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Next year was set by France as the deadline for completion of her forts, because from 1934 to 1938 the young men called up at 20 for military training in her conscript armies and in those of her allies will be less numerous, less robust than normal. They are the "War babies," born in 1914-18 when the birth rate necessarily declined and food to nourish mothers and babes was scarce. In the small German Army, composed of robust volunteers who enlist for a period of twelve years, the ''War baby" defect cannot arise but the mighty ranks of brownshirt storm troops swarm with callow "War babies," now barely ripe for Armageddon.
"Indispensable Poland!" Because of her Alps, Switzerland is a natural fortress, but the Swiss Government takes no chances. President Schulthess put through appropriations to re-equip the Swiss Army fortnight ago. Last week the appropriations were jacked up higher. In Austria embattled, bantamweight Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss has had his army on a basis amounting to mobilization for months (TIME, Sept. 18), massed along the German frontier and ready to repel Nazi attacks. Last week Czechoslovakia and Austria laid their heads together as Chancellor Dollfuss received in Vienna "Europe's Smartest Little Statesman," famed Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Eduard Benes, a power in the counsels of Skoda, the Czechoslovak munitions trust "which makes guns for everybody" including Japan. Skoda is linked with the French munitions octopus, Schneider-Creusot, and the Czechoslovak Army is one of the best equipped in the world. Neither Czechoslovakia nor Poland flank Germany with a chain of pillboxes as does France, but both have heavily fortified frontier cities and the Polish General Staff are confident that Dictator Pilsudski's troops could cut and plow their way in three weeks to Berlin. Just now the heaviest massing of troops in Europe is along both sides of the Polish-German frontier. At the drop of a steel helmet, Poles would join France in a "preventive war," especially since the French Commander-in-Chief is Max Weygand, "Savior of Poland."
After the War, when Red troops seemed about to take Warsaw, Marshal Foch sent Man Weygand rushing to Poland not with an army corps but with only himself and five other French staff officers. In three weeks Weygand's strategy had helped Marshal Pilsudski to drive the Red Army once and for all in headlong flight from Warsaw, but Pilsudski did not take Weygand's advice without high words. "General Weygand!" he once shouted, "you forget that you are talking to a Marshal of Poland. Only a Marshal—only Marshal Foch—can talk to me like that!" "Marshal Foch was accustomed to accept my suggestions and advice," purred General Weygand. "He did this because he was not only a great General but a great man." "Proceed," snapped Pilsudski. After Warsaw was saved General* Weygand said, "My role was merely to fill up the gaps. It was the heroic Polish nation itself which won the victory and saved the Polish State—a State the existence of which is indispensable to France."