Yesterday

During the last seven or eight months the journalistic world has been stirred by the coming of Hitler and his gang into scanning history with an eager eye for striking analogies; and, as if by common consent, it has fastened upon 1914 as an instructive date from which to visualize our immediate future. In 1914 military bluster and parading idiocy were controlling the German state; Europe was tense and waiting; friction in the Balkans was apparent and unpleasantly suggestive of contagious possibilities. And with minor exceptions, those conditions are duplicated today. In such a pacifistic atmosphere, Germany's abrupt withdrawal from the League on Saturday was not calculated to calm the anxious breast or still the palpitations of the fearful heart. Paris rose into the frenzy of Gallic jitters while Italy was officially shocked and Great Britain did its best to ignore the alarum. Dollfuss's Austria feverishly hastened its process of covering the northern border with a maze of barbed-wire, and Russian wondered whether she would be squeezed between the two outlaws, Germany and Japan.

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That section of Adolf speech which dealt specifically (and with welcome frankness) with Franco-German relations, ought to have thrown a wet blanket over the hot foreign presses. The Chancellor declared in his best manner that only a madman would even consider a war between France and the Fatherland, since 'the sacrifices entailed were so much less than the losses of conflict." Certainly this should have satisfied Europe. But the last war seems to have spawned a great many political sceptics, whose unkind interpretation of Hitler's argument reads something like this: "War at the moment would be disastrous for me: but after a year of busy bootlegging of arms and consolidation of resources behind our army--well, we shall see what we shall see." He may also have meant: a year may give us Austria as well, and serve to divide our enemies against themselves. Europe has some reason, then, to question pacific proposals backed up by a philosophy which regards peace as a regrettable interval between two wars.

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Returning to a subject which it has often skirted but never actively attacked, the Radical Socialist Party of France has now pledged itself to a thorough investigation of the international arms and munitions racket. They are especially aroused over the activities of the Schneider-Creusot firm. The current charge against it is that it sold 400 tanks to Germany, through the medium of Holland. As yet the truth of this particular accusation is not known, but the history of this and other armament firms would hold them guilty until proved without any question, innocent. Last summer Beverley Nichols turned his whimsical attention from the subtleties and aesthetic delights of gardening to the pastime of war, and his book "Cry Havoc," was the result. In several chapters there he points out with deserving bitterness the irony involved when British soldiers were smeared all along the Dardenelles by British-made guns sold to the Turkish government, when Germany and France exchange arms shipments through Switzerland during the war, or when revolutions and wars are fomented in small countries to drum up trade for guns. It will be exceedingly interesting to see how far the Radical Socialist Party (which is very much more conservative than its name) can or will go in its attempt to control nationally the movements of war supplies. If every country was able to do it, an irritant, if not a couse, of war would have been removed. However, consideration of that 'if' enforces scepticism.