A German White Sheet
Herr von Ribbentrop's White Paper, designed to throw the responsibility for the war on Britain, may make some impres- sion in Germany. It can make none elsewhere. Never was any war fought for a clearer cause. Germany was plainly and repeatedly warned that if she extended her aggression further and attacked Poland, Britain and France would honour their pledges to Poland and fight. She did attack, without provocation and without declaration of war. The belligerence of France and Britain followed automatically. Herr von Ribbentrop, with his omniscient confidence that Britain would never fight, has been a disaster to his country from first to last. The mental manoeuvre by which he has now reached the conviction that Britain had been resolved on fighting for years has no practical interest, though it might make some appeal to a pathologist. The issue of the White Paper syn- chronises with reports that the wave of arrests for which the Munich bomb outrage provided the excuse is still spreading, and that new concentration camps are being constructed, as those existing are not sufficient. There could be no clearer exposure of the hollowness of the claim to political unity in Germany. But terrorism makes anything resembling open opposition impossible. Dr. Schacht, however, has apparently dared to decline to help to straighten out the Reich's financial tangles.
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