Foreign News: Expulsion of Eden

Many a European thought this week that Adolf Hitler had forced Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden out of the British Cabinet by a brutally successful maneuver (see p. 19) only to be compared with Kaiser Wilhelm’s historic humiliation of the French in 1905 when he forced them to drop Delcasse from their Cabinet.

Ever since he became Prime Minister, businesslike Neville Chamberlain has shown he meant to clean up what he considers the mess his predecessor Stanley-Baldwin made of British foreign policy. It was Stanley Baldwin’s idea in 1935 to equip Great Britain in effect with two foreign secretaries: 1) a popular young idealist who could win pacifist votes for the Conservative Party; and 2) a veteran statesman who could unobtrusively do such dirty work in foreign policy as might be necessary. He appointed handsome young Anthony Eden to the completely new office of Secretary for League of Nations Affairs and put in Sir Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary.

Mr. Eden, quickly popularized as a sort of League of Nations Knight-in-Shining-Armor. was a big factor in enabling Conservative Party Leader Baldwin to win the next General Election. Meanwhile, Sir Samuel Hoare and French Premier Pierre Laval were privately engaged on a deal to condone Italy’s seizure of Ethiopia. The Hoare-Laval “Deal” leaked into the news a few days before its makers were ready to present it to the public as a high-minded effort to make peace on the basis of joint Anglo-French-Italian “carrying of Civilization to the barbarians of Ethiopia.” It made such an ugly scandal that Mr. Baldwin had to take it all back in the House of Commons; Sir Samuel Hoare sat with tears trickling down his cheeks; Mr. Eden was made Foreign Secretary; and within a few weeks many a hard-headed London businessman was saying, “Hoare was absolutely right.” One of those hard-headed businessmen was Neville Chamberlain, then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Downing Street. Last week Mr. Chamberlain invited to No. 10 Downing Street the Italian Ambassador, spade-bearded Count Dino Grandi, and in Mr. Eden’s presence himself made, as Prime Minister, opening moves for quickly closing the breach between London and Rome opened by Il Duce’s conquest of Ethiopia and sending of troops to Spain. Mr. Eden was thus subjected by the head of the House of Chamberlain to acute personal humiliation. Saturday and Sunday, for the first time since the Abdication Crisis there were meetings of the British Cabinet. A patient, drably-dressed crowd almost filled the short blind alley called Downing Street, shouting: “Good old Eden! No more Italy! Down with Musso!” Members of the Cabinet, including Mr. Eden, came & went repeatedly without taking more than the merest notice of the crowd before the official residence of the Prime Minister. Even after Hero Eden had actually handed in his letter of resignation, he only raised his black Homburg hat once or twice, diffidently. To a few friends waiting for him on the steps of the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden said: “It’s all over.”

Next morning’s papers carried the Eden letter of resignation, addressed to “My Dear Prime Minister,” giving his reason: “I cannot recommend to Parliament a policy with which I am not in agreement.” In a letter to “My Dear Anthony” Chamberlain accepted it.

After breakfast Mr. Chamberlain received Count Grandi who left No. 10 grinning. Then the Prime Minister drove to Buckingham Palace and King George kept Mr. Chamberlain for lunch.

It is possible that Anthony Eden, by resigning just when he did, can place himself at the head of a political faction which may ultimately make him Prime Minister. David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, two much disgruntled Government outsiders, were already openly Eden’s backers this week. That afternoon, Mr. Lloyd George took bows and cheers as he entered the House of Commons just ahead of Mr. Eden and the latter’s faithful Foreign Office henchman, Lord Cranborne, who had announced he was resigning, too. Then the Prime Minister entered, got 1½ minutes’ cheering from Conservatives, while Laborites booed.

“No man can be the keeper of another man’s confidence!” cried ex-Secretary Eden, neatly suggesting that he was above keeping Businessman Chamberlain’s squalid conscience. “Agreements that are worthwhile are never made on the basis of threats. . . . The Prime Minister has strong views on foreign policy and I respect him for it. I have strong views, too! Of late the conviction has grown steadily on me that there has been too keen a desire on our part to make terms with others—rather than for others to make terms with us. . . . Propaganda against this country by the Italian Government is rife throughout the world. I myself pledged this House not to open conversations with Italy until hostile propaganda ceased.”

Viscount Cranborne chimed in: “To enter into conversations with Italy now would be regarded not as a contribution to peace but as a surrender to blackmail!”

The Prime Minister said: “As a result of my conversation today with the Italian Ambassador, I never was more convinced of the right of any decision than that which the Cabinet took Sunday” [drop ping Eden].

The Deal No. 2. Cautiously testing British public opinion, as one inches for ward on thin ice, Neville Chamberlain an nounced that “temporarily” the new Foreign Secretary would be Viscount Halifax. Pro-German but High-Church and idealistic, Lord Halifax—who “sees the in scrutable hand of Divine Providence at work almost everywhere,” even in Germany and Italy—was Mr. Chamberlain’s personal envoy last November to Herr Hitler. But His Majesty’s Government this week obviously were thinking almost exclusively about Rome.

Mr. Chamberlain finally told the House straight out that Mussolini thought the retention of Eden as Foreign Secretary had meant that Britain “was trying to lull the Italians into inactivity while Britain completed her rearmament and was in a position to take revenge for Ethiopia. That idea is fantastic and never entered our heads, but it is the idea held in Rome!”

Meanwhile, Laborites proposed a motion of censure, which if carried would call for the fall of the Cabinet. The Leader of the Opposition, Laborite Clement Attlee, shrilled: “Mussolini is a bankrupt dictator, yet it is just at this time that the Prime Minister goes whining to him for an agreement on any terms!”

Final sensation in the House of Commons lobby was the invasion of a turbulent British crowd shouting “Chamberlain must go! Hitler and Mussolini shall not dictate to Britain! Arms and food for Spain! Eden must stay!” Police drove them out.