Contemplating these posthumous punishments, Stalin should not lose all hope. In 1899, Parliament erected a statue to Cromwell in Westminster, facing Whitehall and there, presumably, he still stands. Nikita Khrushchev, however, has created yet another problem for himself. The Lenin tomb is obviously adequate for double occupancy, Moscow is a crowded city, and the creed of communism deplores waste. Who will take Stalin's place beside Lenin? There is Karl Marx, of course, buried in London. The Macmillan government might be willing to let him go, but he has been dead seventy-eight years and even the Soviet morticians could not make him look presentable. Who, then, is of sufficient stature to lodge with Lenin? Who but Nikita himself? Since he has just shown who is top dog, he may not be ready to receive this highest honor in the gift of the Soviet people. Besides, he can hardly avoid musing on the instability of death which, what with exhumations and rehabilitations, seems to match that of life. Suppose he did lie beside Lenin, would it be permanent? If some future Khrushchev decided to rake up the misdeeds of his revered predecessor, would not the factory workers pass the same resolutions applauding his dispossession? When a man is laid to rest, he is entitled to stay put. If Nikita buys a small plot in some modest rural cemetery, everyone will understand.

The appointment of U Thant of Burma as the U.N.'s Acting Secretary General -- at this writing, the choice appears to be certain -- offers further proof that in politics it is more important to have no influential enemies than to have influential friends. Mongi Slim of Tunisia and Frederick Boland of Ireland were early favorites in the running, but France didn't like the former and the Soviet Union would have none of the latter. With the neutralists maintaining pressure for one of their own to succeed Mr. Hammarskjold, U Thant emerged as the only possible candidate unlikely to be waylaid by a veto. What is interesting is that his positive qualifications for the post were revealed only as a kind of tail to his candidacy. In all the bitter in-fighting, the squabbles over election procedures, the complicated numbers game that East and West played on the assistant secretaries' theme, the gentleman from Burma showed himself both as a man of principle and a skilled diplomat. He has, moreover, another qualification which augurs well for the future. He is a Buddhist, which means that to him peace and the sanctity of human life are not only religious dogma, but a profound and unshakable Weltanschauung.