"Your Frontier is Ours!"

Not since Stanley Baldwin said that Great Britain's frontier is no longer the white cliffs of Dover but the wimpling Rhine (TIME, Aug. 13, 1934) have Berlin statesmen been so vexed at London as they were last week. Reason: His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for War, the Rt. Hon. Alfred Duff-Cooper, had hied himself to Paris and there made a speech in which he told Frenchmen:

"Your frontier is our frontier! . . . One of the realities of which my British compatriots sometimes lose sight is that friendship between Britain and France is not a question of sentiment or even of choice. There still are today many Englishmen who are so blind in their prejudices that they sincerely believe Britain entered the War from sheer kindness of heart, solely in order to aid her friends, the French. We entered the War because our vital interests were at stake and because our lives were endangered. We must stand together in a defense of our common civilization against barbarism and tyranny!"

Mr. Duff-Cooper went on to arraign, without actually mentioning names, almost everything for which Germany, the Nazis and Adolf Hitler stand as "detestable ideals." Cried he: "I affirm that not only our frontiers but also our ideals are in mortal danger. It is therefore on the two great democracies of the western world-- Britain and France--that there now rests the terrible responsibility of saving not only our persons but the civilization we have created."

The British War Secretary's declaration three weeks ago that "the European situation is now far worse than in 1914" (TIME, June 22) was fully concurred in last week by famed Winston Churchill who added: "And I may say that Britain's position now is not nearly so good as it was in 1914."

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