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August 26. Sir Nevile landed at Croydon with Hitler's verbal note and rushed with it to the British Cabinet, which considered it over the weekend. From Paris, Daladier wrote Hitler: "There is nothing which could prevent a peaceful solution of the international crisis . . . if the same will to peace prevails on all sides. . . . You as well as I were front fighters in the last War. You as well as I know what abhorrence . . . the War left in the conscience of the people. . . . If French and German blood flows again . . . destruction and barbarism will be the surest winner."
August 27 (Sunday) Hitler replied to Daladier, saying: "As an old front fighter I, like yourself, know the horrors of war. . . . . The pacification of our western frontier . . . can . . . not be interpreted as an acceptance of all other phases of the Versailles dictate. . . . Your Excellency will have to admit . . . the revision had to come. The Versailles dictate was unbearable . . . . I have made an offer to the Polish Government that . . . could . . . be made only once. . . . The Polish Government declined the proposals. . . . If our two countries on that account should be destined to meet again on the field of battle . . . I, Herr Daladier, shall be leading my people in a fight to rectify a wrong, whereas the others. . . ."
August 28. Sir Nevile flew back to Berlin and gave Ribbentrop Chamberlain's note, saying: "The German Chancellor has indicated certain proposals . . . for a general understanding. . . . His Majesty's Government are fully prepared to take them . . . as subjects for discussion . . . if differences between Germany and Poland are peacefully composed. . . . The German Government will be aware that His Majesty's Government have obligations to Poland by which they are bound and which they intend to honor." Before midnight Hitler was busy writing a reply.
August 29. Early in the evening Sir Nevile visited the Chancellery in Berlin, and after 25 minutes of impassioned oratory Hitler gave him the answer: ". . . Encroachments in Danzig . . . threatening demands . . . barbaric actions of maltreatment which cry to heaven . . . unbearable for a great power. . . . The demands of the German Government are . . . the return of Danzig and the Corridor. . . . The British Government may still believe that these grave differences can be resolved by way of direct negotiations. . . . The German Government . . . though skeptical . . . are prepared to accept . . . the British Government's offer of their good offices in securing the dispatch to Berlin of a Polish emissary with full powers. They count on arrival of this emissary on Wednesday, August 30." Sir Nevile asked whether this was an ultimatum. Hitler said that it was not. Sir Nevile hurried away to telephone the not-ultimatum to London.
August 30. At 1 a. m. Chamberlain's Cabinet, still in session from the previous evening, wired Sir Nevile: "It is . . . unreasonable to expect that we can produce a Polish representative in Berlin today, and the German Government must not expect this." And finally, when the 24 hours were almost gone, to Sir Nevile again: "Could you not suggest to the German Government that they adopt the normal procedure . . . of inviting the Polish Ambassador to call and of handing proposals to him for transmission to Warsaw?"