"Bravo Iron!"

Integral part of Adolf Hitler's technique of getting his way in Europe is the use of "military diplomacy." At the psychological moment troops will be massed at weak frontiers, conferences of Generals will be held, inspired stories will be printed telling of fleets of German planes ready to take off and blast Paris and London to bits with newly invented high-pressure bombs. Last week British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, announcing the date of Parliament's adjournment for a three months' vacation, boasted that "there is every indication that Britain's newly regained power is restoring confidence to Europe." In showing off that power the British Government was also showing Fuehrer Hitler that two can play at his game:

> The Territorial Army, fully mechanized, started on Britain's greatest peacetime maneuvers. Trucks, radio cars, ambulance convoys, cyclists rumbled through ordinarily quiet rural roads as 135.000 men began a fortnight's training period which will end with a "battle" with an "invading" army from Wales.

> In the space of 25 hours Britain set a record by launching three new cruisers: the 8,000-ton Nigeria and Mauritius and the 5,450-ton Dido. Within the next several months the Navy will also launch two 35,000-ton battleships, the Duke of York and the Beatty; two new 23,000-ton aircraft carriers, the Victorious and the Formidable; four more cruisers, a destroyer depot ship and several destroyers and submarines.

> Ninety British bombers flew over France in the second "air-raid" training exercises arranged by the British and French Air Ministries. Forty long-range Wellingtons made a 1,500-mile non-stop cruise to and from Marseille, where large crowds gathered in the streets to watch the demonstration. Lighter bombers cruised over Orleans and Paris. Not bashful were the British in pointing out that the Marseille bombers, had they veered slightly to the left, would have been over Turin, Italy's big munitions-manufacturing city, or had they taken a course directly eastward from Britain would have circled over Berlin.

>Cropping up in several places were accounts of Britain's regenerated Air Force. In a series of articles for the Chicago Tribune, Reporter Wayne Thomis estimated Britain's present first-line warplanes at 2,000. He said that 500 to 600 were being delivered monthly, a rate also said to approach German production. Britain is now patrolled, Mr. Thomis reported, by 700 single-seater fighting planes, but the British are still sadly lacking in fast, long-range bombers. Even more optimistic was a special dispatch printed in the American Machinist, which places Britain's present monthly output of warplanes at 700 a month, with an anticipated schedule of 1,000 planes monthly before January.

> To show that Londoners no longer need to live in deadly fear of air raids, the City of Westminster (where Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace are situated) opened for inspection eight elaborate systems of concrete-lined, covered trenches.

> Still appearing in London newspapers' want-ad columns, however, are advertisements of homes in "safe areas," installed with A. R. P. (Air Raid Precautions) devices. Banks, insurance companies and business concerns continued to buy houses in the country for emergency offices. Latest to arrange for, although not to buy, a country place for its staff and records is Lloyd's, insurance brokers.

> To Warsaw for a four-day conference on "military coordination" went Britain's tallest, heaviest Army officer--Sir Edmund Ironside, Inspector General of the British Overseas Forces. His host was the tall, thin, handsome Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz, Inspector General of the Polish Army. Weighing 252 pounds and standing six feet four inches, General Sir Edmund has been nicknamed "Tiny" by his men. More aptly, the Poles called him the "Iron General" and greeted him with cries of "Bravo Iron!"

The Poles were pleased with this outward demonstration of British-Polish military solidarity, which was far more understandable, if not more important, than a temporary breakdown at London of negotiations for a British military loan to Poland. There, Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, Economic Adviser to the British Government, insisted that the Poles spend the projected $25,000,000 loan in Britain. Head of the Polish Finance Commission Colonel Adam Koc was equally insistent that no strings be attached to the loan, and once last week he threatened to leave London in a huff. At week's end there was talk of compromise.

Meanwhile, the German press called Sir Edmund's visit a "secret council of war" and railed against "English interference" and "blustering." More German and Polish military activity was noticeable in and around Danzig, and German Air Marshal Hermann Goering announced that this year's German air maneuvers would begin August 1, and would be held on the Netherlands frontier. Just as another warning to Poland's allies as well as to Germany that Poland would not accept a "Munich deal" over Danzig, Marshal Smigly-Rydz gave an interview to the Paris newspaper, Le Petit Parisien, in which he pointedly said: "Poland will fight, if necessary alone, to keep its right in the Free City."

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