Tirana to Teheran

From Tirana, Albania's capital, to Teheran, Persia's capital, is at best an arduous trip of nearly 2,000 miles through primitive country. Last week Charles Calmer Hart, lately promoted from U. S. Minister to Albania to be U. S. Minister to Persia, was making this journey. But instead of traveling over long roundabout routes, he was shortcutting from post to post across Soviet Russia. The significance of his trip lay in the fact that he was the first U. S. diplomat to enter Russia officially in a dozen years.

Exactly where in Russia Minister Hart was, the State Department did not know. Geographers believed that his itinerary lay to Constantinople, then across the Black Sea to Batum in Georgia, whence he would go by train across the Transcaucasian S. F. S. R. to Baku. There he would ship down the Caspian to Barfrush, going overland to Teheran. Had he traveled through countries officially recognized by the U. S., his route would have taken him to Damascus, with a flight to Bagdad or perhaps by water around Arabia and up to the head of the Persian Gulf.

Not the smallest reason why the State Department had permitted Minister Hart to travel by way of Russia was because he is the only trained newsman in the diplomatic corps, because his official reports constitute some of the most zestful reading matter coming into the State Department by official channels. Crippled in one leg, Minister Hart was appointed in 1925 by President Coolidge, who chose him from the corps of Washington correspondents where he represented Portland and Spokane papers. His reports of crudities in the Balkan capital kept his superiors in a state of giggly excitement, led to the construction of a new legation there. He, of all its men, could furnish the ever-curious State Department with a vivid description of conditions in Southern Russia.

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