The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-03-25

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 Today he is not only minister of war but Premier of France, and as such he is under pressure today far more than Neville Chamberlain. For the chief aim of Hitler, whether he moves east first or west, is to crush Ger many's ancient enemy.
 The life of Ed0uard Daladier has been strangely intertwined with the life of Adolf Hitler. They have come to grips before. It was one day after Hitler first became Chancellor of the Reich on January 31, 1883, that Da- ladier first became Premier of France.
 France needed a strong man then. Germany got one and kept him. But France had a success sion of crises, government turn- overs and new premiers, one af- ter the other, until April g, 1888, when Hitler achieved his then greatest triumph, the annexation of Austria. On the day follow ing, France once again summoned the hard-boiled, hard-fisted son of a small-town baker to pilot her through approaching war clouds.
 INSIDE MUNICH
 The entire world knows how close France came to war when Hitler pulled his next crisis at Munich last October. But probably only a handful know of the dra- ma tic debate which attended it.
 Chamberlain and Daladier had come to Munich expecting to sit down with Hitler and Mussolini in a sincere effort to straighten out the problem of Czechoslovakia and come to an understanding which would mean permanent peace. Originally, President Roose- welt, who had inspired the con- ference, suggested an eight-power gathering including Russia, Po- land, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the country which had most at stake.
 Instead Chamberlain and Da- ladier sat down opposite the two glaring dictators of Europe. and were forced immediately to listen to a harangue from Hit Ter. The German chancellor waved his arms, walked the floor, scOlded, fumed, and raved. Obviously the fact that the lead- CTS of two powerful democracies had been forced to come to him, forced to sit at his feet, was one of the great triumphs of his life. He made the most of 1t.
 During his tirade Hitler laid down the terms of the Czech Sur-. render, and borrowed verbatim the conditions which the Allies had dictated to Germany in 1918. He specified that the Czechs were to remove no personal property from Sudetenland, no clothing, no cattle, sheep, pigs, goats = and he went on to specify every de- tail, paraphrasing the terms of the World War armistice.
 Chamberlain sat and listened.
 Finally Daladier could stand 1t no longer. He jumped to his feet.
 FRENCH ULTIMATUM
 The exact words which he used were not taken down, and never will be known. But approximate ly what he said was this:
 "Let us make sure that we get this straight. M. Hitler has laid down certain conditions. He wants this and this and that.
 ''Now let him, in turn, under stand certain things. If he wants war, he can have it. France is ready to fight. Our army is mobilized and if Ger many wants war she can have 1t tomorrow.
 - France is accepting no uIti- matums. We came here to negotiate. Instead we are hand ed an ultimatum. Until that ultimatum is withdrawn you can count France out of this discussion"
 Then the under -sized Premier of France left the room.
 He went out to a long ante- room adjacent to the conference hall. Field Marshal General Goering, Nazi Aviation Minister, leaped up and came running af- ter him. For nearly an hour thereafter, Daladier paced up and down that anteroom, smoking cig- arettes one after the oth r, light