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From Czechoslovakia: Jan Garrigue Masaryk, Foreign Minister for the new Communist-Socialist Czech Government and chief of its United Nations delegation, stands between two ideological worlds. Son of the father of Czech independence after World War I, Jan Masaryk became the fervent pleader of his country's lost cause after Munich. No Communist, Masaryk is now busy at his job of explaining to the Western world Czechoslovakia's new role as an ally of Russia. Says Masaryk: "There is no iron curtain in Czechoslovakia. . . . The door to the West is wide open. . . . We go along with Russia on the big European political issue, but that does not mean we are going to compromise on other things. . . . Give us the benefit of the doubt."
From Turkey: Ahmed Emin Yalman, editor of Istanbul's newspaper Vatan (Fatherland), is a small, mild-mannered man with an immense capacity for daring independence. He finished his education in the U.S. (three years at Columbia University), then started his paper in 1923, after helping to bring gusty Kamal Atatürk to power. In 1925 Atatürk suspended Ahmed Emin's paper for ten years because he had criticized Government policies. In 1935 Ahmed Emin took up where he had left off. During the war, Vatan was one of the few journals in Turkey which strongly supported the Allied cause. Again it was throttled for long periods for its attacks on Government policies—and once for publishing a still photograph from Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator, which had been banned by the Turkish Government. Ahmed Emin long fought Turkey's single-party system. In the past year a weak anti-Government party has been established, but Ahmed Emin refuses to become its candidate—it might interfere with his independence.
From Hungary: Paul Auer is Hungary's Minister to Paris. He is an international lawyer of Europe-wide reputation, who turned diplomat a year ago. Between World Wars I & II, he was a frequent legal adviser to the French Government and acted for the U.S. legation in Switzerland on some cases with which the League of Nations was concerned. Long an advocate of international cooperation and of European federation, Lawyer Auer in 1936 offered a plan to strengthen the League of Nations by adding to it an economic and social council. The League did not adopt this idea, but the United Nations did. An anti-Nazi, Auer lived in disguise in Hungary during the war. At last summer's Paris Peace Conference, at which he represented Hungary, so many Frenchmen came to greet him that other former enemy delegates were surprised to learn that he belonged on the losers' side of the table.
From Germany: John Scott, TIME'S chief correspondent in Berlin, will report on the Germans and on Big Four occupation policies at work. Berlin is Europe's vantage point for watching the development of Soviet policy. Scott has an extensive acquaintance among Russians in Berlin. Few Americans know the U.S.S.R. as well as Scott; he worked in the Soviet Union for five years as a welder and chemist in the steel mills at Magnitogorsk, for four years as a newsman in Moscow (he was expelled for reporting too well). He married a Russian, speaks German and Russian fluently. He is the author of three books about the U.S.S.R.: Behind the Urals, Duel for Europe and Europe in Revolution.