Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-08-21
Critical Week Ahead

Europe has passed the first in a
new series of critical week ends
without the lightning attack which
Is expected from Chancellor Hitler,
but it goes into a period filled with
grave prospects.
Europe's next two week ends are
likely to be jittery ones with Hitler
speaking this Sunday at Tannen-
berg in commemoration of the
twenty-flfth anniversary of the bat
tie which turned the tide of Russian
invasion, and which is considered the
greatest German victory of the Great
War. One week later the Nazi party
congress will open at Nurnberg.
But before these two events occur
Europe will 60 through tense and
expectant days. The German Army
is strung out along the Polish border
from the Baltic to Eastern Slovakia,
ready to march into Poland. On its
side Poland is calmly prepared,
adamant in its refusal to recede an
inch from its opposition to reunion
of Danzig with Germany and de-
termined to defend, even against
heavy odds, its independence, which
it believes is the real target of Ger
man attack.
Tomorrow the British inner cabi-
net, composed chiefly of Prime Min
lister Neville Chamberlain, Foreign
Secretary Lord Halifax, Chancellor
of the Exchequer Sir John Simon
and Home Secretary Sir Samuel
Hoare, will survey the European sit
uation, and will have before it the
question of Britains course in the
developing crisis, particularly as it
concerns possible efforts to compro-
mise the Polish-German quarrel by
arranging some Polish concession to
German demands which will remove
the threat of immediate hostilities.
The decision as to whether the
Danzig issue will be solved peacefully
or by war does not now rest in British
hands, however Britain has care
fully refrained from any open move
ment to settle German-Po issues,
and the extent of underground efforts
to satisfy German demands, indeed
whether there have been any such
efforts at all, is a moot question.
Whether Poland will fight is ques-
ton which will be decided exclusively
by the Poles, and will not depend, as
In the case of Czecho-Slovakia, on
whether Britain and France honor
their obligations under the mutual
assistance agreement with Poland,
which significantly is now being
formalized, and thus strengthened.
That fact should warn Hitler that
his foreign minister, Joachim Won
Ribbentrop, is ill-informed if he
maintains that Britain and France
will not fight.
The essential point cannot be es-
capped, however, that Hitler has not
yet irrevocably committed himself to
press the Polish question to a con-
clusion at this particular moment,
although he is rapidly approaching
that point and may so commit him
self either in his Tannenberg speech
next Sunday or at the opening of
the Nurnberg congress the week fol-
lowing.
All the evidence still points to the
eagerness of the German people to
avoid war, and Hitler, as bellicose as
he sometimes becomes, must be ex-
pected to weigh in the balance his
own popularity with the German
masses if they are led into war, par
ticularly one in which lightning at
tack might not prove successful, with
the result that the conflict would re-
solve itself into another war of attri-
ton in which Germany's chances of
ultimate success are doubtful.