Highest Stakes

Several quiet games for the highest stakes possible on Europe's political board gripped and absorbed her statesmen last week. Most of them figured that Adolf Hitler's next move, since he has now won every victory he can at home, must be outside Germany's boundaries. Where? Meanwhile, the strategy of Benito Mussolini, now that he has won Ethiopia, is to smash the League of Nations' Sanctions and obtain recognition of his conquest by the Great Powers. How? In searching for the answers to these tremendous questions many a European statesman packed his bag, began to travel fast and frantically.

Not since 1923 had Czechoslovakia seen her President go abroad. Last week President Eduard Benes ("Europe's Smartest Little Statesman") sped to Bucharest. There he was welcomed by King Carol of Rumania. To join them the Regent of Yugoslavia, Prince Paul, hurriedly arrived from Belgrade. President, King and Regent each heads a country accustomed to look to Paris for every sort of support, financial, diplomatic and military. All three countries owe their present territorial status to the post-War Treaty of Versailles, which gave them the lands of Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Bulgaria. Together they form the "Little Entente." Last week they saw France, paralyzed by workers' strikes, with a new Premier who is a Socialist reliant upon Communists (see p. 24). Most decidedly here was a situation to make President Benes, King Carol and Regent Paul wonder if the rock on which their countries had been building since the World War was not at last turning into sand.

Under French dominance, the Little Entente has let Europe know time& again that it would meet either armed German encroachment or a restoration of the Habsburg Empire in Austria with mobilization (i.e., with war), France being sure to fight on their side. Last week who knew whether a German move to seize the tip of Czechoslovakia (in which live a "minority" of some 3,500,000 Germans) could be successfully countered by President Benes, smartest European statesman though he is? Who knew whether the France of Premier Leon Blum either could or would resist--as France has stoutly resisted since the War--any tampering with the status of Austria? Until recently the Little Entente could have relied not only on France but also upon the League of Nations and on Britain. Last week the uncertainties of British policy were among the greatest worries of President, King and Regent. Even the London Times last week found it necessary in a leading editorial to beseech Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to state publicly what are the main lines of British foreign policy and thus clear up the greatest mystery of 1936.

Mystified Europeans last week viewed Benito Mussolini as the chief focus of hard realities. The Dictator was seen to have been palming as many potent playing cards as he could. If Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden persist half-heartedly in stirring up the League of Nations to maintain existing Sanctions against Italy or to impose fresh ones, II Duce hopes not to be caught short of trumps. Last week he ordered Italian war games held not in the autumn as usual, but immediately. That order meant that Italy will have some 200,000 soldiers mobilized, ready for action in Europe by the time the Assembly and Council of the League of Nations are scheduled to meet late this month in Geneva on the question of Sanctions. Other Italian cards were the troops II Duce has sent to face the British position in Egypt ; the Italian forces now dominating Ethiopia's Lake Tana, in which Britons have so much interest ; and the high-power Italian radio station at Bari, now well sup plied with announcers who speak all the languages of natives under British rule. Sources close to the British Cabinet com plained last week that few months ago this Italian station was persuasively inciting the Near East and India to rise "against British oppression." Last week Dictator Mussolini had stopped all such broadcasts, hugged this card, obviously preferring not to play against Britain but to compromise with her and keep his Ethiopian gains.

As a further card II Duce last week held the fate of Austria. The Austrian Chancellor, exceedingly pious and most monarchist Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, dis placed recently Mussolini's chief hench man in Austria, Prince Ernst Rudiger von Starhemberg (TIME, May 25). By last week Chancellor Schuschnigg found it ad visable to go himself to Italy and seek the behests of the Dictator. He sped to the Mussolini farm which is seldom used by II Duce except when he has matters of great moment on the fire. After his last rustication among the Romagna Mountains, Benito Mussolini launched the Ethiopian War. Last week the Dictator received Dr. Schuschnigg, lunched him well. Not a word of their conference leaked. General was an impression that the details of a restoration to the Austrian Throne of handsome young Archduke ("Emperor") Otto and his marriage to the youngest daughter of the King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia were cut, dried and shaped into another Mussolini card. United Press heard that in case II Duce is moved to play this card, as a means of creating a diversion in Europe so tremendous that the League would not dare go on with Sanctions, Mussolini "would announce the restoration of the Habsburgs to be under his protection."

Itching to be enthroned and reported more than willing to marry Italy's beauteous Princess Maria last week was handsome Otto von Habsburg. His Vienna monarchist organization even ventured to publish "an imperial letter from His Majesty." Wrote Otto: "It is high time for decisive action. I am ready at any hour to return to the Fatherland."

Everything depended, most European wiseacres thought, on whether the British Government presses the Italian Government beyond a certain point or instead compromises. Distinctly an omen of compromise was the recall to Britain's Cabinet last week of famed Sir Samuel Hoare, the far-seeing statesman who six months ago was prevented by shorter-sighted Britons from putting through "The Deal" by which Mussolini would have agreed to take only half of Ethiopia and let Haile Selassie keep the other half (see p. 22).

At Bucharest this week the anxious President, King and Regent issued a grim communique, strongly reaffirming the hostility of their Little Entente to any restoration of the House of Habsburg and to any union of Austria with Germany. They stayed for celebration in Bucharest of the sixth anniversary of King Carol's assumption of the Throne (TIME, June 16, 1930).

With 3,000 Rumanians cheering on a grandstand 65 ft. high at the rear, suddenly ominous creakings were heard, then the whole thing wobbled, crunched, collapsed.

"The groaning and screaming of the injured and dying was sickening," declared an eyewitness afterward. "Everyone fought wildly to get out of the debris and it seemed as though most of the injured were women and children. The Queen Mother was a horrified spectator and King Carol with Crown Prince Mihai, who had been in another grandstand with President Benes a quarter of a mile away, hurried on foot to the rescue in full uniform."

Officially the dead were 14, wounded and mangled approximately 400. Veteran Bucharest correspondents, on their own observation, upped these figures to at least 42 dead, 700 ambulanced. Fifteen minutes before the big grandstand collapsed a smaller one crumpled, but its nimble Rumanian occupants all leaped unhurt to safety.

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