Ducks & Dragons

Scathing oratory seethed in the House of Commons last week as His Majesty's Government were fiercely attacked on their proposal to lift Sanctions by His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, frosty Mr. Neville Chamberlain, was hammered to the roots of his personal moral fibre by Opposition Leader Clement Attlee with savage, terrier-like insistence. After first saying that Benito Mussolini reminded him of "Scarface" Al Capone, Major Attlee shouted at the Chancellor of the Exchequer: "If Neville Chamberlain, instead of being mayor of Birmingham, had been mayor of Chicago, he would have altered the functions of the police to accommodate Al Capone!" According to Major Attlee, the new project of Chancellor Chamberlain to alter the functions of the League of Nations to accommodate Benito Mussolini (TIME, June 22) is even more dastardly.

"There was never any intention of stopping Mussolini!" was Opposition Leader Attlee's blanket charge against the National Government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. "In the background was always the idea that Italy might be needed for an alliance against someone else. The result was that Sanctions never had a trial at all!"

Specifically Major Attlee took the Prime Minister to task for having blamed the failure of Sanctions on the U. S. when Mr. Baldwin fortnight ago said: "Now there has been a great deal said about oil. The plain reason why an oil sanction was not put in force was that enormous quantities of oil came from a country that isn't a member of the League of Nations and which we had no reason to believe would prohibit the exportation of oil. This country is the United States!"

These words of the Prime Minister, said Major Attlee, were "a thoroughly mean attack on the United States of America." Recalling that Stanley Baldwin was educated at swank Harrow School, the Major added as his parting shot: "It has been said that Waterloo was won on the playing field of Eton. Abyssinia was lost on the playing fields of Harrow!"

Old Harrovian Baldwin, knowing the Opposition to be impotent because the Government won Britain's last election on a platform of Eden idealism and has the victory safe in pocket, replied to Major Attlee: "Because I mentioned the question of oil from America, I have been accused of putting the blame on America. / put no blame at all on America."

Debate continued on the Government's announced intention to send Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to Geneva to get Sanctions lifted. Snapped Labor's Sir Stafford Cripps: "He goes as the Government's decoy duck!" Against the abandonment of Sanctions His Majesty's Loyal Opposition further battled by presenting a motion to censure His Majesty's Government. Result: victory 384-to-170 for Stanley Baldwin.

Next day Wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George roused a Derbyshire audience by roaring: "I have seen the white feather embroidered across the Union Jack! I am one of many millions in this land who are humiliated by the spectacle."

Showing his feather, Home Secretary Sir John Simon said: "I declare myself unwilling to see a single ship sunk, even in a successful battle, in the cause of Ethiopia."

Oxford gave handsome "Tony" Eden an honorary degree day before he left for Geneva, and Oxford's suave sponsor presented the Foreign Secretary thus: "His aim is to lead the nations to a paradise of peace. Like a second Hercules, he has wrestled with lions and dragons."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.