DAY BY DAY

Her Excellency Madame "Ambassador" Kollontai

Our colleague l'Illustration reproduces, in its issue of today, a documentary photograph as curious as it is attractive. We see Her Excellency Madame Kollontai, first ambassador of the Soviets, who, draped in a heavy cape "Council of Ten" and her graceful head covered with a matching toque, with a grave air as befits and an impeccable ankle, is preparing to enter, to present her credentials, the admirable royal palace of Christiania.

It would certainly be wrong to believe that Madame Kollontai is the first woman to whom the doors of the Carrière, formerly so jealously closed to her sex, have been opened. We know that Miss Stanciof, daughter of the former Minister of Bulgaria, occupied before her the modest post of secretary of legation. It is less well known that the post of First Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington was excellently held, during the last year of the war, by an exquisite and very knowledgeable young girl, who at first caused some trouble there. Colleagues, who until then had lived in peace, stopped talking to each other; reports, always slow to come out of the boxes, no longer came out at all; the entire chancellery had eyes only for the new Chimène of diplomacy. Everything returned to order, however, when, less than three months after her arrival in Washington, the marriage of the attractive secretary was officially announced with one of her most capable colleagues and a first secretary like herself. She will doubtless one day be an ambassador. But she will only figure, alas! in the diminished role of ambassador's wife. With Mme Kollontaï, it is no longer the same at all.

Mme Kollontaï, in fact, is today an ambassador in her own right and on her own behalf; and it was her husband, the Baltic sailor Dijbenko, who on this occasion fulfilled the always controversial function of ambassador consort.

The life of the new ambassador was, naturally, full of adventures. Daughter of a former senior officer of the old regime, Mrs. Kollontai had opted for the revolution before the revolution took place. She even, if we are to believe her reputation, frequented the Moscow cafes a little when the fashion was not yet there, and those where politics and the less good were done. On no occasion, however, did she forget either her origins or what a woman, sovereign by her beauty as well as by her elegance, owes to herself and to the unfortunate men who approach her.

Mrs. Kollontai, an aristocrat by birth, a revolutionary by election, was above all never in love with pomp and splendor. Did she not hold her first public meeting immediately after the fall of the imperial regime on the deck of a battleship? And we know how all the sailors, moved by so much grace combined with such a pure doctrine on the abolition of property and on the communism of women, were immediately won over by both and acclaimed the beautiful orator with spontaneous cries, an ingenuous expression of an admiration that was perhaps disordered but certainly convinced, of "Long live Madame!" Such a start to a career promised a lot. Let us say right away that it has delivered on everything. We have already been told that the ambassador has settled in one of the most beautiful buildings in Christiania and that she receives there, with all the art and seduction of a Madame du Deffand, the elite of studious Norwegian society. Her furs, her dresses and her hats have caused a sensation at Court where they have acquired her as many enemies as friends. She represents magnificently in Norway the government of the workers and peasants. Norwegian capitalism is already, it is said, at her feet. We ourselves have only to watch out. If, in fact, Her Excellency Mrs. Kollontai chooses to visit the other capitals of Europe, it is very likely, even feared, that the embarrassments of Mr. Herriot concerning the recognition of the Soviets, and those of the Geneva assembly concerning their admission to its midst will be resolved, strictly speaking, in the twinkling of an eye.
Eve, model of all diplomacy, will have Sovietized the world once more.

G. L.