The question is in the air. It is written about in the press, debated in political circles, and discussed in private homes. Vansittart, who is just back from a six-week vacation in Monte Carlo, tried to convince me at lunch the other day that the arrow of German aggression was turning ever eastward. Lloyd George also told me this recently. Wilson openly admitted that the British government is proceeding on the premise of an inevitable German strike to the east, and that many things follow from this assumption, including the government’s attitude to rearmament. Why should there be a ministry of supply and other extraordinary measures if Britain is not threatened with war in the immediate future?

Mutatis mutandis, this is a repeat of what I observed here in the winter of 1932–1933. The British ruling circles then put their stake on a Soviet–Japanese conflict and did their best to provoke it. Today they seem to be inclined to stake on a German–Soviet conflict, and someone will probably take a hand in trying to unleash it as soon as possible. It’s doubtful, however, that the hopes of the English reactionaries will be fulfilled.

I accept that Hitler may turn for a while to the east. Since now is an unfavourable moment to raise the colonial question seriously, it would not at all be surprising if he decided for the time being to focus his attention on eastward expansion, which is in fact one of the cornerstones of his programme. The Franco-German declaration of friendship signed by Bonnet and Ribbentrop last week, the apparent preparations for the annexation of Memel, the stirring up of Ukrainian nationalism in Transcarpathian Ukraine and Poland (yesterday the Ukrainian group in the Polish Sejm tabled a bill concerning the national autonomy of the Ukraine within the bounds of the Republic of Poland), and attacks by the German press on the Rumanian king – all this and much else seems to testify to an imminent German strike to the east.

What does ‘a strike to the east’ mean exactly? It is still difficult to say with any certainty. It seems clear to me, however, that it may involve, at the most, some German operations against Lithuania, Poland and the Balkan states, but not against the USSR.

The seizure of Memel and Danzig is probable,

Hitler indeed issued a secret directive on 21 October 1938, ordering the Wehrmacht to rout the remaining part of Czechoslovakia, as well as to capture Memel. A month later, similar instructions were handed down for the capture of Danzig.

fomentation of Ukrainian irredentism is probable, and encouragement of the separatist movement among Germans and Hungarians in Rumania is also probable. Let us imagine that Germany strikes Poland, recovers the corridor and Silesia, and establishes a Ukrainian vassal state made up of Transcarpathian and Polish Ukrainians. Hitler might possibly regard such a state, which would share a border with the USSR, as a milestone on the way to tearing Soviet Ukraine away from the USSR. All this is conceivable (but not inevitable) in 1939.

But I refuse to accept the possibility of a German attack on us in the immediate future. We are too strong and threatening for this, and Hitler is afraid of big wars. His sense of smell is as keen as a raven’s for carrion. Wherever there is a smell of decay and bloodless conquest, there he is. But wherever serious fighting is required, there he is not.