GREAT BRITAIN: The Election

Other nations were treated last week to a British general election campaign waged on the gravest issues of foreign policy with complete abandon and free speech.

A speech by His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs caused a responsible correspondent at Addis Ababa to cable: “The Ethiopians feel that Sir Samuel Hoare’s rejection of the idea of military sanctions was tantamount to a license to Premier Benito Mussolini of Italy to go ahead with the war without effective interference from the rest of the world. . . .”

Some contradictions of British policy, as voiced by British leaders, stung not only Ethiopia’s Emperor but also Italy’s Dictator to grave misgivings. In a fresh public warning to Britons last week Benito Mussolini, although still in private negotiation with Sir Samuel Hoare through intermediaries, declared: “Italians will organize a most desperate resistance [against sanctions] and will distinguish between friend and foe.”

In higher London circles correspondents were informally told, “Whatever is said here now is just electioneering.”

Only British statesmen who do not electioneer are the members of the House of Lords. Debate in their chamber was featured by unusual and concentrated cynicism, almost as if the dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons felt it incumbent last week to say what would not be said by vote-coaxing Cabinet bigwigs and M. P.s.

Lord Snell, Leader for Labor: “I fear that Ethiopia, despite the League, will come under the bondage of the West.”

Lord Hardinge, Conservative: “The sooner Ethiopia is handed over by a mandate to a civilized power the better it will be for the world and for the Ethiopians themselves!”

In a British general election it is the cherished privilege of His Majesty’s Government and the members of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition to rave like opposing lawyers who afterward resume their friendship outside the courtroom. The secret of British enmity is that at bottom it is nearly always friendly. No member of the Nazi Cabinet at Berlin need have taken serious offense last week merely because in the House of Commons the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill peered over his spectacles and said several startling things which happened to be true.

“There is a factor that dwarfs all others, a factor you will find affecting the movements of politics and diplomacy in every country of Europe,” cried Mr.Churchill, “. . . Whatever you believe, I venture to submit we cannot have any anxiety comparable to the anxiety caused by German rearmament. . . .

“The whole of Germany is an armed camp and the industries of Germany are mobilized for war to an extent that ours were not mobilized even a year after the Great War began. The Germans are even able to be great exporters of munitions,

as well as developing their own enormous

magazines. We have no prospect of equaling the German air force or overtaking

Germany in the air in the near future,

whatever we do.

“The Italo-Ethiopian war is a very small matter compared with the dangers I have just described. … It was the fear of a rearmed Germany that led France to settle her differences with Italy at the beginning of the year. It is very likely that what is called a free hand in Ethiopia was thrown in . It is upon the basis of German rearmament and French apprehension that the Italo-Ethiopian war and the dispute between Italy and the League can alone be properly considered. . . .

“The re-entry into the European circle of a Germany at peace within herself would be one of the most beneficial things we could strive for. … But we cannot afford to see Nazidom in its present phase of cruelty and intolerance paramount in Europe!”

Perhaps it was the intuition of Adolf Hitler which let this windy provocation pass, and in Rome the intuition of Benito Mussolini was also working overtime, verbal postures of British electioneers, the pained uproar of Continental editors, and the general Homeric hubbub of last week were vastly flattering to the British voter, made him glow with a feeling that his Government, to create such a stir, must indeed deserve many a ballot. Electioneerings:

Stanley Baldwin, in the so-called Speech from the Throne written by the Prime Minister for King George but read last week by the Lord High Chancellor in proroguing Parliament:

“To both the Queen and myself this— my Silver Jubilee Year—will ever remain one of our happiest memories. … I rejoice that it has been possible for my Government … to grant substantial relief to the small taxpayer. I am gratified to observe a further steady increase in employment among my people. . . . Important postal, telegraph and telephone concessions have been made during the year. . . . Measures have been enacted for further assistance to the agricultural industry … the herring industry . . . tramp shipping….

housing…. ” The King’s speech, just

prior to election, is often the most effective electioneering speech of the Prime Minister.

Clement Attlee, acting leader of his Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the Labor Party’s official campaign manifesto: “The Government has a terrible responsibility for the present international situation. It did nothing to check the aggression of Japan in the Far East and thus seriously discredited the League of Nations and undermined the collective peace system.”

“Overlate to stop a war, the Government ranged itself at the eleventh hour behind the Covenant at Geneva. Even now its action has been slow and halt hearted. While paying lip service to the League, it is planning a vast, expensive rearmament program which will only stimulate similar programs elsewhere. Government is a danger to the peace of the world and to the security of this nation.”

Sir Herbert Samuel, as leader of the main Liberal group and David Lloyd George as chief of his Liberal faction, virtually merged their invectives against the National Government with those of Labor, all opposition parties conceding that the only possible attack on Conservative Baldwin’s sounding of pro-League, pro-Armament and pro-British notes is to accuse the Prime Minister furiously of not having sounded them soon or loud enough. In foreign policy they are what British subjects want. Only the black misery of Britain’s depressed areas and the savage discontent of her leaderless proletariat can boil up into an election surprise expected last week by no British wiseacre.