M. Tchitcherin's Note

At Geneva Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary General to the League of Nations, scanned with annoyance an official communication which came to his desk last week from Foreign Minister Tchitcherin of the U. S. S. R.

M. Tchitcherin blandly announced that Soviet nationals may participate at the various international conferences projected by the League, "the sole condition of their participation being that the conference shall be convened to meet in some other country than Switzerland."

Wearily League supporters accused M. Tchitcherin of "continuing to pretend that Soviet nationals are not safe in Switzerland because many Swiss are anti-Communists." At present the Swiss Government is attempting to patch up its strained relations with the U. S. S. R., and not succeeding very well because M. Tchitcherin prefers to insist that the League go to enormous expense to hold its conferences elsewhere than at Geneva, where its extensive immovable equipment is located.

Secretary Drummond replied vaguely but courteously to M. Tchitcherin, bided the League's time. He despatched invitations to League states and to the U. S., Germany, Turkey, etc., requesting them to send representatives to a League of Nations Passport Conference to be held at Geneva on May 12. He benignly countenanced the formation by four of his U. S. subordinates of "The League of Nations Post of the American Legion, which is to link the greatest peace agency in the world with one of the greatest of fighting-veteran agencies." He helped to make comfortable twelve famed international lawyers, including George W. Wickersham, onetime U. S. Attorney General, who are now engaged as a League Commission upon "investigations looking toward the progressive codification of International Law." Finally, Sir Eric parried the queries of correspondents who persistently tried to get him to admit that the preliminary disarmament conference scheduled for Feb. 15 would be postponed.