Vansittart & Honors

Above other British news last week towered the fact that King George and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had finally done something handsome about "Van." In the Empire's tight little ruling caste no great figure is more generally admired and heeded than Sir Robert Gilbert

Vansittart. He is the exception to the English rule that no man of brilliance, dash and flair can long hold the respect of the British Cabinet, proverbially composed of steady and stodgy John Bulls who mistrust genius.

As Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs since 1930, Sir Robert is generally conceded to have "made" British foreign policy in its more important aspects, and he more than anyone else has kept the British & French Governments in a position of ''maintaining the balance in Spain" between Rightists and Leftists. It is Sir Robert's view that nothing would be more dangerous for Europe, nothing more likely to provoke an immediate war, than for Germany to feel there had been a clear-cut "Red" victory in Spain, or for France to feel there had been a clear-cut "Fascist" victory; that instead compromise--the traditional British virtue--must ultimately triumph in Spain, preferably by setting up a democracy under a constitutional monarch, with due respect for every man's property and religion.

Incidentally Sir Robert has had the British Secret Service under his immediate control, and has disbursed many thousands of pounds of the Foreign Office's "secret funds"--money for the spending of which the law not only does not require but forbids any detailed accounting to Parliament. Beyond all this, Sir Robert, himself, is recognized as a brilliant, persuasive and what the British call "sound" man, at whose London house the Prime Minister of the day and even the King are glad to lunch or dine. It was no wonder, therefore, that two small news items about Sir Robert last week provided official Britain with its chief topic of holiday conversation.

The first item declared that His Majesty had been graciously pleased to elevate Sir Robert to the title of Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. The second announced that the Prime Minister had caused to be created for Sir Robert the new post of Chief Adviser to the Foreign Office. His duties, according to this unusual official announcement, will be "advising the Secretary of State [Anthony Eden] upon all major questions of policy concerning foreign affairs . . . and representing the Foreign Office on any occasions, whether at home or abroad."

While Mr. Eden, whose good looks and idealistic pro-League reputation are reputedly worth some 1,500,000 votes to the Government at election time, remains Foreign Secretary, sound Sir Robert was thus given the widest conceivable authority and mobility in conducting British foreign policy. Technically he will still be subordinate to Mr. Eden, advising the Foreign Secretary only on request, but the terms of the new appointment show that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain intends to use Sir Robert much as President Roosevelt uses Ambassador-at-Large Norman Hezekiah Davis, to, handle big diplomatic jobs wherever they crop up.

To fill the new Chief Adviser's former post of Permanent Under-Secretary there was named last week the perfect diplomatic wheelhorse Sir Alexander George Montagu Cadogan, 7th son of the 5th Earl of Cadogan. This dutiful scion, now aged 57, was a familiar figure at Geneva in the early days of the League, finally worked up to head in 1928 the League of Nations section of the Foreign Office in London. In 1933 he became the last British Minister and in 1935 the first British Ambassador to China. His appointment last week reflected growing British concern over developments in the Far East. Since Sir Robert Vansittart is rated pro-French, the pro-German political group "in London rejoiced this week that Sir Alexander Cadogan is simply not pro or even anti, can be presumed to have "an open mind toward Hitler."

In significance there was no second to the name of Sir Robert Vansittart in His Majesty's New Year's Honors. Aristocratic Britons found the list regrettably thick with persons who are in trade. Others honored and their new titles:

Sir Percival Lea Dewhurst Perry, Henry Ford's longtime English representative: baron.

Baron Nuffield, "The Ford of Britain," whose ceaseless pouring out of millions in gifts to Oxford University has begun to amuse Britons (TIME, Oct. 25): viscount.

Miss Enid Mary Prentice, 39, ten years a brilliant member of the Foreign Office staff, who until two months ago, when she resigned to keep house for her brother after their father's death, was Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's most trusted secretary on his missions abroad: a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Miss Gracie Fields (Mrs. Archie Selinger), Lancashire vaudeville comic, who recently made King George & Queen Elizabeth laugh by her manner of scratching herself in the character of a flea-bitten mill girl: Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Major General Viscount Gort, the sensationally promoted new Chief of the Imperial General Staff (TIME, Dec. 13): Knight Commander of the Bath.

Major General Alexander Patrick Drummond Telfer-Smollett, British commander at Shanghai, and Brigadier Alfred Henry Hopwood, his colleague at Tientsin: Companions of the Bath.

George Reeves-Smith, courtly managing director of the Savoy Hotel board, and Earle Christmas Grafton Page, Australia's former Deputy Prime Minister: knights.

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