marched up the main lanes carrying red or gold lights that
formed five flowing rivers of color in the darkness. The dour
Henderson involuntarily thrilled to this pageant as much as if it
had been His Majesty’s birthday parade.
General Göring joined Henderson in Nuremberg on the
eleventh, mentioning oh-so-casually that he had just told Guido
Schmidt that the sooner Austria bowed to the inevitable, the
better. He assured Henderson once again that Germany’s strate-
gic objectives would astonish Britain by their moderation: first,
Austria; after that, the oppressed Sudeten-German minority in
Czechoslovakia; Poland would then come into line automatically.
And this big Robin Hood look-alike with the polished, rouged
complexion repeated to the ambassador what he had first said
on his arrival in Berlin: “We have no desire to lay hands on
anything at all that Britain possesses. We want to be friends with
the British Empire. We are prepared to fight for its survival and
would, if need be, lend half of our army for that purpose. All
that we ask in return is that Britain guard our rear and that the
British Navy keep our communications open, if we are attacked
in the east.”
When Henderson voiced a lame protest about the concen-
tration camps, Göring produced an encyclopedia. “First used by
the British,” he read out, “in the South African war.” Knowing
that Sir Nevile was one more member of that international
“green Freemasonry,” he invited him to come and shoot a stag at
Rominten, East Prussia, that October.
All along it had seemed likely to Göring that Italy would object
most to any Austrian Anschluss with Germany. Mussolini had
no desire to see Hitler’s troops on his northern frontier. “It’s
intolerable,” Göring had told one Austrian, banging his fist on
the table, on November , , “that Italy has to play police-