(See front cover)
One morning last week Queen Elizabeth chatted in Buckingham Palace with Frau Joachim von Ribbentrop, daughter of Germany's great Henkell imitation champagne family. Meanwhile, King George VI received Herr Ribbentrop, the new German Foreign Minister and onetime Henkell salesman, who in public makes a point of greeting His Majesty with the Nazi salute (TIME, Feb. 15, 1937). Below stairs, Buckingham Palace secretaries were receiving news reports from Munich, denied from Berlin, that that great south German city had awakened to find German mobilization against Austria far advanced.
Herr and Frau Ribbentrop, who had been greeted everywhere they went in London with angry cries of "Release Pastor Niemöller!", "Release Thälmann!" and "Get out, Ribbentrop!", then went along from Buckingham Palace to the second most exclusive address in the British Empire, No. 10 Downing Street. There a State luncheon, with plenty of wine, was offered them by Prime Minister & Mrs. Neville Chamberlain, who had invited pro-French Mr. & Mrs. Winston Churchill, pro-German Lord & Lady Londonderry and all the Cabinet's biggest wigs & wives. The news tickers at No. 10 were chattering about how all Munich's motor vehicles, including beer trucks, had been commandeered and were roaring out along Adolf Hitler's concrete military Autobahnen toward Austria.
All Europe was simultaneously drawing deductions from the hospitality of Buckingham Palace and No. 10. The Quai d'Orsay was hearing from Rome that Mussolini, now just entering upon negotiations through diplomatic channels with Chamberlain and already on an Axis with Hitler (TIME, Nov. 2, 1936), was "in these circumstances" not again going to mobilize Italian troops along the frontier of Austria as he did in 1934 after the Nazi assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.
"In the Circumstances."' The French Army, Navy and Air Force were recently coordinated for quick action in emergencies under a new Super General Staff (TIME, Jan. 31), and a reason given for this was that lack of such coordination had "paralyzed" what might otherwise have been quick French action after Hitler invaded the Rhineland. But there was last week no Cabinet in France at the moment, and to the Austrian Government, calling frantically from Vienna, the Quai d'Orsay had to reply that "in the circumstances" no action likely to check the German advance could be taken by France.
Only Czechoslovakia, the most powerful satellite of France, remained as a possible source of armed assistance to the Austrian Government. But, perhaps because Czechoslovaks fear they may be next on Vegetarian Adolf Hitler's menu, the attitude of Prague "in the circumstances" last week was to lie low. "Europe's Smartest Little Statesman," famed Czechoslovak President Eduard Benes, could think of nothing better than to observe: "In spite of the great importance of material strength . . . the most important forces are spiritual." After all. one bold remark by Benes might cause Hitler to speed German troops toward Prague, as well as Vienna.