INTERNATIONAL: Gentlemen's Peace

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Two forthright Frenchmen in London last week talked His Majesty's Government into what may well prove Britain's most momentous decision since the War.

Today France has a tall, keen, young Premier who goes to Scotland every season to shoot grouse. This trivial fact was of vast, imponderable weight last week. It enabled tall Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin to rank as a gentleman and a sportsman in the eyes of the tall Britons with whom he had come to negotiate. They got on famously—so well, indeed, that the British Cabinet voluntarily sacrificed their sacrosanct week end, worked Saturday and Sunday to oblige Premier Flandin and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval. Normally in London any statesman rash enough to suggest that the Government forego their week end is met either with a freezing stare or the suave, stock British excuse: "Impossible, I am afraid. In Paris, yes. But in London even a rumor that the Cabinet may find it necessary to break their week end upsets the City."

On arrival the French Delegation made for the Savoy Hotel, as French diplomats in London always do, deeming its food the best in the city. That night Premier Flandin and M. Laval were obliged, however, to eat amid the stuffy splendor of Londonderry House because the Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry have what amounts to a permanent social option on Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald and any celebrity guests of His Majesty's Government.

This tiresome chore done, the Frenchmen got busy next morning with Britons who pull more weight in the National Government than does the Prime Minister, namely, Conservative Party Leader Stanley Baldwin, Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain and such bright younger men as Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, chief economic adviser to the Government, and Captain Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal.

"On the Rhine!" Action last week was possible largely because Mr. Baldwin took such fright at Germany's increasing air power that he proclaimed last year, "The Rhine—that is where our frontier lies!" (TIME, Aug. 13). The scare thus started has since been etched deep into the British mind. The nation and the Cabinet were ripe last week for an elaborate dossier placed by M. Laval impressively upon the big oak table at No. 10 Downing St. This dossier of the French Secret Service and General Staff purported to reveal: 1) just how grossly Adolf Hitler has violated the Treaty of Versailles by rearming Germany, and 2) just how great is Britain's potential danger from a sudden Nazi air attack.

After 72 hours of intensive negotiation, M. Laval and Sir John released the text of what was at least a formal agreement. To newshawks eager to call it a pact, Pierre Laval observed indulgently, "I should call it a full agreement, but I see no reason why you should not call it a pact."

Major Agreement points:

Aerial Attack: Britain and France "resolved to invite Italy, Germany and Belgium to ... undertake immediately to give the assistance of their air forces to whichever of them might be the victim of unprovoked aerial aggression by one of the contracting parties."