Ultimate Issue

King George VI said, "In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depths of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your thresholds and speak to you myself. . . . We are at war."

As the big guns began to go off, monarchs and ministers, dictators and presidents, said what they had to say. Soon the tumult of war would be too loud to let the world hear their voices. The headlines of papers blurred and ran together--Hitler said. . . . Daladier said. . . . Chamberlain told the House of Commons. . . . Mackenzie King announced--then changed overnight. The great names and grave words disappeared. The bombing of ships and cities, clashes on the Western Front, maneuvers on the plains of Poland, overflowed in the news.

But, each in his own way, the Spokesmen played their parts magnificently. Incomprehensible or mad to most of the world, a simple, injured man in his own eyes, Adolf Hitler fulfilled his destiny, as lonely as King Lear on the windswept heath, raced off through Europe's darkest night talking of victory or death (see p. 28). Laconic Edouard Daladier talked like a soldier of war and of the way to fight it. High-minded Chamberlain and grave Halifax, two Shakespearean characters in a tragic drama, spoke of right, of justice, of the moral problems of the conflict (see p. 27). Benito Mussolini, as befitted a student of Machiavelli, said little and made that little mean much or nothing (see p. 21). Harsh Molotov in Moscow jeered at hopeful democrats and alone of the world's spokesmen said nothing of war's misery--of which Adolf Hitler no less than Lenin showed himself fully conscious (TIME, Sept. 4).

Young King George VI drew a deep breath and went on, "We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called, with our allies, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the world.

"It is a principle which permits a State, in the selfish pursuit of power, to disregard its treaties and its solemn pledges, which sanctions the use of force. . . .

"And if this principle were established throughout the world, the freedom of our own country . . . would be in danger. . . . But far more than this, the peoples of the world would be kept in the bondage of fear. . . .

"This is the ultimate issue. ... It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the seas who will make our cause their own.

"The task will be hard. . . .If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then with God's help we shall prevail.

"May He bless and keep us all."

War. And so it began. While the King was speaking the German armies were driving to smash the Polish defensive triangle of Lwow-Lublin-Cracow before winter weather aided the Poles. While the bombers were loading, the Chancelleries were preparing their papers to place the guilt of launching the war (see p. 20). Then, the spokesmen stepped from the stage of history; the silent generals took their place.

Week after week through the strain of last summer, observers have totted up the figures on Europe's arms. Week after week they have speculated on strength and strategy: how strong is France's Maginot Line, Germany's West Wall? How long can Poland hold out? How menacing to Britain are Germany's submarines? How strong are Britain's air defenses? Last week each move of each division, each flight of each bomber, the torpedoes that found their marks, the four-inch, six-inch, ten-inch, 14-inch, 16-inch shells that screamed overhead, added their small sums to the totals that would give the great answers.

Answers. But more than answers to military riddles were being decided last week. Obscured by the battles, drowned out by the guns, the old war of nerves, of mystery, rumor, panic, went tediously on:

>Italy's war of nerves seemed settling to a state of siege as slow as the siege of Vicksburg. Now and then a stray shell--a blackout, rumors of French-British pressure (see p. 21), whispers of a dire Axis plot-- sailed over and rolled along the streets. >Nobody paid much attention when the Russian Ambassador to Berlin was suddenly jerked home, replaced with a diplomatic greenhorn who had been Premier Molotov's assistant in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Moscow. But in the Balkans there was a tremor of fright like those involuntary shudders people are supposed to make when somebody walks over their future grave. The reason: the ordinary embassy military attaches accompanying the new Ambassador were loudly trumpeted as a "military commission." The fright: more evidence that Joseph Stalin was getting set to work with Germany if Poland was easily overrun. >Nobody paid much attention when Rumania rejoiced at Italy's neutrality, set to work strengthening her Eastern frontier, discussed a non-aggression pact with Hungary.

But everybody jumped when at the first shot the war of nerves leaped the Atlantic. All the frights in the Balkans that had seemed remote to U. S. citizens became more understandable; the pledges of neutrality of Rumania, Yugoslavia, Italy, looked a little more real in discussions of U. S. neutrality. There had been no absorbed interest in Europe's war so long as it was a word-war. U. S. citizens looked upon it with impatience, with disgusted weariness, a few with alarm. Or they saw it as an obsessed absorption with insoluble problems, pushed the whole conflict out of their minds. Or they made no distinction between the antagonists, thought of them struggling for the same ends by different-- and generally deceptive--means. Or they went South American or Russian (see p. 35), viewed with frank satisfaction making money from the war. Or they decided that the whole turmoil baffled understanding, that its reports held no truth, the speeches of all its spokesmen held some hidden meaning that by the chemistry of distance was lost as it crossed the Atlantic.

Smashing this barbed-wire entanglement of reactions came headlines like an artillery barrage--planes over Warsaw, French soldiers assaulting the West Wall, the Athenia torpedoed (see p. 20).

There were questions:

What would have happened if the Athenia had gone down with losses like those of the Lusitania? How would U. S. neutrality be affected by such incidents? What was the meaning of the search of the Bremen?

There were rumors:

Four German submarines reported off Curac,ao; guards strengthened around Army and Naval bases; a purge of the U. S. intelligence; quarrels in high offices.

In the confusion the only certainty remained what it had been in Europe--that peace seemed worth almost every sacrifice, that morally Adolf Hitler had been stopped. Said the New York Times, premier U. S. newspaper: ". . . We know where responsibility lies for this reckless act that has plunged Europe into war. We know in our hearts, and there is no point of honor and no scruple of neutrality which need forbid us to deny it, that the democracies of Europe are the outposts of our own kind of civilization, of the democratic system, of the progress we have achieved through the methods of self-government and of the progress we still hope to make tomorrow.''

Defeat. Vibrant as a piano wire, Europe resounded with each blow anywhere upon it. Defeat in Poland meant Policy in Moscow; neutrality in Rome built fortifications in Rumania. As the great organizations of war collided last week, as the spokesmen of belligerents and neutrals said what they had to say, one fact stood out: Germany had lost the war of nerves that had raged through the pre-War summer. No Polish ally backed down. Isolated Germany began the fighting. No friend moved to aid her in the 26 countries of Europe, and although a swift Polish victory could draw them in, none moved as the talking stopped, the shooting started. More completely alone than any great power at the start of any great war, Germany plunged into conflict so vast that victory for her could only mean, not that a lightning war was irresistible, but that Adolf Hitler had measured himself against Napoleon.

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