Demoralizing

Suddenly last week peace stories sprang up everywhere. In Washington there was talk of a negotiated peace by President Roosevelt, in New York a report that Germany was offering Great Britain peace with 95% of the Empire left intact. Most credible story was broadcast by Radio Commentator Wythe Williams, who seems to have excellent Nazi contacts. Crediting "a channel that has never failed me," Commentator Williams announced: "Sir Samuel Hoare, Ambassador of Great Britain to Spain, had a conference with General Franco . . . and asked the General whether in his opinion a basis could be found on which to initiate preliminary peace negotiations."

One thing that made this story sound reasonable was the fact that General Franco was the intermediary between France and Germany. Another was the reputation of Sir Samuel as Britain's most notorious appeaser. A third was the Duke of Windsor's prolonged stay in Madrid, where he conferred with Sir Samuel and with Franco. Safe in the U. S., the Chicago Daily News's Hungarian-born Correspondent M. W. Fodor wrote a sensational story of which the two main points were: 1)Germany wants to put the Duke back on the throne as its puppet (which has been journalists' gossip for months); 2) Edward's little Duchess was once the good friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop (which has been common knowledge for years). All in all, the peace story was a good yarn, and in Rome and Berlin, as well as in the U. S., press & radio played it for all it was worth.

To Great Britain it was shocking. Resentful over what they considered France's ratting on the war, Britons were once more afraid that their Government might once more come to dishonorable terms with Germany.

Baron Strabolgi (who as Lieut. Commander Joseph Montague Kenworthy used to speak for Labor in the House of Commons) made the neat point that, much as Prime Minister-reject Chamberlain may hate Hitler now, his past record is so identified with appeasement that "so long as he is in the inner War Cabinet, the German propagandists will find credence for their fairy tales about Britain suing for an armistice."

Winston Churchill, needing a unified House behind him, was tied to Chamberlain whether he liked it or not. To set himself straight, Old Man Chamberlain felt constrained to go on the radio in a worldwide broadcast. "Anyone . . . who imagines that any of us would consent to enter upon peace negotiations with the enemy is just playing the Nazi game," said he. And then, in a voice so choked with emotion that he could hardly finish, onetime Appeaser Chamberlain cried: "We will fight [the enemy] on every road, in every village and in every house, until he or we are utterly destroyed."

Though the peace story ran its course in less than a week, it had had its intended effect. It had shaken Britain's faith in her leaders, had probably increased isolationist sentiment in the U. S. by making U. S. citizens believe that Britain's cause was hopeless. It was Hitler's old familiar technique of waging war with words. With rumors, fear, suspicion diabolically sown, he had again set out to demoralize his enemy before the cannon spoke.

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