FROM THE START of the crisis the Manchester Guardian adopted
a let's-not-get-worked-up-over-trifles line which might have made it thoroughly unpopular; and whatever my feelings about its wisdom, I had to applaud its courage—until I saw its leader on the Prime Minister's broadcast. 'A telling part of the broadcast,' it began, 'was the echo it evoked of 1938'; and it went on to argue, at some length, that the parallel was mis- leading. Now, anybody who had not heard, or who imperfectly remembered the Prime Minister's broadcast, would naturally have assumed that Sir Anthony drew the parallel in it between Munich and Suez. He did not. He never even mentioned Munich. What he actually said was, 'We all remember only too well what the cost can be of giving in to Fascism'; and `with dictators you always have to pay a higher price later.' In fact it is fairly obvious that what Sir Anthony had in mind was the Rhineland parallel, and I am sorry that the Guardian of all papers should have resorted to the dubious expedient of distorting Sir Anthony's speech, the better to make its case against the Government's policy over the Canal. * * *
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