Foreign News: Four Chiefs

A fundamental effort to prevent another World War by reshaping the whole fabric of existing relations between the major European states was launched this week at No. 10 Downing Street, ten minutes after a black rainy midnight. The chiefs of Britain and France could not reach this momentous decision, or even get down to discussing it for eight solid hours at No. 10, without having first decided last week —for reasons of high policy—against fighting either for Czechoslovakia or with the Soviet Union, both treaty allies of France.

Turning their backs squarely on these states, whose envoys in London knew even less than reporters about what was going on, the two chiefs, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Premier Edouard Daladier, proceeded to capitulate and cooperate in efforts to redraw the map of Central Europe so that tension would be ended, Peace bulwarked. Chancellor Adolf Hitler was the chief who last week forced this decision by crude, primitive demands and threats made to Neville Chamberlain behind the soundproof walls of the Führer’s study at Berchtesgaden. Premier Benito Mussolini was the unashamed and blatant chief who was first to shout openly in a speech at Trieste that there was no alternative to War except the immediate dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

To close watchers of European diplomacy in the last few months, the known great number of secret letters, code dispatches and contacts by personal intermediaries which have taken place between The Four Chiefs has made it increasingly certain, month by month, that Europe would sooner or later be offered a sudden and staggering proposed “Solution”— whether or not it be now accepted. Repeatedly correspondents have described Herr Hitler as bringing on the Czechoslovak crisis: primarily to break up the Russo-Czech-French alliance; secondly to get control of the Sudeten Mountains which have barred his “Push-to-the-East”; and only lastly because of the joy it would give all Germans to feel that their “Sudeten brothers” have been rescued from the euphemism of “Czech oppression” (see p. 16).

Chamberlain & Hitler— In 1923 supposedly humdrum Mr. Neville Chamberlain, longtime political leader of Birmingham, won the startled gratitude of his municipality by making his first airplane flight over the Birmingham Fair as a means of advertising it.

Aged 69 today, the Prime Minister won the startled gratitude of most of the world last week by suddenly offering to make the second airplane flight of his life—to Berchtesgaden. This advertised as nothing else could have done the apparent strength of Germany now visibly so great that the British Empire was by comparison a country which could only save Peace by going not half way but all the way. Some dispatches to the contrary, the Prime Minister on alighting in the Reich was not without the tightly rolled umbrella of Downing Street tradition. He carried this emblem of the British statesman, he concealed his terrible anxiety behind a British mask of smiling optimism, and when the effusive and flattered German Dictator wished to present his guest with an oil painting this was accepted with the coolest form of British gratitude. There was never any doubt that Chief Chamberlain and Chief Hitler would NOT quarrel—for through intermediaries they already knew almost completely each other’s minds. However, the particular frenzy with which the Führer gets his MUSTS off his chest, sawing the air and screaming, calming down and saying good-by with a squashy handshake and a confiding German smile—these had their effect.

“Herr Gott!” Exactly what the two chiefs said at Berchtesgaden was kept secret, but the way the British and French behaved afterward strongly suggested that to Mr. Chamberlain the Dictator spoke in part very much as he spoke three days later to Mr. G. Ward Price of the London Daily Mail, who got one of the best scoops of the crisis.

“Herr Gott!” screamed Herr Hitler at Mr. Price, “What couldn’t I do in Germany and for Germany if it were not for this infernal Czech tyranny over a few million Germans? But it must stop. Stop it shall. . . .

“It was the existence of Czechoslovakia as an ally of Soviet Russia, thrust forward into the very heart of Germany, that forced me to create a great German air force. That in turn led to France and Britain increasing their own air fleets.

“I have doubled the German air fleet once already because of the situation now prevailing in Czechoslovakia. If we fail to settle the crisis now, Field Marshal Goring would be asking me to order it doubled again and the British and French would redouble and so the mad race would go on.

“Do you think I like being obliged to stop with my great building and development schemes all over the country in order to send 500,000 German workmen to construct at top speed a huge system of defense works along our western frontier? . . .

“All this is madness, for no one in Germany dreams of attacking France. We harbor no resentment against France; on the contrary, there is a strong feeling of sympathy in Germany toward her. Nor does any German want war with Britain either.”

Chamberlain & Daladier, Here was the stark Nazi reality which Europe faced —openly expressed at last—secretly impressed long ago upon the inner councils of London, Paris, Rome, Moscow. When Premier Edouard Daladier, who was presiding in Paris at a State dinner for the Tsar of Bulgaria, was called to the telephone by Neville Chamberlain and invited to No. 10 Downing Street for a last round-up this week, France had already given and observed many signs which made decision easier. Before every war which France has ever actually entered, the spontaneous will of her people has sent them swirling through the streets with shouts which this week would have been “Vive la Czechoslovakie! Vive la Guerre!” but these shouts were not heard. The only French political parties whose organs urged war were those of the minuscule extreme Nationalist Right and Communist Left. Joseph Stalin appeared, to the French, to have taken in Russia none of the propaganda measures which would have been necessary last week if the Soviet people were to be asked to fight in case Czechoslovakia were attacked. In the general queasy fear of war (and especially of being bombed) which has gripped so many Europeans, the Scandinavian States were actually busy at Geneva last week trying to get the League Covenant reinterpreted so that in no case would any country be “bound” to apply sanctions, which instead would be declared “optional.” In these circumstances Premier Daladier, whose Radical Socialist Party is proverbially the middle-of-the-road group which believes anything can be handled by compromise, flew to London. Mr. Chamberlain dashed all the way out to Croydon airport (15 miles) to meet M. Daladier who beamed at the compliment, and forgotten were early French grumbles: “Since he flew to Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain should also have flown to Paris!”

Instead of keeping their Downing Street talk secret for hours or days, the British and French chiefs smashed another precedent by having the gist of what they had said flashed to all the world immediately. M. Daladier was revealed, for example, to have readily agreed with Mr. Chamberlain’s long exposition that to fight for Czechoslovakia would not save her but only result in twofold catastrophe. First, said Mr. Chamberlain, the Czech Army would massacre the Sudetens as traitors who would be caught between them and the German Army. Second, the Germans would have enough success in the first few days or weeks of war to overrun much Czech territory where, enraged by the massacre of Sudetens, the Germans would massacre many more Czechs. Meanwhile, the German “Siegfried Line,” on the French border, although ultimately it might be broken, would have held, while numberless great cities on both sides were bombed.

The only point on which the British and French did not soon agree, and Premier Daladier hammered with all his might for hours until Prime Minister Chamberlain said “yes.” was that the final settlement in Eastern Europe must be guaranteed by a signed British pledge to fight at the side of France to maintain it, if necessary. In 1914 Germany scrap-of-papered Belgium. In 1935 the Great Powers scrap-of-papered Ethiopian Last week they were about to scrap-of-paper Czechoslovakia— but all at No. 10 struggled, negotiated and acted as if they believed that the next piece of paper will be an indestructible bastion of peace.

The Terms. Working at top speed, British and French civil servants rushed the terms on which their chiefs agreed into formal diplomatic verbiage and flashed these to the Czechoslovak Government with urgent warnings that they MUST be accepted: 1) Czechoslovakia to cede outright to the Reich, without a plebiscite, all Sudeten districts in which the German vote at the last election was 80% or more; 2) Non-German voters and others in these districts to have the right to be transferred to other parts of the Republic under favorable conditions; 3) Czechoslovakia to hold a plebiscite as to whether the Republic, minus the ceded districts (which include the chief existing fortifications), shall be reorganized on the Swiss model into a federation of gaue, or cantons, having “states’ rights”; 4) Czechoslovakia to give up her present treaties of alliance, retain her armed forces, and have her new and smaller frontiers guaranteed by Britain and France; 5) Britain and France to try to get as many other guarantors as possible, not excluding Russia, and probably including Germany, Italy.

Godesburg Next. In Paris, the French Cabinet convened by Premier Daladier immediately on his return this week, “unanimously approved.” The British Cabinet “approved in principle.” While the Czechoslovak Government wrestled under the cracking strain (see below), plans were made to convene the British and French Parliaments, but not until after a scheduled second meeting this week between Chamberlain and Hitler at Godesburg, a tiny spa on the Rhine. But British and French statesmen realistically warned: “Many difficulties of detail, to take an optimistic view, remain to be adjusted.”