A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
MOST of us will probably long remember how we heard the German-Russian news on Tuesday morning. No doubt the average newspaper-reader got his shock at his breakfast-table. Personally I had breakfast without a paper in a remote spot where the papers arrive at midday. But the keeper of the nearest garage, where I had occasion to fill up, observed with studied restraint, " The papers don't seem too good today, Sir," and told me there was one inside in his office. After that I had the leisure of a 30-miles drive to ask myself all the inevitable questions—could it be true? Hadn't the Anglo-Russian agreement been declared repeatedly to be all but complete? Wasn't there a Franco- Russian treaty in existence? Hadn't the Moscow papers been proclaiming up to a week ago the inevitable conflict with Fascism? Wasn't Hitler's and all Nazis' hatred of Bolshevism ineradicable? Everybody, I suppose, was ask- ing those questions, and to none of them was there any answer except the stark fact. But that fact made last Tuesday seem for the moment the blackest day since 1918.
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