Sawed-Off Sudetens?

For decades the London Times, famed "Thunderer," was understood to speak for His Majesty's Government in times of crisis when they preferred not to speak for themselves. Europe was therefore gravely alarmed last week when the Times suggested in a bland editorial that perhaps the Sudeten German territory of Czechoslovakia had best simply be permitted to secede and merge with Germany.

"This is one of the most damaging indiscretions in the records of responsible journalism!" promptly blazed London's Liberal News Chronicle. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's stanch supporter, the Conservative Daily Telegraph & Morning Post, declared: "No more sinister blow could have been struck!"

After striking this blow, Times Editor Geoffrey Dawson was still in good enough standing to lunch with His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Halifax. While they lunched, the French and Czechoslovak Governments urgently demanded that the Times editorial be repudiated, and every German paper jubilantly front-paged it as showing the "real mind" of Neville Chamberlain. Viscount Runciman, the British Mediator in Prague, began cabling London heavily in code, was reported threatening to resign. Finally, in the evening, at No. 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister issued a communique: "The suggestion to the effect that the Czechoslovak Government might consider as an alternative to their present proposals (see p. 18) the secession of a fringe of alien population in their territory in no way represents the views of His Majesty's Government."

The delayed timing of this communique meant at the very least that Czechoslovakia was subjected to a full day of increased "pressure" and agonizing uncertainty. It caused John Bull to cut momentarily the figure of a man who starts to saw off the leg of a friend when he sees the ankle grabbed by an octopus, as Cartoonist Jerry Doyle of the New York Post observed (see cut). Editor Dawson, three days after his "sawing" editorial, made amends. He praised the speech of Czechoslovak President Benes (see p. 19) as "a model of what a public utterance should be," denounced No. 2 Nazi Goering for making at Nuernberg (see p. 19) what the London Times called "the speech of a bully whose fury makes even sympathizers with the German case forget whatever there is in that case for legitimate sympathy."

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