Britain-on-the-Danube

Smack! When irresistible force meets immovable body there can be only one result, a cosmic explosion. Last week as just such an explosion seemed about to take place in European affairs--as German demands rushed headlong against Czechoslovak determination--stolid Britain suddenly slipped into the swiftly narrowing gap a dignified cushion: Viscount Runciman.

The crash was scheduled to occur when the terms were published of a Minority Statute representing the maximum concessions which Czechoslovakia was willing to make to her Sudeten Germans. The terms did not greatly matter* but instantly the Sudetens and their brothers in Germany who have long practiced baiting Czechoslovakia (see p.30) raised an already rehearsed shout: "Completely unsatisfactory!"

The next step should have been for Adolf Hitler to begin throwing his weight about. Instead he kept quiet. He, like the rest of Europe, appeared to be dazzled by the possibility that Lord Runciman might solve the Czechoslovak Question without bloodshed or heroics.

In announcing that Lord Runciman will go to Prague this week--"not to arbitrate but to advise and mediate"--Britain's Prime Minister, grizzled Neville Chamberlain, set up peace machinery as original as the Non-intervention Committee France and Britain set up two years ago to keep the Spanish Civil War from becoming a general conflict. In entangling Britain in a dangerous European quarrel, the Prime Minister tried to preserve British isolation by explaining in the House of Commons that Lord Runciman will go to Prague with no official status, merely as a bifurcated animal representing no one but himself, a one-man European power.

The House of Lords was informed by Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax that, after Lord Runciman was told what is expected of him, he exclaimed: "I quite understand. You are setting me adrift in a small boat in mid-Atlantic!"

"I replied," continued bland Lord Halifax, " 'That is exactly the position.' "

Prague Tricked? Adrift in the small boat with Lord Runciman will be a delegation of top-rank British Foreign Office experts and officials serving as advisers to this one-man power. Much as other states make unofficial war, Britain had launched an unofficial drive for peace.

In Paris, alarmed journals of the Left, which had hoped that the Anglo-French solidarity, just bulwarked by the visit of King George & Queen Elizabeth, gave Czechoslovakia a blank check to do as she liked about German demands, clamored that by thrusting in the cushion last week, Perfidious Albion had tricked Prague. There was some truth in this. Britain had seized an opportunity to check any Czech rashness which might precipitate a general European war.

Mr. Chamberlain told the House of Commons that Prague had "invited" Britain to send a mediator. Next day Prague officials said they had sent no invitation, added that of course they would "welcome" the Viscount. Leading French Newspundit Pertinax (Andre Geraud) bitterly deplored the creation of a situation in which both Prague and Paris will have to follow the lead of London. For most commentators agreed that British public opinion will never support the use of arms to aid Czechoslovakia if the recommendations of Lord Runciman are against it.

The German and Sudeten press gleefully asserted that by sending Lord Runciman Britain had "recognized" the Sudeten Germans. In Berlin, a prominent Nazi editor, with typical Aryan ineptitude, told to Associated Press (stipulating that he be not named), "No really sovereign state would accept an adviser such as Viscount Runciman. Can you imagine Switzerland, for instance, standing for such an adviser!"

Mediator. No direct descendant of any of the Barons at Runnymede is Lord Runciman. His father was a cabin boy who made himself one of Britain's shipping tycoons. As a businessman, keen Son Runciman added to the vast family fortune and prestige. Before the War, he was an outspoken champion of peace between Britain and Germany, delivered a public rebuke to Lord Roberts for having in a preparedness speech called war between them "inevitable."

During and after the World War, Mr. Walter Runciman, as he was then, served under various Prime Ministers in such capacities as President of the Board of Trade, combined the Liberal fervor of a Gladstone with tireless practical energy, plus a modern grasp of economics. In 1930, when enormous shipping interests headed by the late Lord Kylsant and including the Royal Mail, faced scandal and collapse, Mr. Runciman stepped in to help unsnarl British shipping chaos by rapid, efficient reorganization.

Last year the death of his father kicked Son Runciman upstairs into the peerage, curtailed his chances of becoming Prime Minister. Among Lord Runciman's varied interests are teaching Sunday School and yachting--he has sailed over 500.000 miles on salt water, and Sunbeam, one of his yachts, has twice taken him around the world. Last week, while headlines screamed his name in every land. Lord Runciman characteristically went down to yacht for a few days at Cowes, remote even from His Majesty's Government. This week he speeds to Prague to become Mediator No. 1.

In Paris political wisecrackers, recalling that Stanley Baldwin four years ago asserted that Britain's air frontier is the Rhine, chuckled that Chamberlain had moved the British frontier from the Rhine to the Danube.

* Because the most important part, the "administrative statute," describing how and by whom the law was to be enforced, was not published. The statute as published merely gave general promises of: 1) recognition and protection of nationality according to the subjects' mother tongue; 2) the principle of proportioning the allotment of State jobs, legislative representation and the expenditure of State funds to each nationality according to its numbers; 3) self-administration of the educational system by the nationalities.

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