INTERNATIONAL: Gentlemen’s Peace

Two forthright Frenchmen in London last week talked His Majesty’s Government into what may well prove Britain’s most momentous decision since the War.

Today France has a tall, keen, young Premier who goes to Scotland every season to shoot grouse. This trivial fact was of vast, imponderable weight last week. It enabled tall Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin to rank as a gentleman and a sportsman in the eyes of the tall Britons with whom he had come to negotiate. They got on famously—so well, indeed, that the British Cabinet voluntarily sacrificed their sacrosanct week end, worked Saturday and Sunday to oblige Premier Flandin and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval. Normally in London any statesman rash enough to suggest that the Government forego their week end is met either with a freezing stare or the suave, stock British excuse: “Impossible, I am afraid. In Paris, yes. But in London even a rumor that the Cabinet may find it necessary to break their week end upsets the City.”

On arrival the French Delegation made for the Savoy Hotel, as French diplomats in London always do, deeming its food the best in the city. That night Premier Flandin and M. Laval were obliged, however, to eat amid the stuffy splendor of Londonderry House because the Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry have what amounts to a permanent social option on Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald and any celebrity guests of His Majesty’s Government.

This tiresome chore done, the Frenchmen got busy next morning with Britons who pull more weight in the National Government than does the Prime Minister, namely, Conservative Party Leader Stanley Baldwin, Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain and such bright younger men as Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, chief economic adviser to the Government, and Captain Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal.

“On the Rhine!” Action last week was possible largely because Mr. Baldwin took such fright at Germany’s increasing air power that he proclaimed last year, “The Rhine—that is where our frontier lies!” (TIME, Aug. 13). The scare thus started has since been etched deep into the British mind. The nation and the Cabinet were ripe last week for an elaborate dossier placed by M. Laval impressively upon the big oak table at No. 10 Downing St. This dossier of the French Secret Service and General Staff purported to reveal: 1) just how grossly Adolf Hitler has violated the Treaty of Versailles by rearming Germany, and 2) just how great is Britain’s potential danger from a sudden Nazi air attack.

After 72 hours of intensive negotiation, M. Laval and Sir John released the text of what was at least a formal agreement. To newshawks eager to call it a pact, Pierre Laval observed indulgently, “I should call it a full agreement, but I see no reason why you should not call it a pact.”

Major Agreement points:

Aerial Attack: Britain and France “resolved to invite Italy, Germany and Belgium to … undertake immediately to give the assistance of their air forces to whichever of them might be the victim of unprovoked aerial aggression by one of the contracting parties.”

German Arms: “Simultaneously . . . Germany should resume her place in the League of Nations” and Europe’s armament problems should receive a “general settlement” based on “equality of rights in a system of security. . . . This settlement would establish agreements regarding armaments generally, which in the case of Germany, would replace the provisions of part of the Treaty of Versailles at present limiting arms and armed forces in Germany.”

While thus willing to legalize Realmleader Hitler’s rupture of the Treaty of Versailles as part of the quid pro quo in a general settlement, Britain and France “agreed that neither Germany nor any other power whose armaments have been defined by peace treaties is entitled by unilateral action to modify these obligations.”

Italy and Austria: In graceful tribute to the success of Foreign Minister Laval and Premier Mussolini in their” recent Rome parley (TIME, Jan. 14, 21) Britain last week “cordially welcomed” the declaration of France and Italy that they mean “to collaborate,” and agreed that Britain, France and Italy shall “consult together if the independence and integrity of Austria are menaced.”

“Up to Hitler!” So proud of these agreements were the Frenchmen that M. Laval asked French reporters up to his suite at the Savoy and let them interview him extempore before a microphone, their questions and his replies going out by radio to all France—a novelty unprecedented.

Same night Sir John Simon, stickler for tradition though he is, reported direct by radio to the British people, smashing a tradition which demanded that he report first to Parliament.

In France and Britain immediate popular and press reaction seemed to be “now everything is up to Hitler.” If Der Reichsführer was sincere in his professions of peace and nonaggression, now was Germany’s chance to enter negotiations leading to recognition of her rearmament rights, plus simultaneous agreements which should nail down all Europe’s more important frontiers and preclude the possibility of any nation suffering unprovoked air attack.

In the Wilhelmstrasse diligent Dictator Hitler at once applied himself to the Franco-British agreement texts, cabled from London this week and delivered to him by the Ambassadors of France and Britain in double-quick time. As he always does when his zeal is excited, Adolf Hitler sat up the whole night. Until he should utter his awful word, German editors hewed to the obstinate line they have taken for months: no return of Germany to the League, no signing of pacts, no concessions or even negotiations about armaments until after the Fatherland has first been granted “as of right” her present degree of rearmament.

Again Gastounet, While Adolf Hitler puzzled, Pierre Etienne Flandin returned to France where War veterans threatened serious riots this week on the anniversary of the shooting last year in the Place de la Concorde of citizens who protested the Stavisky scandal (TIME, Feb. 19).

Just in case hell should break loose, former President Gaston Doumergue, today the somewhat self-conscious mascot of French law & order, left the country estate to which he has twice “retired forever,” bustled into Paris.

To the Press beloved “Gastounet” dramatically cried: “In my supreme appeal— last November—I pointed out to my fellow citizens the need for calm. Messieurs! I withdraw nothing now which I said then —nor do I need to add anything.”