The trouble began when word got about that the Russians had brought a whole shipload of caviar and vodka. Actually, the Russian ship anchored in San Fran cisco Bay was there primarily for radio communication with Moscow. Some of the delegation lived aboard, and they presumably had a supply of their national food and drink. But the refreshments were incidental. Thanks to Russian secrecy about the ship, and the press's failure to check, tongues were clacking furiously when Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov arrived by plane from Washington.
He was smiling, gracious, obviously eager to please. But an unconscionable mixup in press arrangements soured newsmen, colored their whole attitude and many of their stories.
Behind the Azaleas. Russian security police seemed to be everywhere. They were hard-eyed and husky. They made pathetic efforts to be unobtrusive, standing self-consciously behind potted palms and azaleas in the hotel lobbies, and giving their identities away with their long Russian cigarets. Some of them, arriving without proper headgear, visited a store and bought felt hats. The clerks carefully creased the hats. The Russians as carefully uncreased them, restoring the round newness of hats on a shelf.
Molotov never appeared without his flying wedge of guards and his interpreter.* Some of them were inoffensive consultants in his delegation, but they all spelled Ogpu to the onlookers. The contrast with Stettinius and Eden, striding carelessly through the lobbies, was too much for Americans, who often forget that three of their Presidents have been assassinated.
Russian officials soon learned that their seclusion, their secretive official air did not sit well. On the conference's opening day, Molotov and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, must have overheard the rude remarks of newsmen waiting with them for an elevator in the Fairmont Hotel: "Those bastard Russians!"; "Did you hear how so-&-so got the brushoff?" Gromyko speaks and understands English; Molotov does not.
Guards & Gavels. Next morning, before the conference steering committee opened its first meeting, newsmen had clustered around erect, impassive Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts when someone cried: "Molotov!" In mid-question, the reporters deserted Smuts. Resembling Cartoonist Otto Soglow's "Little King" amid his guards, Molotov entered the Veterans' Building lobby and walked rapidly to an elevator. Smuts trailed along, tried to enter the same elevator and was blocked by a line of photographers. A U.S. Army captain pushed a photographer aside, and Smuts eased in. Molotov, painfully embarrassed, bobbed a greeting to Smuts. One of the hard-faced Russian guards peered at Smuts's insignia, twitched an eyebrow at another guard whose expression seemed to say: "How would I know?"