A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE political crisis of the week-end has provoked an abnormal crop of unanswered questions. Mr. Eden, in his speech on Monday, spoke of one particular occasion in recent weeks in which he differed fundamentally from the Prime Minister on a matter of foreign policy. What was it ? Certainly not Lord Halifax's visit to Berlin, which was not " in recent weeks." It refers, I think, to a matter which has never been made public at all. Then the Prime Minister made the remarkable statement that he received on Sunday morning from " a friend of Count Grandi " information regarding the contents of a memorandum which Count Grandi was to give him the next day ; Mr. Eden added the still more remarkable statement that though the Prime Minister told him (he was still Foreign Secretary) of the information he did not tell him where it came from. Thirdly, Mr. Churchill quoted in the House of Commons on Tuesday a passage from the National Zeitung, which made a violent attack on those responsible for " a campaign of propaganda and calumny in the foreign Press," and added that it was clear what individual in this country was aimed at. To the question " Who is it ? " from several Hon. Members Mr. Churchill preferred to give no answer. But the answer obviously is, Sir Robert Vansittart, as Chairman of the new Committee on British propaganda. A fourth question is what the Prime Minister meant when he said that recog- nition of the conquest of Abyssinia could only be " morally " justified if it were a factor in general appease- ment ; what degree of expediency constitutes morality ?
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