COLD WAR CONFERENCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I should like to enter a correction to Paul V. Smith's letter in the CRIMSON of December 9, concerning the conference "Understanding the Cold War," on December 2 and 3.

Two of the remarks attributed by him to me I recognize as my own: first, that the really significant difference between the United States and the USSR is in their attitude to personal liberty; second, that the balance between communism and the quasi-capitalism of the West will not come into any sort of permanent equilibrium untl communism has made further advances. In this latter case, I added the explanation--omitted in Mr. Smith's account--that the spread of communism in the under-developed world would very likely come in unorthodox forms inspired by Yugoslav or Polish example.

What I cannot accept, however, is his account of Russians assuring me that they had no hostile images of the United States and that they objected to Khrushchev's demolition of the Summit. What I did say was that during my short visit to the Soviet Union last summer I was struck by the absence of hostility to myself and my traveling companions as Americans--despite the fact that we reached Russia just after the Powers trial, when popular feeling against our country might be presumed to be at its height. I had no such conversations as Mr. Smith reports. My spoken Russian is not good enough for that.

Let me add that I was particularly surprised by Mr. Smith's letter, since I share his hostility to the current fad of foreign policy "images"--a way of expressing oneself which actually figured very little in the conference on December 2 and 3. H. Stuart Hughes,   Professor of History.