Surprise?

Since Sir Thomas Jeeves Horder, Physician in Ordinary to Edward of Wales, felt no anxiety last week for the health of H. R. H., Sir Thomas consented to fly to Paris with James Ramsay MacDonald whose right eye is now causing him trouble. The Prime Minister's left eye was operated upon for glaucoma (hardening of the eyeball) in February by Surgeon Duke-Elder. Last week Surgeon Duke-Elder did not fly with Scot MacDonald but followed him by rail and Channel packet.

In Paris only a perfunctory call on Premier Andre Tardieu was scheduled, but during this chat M. Tardieu, who had only that morning returned from Geneva, suddenly decided to catch the train Mr. MacDonald was taking for Geneva. Tremendously excited were Paris newshawks, who had just been officially informed that their Premier was not returning to Geneva when he popped out among them to say: "I can tell you nothing now messieurs, but--I am going back to Geneva!"

Since Statesman Stimson, Signer Grandi and German Chancellor Heinrich Briining were already in Geneva the world Press treated its readers to such headlines as SURPRISE 5-POWER PARLEY.* What did it all mean? In Geneva one of the first things reported by correspondents was the behavior of Mrs. Henry Lewis Stimson (the former Mabel Wellington White of New Haven, Conn.) as she was escorted into the Geneva Disarmament Conference Building by Mr. MacDonald.

At that moment. Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, Soviet Foreign Commissar, was strolling into the lobby. Prime Minister MacDonald, himself a Socialist,/- held out his hand to clasp that of Comrade Litvinov right warmly--never thinking of the impossible position in which this placed Mrs. Stimson. She, flushing, quit Scot MacDonald's side and beat a hasty retreat to Statesman Stimson whose State Department does not recognize the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

Peace & Pigs! The surprise of the "Surprise Conference" proved to be that there was no Stimson-MacDonald-Tardieu-Bruning-Grandi conference last week, the whole thing turning into a somewhat comic false alarm. Premier Tardieu's sudden dash turned out to be the result of a misunderstanding which led the Frenchman to think that Britain and the U. S. were going to maneuver the Conference into excluding from discussion the Tardieu Plan (TIME. Feb. 15) of creating a world police force to be managed by the League of Nations. Upon actually reaching Geneva, M. Tardieu found Messrs. Stimson and MacDonald perfectly willing to let the Conference discuss the Tardieu Plan, now termed "internationalizing armaments."

Mr. Stimson, who had a mild case of laryngitis before he left Washington, presently found it so bad in Geneva that he had to sit at home in his ornate, rented Louis XVI villa ("The Stimson Musee") wearing heavy woolen socks, a bathrobe and silken muffler. Meanwhile, Scot MacDonald's doctors were pestering him with doctorish demands that he "take three full hours of complete relaxation and visual rest every day." In this atmosphere of inaction, invalidism and frustration correspondents set down:

P:The positive denial of Statesman Stimson that he had permitted anyone to engage him in conversation about Reparations & War Debts (only Dr. Bruning, reputedly, tried to bring them up). P:The sudden violence against Statesman Stimson of virtually the whole French Press, a violence which at once subsided after Premier Tardieu got over his scare. In the Paris Avenir, for example, French Senator Billiet had accused Statesman Stimson of "trying to cash in on the situation" by using what is owed the U. S. as a bargaining weapon to induce Europe to disarm. "By these gentlemen" [from Washington], stormed Senator Billiet, "the problems of Security and Peace are treated like pigs in Chicago stockyards!"

P:Sole work done by the Disarmament Conference last week was to "approve the principle of reducing armaments to the lowest limit consistent with national safety" and to adopt an Anglo-American resolution calling for an attempt by the Conference to attain "qualitative disarmament" and decide what weapons are "most efficacious against national defense" (with a view to limiting such weapons).

By "qualitative disarmament" Sir John Simon, British Foreign Secretary, who introduced that part of the motion, appeared to mean the limitation or reduction of weapons having an "offensive quality" (such as poison gas or submarines). Without cracking a smile, the Japanese Delegate mildly observed that "too much qualitative disarmament might easily lead to too much quantitative disarmament."

*New York Times.

/-On the stump Russia's late, great Nikolai Lenin used the words "Socialism" and "Communism" as interchangeable synonyms. Josef Stalin has stated that what the Russian Communist Party is doing today is "Building Socialism."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.