A Conservative friend who has been playing a partof some
prominence at Geneva in the past month after an absence of some years brings back what is rapidly becoming the general verdict, that " Sir John Simon is a public danger." The Foreign Secretary has conspicuous gifts, which would qualify him to fill any one of half a dozen Cabinet posts with distinction, but not, as it happens, the particular qualities that fit a man for the Foreign Secretaryship. Mr. Asquith said of Mr. Lloyd George in 1916: " He has many qualities that would fit him for the first place, but he lacks the one thing needful—he does not inspire trust." Both parts of that judgement fit Sir John Simon like a cap. It may be his misfortune and not his fault that he does not inspire trust, but the fact remains, and in days when international negotiation is so largely personal it is a fatal defect. Sir Austen Chamberlain invariably inspired trust. So, as invariably, did Mr. Henderson. A Foreign Secretary who does not can, without much excess, be described as a public danger. * *
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