Watch on the Vistula

Step by step, like a long-harried elephant finally facing an enemy, Britain last week turned in her tracks. It was an impressive and world-shaking spectacle. Hard as it is for Britain to change, in one short week she turned her back on a longestablished policy of no military commitments in Europe east of the Rhine--turned, whole-elephant, and guaranteed that the British Fleet, along with the French Army (and the combined Air Forces of the two nations) would fight to protect the States of Eastern Europe from further Nazi aggression.

For Britain the step marked the end of a six years' effort, to get along with Adolf Hitler. Time after time Fuehrer Hitler has torn up treaties, ignored agreements, threatened neighboring States with invasion. As many times Britain has looked the other way. When, three weeks ago, the Fuehrer moved into a Czechoslovakia which he had already dismembered last autumn, even the most credulous of British statesmen were shocked. They recognized then that Herr Hitler had embarked on a policy of conquest aimed at nothing less than domination of Europe, if not the world. Last week they reacted.

Flush from the Czech seizure, the Fuehrer began to threaten Poland. The German Army was already partly mobilized. Troops were moved toward the Polish Corridor and toward Danzig, the Free City on the Baltic, where Poland has large interests and investments. East Prussia had become an armed camp. Finally the Nazi Government submitted its demands: German absorption of Danzig, a German auto road across the Polish Corridor, a Polish signature on the German-Italian-Japanese anti-Comintern Pact.

Poland's hour of unequal struggle with the Nazi giant seemed at hand. Poland with a bigger population (34,000,000), bigger area (150,000 sq. mi.), bigger standing Army (285,000) than Czecho-Slovakia was too big a nation to let fall into Germany's hands. So fortnight ago the British Government hastily offered a watery anti-aggression pact, but the hard-boiled Polish Government insisted on strict military guarantees with no ifs, ands or buts.

Last week Poland got what Czechoslovakia had pleaded for in vain. Before a hushed, crowded House of Commons 70-year-old Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, former arch-exponent of appeasing the dictators, announced that Britain and France were negotiating with Eastern European nations (understood to include Poland, Soviet Russia, Rumania, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece) a tight system of military agreements to resist further Nazi aggression. In the meantime, moreover, the British Government was prepared to consider the Vistula, the river that flows through the Polish Corridor, just as much its frontier as it has long considered the Rhine. He added:

"In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend all the support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect."

Doubts. Britain has made pledges before. Straightforward as this seemed, even Britons had doubts of its force and full intent. In a Foreign Office press conference next day one correspondent asked an ironic question: "Will the Government send Lord Runciman soon to Poland?" The London Times which often reflects the views of the British Government, found a multitude of reservations in the Chamberlain pledge: "The new obligation which this country has assumed does not bind Britain to defend every inch of the present frontiers of Poland. The key word in the declaration is not integrity but independence. The independence of every negotiating State is what matters."

The Italian press hastily pointed out that a British pledge was not an unmixed blessing. The German press warned Polish Foreign Minister Josef Beck not to trust British guarantees.

With the whole world thus searching for loopholes in the British pledge, Septuagenarian Chamberlain this week rose again to speak in the House. In the diplomatic gallery U. S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, Soviet Ambassador Ivan M. Maisky, French Ambassador Andre Corbin listened. On the floor the group of M. P.'s who had long scoffed at the Prime Minister's efforts to get along with Herr Hitler hung on his words.

Mr. Chamberlain began mildly repeating his protest of last autumn that he was a "man of peace to the depth of my soul." He repeated his oft-expressed views that any attempt to dominate the world must still be resisted. Then he recalled Herr Hitler's pledge (to him and to the world) that Nazi Germany had no further territorial ambitions in Europe. Said the Prime Minister bluntly: "Those assurances have now been thrown to the winds absolutely." Said he in words that will either alter the course of European history or will for years be thrown back contemptuously into Britain's face:

"That has completely destroyed confidence and has forced the British Government to make this great departure. . . . These recent happenings have, rightly or wrongly, made every State which lies adjacent to Germany unhappy, anxious and uncertain about Germany's future intention. If that is all a misunderstanding, if the German Government have never had any such thought, so much the better. . . .

"What we are concerned with is to preserve our independence. When I say our independence, I do not mean this country only. I mean the independence of all States which may be threatened by aggression in pursuit of such a policy as I have described. We therefore welcome the cooperation of any country, whatever may be its internal system of government, not in aggression, but in resistance to aggression. . . . We cannot live forever in an atmosphere of surprise and alarm from which Europe has suffered in recent months. The common business of life cannot be carried on in a state of uncertainty."

His words opened the way for Poland, Rumania, Turkey, the Soviet Union, Greece, Yugoslavia--all to join Britain and France in a pledge to aid one another in case of attack. The British Government had flatly dropped all pretenses of continental neutrality. It was an event that went a long way toward restoring the balance of power that had lately swung heavily in favor of the dictators. If Chamberlain's words meant anything, they meant that from now on Fuehrer Hitler will have few if any more bloodless conquests.

The world may now find the answers to two questions long debated: 1) Can Fuehrer Hitler and his Nazis remain in power long without their foreign "diversion"? 2) When the Fuehrer threatens invasion is he bluffing or prepared to wage war? Another question was virtually settled in the affirmative: If war does come, Germany will again have to fight both on eastern and western fronts.

Major Vernon Bartlett, M. P., offered a "peace formula" to the House of Commons : "We shall not be able to enjoy ourselves until Franco's widow tells Stalin on his deathbed that Hitler has been assassinated at Mussolini's funeral."'

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