Monday, Dec. 05, 1927
Stormy Petrel
To Geneva there came last week a corpulent Russian, gruff and burly, but accounted shrewd and keen. He, Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, Assistant People's Commissar (Minister) for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, came to create troubled waters and to fish in them at what had been scheduled to be merely a routine two-day session of the League's Preparatory Disarmament Commission (TIME, Sept. 26 et seq.). As a prelude to his ostentatiously early arrival in Geneva, last week, there had been shrewdly released two troublous pronouncements :
Rykov Thesis. Before leaving Moscow, M. Litvinov handed to correspondents a statement by "Premier"* Alexei Rykov outlining the Soviet thesis of disarmament to be propounded at Geneva. Wrote M. Rykov: "The Soviet Union is ready to propose, support and carry out the most radical possible program of disarmament for the whole globe simultaneously. A campaign against these proposals would be only designed to mislead and disguise preparations for a new war under the mask of pacificism."
Such a statement more than threatened that the Soviet delegates would seek to revive all the smouldering issues which have forced adjournment of so many League disarmament conclaves, and even brought to a fruitless close the Naval Limitations Parley called by U. S. President Coolidge (TIME, June 27 to Aug. 15).
Poland Menaced. No sooner had the Litvinov delegation left Moscow, than Soviet Foreign Commissar (Minister) Georg Tchitcherin despatched a sudden and stiff note to Warsaw, informing the Polish Government gratuitously that Soviet Russia would not countenance any plans which Poles might have to seize all or a portion of Lithuania.
At this note League well wishers were if possible more chagrined than at the Rykov pronouncement, for everyone knows that the League Council has sidestepped and dallied over long in dealing with the perennial Lithuano-Polish quarrel over minority and frontier questions--a quarrel ever capable of leading to such an attack by armed Poland upon puny Lithuania as was envisioned in the Soviet note.
Berlin Watchers. The effect of releasing the Rykov thesis and Tchitcherin note was to create about M. Litvinov, when he stopped off at Berlin, last week, an aura of surmise that this large, red-faced Communist might be about to loose a world-uproar at Geneva which would attract and focus hostile criticism upon the League.
M. Litvinov, correspondents decided, was worth watching. They watched while he went in to talk for two hours with German Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann. Later the German Foreign office released a report stating that Ministers Litvinov and Stresemann had "recognized in common accord that it is urgent to avoid everything which might trouble the development of peace and to take measures necessary to settle present difficulties."
What did that mean? As M. Litvinov left Berlin the certainty grew that he and Dr. Stresemann were in at least sufficient accord to present a firm Russo-German front in demanding more and faster progress in disarmament by the League. Arrived at Geneva, early bird Litvinov held his peace, especially to correspondents, until the other delegations should assemble.
*Official title: President of the Union Council of People's Commissars.