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In would march brilliant little General Maxime ("Max") Weygand, a slant-eyed, bristling terrier of a man who was chief assistant to the Generalissimo in war and victory. "If a military peril menaces France when I am no longer here," said Marshal Foch on his death bed, "call on Weygand and you can be tranquil!" Two years ago France called General Max to supreme executive command of her army. This office has a highly technical title: "Vice-President of the Supreme War Council." Today no War Minister (who is ex-officio President of the Supreme War Council) would think of overruling Vice President Max Weygand. The little general, a bowlegged cavalryman and the blackest of Papists,* is cock of the French military roost but by no means inclined to crow a challenging cock-a-doodle-doo. It is with sincere, heartfelt emphasis that he says: "No soldier would start a new war!" Last week one of the strongest forces operating to stop France and her allies from launching an immediate "preventive war" was Frenchmen's knowledge that in 1934 they will complete a program of fortifications designed to make their frontiers impregnable, a program conceived by Marshal Foch before his death and worked out by the late War Minister André Maginot (died 1932), Marshal Pétain and General Max Weygand.
"French Divisions by Request." From the English Channel to the Baltic, Europe's safety chain around Germany is forged of nine links: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania. As they always have, Queen Wilhelmina's phlegmatic Dutch subjects rely on flooding the country in case of attack, though powerful fortresses protect Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam.
Since the War spunky Belgium has revamped her shattered forts at staggering cost, rebuilt Liége and Namur and constructed the super-fort of Eben-Eymal — a name the next war may make memorable. "In case of attack," Premier Count Charles de Broqueville has declared, "we would now have an army of 350,000 for use instead of the 40,000 we had in 1914. In addition to these forces a certain number of French divisions would be rushed immediately to help Belgium but only should our Government so request."
Since General Max Weygand was born in Brussels, in 1867. and had to be naturalized a Frenchman he seems to most Belgians in effect a Belgian. Who his father was he will not say. Rumor insists that General Max is a natural son of Belgium's late King Leopold II, would thus be a cousin of King Albert.
Luxembourg's homely Grand Duchess Charlotte has lumped her beauteous little realm with King Albert's. Luxembourg, the first land Germans invaded in 1914, will be defended as a unit with the Belgian provinces of Limbourg, Liege and Luxembourg.