At Edinburgh

Through the gusty streets of Edinburgh, where (except for U. S. trippers, itinerant golfers and English merchants seeking financial advice) you seldom see aught but Scotsmen, there walked last week a Chinaman and a Swede, a Dane and an Italian, a Swiss, a Greek, a Frenchman, a Hungarian, a Belgian, a Czecho-Slovakian, a German, a Persian. Americans were there. Colonials from Canada, India, Rhodesia, were there; swarthy sons, also, of Spain and of Hayti. Almost all pedagogs, they awaited the gavel-tap of the Rt. Hon. Sir John Gilmour, His Majesty's Secretary for Scotland, indicative of the opening of the second biennial conference of the World Federation of Educational Associations. Founded in the U. S. in 1923 (TIME, July 2, 9, 16, 1923), headed by Dr. Augustus O. Thomas of Maine, this body promotes world peace by congregating, for handshakes, headshakes and joint resolve, the educators of the world.

To Williamstown

Boston & Maine trains, moseying up the Hoosac Valley to Williamstown, Mass., carried a curious freight this week. In the winter their usual load is milk cans and traveling men; in the spring and autumn milk cans and college boys; in the summer milk cans. But this week big, all-steel specials swept up that dreaming valley, bearing to Williamstown financiers, lawyers, editors, college presidents, diplomats, army and navy officers, savants from all parts of the world, assembling at the invitation of Dr. Harry A. Garfield, President of Williams College, for the annual session of the Institute of Politics.

Among the distinguished gentlemen invited to make that journey were: Count Alexander Skrzynski (pronounced Sh-trin-ski), Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who came to the U. S. to deliver two addresses before the Institute on the policy and economics of Poland Count Antonio Cippico, famed Facist, Italian Senator and friend of Mussolini, to speak on Italy, the Mediterranean area Robert Masson, French banker who is the virtual head of the Credit Lyonnais and during the War performed much the same service for France that Robert Morris rendered revolutionary America; eloquent Dr. William E. Rappard, member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations; deliberate, scholarly E. F. Gay, onetime (1920-24) President of The New York Evening Post, now Professor of Economic History at Harvard; amiable Archibald Cary Coolidge, Editor of Foreign Affairs; Sir Frederick Maurice, equally an author and a soldier; Professor Arnold Toynbee, authority on the Near Eastern question; L. S. Rowe, Director General of the Pan-American Union; Professor Timothy A. Smiddy, Minister of the Irish Free State, and many another.

Large in the discussions of the Institute will figure, as always, such subjects as the problems related to the self-governing dominions of the British Empire, agriculture and population increase, the economic recovery of Europe, mineral resources as a factor in world affairs, limitation of armaments, international justice, inter-American relations, political problems of Europe and the Mediterranean area.