Word: barthou
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...small nations, such as Switzerland and Panama, still hostile to Russia's entry. The Swiss Government, strongly conservative, grew so excited that Swiss reporters at Berne conjectured fantastically, "If Russia is admitted we may resign and the League may have to move out of Switzerland." It took M. Barthou, Sir John and the Italian Chief Delegate, tall, hollow-cheeked Baron Pompeo Aloisi, about 24 hours to get the drafting work going quietly forward again in hotel rooms without protest...
...nature of that ground went back directly to M. Barthou's general diplomatic background. It was he as French War Minister in 1921 who wrote the military clauses of the Franco-Polish Alliance. This alone enabled the re-created Polish State to maintain itself against Soviet Russia and against Germany's desire to recover the Polish Corridor. In the whole post-War period up to last winter Poland was regarded as the fortunate and presumably grateful protege of France...
...Berlin proposed Adolf Hitler's most statesmanly idea thus far, namely, that the Polish Corridor question should be put officially on ice for ten years by a non-aggression pact between the two countries. This was duly signed (TIME. Feb. 4). It profoundly vexed France and sent M. Barthou, who had just come in as Foreign Minister in the National Union Cabinet of Premier Gaston Doumergue, off on his alliance-mending tour of Europe (see below...
That meant that Poland was daring to scrap a portion of her Versailles obligations-as Germany would like to scrap all hers. Pilsudski was playing Hitler's game, providing a test case before the League. For France, for Louis Barthou, what...
...most that could be done was to organize, if possible, a joint rebuke to Poland by the three Great Powers now dominating the League. France, Britain and Italy. Overnight M. Barthou sought the co-operation of Sir John and Baron Aloisi. The Frenchman's role was exquisitely delicate, for should he himself crack down too hard on Colonel Beck, Poland might take such offense as to cast her vote in the League Council against admitting Russia, and the Council can act only by unanimity. In Warsaw, meanwhile, streets had been beflagged as if in celebration of a military victory...