"Last Word"

Last week in Cardiff, Wales, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told 10,000 followers that he was no seer, that if they wanted to know what the future had in store for Europe they might as well go to Old Moore, the astrologer-author of a popular British almanac, as to ask the Head of the British Government. Others with far less opportunity for knowing what was going on in Europe were not so modest.

On the eve of Sarajevo's 25th anniversary, they saw on the European horizon signs aplenty that the old war-ridden continent was again facing nerve-wracking summer days of crisis.

In Germany an unprecedented peace time mobilization of 2,000,000 men was under way. Division after division moved into the Limes Line, there to face the French poilus long ago shoved into the Maginot Line. Into East Prussia, already an armed camp, went more antiaircraft regiments, and a narrow strip along the border of Poland's vital southern indus trial area was closed to civilians. Reports persisted that a few Italian soldiers had also been brought up there, perhaps as a moral stimulant to their Nazi brothers.

Polish soldiers, weary of inaction after three straight months in uniform, watched across the Danzig border as Nazis in the Free City got ever bolder.

Italy announced the biggest maneuvers of her history, to be climaxed with a sham "Battle of the Po" in the North. The Fascists made no bones about naming the invader: the French. Lest scheduled naval maneuvers in September heighten the chances for a crisis in that fateful month, Great Britain advanced her fall sea games to August when sailors presumably may play without trepidation.

As more and more reservists were called up, statesmen, politicians, journalists and generals hauled out their big oratorical guns for what promised to be a screaming international debate. At Verdun, where 23 years ago this week the French defenders were repulsing the attacking Germans, the usually silent General Maurice Gustave Gamelin, commander-in-chief of all French armed forces, said that "respect cannot be bought with concessions." French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet spoke to fellow Radical Socialists of the "spectre of war" haunting Europe, came right out and pleaded with the U. S. to remove war fears by joining the British-French Peace Front.

Political Journalist Andre Geraud (Per-tinax) viewed German mobilization as a prelude to war, reported that the usually peaceful Prussian militarists were now won over to action.

Vladimir Poliakoff (Augur), White Russian newspaperman who snoops around odd corners of European chancelleries and sometimes pulls out something good, last week reported to the New York Times that British Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax had sent, through an unnamed emissary, to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop an odd but simple and direct message: "If you want war you can have war." Almost as defiant was Prime Minister Chamberlain, who delivered the most direct warning he has yet given to the Reich and boasted about Britain's newly found military power.

Until Germany is "ready to talk reason with reasonable people," the Prime Minister said, Britain cannot hope to deal with the Reich. The German people are being "drenched day and night" with "false and unfounded suspicions" that Great Britain is trying to encircle them, which brought Mr. Chamberlain to exclaim: "What a grotesque travesty of the attitude of this country!" Continued the Prime Minister: "Our Navy today is the most powerful in the world; our army is daily increasing in its numbers and the efficiency of its equipment; and as to our air force I will give you no figures but I can tell you that it has expanded during these twelve months at a rate far beyond our expectations, while in the quality of its personnel and the speed and power of its machines it is unexcelled by the air force of any other country. ... I repeat once more, and this is my last word: our opposition is not to change, for in a changing world there must be adjustments from time to time. But what we are resolved to oppose is the use of force to bring about changes which should be determined by discussion and cooperation."

From Germany, at a series of provincial Nazi rallies, came a prompt reply to Mr. Chamberlain's "last word." It was: "Rights or War." What the Nazis consider their "rights" were outlined at Essen by frenzied Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels: "We want natural and just living conditions [i.e. Lebensraum). We want to do away with the wrongs of Versailles [Danzig]. We do not want forever to belong to the have-nots [colonies]." As for England, "she stands as an idiot. They cannot compete with our might." Prime Minister Chamberlain was called the "Pied Piper of Cardiff" and his speech was termed a "siren song" by the Nazi press directed by Dr. Goebbels.

Even more uncompromising was Dr. Robert Ley, the Labor Front leader whose job it is to convince the German worker (hat he has an interest in the Fuehrer's plans. To munitions employes he thundered: "For us there is no longer any turning back! We have taken our destiny into our own hands. .. . Germany wants no war, but if she is forced to it she will rally more fanatically than ever and fight to the last man. . . . We want our rights. If these rights are denied us, then a nation of 80,000,000 will know how to fight fanatically." At Munich, where he received 500 Italian war veterans, Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, unlike Mr. Chamberlain, ventured to look ahead: "The future belongs to us--Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany."

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