THE CABINET: Poor Chap Shapurji

The Secretary of State is a little man, and he is rather nervous in his manner. So the giants of wit and wisdom who wander among the concentric semicircles of desks in the Senate Chamber looked at him quizzically, and between the making of one law and the making of another dubbed him “Nervous Nellie.”

With those who look with a critical eye upon him and all his actions, seeing the superficial eccentricity and overlooking the well-measured ability within the man, although he has long passed from those semicircles of desks and the sacrosanct precincts of the Chamber devoted to the deliberations of the Foreign Relations Committee, and although he passed through and beyond the U. S. Embassy at the Court of St. James’s, the contemptuous sobriquet still sticks.

As it is their wont to murmur it from time to time, so they murmured “Nervous Nellie” last week when he first summoned to confer with him his former colleague, now become Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Borah, and later went to confer with President Coolidge, and then issued a statement.

“Nervous,” the critics reiterated. “What is he nervous about now?”

Oct. 1. In the great pit of the House of Representatives in the Capitol at Washington, on the first day of October there will assemble a strange polyglot agglomeration of men whom the peoples of the teeming earth have chosen to regulate their liberties and decree their tabus—the Interparliamentary Union. Gatherings of diplomats from half the countries of the world are fairly common, and assemblages of executive heads, premiers, dictators and Presidents are not unknown. But the lawmakers of the world generally remain in a magnificent isolation from international contacts. The Interparliamentary Union is the great exception. In Paris, on Oct. 31, 1888, a few French and British legislators assembled unofficially to promte the cause of international arbitration treaties. They decided however, to treat of other matters as well, and invite the legislative representatives of other countries to sit with them. In June, 1889, the first meeting of the Interparliamentary Union was held and meetings have been held every year since except during the War. The object of these unofficial meetings is “to unite in common action the members of all parliaments constituted in national groups to secure co-operation,” etc., etc., in the usual vague and well-known terms.

The U.S. has been represented in the meetings from the first by Congressmen or Senators, although attendance was not regular at first. In 1904 the meeting of the Union was held in St. Louis during the World’s Fair. In 1915 it was to have met in the U. S., but the War intervened. In 1924 Congress invited the Union to meet at Washington this year. The invitation was accepted. Congress voted $50,000 towards the expenses of the meeting, which takes place next month.

The Gathering. Crossing the boundaries of their fatherlands, legislators last week made their way towards Washington. Ex-Chancellor Josef Wirth, of Germany, lately resigned from his party (TIME, Sept. 7, Germany), was among the first arrivals. Frenchmen, Germans, Englishmen, Italians, Swiss, Rumanians, Austrians, Czechs, Latvians, Lithuanians, Serbs, Swedes, Poles, Irish, Magyars, Belgians, Bulgarians, Canadians, Egyptians, Finns, Dutchmen, Norwegians, Danes were on their way.

The State Department had issued blanket orders to diplomatic officials that visas be given the passports of all who wanted to come.

Suddenly certain newspapers and persons began to murmur, “This Parsee,*this M.P. from Battersea, he’s a Red, an anarchist, a whatnot. What does the State Department mean by admitting him? Doesn’t the law forbid the entrance of persons into this country who advocate the overthrow of our Government?”

Official Cognizance. Hearing these murmurs, Secretary Kellogg took heed. He well remembered the storm that broke when Count Karolyi was admitted to this country to visit his sick Countess but forbidden political utterances (TIME, Mar. 2). He considered what might be done in the case of this Parsee with the unpronounceable name, Shapurji Saklatvala. Secretary Hughes had had his Karolyi, but Secretary Kellogg did not want a Saklatvala for a Karolyi.

He conferred with Mr. Borah, with Mr. Coolidge. Then the Secretary of State issued a statement. The statement, quoted from the utterances of the Parsee, who had been elected to Parliament by an English constituency (see COMMONWEALTH ):

I, as a Communist and a true believer in Internationalism, do not speak with the the intention of offending but with the intention of giving a shock to your mentality. I, for one, will not yield to terrorism. I am going to carry subversive propaganda, revolutionary propaganda, Communist propaganda, international propaganda, with the assistance of the Russians and the Chinese and the Germans and the British.

I am going to America as a friend of the working classes. British imperialism ought to crumble in the dust. I am out to work for a revolution and for the day when the workers will control the whole world. But before this comes you will have to face cold steel.

Said Mr. Kellogg:

Saklatvala is understood to be a member of the British Parliamentary delegation to the Interparliamentary Union meeting to be held in Washington. He is not appointed by the British Government nor selected by any authority of the British Government. I know of no reason why he should be considered exempt from the immigration law any more than the humblest immigrant who holds subversive or revolutionary views and carries on propaganda contrary to our institutions. It is the policy of this Government to exclude such persons from coming to this country.

I do not believe in curbing free speech, nor do I believe in making this country the stamping ground for every revolutionary agitator of other countries. This is no place for them. Nobody, I believe, will object to any citizen of the United States advocating a change of our form of Government by legal and constitutional means, but I do not believe we should admit foreigners to this country to preach anarchy or a revolutionary overthrow of Government.

The Outcry. Promptly cries and countercries arose.

Said Senator Borah:

It is neither necessary nor wise to exclude Saklatvala. He is a member of the British Parliament. What he has said he has said there. If he comes here for the Parliamentary Union sessions and violates any law, then there is time enough to proceed against him and put him in jail if need be.

But to assume in advance that he is too dangerous a character to admit to these shores because of his Communist beliefs would offer an affront to the British people. The way to spread such doctrines is to make martyrs of the spreaders. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church in more ways than one. I do not want to see the right of free speech more abridged on American than on British soil.

Said Mr. Saklatvala:

If I got to the United States, I would prove Secretary Kellogg a liar and a defamer in ten minutes.

The speech of mine in the British Parliament quoted by Secretary Kellogg has been falsely reported. Mr. Kellogg is deceiving the American public. He claims I would preach sedition in America.

Mr. Kellogg has accused and blackguarded and condemned me without a hearing. What he has done is a work of the lowest type of human being. It is a work which is a disgrace to America. And it is illegal.

Mr. Kellogg has committed an atrocity in the name of the American people. He has lent himself to the British intrigue to keep me out of America.

Said Mr. Saklatvala’s brother, P.D. Saklatvala, President of the Middle States Oil Co.:

For 20 years I have been a resident of the United States. I am a naturalized citizen, a loyal American.

That my brother has been excluded from the United States and refused permission to attend the forthcoming congress of the Interparliamentary Union here is no surprise to me.

Washington knows best. Mr. Kellogg’s word is final.

The phase of the affair that I resent is my brother’s inflammatory language directed toward our Secretary of State. I don’t mind how he expresses himself, so long as he does it with the tact obligatory on a member of Parliament.

We were schoolmates together at St. Francis Xavier’s Academy in Bombay. He was always getting in trouble, always taking the opposite side, no matter whether he believed in the issue or not.

Then twenty-one years ago, I came to America. He went to England. Ever since he’s been the family thorn, taking the side of every tatterdemalion, every underdog in England.

Ours is a very rich family. The opportunities, as provided by our family, were the same for us brothers.

My brother, Beram D. Saklatvala, has done well as a chemical expert in Pittsburgh. I have prospered here in New York in the oil business.

But our “insurgent brother” threw his chances away. He could be today one of the most distinguished men in Great Britain and India. Instead, he flings vituperative words at Secretary Kellogg.

The press commented diversely: “Good. This is no place for Reds,” or “What! another invasion of free speech!” or “Why dignify this windbag by excluding him?” or “Mr. Kellogg could not do otherwise—the law required that Saklatvala be excluded.”

*Parsees constitute a sect in India who are followers of Zoroaster. They are descendants of ancient Persians who migrated to India in the 8th Century. They are one of the more advanced of India’s numerous racial and religious minorities.