INTERNATIONAL: Surprise? Surprise?

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Last week Adolf Hitler, the greatest Aggrandizer of the Reich since Frederick the Great, seized and occupied all but the Eastern Carpatho-Ukrainian tip of the 20-year-old Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. To the worldwide man in the street, and even the supposedly more knowing man in the stock exchange, it was Adolf Hitler's most sudden, most shocking surprise.

The world knew that Germany now economically and politically dominated emasculated Czecho-Slovakia. But the fact that Germany had recently gone through the diplomatic motions of requesting (and getting) currency adjustments, railroad, road and canal rights-of-way across Czecho-Slovakia seemed to indicate that the Reich was content with de facto subjugation. Had Herr Hitler not said that all he wanted was to get all the Germans back together again? Had he not signed a declaration with Britain not to do anything that might disturb the peace of Europe without consulting her?

It took less than 48 hours last week to send all these facts and factors over the dam. The people who own most in the world are supposed to know a good deal about what goes on in it. Obviously Herr Hitler caught them napping, for in Berne, Amsterdam, London, New York, markets fell last week and kept falling as big investors hastily unloaded in something very like a panic. If they had not known what Chancellor Hitler was going to do last week until he actually did it, how could they tell what he was going to do next?

Questions. Once the first shock of the grab had passed, all kinds of questions began to rear their puzzling heads. The first was: How surprised were the Governments of the world at the second Czecho-Slovak coup?

For weeks private correspondents from Czecho-Slovakia had spoken of the intense activity in Prague of German Gestapo agents. For a year young men like those who had circulated around Vienna in 1937-38, dropping a word here and a word there for Naziism, had been active in Prague. The swift, smooth pace of the occupation (see p. 17) showed that the Germans had made organized preparations for it well in advance.

If the British and French secret services did not know all this they were not worth their pay. That they did know it and did report it was made fairly evident at week's end when French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, badgered by Parliament for being taken by surprise by Herr Hitler's coup, blurted out that he had known something was in the wind as early as the Saturday before the Wednesday of the grab. He also said he had reported it to the British.

Next question the world wanted answered was: If Neville Chamberlain knew what was going to happen, why did he act as though he didn't?