Salesman & Culverins

Salesman & Culverins

Last June Germany's round-faced and cheerful Ambassador-at-Large Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop, onetime salesman of "German Champagne," blandly appeared in London and showed around the smart salons of Mayfair what he said was a list of British subjects any one of whom Adolf Hitler would prefer to the present British Ambassador at Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps. Herr von Ribbentrop did not deny that he himself was the Realm-leader's choice to succeed as German Ambassador to the Court of St. James the distinguished, old-school Dr. Leopold von Hoesch who died in April.

In Whitehall this was considered double-barreled insolence on the part of Herr von Ribbentrop, for Sir Eric Phipps is the brother-in-law of the Permanent Undersecretary of the British Foreign Office, brilliant Sir Robert ("Van") Vansittart. Recently Sir Robert went on vacation to Berlin (TIME, Aug. 10). Few days later he conferred with Adolf Hitler. Last week Joachim von Ribbentrop was appointed German Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

So long as Sir Eric Phipps remains British Ambassador in Berlin, Europe's diplomatic fraternity was inclined to think that von Ribbentrop will have lost rather than gained by his appointment to London. He has been the closest adviser on foreign affairs of Herr Hitler, and his Berlin office, nicknamed Das Euro Ribbentrop, overshadows the German Foreign Office headed by old-school Baron Constantin von Neurath at whom proletarian Nazis sneer.

With Sir Robert Vansittart in Berlin and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden vacationing in the country last week, the British Foreign Office happily came out with exactly the sort of announcement its civil servants love to make. Apropos of nothing they announced that His Majesty's Government have re-examined and consider fully binding upon themselves, "the Treaties of Alliance with Portugal, dating back to 1373."

A mention of these in the House of Commons recently evoked guffaws, but according to the Foreign Office the obligations of assisting Portugal in case of attack, initiated by British King Henry II and subsequently strengthened by British King Charles II, when he took to wife Portuguese Princess Catherine de Braganza, remain in force. One of these obligations, the Foreign Office gravely announced, is that Britain ''if need be" must go to the aid of Portugal "with a warship carrying at least ten culverins." Culverins were long cannons with peculiar serpent-like adornments much esteemed in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

Crowded up against Portugal's frontier last week by the troops of Spain's Revolution were portions of Spain's Government forces hard-pressed and cut off from Madrid. When some of these skipped over the frontier into Portugal, they were harshly driven back to be slaughtered. Perhaps they would have fared less hard had not the Lisbon Cabinet of Portuguese President Antonio Oscar de Fragoso Carmona just received assurances that Great Britain will come with culverins "in case of need."

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