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In recent developments in the Mediterranean statesmen and publicists are convinced that the occupation of Albania will turn out to be even more costly to Benito Mussolini than the occupation of Czechoslovakia has been to his opposite number in Germany. During the Ethiopian crisis in 1935 the British fleet scuttled out of Malta without waiting to count ten. Had war broken out, it would likewise have had to abandon Alexandria, where it had taken shelter. All Egyptian bases including the Suez Canal were then undefended, Italian submarines and bombers would have met very little resistance. Indeed, British naval officers made no secret of their intention to clear out of the Mediterranean in case of hostilities and take up a position west of Gibraltar.

The partition and conquest of Czechoslovakia prove that the spirit of Munich is marching still. For one hundred glorious days, from the beginning of December till the new crisis, Balkan States breathed freely. There were whispers of British and French support; that the great democracies would take a stand on the Danube; that, above all, the heroic words of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not been in vain. King Carol of Rumania took a determined stand and crushed German agents boring from within; Yugoslavia and Hungary were not slow to follow his lead. The little states around the Great Reich did not embark lightly on the new policy. On the contrary, there was careful analysis; and they certainly did not underestimate the extent of German opposition.

Religious and anti-fascist forces in Germany should join their counterparts in the Reich this week in marking the beginning of protestant leader Martin Niemöller's third year of martyrdom in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Niemöller's arrest on July 1, 1937, on Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's personal order came as a surprise to no one, least of all to himself. In a sermon Hitler had delivered a few days before as the sole member of the Prussian Council of the Confessional Church still at liberty, Hitler had attacked the fundamental principles of the regime with unprecedented vigor.