INTERNATIONAL: Catechism for Hitler

What Adolf Hitler will eventually do to get all he wants for Germany is today Europe's most momentous secret. In March the Realmleader sent German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland and a fine-sounding set of peace proposals to Britain (TIME, April 13, et ante). It occurred to Britain's earnest young Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that perhaps the best way to find out what Adolf Hitler was thinking was to ask him. He wrote down a list of questions to which honest answers from Hitler would certainly be useful. He sent his manuscript to Pierre Etienne Flandin for additions, which the French Foreign Minister cheerfully supplied. Mr. Eden last month took his completed catechism to the British Cabinet where Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was delighted by its British candor and self-righteousness. Less delighted were Cabinet members whose idea of how to surprise a man's secrets is not to ask for them.

Last week the British Cabinet finished a two-week job of editing and polishing Mr. Eden's questions, after which the extraordinary document was dispatched to Britain's Ambassador to Germany Sir Eric Phipps to be handed to Adolf Hitler. All the good Conservative caution and breeding of which British gentlemen are capable had gone into toning down the original questions. In the whole document there was not a single question mark. Cabinet members had struck out all reference to Austria, Memel, Eupen and Malmedy, keeping those possible objectives of Adolf Hitler beyond the pale of polite conversation. They had struck out Captain Eden's question about Hitler's intentions regarding the refortification of the Rhineland. Most important of all, they had struck out every mention of Hitler's demand for "colonial equality of rights" lest the answer be too disagreeable for British public opinion.

What remained was a polite pecking at Hitler's peace memorandum. Behind the words bristled three great question marks: 1) the sanctity of Germany's future treaties; 2) the limitation of air fleets; 3) the inviolability of the map of Europe as it now stands.

The British Government inquired precisely what the Realmleader meant by asking that the League of Nations Covenant be separated from its basis in the Treaty of Versailles. Did Germany intend to repudiate all the remaining sections of that fat document and "any agreement which may be said to have its origin in the treaty of Versailles?" What did he mean by a brand new international court, with what powers? Why had he not included Russia, Latvia and Estonia in his proposed system of non-aggression pacts?

This last question, hitherto shelved by British diplomacy, was what last week ingratiated Soviet Russia at the same time that it irked Germany. The Russian objection that the British note gave unlimited opportunity for evasion was precisely its virtue in the eyes of the British gentlemen who framed it. Last week, after preliminary secrecy, the note was printed simultaneously in British and German newspapers. Commented the Frankfurter Zeitung sagely: ''Questions can be asked because you want to know what someone thinks or intends to do. They can be asked because you do not know yourself what you want. You can also ask questions for purely demagogic reasons. . . ."