The powerful supporters in the Press of isolation in Foreign
Policy must have had a cruel disappointment at the reception of Sir John Simon's finely-phrased statement that British troops would co-operate in the preservation of order during the Saar plebiscite. There was not merely no hostile question, there was not a murmur of dissent from the packed Conservative Benches. I understand that Sir John Simon was himself opposed to the dispatch of troops on the ground of the hostility it was certain to provoke in a section of the Government supporters, but that he was overborne by a section of the Cabinet led by Mr. Walter Elliot. The welcome that it received should help Sir John to estimate the Rothermere and Beaverbrook influence at its true worth and make him less timid in the future about inter- national action. That is the hope felt at any rate not 'merely by the Liberal and Labour opposition but by the great mass of Government adherents..
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