Piles of documents on the tables. Even here there is no rest, no relaxation. By telephone, through special messengers,
orders are dispatched incessantly, orders that fix the destinies of the country. Stalin sits at his desk, calm, almost motionless; on his stony face of an antediluvian lizard only the eyes are alive. A few years ago his name was unknown to the world. Today none of our contemporaries attracts so much attention as this son of a Caucasian cobbler. Unseen and unapproachable, like an oriental despot, this mysterious man, a student of a theological seminary, who turned out to be leader of a revolution, is at present the focus of Russia. Behind the thick walls of the Kremlin or the fences of his lofty country-j seat he holds, squeezed in his armed fist, 160 millions of human lives and one-sixth of the globe. Perhaps he is today the world's most powerful ruler. There is no country where the government's authority is as boundless as in Soviet
Russia, and it is Stalin's will that forms Russia's government. If any modern autocrat has the right to repeat the haughty
words of Louis XIV, "L'état - c'est moi", it is Stalin who has it.