A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE atmosphere in London on Wednesday evening when the first news of the Vienna coup came through was charged with sinister, reminiscence. Everyone was already thinking of twenty years ago. On the afternoon of July 25, 1914, the Austrian ultimatum to Servia had expired, though fighting did not actually begin till three days later. And the possibilities of what seemed to be happening in Austria on July 25th, 1934, were scarcely less alarming. Dollfuss was dead. Did that mean that the Nazis were in control ? If they were would Italy march in ? And Czechoslovakia ? In that case what would Hitler do ? If he intervened in support of the Austrian Nazis would France take action ? And would that raise the question of our Locarno obligations ? Those questions and others like them shot in succession through the brain of anyone who realized what the operation of the forces and counter-forces engendered in Europe today might be. Obviously a European war was possible. I let fall the phrase to someone I was meeting that night at a London terminus. The porter who was carrying the baggage overheard and started back. " We heard something about that earlier in the evening," he said in a lowered voice. I hastened to say that I was putting possibilities at their worst. Fortu- nately such first alarms look exaggerated now.
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