The World Over

At 10:30 one night last week a tall, tired, impassive U. S. diplomat, whose habitual uncommunicativeness was intensified by the fact that he had a cold, got to the Stazione Termini in Rome and went at once to his private car. One last Italian functionary arrived to bid him farewell. Then Sumner Welles, U. S. Under Secretary of State, in Europe on a special mission for President Roosevelt, turned in, although his train did not leave until 12:05.

He had had a grueling two days. On the first, beginning at 10 in the morning, he had spent two hours with excitable, athletic Count Galeazzo Ciano, who lingered 15 minutes over his farewells and shook hands four times in parting. He had held a press conference at which, with great politeness, he had told correspondents that he had nothing to say. At 5 o'clock he had walked the 60-foot stretch of marble floor in the Palazzo Venezia that visitors must cross to approach the desk of Benito Mussolini. His hour's talk with Il Duce (who wore civilian clothes to emphasize that it was an unofficial visit) was followed by a dinner given by the U. S. Ambassador to Rome. He had lunched on the second day with the French and British Ambassadors and had tea with the one from Germany. And then the first hazard in Sumner Welles's mission to Europe had been negotiated. Some kind of diplomatic history had been made: for the first time in two years pro-U. S. headlines appeared in the controlled Italian press, crowding in among headlines announcing that the Axis was up again, that an Italian-German Cultural Commission had come to an agreement, that new, stiff, anti-Semitic decrees were in force.

In an unseasonable coincidence, fine warm weather dotted a Europe that was emerging from its coldest winter in a hundred years. As Sumner Welles & party arrived in Rome, the almond trees were blossoming; people were singing a new song, Wind, wind, take me away with you; crowds were flocking to see Three Smart Girls, to hear Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole.

In Berlin the snowdrifts melted; crossings were flooded; the first flowers--tulips, daisies--went on sale in the streets. In Brussels, where the Lenten processions these days end with prayers that Belgium can keep out of the war; in Switzerland, where patches of brown earth began to fleck the foothills of the Alps, and drove the skiers higher; in Paris, where a sudden blazing sun brought tables back to cafe terraces and cheerful strolling crowds back to the Champs-Elysees--Europe last week was poised between winter and the dread spring that may launch the great offensive of the war.

Scenes. North through this half-frozen Europe moved Sumner Welles and his staff of assistants. To U. S. watchers from afar, uncertain as to the object of his mission (although President Roosevelt had said that it was only to gather information), in doubt as to whom he could see, what he would hear, skeptical of what he could accomplish, the journey of Sumner Welles was less a continued story of diplomatic progress than a series of vivid scenes, puzzling as stills from a movie whose story is not known.

Switzerland. In a hotel in Zurich the party paused midway on the journey from Rome to Berlin. Hearty was the greeting from the Swiss, who made no secret of their fear for the next few months--with mud drying on the far bank of the Rhine, with sunlight swallowing the Alpine Valley fogs, with trim fighting planes, wing-marked with a white cross on a red field, regularly droning overhead, with the Federal Council of seven Swiss elder statesmen quietly upping the army from 150,000 to 500,000 in preparation for good weather. Hearty and well-publicized was Sumner Welles's luncheon with his old diplomatic crony, Leland Harrison, the Minister to Bern. But unpublicized and mysterious was another U. S. Ambassador's visit. Squarejawed, grey-haired John Cudahy, newly appointed U. S. Minister to Belgium, left his embassy, entered Zuerich undetected, got past the reception desk at the hotel without leaving his name, late at night departed as secretly as he had come.

En Route. A private car supplied by the German Government. Inside, a crack German photographer who once accompanied Ribbentrop to Moscow, a suave German diplomat who once served in Washington. Also, elaborate trays of hors d'oeuvres, dinner of soup, roast chicken, vegetables, stewed fruit, coffee, and stout German protestations that such was the regular fare. In the U. S. party, enigmatic, icy, shiny-domed Sumner Welles; black-haired, jovial Chief of the European Affairs Division and crack career Diplomat Jay Pierrepont Moffat; quiet Lucius Hartwell Johnson, onetime Welles secretary newly recruited for this trip. Lights were bright behind the curtained windows. A stop at Stuttgart, 50 miles from the front--the huge station was ghostly under dim lights in its cavernous interior as one detachment of soldiers swung off the Welles train, another swung aboard. An English-speaking soldier asked a question about the Welles mission (which was not then discussed in the Nazi press) was sharply shut up by a Nazi official.

Berlin. Berlin's good weather ended with Envoy Welles's arrival. No flags, no bands, no military escorts were at the station. No U. S. flags, but the flaring white, light blue & red pennants of conquered Slovakia flapped in the snow over the Hotel Adlon where he unofficially stayed. A Slovakian propaganda mission, headed by young, black-haired, shouting Slovakian Propaganda Minister Sano Mach, pulled up at the front of the hotel at the same moment Welles's car drew up. Unobtrusive in a dark suit and black soft hat, poker-faced Sumner Welles gave no sign of interest or annoyance as the air-raid siren screamed a false alarm, the Adlon's lobby filled with gesticulating, heel-clicking, heiling Slovakians, obscuring his own arrival.

Hitler. But Berlin soon knew that he was there. Of his 60 hours, Sumner Welles spent nearly three talking with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (after which the press popped with inspired stories of Germany's demands before she would discuss peace: a free hand in the Balkans, recognition of her Czecho-Slovakian and Polish conquests). In the remaining 57, he found time to attend the opera (The Marriage of Figaro), be quietly feted by Alexander Kirk, U. S. charge d'affaires in Berlin, call on the Italian Ambassador. He also:

> Lunched with grey, good-natured, conservative Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, perpetual in-&-outer among Hitler's economic advisers. If any scheme was abroad for a World Bank to redistribute gold along the lines proposed by the State Department's Brain-truster Adolf Berle (TIME, Feb. 19), Dr. Schacht was the man to discuss it with.

> Dined with Goering, while the Nazi press thundered its regular warning that Goering's mighty air force could launch its devastating attack on Britain whenever Hitler said the word. If there was any justification for last week's gloom in Washington and the word there that the Allies have only a 45-to-55 chance, Goering was the man to justify it.

> Conferred with Deputy Rudolf Hess, No. 3 Nazi. If there seemed to Sumner Welles any truth in the Hermann Rauschning theory (The Revolution of Nihilism) that the Nazi revolution does not depend on Hitler, is in fact a Continental upheaval--then Rudolf Hess (third in line of succession to the Fuehrership of the National Socialist Revolution) was the man to talk to.

But the climax of Welles's hours came in the one he spent with Hitler. And a smashing climax Hitler made it. The Fuehrer had been in seclusion in the Chancellery for a week before Welles arrived. Whether he had spent the week brooding on things to ask for as the price for making peace, the Welles interview was no sooner over than doubly inspired stories popped in the press--twice as extravagant as Ribbentrop's demands, more grandiose than the Kaiser's dream of the drive to the East, a tumultuous welter of claims, charges, accusations; demands for Suez, Gibraltar, Singapore; denunciations of British naval bases as pirate hideouts; insistence that Germany could no more tolerate Britain in Southeast Europe than the U. S. could tolerate an enemy seizure of the Panama Canal; demands that Britain give up its financial power--in short, an end of Britain's power, an end of the British Empire, as the price of peace. Whether or not the Fuehrer shouted such claims to Sumner Welles in the Chancellery, they were certainly in the inspired stories from Berlin. The arrival of the official U. S. envoy had smoked out the German Revolution's forthright demands.

In the U. S., where the Welles mission was the biggest story of the week, journalists went in for some superlatives of their own. Headline of the week flared across the pages of the late Frederick Gilmer Bonfils' Denver Post, with a counterclaim dwarfing Hitler's as much as Hitler's dwarfed Bismarck's -- "Roosevelt," headlined the Post, "Wants to Dictate Peace and Become President of World".

Other U. S. journalists, less daring, nevertheless found Europe and echoes of Hitler's demands crowding U. S. news.

> Announced for next May were the biggest Army maneuvers in U. S. history, to be held on the Sabine River near the Louisiana-Texas border.

> Glenn Martin reported that the U. S. has developed the basic design for a 250,000 Ib. plane that would fly 380 m.p.h., carry 64,000 Ibs. of bombs 3,000 miles with a crew of 16 men.

> A group of churchmen representing 23 denominations met in Philadelphia, came out for a World Government.

> Aid to Finland had progressed to the point where it had created a definite Sympathy Front in the U. S.

And as Mr. Welles's 60 hours in Berlin sped by, the Welles mission bulked bigger & bigger in U. S. news, brought Europe more sharply into focus. From Berlin Sumner Welles rushed back to Switzerland ("to sleep, sleep, sleep," said a diplomatic spokesman) his normally expressionless face lined with strain and weariness. Half his mission was over. Ahead lay his talks with Premier Daladier and Prime Minister Chamberlain, to be carried on while the French press proclaimed there could be no peace with Hitler, Britons expressed annoyance, and the fateful spring of 1940 drew a little nearer.

Europe to the U. S. While Sumner Welles's cold professional eye was fixed on Mussolini, Hitler, and the professionals of government, U. S. citizens saw more clearly the Europe he passed through. It was a Europe where statesmen dreamed of Empire, but could not get coal. In Sweden, where the popular songs were a jumpy tune called Run Rabbit and a crazy Danish-American piece called Welcome Home, Mister Swanson, hot water was banned last week to conserve coal. In Denmark rations for coffee-drinking Scandinavians were cut 20%. In Brussels, a week that began brightly, with crowds flocking to Stanley and Livingstone, ended darkly in the rush of popular indignation and diplomatic protests that followed the shooting down of a Belgian airman. In Paris the rising spirits of crowds that took advantage of the good weather early in the week to swarm to the toy exhibition, the annual Humorists' Art Exhibition, were curbed when new government regulations established ration cards, banned chocolate, prohibited the sale of liquor on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, passed stringent decrees for agricultural workers.

Intellectually, Europe's life tightened: Italians who love to argue vehemently over their meals ate silently in cafes under signs reading "Here politics and strategy are not discussed"; in Brussels Allied sympathizers sneaked to private showings of the British movie The Lion Has Wings; in Yugoslavia, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece last week Hermann Rauschning's devastating attack on Hitler, The Voice of Destruction, was banned after German protests. Wrote the New York Times's Anne O'Hare McCormick, explaining why the Welles mission raised hopes despite its modest program: "No clear-eyed observer is left in Europe."

And as, in the Balkans, the conviction spread that a fateful decision had been made and a great attack was impending; as the British-Italian trade agreement broke down; as Swedish public opinion split on the question of aid to the Finns and King Haakon of Norway hurried to Stockholm; as Premier Molotov in Moscow gave a three and one-half hour lunch to U. S. Ambassador Steinhardt; as diplomatic life all over Europe speeded up in the wake of the Welles mission, it was plain that, although Sumner Welles made no statement, raised no hopes, he looked to many a European like the agent of a going concern who had entered the realm of disorder. Here & there peace moves looked up despite official frowns--membership of Union Now jumped to 10,000 in Britain; reports of Hitler's real peace terms were rumored in city after city. But no official acts encouraged them. As Europeans noted with fear in their hearts the brightening skies, the lengthening days, the first flowers of spring, it remained to be seen whether the U. S. envoy could smoke out from London and Paris the terms of peace that would be a sufficient answer to the warlike challenge of Berlin.

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