SECRET ARMIES
18
March 26-27, 1938, at Cliveden, Lord and Lady Astor s country
estate at Taplow, Buckinghamshire, in the beautiful Thames
Valley.
When
the Prime Minister
and
his wife arrived at the
huge Georgian house rising out of a fairyland of gardens and
forests with the placid river for a background, the other guests
who had already arrived and their hosts were under the horse
shoe stone staircase to receive them.
The
vited
small but carefully selected group of guests had been in
play charades" over the week-end a game in which
"to
the participants form opposing sides and act a certain part while
the opponents try to guess what they are portraying. Every man
invited held a strategic position in the British government, and
was during this "charades party" week-end that they secretly
charted a course of British policy which will affect not only the
fate of the British Empire but the course of world events and the
it
lives of countless millions of
people for years to come.
This course, which indirectly menaces the peace and security
of the United States, deliberately launched England on a series
of maneuvers which made Hitler stronger and will inevitably
on the road to fascism. The British Parlia
ment and the British people do not know of these decisions,
some of which the Chamberlain government has already car
lead Great Britain
ried out.
And
without a knowledge of what happened during the talks
and what preceded them, the world
can only puzzle over an almost incomprehensible British foreign
in those historic two days
policy.
Present at this week-end gathering, besides the As tors and the
his wife, were the following:
Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Defense.
Prime Minister and
Alexander Cadogan, who replaced Sir Robert Vansittart as
adviser to the British Cabinet and who acts in a supervisory
Sir