Peace?

Last week the correspondents who have been raptly following the great reversals of a staggering month brought a new, sardonic note into their stories. They had something concrete to write about. There were the German-Russian division of Poland (see p. 29), Russia's quick Baltic grab that snipped off Estonia and threatened Latvia (see p. 28), the second German-Russian "friendship" and economic pact. But, as the geese flew south over the ruins of Warsaw, and ice formed on the remote Finnish lakes, a wintry blast of cold scorn crossed the Atlantic with their cables.

It appeared in the what-kind-of-a-war-is-this? reports from the first batch of correspondents to reach the Westwall (see p. 31). It appeared in accounts of the mighty invasion of the Russian Army into conquered Poland, in which correspondents, ostensibly praising the Army, declared it had reached that high degree of technical proficiency achieved by the armies in the U. S. Civil War. Of its mechanized might, they said trucks were numerous--so numerous that seldom had so much broken-down machinery been blamed on bad roads. Scorn snowed through stories of impossible Chinese peace proposals from Chungking, in stories of the suppression of the French Communist Party, no less than in the mysterious report that Adolf Hitler might put an abrupt and disconcerting end to the Stop Hitler movement by abdicating. But the scorn burned warmest in the stories that dealt with the likelihood that those great pacifists, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, had united in the drive for Peace.

The Pact concretely provided only for German credits for Russian supplies and for "consultations" if peace should be refused. In Berlin, inspired stories promised Russian planes on the Western Front; in London the dominant reaction was relief; in Rome it was uneasiness. But in Moscow, Times Correspondent George Eric Rowe Gedye, noted readers waiting in their queues--more than a quarter-mile long--to buy Pravda, read the German-Russian peace proposal, gripped with "fear that they were about to be dragged into war."

Eight weeks ago Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano spent three days with Fuehrer Hitler and Herr von Ribbentrop, returned with news that plunged Mussolini into profound silence. Last week Count Ciano saw them both again. He also was going to talk "peace." But of this visit little notice was taken; Count Ciano stayed less than 24 hours, returned to Rome having discussed, according to authoritative sources:

P:The possibilities of the future in Europe, including Italy's share in what may or will happen.

P:Germany's conception of various spheres of interest in Eastern Europe.

P:The possibility of giving effect to the German thesis that the European war should be ended now.

These apocalyptic questions boiled down to one--what would Italy get if she backed up her peace proposal with a threat to go in with Germany and Russia? That a peace proposal was imminent few doubted. That Britain and France would accept it few believed. Britons, believing that its main purpose was to make Britain appear to be guilty of continuing the war, accepted its challenge beforehand. Said Winston Churchill, in a speech on war aims that observers believed made him a real candidate for Prime Minister:

"It was for Hitler to say when the war would begin, but it is not for him nor his successors to say when it will end. It began when he wanted it, and it will end only when we are convinced that he has had enough. . . .

"How often have we been told we are the effete democracies whose day is done, and who must now be replaced by various forms of virile dictatorship and totalitarian despotism? No doubt at the beginning we shall have to suffer, because of having too long wished to lead a peaceful life.

"Now we have begun: now we are going on. . . ."

"Tragic Hour." There was no scorn in the reports of one expression of desire for peace. All week from Rome came stories that the Pope would propose a general conference, hoping to create a Catholic Polish buffer state between godless Russia and pagan Germany. But no proposal came. Instead, at ten o'clock one morning last week, before the Polish Ambassador, the Polish Primate and a large audience of Polish priests and nuns, the Pope walked to the throne in the Pontifical Palace of Castel Gandolfo, to offer words of consolation to "his children of Catholic Poland" in this "tragic hour of your national life." Pale, and deeply moved, he spoke of his duty to give comfort, wept as he went on: "Now there are already thousands, hundreds of thousands, of poor human beings who suffer ... by this war from which all our efforts ... so obstinately, so ardently but, alas, so vainly fought to preserve Europe and the world. Before our eyes now passes a vision of mad horror and gloomy despair. ... In a tumultuous life, this race has known hours of agony and periods of apparent death, but it has also seen days of uplift and resurrection." Pope Benedict XV said of Belgium: "Nations do not die." Pope Pius XII said of Poland: "Poland, which does not intend to die." And although he urged Poles not to give way to despair, not to harbor rancor through hate, he added to an audience of Poles who had begun to weep: "We do not say to you: 'Dry your tears.' "

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