Rhetorical Retreat

Black-uniformed black-helmeted Schutzstaffel (Special Guards) ringed Berlin's Kroll Opera House last week while a battalion of grey Reichswehr troops stood as a guard of honor before the door. In public squares all over Berlin, all over Germany, other crowds stood gaping at the trumpet horns of loudspeakers. Inside the Opera House the brown-shirted Reichstag had been called to order by paunchy Hermann Wilhelm Goering. It had risen, once to honor the memory of Bavarian Minister of Education Hans Schem, killed in an airplane accident, once to do the same for the late Marshal Pilsudski of Poland. It had welcomed the newly elected delegates from the Saar making their first appearance in the Reichstag since the War, and had thundered applause when Minister of the Interior Frick announced the completion of Germany's new conscription law (see col. 1.). Then cried Premier Goering: "Der Fuehrer has the floor!" Adolf Hitler almost jumped from his chair to the rostrum where he unfolded his speech amid a din of clapping and cheers. For exactly two hours and 15 minutes thereafter he talked.

As has happened many times before, German foreign policy last week had Herr Hitler in an uncomfortable position. Constant sabre-rattling had driven France and Italy together, brought about the Franco-Russian accord and seemed likely to cost Germany all her recent gains with Poland. Private reports from Premier Goering's secret conversations with France's Laval in Poland showed that now if ever was the time to curry favor by beating a strategic retreat. That it should seem no retreat at all to Nazi ears, Realmleader Hitler shrewdly decided to beat it in as loud a voice as possible. When he finally stepped from the rostrum last week, Der Fuehrer was so hoarse he could scarcely speak.

Keynote of the whole speech was in one sentence: "For the next ten or 20 years Germany will be occupied with her domestic program. Germany needs peace and wants peace."

Going further, Adolf Hitler announced at the top of his lungs 13 points of German foreign policy. They were:

1) Rejected is the League of Nations decision of March 17 that Germany alone has violated the Versailles Treaty. Germany will never return to the League until full equality of rights has been established.

2) Germany has only repudiated the arms provisions of the treaty. She promises to respect all the rest, including territorial provisions, and will seek revision only by peaceful means.

3) Germany will observe all treaties now in force, even those signed by previous Socialist German governments. Particularly, she will observe the Locarno Pact (as long as the other signatories do) and the prohibitions against fortifying the Rhineland.

4) Germany will participate in collective co-operation to secure peace, providing only that the possibility of treaty revision is allowed.

5) Germany believes that the reconstruction of Europe can never be brought about by conditions dictated by one side alone.

6) Germany will sign non-aggression treaties with all her neighbors except Lithuania (from whom she is now trying to wrest the city of Memel) because Germany cannot enter into political treaties with a State which disregards the most primitive laws of human society.

7) Germany will sign an international air pact to supplement the Locarno Treaty.

8) Having just announced the extent of the new German army, Germany will not deviate from her present plan. BUT she will accept any arms limitation scheme that other states accept at the same time. To calm British fears, Germany will limit her fleet to 35% of Britain's, which would make it about 85% of France's.

9) Germany suggests the immediate outlawing of offensive weapons aimed at non-combatants such as gas and incendiary and explosive bombs, and an eventual ban on all bombing.

10) Germany is ready to eliminate heavy artillery and tanks.

11) Germany will agree to any limitation of the tonnage and gun calibre of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, is willing to abolish submarines.

12) Germany believes there can be no easing of international tension until all foreign countries prevent the "poisoning" of public opinion in newspapers, cinemas, theatres.

13) Germany will join any international agreement to prevent interference in other states (such as Austria) from the outside, but she insists that the term "interference" be exactly and internationally defined.

Most obvious in all this was the effort to conciliate Britain by promising not to build beyond 35% of the British fleet. After the speech last week Capt. Erwin Wassner, German naval attache in London, left hastily for Berlin to make final arrangements for a German-British naval conference in London. British delegates already chosen include the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ernie Chatfield, and the Foreign Office's naval expert, Robert Leslie Craigie. Germany was reported to have picked Der Fuhrer's personal arms adviser Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rear Admiral Schuster and a Commander Kiderlen.

Europe's old political hands, gathered in Geneva for the important conference on the Italy-Abyssinia crisis (see p. 18), took the Realmleader's entire speech with notable lack of excitement.

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