those of paid foreign agents. This is especially true of those whose
financial interests are on an international scale and who consequently
think internationally.

Such class interests were involved in the betrayal of Austria to the
Nazis only a few months before aggressor nations were invited to cut
themselves a slice of Czechoslovakia; and it will probably never be
known just how much the Nazis' Fifth Column, working in dinner jackets
and evening gowns, influenced the powerful personages involved to
chart a course which sacrificed a nation and a people and which
foretold the Munich "peace" pact.

The story begins when Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of England,
accepted an invitation to spend the week-end of 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 horseshoe stone staircase to receive them.

The small but carefully selected group of guests had been invited "to
play charades" over the week-end--a game in which 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 it 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 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 lead Great Britain on
the road to fascism. The British Parliament and the British people do
not know of these decisions, some of which the Chamberlain government
has already carried out.

And without a knowledge of what happened during the talks in those
historic two days and what preceded them, the world can only puzzle
over an almost incomprehensible British foreign policy.

Present at this week-end gathering, besides the Astors and the Prime
Minister and his wife, were the following:

Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Defense.

Sir Alexander Cadogan, who replace