To Paris

On the eve of Waterloo, British officers danced till dawn. Last week, as another no less significant zero hour approached, Germans did equally strange things. Adolf Hitler, as well as Field Marshal Hermann Wilhelm Goring, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Goring's half-Aryan Air Chief of Staff, Colonel General Erhard Milch, and numerous high Army officers all went to the theatre. Ordinary Germans flocked to the just opened Kurfurstendamm street cafes where young couples enjoyed the privacy of darkness, and oldsters listened to the newest song hit, Woodpecker's Serenade. Foreign correspondents switched off their teletypes and went home to bed. When the curfew hour struck at 1, Berlin was black and still.

Nach Paris. At 5 a.m. next morning a drowsy-voiced night operator summoned the press to a 6 o'clock conference. Not until 8:25 did Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop come in, pale and red-eyed from a sleepless night. His voice husky from strain, he rasped, "England and France at last dropped the mask. The attack on the Ruhr Valley was definitely planned." Then followed the usual tirade of accusation and denouncement. Belgium and The Netherlands had "plotted" against the Reich, had "fostered a German revolution," etc., etc. Long before he had finished, journalists knew that Germany's war machine had again struck at small neutrals, and one after another they edged towards the door.

While the press was dozing in the Foreign Office, the huge doors of the Chancellery swung open and a black car rolled out. In it was Supreme Commander Adolf Hitler on his way to lead what he was determined should be the most stupendous and fateful military campaign in history. "Nach Paris," responded the policeman on guard jokingly in reply to the query of a curious passerby, not knowing that the same thought was in the mind of the small figure in the big car.

Germany at large slept on, learning only at 8 o'clock that Der Tag had come, when Dr. Goebbels in suave radio tones announced that Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg had been taken "under protection" by the Reich. German laborers plodding to work in wooden-soled shoes, with their black bread and margarine wrapped in a newspaper, scarcely paused to listen at the public loudspeakers. The events of the past six years had endowed them with a stoic indifference which no new violence could shatter. Men over 50 had been drafted and even disabled veterans were called into service for behind-the-line duty. Few were left outside the war effort.

Dancing Verboten. Bordered in black to emphasize its importance, extra editions of the morning papers carried Warlord Hitler's proclamation to his troops.

Inspired as never before, the press screamed in flaming red headlines: "The disorder ... of more than three centuries will be revised. . . . An outworn era is crumbling to dust beneath the marching feet of the German Army!" Pregnant with crusading zeal, Nazi Ideologist Alfred Rosenberg proclaimed: "Germany has become the protector of the endangered and oppressed continent. It is fighting against an unholy division of the old and venerable European continent into dozens of pigmy States. National Socialist Germany, the heart of Central Europe, enters upon its historic rights."

More immediately important to the underfed German man in the street was the simultaneous announcement that tobacco dealers had been cut to 35% of their usual supply and in the future would sell only two cigars or ten cigarets daily to male customers, none to female; that restaurants would henceforth receive only 60% of their already rationed quota of beer; that 40% of their wine reserves would be confiscated for the Army. At noon the radio programs were interrupted with "Achtung! Special announcement! The German nation has entered its decisive battle. In accordance with the seriousness of the hour, no dancing will take place."

Bewildered at Nazi Blitzkrieg methods which left no time either for warnings or declarations of war, Belgian Ambassador Vicomte Jacques Davignon and Dutch Minister Jonkheer Hendrick Maurits von Haersma van de With clapped on silk hats and drove up to the Foreign Office to deliver a "formal protest." "An all-time high in insolence, shamelessness and stupidity," screamed the official German News Agency, D. N. B. "The world . . . will simply ignore that piece of hypocrisy." Accusations that Germany had "invaded Holland and Belgium," D. N. B. branded as "childish," declaring that the envoys were told to "request their passes in the generally accepted manner and were shown the door."

Royal Plotters. Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick added insult to injury, accused placid Queen Wilhelmina, her late lamented consort Prince Henry, and Bible-reading Lord Halifax of having plotted incessantly against the Reich, and promised sensational revelations that would "unravel the dark plans of obscure homosexual and anti-social elements." These revelations would be made, promised Minister Frick, at the forthcoming trial of alleged British agents Captain S. Richard Henry Stevens and Sigismund Payne Best, kidnapped over the Dutch frontier last November and unsuccessfully exploited in connection with the attempt to bomb Hitler at Munich last November.

Of more immediate interest to harassed

German Hausfrauen, driven to desperation by the pleading of sallow, hungry children, was a small announcement that henceforth spinach would be rationed, one-half pound to a customer.

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