A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
" In some quarters an absurd attempt is being made to saddle
• Mr. Eden, both by praise and by blame, with the reputation of being a young man in a hurry, rushing along in front of reluctant coreagues. This sort of comment is unfair and untrue, and appears at its worst in the -fantastic suggestion that there is friction or incompatibility between the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for League Affairs. . . It is just as far from the facts that he [Mr. Eden] should be made the bogey of certain newspapers which have just discovered weaknesses and dangers in the League, or which (more logically) have consistently attacked it from the beginning, as that the British Government should have become the bogey of the Italian press."
--and here another :
" Another lesson is that the influence of Britain for peace has been weakened by the cries, largely originating in this country and eagerly repeated abroad, that her material defences are weak."
No one who had skimmed Mr. Garvin's three columns of picturesque vituperation on the previous day could doubt what the target for The Times' thrusts was meant to be. The situation is a little odd. The principal owner of The Observer is understood to be Lord Astor, and the principal owner of The Times his brother, Major Astor. So far as is known, moreover, the two are at one in their approval of the Government's action at Geneva. What is more, Lady Astor is about to present herself for re-election to the voters of the Sutton Division of Plymouth as a staunch supporter of the National Government, which Mr. Garvin is assailing with more violence than Lord Beaverbrook or Lord Rothermere. Altogether, as the man-in-the-street sometimes veraciously observes, it's a strange world.
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