M. Daladier's " No "
The decision that Herr Hitler should get his first answer from M. Daladier rather than from Mr. Chamberlain was well-advised. The whole of German propaganda has been directed against Great Britain, and, quite apart from the patent and crude attempt to separate France and Britain, the illusion that France has no real heart for war seems to have taken a genuine hold on the German people. It cannot have survived the French Prime Minister's speech, which was a model of what such an utterance should be. It was firm where firmness was needed, and conciliatory where that note was called for. Nothing could have been better than the passage in which M. Daladier credited the German soldier in the trenches with the reflection, " My Government protested against the Treaty of Versailles in the name of the right of the peoples to self-determination but it has seized Vienna and Austria, Prague and Czecho- Slovakia, Warsaw and Poland." The bitterness of the speech delivered by Herr Hitler in Berlin a few hours earlier revealed his recognition of the final failure of his technique of conquest without battle. M. Daladier's declaration that " we are fighting, and will go on fighting, to obtain a final guarantee of security " is the final revelation to Germany of the prospect which her Leader's policy has opened up. To a population schooled successfully to believe there would be no war in the West the disillusionment must be pro- found—as the intensity of the " peace-drive " indicates.
