"God is not only with the stronger battalions. He is also with those of better nerves. We have had better nerves and will keep them! . . ."
So last week editorialized Das Schwarze Korps, the newsorgan of Adolf Hitler's special "Elite Guard."
It was nerve against nerve this week. The stakes, piled mountains high, amounted to nearly everything Europe values in this world. The grimly staking chiefs of the Great Powers passed from words of War and Peace to final drastic acts involving the lives of millions. With men saying good-by at railroad stations all over Europe, joining the colors with the strange, excited high good humor of people consciously risking death in great numbers, President Roosevelt suddenly drew attention to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. Under that agreement, nearly every nation in the world, including Japan, Italy and Germany, has renounced "war as an instrument of national policy'' (see p. 16).
The initiative of the President, addressed evenhandedly in duplicate to President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia and to German Führer Adolf Hitler, contained a solemn injunction "not to break off negotiations looking to a peaceful, fair and constructive settlement of the questions at issue." These negotiations were begun fortnight ago at Berchtesgaden, after months of private exchanges between the four European chiefs, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini. They were continued last week at Godesberg, the picturesque Rhineland spa. There the Berchtesgaden Plan, already "accepted unconditionally" by Czechoslovakia, was evaporated last week from cold Peace water into the hissing War steam of Godesberg Demands unexpectedly made by Adolf Hitler.
Chamberlain Map v. Hitler Map. The Berchtesgaden Plan of last fortnight went far beyond the demands which the Sudeten German Party repeatedly in August told British Mediator Viscount Runci-man would satisfy not only their "Little Führer" Konrad Henlein but also the Führer. Henlein asked "states rights" or "dominion status" for the Sudetens, and the Czechoslovak Government reluctantly consented. In the traditional British role of "broker" in major quarrels on the Continent, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, after ascertaining fortnight ago that France was ready to yield and join in causing Czechoslovakia to yield still more than anyone would have believed possible, struck at Berchtesgaden a bargain frankly advantageous to Germany, but also a bargain which avoided war in Europe for a full week at least, with prospects of lengthening this Peace.