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The next splendid stop was at a French village near Tours. Gracious as King Henry I of Brabant receiving his fractious vassals in Lohengrin, Herr Hitler did honor to the old fighter Henri Philippe Pétain and his Vice Premier Laval. The Marshal, dressed in a horizon-blue uniform like the one he wore when he was the victor of Verdun (when Adolf Hitler was a Bavarian corporal), was permitted to review some German troops, neat as an iron fence. The Führer clasped the old man's hand and said: "I am sure you did not want war, and I regret making your acquaintance under these circumstances." Then they talked business. The German terms were hard but not unacceptable. The Vichy press even approved the "grandeur" of Hitler's attitude toward his beaten foes.
The train went on. Four days later it pulled to a stop in a town where the Renaissance settled permanently, Florence. The Führer drove to the medieval Palazzo Vecchio, and under a portrait of Machiavelli, who once worked in the room, he and Benito Mussolini and Foreign Minister Count Ciano spread out their papers. At that moment the Italian Army was poised to reach its armored fingernails into the flesh of Greece. Hitler explained all he had done. Satisfaction was enormous. This was the 18th anniversary of Mussolini's march on Rome, and after the genial conference the two men went out on the balcony and waved to the multitude. Close about them stood valets in medieval costume. The two drove out to a formal luncheon, then to the Pitti Palace, where hangs the lusher art of the Renaissance—the good fleshy art of Titian, Raphael and Rubens, which Adolf Hitler prefers to delicate primitives. There, in an air of preciousness, the two were regaled with chamber music.
Out over the countries they could hear the music of war getting louder, the giant Axis metronome ticking a little faster. Herr Hitler's tour and Signor Mussolini's attack to the East brought Europe one step closer to the solid bloc which would constitute the New Order—a pan-Europe which the Axis hopes can defy Britain's blockade and turn it against the blockaders* The alignment of France and Spain, the former in supine collaboration, the latter with willing spirit but feeble body, would make possible an all-out attack soon on the Western Mediterranean. This week German troops were reported crossing the Pyrenees packed in trucks. Penetrators in obvious cheap mufti had long been reported in Spain. Clearly the attack was not far off.
In Spain and France there was no rejoicing, only a queer, unreal enthusiasm. Arriba of Madrid, the Falangist paper, tried to take consolation in a link of blood with ancient Germans. Basques, Asturians, Castilians, it said, "bear the unmistakable imprint of their Visigoth origin." In Paris, Le Temps's editorial writer cut a tiny gem of black futility: "There are days when it is difficult to write anything at all on any subject whatsoever."
*Japan did not know whether it was in on this latest war or not. Its attitude toward Greece would be "considered from a practical political standpoint, not in the strict literal sense." Since Albania, an Italian possession, was "attacked" by Greece, Japan dishonored her five-week-old mutual-defense pact with the Axis by not going to Italy's aid.