Vampire's Caress

The moral prestige of King George was associated last week with "The Deal" to make peace in Ethiopia by giving Italy approximately half that Empire (TIME, Dec. 16). With no subsequent tut-tutting from courtiers, Associated Press put on the world's wires that in highest circles His Majesty was believed to have strongly urged (if he did not command) Captain Anthony Eden, Sanctionist Extraordinary, to assist in making peace quickly by means of The Deal and to desist at Geneva from trying to put through further sanctions.

The test of Minister for League of Nations Affairs Anthony Eden came within a few hours after he was received in private audience at Buckingham Palace. He might have maintained the reputation he has won in 1935 as "The White Knight of Geneva" and the "Lindbergh of Diplomacy" by resigning from the Cabinet and, as a private member, hewing to the line which has made him famed at Geneva.

Many of "Antony" Eden's friends, particularly female, urged him to make this stand. He seemed haggard as he entered the House of Commons and his chief, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who had gone without his dinner in the crisis, also seemed haggard. But when Captain Eden finally spoke, it was for His Majesty's Government and to advocate The Deal-- denounced the day before by Laborite Dr. Hugh Dalton, onetime Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, as "condoning a felony and worse than a felony--wholesale murder and treaty breaking!"

Eden can certainly claim a heavy political reward later, was the general impression in Parliament, for stowing away all moral considerations last week and upholding The Deal before the Commons. "Let's face the facts!" barked Captain Eden. "If Italy, Ethiopia and the League accept discussion on the basis of the suggestions which have been made in Paris, there is nobody here that is going to say 'No,' even if some of those proposals may not be particularly appealing to us!"

There was nobody in the House of Commons who took any visible or audible exception to this. Nobody cried "Shame!" as M.P.'s commonly do when an instance of cruelty to animals or a jibe at the Royal Family fires their indignation. There were a few Conservative cheers for Eden, and the Prime Minister was listened to with respect when he replied to Opposition hints that Ethiopia was being sold down the river because Britain was afraid she or her ships might suddenly be attacked by Italian airmen on orders from their Dictator.

"The Opposition has informed me of the feelings of my own supporters," sarcastically declared Squire Baldwin. "I generally have a tolerable knowledge of what are their feelings. . . . Some people speak of the League of Nations as if it was a kind of celestial institution with a volition of its own, as if it was always right, whereas it is a very human body of fallible nations gathered in council and represented by fallible statesmen trying to do what they can to build up the League, which in time may perform all those services for humanity we dreamed of when the League was first founded. I don't propose tonight to say anything about its constitution or deficiencies in the absence of certain great nations."

After thus dragging in and blaming the U. S. in part for The Deal, Mr. Baldwin closed his address by refusing to reveal The Deal's terms, though they came out three days later (see col. 1). Piously observed the Prime Minister, "I have seldom spoken with greater regret, for my lips are not yet unsealed, but were these troubles over I would make a case and I would guarantee that no man would go into the lobby against us."

This Olympian attitude reduced to the status of gutter-yappers against His Majesty's Government such newsorgans as London's Liberal Star, which railed against the Prime Minister next day: "The grand old woman of British politics, Stanley Baldwin, passed through an hour of humiliation in Commons debate which most Englishmen would give a Premiership to avoid."

It was true that bumbling Stanley Baldwin had bumbled, as he occasionally does, especially in foreign policy, but he remained the grand old sheep dog of the British electorate. A few thousand sheep wrote indignant letters to their M.P.'s last week, one M.P. receiving 400 denunciations of The Deal. But the most Prime Minister Baldwin actually suffered was a division on the King's Speech, which is usually adopted by the House of Commons without a vote as a courtesy to the Throne. When the division was taken there were 281 votes for His Majesty's Government and 139 against. In effect this was a House of Commons vote of confidence on dismembering Ethiopia.

Mr. Baldwin, an able politician, and Captain Eden, an able diplomat, cleverly left open avenues of retreat from The Deal. They professed that the League of Nations was to decide everything. Three days later at Geneva suave Eden, although the whole London Press was printing columns about the Government's "reversal of policy," had the British crust to say officially: "The policy of His Majesty's Government remains unchanged."

Throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas no reaction to what His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom had done was closer to the general consensus than the reaction of His Majesty's Government in the Dominion of Canada. Cried a Canadian Cabinet Minister close to Premier William Lyon Mackenzie King: "A shameless betrayal of the League! This will strengthen the hands of Canadian isolationists. After this, will anything seem important enough to take us out of our own continent?"

No matter what may now be done about The Deal, two facts seemed basic: 1) the dispatch of the British Home Fleet to patrol the waters between Italy and Ethiopia (TIME, Sept. 30) acted like a blood transfusion in reviving the League of Nations; 2) the British display of readiness last week to consider dismemberment of Ethiopia as a possible and perhaps desirable solution was to the League of Nations like the bloodsucking caress of a vampire.

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