Apologize!

Fez. Egypt boiled with indignation last week at a Turkish insult to the fez, favorite headgear of Egypt's fat King Fuad. Years ago Turks abandoned the fez, the veil, the Arabic alphabet and polygamy by command of their progressive dictator, President Mustafa Kemal Pasha. It was Kemal himself, according to irate Cairo newspapers last week, who insulted the fez on Turkey's Independence Day at a banquet tendered by the President at Angora to the diplomatic corps.

Flush with champagne & cognac, as he always is at the close of a dinner, President Kemal began to stare at the Egyptian Minister's red fez. Upon Kemal the effect was that of a red rag on a bull. He ripped out something in Turkish and the Egyptian Minister, flushing as red as his fez, took it off, later sent details of the affront to fat King Fuad.

Last week the Egyptian Government reacted by sending a sharp note to Angora, demanded an apology from Turkish Foreign Minister Dr. Tewfik Rushdi who used to be an accoucheur. Expert at handling both excited women and excited governments, Dr. Rushdi suavely replied that there had been no insult. "The banquet hall was somewhat overheated," he alibied, "and President Kemal merely invited His Excellency the Egyptian Minister to remove his fez for his own greater comfort."

Unappeased Egypt continued to press for an apology. "The President's invitation, if such it was," said a spokesman for the Egyptian Minister, "was an insult to all who wear the fez which in Egypt is a national symbol."

"Bogus Documents." While Egypt was failing to make Turkey apologize. Great Britain demanded that the Soviet Government apologize last week for statements recently made in the Moscow Izvestia ("News"). Specifically Izvestia has charged that the British Intelligence Service is preparing "bogus documents" to prove that Dictator Josef Stalin, acting through the Moscow headquarters of the World Communist Party (Third International) had something to do with fomenting the British "Hunger March" on London (TIME, Oct. 31 et seq.). A British motive for its alleged propaganda, according to Izvestia, was a desire to prevent a rapprochement between U. S. and Soviet Governments.

The official Soviet reply last week was flatly to refuse apology, flatly to deny that Izvestia speaks for the Government (which all Soviet newsorgans do). Not backing down in the least, Izvestia hailed Persia's defiance of Britain last week declaring, "Its repercussions in the East will help deepen the cracks in the shattered structure of a decrepit British Empire."

Far from displeased by such Soviet bravado, prominent British Tories welcomed it as sufficient provocation to break off Anglo-Soviet trade relations, stop alleged Soviet "dumping" in British markets.

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