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members of the German Embassy reaffirmed their statement
and advised him to get the news from Berlin the following
morning.
 
 
A few minutes later, my friend ran into Friedrich
Sieburg, the Paris correspondent of the FRANKFURTER
ZEITUNG, - one of the outstanding German correspondents
abroad, so I am told, and a close friend of von Ribbentrop.
Sieburg took my friend into a corner and "holding his head
in his hands" said: "This will make the most awful mess. Ribbentrop has Just received the news and he is going to
get Hitler on the telephone and try to dissuade him from
this mad publication. 
 
 
The next morning my friend listened to the German
radio news and heard nothing alarming. He then went to
see his friends at the German Embassy and asked what it
was all about. They told him that Ribbentrop had spoken
with Hitler during the night and had dissuaded him from 
the publication of the letter, pointing out that it would 
undo everything which he, Ribbentrop, had been trying to
accomplish by his Paris visit. My friend was again told
categorically that it was a fact that such a letter had
been sent a few days previously to Mussolini, and it was
added that a copy of the letter was in the German Embassy
here. My friend again expressed incredulity that it had