Hitler Touches Wood

Tall, reedy, gentle, devoutly religious and pro-German is Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Viscount Halifax of Monk Bretton in the West Riding of York, Baron Irwin of Kirby Underdale York, Knight of the Garter, onetime Viceroy of India (TIME, May u, 1931, et ante), today Lord President of the Council and Government Leader in the House of Lords. In London, the abrupt decision of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Lord Halifax should go to visit Adolf Hitler last week came more & more to be regarded as a "humiliation" to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who is not pro-German.

The Yorkshire Post, owned by Mrs. Eden's family, did its best to sabotage Lord Halifax's visit. It was rebuked by the London Daily Telegraph (which is close to Mr. Chamberlain) for printing rumors that "There exist and are known to Germany to exist in this country [Britain] a "certain number of people--not all of them obscure [Halifax & friends]-- who would be prepared to welcome a German campaign of territorial expansion in the East [Austria, Czechoslovakia, Russia] if by that means Germany could for the time being be diverted from exploiting her nuisance value in other directions [colonies]. Accordingly it requires no great exercise of the imagination to conjecture that Hitler at his meeting with Viscount Halifax will test the ground for some such policy." To the Chamberlainian Daily Telegraph'?, sharp rebuke for printing this rumor, the Edenesque Yorkshire Post sharply retorted that its information was from a "reliable source."

In the House of Lords, prominent Jewish and Labor peers surprisingly outdid themselves in speeches calculated to dispose Adolf Hitler favorably to touch wood, that is Lord Halifax. One of Britain's top Jews, Viscount Samuel urged in the House of Lords that Germany be explicitly absolved of her 1914 "War guilt," that her former colonies be returned, and that the Covenant of the League of Nations be detached from the Treaty of Versailles in hopes of getting the Reich to rejoin the League.

"Those who disapprove of Germany's political regime," said Lord Samuel in his peroration, "have to resist the temptation to take a negative view of all the claims advanced by that regime."

Lord Allen of Hurtwood, a National Laborite; the Marquess of Crewe, Liberal; and Lord Plymouth, Conservative, were among peers who joined Lord Samuel in publicly resisting the temptation to take a negative view of Nazi demands and ambitions. However, Lord Allen plaintively admitted that Britain "cannot hand out colonies like cards in a game of 'beg of my neighbor'."

Among Germans last week the news from London of dissension in the British Cabinet and fawning in the House of Lords produced an immediately stiffened attitude toward Lord Halifax. British references to the Viscount's visit as one of "exploration" caused a whole string of Nazi news-organs--reciting the words of the official Nazi press service--to retort: "Adolf Hitler's Germany needs no 'exploration.' The German position is perfectly clear. 'Explorations' might better be sent into the jungle of England's own policy."

The Hamburger Fremdenblatt taunted the British Government because its "muddling . . . leaves other governments in the greatest uncertainty as to what England will ever do in any given situation o . . highly annoying and thoughtless, if not worse, on England's part." German editors, apparently convinced that their Fatherland today has England on the run and need show scant respect, even joined in twitting Lord Halifax for having arrived in Berlin on Busstag ("Atonement Day").

So deeply religious is Lord Halifax that, when he was offered the post of Viceroy of India, he consulted his no less devout father and they prayed together in church. "When we came out," related Halifax pere afterward. "I said to Edward, 'I think you really have to go' and he said, 'I think so too'." Last week friends of the Viscount said he really had to go and be friendly with the Nazis, although the number of Protestant clergymen in jail in the Reich had just risen from 495 to 520 and the Nazis insist upon trying batches of Catholic priests on charges of sexual perversion --both situations painful to a High Churchman like Lord Halifax. In Berlin, however, he stepped off the Nord Express smiling, although no Nazi bigwig had come to meet him.

A keen huntsman, the Viscount was originally invited to Berlin by Minister President General Hermann Wilhelm Goring to inspect his Nazi International Hunting Exhibition. Not accompanied by General Goring, Lord Halifax was taken around the exhibition last week by a Nazi guide. In a long statement from the British Embassy afterward the Viscount praised the exhibition to the skies, declared: "Great Britain and every country owe a debt of gratitude to General Goring . . . really wonderful . . . showmanship . . . closely allied to the Arts."

On the third day Host Goring had not yet received Guest Halifax but had prom-ised to do so after the Viscount made a 20-hour journey to Bavaria to lunch with Adolf Hitler in his Bavarian chalet in the mountains near Berchtesgaden. After lunch Halifax was sent off by train, and the Dictator followed in his own train. The two pulled into Munich at the same time, but Hitler and Halifax did not meet again. While Halifax was undergoing his 20-hour return trip to Berlin, an official communique was issued by Adolf Hitler's press office in terms which would have been satiric had they not been so Aryan:

"On the drive upward [to Hitler's chalet], Baron von Neurath [German Foreign Minister] took the occasion to expound to his guest the characteristics of the Berchtesgaden landscape which, favored by a clear, crisp day, presented itself in all its overpowering beauty."

After tersely recording the fact that Hitler received Halifax, the communique said, referring to the Fuehrer's glass-en-closed workroom: "Here Lord Halifax once more was privileged to cast his eyes over the snow-covered mountain landscape. The pleasant weather, magnificent surroundings and comfortable trip of the British guest appeared to have created an auspicious atmosphere for the ensuing conversations. In keeping with the character of the visit these conversations were exclusively of an unofficial nature."

Not at all obscure was the reason that Halifax was treated as he was by Hitler: Der Fuehrer's chief concern last week was to keep Germany's allies, Japan and Italy, from having the slightest reason to suspect that he might be making a deal behind their backs with Britain.

After being received by No. 2 Nazi Goring and No. 3 Nazi Goebbels, Lord Halifax left Berlin for London, told correspondents: "Now that the door has been opened, it will remain open!"

Same day at Augsburg, apple-cheeked Swabians cheered Orator Hitler for declaring: "What the world will not listen to now, it will have to think about in three years' time, and, in five or six, it will have to take into practical consideration. . . . Our lost property the world will have to return! . . . Germany will voice her demands louder and louder." --<->

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