"T. & T."

Tchitcherin Travels. The "T. and T. Conference" at Odessa (TIME, Nov. 22) between Turkish Foreign Minister Tewfik Rushdi Bey and Soviet Foreign Minister Georg Tchitcherin came to a most amiable close last week amid continued, portentous secrecy. As he took ship to sail across the Black Sea to Constantinople, the swarthy dandified Tewfik Rushdi Bey assured newsgatherers that Turkey and the Soviets are now in diplomatic concord, adding darkly: "Turkey does not favor any Western state to the detriment of any Eastern state. . . ." With Tewfik Rushdi Bey gone, M. Tchitcherin, still less communicative, tarried not in Odessa. Bundled up as usual because of his uncertain health, he hurried with his bustling undersecretaries to catch the regular 6:40 p.m. through express to Moscow. Behind the puffing locomotive M. Tchitcherin's first class wagon-lit rumbled smoothly. Then came a jangling, second class car, a rattlety-bang third class coach and seven careening fast freight vans. Speeding northwestward to Schmerinka, northeastward to Kiew and Kursk, and finally due north to Moscow (900 miles), the train drew in on the morning of the third day at 10:54 a. m.--one minute ahead of schedule. "Scoops." At Moscow M. Tchitcherin would have smiled awry had he known that the Hearst Sunday Feature Service was broadcasting what purported to be a speech delivered by President Mustafa Kemal Pasha to his "War Council" at Angora. President Kemal Pasha was quoted as saying that he had received assurances from Persia, the Egyptian Nationalists, Syria, Afghanistan, Mesopotamia, China and Soviet Russia that those nations are ready to enter "an Oriental League of Nations predominated by Russia and Turkey . . . supported by a million bayonets . . . with the potential possibilities of arraying ten million fighting men against ... the West." To serious diplomatic watchers of the sky, the annoying thing about Hearstian scoops is that now and again they are "straight." Strangely enough the Philadelphia Public Ledger Foreign Service turned up an equally unique "scoop" to the effect that M. Tchitcherin would speed to Paris and there lay before Foreign Minister Briand a scheme for a Pan-Asiatic League to be set up in close harmony with the League of Nations.

Portents. In diplomatic circles the belief was current that the Odessa conference was concerned with arriving at an understanding whereby Turkey will be able to apply for membership in the League of Nations without violating certain treaty obligations by which she is bound to Soviet Russia. The wild guesses and speculations current in the Occidental press caused loud reverberations of scorn in the Levantine and Japanese press. Levantine editors remarked that the violent "Westernizing" campaign being carried on in Turkey by Kemal Pasha precludes his ever being regarded by Orientals with anything but suspicion. At Tokyo, the Board of Directors of the Pan-Asiatic Society of Japan denounced the proposed Asiatic League, saying that they propose to work for Asiatic union "along peaceful lines and not in imitation of the war like League of the West."