]]]]]]]]]]   PEACE! ARMS CONTROL! DISARMAMENT!      [[[[[[[[[[[[[[ 
   
     "National Socialist Germany wants peace because of its funda-
mental convictions... Germany needs peace and desires peace!
     "Germany has solemnly recognized and guaranteed France her fron-
tiers... Germany has concluded a non-aggression pact with Poland... 
[and] we shall adhere to it unconditionally... Germany neither intends 
nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria...
     "The German government is ready to agree to any limitation which 
leads to the abolition of the heaviest arms, especially suited for 
aggression... Germany declares herself ready to agree to any limita-
tion whatsoever of the caliber of artillery, battleships, cruisers, 
and torpedo boats. In like manner, the German government is ready to 
agree to the limitation of tonnage for submarines, or to their com-
plete abolition..."

                              ADOLF HITLER, speech to the Reichstag,           
               21 May 1935, five days after re-introducing universal 
            military service in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles

                         ********


[Ribbentrop: Nazi Foreign minister, former champagne salesman; Sir 
Stanley Baldwin: British Prime Minister; "T.J.:" Thomas Jones, Bald-
win's secretary; Lord and Lady Astor: Elder British Conservative Party 
members; Geoffrey Dawson: Editor of the London "Times."
     What follows is an excerpt from a book referenced below.]
 
     Hitler, the artist -- he had some gifts as a mimic -- must often 
have split his sides with laughter at his stooges' naiveness... The 
obviousness and naiveness of Nazi propaganda must not blind us to its 
effectiveness with those who sopped it up...
     When Ribbentrop came over, T.J. took him down to Sandwich, the 
Astors' sea-side residence, where he would meet a Cabinet minister in 
the shape of Inskip, now Minister for the Coordination of Defence, as 
well as Lothian and the Astors. Inskip, an old lawyer whose chief 
interest in life was that the Prayer Book should not be revised, was 
Baldwin's answer, with characteristic indifference to the gravity of 
the situation, to the Tory demand for a Minister of Defence. "The 
Times History" tells us that both Baldwin and Dawson "agreed not to 
bring Churchill in." T.J. warned Ribbentrop that Inskip's real inte-
rest was Church matters and that he would be sure to bring up (as he 
did) not Nazi armaments, but the Nazi persecution of the Church in 
Germany.
     The ex-champagne merchant with his bogus "von" was quite equal 
to this humbug. Humbug deserves humbug, and this is what he got. "Von 
Ribbentrop" [writes Jones in his "Diary and Letters, 1931-50"] "tact-
fully prefaced his defence by saying he knew the Archbishop of Canter-
bury and George Bell of Chichester, and went on to explain that a new 
Reformation was proceeding in Germany in the interests of religion. 
Out of the present confusion a new and better Christian church would 
emerge."
     The regular gramophone record followed.
     When all is said and done, who was the greater fool -- Ribbentrop 
or Inskip?
                         A.L. Rowse, APPEASEMENT: A STUDY IN POLITICAL
                      DECLINE, 1933-1939 (W.W. Norton, New York, 1961)

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