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 replaced Sir Robert Vansittart as adviser to the British Cabinet and who acts in a supervisory capacity over the extraordinarily powerful British Intelligence Service. Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the London _Times_. Lord Lothian, Governor of the National Bank of Scotland, a determined advocate of refusing arms to the Spanish democratic government while Hitler and Mussolini supplied Franco with them. Tom Jones, adviser to former Premier Baldwin. The Right Honorable E.A. Fitzroy, Speaker of the House of Commons. The Baroness Mary Ravensdale, sister-in-law of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British fascist movement. To understand the amazing game played by the Cliveden house guests, in which nations and peoples have already been shuffled about as pawns, one must remember that powerful German industrialists and financiers like the Krupps and the Thyssens supported Hitler primarily in order to crush the German trade-union and political movements which were in the late 1920's threatening their wealth and power.