For six months Europe has shuttled back and forth between fear of war and hope of peace. Not since last September, when France, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia and Italy had millions of men under arms, has Europe so resembled an armed camp as it did early this week. All over Europe more men were being called to the colors, more soldiers were being rushed to frontiers.
Most ominous troop movement was in the Polish Corridor near Danzig, the Free City attached to the Polish customs union but ruled by an all-Nazi government. The Germans of Danzig (about 380,000) have long clamored for a “home in the Reich”; Adolf Hitler has long wanted to oblige. But only last week realistic Josef Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, who knows that for every inch Poland gives Germany Fuhrer Hitler will take a mile, was reported to have reminded the Reich that his country would consider the seizure of Danzig a casus belli.
Nevertheless, the German press this week began carrying stories of attacks by Poles on German women and children, the all-too-familiar German method of preparatory propaganda before expanding the Reich frontiers. The rolling stock of the Polish Railway Administration was removed from Danzig and environs and “more than 10,000 troops” were moved into Gdynia, Polish port twelve miles from Danzig. The Polish standing Army was increased to some 400,000 men and the Polish Army journal, Polska Zbrojna, published a defiant editorial labeled We Are Ready.
Southward Bound. The traditionally neutral Swiss had a real week-end scare when alarming news came over the border that the Reich had been massing more than 200,000 troops around Lake Constance, to the north, and near the Swiss eastern frontier. Switzerland’s border guard was doubled, border roads and bridges were mined and anti-aircraft guns were in position in Basel, Zurich and other big cities. To allay popular fears the Swiss Federal Council appealed for calm, issued a statement that “rumors concerning an immediate menace to Switzerland, whether direct or indirect, are without foundation.”
Privately, other explanations for German troop movements in the eastern Alps were given. For a week the Brenner Pass from old Austria into Italy has been closed to civilian traffic. For the same period long German troop and munition trains have been pouring through, southward bound to Italy. Best guess as to their ultimate destination: Italian-owned Libya, in north Africa, where Dictator Benito Mussolini has long planned an “adventure.”
The Germans have about 1,000,000 men under arms continually, have called up another 500,000. Italy has mobilized several classes. Just to make the mobilization general, French Premier Edouard Daladier, under his new decree powers, had poured thousands of special reservists into frontier defenses.
For the past 20 years the people of no big power have wanted to go to war—not even those of Germany, whose dictator keeps telling them not to worry because no one dares fight the mighty Third Reich. One of the factors constantly working against a general European war is the lack among Europe’s most powerful nations of a disposition to fight.
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