NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE Prime Minister's statement on foreign affairs will have been made before these lines are read. It is to be hoped it will be of a less consistently negative order than most of the daily paper forecasts have suggested. It can quite well be understood that the Cabinet may hesitate to give an unconditional pledge of support to Czechoslovakia, though one factor calculated to check Further aggression by Herr Hitler would 1e the knowledge that if he took certain steps he would find three Great Powers in the field against him. But it is one thing to decline to pledge our- selves to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia in all "circum- stances and quite another to give Germany ground for concluding that we shall not interfere with her in any circum- stances. We have gone quite far enough towards giving her that impression already. Therein lies the gravity of the situation that faces Europe. Herr Hitler has pursued a policy of successive coups de main, chief among them the military reoccupation of the Rhineland and the destruction of Austrian independence, none of them enough to constitute a cause of war, but each of them sufficient to encourage Germans in Germany, Germans out of Germany and the lesser States to the south-east of Germany to believe that German hegemony in Europe is already established and that it will continue to go unchallenged, no matter to what lengths ruthlessness (as in Spain) or outrage (as in Austria) is carried.
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