Happy Funeral

"Honest Tony" Eden and earnest Eduard Benes were the pallbearers, and there were two requiems: one by Eden in the House of Commons, one by Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk via radio to his countrymen. Thus was decent burial finally provided for a smelly old corpse, the Munich Agreement.

It was a happy funeral. The House of Commons contentedly rumbled: "Hear, Hear." The Times piped: "What goes without saying goes still better when said."

In a White Paper the British Government printed the obituary. It noted that "Germany has deliberately destroyed arrangements concerning Czecho-Slovakia reached in 1938," that "the Prime Minister has already stated in a message broadcast to the Czecho-Slovak people Sept. 30, 1940 the attitude of His Majesty's Government with regard to the arrangements." The Paper recalled that the British had officially told Dr. Benes that they considered the corpse a corpse.

What Now? Most welcome to the Czechs was the British conclusion: "At the final settlement of Czecho-Slovak frontiers, to be reached at the end of the war, [the Government] will not be influenced by any changes affected in and since 1938." It was most welcome because neither the Atlantic Charter nor last June's British-Russian Agreement* have cooled the jingoistic fires over which Europe's exiled governments in London hash and rehash post-war boundary lines. The Czech hash has always included Sudetenland, which the Munich Agreement bestowed on Germany.

In his radio requiem suave-spoken Masaryk stressed the point and jubilated: "So . . . everything that was not clear is finished. . . . The pre-Munich Republic will take its seat at the peace conference."

Where Now? The ersatz faith which fostered Munich was replaced in Britain last week by other concepts and credos, equally fervent. Of the people who fostered Munich, some were dead, some repentant, some changed hardly a whit. Viscount Halifax, Chamberlain's now-repentant Foreign Secretary at Munich-time, rushed cheerfully from Birmingham (where he told an audience: "Once the shipping problem has been mastered, the Allied Nations can hold out very solid grounds for confidence") to Cabinet meetings in London, then to holiday on his rolling moors in Yorkshire. Droopy-lidded Sir Horace Wilson, Chamberlain's political valet at Munich, prepared to quit his office in the Treasury as head of the British Civil Service. Munich-time Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon, now Lord Simon, Lord Chancellor, nursed through a garrulous House of Lords a bill empowering U.S. military forces in Britain to set up courts with criminal jurisdiction over American troops. Lord Runciman, Munich's advance man in Prague, had dropped out of sight. David (now Viscount) Margesson, then Tory Party ringmaster, now a General Electric director, admitted: "Public opinion demanded there should be changes." In Madrid Sir Samuel Hoare, Home Secretary Munich supporter, welcomed at the British Embassy Foreign Minister Ramon Serrano Suner, who that day also visited the German and Italian Ambassadors.

How Now? At Cliveden, overlooking the tranquil Thames, Viscountess Astor, the Tory Party's Munich-era hostess and perennial mosquito, buzzed anathema. Some of it was against Paul Joseph Goebbels, who was gleefully repeating to Russia her statement that the Russians were fighting "not for us . . . for themselves" (TIME, Aug. 10). Most of it was against her fellow M.P.s, the British press and her own Plymouth constituency, who were hopping mad at Nancy Astor. M.P.s hunted loopholes in Commons privileges which would allow them to force Nancy to apologize publicly. The British press labeled her speech "a major political indiscretion." A trades council of her Plymouth constituents announced that her statement did not represent their views.

Perhaps to prove that consistency is the luxury of the irresponsible, Lady Astor complained to the London News Chronicle: "Russia, Russia, Russia. That's all we read in the newspapers, all we hear in the broadcasts. They are fighting the same enemy, but they are fighting for themselves, just as we are."

* Article V of the Agreement says that the British and Russians "agree to work together in close and friendly collaboration after re-establishment of peace for the organization of security and economic prosperity in Europe. . . ."

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