During all the years under the Soviet government the Russian people had to do without romance, until the Five-Year Plan was begun. Then they began to find glamour in statistics. They glorified in figures showing that this or that project in the Soviet Union was the largest of its kind in the world. The Dnieper dam when it was built was the biggest on earth and so it occupied a place in the imagination and affection of the Soviet people difficult for us to realize. I remember standing in the middle of the mile-long dam and listening to a young Soviet engineer rhapsodically exclaim: “You see there, that forest of cranes, that army of excavating machines! There is more machinery concentrated on this construction site than was ever concentrated anywhere in the world! Look at those gravel mixers. We are pouring here five thousand cubic meters of gravel, more per day than any body of men ever poured in the history of the world! See those immense snail-shaped turbo dynamos! They are the biggest ever made. We will supply more electricity from a single point than ever....” And so he went on endlessly, and back in Moscow people would eagerly scan the newspapers for the latest bulletins on Dnieprostroy. Stalin’s order to destroy it meant more to the Russians emotionally than it would mean to us for Roosevelt to order the destruction of the Panama Canal. Suppose our troops defending the canal were to have been driven back by the invading Japanese until it became evident they would capture the canal if we did not destroy it. If our troops then blew up the locks, it would be an act of determination which could be compared to that of the Russians in blowing up the Dnieper dam. Q. _Well then, doesn’t this prove that the Russians will fight to the bitter end and never make a separate peace?_ A. Perhaps, but not necessarily. They may fight to the bitter end but even the Dnieper dam does not prove it. The task of Stalin, it appears now, is by just such a demonstration of stubborn courage, to whittle down Hitler’s demands until they reach Stalin’s ability to accede to them. If he can get Hitler to offer to keep the Soviet government and bureaucracy in power and to withdraw the bulk of the German troops, and not to demand too much in the way of demobilization of the Red Army, the two tyrants might once more get together. Q. _But why should Stalin quit? Why should he ever be willing to make such a compromise peace if in the long run he believes Germany will be beaten?_ A. Because the Soviet Union is not strong enough economically to go on fighting indefinitely, particularly if the industries and mines and agriculture of Southern Russia are cut off by the Germans. It would be a miracle if the Russians could endure a long war. Most peoples have a surplus they can do without in wartime. The Soviet Union has no surplus. Q. _What about the Chinese? They didn’t seem to have a surplus either, but they have gone on fighting the Japanese now for over four years._