THE OPEN GATEWAY 255

for a speed tiansport plane, and after graduating was
appointed to his present post.

Nor is the Soviet Union backward in the aits. In 1927
several young Soviet musicians took port in the First
International Chopin Contest of pianists held in Warsaw.
Out of them, Lev Oberin, won the first piize. Since then
at practically all international contests Soviet Youth rank
first among the prize-winners At the Thud International
Contest of Pianists in Wai saw in 1937 Zak and Rosa
Tamarkina won first and second prizes lespectively. Emil
H^lcls, who had won the second prize in 1936 at Vienna,
won first prize at Brussels in 1938.

As with the piano, so with the vioLn. At the Inter-
national Ysaye Contest in Brussels in 1937 five of the six
prizes were awarded to Soviet violinists, first, thud, fourth,
fifth, and sixth.

And yet, as far as youth and education are concerned,
there is to be no resting on laurels already won. The
Third Five-Year Plan has more in mind than quantity.
Though quantity precedes, quality is to crown educational
achievement; and special attention is to be paid in the
coming years to quality of education A higher standard
is to be set and reached, and as a preliminary step a
thorough revision of text-books is contemplated: none
but the best must be employed

The end of the Third Five-Year Plan should show not
only that 40 million out of a population of 168 million were
studying in elementary and secondary schools, but that
they were reaching a standard of education calculated to
place the Soviet Union in the front rank of educated
nations.

I can well understand Lion Feuchtwanger when he
wrote after sojourning in the U.S.S.R. that " Soviet youth
emanates a strength and joy which involuntarily astonishes
me." And I can sympathize with Roland Romain's
message to Soviet Youth: tl You are the hope of the world,
the seed of the future classless society of all humanity, a
society without exploitation of man by man, without
frontiers between the states, without hatred between races
and peoples."