Two Nots

When portly President the Aga Khan of the Assembly of the League of Nations wound up its session by a recess last week and statesmen started home, Geneva correspondents agreed that "only one of the 52 principal delegates left Geneva better known and better appreciated than when he arrived, Vilhelms Munters."

This young man who is Foreign Minister of the Republic of Latvia has the clean-cut mien of an Arrow-Collar illustration. Latvia is just about as remote from Japan, geographically and in every other respect, as possible, and this fact in Geneva became important recently. The Dutch suddenly realized that their delegate was slated to be chairman of a League committee which must examine the aggressions of Japan, and, since The Netherlands East Indies are within easy striking distance of the Japanese Navy, the risk of heading such a committee was deemed too great for Queen Wilhelmina's representative, who promptly resigned. Thus, smart Vilhelms Munters of Latvia came to be chosen, has presided in recent weeks with notable skill and tact over a League committee whose British and French members wanted Japan to be let as nearly alone as possible, while its Soviet and Chinese members tried to egg the League into cracking down as hard as possible on Tokyo.

President Roosevelt last week significantly let the Munters Committee see his Chicago speech six hours before he made it. The Committee had by this time decided not to brand Japan as an "aggressor" and not to mention "war." Not even the President's candid show of partiality for China budged the Committee from its two nots, but after scanning Mr. Roosevelt's words it inserted in the motion it was drafting that "League members should refrain from taking any action which might have the effect of weakening China's power of resistance . . . and should also consider how far they can individually extend aid to China." As taken by Latvia's Munters before the League Assembly and promptly voted by 50 unanimous ballots, with Poland and Siam abstaining, the motion directs League member States who are signatories to the Washington Nine Power Treaty (namely Belgium, China, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Japan and the U. S.) to invite the U. S. and "other interested powers" to a Far East Peace Conference--this invitation being promptly accepted last week by Washington. Dependent upon Belgium's permission, the Conference was scheduled to meet in Brussels.

Meanwhile, as Latvia's looming Munters left Geneva for Riga jauntily wearing credit for having stepped ably into the empty Dutch breeches, Europeans were intrigued by details of the little-known visit last spring of Mr. & Mrs. Munters to Dictator Joseph Stalin (TIME, June 28). In his boyhood Latvia's still young Foreign Minister studied at the Vladimir Military Academy in Petrograd to become an officer in Tsar Nicholas' Imperial Army, was turned out of school by the Revolution. In Moscow, vivacious Mrs. Munters, a typically irrepressible Russian of pre-Revolution type, promptly taxed Stalin to his face with general religious intolerance and particular oppression of the Church in Russia. Not thus challenged in years by anyone, male or female, Dictator Stalin knit his brows, finally replied: "Mrs. Munters, we in the Soviet Union seek to advance Culture, and Culture has nothing to do with Religion."

Statesman Munters, conversing easily in Russian with Statesman Stalin, noted the Dictator's expansive natural charm, coupled with earthy peasant shrewdness and no trace of being a Communist intellectual. Mr. Munters, knowing how many abstruse, voluminous Communist tracts have been printed with Joseph Stalin as the author, tried to draw him into intellectual discourse. Invariably J. Stalin's rough and ready ideas, questions and replies had to do with quick facts, not theory. His queries about Latvia, Statesman Munters was distressed to find, showed an all but complete lack of knowledge of the facts of Latvian history, since Soviet rule in Riga was overthrown in 1918.

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