Last Words

Some of the diplomatic jockeying which last week ended in World War II was old-fashioned international maneuvering for power. Some of it was doubtless actuated only by a desire to "make a record" that would look good in history. But all of it was conditioned by a fact new in human history:

The people of all nations the idea of war; 2) morally ashamed of it.

Because of this fact many of the exchanges which preceded the outbreak of war undoubtedly transcended mere diplomacy, and reached the level of moral efforts to save the human race. And all of the exchanges, genuine or hypocritical, were designed to appeal to this feeling in humanity at large.

Herewith TIME presents, from facts known at the present time, a sort of international white paper,* a chronological record in brief of the diplomatic exchanges that culminated in the white race's second civil war. The record properly goes back to a day six months ago, just after Hitler's troops took possession of Czecho-Slovakia:

March 18. At a meeting in Birmingham, England, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said: "Is this the last attack upon a small state, or is it . . . a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force? . . . No greater mistake could be made than to suppose that . . . this nation has so lost its fibre that it will not take part to the utmost of its power resisting such a challenge."

March 22. Hitler seized from Lithuania the onetime German port of Memel.

March 31. After consultation with Poland Chamberlain told the House of Commons: "In the event of any action . . . which the Polish Government . . . considered it vital to resist with their national forces, the [British] Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power."

April 28. In Berlin Hitler said to the Reichstag: "During the whole of my political activity I have always expounded the idea of close friendship between Germany and England. ... I am now, however, compelled to state that . . . war against Germany is taken for granted in that country. . . . The basis for the [Anglo-German] naval treaty has been removed. I have therefore resolved to send today a communication to this effect to the British Government . . . . As regards German-Polish relations . . . some months ago I made a concrete offer to the Polish Government: 1) Danzig returns as a free state into . . . the German Reich; 2) Germany receives a route through the Corridor. . . . The Polish Government has rejected my one and only offer. . . . Therefore I look upon the agreement which Marshal Pilsudski and I at one time concluded as . . . no longer in existence!"

May 5. In Warsaw Foreign Minister Josef Beck said to his Parliament: "I hear demands for annexation of Danzig. . . . I get no reply to our proposal ... of a common guarantee of the existence and rights of the Free City. . .. We have given to the German Reich all railway facilities, we have allowed its citizens to travel without customs or passport formalities from the Reich to East Prussia. . . . But we have . . . no grounds whatever for restricting our sovereignty on our own territory. . . . We in Poland do not know the conception of peace at any price."

June 8. Great Britain sent an emissary to Moscow.

August 5. Although the conversations in Moscow seemed to make scant headway, Britain and France together sent a military mission to discuss plans for mutual defense with the Soviet Army.

August 21. At midnight the German press suddenly announced that Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop would go to Moscow to negotiate an anti-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

August 23. From Berlin British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson flew to Berchtesgaden with a note from Mr. Chamberlain saying: "War between our two peoples would be the greatest calamity that could occur. . . . I cannot see that there is anything in the questions arising between Germany and Poland which could not . . . be resolved without the use of force. . . ."

The Fzig, the Corridor, a protectorate over Poland. Then he retired to write out his answer. It was handed to Sir Nevile later in the day: "Your Excellency informs me . . . that you will be obliged to render assistance to Poland. . . . I . . . assure you that it can make no change in the determination of the Reich Government. . . . I have all my life fought for Anglo-German friendship. The attitude adopted by British diplomacy . . . has, however, convinced me of the futility of such an attempt."

August 24. Hitler flew back to his Chancellery from Berchtesgaden; Ribbentrop, the Soviet agreement signed and sealed, flew home from Moscow.

August 25. In London Great Britain, to make her meaning clear, signed a treaty with Poland making official her ironclad promise of military aid to Poland. In Berlin Hitler sent for the British and French Ambassadors. To Sir Nevile he said (as quoted by the British White Paper from Sir Nevile's notes): "Poland's actual provocations have become intolerable. . . . War between England and Germany could at best bring some profit to Germany but none at all to England. The F then also be ready to accept a reasonable limitation of armaments."

August 26. Sir Nevile landed at Croydon with Hitler's verbal note and rushed with it to the British Cabinet, which considered it over the weekend. From Paris, Daladier wrote Hitler: "There is nothing which could prevent a peaceful solution of the international crisis . . . if the same will to peace prevails on all sides. . . . You as well as I were front fighters in the last War. You as well as I know what abhorrence . . . the War left in the conscience of the people. . . . If French and German blood flows again . . . destruction and barbarism will be the surest winner."

August 27 (Sunday) Hitler replied to Daladier, saying: "As an old front fighter I, like yourself, know the horrors of war. . . . . The pacification of our western frontier . . . can . . . not be interpreted as an acceptance of all other phases of the Versailles dictate. . . . Your Excellency will have to admit . . . the revision had to come. The Versailles dictate was unbearable . . . . I have made an offer to the Polish Government that . . . could . . . be made only once. . . . The Polish Government declined the proposals. . . . If our two countries on that account should be destined to meet again on the field of battle . . . I, Herr Daladier, shall be leading my people in a fight to rectify a wrong, whereas the others. . . ."

August 28. Sir Nevile flew back to Berlin and gave Ribbentrop Chamberlain's note, saying: "The German Chancellor has indicated certain proposals . . . for a general understanding. . . . His Majesty's Government are fully prepared to take them . . . as subjects for discussion . . . if differences between Germany and Poland are peacefully composed. . . . The German Government will be aware that His Majesty's Government have obligations to Poland by which they are bound and which they intend to honor." Before midnight Hitler was busy writing a reply.

August 29. Early in the evening Sir Nevile visited the Chancellery in Berlin, and after 25 minutes of impassioned oratory Hitler gave him the answer: ". . . Encroachments in Danzig . . . threatening demands . . . barbaric actions of maltreatment which cry to heaven . . . unbearable for a great power. . . . The demands of the German Government are . . . the return of Danzig and the Corridor. . . . The British Government may still believe that these grave differences can be resolved by way of direct negotiations. . . . The German Government . . . though skeptical . . . are prepared to accept . . . the British Government's offer of their good offices in securing the dispatch to Berlin of a Polish emissary with full powers. They count on arrival of this emissary on Wednesday, August 30." Sir Nevile asked whether this was an ultimatum. Hitler said that it was not. Sir Nevile hurried away to telephone the not-ultimatum to London.

August 30. At 1 a. m. Chamberlain's Cabinet, still in session from the previous evening, wired Sir Nevile: "It is . . . unreasonable to expect that we can produce a Polish representative in Berlin today, and the German Government must not expect this." And finally, when the 24 hours were almost gone, to Sir Nevile again: "Could you not suggest to the German Government that they adopt the normal procedure . . . of inviting the Polish Ambassador to call and of handing proposals to him for transmission to Warsaw?"

At midnight Wednesday, Sir Nevile carried Britain's formal answer to Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop reputedly lost his temper, gave the British Ambassador a lecture that lasted three-quarters of an hour: the condition upon which Germany had agreed to negotiate had not been fulfilled; no envoy had appeared; the time limit had expired. Then (according to the British) Ribbentrop produced and read rapidly in German a long document: Hitler's final offer to the Poles. Sir Nevile asked for the text; Ribbentrop declined to furnish it because "it could no longer be considered an official order," insisted that a Polish negotiator with plenary powers (i. e., full authority to accept Nazi demands) must appear by next day.

In mid-morning in Warsaw, President Moscicki proclaimed: "There is danger of war," ordered a final mobilization. In Berlin at 9 a. m. Polish Ambassador Josef Lipski telephoned for an interview with Ribbentrop. He was given no appointment. At noon Sir Nevile called and suggested that the German Government confer with Lipski. Ribbentrop thereupon asked Lipski whether he had power to negotiate as a plenipotentiary or merely as an ambassador. "As ambassador," said Lipski. He heard no more until 8 o'clock that night, when Ribbentrop saw him for a few minutes, said it was too late for discussions. The Foreign Office then gave the text of Hitler's expired offer to the heads of embassies in Berlin, released it simultaneously to press and radio. In 16 points it provided that:

Danzig was to become German at once; Poland should evacuate the Corridor which would be administered by an international commission representing Italy, the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain; at the end of a year a plebiscite would give the Corridor to Germany or Poland; only natives of the Corridor born before 1918 and people living there at that time would be eligible to vote; Gdynia in any case would remain a Polish port; the nation losing the plebiscite was to have a sovereignty over a highway one kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) wideplace, and therefore the Fndicated that the German war machine had received its marching orders the previous afternoon, before Hitler's 16 points were published.)

At 10 a.m. Adolf Hitler told the Reichstag : ". . . I and my Government sat there for two full days and waited until it should suit the Polish Government at last to send us a man with full powers. By last night they had not sent a plenipotentiary but they let us know through their Ambassador they were now contemplating whether and how far they were able to consider British proposals. . . . If it was possible to make the German Reich and its head of state take this . . . then the German nation would not deserve anything better than to disappear from the stage. . . . I have decided to speak to the Poles in the same language as they are speaking to us. . . . Our soldiers have been shot at, and since 5:45 we have been shooting back."

At 9:30 p.m. in Berlin Sir Nevile gave Ribbentrop Britain's ultimatum: "Unless the German Government are prepared to give His Majesty's Government an assurance that the German Government have suspended all aggressive action against Poland, and are prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory, His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom will, without hesitation, fulfill their obligations to Poland." At the same time M. Coulondre presented an almost identic ultimatum from the French.

In London, Chamberlain told Parliament:

"No man could say that the Government could have done more to try and keep open the way for an honorable and equitable settlement. . . . We shall stand at the bar of history knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man. The German Chancellor has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions."

September 2. Nazis claimed successes against the Poles "on all fronts."

France began final mobilization.

At 7:30 p. m. in London Chamberlain reported to the House of Commons on his ultimatum: "No reply has been received. If the German Government should agree . . . His Majesty's Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the frontier."

September 3 (Sunday). In Berlin at 9 a. m. Sir Nevile gave the German Government this message: "I have the honor . . . to inform you that unless not later than 11 a. m. . . . today . . . satisfactory assurances have been given by the German Government . . . a state of war will exist between the two countries." Daladier informed Hitler that France would consider herself at war at 5 p. m. unless the Germans gave up their war against Poland.

Shortly thereafter the Fent the ultimatum requests or to fulfill them. . . . A condition exists at our eastern borders which in effect amounts to war. . . . The German Government and the German people have assured the British people time and again that they are desirous of bringing about an understanding with them. . . . If the British Government has refused to consider all these offers, and now makes a reply consisting in overt acts of war, this is not the responsibility of the German people. . . . We shall therefore reply to all acts of attack coming from England, no matter under what form, with the same weapons."

At 11:15 from 10 Downing St., Mr. Chamberlain broadcast in a tired monotone to the British people: "This country is at war with Germany. . . . May God bless you all and may He defend the right."

At 10 p. m. Hitler proclaimed to Germany: "The German people know that the British people as a whole cannot be made responsible for all this. It is that Jewish plutocratic and democratic upper crust, which, in all peoples of the world, desires to see only obedient slaves and which hates our new Reich because it sees in it a model for social work which it fears because it might prove contagious in their own country."

At 1 p. m. in Paris the Foreign Ministry announced that Hitler's answer was unsatisfactory, that by 7 p. m. France would be at war.

*A phrase coined for British diplomatic publications which had no special covers. Actually the big 1914 war documents of Britain were bound in blue paper. Colors of other nations: Germany, white; France, yellow; Austria-Hungary and the U.S., red; Belgium, grey; Italy, green; Russia, orange.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.