THE WEEK
 
      28 VICTORIA STREET.
 
      LONDON, S.W.1
 
      
 
 
May 17th 1939.
 
      
 
 
TELEPHONE
 
      ABBEY 1954
 
      THE CRISIS
 
      
 
 
Key-points in the crisis as it develops towards its climax 
      are these:-
 
      (l) The Anglo-Soviet situation is much less bright than the Downing 
      Street inspirations to the British press suggest. The position 
      in a nutshell is that on April 16 the Soviet Government proposed 
      a Pact of Mutual Aid against aggression, based on a defensive 
      military alliance between Britain, France and the Soviet Union, 
      and on that basis erecting a really unbreakable battler of small 
      states too.
 
      
 
 
The British Government gave no reply to that proposal until 
      May 8th, but in the meantime while telling the House of Commons 
      that everything was going well, suggested to everyone that on 
      the one hand the Poles would object to such an arrangement, and 
      -- to other people -- that Mussolini, Franco, Salazar and the 
      Japanese would dislike it too.
 
      
 
 
On May 8th the British Government rejected the Soviet offer.
 
      
 
 
On the same day the Germans and Italians concluded their military 
      pact.
 
      
 
 
Izvestia Article
 
      
 
 
The outline of the Soviet reply to the British rejection was 
      contained in the now famous Izvestia article of the middle of 
      last week --which even now several British newspapers could not 
      bring themselves to publish in full, though it was very evidently 
      the hottest news available on the possibility of preserving the 
      peace.
 
      
 
 
Then came the Soviet official reply. And to-day (Wednesday 
      May 17) the Cabinet is due to turn it down -- with the proviso 
      that the whole thing had better be discussed at Geneva.
 
      
 
 
"Impersonal"
 
      
 
 
There was a comical feature to a tragic affair in so far as 
      the British Government, believing that the Soviet Government 
      is conducted on as "personal" a basis as is the British 
      Government, and that -- as British officials always suppose -- 
      "if y %ou only snaffle the right man" you get to do business 
      regardless whether the business you do makes sense or not, thought 
      that if only they could get Molotov to Geneva they would thereby 
      persuade the anxious British public that things were going well.
 
      
 
 
Then they learned that the Soviet Government was not at the 
      moment thinking of sending Molotov but might send Potemkin.
 
      
 
 
Just after that came the Soviet reply to the British "counter-proposals" 
      and the British press, inspired directly from No. 10, suddenly 
      issued (on Tuesday May 16) a series of suggestions to the effect 
      that the