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One of our men, Sidney Wilcox, who worked for the Department of Labor had been invited to go to some South American country to stay a year and make an economic survey. They had picked Mr. Wilcox as a competent economic person with good ideas and so forth. This reception was given, not by the Ambassador--although the Ambassador from that country was present--but by the head of the economic agency, the economic advisor to the Ambassador, in a small house out here in that area beyond the Wardman Park Hotel. It was not a small house, but a medium sized house, not a great Embassy. It was in the foothills of Cleveland Park.

Mr. Gromyko showed up and somebody else from the Russian Embassy, and they both had on their diplomatic uniforms, and Mr. Gromyko had his diplomatic sword. I remember making an immediate salutation to him, to say how glad I was to see him in his diplomatic uniform, sort of laughing at him. He was then carrying on the pretense that he couldn't speak English. So I deliberately broke it down, and I said to our host, “Oh, Mr. Gromyko speaks just as good English as I do: He tipped his pocket to me only two days ago.”

Anyway, that served to break the ice, and Mr. Gromyko became very jolly. He admitted he could speak English, and so we all laughed about talking English. Our host spoke Spanish as his native language, but of course he spoke very good English too.