Fathers & Godfather

A new pact to keep the peace of Europe began to stir fatefully last week in diplomacy's deep womb.

Two fathers and a godfather were concerned. Thereby hung a tale, unrevealed until last week, of how a handsome apology enabled great concord to grow out of the furious spat in Geneva last May between glacial, correct British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon and humorous, mercurial French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. Knowing nothing of Sir John's deep sorrow at his childless second marriage,* M. Barthou lapsed accidentally into offering a deadly insult to Sir John. The issue was a plan not devised by the Briton but to which he had given approval. "It seems, Sir John," flashed M. Barthou, "that you are a better godfather than you are a father!"

At this Sir John Simon flushed beet-red, his secretary paled amid French amazement. This climaxed the public spat over Sir John's proposal to grant a measure of rearmament to Germany which M. Barthou bluntly rejected (TIME, June 11). To all appearances they parted bitter enemies, but just before Sir John left Geneva, M. Barthou, having discovered the nature of his blunder, called to make a handsome apology which Sir John handsomely accepted.

"I am sure, mon cher ministre," he said, "that you did not say it intentionally."

"Exactly!" cried M. Barthou, "I should have preferred to speak a little naughtily rather than so clumsily. Helas! What I am least ready to forgive myself is my clumsiness!"

Since then secret negotiations have been proceeding between Paris, London and Moscow. The fathers of the new scheme to keep Europe's peace are M. Barthou and Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovitch Litvinoff, but they need a potent godfather to urge their plans upon Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Last week Sir John Simon assumed this role with Augustan magnanimity.

The peerless civil servants of the British Foreign Office took charge of all details. M. Barthou, who crossed the channel for a personal conference with Sir John, ostentatiously returned last week to Paris. British public opinion was prepared for what was coming by a few intimations that what Europe needs is a return to "the Spirit of Locarno." Nine years ago at Locarno, Switzerland, gold pens squiggled in the hands of Benito Mussolini, Austen Chamberlain, and the late great peace men of France and Germany. Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann. Today the Locarno Treaty, still in full force, binds all the signatory powers to maintain unchanged the western frontier of Germany adjoining France and Belgium. The new scheme fathered by Comrade Litvinoff and M. Barthou is to fix the other frontiers of Germany by an Eastern Locarno. This scheme in embryonic verbal form was outlined to the Hitler Government by Comrade Litvinoff the last time he passed through Berlin. Hotly German Foreign Minister Baron von Neurath cried "Nein!" That rebuff made it necessary to drag in Great Britain as a stern godfather able to impress Adolf Hitler.

That Britain is acting only as godfather, Sir John Simon crisply made clear when he rose to give the Eastern Locarno its first public airing last week in the House of Commons. "We are not undertaking any new obligation," he insisted. "We under take no obligation at all!" But Sir John then threw the full moral weight of His Majesty's Government behind the following peace program:

1) Germany, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic States to sign an Eastern Locarno pact of "mutual assistance" pledging each other to maintain their present frontiers.

2) The new Eastern Locarno to be "genuinely reciprocal" in that, while it should embody fixation of frontiers which many Germans wish to burst, it should also lay down "the principle of German equality rights under a system of security for all nations."

3) Soviet Russia to enter the League of Nations.** Strongly urging this, Sir John cried to the House of Commons: "Which do you prefer, this immense power [Russia] inside or outside the collective system of the League?" He then took a remarkable poke at League-Quitter Japan: "I neither wish to proclaim Japan the King's enemy nor Soviet Russia as my special friend! . . . Certainly we are prepared to welcome Russia warmly to the League of Nations if Russia makes application. We are satisfied it will contribute to the peace of the world."

In conclusion, Sir John read to the House a cablegram from Premier Mussolini throwing Italy's full weight into the scale with Britain, France and Russia. Playing his stern godfather role to the limit Sir John cabled to Berlin and Warsaw, instructing His Majesty's ambassadors in the two capitals to bring the Eastern Locarno strongly to the attention of those governments. Poland, which must do as France and Russia wish in any case, was thus subjected to formal urging so as to avoid seeming to crack down exclusively on Adolf Hitler.

In Berlin the Nazi Press all but screamed despair. "This system of treaties," said the Berliner Tageblatt, "means the attainment of French dominance over Europe with the assent of Russia and Poland." In his personal newsorgan the No. 2 Nazi, General Hermann Wilhelm Goering, raged against "This fad for pacts, this pactomania!" In another groaning outburst the Berliner Tageblatt declared: "Thus France has arrived at last where Clemenceau wanted to see her!"

Seasoned diplomats saw no grounds for such hysterics, recognized that Sir John had only made the opening move in an Eastern Locarno game which is likely to be long. If Adolf Hitler can be induced to sign--and by signing the Eastern Locarno he would renounce Nazidom's most cherished dreams for expansion--so much the better for peace. The opening gambit last week faced the Hitler Government with proof that Nazi Germany has been diplomatically encircled. In blazoning this encirclement to the whole world Godfather Sir John acted as he did partly because Fathers Barthou and Litvinoff of the Eastern Locarno had warned him that, should he refuse to put pressure on Germany, they were ready to protect themselves by signing a mutual pact of military alliance. Since France and Russia possess the two largest armies in the world such an alliance would gravely upset Europe's balance of power, the one thing British diplomacy always strives to maintain.

As presented to the German Government last week by British Ambassador Sir Eric Phipps, the draft agreement ready for Adolf Hitler's signature includes not only an Eastern Locarno pact proper but also an Acte General or so-called "Holding Pact" which would tie into one the original Western Locarno and the new Eastern Locarno, thus riveting down in one pact Germany's entire frontier.

In Moscow the possibility that Adolf Hitler may now be induced to sign on the Barthou-Litvinoff dotted line caused Soviet newsorgans to cease abruptly their recent vitriolic attacks on Nazidom. Soothingly Comrade Karl Radek, No. 1 Soviet editorial pundit, observed: "Even though active propaganda for aggression in our direction has existed in Germany, no Soviet official newspaper has ever advanced the insane and criminal idea of dividing up Germany."

*By his first marriage Sir John is a grandfather.

**The original Locarno Treaty was made the occasion of Germany entering the League.

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