Word: commissariats
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Urbane, witty Jean Hippolyte Giraudoux, playwright and novelist, is always irritated to be called a propagandist. He insists he is simply the chief of the French Commissariat General de I'Information. Another pet annoyance is to be told that France and Britain are fighting a "phony war," and last week, in a speech of high literary quality before the American Club in Paris, M. Giraudoux set about to correct any such notions held by transatlantic strategists...
...test of its neutrality, the skill of its diplomats, the wisdom of its foreign policy. City of Flint was flying the German flag. It carried a German prize crew. Dramatic was the story of its seizure and flight. But last week the swift routine moves of the Russian Foreign Commissariat, the swift routine countermoves of the U. S. State Department, unexpectedly turned into something bigger, a first-class demonstration of diplomatic action, a maneuver that illuminated a basic difference between dictatorial and democratic diplomacy...
...pressed for more information. Russia announced that the German crew had been released. That would suggest that the ship should sail under her German crew within 24 hours. Ambassador Steinhardt pressed for more information, tried to telephone Murmansk, sat at his desk till 5 a.m., daily prodded the Foreign Commissariat, tried to get permission to charter a plane to send an Embassy secretary to Murmansk, once got Murmansk on the telephone, only to be cut off-all for information about the welfare of the crew. But this information Russia apparently could not or would not provide...
...third day of City of Flint's stay, Ambassador Steinhardt, armed with new instructions from Washington, talked over the case with Foreign Commissariat officials. Hour and a half later the Soviet radio announced that Russia was releasing the ship on condition that she leave Murmansk at once. Next day Ambassador Steinhardt slapped down his trumps. With an indignation compatible with the strength of his position, he: > Accused the SovietGovernment of refusing to cooperate in providing information...
...Commissariat of Information were such pillars of French letters as Paul Claude), the Roman Catholic poet and onetime Ambassador to the U. S., and Paul Valery, who presented the first wartime performance of the Comedie Fran-Qaise. André Maurois took a post in the censorship under Jean Giraudoux (TIME...