Word: sir
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...peerless civil servants of the British Foreign Office took charge of all details. M. Barthou, who crossed the channel for a personal conference with Sir John, ostentatiously returned last week to Paris. British public opinion was prepared for what was coming by a few intimations that what Europe needs is a return to "the Spirit of Locarno." Nine years ago at Locarno, Switzerland, gold pens squiggled in the hands of Benito Mussolini, Austen Chamberlain, and the late great peace men of France and Germany. Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann. Today the Locarno Treaty, still in full force, binds...
That Britain is acting only as godfather, Sir John Simon crisply made clear when he rose to give the Eastern Locarno its first public airing last week in the House of Commons. "We are not undertaking any new obligation," he insisted. "We under take no obligation at all!" But Sir John then threw the full moral weight of His Majesty's Government behind the following peace program...
...Soviet Russia to enter the League of Nations.** Strongly urging this, Sir John cried to the House of Commons: "Which do you prefer, this immense power [Russia] inside or outside the collective system of the League?" He then took a remarkable poke at League-Quitter Japan: "I neither wish to proclaim Japan the King's enemy nor Soviet Russia as my special friend! . . . Certainly we are prepared to welcome Russia warmly to the League of Nations if Russia makes application. We are satisfied it will contribute to the peace of the world...
...conclusion, Sir John read to the House a cablegram from Premier Mussolini throwing Italy's full weight into the scale with Britain, France and Russia. Playing his stern godfather role to the limit Sir John cabled to Berlin and Warsaw, instructing His Majesty's ambassadors in the two capitals to bring the Eastern Locarno strongly to the attention of those governments. Poland, which must do as France and Russia wish in any case, was thus subjected to formal urging so as to avoid seeming to crack down exclusively on Adolf Hitler...
Seasoned diplomats saw no grounds for such hysterics, recognized that Sir John had only made the opening move in an Eastern Locarno game which is likely to be long. If Adolf Hitler can be induced to sign?and by signing the Eastern Locarno he would renounce Nazidom's most cherished dreams for expansion?so much the better for peace. The opening gambit last week faced the Hitler Government with proof that Nazi Germany has been diplomatically encircled. In blazoning this encirclement to the whole world Godfather Sir John acted as he did partly because Fathers Barthou and Litvinoff...