(See front cover) The sun went up at Geneva last week on the climax of a great career. A scant 20 years ago Samuel Hoare was merely the name of a British secret operative in Imperial Russia whose almost immediate knowledge of the assassination of Gregory ("Mad Monk") Rasputin led to complications. These were unsnarled only when the British Ambassador personally assured excited Tsar Nicholas and his hysterical Tsarina that pro-German Rasputin had not been murdered as an act of War expediency by British Agent Hoare.
Still as keen and canny as he was in 1916, Sir Samuel Hoare now enjoys triple prestige. He made a great Air Minister (1922-24 & 1924-29), flying with Lady Hoare to inaugurate personally such new Empire air routes as the 5,566-mile span from London to New Delhi. More recently he has been the most prominent Secretary of State for India of this century, driving relentlessly through the House of Commons the longest bill it ever passed, and thus giving 350,000,000 Indians a new Constitution (TIME, June 17). The reward was Sir Samuel's appointment as His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the star Cabinet portfolio. Last week a British Royal Air Force plane carried "Flying Sam" to Geneva where he at once dwarfed handsome young Captain Anthony Eden, His Majesty's Minister for League of Nations Affairs. All the world knew that if any voice could halt Dictator Benito Mussolini's prospective war of African conquest, that voice was Great Britain's— the calm, chilling voice of Sir Samuel Hoare.
H. R. H, In & Out. A special train bearing Edward of Wales from the French Riviera drew into Geneva shortly before the Foreign Secretary was to address the League Assembly. Swiss burghers, startled out of their stolidity, spread exciting rumors that on this supreme occasion the British heir apparent, though precluded from taking an active part, would lend the weight of his presence to the Struggle for Peace. From the railway station H. R. H. was driven to one of the big hotels bordering the Lake of Geneva where he took a bath, ate a hearty breakfast, sallied forth with a group of swank friends to do a little shopping. Then the Prince vexed the peace devotees of Geneva by getting aboard his special train, chuffing off to Budapest.