Bruce Lockhart Says Dictators Fear Anti- War Feeling, Will Avoid War

"I can't say about America, but in England at present the average man-in-the-street, the floating vote as we call him, holds the balance between tradition and reform in British foreign policy."

Thus spoke Bruce Lockhart, noted British author, journalist, Foreign Office observer, and "agent," as he was interviewed yesterday at the University Club. The author of "British Agent" has been in the United States ten weeks on a lecture tour and will leave shortly for England to take over a diplomatic post--if war breaks out in Europe.

He explained that the average Britisher until a short time ago could not recognize the Sudeten problem as one to worry about, "until the Munich awakening made the British feel that they would go to war for much less than they would have during the twenties. And today, England is infinitely more alive to the danger than she was a week ago, because, for one thing, the prospect of a man breaking his work--witness Hitler--shocks the Britisher deeply."

Lockhart declared that he did not think the dictators really want a war because they realize the universal anti-war sentiment in Europe today. "They blackmail on the threat, however, and hit the weakest spots," he said. "They calculate the chances of war and if the odds are 9 to 5 against it, then they strike!"

Germany's On A Bicycle

He saw two alternatives for Germany's future: "Hitler may lie down and digest for a bit--he's sailed pretty close to the wind, you know ... or, what I'm most afraid of is that Germany may be like a man on a bicycle if he stops moving he'll have to jump off." Also, he said, the Nazis would face an intolerable situation if they have to "jump off" because of the difficulty in converting their nation from a wartime to a peacetime economy.

"Probably not," was his answer to a query regarding the possibility of a European war in the near future, but he likened himself to Lord Castleross, 280-pound English columnist, who asserted, 'I'm only a poor columnist but I'm the only one who doesn't know exactly what's going on in the minds of Hitler and Mussolini."