Low-down on Bonnet

Most official German publications have tried to pin war guilt largely on Great Britain. Last week an official statement was issued in Berlin which helped along this favorite Nazi thesis but which also recounted the tricky diplomacy of Georges Bonnet, French Foreign Minister for the 18 crucial months before war's outbreak.

In a dozen French governments 50-year-old Georges Bonnet has held such Cabinet posts as Minister of Pensions, Commerce, Public Works, Posts & Telegraph, Finance. He was also once sent as French Ambassador to Washington, where he was scheduled to talk about a compromise on the defaulted French war debt to the U. S. Nothing ever came of that, and social Washington remembered him best for his pretty, English-speaking wife Odette, whom wags called "Oh, debt!" M. Bonnet is tall, parrot-nosed, looks like Cinemactor Ben Turpin.

M. Bonnet's role in the negotiations that led to the historic Munich Pact pleased the British Government, the French industrialists, who are among his chief supporters, and the Nazis, but displeased anti-appeasers everywhere. He talked big about France keeping her alliances, but acted differently. He held up a crucial message from President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia to Premier Daladier. In forwarding to the British Cabinet a French Army resume he was said to have censored it so that the weaknesses and not the strength of the French Army were emphasized.

The Bonnet diplomatic chef-d'oeuvre was a French-German treaty of "friendship" signed by him and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Paris in late 1938. They drank a toast together during the festivities. The treaty "froze" the French-German border, provided for consultation between the two powers in case of dispute.

The Bonnet-Ribbentrop conversations were not made public at the time, but last week the Reich not only accused Foreign Minister Bonnet of double-crossing Germany but intimated that he had been quite willing to mislead his own Parliament.

The German accusations:

> Herr Ribbentrop made it plain to M. Bonnet before signing the pact that Eastern Europe was henceforth to be regarded as German Lebensraum and that French alliances with Poland and Czecho-Slovakia were "atavisms." M. Bonnet did not contradict Herr Ribbentrop, signed up.

> Seven weeks later, before M. Bonnet made a speech in the Chamber of Deputies reaffirming the French-Polish alliance, he first called in German Ambassador Count Johannes von Welczeck to explain. The Ambassador reported to Berlin:

"M. Bonnet read aloud several passages from his speech, declaring some were meant for internal consumption and at the same time mentioning France's absolute adherence to her present policy on Eastern Europe."

> Nevertheless Herr Ribbentrop directed the Count to protest, whereupon the Ambassador reported: "M. Bonnet said that in foreign political debates before the Chamber things were often said that obviously were meant only for internal consumption and did not have any further importance." M. Bonnet contended, wired the Ambassador to his chief, that when he "braved the opposition" to put across "justified German demands," he could scarcely be expected to "abdicate all along the line before the Chamber." "If I did so," the Foreign Minister was quoted as saying, "then the warmongers would gain the upper hand."

> Two weeks later in Berlin, French Ambassador Robert Coulondre, apparently on orders of M. Bonnet, assured Herr Ribbentrop that "France will not undertake any political steps in Eastern Europe that would disturb Germany."

But later, the French-German pact became moribund and M. Bonnet was "no longer master in his own house." The German summary:

"France gave up this policy of understanding with Germany in the spring of 1939 by intervening in Eastern European questions that did not conflict in any way with her interests but deprived the French-German understanding of its basis and assisted England in loosing the dogs of war."

Long before that Premier Daladier had become his own Foreign Minister in all but name. Shortly after the war broke out Georges Bonnet was shelved to the unimportant Ministry of Justice.

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