"Unwritten Alliance"
"Unwritten Alliance"
Industriously in London last week solid, bull-necked French Premier Edouard Daladier and lean, hawk-nosed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did their potent best to spoil the grandiose State visit which pudgy, mystic Adolf Hitler was to make to Italy this week, escorted by a retinue of 170 German officials, plus 70 German editors, plus 84 German photographers. The privileged photographers were fitted out last week for the first time in blue-grey uniforms with a visored cap and flowing cape. The privileged German editors each received two blue-black uniforms and six pairs of gloves, were warned to have one of the uniforms always freshly cleaned and pressed, ready to be donned at a moment's notice, since every German must be 100% spick & span to be seen with the Fuehrer.
Untidy Premier Daladier, who rolls his own cigarets and always has tobacco crumbs in the creases of his suits, last week left Paris with Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet by special plane for Croydon. There he was met by elegant British Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax whose cadaverous visage for once beamed. This same Halifax few months ago visited and conferred at length with Hitler, afterwards was reported by close friends shocked and grieved when Germany absorbed Austria. Whether or not events in Austria have taught Lord Halifax things he did not know about Germans, the conference at No. 10 Downing Street last week impressed London correspondents as of historic moment. They drew the United Kingdom and the French Republic into what United Press's Webb Miller called "an unwritten military alliance."
Daladier and Bonnet "fulfilled the French dream of establishing a complete Anglo-French defensive alliance" according to Ferdinand Kuhn Jr. of the New York Times's London office, while its P. J. Philip in Paris thought "they have accomplished what no other French ministers have ever done ... a firm agreement between Great Britain and France to stand together and fight together if and when they must fight." Flashed from London International News Service's Kingsbury Smith: "A new western frontier beyond which Germany will be forbidden to trespass was created today by France and Great Britain, simultaneously with adoption of a program to check Nazi expansion in Europe."
Night at Windsor. While the world's cables hummed with such news and Berlin dispatches reported the mood of the German Foreign Office to be "consternation," Statesmen Daladier and Bonnet went out to be overnight guests of King George and Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle where they were lodged in Lancaster Tower, "the most luxurious guest suite." With all males in court dress, a State dinner was served off plates of gold, and the band of the Grenadier Guards played "not only during dinner but afterward in the Crimson Drawing Room."
Still later Premier Daladier and Prime Minister Chamberlain withdrew with George VI to His Majesty's study for a long, earnest, secret talk. After all it was in April 1914 that the late King George V paid a State visit to Paris to reassure France, and King George VI is about to pay a similar State visit to France in June 1938. The gravity of the European situation as viewed by His Majesty's Government was shown last week by the revelation of Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon that the United Kingdom has secretly stocked up with enough food to last through the first few months of an immediate war (see p. 18).
Since the Fuehrer must not be given the impression that Germany's only real chance to win the next war would be to strike with all her might at Britain and France now, the final stage in the Daladier-Chamberlain conversations of last week was to issue a carefully vague communique--so vague that out of it few London correspondents could have proved the half of what they had reported and still believe.
The communique (only concrete official evidence of what took place) went little beyond saying: 1) that France approves the recent Anglo-Italian Treaty; 2) that Britain hopes France will succeed in her current negotiations for an equally satisfactory treaty with Italy; 3) that Anglo-French staff talks which have been going on for months will "continue"; 4) that with respect to "Central Europe" (i.e., Czechoslovakia) the British and French "found themselves in general agreement"; and 5) that "Britain and France are bound to one another by a close community of interests."
No sooner were Daladier and Bonnet on their way back to Paris than Lord Halifax made reassuring calls in London at the embassies of Germany and Italy. It appeared that His Majesty's Government had most certainly not made any signed & sealed agreement with the French Republic. Diplomats watched, expecting that France & Britain will shortly warn the German Government against precipitant action on Czechoslovakia, while at the same time warning the Czechoslovak Government to make "all concessions consistent with national honor" to its Sudeten Germans. Economists watched to see to what extent Britain & France will now throw large orders to Czechoslovakia, strengthening it economically.
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