British Talk

The British Government's hardest job last week was to convince Adolf Hitler that this time Britain means business, that when it signed a treaty last April to assist Poland in case of aggression it meant it. Even British cartoonists, like Middleton of the Birmingham Gazette, complained that the Nazis would pay no attention even to the direst warning a British statesman could give. Fuehrer Hitler and his coterie obviously did not believe a word of it, and there were even non-Nazis who shared the Fuehrer's skepticism. It was all very well to talk of determination to obstruct "aggression," "attack." "force," "domination" and such like, but why should British (and French) statesmen be so skittish in mentioning the simple word Danzig? Not one did. Even so, the parade of British orators giving Germany advice last week was impressive:

>Anthony Eden, former Foreign Secretary who could not stomach appeasement, outlined a new foreign policy: "Not only to be tough, but to look tough, to talk tough, and to act tough is the best contribution we as a people can make to peace today."

>First to talk tough was Winston Churchill, Wartime First Lord of the Admiralty. He addressed to Fuehrer Hitler a warning to "pause, consider well before you take a plunge into the terrible unknown. . . . The British nation and surely also the British Empire have reached the limit of their patience."

>Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax made an address to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a body set up during the Paris Peace Conference for the study of contemporary diplomacy. The British press unanimously hailed the speech as the truest expression of British opinion ever made by a member of the Chamberlain Government: "What is now fully and universally accepted in this country, but what may not even yet be as well understood elsewhere, is that in the event of further aggression we are resolved to use at once the whole of our strength in fulfillment of our pledges to resist it."

For cries of "Encirclement" by the Nazi propaganda machine, the Foreign Secretary had a sharp rebuttal: "We are told that our motives are to isolate Germany . . . Germany is isolating herself and doing it most successfully and completely. . . . The last thing we desire is to see the individual German man or woman or child suffering privations; but if they do so the fault does not lie with us ... for any day it can be ended by a policy of cooperation. ... I come next to Lebensraum [living space]. ... It can only be solved by ... adjusting and improving . . . relations with other countries abroad. [But it is] impossible to negotiate with a Government whose responsible spokesmen brand a friendly country as thieves and blackmailers."

>That night German and Italian translations of the Halifax speech were broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corp. to the people of the Nazi and Fascist nations. Goaded by the contempt that greeted its appeals to the Nazi Government, the British Government was trying to cut through the curtain of censorship and speak directly to the German people. With the approval, if not at the request of the Prime Minister, the Council of Labor, representing the Trades Union Congress and the Labor Party, begged the German workers "to do whatever you can to make it known to your Government that you want peace and not war. . . . Herr Hitler is encircling himself and you. . . . Far from wishing to encircle your country ... we invite you to come into the circle yourselves, to join up with a worldwide combination of nations, so that the great abilities of the German people may make their contribution to the establishment of a friendly world in which man can prosper." Not only was this broadcast to Germany by B. B. C., but it was amazingly announced that the appeal would be circulated in Germany through the underground anti-Nazi movement. This was, indeed, strange behavior for the British Government in peacetime.

> With the verbal warnings came actual preparation for war. Fleet maneuvers were moved up from September to August. The first 34,000 of 200,000 conscripts were ordered to report July 15. A White Paper announced that the regular Army was to be increased by 89,000 men. The 406,000 members of the Territorial Army were ordered to clean up all personal affairs before they report for training in August. The first batch of regular Army reserves is now in training and the second contingent will be called up in August. By the end of the summer Britain will have at least 750,000 men under arms. But most important, the Air Ministry allowed the news to "leak" that Britain is spending $10,000,000 a week on airplanes and that plane production passed Germany's in April. This week 1,000 first-line planes will engage in maneuvers.

The Government nonetheless lagged far behind public opinion in its campaign to halt Germany before it was too late. Former Appeasers were the most violent of all. The once pro-Munich Observer declared that if Britain "bilked her pledges" no one in the world "would believe that we had the guts for any test. Our name would smell. Our diplomatic connections would dissolve. Our repute would vanish." The press beseeched the Prime Minister to declare unequivocally that the annexation of Danzig to the Reich, no matter how carried out, would mean war. He did no such thing.

Sunday night, after the King and Queen had reviewed 20,000 men and women representing all corps of the 1,500,000 Britons enlisted in Civil Defense, Neville Chamberlain spoke of throwing "our whole strength into the scale ... to resist aggression," but of Danzig he said not a word.

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