Strix
Thunder in the Thirties
THE publication of Sir Evelyn Wrench's life of Geoffrey Dawson* has revived, and seems to have strengthened, the popular belief that, under Dawson's editorship in the Thirties, the foreign policy of The Times was consistently pusillanimous, mealy-mouthed and mistaken. To Dawson's friends (one of whom I am proud to have been) the attempt to depict him as a cross between an ogre and an oaf, fumbling every crisis in an increasingly critical situation, blurring the issues by euphemism and circumlocution, and finally, invari- ably, selling the pass, has caused pain. The Times, like every- body else during that period, was often wrong, and sometimes avoidably so; but I wonder whether the alacrity, and the fre- quent venom, with which it is now fashionable to arraign Geoffrey Dawson is not partly due to the urge to saddle upon a scapegoat the whole burden of a communal blame.
It is certainly true that the susurrus of tut-tutting when The Times took a weak line was as nothing to the bellows of protest and alarm when it took a strong one. Most people have for- gotten that it ever did this, and from what is written about Dawson today it might be deduced that he was incapable of meeting a totalitarian menace with anything firmer than equi- vocation, pious hopes and suggestions for a compromise. In the hope that it may help, however marginally, to readjust this misconception, here is the story of a first leader which The Times published on November 18, 1936.
On or about that date the Axis Pact between Germany and Japan was signed in Tokyo. The Japanese had imposed a strict censorship on correspondents in the capital two or three days earlier; but despatches from The Times correspondent in Shanghai had given a clear indication of what was afoot, though they erred in reporting that Italy was also a signatory of a pact which did not in fact become tripartite until later.
The leader, based on these despatches, was called 'Three's Company?' It was written by my friend X, and it was un- compromisingly astringent in tone. Sentences like 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown; but to share the pillow with a couple of dictators is to court insomnia' and (in a reference to Italy's recognition of her Abyssinian conquests) 'If there. is not honour, there is at least mutual admiration among thieves' could not — whatever their other faults — be called mealy- mouthed. The viewpoint which they expressed, and the style in which they expressed it, were consistent throughout a very long leader, which Dawson, after cutting one unimportant sentence, printed without altering a word.
The inauguration of the Axis Pact, though ostensibly a measure of self-defence against Soviet Russia and international Communism, was for this country an important, and an ominous, development. The Times can hardly be charged with failing to give the public a lead in this context, or with giving it a lead about which there was anything half-hearted, equi- vocal or wrong in principle. ' "Thieves!" he thundered' was the caption under a photograph of Dawson in Time magazine; and thundered was not too strong a word.
X's memories of the episode are that, ,though there may have been among his compatriots those who welcomed this plain speaking, their voices were not heard among the brisk ephemeral furore caused by the leader. No letters ap- peared in The Times expressing appreciation of its firmness.
• GEOFFREY DAwsoN AND OUR TIMES. By John Evelyn Wrench. (Hutchinson, 30s.) Answering an involved question by a Labour Member, which appeared to imply approval of the leader, the Foreign Secre- tary (Eden) evaded—sensibly and legitimately—an attempt to establish how far, if at all, it represented the Government's views. In private, Foreign Office officials deplored, quite reason- ably, an article whose appearance had seriously embarrassed British diplomacy in those capitals. The three Powers con- cerned reacted like wounded buffaloes.
X had an individual style which not even the austere, mahogany usages of the first-leader column could wholly de- personalise; it was widely known in London that he had written the leader. Two days after it appeared his German publishers telephoned from Berlin. Unless he could assure them that he was not the author of the offending article, the Gestapo would confiscate all existing stocks of his books (which were then popular in Germany) and forbid their further publication. X replied that the Gestapo ought to realise that The Times's tradition of anonymity was so strict that not even negative information could be divulged about the identity of a leader- writer. No more was heard of this matter.
From Rome X received a letter from a senior official in the British Embassy, who had invited X to stay with him in the near future. His Ambassador felt, this nice man wrote, that in view of the fact that X's,name was being widely linked with the leader, it would be better if X, when he came to Rome, did not actually stay in Y's flat, where, of course, Y would always be delighted to welcome him to luncheon or dinner.
These were all trivial repercussions, but the fact that they followed like a reflex action upon a single fprthright expression by The Times of strong views on the heart of the international matter recalls the dilemma in which Dawson continuously stood during those years. By an almost imperceptible process covering several decades, The Times had drifted into an am- biguous position—not at home, but abroad. The Times was, in fact, completely independent of the Government, but no foreigner believed this. At a time when we were weak and our enemies strong, the national interest seemed to depend on promoting compromise, on leaving doors open, on strengthen- ing the hands of `the moderates.'
It was an impossible hand to play. If, every time the foreigners behaved badly, Dawson had said exactly what he thought of them, the foreigners would only have behaved worse. Whether it liked it or not, The Times was an honorary instrument of British policy. Dawson's relationship with mem- bers of the Chamberlain administration is neither here nor there. Whatever Government had been in power, its foreign policy, conditioned by the country's weakness, must have con- formed broadly to the same drab pattern of temporising and retreat; and The Times would have had to support, in its essentials, a general course or trend to which no realist can pretend that there was an alternative.
To a man of Dawson's mettle, the business of conducting The Times's foreign policy as though he was driving a car with 'Running In. Please Pass' stuck on the rear window was an irksome, but in the circumstances inescapable, obligation. X has the impression that when Dawson allowed himself the luxury of thunder he enjoyed it very much; but he never forgot that thunder — without any lightning — was a double-edged weapon in those days.
Previous page
