W HEN a Foreign Secretary reports to the House of Commons
on the first official visit of British Ministers to a new United States Administration, the occasion should he serious if not solemn—the more so when the British Ministers have been representing the views not only of their own Government but of the Commonwealth too. Mr. Attlee evidently felt this when Mr. Eden made his statement on Tuesday. for Mr. Attlee's manner suggested that the House had heard Mr. Eden throughout in dignified concentration. But it had not. Mr. Attlee no doubt has-had much experience in the drafting of official statements that say nothing to the uninformed but hint at great wisdoms to the initiated, and he may have been able to roll himself in the Foreign Office blanket prepared for the House with breathless zest. Other Members clearly could not.
What is so odd is that Mr. Eden did not seem to realise that the House—or at least the Opposition—would have pre- ferred a much shorter statement if the Government felt unable to tell the House much about the Washington visit. Lord Salisbury, who was saying nothing about Lords' reform in the Upper House at about the same time on Tuesday, had the grace to apologise because his answer was " bound to be of a rather anodyne and even negative character." Mr. Eden brought the first part of his statement (on Commonwealth affairs) to an unhappy close by saying: " 1 will not inflict upon the House a detailed account of these talks." Those Members who had been jeering at the emptiness of Mr. Eden's earlier sentences (" Do the Marines know about this ? " he was asked at one point) were hungry for details. The United States Administration has been given them. Canada has them. The O.E.E.C. is to get them. Cannot Parliament be told something ?
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The second part of Mr. Eden's statement on foreign affairs was a little more informative and was heard more attentively. But this difference between what Mr. Eden said as Deputy Prime Minister—it was in that capacity that he had presided over the Commonwealth conference—and what he said as Foreign Secretary sharpened the curiosity of Members about the relative standing of Mr. Eden and Mr. Butler within the Conservative Party. an issue which the business of the House on Tuesday had forced to the front. The first questioner of the day asked Mr. Butler to make a statement on the Washington talks. He modestly referred his questioner to what Mr. Eden would have to say later on. And when the time came. Mr. Eden praised " the firm grasp and lucid exposition " of Mr. Butler which, he said, had made a deep impression on the Americans. Mr. Butler had an opportunity to display these qualities in the House before the Washington episode ended. He was asked by Mr. Gaitskell about con- vertibility and repeated the short and clear formula on the subject that the House already knows.
The third reading of the Steel Bill was secured quietly on Tuesday. Mr. Duncan Sandys, who dozed during the final stages of the Transport Bill's third reading a month ago. was awake on Tuesday night. His final speech, though it could contain nothing new about the Bill, was of value to the student of Mr. Sandys. He thanked everybody, including the Opposi- tion and the Steel Corporation, for their help. But, having been so kind, he was brutal enough to quote Sir Hartley Shawcross against Labour critics of the Bill. Yet he was playful too and outdid Mr. Mitchison in quotations from " Alice." Finally he found a political label for himself when he urged the House to accept the " moderate progressive" proposals in the Bill as a fair and lasting settlement. The res- ponse to that will he given in the .next Parliament, not this. J. F. B.
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