Staff Talks: Spy Stories

On a summer afternoon in 1885 the great Pre-Raphaelite painter, Sir John Everett Millais, saw his curly-headed little grandson, Willie James, blowing soap bubbles in a velvet suit, induced him to pose for his portrait in return for a series of fairy stories. Before the portrait was finished, methodical Painter Millais found it necessary to have an iridescent glass sphere especially blown so that he could copy the tints of a soap bubble. The canvas created a mild artistic scandal when it was sold to Lever Bros. Ltd. for Pear's soap advertising. As such it soon became Sir John Millais' best known work.

Last week Vice Admiral William Milburne ("Bubbles") James, still blond, still curly-headed, stood in the British Admiralty building in Whitehall to welcome, as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Royal Navy, high French and Belgian officers for one of the most important meetings since the War. As a result of the German Army's reoccupation of the Rhineland, Britain, France and Belgium were admitting to the world that they were preparing for war with Germany by holding a conference of their General Staff officers.

Chary of photographers, Admiral James's friends slipped into the Admiralty through a side door. They included:

Britain

Navy: Admiral James; Captain E. N. Syfret, Deputy Director of Plans.

Army: Major General John Greer Dill, Director of Military Operations & Intelligence; Major General Walter King Venning, Director of Movements & Quartering; Colonel Sir Ronald Forbes Adam, Office of Military Operations.

Air Force: Vice Marshal Christopher Lloyd Courtney, Deputy Chief of Staff; Group Captain A. T. Harris; Wing Commander J. O. Andrews.

France

Navy: Vice Admiral Jean Marie Charles Abrial, Deputy Chief of Staff.

Army: General Victor Henri Schweisguth, Deputy Chief of Staff.

Air Force: General Henri Mouchard, Chief of Staff.

Belgium

Army: General Georges De Fontaine, Deputy Chief of Staff.

Air Force: Major L. F. E. Wouters, attache at the London Embassy.

Not one word said at the preliminary meeting in the Admiralty nor at the separate Army and Air Force conferences which followed ever reached the Press. Two days later the French officers gave their colleagues a champagne luncheon and the Staff conference was over.

The most obvious fact was that none of the officers at the conference was of a rank high enough to decide anything important. Chief of the British Naval Staff is Admiral Sir Alfred Ernie Montacute Chatfield. He stayed at home last week. Britain's Army had last week a new Chief of the Imperial General Staff in handsome, close-mouthed General Sir Cyril John Deverell, who lately succeeded Field Marshal Sir Archibald Armar Montgomery-Massingberd. So far as the public knew, General Deverell took no part in the conference. Neither did Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Emile Van Den Berghe of Belgium, nor Chief of Staff Marie Gustave Gamelin of France.

As a matter of fact the Staff conference ended quickly because there was very little to discuss. It would be playing into the hands of Adolf Hitler to admit it, but the French and British General Staffs have been "in contact" on a possible war with Germany for several years. A most important social visit occurred in June 1934 when General Maxime Weygand, generalissimo of the French Army, went to Britain with General Gamelin. These two and two aides spent an entire week enjoying the British countryside as guests of Field Marshal Montgomery-Massingberd. Year later Field Marshal Montgomery-Massingberd was accompanied by French Staff officers during a week's sightseeing on the Marne.

No one denied last week that complete plans for British aid to France and Belgium in case of German attack have long been in existence, that last week's Staff talks were merely to bring them up to date now that German troops were actually on French frontier. In Paris General Gamelin blurted out:

"I do not expect the help of a single British soldier in defending the French frontier. Behind our Maginot line we can resist any attack by Germany. The only question really interesting me is the measure of co-operation that Britain needs from France to assure the defense of Belgium which is primarily Britain's concern." Last week most military scientists believed that the Anglo-Belgian-French Staffs were working along the following lines: Defending Belgium will be Britain's job. French engineers will help Belgium build a cheaper continuation of the Maginot line.

Co-operation of air forces is the most important part of the whole scheme. Britain's rapidly-expanded air force is to equal Germany's. Certain British squadrons have already been given designated airports in Belgium and France to which they will fly automatically if & when Germany attacks. The plan also provides for massed bombing of German industrial cities.

Newshawks suddenly remembered last week still another zone, demilitarized by treaty. It lies in France, opposite the Swiss frontier. The Powers established it in the Second Treaty of Paris after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The Maginot line of forts scrupulously observes this demilitarized zone, on the theory that no one would be brash enough to attempt to invade France by way of Switzerland's Jura mountains. Last week the French General Staff was not so sure. Rumors persisted that the latest Nazi strategy was based on the violation of Swiss, not Belgian, neutrality. French War Minister General Louis Felix Thomas Maurin recommended that permission to refortify this gap in the French line be obtained from the League of Nations.

Meanwhile the frontier forts already constructed were giving French Army authorities plenty of headaches. For all their intricate galleries, ventilating systems and electric trolleys, they were never intended to support a permanent garrison. For six funless weeks nearly 50,000 young French conscripts have been living entombed in those forts whose lower galleries are leaking badly as a result of the spring rains. The Petit Parisien, mass circulation daily, did its bit last week by supplying free cinema films for the occupants of the Maginot fortresses. The Echo de Paris opened a subscription department for "Comforts for the Boys in the Front Line."

A report of more serious trouble was brought back by French spies in Germany. The Saar coal mines run right up to the French border, many of their deeper galleries reaching right into French territory. Word came out of the Saar that hand-picked Nazi miners have been set to work running coal galleries underneath the French forts, were ready to blow them up at the first blast of war, that important strong points at Forbach, Merlenbach and Grossrosseln have already been made potentially useless by undermining.

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