The Week in Parliament Our Parliamentary correspondent writes : On
the interna- tional situation the House is toughly divided into two schools of thought. Both appreciate that, in the next two or three months, the controversy which has raged since Mr. Eden's resignation a year ago will be settled. But how? The one foretells the Italians' immediate dismissal from Spain by General Franco, the subsidence of Italian claims confronted with a united and increasingly powerful Great Britain and France, a change in Germany's temper due to domestic trouble, and an armistice arranged by this country between China and Japan ; Mr. Chamberlain's foreign policy will be recognised at last as consummate tactics, and the picture is completed by an early General Election, in which his opponents are utterly routed. The other school recalls the lull before the storm, prophesies a joint demand from Germany and Italy, considers that the unconditional recogni- tion of General Franco would either encourage his pro- moters or convince them of the necessity of striking at once, and sees in Japan's seizure of Hainan the anti-Corn- mintern Pact revealed in its true colours as an anti-British Alliance. War or another Munich is the unhappy forecast. Both schools agree that the reassurance campaign was started too early, and without much finesse. Sir Kingsley Wood, there is no doubt, has done a good job of work at the Air Ministry, and gun-production at last is not unsatisfactory. But no one believes that we can yet breathe freely.
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