Peace on Earth

Last week a few earnest men still had courage enough in their hearts to believe, in the face of cynics' laughter, that Germans can live on the earth in peace even with Britons and Frenchmen, Japanese with Chinese, and Russians with whoever are their enemies. These men hurried about Europe proposing conferences, asking for moratoriums, begging at least a pause. Their reward was not great. Berlin papers called their pleas the "tubercular coughs of senile sinners," and their proposals were either damned or neglected by the lieutenants of force.

P: Karl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, saw Fuehrer Hitler, Herr Ribbentrop, visited Berlin, rushed back to Danzig where he was closeted next day with Polish and Nazi officials. Announced subject of their talk was the Polish-Danzig customs dispute: but within half an hour Polish Cornmissioner General at Danzig Marian Chodacki raced off to Warsaw to see Foreign Minister Josef Beck. Black-haired, patrician, handsome, Swiss-born Dr. Burckhardt, author of a biography of Richelieu, ambitious to be a 20th-century Talleyrand, seemed as likely a man as could be found in Europe to act as go-between for Fuehrer Hitler and Colonel Beck if direct negotiations at this stage had any chance. He has" been publicly praised for his tact by the Fuehrer. He is on excellent terms with top British Cabinet officers. But talk of a settlement quickly fizzled and Dr. Burckhardt stayed put in Danzig.

P: Pope Pius XII received Casimir Papee, Polish Ambassador to the Holy See, heard Poland's side of the Battle of Danzig on the Vistula. Urging prudence "in this hour of grave decision," he dispatched an emissary to Warsaw to urge peace.

P: The dread (and, at week's end, dead) subject of Appeasement was revived, both by way of recrimination, and seriously by some who would still rather trust a proven deceiver than shoulder a gun.

P: Like a valiant David twirling his slingshot in the face of a giant adversary, King Leopold III of the Belgians invited six other little fellows--the Foreign Ministers of The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden--to join him in Brussels to: 1) draft a peace proposal to the powers; 2) pool their raw material resources to insure their neutrality in case the proposal went the way of other peace proposals.

P: Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano was as elusive as a cake of soap in the bottom of a bath. He had the Ambassadors of France, Great Britain and the U. S. pouncing all over Rome to try to pin him down. Two caught him for a spell--Britain's Sir Percy Loraine (but only for a few minutes one evening) and the U. S.'s William Phillips (but informally, while basking at Castel Fusano, a fashionable beach outside Rome; Count Ciano made an appointment for the next morning, which he broke). Twice the three Ambassadors almost cornered Count Ciano. The first time, the arrival in Rome of Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Stephan Csaky gave him a chance to refuse to see them. The second time, next morning, he gave them the slip by suddenly flying to Albania, where he was reasonably sure they would not follow him.

Count Ciano could guess what the three had to say, and he obviously did not want to hear it: he must do all in his power to stop the rolling stone before it gathered an avalanche to swallow them all, as Mari of Peace Mussolini did this time last year when he persuaded Hitler to call off his Army before Munich. Count Ciano's answer, heartily concurred in by Premier Mussolini: mum.

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