In London last week the German Ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop, told Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that Berlin would immediately break off diplomatic relations with Moscow in case the OGPU should execute in Russia German Engineer Emil Ivan Stickling, who Was sentenced to death fortnight ago for "sabotage"' (TIME, Nov. 30). Ambassador von Ribbentrop then left by air through a dangerously dense fog for Berlin. In Moscow, with evident perturbation, the Soviet Council of Commissars soon issued a most singular communique, revealing that in Russia the quick-triggered OGPU sometimes get considerably ahead of the rest of the Communist mechanism of "class justice." Announced the Council: "It has been found possible to reduce the sentences of Stickling, Leonankoand Kovienko from death to ten years' imprisonment, but the others already have been shot." Since Stickling was the only German (the other convicted saboteurs being Soviet citizens), this satisfied Berlin.
Alighting in Berlin, Ambassador von Ribbentrop went over the head of his nominal superior, Foreign Minister Baron Constantin von Neurath, and signed on behalf of the German Government the new Japanese-German treaty against the Moscow Comintern or organization for fomenting the World Revolution of the World Proletariat (TIME, Oct. 7, 1935 et ante). The Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Kimitomo Mushaktji, signed on behalf of the Son of Heaven, and Nazi organs spoke up:
"With joy the German nation of National Socialism reaches out its hand today to the powerful, brave Japanese nation to build with it a wall over which Bolshevism can no longer reach. . . . For 14 years we cried, 'Germany, awake!' We were then laughed at and ridiculed, but Germany did awake. Now we cry, 'EUROPE AWAKE!' Der Führer today is not only the Leader of the German people but the spiritual revivalist of Europe against Bolshevism."
This gave acute pain to many of Joachim von Ribbentrop's hitherto close English friends, and they were further pained to learn that the German Ambassador now becomes a member of a joint German-Japanese commission which will permanently function to frustrate World Revolution. That some of this high-powered frustrating is evidently going to be done in London was unwelcome news indeed to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and he was further ruffled by reports that Herr von Ribbentrop had told Der Führer that the English of 1936 simply will not fight "unless their soil is invaded"—i.e., will not fight as they did in 1914 at the provocation of a German invasion of Belgium.
Although the British Cabinet yield to none in their alarm at the now chronic reluctance of young men to enlist in the British Army (TIME, Nov. 30 et ante), the alleged advice of Herr von Ribbentrop to Herr Hitler was really too much for them to stomach. In London last week being feted was Belgian Premier Professor Paul van Zeeland, and his English hosts had to do or say something. Up at an International Chamber of Commerce luncheon for Premier van Zeeland got handsome and willowy young Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to utter words braver and bolder than he has ever used in the House of Commons or the Council of the League of Nations.