Peace

The world's greatest battle was in progress last week {see p. 17), but that did not keep recurrent German peace talk out of the air. This was no inconsistency. A negotiated peace might be Adolf Hitler's greatest victory.

From Ankara, New York Times Correspondent Ray Brock cabled that, on the day when Germany attacked Russia, Germany's wily Ambassador to Turkey Franz von Papen had proposed to the British Ambassador that Britain stop fighting and join Germany against the Soviet Union. Last week from Ankara came word that Herr von Papen and friends were still plugging peace hard, through U.S. and other middlemen.

It was said that after the attack on Russia had reached the Urals (and the Germans had captured Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev and other great Russian centers) the Nazis would be willing to dicker for peace on the following basis:

> Nazi forces would withdraw from western Europe. The bombing of Britain would stop.

> Germany would occupy Russia up to the Urals for 25 years, set up a "semi-autonomous" Ukraine.

> Poland, a Czech State, Yugoslavia and Greece would be "semi-autonomous."

> Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria would be permanently "protected" by Germany.

> Alsace-Lorraine would be kept by Germany.

> Ethiopia, Libya and Tunisia would be given to Italy.

> The British Empire would be unchanged.

Last week, also, Fight for Freedom, Inc., U.S. immediate-intervention group, announced that underground German sources had sent it news of another forthcoming German peace campaign. Adolf Hitler would become "ill" and possibly "resign" --to make things easier for Winston Churchill, who has vowed not to negotiate with Nazi leaders. Then the German High Command would make proposals:

> All conquered countries would be "semi-autonomous." >-All continental Europe would disarm except for a "Pan-European Army" under German control.

> Germany would make "marked concessions" to Protestantism, but particularly to the Vatican.

> The British Empire would be unchanged, but would recognize German-Italian hegemony in the Mediterranean.

> Under Nazi control, British capital would be "encouraged" to develop Russia, the Near East, other potentially rich lands.

Neither of these sets of proposals stressed the fact that, on the record, no proposal, promise or pact of Adolf Hitler's has more meaning than jabberwocky.

Outside the Axis last week no important voice was raised in approval of any such plans--at least publicly. But several cogent voices talked of peace in quite a different vein. They thought that peace would have to be won by war, not by negotiation, and that, having been won, it would have to be handled with care.

In mid-July Britain's recently retired Chief Diplomatic Adviser, Baron Vansittart of Denham, wrote: "The question of how we are to live with the Germans as neighbors will certainly involve our maintaining a state of preparedness for more than a generation to come. But, above all, it involves the re-education of the German people and the renunciation by them of militarism and the Prussian qualities which have made them such impossible neighbors in the past. This they will never do voluntarily; it will have to be imposed upon them." In Parliament last week, Socialist John James ("Jack") Lawson cried: "I never thought that I should live to see hundreds of millions of people slaves to the will of one man, and millions, yes millions, massacred and women and children murdered.

I say--and I hope to speak for my party--that there are no two wills about it. We will not punish--there will be no spirit of hatred--but we will see to it that there is no repetition of this kind of spirit in Germany." To this, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden assented: "I agree with every single word Mr. Lawson said. . . ." Some were reminded, by sentiments such as these, of feelings expressed by Winston Churchill back in 1930. In his premature autobiography, A Roving Commission, he wrote: "I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions with might and main till overwhelming victory, and then offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished. Thus I have always been against the pacifists during the quarrel, and against the jingoes at its close.. .

"I thought we ought to have conquered the Irish and then given them Home Rule: that we ought to have starved out the Germans, and then revictualed their country. . . . Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war. It would perhaps be pressing the argument too far to suggest that I could do both."

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