"Very Bad"

Tingling little shocks rippled, last week, along the diplomatic cobweb that unites those wary spiders, the foreign ministers of the Great Powers. Cause: at Rome the Italian Government ratified, last week, the Franco-British-Italian-Japanese Treaty of Paris (1920).

The treaty upholds and guarantees Rumania in her seizure of the onetime Russian province of Bessarabia after the World War. Britain has signed (1922); France signed (1924); and now the signature of Italy leaves only that of Japan necessary to make the treaty binding.

Therefore, last week the frail cobweb relations between the Black Spider at Rome and the Red Spider in Moscow were strained to the rupture point. Moscow news-organs screamed that a British-led bloc of nations was being lined up against Russia; and even neutrals considered the Italian signature a British diplomatic victory.

To still the international cob-web's trembling, Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann of Germany assumed the role of peaceable mediator, intimated that Germany would proffer her good offices between Russia and Rumania in the Bessarabia dispute. He vigorously scouted the "British Bloc" story as follows: "The British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain has never intimated to me a desire to build up a bloc of European nations against Russia, but has, on the contrary, categorically denied to me any such intentions."

Since Foreign Ministers Stresemann and Chamberlain were both in Geneva, last week (See THE LEAGUE) , newsgatherers rushed in to ask Sir Austen the nature of relations now existing between Britain and the Soviet Republics. He, obviously displeased at the question, answered shortly: "Very bad."