"Preventive War?"
(See front cover) Not knowing what Adolf Hitler may do next, statesmen of all countries neighboring Germany were jangle-nerved last week, but Denmark's hulking pacifist Premier, auburn-bearded, cigar-rolling Thorvald Stauning, was absolutely frantic. Three years ago his Cabinet took the somewhat feminine position that Denmark, if attacked, had better scream for help rather than fight. Announced plump and placid Defense Minister Lauritz Rasmussen :
"Total disarmament and, in case of aggression, a protest to all the Powers—that is our best—our only adequate defense!"
Abruptly changing front last week, because of Germany's withdrawal from the League and Disarmament Conference (TIME, Oct. 23), Premier Stauning shouted, "Our German frontier in North Slesvig is the frontier of all Scandinavia! . . . It must and will be defended by every means at our disposal. I shall consult at once with Premier Hansson [of Sweden] and Premier Mowinckel [of Norway]. . . . The time is ripe for us to forge a united Scandinavian front!"
Observers agreed that, should Chancellor Hitler decide to pick a war tomorrow, fat little Denmark, a land of farmers as defenseless as their cows, would offer the easiest prize, especially since North Slesvig is swarming with Danish Nazis financed from Berlin. But the main danger was not last week that Germans may be so foolish as to start any kind of war in 1933. The longer Adolf Hitler waits, the keener his Reichswehr and Storm Troops become, the more arms the Fatherland secretly or openly acquires, the greater will be Germany's chance to strike with success. The danger last week was that Europe might not let Germany wait. In Paris, Warsaw, Prague and Brussels statesmen and strategists pondered anxiously what seemed to some of them the necessity of crushing Hitlerism by launching a "preventive war" against Germany before the Fatherland grows too strong.
"Où est mon Weygand?" Every morning when the late great Marshal Ferdinand Foch reached his fusty little office he would lean his umbrella in the corner, adjust his spectacles and call out as he sat down to work, "Et Maintenant, Où est mon Weygand?"