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Democracy Alignment StrongerHitler’s Conquests Cement Interests of Menaced AreasBy David Lloyd George.PREMIER MUSSOLINI.Till now Chamberlain has ignored Russia and Bonnet tricked that great country out of what was in September a willingand a proffered co-operation.Russia Would Not Have Bowed.I have more than once called attention to the crass folly of snubbing Russia. I have pointed out repeatedly that this vast and resourceful country has the most powerful army and the finest air force in the world. Had she been called in at Munich, there would have been no capitulation to Hitler. Autonomy would have been granted—and rightly granted —to the Sudeten Germans, but the immense quadrilateral of fortifications so essential to the defence of Czecho-Slo-vakia would not have been handed over to Germany.That foolish surrender left the republic defenseless and prostrate at the feet of Hitler. The Fuehrer s military advisers would never have advised him to face the redoubtable combination of overwhelming force which they would have had to encounter had Russia been brought in. There would have been France with her great army. Russia with her 13.000.000 trained men, backing up Czecho-Slovakia with her excellent and highly trained army of 1.000.000 men intrenched in well devised and constructed forts in the mountains. The latter are now eliminated. but France. Russia and Britain, with her fleet the greatest in Europe, remain. •One of the potent new factors with which Hitler has now to deal is the entrance of Russia effectively into the anti-Nazi confederation. But there is another in the background, though less in the background than it was before the crushing of the Czech Republic—the mighty power of America. Germany knows already what the intervention of the United States may mean.Poland also will count. She is less pro-German than she was six months ago. She is thoroughly terrified by these last coups. Her army is by no means negligible; she could call at least 2.000.000 trained men to hfr colors. If Rumania were attacked, Poland would not tamely await her turn for Hitler to organize pretexts for intervention among her large German population in the Corridor and in Silesia.Dictators May Be Stopped.If Britain and France take advantage of the new spirit of co-operation among menaced countries frightened by the annexation of Czecho-Slovakia, and great democratic countries indignant at so flagrant a crime against international right and good faith, there will be surprises to upset the world and the dictators will be compelled to halt in their swaggering march against liberty.T hesitate to offer any opinion as to what that incalculable man who is the real leader of the German people may or may not do. The advancing threat to the Rumanian boundaries has been fully pressed to wring generous terms for Germany in the Rumanian economic pact, but I cafcmot see Hitler committing himself to so rash an enterprise as the invasion of a country which has Russia for its neighbor. It would convert a rapprochement between Russia and the democracies of the west into an overpowering military alliance.There remains Mussolini. So far he has preserved a Hitlerian silence. Up to the present the realized profits of the alliance with Germany have gone entirely to the latter. Ethiopia is still a liability and so is Spain. Will Mussolini be satisfied with useful but small and undramatic concessions from France?If so, peace is assured with Italy. The Duce is in a very tight place. As a very influential member of the Italian Fascist Council is rumored to have said, “You cannot make war with the King, the church and the people against it/* Mussolini may therefore find that moderation is the truest courage and the surest victory. •(Copyright, 1039.)CHANCELLOR HITLER.This is ihe second of a series of articles on world events which Britain's veteran wartime statesman will write for publication in America. The articles will appear exclusively in The Star in Washington.ANTIBES, French Riviera. — I am writing this article in the south of France. The hills around are crowned with fortifications to resist a possible Italian invasion. Some of them are old, but many have been constructed recently.In September, when France was on the brink of war with the military dictators, the peasants were preparing to flee into the interior of France with their belongings. This last move of Hitler has revived the sense of general apprehension in this area. Mussolini may move next.The possibilities are numerous and widespread. They extend from the German Ocean to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. You have only to recount the countries which live now In daily and nightly dread of the blow falling upon them—Rumania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Holland. Belgium. Tunis, French Somaliland and France itself.To the inhabitants of Europe, without distinction of age or sex, war is a reality. In September last, trenches were dug and air shelters constructed to protect men, women and children against bombs from the air, and gas masks by the million were distributed to save them from being strangled by poison gas.Europe Roused by Czech Grab.The shameless grabbing of Czechoslovakia by Germany has roused Europe at last to such a hurricane of anger and apprehension as has not been witnessed since the invasion of Belgium. It has shaken off the moral torpor from which no outrage on liberty and right has seemed able to shake this continent, whose ethical impulses appeared to be exhausted by a tremendous struggle for international rights.The annexation of Austria by force left Europe apathetic. The suppression of democracy in Spain by German and Italian armaments did not seem to produce a ripple on the conscience even of free countries, each of which in its turn has given official recognition to this outrage. The dismemberment of Bohemia, the handing over of the defenses of the Czecho-Slovakian Republic toHitler, thus leaving that state at hismercy, were almost hailed with a sigh of relief.Chamberlain and Daladier were welcomed as conquerors when they returned from that abject capitulation, and chaplets of olive leaves were placed in their brows. The Independence of Abyssinia had long ceased to worry nations that had once vowed protection to that doomed land. The empire which took the lead in the protest against that act of rapine sent her leading statesmen to Rome to toast the success of the infamy. When the British prime minister raised his glass to the Italian Emperor of Abyssinia, • Britain as' a whole took it without a murmur.The building up by the dictators of huge armies and air fleets and formidable navies did not seem, for three years, to cause any deep uneasiness in Britain and France.America Knew Peril ef Crisis.Their rearmament programs just trundled along sluggishly and clumsily. When they almost blundered into war last September they had no effective protection for their cities against air raids. That discovery gave them a temporary fright, but once the scare was over there were signs of a lapse into a mood ofi vapid complacence. We were settling down comfortably to the new world rearranged for us by Hitler.There were still a few independent observers who were uneasy, and it is fair to admit that America seemed to understand much better than we did how perilous was a situation in which democ-(Upper) PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.(Lower) PRIME MINISTER CHAMBERLAIN.—A. P.. Harris-Ewina and Wide World Photos.racy was placed by this pusillanimous acquiescence in the all-around triumph of dictatorship. But here in Britain and in France, ministers were admonishing those who harbored misgivings, for inculcating unfounded and mischievous pessimism. They were accused of sacrificing patriotism to partisanship and prejudice.We can never forget the elaborate denunciation of “jitterers” by Sir Samuel Hoare, who is high up on the rota of successors to the premiership. A vision of general disarmament before the end of the year was thrown on the screen by ministerial propagandists. Then came the thunderbolt which shattered this flimsy palace of hallucination in which we were invited to dwell and carry on our business.Lord Halifax, in his speech in the House of Lords, said that the annexation of Czechoslovakia “profoundly shocked” the world. It was like an incident that I witnessed behind the French front in 1916, when a friend of mine was walking leisurely along a road looking around him to enjoy the prospect. Suddenly, and without warning to him. a great gun hidden in the brush not far from him went off with a terrific bang. The concussion swung him completely around and he suffered for weeks from the shock.Hitler Keeps His Own Counsel.It is not too much to say that no one expected the Hitler barrage to start at that time and in that direction. The effect of the detonation was stunning. The fact that Hitler keeps his plans to himself until the moment comes to put them into action deepens and intensifies the anxiety and the bewilderment which is experienced everywhere today.No one knows what will come next. The Czecho-Slovakian coup has planted in the nerve-centers of the world an ineradicable conviction that more of the same sort of crashing surprise is bound to come. But where and when?The Memel incident in itself does not seem to threaten the Europe-wide upheaval which is so generally feared. It was hardly a surprise. But are there no others in the Hitler or Mussolini electric batteries?Last October Hitler declared that the period of surprises had come to an end, that Germany had no further territorial claims. Five months later he annexed Czecho-Slovakia. But Hitler will henceforth be confronted by a new Europe—a Europe frightened but no longer intimidated.The most significant development ofthe last few days is the rapprochement between the western powers and Russia.
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Evening Star
Washington, Washington-DC, US
Sun, Mar 26, 1939
Page 17
Full Page
Clipped by
Duncan H.
GB 19 Nov 2021
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