"Bleeding Frontiers"

"Bleeding Frontiers" (See front cover)

"Urn, Stresa," remarked Benito Mussolini one day last week, pausing an instant as he dictated Fascist orders of the day. "Get Stresa ready for a conference on April 11. Veneer the railway station with marble. Repave the principal streets. Clean up everything--the usual precautions. And don't spend more than 2,000,000 lire ($165,000) !"

Next day slumbering Stresa on the blossom-dotted rim of Lago Maggiore sprang to life. Excited Fascist workmen ripped up the main street from end to end. They had all but demolished the stuffy little station when an architect front Rome arrived, his mind full of modernism and marble. Snappily accoutred Fascist militiamen and plainclothes agents in all conceivable disguises arrived to put Stresa and its basking tourists under careful scrutiny. "Now that Hitler has defied the world, and Nazi agents are kidnapping and even murdering small fry abroad," said a Fascist corporal of militia grimly, "who knows what outrage can be expected next? Il Duce is determined that none shall occur at Stresa."

Climax at Stresa? In London last February today's great effort for European peace was launched by His Majesty's Government and the new-dealing Premier of France, strapping, kinetic Pierre Etienne Flandin. To Adolf Hitler they sent an offer. If Der Fuehrer would back up his loud professions of peace by four acts they offered him in exchange a major concession.

The four acts asked of Germany: 1) return to the League of Nations; 2) renunciation of Nazi ambitions to incorporate Austria in the Fatherland. Germany joining Britain, France and Italy in guaranteeing the independence of Austria; 3) adherence by Germany to the proposed Eastern Locarno Pact under which all nations east of the Rhine* would mutually respect and guarantee each other's present frontiers; 4) adherence by Germany to a British-French-Italian-Belgian pact to resist "unprovoked air aggression" by whatsoever nation committed. The concession: In return for the foregoing German peace acts the Great Powers offered to release Germany from her Versailles pledge of disarmament and to permit German rearmament on a basis of equality up to limits which the Fatherland would abide by.

Thus the peace bluff of Adolf Hitler was officially called. His retort, based on canny intuition that the Great Powers would not fight, was to seize even more than they had offered to barter. Instead of limited German rearmament, Der Reichsfuehrer proclaimed unlimited rearmament, decreed compulsory recruiting for an army of over half a million Germans and again professed peace (TIME, March 25).

This fresh bluff His Majesty's Government called by sending to Berlin last fortnight two high-powered traveling peace-men, Sir John Simon, His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Captain Anthony Eden, the Lord Privy Seal. Swank London friends had understood from "Antony," who dropped in quietly on Herr Hitler last year at Berlin, that Der Reichsfuehrer is "a better eggplant than some people think." However, when the two Britons alighted in Berlin the "eggplant" erupted in a defiant monolog* (TIME, April 1). Last week golf-addicted Sir John Simon canceled a round he had agreed to play with Germans on the famed links at Wannsee and flew back to London where the eggplant comedy was continued.

The German Embassy in London amazingly proceeded to deny Sir John Simon's own version of what Adolf Hitler had said in Berlin as sketched by the British Foreign Office official spokesman. "It is not true," bristled the Embassy, "that Der Fuehrer intimated to Sir John Simon that the present strength of the German air force is equal, if not superior to the British."

When he read this Sir John purpled, burned up the wires to Berlin. There British Ambassador Sir Eric Phipps strongly protested to German Foreign Minister Baron von Neurath who burned up the wires to London. That afternoon Embassy Counselor Prince Otto von Bismarck, grandson of the late, great "Iron Chancellor," formally apologized to the British Foreign Office. That night His Majesty's Government-subsidized B. B. C. broadcast: "There is good reason to believe that the German air force has now attained equality with our own."

To millions of His Majesty's subjects this fact, confirmed officially by a blazing Hitler indiscretion and reconfirmed by Prince Bismarck's apology, was absolutely paramount last week. Having been burned by the Kaiser's air raids, England was looking far afield for aid in quenching Hitler--looking even to Moscow--then to Stresa.

Even before Sir John Simon left Berlin for London the other British traveling peaceman, Captain Eden, "was off to Moscow. Next he will visit Warsaw and Prague. Finally at Stresa on April 11 II Duce will take the chair and statesmen of the Great Powers, excluding Germany, will decide climactically what to do about the Nazi Reich. Last week with inimitable Russian humor a Bolshevik band at Moscow, assigned to play in Captain Eden's honor, blared not only "God Save the King" and "The Internationale" but also "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

Tea with Stalin. When Little Anthony Eden was a healthily snobbish Eton schoolboy in tails, starched collar and high hat every day of the week, bombs were things Russians threw at their Tsar; Nicholas II was first cousin to George V; and a brilliant career of bomb-throwing, safe-blowing and assassination of Imperial Russians was to lead Joseph Stalin to the Great Kremlin Palace where, last week, he offered tall glasses of smoking Russian tea to Lord Privy Seal Anthony Eden. Affably, grown-up "Antony" accepted and puffed a long Bolshevik cigaret.

Even to Russians the swarthy Kremlin Dictator does not convey his views or orders in a monolog. Like Mussolini, Stalin has the habit, nerve-racking to his henchmen, of asking them first what they think. They may try to guess what he wants them to think, but inevitably Stalin succeeds in digging out much mental meat. He then sums up, gives his decision, and with sighs of relief the henchmen agree. This method, adopted by Mussolini from Machiavelli's II Principe, Stalin evolved from his innate Oriental flair for despotism. Charming when he chooses, Joseph Stalin, big-boned and big-mustached, last week asked small-boned, small-mustached Anthony Eden what he thought of Adolf Hitler. Thenceforth they got on famously. Snatches of their conversation as later divulged:

Stalin: What do you think is the danger of war now as compared with 1914?

Eden: Definitely less.

Stalin: In my opinion the danger is greater. In 1914 there was one nation whose ambition to expand served to create war. In 1935 there are two, one in the West, the other in the East.

Eden: The longstanding suspicion here that England is in some way back of every threat to the Soviet Union is false.

Stalin: Germany is in a dangerous state of mind. Efforts to isolate such a nation in the centre of Europe would be vain. It is absolutely necessary to take measures of precaution to make European peace secure.

Eden: I agree. My country stands for peace, the whole peace and nothing but peace.

Interpreter was a Polish Jew who once worked in England as a traveling salesman, today His Excellency Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff, roly-poly Foreign Minister of Soviet Russia. Smarter than "Maxie" they do not come. Knowing perfectly well that every member of the British ruling classes hates him and Stalin, Comrade Litvinoff stage-managed Captain Eden's visit in a way to win reluctant sympathy for Bolshevikland and turn the tables against Nazidom.

"Never since the World War have there been such misgivings as now," declared "Maxie" at a brilliant Moscow ball for "Antony," then cleverly switched from alarmism to reassurance. "A consoling feature of the present situation ... is ... that it is impossible now to point to groups of powers awaiting a propitious moment to attack. . . . The danger spots are at least located and clearly defined. ... I raise my glass to the health of His Majesty the King of England, and to the prosperity and happiness of the British people, and to your very good health, Sir."

To this Bolshevik toast Mr. Eden, who, after all. is not Britain's Foreign Secretary, cautiously replied: "My visit is purely exploratory and not to negotiate. . . . After my return from Moscow, Warsaw and Prague there will be further consultations between the Foreign Secretaries of the United Kingdom, France and Italy at Stresa. ... I raise my glass to the happiness and prosperity of the peoples of this great country, to the President of the All-Union Central Executive Committee [Comrade Kalinin, puppet 'Soviet President'] and, Monsieur Litvinoff, to your very good health."

Though Correspondent Walter Duranty took time out to observe that Captain Eden's audience with Dictator Stalin may just possibly turn out to be as barren of result as that accorded U. S. Ambassador William Christian Bullitt (TIME, Jan. 8, 1934), optimism flashed from Britain's Moscow Embassy to London where it was decorously manifest at the British Foreign Office. There Joseph Stalin was allowed to appear, for once, not as the Bolshevik Ogre but as a strong ally in holding the Nazi Ogre in check.

A page of history turned as the London Times, with a major readjustment of its editorial mind, pontifically observed, "A 1935 war seems a greater danger than a World Revolution. One nation and one man can declare war. Neither can declare World Revolution."

Eden Up & Simon Out? An extremely pretty, peach-skinned "diplomacy widow" is swank Mrs. Eden who does not go with "Antony" to outlandish places. Music to her sharp ears this week was an outburst of rumor in the House of Commons that Sir John Simon, long considered a dud as Foreign Minister, will be replaced after the Royal Jubilee by Captain Eden.

Stanley Baldwin, Leader of the Conservative Party and as such the Empire's dominant statesman, was said to feel that Sir John's weak handling of Der Fuehrer's rupture of the Treaty of Versailles and his insistence in waiting upon the treaty-breaker at Berlin could only be justified to British public opinion by some sort of visible success, quite invisible last week. Sir John, it seemed, could so easily slip back into his legal practice, the most lucrative in the Empire. After all, what has been his most conspicuous public service? He was chairman of the commission on India which took almost three years to produce the Simon Report, obsolete before it appeared (TIME, June 30, 1930).

In contrast to unpopular great Lawyer Simon, Mr. Eden, since he got his diplomatic start as Parliamentary private secretary to Nobel Peaceman Sir Austen Chamberlain, K. G., has waxed steadily in the esteem of ruling Britons, become a special favorite of Leader Baldwin. For years at Geneva he has done, and done well, peace chores Sir John Simon, who hates travel, did not care to cross the Channel to attend to.

This week, with Peaceman Eden still on the road and waxing more popular daily as British public opinion hardened against Germany, Peaceman Simon suddenly exerted all his strength in the Fatherland's behalf on an issue which Nazis had touched off in violent explosion--the issue of Memel.

"Supreme Example." Scrappiest of Baltic peoples are the Lithuanians. During the Middle Ages the Teuton outpost of Memel (see map) was so often sacked by Lithuanians that today they boast "We cannot count the number of times we have taken Memel!"

The last time was in 1923, when they took it from under the noses of the Allies, its temporary administrators by the Treaty of Versailles. The Lithuanians, scrapping for their independence amid the debris of Tsardom, had founded the Republic of Lithuania in 1918, with its capital at Vilna. Along came the Poles, also scrapping for their independence, and took Vilna. Not downhearted by the mere loss of their capital, Lithuanians scrappily founded another capital at Kovno, then took Memel as a likely seaport. Last week President Antanas Smetona of Lithuania and every other Lithuanian was satisfied that a pact of Nazi agents had been caught red-handed fomenting separatism in Memel. For this 83 Nazis were sentenced by military court at Kovno to a total of 1,400 years in jail. There were also, however, four other Nazis. These were convicted of murdering yet another Nazi who had peached on them to the Lithuanians. Last week the convicted brownshirt murderers had not been executed, and President Smetona was expected to commute the death sentences, but at Berlin news of the sentence arrived just in time for Realmleader Hitler to send Sir John Simon and Captain Eden away with a harrowing denunciation of the Lithuanians ringing in their ears.

"Memel is a supreme example of the many festering wounds in our bleeding frontiers!" was the keynote of German Propaganda Ministry releases, and presumably Adolf Hitler also made Memel bleed verbally. In 1924 the Great Powers recognized the conquest of Memel by '"awarding" it to Lithuania which engaged to respect the minority rights of 40,000 Germans in the strip of Memel territory. On the plea that these rights were being somehow or other violated last week, Realmleader Hitler demanded with passionate insistence that England intervene.

Back in London, with the Realmleader's appeal ringing in his old ears, Sir John Simon sounded France and Italy by telephone. It might be a good idea, the three Great Powers presently agreed, to give Lithuania a light rap over the knuckles. Not because she was wrong in trying and convicting Nazi murderers, but because Lithuanian administration of Memel has been heavy handed upon its Germans generally. When President Smetona presently received a joint Anglo-Franco-Italian admonition to be kinder to the Memel "German minority," spunky Lithuanians snorted, as Europe's lesser peoples often do, that "All the Great Powers are nothing but big bullies!"

"One Thing at a Time." Meanwhile Poles last week seethed in their villages against Nazidom, the principal Polish demonstrations being near the frontier at Kattowitz. Thousands strong, Poles rampaged through the town, smashing German shopkeepers' windows, storming the local German newspaper office and chanting: "Poles spit on Germans! Poles spit on Germans!"

In Warsaw eccentric Marshal Josef Pilsudski took calm note of the riots as fresh evidence of the unpopularity in Poland of the pro-German policy of Foreign Minister Josef Beck. It was Beck who sold to Dictator Pilsudski the ten-year Polish-German non-aggression pact of Dictator Hitler (TIME, Feb. 3, 1934). Last week Pilsudski was busy jamming through Poland's long-impotent Parliament constitutional changes making the dictatorship still more absolute. "One thing at a time!" is the crusty old Marshal's motto. For Poles the choice of the future lies between reverting to their old-time French alliance or sticking with Germany. "Our crushing dilemma," said a highly placed Pole last week, "is that if the Nazis fly to arms against the Bolsheviks or vice versa, in either case the aggressor will attack Poland first. Who are our real friends?"

As Captain Eden's train drew in, the Polish Foreign Office was defining Marshal Pilsudski's policy as one of "being able to take care of ourselves." The gruff old Dictator who refuses to be President and insists on being War Minister believes, really, in nothing but the sword. To him, the spokesman implied, it will be difficult for a suave young Etonian on the make to sell the Stalin-endorsed, Hitler-rebuffed Eastern Locarno Pact.

*Germany, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. *After news of how Hitler out-talked Simon & Eden began to excite world mirth, an irate official of the Wilhelmstrasse declared, "There was no 'Hitler monolog.' The conversations lasted for eight hours and never at any time did the Leader speak uninterruptedly for more than 20 minutes!"

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