Things have moved so rapidly during the past six weeks that the ballan d'essai liberated by "The Times" on September 7, whicn created such a sensation at the time, is likely to be overlooked, and yet in retrospect that leading article either profoundly influenced the trend of British negotiations with Germany, or demonstrated a capacity for prophecy which must be regarded as nothing Short of marvellous. The story was carried by the news-agencies at the time, but now that the full text of the editorial in question is to hand, and detailed accounts of the percussions in Britain, and throughout the rest of the world, reference to the incidence may not seem out-of place. Some seventeen innocent looking lines at the end of the first leading article in "The Times" on September 7, raised the storm. They read In that case it might be worth while for the Czechoslovak Government to consider whether they should exclude altogether the project which has found favour in some quarters, of making Czechoslovakia a more homogeneous State by the secession of that fringe of alien populations who are contiguous to the nations by which they are united by race. In any case the wishes of the population concerned would seem to be a decisively important element in any solution that can hope to be regarded as permanent, and the advantages to Czechoslovakia of becoming a homogeneous State might conceivably outweigh the obvious disadvantages of losing the Sudeten German districts of the borderland.
If that meant anything at all it was a r commendation to Prague that it should dis: pose itself in readiness to surrender the Sudeten districts as the best, and probab! the only solution of the crisis. It was or which, apparently, was not in the consider ation of either the British or foreign public at the time, and the fact that a journal of the standing of "The Times" should have made such a recommendation, aroused the belief that the British Government had at least inspired it.
The sequel is best told in the words of the "World's Press News" in its interesting account of the incident "The Times" plan to redraw Czechoslovakia's frontiers was flashed round the world, spread consternation and indignation in Czechoslovakia, dismay in France, and no doubt jubilation in Germany.
The foreign correspondents, the Czechs, the French, the Germans, the Americans sped to the Foreign Office for the press conference in combative mood.
Outside the conference room, excited groups argued, expostulated, called upon high heaven to witness the new enormities of "perfidious Albion."
British correspondents counselled calm, pointing out that the Continental conception of "The Times" as a sort of ventriloquist's dummy for the British Government was dangerously misleading—but with no noticeable effect.
It is a very long time since the Press Cor-rider was as lively as this; it was as if a hive of bees had been disturbed. And all because of seventeen lines in "The Times."
Some of the Americans seemed to favour making a complaint against the gross fashion in which the Press had been misled, if this were what the Government were thinking.
"They've been fooling us" said one well-known U.S. correspondent.
Presently the correspondents filed into the conference. It was left to a Pole to put to the blandly smiling member of the Press department who was "taking" the conference, the question in everybody's mind.
"Was here anything to say, any comment on the leader in 'The Times' today?" There was an odd tension in the room. Ah, yes. Well they were not responsible for everything that appeared in "The Times"; the passage they no doubt had in mind did not represent the British Government's view.
An Australian journalist asked if perhaps the idea had been "toyed with" at the Foreign Office. No, sir.
And so it went on; the leader had not been officially inspired, its views were not the views of the Government at least so far as the offending paragraph was concerned. The conclusion to be drawn was, consequently, that within the inner fastnesses of the editorial offices of "The Times" this particular solution of the Czechoslovak problem has been discovered, and issued to the world as probably the best way out of the troubles which were giving so much anxiety, Whatever the Foreign Office had to say about the subject "The Times" laid remarkably low, maintaining the reticence of B'rer Rabbit despite the furore of comment it had stirred up. It neither withdrew what it had said, nor supported the Foreign Office in the statement it issued.
Some few weeks later it transpired that the solution of the Czechoslovak crisis followed precisely the lines which "The Times" had suggested. Prague was persuaded under considerable pressure to cede that "fringe of alien populations who are contiguous -to the' nation with which they are united by race." A degree of intelligent anticipation had been displayed which amounted almost to prescience. "The Times" had scored, and scored heavily. Unpopular as it proved to be on September 7 the fact remains that} after Mr. Chamberlain had seen Herr Hitler on three occasions, and the crisis taken right up to the very last minute, the solution which had been suggested on September 7, and had aroused such indignation, was the one which had ultimately to be adopted. Conceding that the Foreign Office had nothing to do with the inspiration of the article, and that the idea originated in the editorial mind of the paper in question, the average man will find a remarkable coincidence in the similarity of the solution then suggested anc that which was ultimately reached. He will ask a very natural question, as to why, if this arrangement was so obviously the soltion on September 7, it took so long for the various governments to perceive it, or alternatively he will ask why, if it were recognized as the only way out, it was necessary to maintain alarums and excursions for so long, before the idea became an accomplished fact. Czechoslovakia has been and is being deprived of its fringes, and is being transformed into the homogeneous state which was foreseen, and if "The Times" alone could foresee in it the only method of resolving the difficulty, much cannot be said for those men who could only appreciate it when it was finally thrust under their very noses. The great journal may not have been specifically inspired, but this at least can be said for it—it certainly seemed to have possessed a grasp of the problem which was at that time apparent nowhere else except in the mind of Herr Hitler. And so the public is left with but one idea on the subject now, and that must be that if "The Times" were not inspired in its comment, its comment certainly inspired the settlement.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.