Berlin Diary (32 page)

A
BOARD
Mauretania
(
undated
)

A dull voyage. Sir Percy Bate, chairman of Cunard, assures me there will be no war.

W
ASHINGTON
,
July
3

Hope I can stay a little while in my native land. It takes some getting used to again after being almost continuously away since the age of twenty-one. Little awareness here or in New York of the European crisis, and Tess says I’m making myself most unpopular by taking such a pessimistic view. The trouble is everyone here knows all the answers. They
know
there will be no war. I wish I
knew
it. But I think there will be war unless Germany backs down, and I’m not certain at all
she will, though of course it’s a possibility. Congress here in a hopeless muddle. Dominated by the Ham Fishes, Borahs, Hiram Johnsons, who stand for no foreign policy at all, it insists on maintaining the embargo on arms as if it were immaterial to this Republic who wins a war between the western democracies and the Axis. Roosevelt’s hands absolutely tied by Congress—a situation like that which confronted Lincoln at the beginning of his first term, except that he did something about it, and Roosevelt, they say here, is discouraged and won’t. He sees the European situation correctly, but because he does, because he sees the danger, the Borahs and Fishes call him a war-monger.

Oh well, it’s pleasant to be here with the family and loaf and relax for a few fleeting days.

N
EW
Y
ORK
,
July
4

A pleasant afternoon at the Fair with the Bill Lewises. We must start back to Europe tomorrow. Alarming news from Danzig, and the office worried I won’t get back in time. Hans Kaltenborn so sure there will be no war, he is sending his son off on his honeymoon to the Mediterranean, he tells me tonight.

A
BOARD
Queen Mary
,
July
9

Much good company aboard. Paul Robeson, whom I have not seen since he stormed London in
Show Boat
ten years or so ago. In the evening we sit and argue, Robeson, Constantine Oumansky, Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Tess, and I. Oumansky tells me he has been down to third class to lecture to some American students on “Soviet Democracy.” But he takes my
kidding good-naturedly. Soviet democracy! I do not envy him his job. His predecessor in Washington is now in the dog-house. I have known many Soviet diplomats, but they have all been liquidated sooner or later. Oumansky thinks the Soviets will line up with Britain and France in a democratic front against fascist aggression
if
Paris and London show they mean business and are not merely trying to manœuvre Russia into a war alone (or alone with Poland) against Germany. So far, he says, the British and French have done nothing but stall in their negotiations with the Kremlin.

Much wild ping-pong with Tess on this voyage.

L
ONDON
,
July
14

Paul White from New York and our “European staff,” consisting of Murrow, Tom Grandin from Paris, and myself here conferring on war coverage. We worked out technical matters such as transmission lines and short-wave transmitters and arranged to build up a staff of Americans (the New York
Times
, for example, has several Englishmen on its foreign staff) as regular staff correspondents, figuring that the American press associations and newspapers will not allow their men to broadcast, once the war starts. We hear our rival network plans to engage a number of big-name foreigners such as Churchill here, Flandin in France, Gayda in Italy, et cetera, but we think our plan is better. American listeners will want news, not foreign propaganda, if war comes. We distressed at the failure of the Poles to rush their new short-wave transmitter to completion, as this may leave us in a hole. A wild game of golf with Ed and it was good—after listening to my Labour friends in Parliament curse conscription and the Conservatives
express hopes for further appeasement—to hear my caddy say in a thick cockney: “Seems as ’ow we’ll have to give that bloke Hitler a damned good beatin’ one o’ these days….”

P
ARIS
(
undated
)

John Elliott, formerly Berlin, now Paris correspondent of the
Herald Tribune
, tells me that in all the years he has been writing the day-to-day history of Europe for his paper he has received but a dozen or so letters from readers who were interested enough in what he had written to write him. But after two or three broadcasts from Paris during the March 15 Prague occupation he received scores of letters, praising, protesting, inquiring.

G
ENEVA
,
July
28

Fodor and Gunther dropped in tonight and we argued and talked most of the night through. John fairly optimistic about peace. Fodor, a trained engineer himself, had a lot of material about Germany’s lack of iron. You can’t store much iron ore, Fodor says. John’s latest,
Inside Asia
, going blazes. We argued a little about India, on which subject, I fear, I’m a crank. John not so impressed by Gandhi as I was.

G
ENEVA
,
August
3

Much golf, including a comical game with Joe Phillips, and tramps in the near-by mountains, and swims in the lake with my family, with whom I’m beginning to get acquainted again. From a personal viewpoint it will be nice if there’s no war. But must get off to Danzig next week to see.

B
ERLIN
,
August
9

The people in the train coming up from Basel last night looked clean and decent, the kind that made us like the Germans, as people, before the Nazis. For breakfast in the Adlon this morning I asked for a glass of orange juice, if they had any.

“Certainly we have oranges,” the waiter said, haughtily. But when he brought the breakfast there was no orange juice. “Not a one in the hotel,” he admitted sheepishly.

A discussion this day with Captain D. A World War officer of proved patriotism, he was against war during the Munich crisis, but changed, I noticed, after April 28, when Hitler denounced the Polish and British treaties. He became violent today at the very mention of the Poles and British. He thundered: “Why do the English butt in on Danzig and threaten war over the return of a German city? Why do the Poles [sic] provoke us? Haven’t we the right to a German city like Danzig?”