MR: EDEN AND THE WORLD
MR. EDEN is both a personality and a symbol. Of his personality sufficient is known to make his appointment to the office of Foreign Secretary welcome on that ground alone. The appointment has been criticised on the ground of the new Minister's age and inexperience. As to age, it is in fact ridiculous to suggest that at 38 the fevers and heats of youth must still be fatal to judgement. If to the cry of too old at forty is to be added the dogma, too young at thirty-eight, the able-bodied and sound-minded portion of the population will be reduced to singularly meagre dimensions. Actually Mr. Eden stands at a point of human life where maturity and vigour are perhaps better combined that at any other. As for experience, if by that is meant experience of the special field in which he. will have to work, Mr. Eden comes to the Foreign Office better equipped than any one of his recent predecessors—and better than Lord Salisbury, or Lord Rosebery, or Lord Lansdowne or Lord Grey. For he has served a full seven years' apprenticeship, having been for three years Parlia- mentary Private Secretary to Sir Austen Chamberlain (not primarily a training in impetuosity), two years as Under-Secretary to the Foreign Office and another two, first as Lord Privy Seal with special charge of League of Nations Affairs, then as actual Minister for League Affairs. And it is worth remembering (Mr. Baldwin, no doubt did remember) that the two events which prior to last September had done more than any other to establish this country's prestige at Geneva were the parts its representative played in securing peaee in the Saar during the plebiscite, and in achieving a settlement of the dangerous dispute between Hungary and Jugoslavia. The representa- tive in each case was Mr. Eden.
But both to the country and to the world in general Mr. Eden's appointment is first and foremost symbolic. It demonstrates the will of the Govern- ment, and still more the will of the people, that the foreign policy of Great Britain shall remain based on the League of Nations, and that that policy shall be manifested not only in words but in deeds. It would be a profound mistake to try and discover a divergence between Sir Samuel Hoare's policy and Mr. Eden's. There is none and never has been, except on the single point of the ill-starred Paris peace plan. Certainly no words that Sir Samuel Hoare ever uttered express, or could express, more effectively everything that Mr. Eden has always urged both at Westminster and at Geneva than the declaration that "what this country stands for is the collective maintenance of the Covenant in its entirety, and particularly for steady and collective resistance to acts of unprovoked aggres- sion." The words are Sir Samuel Hoare's ; the policy is the British Government's. Sir Samuel has impressed it on the world through the League of Nations during a tenure of office of six months, Mr. Eden for more than two years. From that policy there has been one unfortunate deviation— quickly rectified through what Lord Harting-ton well described as the capacity of a democracy to. assert itself as rapidly and decisively as a dictator—but no real departure. And the appointment of Mr. Eden is a guarantee to the country and the League of Nations that there will be none in future.
What, then, is the foreign policy of this country as it stands after the peace plan episode ? There can be no more authoritative spokesmen on that point than the Prime Minister and the .Chancellor of the Exchequer. In some quarters, particularly in the Conservative Party, the declarations made by Mr. Chamberlain, both in the House of Commons and in his constituency, will carry the greater weight. But in fact the views of the Prime Minister and his senior colleague are identical. There has been frank confession of fault in regard to the Paris negotiations. There have been clear assurances that this country will pursue at once the policy of sanctions and the policy of peace by agreement.
How far the sanctions policy is to be carried is a matter for early decision. Mr. Eden's appointment does not necessarily mean that this country will press immediately for the imposition of petrol sanc- tions. But neither, certainly, does it mean that it will not. Sir Samuel Hoare's warning that collective action means a real and active sharing of responsi- bility for consequences was necessary, and appears to have evoked the desired response frodi League , States in the Mediterranean area. To assume that the business of the League in a conflict like the present is simply to keep the ring for the combatants is to misunderstand the whole tenor of the Covenant fundamentally. Its business is to make. the victory of the aggressor unattainable and bring the war to the earliest possible end consistent with justice. Obviously the imposition of petrol sanctions would go far to achieve both purposes, and if there is a proper assurance of mutual support from all the League §tates capable of taking action against any new, aggressive stroke by Italy Signor Mussolini's menaces will not be gratuitously invested by the British Gov- ernment with the force of veto.
As to a settlement, that may be a more delicate question still. This is no time to be discussing details, but the Paris proposals have already taught such Ministers as needed it a sharp lesson. 'Os funda- mental that Italy shall not secure as a result of her aggression better terms than she might have had for the asking before she attacked. The proposals framed at Geneva in September by the Committee 9f Five (of which Mr. Eden was a member) made great concessions to Italy. The Emperor of Abyssinia went very far in assenting in principle to a plan which pledged him to accept extensive assistance, through expert advisers appointed by the League, in the administration of his realm, particularly as regards finance, law and order and security on the frontiers. On that basis the mission of civilisation by which Italy sets such store would be effectively carried out—but not by Italy either exclusively or principally. No settlement going an inch beyond that can have Britain's approval or the League's. That is the prin- ciple Mr. Eden is commissioned, even more by his fellow-citizens than by his fellow-Ministers, to defend.
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