THE DEAL: Sham Battle?

Apart from certain tears physically shed in the House of Commons last week, apart from the unprecedented gush of emotion as His Majesty’s Government admitted their Ethiopian policy to be all wrong, apart from other sensational and high strung happenings in London (see p. 12), there emerged the first clear-cut exposition of what has actually been done behind Europe’s diplomatic scenes to end the Ethiopian war.

This exposition was made by Sir Samuel Hoare, 55, the day after his resignation as British Foreign Secretary and three days before he was succeeded by Mr. Anthony Eden, 38, the youngest British Foreign Secretary since Earl Granville in 1851. Its continuing vital importance was well indicated by New-York Timesman Charles A. Selden who cabled from London thus: “Anybody who went to the Commons expecting to hear reproaches and recriminations between Sir Samuel Hoare on the one hand and Mr. Baldwin and other members of the Cabinet on the other was disappointed. There was not a trace of bitterness on either side. The atmosphere was so much the other way that surprised members in the lobby after Sir Samuel, Mr. Baldwin and Sir Austen Chamberlain had finished their speeches wondered if the Cabinet break had not been a sham battle or at least an arranged episode to serve some future useful purpose. . . . Another factor that has made many members feel that Sir Samuel’s retirement was not permanent was Sir Austen’s remark in his speech that he hoped ‘the tragedy which has caused the resignation is only temporary.’ ”

Useless Sympathy, With such views current in the House of Commons, the future course of His Majesty’s Government regarding Ethiopia seemed certain to take its bearings from basic factors which have not changed in the slightest because of the resignation of Sir Samuel Hoare. These factors he ably set forth.

The Hoare-Laval Deal to make peace between Italy and Ethiopia, mainly at the expense of Ethiopia but leaving the greater and by far the richest portion of the Empire intact (TIME, Dec. 23), Sir Samuel approached not apologetically but with a brisk question as to whether the House knew what other and spontaneous proposals for peace have in fact been made by the Emperor, the Dictator and the League. Ignorance was obvious on all sides. Many M.P.s sat up to listen as though hearing for the first time much which they might have read weeks and months ago in the Press. As if for the first time, the House seemed to learn that last autumn Haile Selassie offered to cede territory to win Peace*; that Italy has juridical claims upon British and French tolerance of her intrusion of Ethiopia based on the treaty of 1906 and the exchange of notes of 1925; and finally that in the past, when British aid has been offered in a spirit of idealism to native peoples such as the Arabs of famed Colonel T. E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert, results have too often been dishonorable.

“I have been terrified,” cried Sir Samuel, “at the thought we might lead Ethiopia to think the League could do more than it can, and that finally we should find a terrible moment of disillusionment in which Ethiopia might be altogether destroyed as an independent State.

“I could not help thinking of the past, when more than once in our history we had rightly given all our sympathies to some threatened or downtrodden race, but because we had been unable to implement the effect of those sympathies, all we had done was to encourage them, with the result that in the end their fate was worse than it would have been without our sympathy.”

“Never Say Die!” In addition to thus ramming the perfidy of Albion down Albion’s throat amid well-bred cries of “Hear! Hear!”, the astonishing 45-minute address of Sir Samuel branched into a legal demonstration that the broad principles of The Deal, whatever its defects in detail, are identically the same broad principles enunciated by the League of Nations’ Committee of Five.

In the strongest part of his speech Sir Samuel declared: “The fact is there are only two ways of ending war—either peace by negotiation or peace by surrender. If it is to be peace by negotiation, I don’t believe myself when the time comes that it will not be found peace will have to be made upon the principles I have stated. … If it is to be peace by surrender it will mean complete collapse of one or the other of the belligerents. My own view—and I have stated it frankly to the House —is that I believe the end of the war will come by negotiations.”

Sir Samuel concluded that failure of The Deal to go through last week far enough to lay a groundwork for further negotiations “makes the position more difficult and dangerous than it was before. … I believe that, unless these facts are faced and faced in the immediate future, either the League will break up or a most unsatisfactory peace will result from the conflict which is now taking place.”

After this hard-hitting, fact-marshaling speech the resigned Foreign Secretary was overwhelmed by the general House of Commons atmosphere of hysteria and tears, tottered out weeping. The appointment as his successor of Robert Anthony Eden, a handsome young man with ancestors who were Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, was the one logical move in a British fortnight of illogic. In the popular mind “Eden” stands for going whole hog against Italy, but in the House of Commons he has said that The Deal or any other arrangement acceptable to Italy, Ethiopia and the League would not be opposed by Britons. This stand by popular young Captain Eden promised well for a peaceful solution, except that the personal antipathy between Eden and Mussolini and the wild anti-Eden rage to which Italians have been worked up, made his appointment the most inflammatory in which His Majesty’s Government could indulge as they gracefully executed this week their leap from illogic to logic.

* He repeated this offer last week (see col. 3).