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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. In Europe, a few years ago, this writer met a friend who had just interviewed Gen. Ismet Inonu, who is today Turkey's Tur-key's new dicta-Dictator dicta-Dictator Inonu tor, succeeding An Iron Man, Kemal Ataturk, Yet a Diplomat who died recent" ly. "He's the smartest hombre I ever met," said my friend. "He talked to me for two hours, frank and honest, looking look-ing me right in the eye and never holding out on anything. He was charming and brilliant and he didn't ask me not to print anything. I thought I had a great story. But, when I started to write it, there was just nothing there. I saw him several times after that, and realized real-ized that he was a master in heart-to-heart talk which left no commitments commit-ments whatsoever. I saw cagey diplomats dip-lomats kissed off just as I had been. The man is a marvel of brains and ingenuity." The small, fragile, deaf, ingratiating ingratiat-ing General Inonu is the hero of the Turkish army, premier until a year ago, when he was mysteriously benched by Kemal Ataturk. There were rumors that he was engaged in international negotiations of such subtlety that he found it necessary to keep out of office and off-stage. It was in 1920 that young Colonel Ismet joined Mustafa Kemal in Anatolia. By 1922, he had driven the Greeks out of Anatolia and Smyrna and in this period and thereafter he was Kemal Ataturk's chief military mili-tary aide. He added to his laurels, lau-rels, when, at the 1923 Lausanne conference, he ran rings around British and Italian diplomats and won for Turkey virtually its demands. He was one of few men who retained re-tained the confidence of Ataturk to the end. He was a firm and exacting exact-ing and, at times, ruthless ruler of the army, and is said to lack none of the traditional specifications of the iron man. It is apparent that Ismet Inonu is intent on keeping Turkey diplomatically diplomat-ically liquid, that he fully realizes the bargaining power of Turkey's hegemony over the Moslem bloc, and that he probably will use this and other strategic assets in making mak-ing some shrewd bargains. 'TpALL, austere Sumner Welles, a deft precisionist in career diplomacy, diplo-macy, is merely undersecretary of state, but off-stage he's the key-man of a critical in Sumner Welles ternational en-A en-A Specialist in counter and a S. A. Relations PUcy draughtsman draughts-man in whose hands a chart of our South American Ameri-can procedure is taking shape. He helped initiate and has diligently fostered the "good neighbor" policy in Latin-America, and his radio address ad-dress urging a get-together in the Western hemisphere received a good press in those countries. , But a bad press in Germany. His plea for joint defense against "any threat of attack" is in interesting contrast to his speeches of a year ago, when he appealed to the "nations of the world for a new world order, based on justice and law." He weighs the actualities of trade, finance and the collective safety and solvency of the Western world. Something like a picture of a western league of nations begins be-gins to emerge as the great imperialisms turn toward the vast raw material storehouse of South America. After his graduation from Harvard Har-vard in 1914, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy, helped him enter career diplomacy. In his early thirties, he was high commissioner to the Dominican Republic, Re-public, the author of "Naboth's Vineyard," a two-volume study of that country. He was made ambassador am-bassador to Cuba by President Roosevelt in 1933. He became undersecretary un-dersecretary of state last year. ROBERT DONAT, the English actor ac-tor on the up-take in "The Citadel" Cita-del" and other films, made so many unsuccessful tries at the screen seven years ago Laughing at that they called Despair Gets him "Screen Donat Fame Test" Donat' A competent actor, he met hard luck and was all but desperate, as something always went wrong. One day, in what he was sure would be his last try, the director told him to register despair. The irony of his merely imitating despair sent him into demoniac laughter. Alexander Korda, in another an-other room, heard him. "Sign that man up, whoever he is," said Korda. "That's a great performance." He had what it took, and they routed him right through to fame and riches. He won by challenging a homily "Do not despair." Consolidated News Features. WNU Service. |