The House presented a colourful spectacle, with every seat taken, when it assembled today, M, Josef Stalin sat with M. Molotov and all other members of the Council of People's Commissars. Sir William Seeds, the British Ambassador, was in the Diplomatic box. Other spectators included Herr Schurre, head of the German trade delegation to Moscow. M. Maxim Litvinoff, former Foreign Commissar. occupied a deputy's seat near M. Dimitrov, the Communist leader who played a prominent part in the Reichstag trial and is now General Secretary of the Comintern, A battery of floodlights and cinema cameras played on the tribune, where M. Stalin and M.
Molotov sat, Shortly before the proceedings opened, delegations from the newly-elected. Western Ukraine and Western White Russian conventions took seats on the floor of the House, including old women with heads wrap-" ped in shawls, young girls in bright-coloured peasant costumes, and poorly dressed men.
In opening his address, M. Molotov said the so-called traditional policy of unprincipled manceuvering between Germany and Soviet Russia, and playing off one against the other, had proved unsound and had suffered complete bankruptcy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.