Reactions to Ribbentrop

Last week Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, who likes nothing about the English except their ceremony, sent word to the Berlin diplomatic corps to be on hand in their cutaways at the Chancellery next morning for a momentous announcement. The press also was told to come, in blue serge suits. In due course the invited showed up, marched through the great gilded wood portals that had just replaced the bronze ones (now being melted into munitions), and Herr Ribbentrop shot the works.

The works consisted of a speech and a White Paper calculated to show that Britain had long prepared an invasion of Scandinavia, in cahoots with Norway, and that Germany had been forced into invading first for self-protection. Chief exhibits to support this assertion were:

> Alleged battle orders, found on captured British officers, directing a battalion of the Sherwood Foresters to attack at harbors "512," "547" and "548" and take the Sola airport. The orders were dated April 7, two days before the German invasion.

> Correspondence found in British consulates in Norway indicating that the British planned a coastal invasion.

> Records of a Norwegian Cabinet meeting at which Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht warned that Norway must not get in the war "on the wrong side."

Next day the British Foreign Office went to great pains to explain that the whole Ribbentrop speech and White Paper were a tapestry of lies and forgeries. As far as disinterested observers were concerned, this was needless effort. The tardiness with which British forces had reached Norway, and the lack of organization shown in their first attacks, were eloquent evidence that Britain had been ready for no such campaign.

Sweden's Sphere. One obvious purpose of Herr Ribbentrop's speech was to serve notice on neutrals that any suspicious traffic with Great Britain will subject them to the threat of extinction. In passing, Power Politician Ribbentrop gave Sweden a nice pat on the head. "The Swedish Government," he said, "interpreted their declaration of neutrality very seriously indeed, and at no time did anything . . . which might not have been in accord with it."

These soothing words Sweden accepted with wry docility. Stockholm newspapers interpreted them as a polite way of saying that Sweden had entered "the German sphere of interest." Next day Stockholm police walked into the British Legation and seized a propaganda weekly called News From Great Britain which had been issued by Press Attache Peter Tennant. The Swedes continued to arm--King Gustaf led his countrymen in subscribing $59,250 to a $118,500,000 defense loan--and to promise to defend their neutrality. But as long as Germany held most of Norway and made no aggressive move, Sweden had no choice but to stay quiet within Germany's sphere.

Spoiled Premiere. Another purpose of the Ribbentrop revelations became plain when it was revealed that, like Gone With the Wind, his big production was to have had a double-barreled big-town premiere--one in Berlin, the other in Rome. But bad weather grounded the plane that was carrying the big show to Rome, so Ambassador Hans Georg von Mackensen had to call off his end of the opening.

Nevertheless, the Italian press accepted the German White Paper at face value, and Italy went on with her part of the show. France chose the wrong moment to try to interrupt it and was tossed out on her ear. To Ambassador Andre Franc,ois-Poncet's suggestion that France and Italy adjust their Mediterranean differences, Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano replied coldly that "the moment is not opportune." If France needed more.proof of where Italy stood, she got it with the appointment of Dino Alfieri, sidetracked last fall with other Germanophile Fascists, as new Italian Ambassador to Berlin.

Every day in the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations a new speaker stood up and let fly with a bellicose, anti-Ally talk. First Old Fascist Francesco Giunta pointed out that France had always been Italy's enemy, that Britain's friendship was "belied by history and the facts," that the war would spread until it became "a war of peoples against a world of possessors of lands." The Chamber roundly cheered. Next day (the 25th anniversary of Italy's joining the Allies in World War I) Under Secretary of the Interior Guido Buffarini-Guidi got up and said that it would be mighty hard for Italy to stay out of the war. Louder the Chamber cheered. The following day the Chamber's President and II Duce's able lieutenant, brush-bearded Count Dino Grandi, returned to the war-of-peoples theme. Thundered he:

"The Fascist Empire is not and knows that it cannot be on the margin of this conflict between peoples. The Italian nation has a precise knowledge of its responsibility and its duty." This time the cheering was loudest of all and this time it was directed at Il Duce.

If the war-cool Italian people were not well on their way to warming up to fight, they never would be.

Quaking Balkans. Back to their posts in Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia, Athens and Ankara last week went six British envoys who had conferred in London with Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax on how to increase British influence in the Balkans. They had a hard job ahead of them. The Danube was thick with tugs and barges, nearly all German and Italian.

In Rumania, King Carol, taking note of what happened to Norway, yielded to German threats and released all political prisoners. He thereby restored freedom to the Nazi Iron Guard as well as to a sprinkling of Communists but warned both parties against anti-Government political action.

The ubiquitous Dr. Karl Clodius, his job in Rumania done, moved upriver to Budapest. No sooner had he paid a few calls than Hungary came out with a proposal for a patrol by all Danubian States, including Germany, of that part of the Danube which forms the boundary between Yugoslavia and Rumania. Yugoslavia turned it down flat, but frightened Rumania stalled. Rumors spread through the Balkans that Hungary had agreed to allow Germany passage to Rumania, if Germany felt called upon to offer that country her "protection." In return Hungary would get Transylvania. If Germany reached Rumania's part of the Danube, Yugoslavia would be squeezed in a Rome-Berlin vise.

Yugoslavia had much to fear. Italy eyed the Dalmatian Coast, and a formidable fifth column was operating inside the country. On the heels of the arrest of onetime Premier Milan Stoyadinovich (TIME, April 29), police last week clapped into jail a onetime police chief of Belgrade, Milan Achimovich. Slovene Nationalists issued a manifesto attacking Germany and Italy, which the Italian press promptly blamed on Allied intrigue. A Yugoslav trade commission reached Moscow and presumably talked also about diplomatic recognition of and by the big Slav brother. But Italy and Germany were on Yugoslavia's doorstep and Russia was far away.

Weaker Axis? It was generally conceded that Great Britain had arranged the Yugoslav rapprochement with Russia. Russia's position gave the Allies one patch of comfort in the mottled quilt of European power politics last week. German occupation of Denmark and Norway, making the Baltic once more a German lake, was hardly calculated to increase the security of Leningrad, for which Russia has just fought one costly war. Since Germany went into Norway, shipment of Russian materials to Germany has slowed down, through inefficiency, misroutings, losses and other deeply regretted causes. Russia has been very courteous in its dealings with both Finland and Sweden, and last week Ambassador Ivan Maisky had a long talk with British Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Richard Austen Butler about the possibility of a trade agreement with Great Britain. This week the possibility of such an agreement seemed likelier as Ambassador Maisky again visited the Foreign Office, this time conferred with Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax.

In Moscow's conception of Realpolitik, if Italy upsets the balance of power by pitching in with Germany, it would be consistent for Russia to lean the other way, to keep Europe fighting as long as possible without getting into a big war herself--unless Russia thought the Allied case was hopeless, and went in with Germany and Italy to snatch her share of the spoils.

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