"All or Nothing!"

Eager to get at a Fascist Dictator last week, 6,000 Paris Reds and Pinks swarmed to the Gare de I'Est where 1,000 were promptly arrested by order of Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin.

"We are going to take all the precautions we did not take when King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated!" snapped a high official of the French Secret Police. As a result of these precautions the arriving Fascist Dictator, be spectacled and intensely pious Austrian Chancellor Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg, never pulled in at the Gare de I'Est at all. Just inside the walls of Paris, the Austrian's special train stopped at a tiny station and on the platform stood tall Premier Flandin with short Foreign Minister Laval beaming welcome. Out hopped Chancellor Schuschnigg with his Foreign Minister, morose Dr. Egon Berger-Waldenegg. Stepping into a sleek Renault all four statesmen sped through Paris, delivered Fascist Schuschnigg safe at the ornate Hotel Crillon while patient police kept the duped and battling Reds and Pinks at the Gare de l'Est as busy as they could.

In effect Chancellor Schuschnigg's visit to Paris, whence he would next visit London, was a sort of vital symbol last week of the Great Powers' will to prevent Austria from being absorbed into Nazidom. This will was formally recorded at Rome in the pact of Benito Mussolini and Pierre Laval (TIME, Jan. 14), then re-recorded at London in the Franco-British agreement of Premier Flandin with His Majesty's Government (TIME, Feb. 11) . In Paris last week Fascist Schuschnigg, incessantly guarded by popping motorcycle police "`a l'Americaine" (a distinct novelty in France), had really nothing to do except to pin upon sad-eyed French President Albert Lebrun the Grand Cross of Austrian Merit and be pinned in return with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Since devout Catholic Schuschnigg is a passionate Monarchist he explained to the bored, irreligious French over & over just how wonderful it would be to proclaim deep-dimpled, wavy-haired Habsburg Archduke Otto as His Apostolic Majesty in Vienna.

When Chancellor Schuschnigg reached London this week Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, as he always does, turned the visiting political lion over to Lord & Lady Londonderry for a thoroughgoing banquet. Said Chancellor Schuschnigg next morning: "We have not come to ask for a loan," then asked leery British statesmen about Otto's chances.

Enter Russia. The visiting Austrians distracted nobody from Europe's major diplomatic problem: how to get Adolf Hitler to sign the Eastern Locarno Pact to nail down with mutual security guarantees all the frontiers of Eastern Europe (TIME, Feb. 18).

In Moscow anxiety was acute lest Realmleader Hitler sidetrack Britain and France into a more mutual pact against unprovoked air aggression in Western Europe, leaving the Eastern Locarno barren and betrayed. What the Soviet Union fears is that some day Europe's Capitalist Powers will realize where their interest lies, namely in a drastic settlement of Eastern Europe's frontier problems at Bolshevik Russia's expense.

This Nazi statesmen constantly propose. They would like to help Poland seize Russia's rich Ukraine and Lithuania to boot, thus giving Poland direct frontage on the Baltic. Poland, say Nazis, should then have no use for the Polish Corridor which would revert to Germany along with Polish Silesia. So nervous last week was the Kremlin over this remote possibility that in London potent Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky shouted: "There can be no peace in Western Europe unless it is also assured in Eastern Europe. A fair inference from Germany's opposition to a collective security agreement in Eastern Europe [the "Eastern Locarno"] is that she is contemplating the possibility some day of being an aggressor herself in that direction. It should be clear to everybody that if the fabric is ignited at any corner of Europe, say somewhere in the East or Southeast, the whole European structure would soon be in flames."

To avert this catastrophe Comrade Maisky exhorted the Great Powers to force Germany to sign not only the Air Pact but also the Eastern Locarno with a diplomatic ultimatum of "all or nothing!"

According to harassed Soviet diplomats the Englishman chiefly to be feared by Bolsheviks today is keen Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, who had a chat with Dictator Stalin at the same time as did Bore Bernard Shaw (see p. 38). Today Lord Lothian, highly esteemed at the British Foreign Office, is perhaps Adolf Hitler's one influential apologist to His Majesty's Government. Last week British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, Francophile and Naziphobe, after much anxiety and indecision, announced he would accept Der Reichsfuehrer's proffered hospitality for a heart-to-heart in Berlin. Sir John, who hates travel, appeared likely to bow to French insistence that if he goes to Berlin he must also go to Warsaw, Prague and Moscow.

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