Little Entente

Some 60 correspondents assembled last week at Joachimsthal, Czechoslovakian spa. They ferreted industriously, almost hysterically, into the doings of three solemn gentlemen. The gentlemen met every day in a hotel at which the other guests were invalids gulping down incessantly glass after glass of curative, radium-active water. . . .

The three statesmen who met thus in deadly secrecy amid a conclave of water drinkers were the Foreign Ministers of Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, countries allied in the so-called "Little Entente."

Their dean, the co-founder (1920) of the Little Entente was Dr. Edouard Benes (pronounced Benesh), Foreign Minister and leading statesman of Czechoslovakia. As host, Dr. Benes welcomed Foreign Ministers Ion M. Mitilineu of Rumania and M. Marinkovitch of Jugoslavia.

It was certain that they were discussing the threat to the Little Entente of Italy's alliance with Hungary (TIME, April 18) and Albania (TIME, Dec. 13). Because the Little Entente "Big Three" believe in secret, old-school diplomacy they permitted the 60 correspondents who hovered about their meeting place to discover absolutely nothing of what passed.