Polo Diplomacy

Seven crack horsemen from War Commissar Klimentiy E. Voroshilov's Red cavalry rode forth one afternoon last week on a pleasant green meadow across the river from Moscow. They dangled polo mallets from their wrists. With them rode a Philadelphia socialite who had won his one-goal rating with the Bryn Mawr Polo Club and the West Point polo team, Charles W. Thayer, personal secretary to U. S. Ambassador William Christian Bullitt.

Bill Bullitt was also born & bred a Philadelphia socialite of the bluest. But today he is famed as the only envoy in Moscow whom Bolsheviks consider practically one of themselves. His second wife was the widow of famed U.S. Communist John Reed who lies buried in the Kremlin wall. Two months ago he persuaded the Russian high command to tell off a squad of cavalrymen to learn polo from his secretary. He pointed out that polo was played many centuries ago by the horsemen of Tibet who gave it its name pulu. Ambassador Bullitt, in trig khaki riding breeches and a well-cut tweed coat, umpired last week's match while War Commissar "Klim" Voroshilov and Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinoff sat on the sidelines.

As soon as War Commissar "Klim" saw the over-sized cavalry geldings lumbering into one another and his men swinging wildly at the white willow-root ball, he began to cheer. His own Captain Horovenko, playing No. 1 for the "Red" team after six weeks of teaching, was crowding Mr. Thayer, No. 1 for the "White" team, for individual honors. The West Pointer could hit but Captain Horovenko could ride. The All-Russian "Red" team beat its coach, 5 to 4. Commissar "Klim" congratulated his men hoarsely: "The horses were less efficient than the riders. It was a hard-fought, clean, friendly match."

Before the game, at luncheon and afterward at dinner Ambassador Bullitt played host to the two potent Red Commissars and three high-ranking Red Army officers, on a footing of hearty intimacy such as no bourgeois Ambassador has ever achieved in Moscow.

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