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London played lavish host to the brisk, bandy-legged engineer of the French war machine, terse, terrier-like General Maxime Weygand.
He was received by King George. He entertained British War Secretary Viscount Hailsham at the French Embassy. He worked daily with the chiefs of the British fighting service staffs. The consultation was understood to be about whether the safety of Great Britain, in the event of another war, demands establishment of a "forward defensive zone." States men dare not let it be rumored that they have talked of such things but the generals in London last week seemed not to care if the whole world knew they were discussing possible occupation by British troops of the lowlands of Belgium and Holland should France and Germany again become embroiled. After a week of such military fraternizing General Max flew home to Paris escorted by a whole squadron of British combat planes.
Three days later British Secretary for War Viscount Hailsham crossed the Channel with 40 British staff officers including General Sir Archibald Armar Montgomery-Massingberd. Chief of the Imperial Gen eral Staff, and set out from Paris as guests of the French General Staff for a four-day tour of the Franco-Belgian frontier and Wartime battlefields.
Fortnight ago Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald announced the imminence of huge additions to His Majesty's Navy (TIME, July 2). Last week Air Secretary the Marquess of Londonderry told the House of Commons that Britain must double her air force.
In London it seemed like 1913 again when a great war scare stench was uncorked by Henry Wickham Steed, onetime editor of the London Times. He claimed to have obtained from Berlin official documents showing that for years successive German Governments have had secret agents in London and Paris preparing surveys for bomb, gas and germ raids. According to Mr. Steed, whose acumen and veracity stand high among his countrymen, harmless germ cultures have lately been released in London and Paris subways and the spread of the germs recorded by German agents. Last week the Nazi press bureau retorted: "There are other reasons for the stench in those subways!"
Paris seconded the "big navy" drive of the British Admiralty as the French Naval Ministry told correspondents that Italy's recent appropriations for two battleships of 35,000 tons each in answer to the 26,500-ton battleship laid down by France will necessitate still greater French naval building.
Berlin seethed with Nazi bloodshed but on St. Vitus Day all German flags went to half mast. Quietly at Wilhelmshaven the third of Germany's famed 10,000-ton "pocket battleships," the Admiral Graf von Spee, with six nin. guns, was launched and hailed by the Fatherland's Press as "unmatched in battle power for her size." Chancellor Hitler, just before the Nazi revolt broke, inspected the great Krupp works at Esse—n. Instead of passing this off as a trivial event. Publisher Hitler's personal news-organ covered its entire front page with militant pictures from Essen showing the Chancellor promenading with Master Armorer Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.