Invitation to War

The "hardy Swiss," the "resolute Turk," the freedom-loving Dutch, in fact all European neutrals, won eulogies last week from First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He poured it out in a radio speech from London. But it was not all admiration for these brave peoples. Blunt Mr. Churchill, speaking with a back-throat lisp caused by a badly fitting upper plate, went on to say things that hitherto Great Britain has uttered only under her breath.

"Unfortunate Neutrals." The First Lord, having painted a rosy picture of war time Britain and France, turned to the "very different lot of the unfortunate neutrals. Whether on sea or on land, they are the victims upon whom Hitler's hate and spite descends. Look at the small but ancient and historic States which lie in the North, or look again at that other group of anxious people in the Balkans or in the Danube Basin. . . . Every one of them is wondering tonight which will be the next victim on whom the criminal adventurers of Berlin will cast their rending stroke [see p.31].

". . . Only Finland, superb, nay, sublime in the jaws of peril, Finland shows what free men can do. . . . There, exposed for all the world to see, is the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. . . . Everyone can see how Communism robs the soul of a nation, how it makes it abject and hungry in peace and proves it base and abominable in war. ... If the light of freedom which still burns so brightly in the frozen North should be finally quenched, it might well herald a return to the Bark Ages when every vestige of human progress during 2,000 years would be engulfed.

"But what would happen if all these neutral nations I have mentioned, and some others I have not mentioned, were with one spontaneous impulse to do their duty in accordance with the covenant of the League and were to stand together with the British and French Empires against aggression and wrong?

"At present their plight is lamentable and it will become much worse. They bow humbly and in fear to German threats of violence, comforting themselves meanwhile with the thoughts that the Allies will win. . . . Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured.

"But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely. It will spread to the South, it will spread to the North. There is no chance of a speedy end except through united action, and if at any time Britain and France, wearying of the struggle, were to make a shameful peace, nothing would remain for the smaller States of Europe with their shipping and their possessions, nothing will remain but to be divided between the opposite, though similar, barbarisms of Nazidom and Bolshevism."

Irritated Neutrals. In spite of his dental lisp, Winnie Churchill did a first-class job of oratory. But it sounded ominous to neutrals. It suggested a growth of that school of thought in Great Britain which believes that the way to lick Germany is to fight her elsewhere than in France--in the East, in the North, wherever a battle front may offer.

Neutral. Reaction varied from Brussels' Nation Beige headline "STRANGE REPRIMAND TO NEUTRALS BY CHURCHILL" to Turin's Gazzetta del Popolo's streamer "STRUGGLE TO DEATH BETWEEN BELLIGERENTS ON DIPLOMATIC FRONTS." Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant called the speech a "sharp attack on neutrals." The famed Politiken of Copenhagen editorialized: "The small neutral States will feel no gratitude to Mr. Churchill because he is again dragging them in."

So unfavorable were the reports from neutrals that the British Foreign Office hastened to explain that the Churchill speech "should not be considered a statement of Government policy." Any new departure in policy, it was said, would be made not by the First Lord of the Admiralty but by the Foreign Secretary.

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