EVENING REFLECTIONS
Today's Conversation

Mr. Chamberlain is in Paris and will confer everything today with the President of the Council. We are warned that the conversation will not be easy for him, as we suspected.

The English minister arrives, in fact, at our place, empty-handed and has taken care to let us know. He comes to document himself, to make contact. He has no plan to propose. He will exchange views and educate himself like an observer, we were going to say like a schoolboy who has everything to learn.
At first sight, this would not displease us, if there were all the same, in the visitor's mind, the beginning of a plan, an outline of an agreement. But there is nothing and it will doubtless be thought that this nothingness is excessive. We think so and we say so.

The English minister has no solution to propose, because he is undecided and he is undecided because he would like to bet on both sides.
The English government no longer wants the Geneva protocol. We do not blame it for that. But it does not want England to remain isolated either. It says to itself that it must not expose itself to the grave danger of a new German aggression, but that it must not encourage this aggression by a threat of encirclement.
And its conclusion is this: let us get close enough to France so as not to go it alone, but not so close as to bear the responsibility for a German attack. Which is more or less the same as saying: let us leave things as they are, let us talk, let us see what happens, let us not quarrel with Berlin and let us try to have others resolve the squaring of the circle.

At no time has Mr. Chamberlain thought of a defensive alliance with us, that is to say, the only way to ward off the danger.
This little game can go on for a long time; because with such a state of mind, the English minister could cross the Channel every quarter, but he would not advance the problem one step. On the other hand, this little game devilishly favors Germany, which may well hope to pull through the Danzig affair and not have to answer too much about its armaments.
Germany is logically authorized, by the English attitude, to maneuver us. She will not fail to do so. Whether it is a question of her breaches of the clauses of the Treaty of Poland, the evacuation of Cologne, or the revision of the treaty itself, she will take advantage of the divisions between allies and it is we who risk being, once again, the dupes of her bad faith.

What will Mr. Herriot do? Will he succeed in persuading Mr. Chamberlain that he is, without realizing it, doing Germany's business? Will he convince him that by sacrificing the Treaty of Versailles we are sacrificing common security?
We must hope so. But it may also be that our Prime Minister lets himself be won over by his partner's indecision. Then, it is the German plan that we denounced the day before yesterday, it is the delaying policy that prevails. It is a new bonus granted by the victors to temporization and preparation for revenge

ANDRE PAYER.