DANUBIAN ANXIETIES

Commonwealth and Foreign

FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Vienna.

THE coronation fell at a timely moment. All eyes are on England today, and destiny, that incalculable stage manager, seems to be providing one opportunity after another for her to display her strength and wealth to the statesmen of the nations at close quarters, in the magnificent setting that her leaders excel in devising. The jubilee and funeral of King George V, the accession and abdication of King Edward, the coronation of King George VI, all these seem to the onlooker in Danubian Europe less the accidents of fate than events falling into their allotted place in some stupendous drama directed by the gods in high Olympus. The other scenes and players are Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, with their vast armies massed in the background, the cloaked and enigmatic giant that is Soviet Russia, the patient and enlightened burgher that is France.

In the Danubian and Balkan countries—Austria, Czecho- slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey—which all have painful memories either of alien domination by great foreign powers or of disaster suffered under their wing, the hopes of rulers and statesmen, united in the conviction that the smaller countries have nothing to gain and much to lose from a new war, are pinned on British rearmament.

For this reason their representatives hurry to London with especial interest on such occasions as that of May 12th. The four years lost by England while Germany was rearming to the teeth have left the two martial dictatorships of Europe in a position of superiority, in actual arms, that must be a constant temptation to men who believe in a new war and in striking while the advantage is on their side. Events in Spain have shown how far such men are ready to go.

For this reason the Danubian and Balkan countries, being equally uncertain whether they would be able to keep out of a new war or on which side they would have to come in, will feel themselves insecure until the lag in British rearmament is made good, and they are intently watching its progress. With a Britain strongly armed they will feel easier, for the general view is that the one thing that can— none is certain that it will—Save the peace is the lurking fear of provoking the enmity of an England mighty in arms.

The meeting at Venice between Signor Mussolini and Chancellor Schuschnigg of Austria has revived fears, for it left the clear impression in Danubian Europe that the halo- German partnership has become ominously dose. Already Italian and German forces were co-operating in Spain, a country with which neither Germany nor Italy has any quarrel, but the general assumption was that the essential condition of the partnership was that riothing should be done to disturb the independence of Austria, Italy's protégé.

But after Venice it became clear that Italy would not again move troops to the Austrian frontier if Austrian independence were threatened, possibly because her commitments in Abyssinia and Spain deprive her of the physical strength to do so, and the inference is that, for the sake of the partnership with Berlin, Signor Mussolini has reconciled himself to the ultimate victory of German ambitions, in some form, in Austria.

That an Italian campaign against Czechoslovakia was simultaneously opened, and that the Italian influence in Hungary now works in double harness with German diplomacy in seeking to improve Hungarian relations with Rumania and Yugoslavia, but not with Czechoslovakia, showed that halo-German policy in future was jointly to be directed to isolating Czechoslovakia by separating her from her friends and encouraging her enemies.

But the most ominous thing of all is the destruction of Guernica by German aircraft. In England the significance of this event seems to have been missed, but the Danubian and Balkan neighbours of Germany and Italy attach the gravest importance to it. It served no military end. It will not hasten the subjugation of the Basques—apparently the first small European nation due to be enslaved by the martial dictatorships. No Jews, Marxists or Bolshevists suffered by this first large-scale use of the new German army, but only Basque peasant-folk going to market.

In the view of military observers in Danubian Europe Germany is using the Spanish operations pre-eminently as a means to test her new guns, tanks and aircraft, and the destruction of Guernica was the first rehearsal, in miniature, of the methods to be used in any new major conflict. "Totali- tarian warfare" as advocated by the writings of General Ludendorff and Professor Banse ; unrestricted frightfulness; the extermination of civilian population and destruction of private property to the maximum limit possible. Guernica gave the first opportunity to test how long a time is needed completely to destroy a small town and its population. Less than four hours.

Guernica is the gravest warning that Europe has had yet.

Danubian and Balkan Europe is thus watching with bated breath the pace of British rearmament and the further development of the Italo-German partnership. The pacts and alliances made by the small countries are not conclusive. Faced with a major conflict in Europe they would desperately try to remain neutral or go with the side they thought likely to prevail. Their constant preoccupation is to assess the strength, in arms, man-power and staying-power; of this or that group of Great Powers.

Yugoslavia, through her treaties with France and the Little Entente, her new friendship with Italy and her good relations with Germany, has a foot in all camps. Czecho- slovakia, surrounded by dangers, puts her faith in her treaties with distant France and Soviet Russia and the dogged hope that England would move against an aggressor. Hungary, surrounded by enemies, faces the prospect of immediate submergence by her hostile neighbours if war breaks out and the horns of her dilemma are whether to pin her hopes of a subsequent glorious -resurrection to a hard-and-fast association with Berlin-Rome or to play for a safe neutrality. Mimania, even farther away from her friends and faced with the prospect of either a German or a Russian occupation in a European war, whether she be neutral or not, would be glad to be on the side likely ultimately to prove stronger if she only knew which side that is. (The eternal missing link in the chain of statesmen's calculations in all these countries is the uncertainty about British action.) Bulgaria, hemmed in and isolated, is rearming as rapidly as her slender purse and German credits allow, but has also bought a few British tanks in order to keep the line to London open—in case. Greece, looking longingly towards the peaceable but distant and incalculable democracies, feels the unpleasant closeness of the powerful Italian fleet to her shores.

British rearmament is the dominant preoccupation of all these countries, and the consensus of their feeling about it is, "Get on with it, quickly ! "