Foreign News: Fuhrer’s Crusade

In London last week the German Ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop, told Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that Berlin would immediately break off diplomatic relations with Moscow in case the OGPU should execute in Russia German Engineer Emil Ivan Stickling, who Was sentenced to death fortnight ago for “sabotage”‘ (TIME, Nov. 30). Ambassador von Ribbentrop then left by air through a dangerously dense fog for Berlin. In Moscow, with evident perturbation, the Soviet Council of Commissars soon issued a most singular communique, revealing that in Russia the quick-triggered OGPU sometimes get considerably ahead of the rest of the Communist mechanism of “class justice.” Announced the Council: “It has been found possible to reduce the sentences of Stickling, Leonankoand Kovienko from death to ten years’ imprisonment, but the others already have been shot.” Since Stickling was the only German (the other convicted saboteurs being Soviet citizens), this satisfied Berlin.

Alighting in Berlin, Ambassador von Ribbentrop went over the head of his nominal superior, Foreign Minister Baron Constantin von Neurath, and signed on behalf of the German Government the new Japanese-German treaty against the Moscow Comintern or organization for fomenting the World Revolution of the World Proletariat (TIME, Oct. 7, 1935 et ante). The Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Kimitomo Mushaktji, signed on behalf of the Son of Heaven, and Nazi organs spoke up:

“With joy the German nation of National Socialism reaches out its hand today to the powerful, brave Japanese nation to build with it a wall over which Bolshevism can no longer reach. . . . For 14 years we cried, ‘Germany, awake!’ We were then laughed at and ridiculed, but Germany did awake. Now we cry, ‘EUROPE AWAKE!’ Der Führer today is not only the Leader of the German people but the spiritual revivalist of Europe against Bolshevism.”

This gave acute pain to many of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s hitherto close English friends, and they were further pained to learn that the German Ambassador now becomes a member of a joint German-Japanese commission which will permanently function to frustrate World Revolution. That some of this high-powered frustrating is evidently going to be done in London was unwelcome news indeed to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and he was further ruffled by reports that Herr von Ribbentrop had told Der Führer that the English of 1936 simply will not fight “unless their soil is invaded”—i.e., will not fight as they did in 1914 at the provocation of a German invasion of Belgium.

Although the British Cabinet yield to none in their alarm at the now chronic reluctance of young men to enlist in the British Army (TIME, Nov. 30 et ante), the alleged advice of Herr von Ribbentrop to Herr Hitler was really too much for them to stomach. In London last week being feted was Belgian Premier Professor Paul van Zeeland, and his English hosts had to do or say something. Up at an International Chamber of Commerce luncheon for Premier van Zeeland got handsome and willowy young Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to utter words braver and bolder than he has ever used in the House of Commons or the Council of the League of Nations.

“Let us, on this Anglo-Belgian occasion,” cried Mr. Eden, “once again affirm that the independence and integrity of Belgium is a vital consideration for this nation, and that Belgium could count upon our help were she ever the victim of unprovoked aggression!”

At this the Belgian Premier led the Chamber of Commerce in vigorous hand-clapping and cries of “Hear! Hear!” Encouraged, Mr. Eden went on to say that the Britain of 1936 is characterized neither by “softness” nor by “cowardice” and that “the terrible weapons that science has forged can be wielded with no mean courage” by Britons now, as in the past.

Meanwhile press officers of His Majesty’s Government told correspondents that Britain last week certainly had no intention of joining the anti-Communist pact of Germany and Japan, under Article II of which non-Communist States are invited to join. This much relieved Socialist Premier Leon Blum of France. It was understood that the position of both London and Paris was substantially covered by French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos when he announced last week: “The accord of Germany and Japan is inspired by a crusading spirit which France, like England and all countries desirous of peace, refuses to accept. France does not wish to add to the all-too-real causes for conflict.”

In Tokyo last week the Privy Council of the Son of Heaven were furious at Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita for his handling of the new Treaty. It had been negotiated with great secrecy for some 18 months, and yet it leaked out of the Japanese Foreign Office just a few days before Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff was to have signed a Russo-Japanese fishing treaty highly favorable to Japan (TIME, Nov. 30). Of course Comrade Litvinoff refused to sign this treaty when he heard about the anti-Communist pact, and last week members of the Japanese Privy Council, too angry to be discreet, blabbed that the Japanese Foreign Minister had himself unwittingly blabbed the secret in a conversation with the Soviet Ambassador to Japan, Comrade Konstantin Yurenev who of course flashed it to Litvinoff. The cost of this blunder to the Japanese fishing industry, according to its irate Tokyo tycoons last week, will run into the tens of millions.

Japanese Army circles, close to Premier Koki Hirota and firmly antiCommunist, cracked the whip last week and civilian leaders of both great Japanese political parties expressed warm approval of the Hitler Crusade. Ready were Army zealots to smash any Japanese of consequence who disagreed, but they did not bother last week about certain notes of caution sounded by large Tokyo newspapers with Big Business connections. Of these Nichi Nichi, the boldest, said: “We heartily welcome friendship with Germany, but we feel as though we are running after a fly with a hatchet if the agreement is aimed only against the Communist International. Japan need not stand isolated. Let Japan make friends as fast as she can. But it would be better not to make lukewarm friends at the expense of making red-hot enemies.”

Japan had most certainly made a red-hot enemy of the Reds of Russia last week, and European observers were inclined to think that intuitive Adolf Hitler had in this deal outsmarted the Imperial Government of the Son of Heaven. Japan already has bitten off in China all she can effectively chew, and only last week the Soviet Union finally completed their duplicate “behind the mountains” strategic railway paralleling the Trans-Siberian and permitting Russia more effectively than ever before to fight Japan.

The more Red soldiers have to be flung over this line into the Far East, the better Adolf Hitler will be pleased. In Europe rumors that next spring is the time envisioned by Der Führer for a short, sharp drive to seize Leningrad began last week to take on some of the dignity of predictions. Nazi strategists, political as well as military, were said to feel that the greatest folly would be a German invasion a la Napoleon which would lose itself in vast Russia, but that internal Russian forces of disunion would overthrow the Bolshevik leaders once the Russian people knew Dictator Stalin had been unable to hold Leningrad. “The Cradle of the Communist Dictatorship.” and such parts of the Baltic regions and the Ukraine as would fall to an even moderately successful German drive. A preliminary Nazi move, much mooted today in European military circles, would be to attempt to nip off the small, German-speaking western tip of Czechoslovakia “restoring it to the Fatherland.”