Berlin Mission

With her Rolls-Royce engines throbbing sweetly, a "Flying British Foreign Office" lofted up from Croydon this week, swept off across the Channel. Aboard were crack Whitehall diplomats fluent in German, and Sir John Simon who was reported to have sighed: "I could talk with Hitler in French if he could talk French."

Never perhaps had a British Foreign Secretary departed amid greater misgiving. If Sir John triumphed, he would deserve double acclaim, for he was considered last week to have pretty well bungled things in advance. In the House of Commons, where he had dallied persistently last week, refusing invitations to confer with the Premiers of France and Italy, Sir John created an impression so unfortunate that Sir Austen Chamberlain K. G., who had been expected, as a onetime Foreign Secretary and half-brother of Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, to felicitate His Majesty's Government on the "mission to Berlin," abruptly thrust the notes for his speech back into his waistcoat pocket and rushed off to the Chamberlain stronghold of Birmingham.

"I must say frankly," Sir Austen told his constituents, "that I think there has been some clumsiness in our present diplomacy. We were invited to Berlin as perhaps the least biased and prejudiced of a group of Powers, all equally interested in this great scheme, and I think it would have been better that before any announcement was made to Berlin as to our intentions they should have been made clear and expressed fully to our friends in Paris and Rome."

Strictly speaking, the intentions of His Majesty's Government had not been announced to Berlin, but the mildness of Sir John's protest after Herr Hitler re-established conscription in defiance of the Versailles Treaty (TIME, March 25) was notice enough to the Realmleader that Britain would not join France, Russia and Italy in any harsh, concerted effort to make him toe dotted lines on which Germany has signed. Last week in Berlin the French Ambassador was received with studied discourtesy by German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath when he called to protest. On a similar errand the Italian Ambassador was received with the deference Il Duce demands, gets. Considering that words are not enough to impress Hitler, Mussolini this week treated Nazidom to the spectacle of an Italian mobilization. Not calling it by that name, II Duce sent pink mobilization cards out in quantities sufficient to put some 1,000,000 soldiers and militia under arms by April 15.

"I desire to say to the whole Italian people," he told a cheering Italian throng last week on the 16th anniversary of the founding of the Fascist Party, "that no event whatsoever will find us unprepared!"

"Sir John's Chestnuts." As the Imperial Airways liner carrying Sir John Simon approached Amsterdam, it coasted down to a landing and aboard stepped the handsome young Oxonian fixer who likes to be called "Mr. Eden."

Captain Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal of His Majesty's Government, had gone over to Paris to fix the French and Italians, if he could. Italy's Vice Foreign Minister Fulvio Suvitch was sent up from Rome to eat luncheon with Capt. Eden at the ornate French Foreign Office. Afterward a formal pretense of Anglo-Franco-Italian solidarity was made, but as one of the Latin statesmen said: "We have decided to let Sir John pull chestnuts out of Herr Hitler's fire, if he can. Later we will see whether or not we like the chestnuts. We will never consent to a German Army of the size that has been proposed by Hitler."

Simultaneously some 30,000 French poilus were ordered by President Lebrun to man the elaborate concrete fortifications France has thrown up along her German Frontier.

Meanwhile Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria--all bound by treaties limiting their armaments after their defeat in the World War--threatened to break faith, in imitation of Adolf Hitler. Austria, limited to 30,000 troops by the Treaty of St. Germain, plus 8,000 allowed after the assassination of Dollfuss, sought 100,000 as "absolutely essential." Turkey's pugnacious Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ("Father of the Turks") and Ghazi ("Victorious One"), is suspected of having already fortified the Dardanelles contrary to treaty, hinted that Turkey would now do so openly.

"Force for Peace."Everything depended, as Sir John and Capt. Eden reached Berlin, on the psychological reaction of Adolf Hitler, whose works bristle with grudging admiration of the English, to two flesh & blood Englishmen.

Alighting all smiles, lean Sir John clasped hands with portly Baron von Neurath. "Fine of you to have invited me to your home!" he cried, then recoiled as though slapped when a bristling, black-jacketed S. S. (Special Guard) leader stepped directly in his path, blocked the Englishman with an abrupt salute and bawled:

"Excellency! The life guards of Reichsfuhrer Adolf Hitler are at attention! Present or accounted for!"

Nobody in Berlin and no member of the Cabinet had seen Hitler for days. Hopping by plane about Southern Germany he had been haranguing his people, listening to their hoarse cheers, sharpening his intuition. About all the preparation Foreign Minister Baron von Neurath had been able to make was to persuade the Ministry of Interior with great difficulty, to release from jail and house arrest several hundred Protestant pastors locked up for denouncing Naziism as "pagan," Sir John Simon being the son of a clergyman.

An echo from England that His Majesty's Government were in characteristic form rumbled meanwhile from the National Government's real boss, good Mr. Stanley Baldwin:

"It is our difficult privilege to be the torch bearer of ordered freedom. I could wish that aircraft had never been invented, but they are here and somehow we have got to Christianize them. . . . The greatest force in the world today for peace is the British Empire."

Gutturals & Magnetism. Always the basis of Adolf Hitler's strategy is surprise. He let Sir John and Captain Eden go to bed in the Hotel Adlon, sleep, arise and breakfast under the impression that they would lay the basis for negotiation in a quiet morning at the German Foreign Office with Baron von Neurath and without Adolf Hitler. Abruptly at the last minute the morning-coated English and German diplomats were summoned to the Realm-chancellery where they found The Leader lounging in a loose brown jacket behind his great, document-piled desk.

The flabby-fingered Hitler handshake was cordial. Sir John, Baron von Neurath and their diplomatic suites occupied chairs facing the Great Orator in a semicircle. Then from Adolf Hitler burst such a torrent of compelling gutturals and animal magnetism as only he can turn on.

Austria! If the English had expected to ask Hitler whether he would agree to keep hands off Austria, the Realmleader got the jump on them by demanding "examination of the present status of Austria under the present dominance of certain powers!"--Italy, France and Britain. He indicated that, contrary to the wishes of the Powers, Austrians must vote whether or not to join Germany.

Rearmament! If Sir John had hoped, as he was understood to hope, that Herr Hitler would answer whether or not his decree of Rearmament was irrevocable or subject to negotiation, the Realmleader dashed such questions to the ground with a tirade in which he spoke of Germany's future army of perhaps a million men, proclaimed that Naziism has already saved Europe from Bolshevism and shouted at his English guests that a great Nazi German Army is needed to protect the world against the Soviet Red Army.

This sort of thing went on for eight hours, two being luncheon, with Vegetarian Hitler giving the interpreters no chance to eat as he shook before the John Bulls what one diplomat called afterward "the expanse of Europe embroidered like a German tapestry."

Such words as the English managed to insert edgewise the German assimilated without pausing in his stride. At 7:15 p. m. Sir John and Capt. Eden withdrew with negotiation not yet begun. At their Embassy correspondents were given to understand that "the best that can be hoped for" is that Germany will demand as of right an Army as large as the largest (Russia's), an air force as large as the largest (France's) and a navy 30% as large as His Majesty's Government's. "This," prominent Nazis said, "will be sufficient until such time as Germany regains colonies taken from her at Versailles."

Last Roundup. Fresh surprises cooked by Adolf Hitler were expected to be served when and if Sir John asks this week whether Germany is prepared to return to the League of Nations, sign the Eastern Locarno Pact and adhere to an all-Europe pledge to resist "unprovoked air aggression" (TIME, Feb. 11). The British Foreign Secretary then returns to London, while the Lord Privy Seal speeds on to Moscow, Warsaw, and Prague.

To make things as difficult as possible for Captain Eden to sew up anything against Germany with Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinoff, an $80,000,000 private credit was abruptly extended by Germany to Russia this week three days before the Great Orator hurled his tirade against Bolshevism.

Next week Britain's Eden will be followed in Moscow by France's Laval. By the time he returns to Paris all the great powers will have tied their diplomacy into double crosswise bowknots. They hope and plan to cut them on April 11 at Italy's beauteous Stresa with II Duce in the chair for a last roundup on Adolf Hitler.

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