23 NOVEMBER 1962, Page 58

Eden's Finest Hour

Facing the Dictators, 1931-1938. By the Earl of Avon. (Cassell, 42s.)

MEMOIRS are personal reminiscences: childhood scenes, moments of political crises vividly re- membered, and portraits of contemporaries at work and leisure. Not so in The Eden Memoirs. Childhood days have been omitted; crises mostly disappear, to be swallowed up by a day-to-day narrative of foreign affairs; even portraits are secondary. Documents dominate all. For this volume is a history rather than a memoir. It is a carefully constructed, carefully corrected version written, not through the mists of memory, but with the documents of pre-war history diligently procured and set out. The re- sult is thorough, but partisan, history, thinly disguised as memory and reflection. The style, though dull, is rarely pedantic. This volume is far richer, in both style and content, than the first volume, covering the Suez crisis. Documents are here given at length: a boon to the his- torian, but a bane to those in search of excite. ment. Sad to tell, from these dramatic years, one of the main contestants has allowed us only rare glimpses of the drama.

Anthony Eden, as a former Minister of the Crown, has had full access to Foreign Office archives for the years when he was in office. His able assistant, David Dilks, has selected the docu- ments with consummate skill. The archives are closed to all other historians. Nor has thd bulky (though incomplete) series of official Foreign Office publications yet reached the mid-Thirties. Until this worthy volume moves forward, which it should do within five years, Eden's book is a major source. Once the official selection is made it will be of less value. But even then, this volume has many of Eden's minutes, which the official historians do not print. These thus re- main hidden until the expiration of that damnosa hereditas, the Fifty-Year Rule. When that rule dies its natural death (which for 1934 will be in 1984), everything will be on view, and this particular section will lose its value. Until then historians will need to thumb this heavy book with a certain reverence.

There are a number of vignettes here: meet- ings with Hitler and Stalin are always good value. Even Eden's slow prose cannot hide some- thing of the excitement of a meeting with these men. Corporal Hitler (Iron Cross) and Major Eden (Military Cross) discovered that they had been opposite each other in the trenches during the last great German offensive in 1918. But the spice comes from the French Ambassador, who, on learning of this, remarked: 'Et vous

manque? Vous devriez etre fusille.' Stalin, for whom Eden 'even felt a sympathy which I have never been able entirely to analyse,' is neatly drawn. But again it is not Eden who provides the sparkle, but Stalin, while explaining collec- tive security: 'We are six of us in this room; if Maisky chooses to go for any one of us, then we must all fall on Maisky.' It is good that Eden records this story; Maisky has omitted it from his own memoirs!

What of the policies for which these meetings were the fringe? Eden's resignation in 1938, and his subsequent place in Churchill's War Cabinet, suggest that he rejected appeasement and all that it stood for. In a sense he did. He was not in- different to the fate of the Czechs, but insisted upon avoiding 'the responsibility for counselling Dr. Benes to negotiate a settlement, . . which might, indeed, entail dangerous or humiliating concessions.' Eden's warnings were • ignored, but he had already resigned when the Czech crisis became acute, and was unable to influence it

in any way. He had sought while in office a speed-up of rearmament, but was rebuked by Chamberlain for this 'feverish' suggestion. He wished to accept Roosevelt's proposal for a con- ference to settle outstanding international prob- lems, but was told by Sir Horace Wilson that such a proposal was 'woolly rubbish.' Eden was a plague in the corridors of appease- ment. As Lord Londonderry wrote to a friend: 'I have been very careful in my relations with Germany never to adopt an attitude, which Anthony Eden unfortunately does, of hectoring and lecturing and criticising what they do.' Eden saw the need to criticise and would not alloof himself to be silenced. But he did allow the Permanent Head of the Foreign Office, Sit Robert Vansittart, to be kicked 'upstairs' to a position of unmerited impotence. Eden records that Chamberlain was 'insistent' upon Vansittart's removal. The page devoted to this incident abounds in inconsistencies and special pleading. It is the worst page in the book. It was most unwise of Eden to allow so great an ally to 13,e pushed aside. Once Vansittart had gone, Edens own removal was less difficult for the appeasers to engineer. In a much undervalued book, The British Foreign Office, Ashton-Gwatkin told, thirteen years ago, of how the Head of the Civil Service (first Sir Warren Fisher and then Wilson) inter- fered in Foreign Office business and sought to, influence policy by unconstitutional threats On pressures. Eden's memoirs bear this out, full and disconcertingly. Here we see Fisher an Wilson devoting themselves to the task of prising Eden out. Wilson insisted upon the need for 'getting together' with the dictators. Eden was dubious. 'I strongly doubted whether either, Hitler or Mussolini was in any way interested in coming to worthwhile terms with us and wanted to strengthen our hand by every means' amongst which closer Anglo-American relations, had a first place.' Yet although Halifax and Malcolm MacDonald groped for a comproiniSe solution, and although Simon sought to mint' mise the clash by trying to persuade Eden la resign on the false grounds of ill-health, Wiln, triumphed. Eden not only resigned, but his Policy of wariness when dealing with dictators, and hi innate suspicion of too swift a deal with the was dashed to the ground. But the difference between Eden and Chant; berlain was not so great as, in retrospect, Eden claims. In certain circumstances Eden was pre- pared pared to seek agreement with Italy. He Wall'„, the condition to be Italian withdrawal fr",, Spain. Chamberlain and Wilson wanted to burr. talks forward before Italian troops withdrer, The difference was one of timing, not principle' Eden's enemies gave him more credit for highs mindedness than they need have done. He hof not been ashamed to accept their estimate of him. Far better to be thought an opponent 5 Chamberlain's beliefs than of his technirine alone. But any opposition was better than nOne. And with Eden's resignation the way was 010 for Chamberlain to draw closer to the dictators, o What happened after the resignation? Ectd4c, does not tell us of the visits of the nimble g' Id Butler to the German Embassy. Nor are vve,tferi of the anti-Chamberlain groupings to which I.' is belonged, and his efforts in them. All tilt promised in a later volume. But it is an integ ot part of this one. It is a pity the story is nit, taken to the outbreak of war. As it is, it hangs ,of