Art: Neutral Flag

Proud indeed last week were followers of Nicholas Constantinovich Roerich, painter-explorer-mystic. In the 24-story apartment-house-museum which his disciples have built for him on upper Riverside Drive, Manhattan, there was happy talk about the Master’s latest step in his mission of Unifying Humanity Through Art. From Roerich in Paris had come a cable saying that the League of Nations’ International Commission of Intellectual Cooperation (TIME, Aug. 4) had endorsed an international convention suggested by him to ensure Art’s neutrality and safety in wartime. The “Roerich Pact” was drawn up by Dr. George Chklaver of the University of Paris and Professor Albert Geouffre de Lapradelle, Law Professor of the Sorbonne, Hague Court member and vice president of the Paris Institute of International Law.Chief provision is the creation of a flag to be flown, during hostilities, over museums, cathedrals, libraries, universities and other cultural centres, to prevent such disasters as befell Rheims and Notre Dame.

Friends of Roerich wished for him last week that such a treaty already existed. Carrying Art’s flag he might be able to wrangle from the British a visa for India, where his wife lay sick but where the British—despite official pleas fromWashington and Paris and four other countries —(Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Brazil & Peru)—feared his alleged sympathy for Soviet Russia.