SECRET ARMIES
20
history following other week-end parties. Lady Astor and her
coterie had been playing a more or less minor role in the affairs
of the largest empire in the world, but decisions recently reached
at her
week-end parties have already changed the
map
of Europe,
after almost incredible intrigues, betrayals and double-crossings,
carried through with the ruthlessness of a conquering Caesar and
the boundless ambitions of a Napoleon.
The week-ends at Cliveden House which culminated in the
historic
one of March
26-27,
began in the
fall
of 1937.
Lady
Astor had been having teas with Lady Ravensdale and had en
tertained von Ribbentrop, Nazi Ambassador to Great Britain, at
her town house. Gradually the Astor-controlled London Times
assumed a pro-Nazi bias on its very influential editorial page.
When the Times wants to launch a campaign, its custom is to
run a series of letters in its famous correspondence columns and
then an editorial advocating the policy decided upon. During
October, 1937, tne Times sprouted letters regarding Hitler s
claims for the return of the colonies taken from Germany after
the war.
Rather than have Germany attack her, England preferred to
see Hitler t urn his eyes to the fertile Ukrainian wheat fields of
the Soviet Union. It meant war, but that war seemed inevitable.
If Russia won, England and her economic royalists would be
faced with "the menace of communism." But if Germany won,
she would expand eastward and, exhausted by the war, would
be in no condition to make demands upon England. The part
Great Britain s economic royalists had to play, then, was to
strengthen Germany in her preparations for the coming war
with Russia and at the same time prepare herself to fight if her
calculations went wrong.
Cabinet ministers Lord Hailsham (sugar and insurance inter
with subsidiaries in Ger
ests), Lord Swinton (railroads, power,
many,
Italy, etc.), Sir
Samuel Hoare
(real estate, insurance, etc.),