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quite as impressive as present-day achie i:nts.in the natura sciences. . In general the Sovict universities appenr to be ane of the most honeful foress in Soviet soctety By its very nature as ar MOst MOPS, LOPCes IN oOVIeL society. HS Very MALure institution organized to expiore the frontiers of knowledge, the university cunnol be wholly regiraented, for then it would cons to function as a university, and the vital sources of our expand. ing knowledge about man and the world would begin to dry up The great emphasis that is placed on the natural sciences anc the scientific method in Soviet education tends to cultivate it Soviet students and scholars an attitude of mind that is unlikels to prove compatible very long with any dogmatism, including the present dogmatic interpretations of Marxism. It will be interesting to see what the ultimate consequences will be of the present emphasis on science in Soviet education. One wonder: what significanee there may he even now in the proportions o Communist Party members in university faculties. While 34. per cent of al] teachers in higher education in 1947 were Part; members, the percentage among full professors was only 25. and among professors in engineering technical fields only 17 During World War II], when Wendell Willkie visited thi ' Soviet Union on his trip around the world, he told Stalin he wa: impressed by the schcols and libraries he had seen. “But if you continue to educate the Russian people, Mr. Stalin,” he said “the first thing you know you'll educate yourself out of a job." It must be admitted that the Communist Party is a lon way as yet from having educated its own dictatorship out o existence. But in the emphasis it has placed upon education even though that education is as “partisan” and biased as th Party can make it—the Party has set in motion a force that ma’ possibly have a significant leavening influence, in the course o time, upon the Communist dictatorship itself. Thirst for Culture Few things in Russia impressed us so much as the well nigh inexhaustible thirst of the Russian people for culture. F- Leningrad we saw crowds of unsophisticated-locking Russian walking wide-eyed through the galleries of the Hermitage Mu seum, Which holds one of the richest art collections in the worlc In Moscow, where the Dresden art treasures (taken out of Ger many at the end of World War II) were placed on display fo the three summer months before being returned to German * Wendell Wilikie, One Werld (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1543 pp. 70-71, : 62