Word: becks
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...firm accord. Any nation in accord with Hitler must chime in with his aversion to the Treaty of Versailles, the very document that re-created Poland after her 300-year subjugation. The climax of paradox was reached in Geneva last week when Marshal Pilsudski's long, lean Colonel Beck rose to make a bold declaration unique in League history and tantamount to tearing up a portion of the Treaty of Versailles...
...treaty was the Polish Minority Treaty, vesting in the League authority to compel the Polish Government to give adequate protection to Jews and other "minority peoples" in Poland. Without success Poland has several times urged the Great Powers to put their minority peoples under similar protection. Last week Colonel Beck arose to rasp: "Pending the bringing into force of a general and uniform system for the protection of minorities, my Government finds itself compelled to refuse, as from today, all co-operation with international organizations [i. e. the League] in the matter of supervision of the application by Poland...
...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 and the Pilsudski Press was hailing "the historical day of Poland...
...morrow tall, glacial Sir John Simon chastised Colonel Beck before the Assembly with the menace, "It will not be possible for any state to release itself from obligations of this kind by unilateral action." M. Barthou followed with a speech in the firm but supple tradition of the Old Diplomacy. France would no more stand for treaty-breaking than Britain, he warned, but "France as the friend and ally of Poland" was sure that the Warsaw Government would reconsider before setting "an example which other countries might be tempted to follow"; after all, the very existence of Poland depended upon...
From the German viewpoint Louis Barthou is thus the very old Devil. Rightly Adolf Hitler was in a white fury last week at the seeming entente between France and Russia. It was this which caused Dictator Hitler to egg on Dictator Pilsudski and Colonel Beck. In Berlin the Realmleader was reported to have stormed to an official of the Wilhelmstrasse last week, "If France and Russia have an alliance, then let this alliance come out into the open!" But such is not the method of the Old Diplomacy. Without an alliance France drew England into the Great...