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News gets worse and worse these days, and at a time when it takes an act of faith to drop off to sleep each night, even tiny grins of comfort are very welcome. It was therefore good to see that Muscovites are lining up to purchase their copies of Izvestia's interview with President Kennedy. Not because Russian citizens will immediately and clearly (in some Goldwatery, Cartesian manner) perceive the truth of the American cause, but because such interchanges are much preferable to the kind of scary Cold War bluster that has characterized the present world crisis.

Izvestia's six million readers will, for example, hear Kennedy express disappointment that the Soviet government was preparing its latest test series during the course of the Geneva test ban talks--a fact that the Russian people has not seen underlined before (even the neutralist press has commented acidly on the way the authorities in Moscow have veiled the magnitude of its nuclear testings).

And they will hear Kennedy point out what must seem a new and daring, if not preposterous, idea to Russians worried over West German revanchism: that Bonn's membership in NATO is much preferable to an independent, nationally-minded West German military establishment. Kennedy said--and quite rightly--that West Germany's nine divisions are under the command of 15 other NATO nations, and that these other nations themselves have 22 or 23 divisions on German soil. A divided and militarily second-rate Germany may be a cause for some worry--Kennedy seemed to be saying--but not cause for the sort of terror that the Russian revanchist myth is based on. Also--if Kennedy meant it--the Russians should be pleased by:

"The United States, as a matter of national policy, as I said at the United Nations, will not give nuclear weapons to any country, and I would be extremely reluctant to see West Germany acquire a nuclear capacity on its own. Chancellor Adenauer stated that they would not in 1954. That is still the policy of that government, and I think that is the wise policy."

Neither Kennedy's point about Russian test preparations nor his assurances about West Germany are going to thaw the Cold War: events in the last few months have gone too far. And in one sense, it is not really important that the Izvestia interview change minds. What it represents is a small gesture towards reasonableness, a small reminder that both sides have everything to lose by not listening to one another. It is no more than a gesture, but it is nonetheless welcome.