"Little World War"

The stock question which reporters ask and diplomats evade is: "War?"

In Washington at a State Department press conference last week correspondents nearly fell out of their chairs with astonishment when aged Acting Secretary of State Robert Walton Moore, a diplomat of the old school who normally would be the last person to become loquacious about War, suddenly offered to let himself be quoted on it at length.

"I decline to believe that any war involving the leading European nations is about to occur," cried Mr. Moore with an emphasis which suggested it took effort to decline to believe. "I decline to believe," vehemently continued the Acting Secretary of State, "that any such adventure in suicide is imminent! On the contrary, I am convinced that the leaders of those nations, knowing what a perhaps fatal blow another extensive war would be to the fabric of European civilization, will find some common-sense method of adjusting all controversies. Of course all the world would be glad to see the civil strife in Spain wholly localized.''

Since between the British Foreign Office and the U. S. State Department many intimate personal and individual ties exist, Secretary Moore, as some of his quoters wrote in their dispatches, was perhaps doing his personal best to encourage Britain and France, discourage Germany, Russia and Italy with regard to the efforts of these five states last week in Spain's "Little World War," as diplomats were now calling it. During the week journalists of the French Radical Popular Front, which supports the Cabinet of Socialist Premier Leon Blum, launched daily rumors that German troops were arriving in Morocco at Ceuta, only 14 miles across the Straits from Britain's Gibraltar and "within canonading range''. In London these rumors had galvanic effect. The nervous Duke of Windsor's nervous intimate friend, British War Secretary Alfred Duff Cooper, who has said in a public address that he considers it his duty to "frighten people out of their wits" with the dangers of War (TIME, June 22), promptly bolted from London over to Paris. There he conferred with burly, square-jawed French War Minister Edouard Daladier, an ambitious politician whose critics have for years implied that he wants to make himself France's Radical Dictator.

After M. Daladier had received Mr. Duff Cooper and the Englishman had read in virtually the entire French press increasingly alarming reports of "Blond Moors" (Germans) at Ceuta, he was reminded at the French Foreign Office that not only the Treaty of Versailles but many another bars Germany from Morocco. Simultaneously a French Foreign Office spokesman, not permitting himself to be named, told correspondents that "France will go to any lengths to protect her interests in Morocco!" To Morocco soon will go M. Daladier and generals of the French G. H. Q.

Back to London hurried Mr. Duff Cooper, and it remained to be seen whether he could kindle the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin into an enduring flame, or whether the Prime Minister would ignite and then gradually sputter out as he did when he was briefly lit on the Ethiopian "Deal" by Sir Samuel Hoare (TIME, Dec. 30, 1935 et ante). Sparks flew in Downing Street last week with two "emergency meetings" of His Majesty's Government within 48 hours, and by the time Mr. & Mrs. Baldwin left to weekend in the country with the King & Queen, the more combustible Fleet Street newsorgans were in decorous conflagration. Blazed the London Sunday Referee: "Mr. Baldwin believes that, if the present situation is allowed to continue, it will lead inevitably to European war.

"Only one thing can save the situation --decisive intervention by a power whose neutrality is above suspicion. That power is Britain.

"The Cabinet realizes that in deciding on a blockade it is giving Hitler and Mussolini an excuse for reprisals. ... If they seek to delay control, the British Navy will be given orders to act swiftly and effectively." Soon the British Empire proceeded to unleash the British Navy again--as it was unleashed last year against Benito Mussolini -- this time perhaps to blockade Spain entirely by sea as suggested by the Sunday Referee. Since the House of Commons is about to reconvene this was a good line for His Majesty's Government to take, in preparation for expected criticism from Labor M. P.'s to the effect that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's Non-intervention Committee on Spain is just so much humbug (TIME, Dec. 14). Cynically the London bureau of the New York Times cabled last week: "To keep public opinion behind him, if for no other reason, Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, will give the appearance of great energy between now and the time Parliament meets." It remained to be seen whether His Majesty's Government were merely giving an "appearance of great energy" or really meant business. Admiralty orders to British warships were couched in terms which might mean anything. The effect of these orders is to bring about 200,000 tons of British war boats into waters near Gibraltar, ostensibly "on their way" past Gibraltar steaming to distant ports. The flagship Queen Elizabeth (33,000 tons) carried Admiral Sir Alfred Dudley Pound from Malta to Gibraltar last week and is scheduled to steam back this week to Malta. The famed Hood (46,200 tons) and Repulse (37,400 tons) were already at Gibraltar and scheduled for Malta. Other British ships were bound from England, Malta and various bases through the Gibraltar Straits and officially the Admiralty called all this "western Mediterranean periodical reliefs." Last year the same tactics were used to intimidate Mussolini, even down to the always-thrilling Admiralty order again issued last week, that all British tars are to bring their officers up to date on the names and addresses of nearest relatives.

In London circles close to the Prime Minister this week it was said that Squire Baldwin was asking the Radical French Cabinet for further proof of their accusations about Germans in Morocco before his own Conservative British Cabinet finally made up their minds;

Diplomacy. Middle of the week the German Government and the Italian Government stood shoulder to shoulder in replying to Anglo-French notes proposing that further arrivals in Spain of non-Spanish warriors be halted. In the involved language of diplomacy Der Fuehrer and Il Duce professed themselves ready to assist in halting the influx of warriors, on condition that those already in Spain, together with foreign agitators and other foreign aid all be cleared out. Nazi newsorgans roared that "the Red agents of Moscow" must not be permitted to remain in Spain, and raised the issue of the Bank of Spain's great gold hoard, now seized and in large measure cached abroad in bank accounts of members of Spain's Red Cabinet. Berlin and Rome thought something should be done about that. Neutral diplomats thought Der Fuehrer and Il Duce, by the conditions they laid down, were simply throwing the whole issue of intervention in Spain back into the hands of London's luckless 27-nation Non-intervention Committee.

Spain's War. Madrid dispatches insisted that the German envoy to the Spanish White Government at Burgos, General Wilhelm Faupel, is in fact the military commander of the German expeditionary force in Spain. Last week Madrid credited him with sending his Reichswehr troops crashing into the Spanish Red Militia a few miles from Madrid and breaking through the Red front on the El Escorial road.

At Madrid, whether or not the Whites had taken Jan. 15 as their deadline for victory, the heaviest fighting of the entire civil war was going great guns this week, with German air bombs and projectiles pounding the $4,000,000 U. S.-owned Telephone Building into increasing uselessness. At latest reports U. S. Telephone Tycoon Colonel Sosthenes Behn was still with his battered building, although the U. S. and British embassies had long since been officially evacuated, and last week were scarred by air bomb splinters. Splinters lodged in the heads of a left-behind British military attache and an Englishwoman but neither was seriously hurt.

Baron Bumped Off. Dead, apparently shot in the back by a Red Militia execution squad, was Baron Jacques de Borchgrave, First Secretary of the Belgian Legation in Madrid. Incensed at Brussels, the Government of His Majesty King Leopold III demanded $35,000 indemnity from Spanish Premier Largo Caballero, plus a Spanish apology and full military honors for the Baron. His corpse was dug up and the Baron de Borchgrave was found to have been killed by a pistol shot just behind the ear in the classic style of "Spanish bumping off parties" (TIME, Jan. 11) and Chinese executions (see p. 22).

"All Honest Friends." Most concrete, fateful development in the "Little World War" came with official announcements in Berlin and Lisbon that Germany and Portugal signed secretly some six months ago a treaty by which, as of Sept. 1, 1929, Portugal declares void all rights to German property in Portuguese territory acquired under the Treaty of Versailles, and also agrees to return to Germany all properties in disputes which have not been liquidated by the Portuguese courts. Much more than the above clearly underlies a Portuguese-German pact made at such a time as now, when Dictator Salazar of Portugal and Dictator Hitler of Germany have been in closest fighting collaboration for weeks to secure a White victory in Spain.

According to a joyous bedlam of editorials in the German press, Portugal is now "casting off ties which for three centuries have bound her to Britain" and the African colonies of Portugal are going to be voluntarily opened up for exploitation with the assistance of "all honest friends" i. e., Germans. Simultaneously the German press, plus official German sources, formally denied and then heaped ridicule upon "the carnival joke" of reports about Germans in Morocco "invented in Paris to save the pirates of Valencia and their government."

Berlin insisted that only some few Germans had arrived and would arrive in Spanish Morocco to act as armed guards at its valuable ore mines.

The World War had its prelude in Morocco, with Kaiser Wilhelm II brandishing the Fatherland's naval might off the Moroccan coast, sending bis warship Panther into the French harbor of Agadir to snarl and make demands in 1911. This winter it is not the rich, well-prepared Germany of the Hohenzollerns, but the food-short, cash-starved Naziland of Adolf Hitler which is challenging the Great Powers, giving them sleepless jitters. This week they felt no less wary or suspicious upon hearing that Der Fuhrer had assured French Ambassador Andre-Franc,ois Poncet that Germany has no designs upon Morocco.

75% Chance. In Mexico landed last week great Exile Leon Trotsky (TIME, Jan. 11) and at latest reports was safe and sound. Said he:

"I left a Europe torn to pieces by frightful contradictions and convulsed by the presentiment of a new war. The general nervousness explains why countless panicky rumors arise about all sorts of things, including myself. I think there is a 75% chance that there will be a war in Europe in the not distant future."

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