En Route Tchitcherin

Last week a twinkling-eyed, eccentric little man arrived at Paris and was greeted by a sprinkling of Russian Communists, a lone detective and an official of the French Foreign Office. Long after his train drew in, the little man remained seated in his compartment. When the crowd of travelers had quite cleared away, he stepped nimbly forth and was whirled away to a secret conference with M. Herriot and M. Briand, who were engaged at the moment chiefly in deciding which, if either of them, should be the next Premier of France (see FRANCE, p. 11.) The shabby, bright-eyed stranger who could command an audience with these famed statesmen at such an hour was none other than M. Georg Tchitcherin, famed political stormy petrel and Foreign Minister to the Soviet Union.

Observers recalled how he had sped from Moscow to Berlin (TIME, Oct. 12) in an effort to keep Foreign Minister Stresemann of Germany from going to the now famous Locarno Conference. From croaking throats came prophecies that M. Tchitcherin's presence in Paris last week foreboded a Communist uprising in France. To heads more subtle it appeared that M. Tchitcherin was at length approaching perilously near the truth when he spoke as follows to correspondents: "So! Let there be no rumors, gentlemen! I am merely passing through Paris on my way from Germany to Mentone [French Riviera] for two weeks of healthful rest. Then I shall return to Paris. ... So! You shall see me again, gentlemen."

Able listeners at well-plugged official keyholes were unable to think of anything of a world-shattering nature which M. Tchitcherin could have discussed with a French Government that did not exist at the time of his visit.

On his return from Mentone, they averred, M. Tchitcherin may have the good luck to find M. Briand's new cabinet sufficiently well established to make negotiating worth while. At that time discussion would seem to be in order concerning: the Tsarist debt to France; Franco-Soviet commercial treaties; a resumption of uninterrupted railway service between France and Russia; the final disposition of Tsarist gunboats now in French hands.

At Moscow, Acting Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov was at some pains to deny loudly that the Soviet Union has the slightest intention of ever joining the League of Nations. He said: "Like the United States of America, we should continue to remain aloof. . . . The League is a mere screen for the oppression of small and weak nations by the Powers."

Inveterate rumormongers queried: "What if M. Tchitcherin discussed all that with M. Briand, President of the Council of the League of Nations?"