[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Is your argumentum ad
hominem quite fair ? As you state the case, it is between an ex-Lord Mayor of Birmingham on the one hand and on the other a man who has for 12 years been immersed in the study or foreign affairs. Even if as you suggest, other members of the Cabinet may have acquiesced in rather than supported the Prime Minister's view, there is one man whose attitude I should have expected you to recognise as being almost decisive, and that is Lord Halifax. Surely it is very significant that a man of such great distinction and experience whose point of view is in many ways so different, came down so heavily on the side of the ex-Lord Mayor against the Foreign Secretary. It is true that on the other hand two former professional Foreign Office officials in the House of Commons supported Mr. Eden, influenced perhaps a bit by the " old school tie " idea.
But is this really a matter for experts ? After all the issue as Lord Halifax pointed out is a very simple one, namely- " what the Prime Minister considered should be vital con- ditions of any agreement that issued from conversations Mr. Eden considered should be conditions precedent to the inauguration of the conversations themselves." Mr. Eden's demands for evidences of good behaviour is ominously remin- iscent of the attitude of the French Government to Germany in 1933. Germany was then rearming in flagrant breach of the Treaty of Versailles. The French Government, supported by Sir John Simon, refused to consider proposals for a general scheme of reduction of armaments and wanted to impose a " period of probation " as a punishment on Germany for breach of the Treaty. Let us not repeat that error by humiliating a very much weaker power when she is anxious to come to terms. And let us remember, as Mr. Spender has pointed out in a recent book, that although we are conscious of our own disinterestedness in trying out the League of Nations over the Abyssinia business, there is probably no one on the Continent who believes this.—Your obedient [Our respect for Lord Halifax is all our correspondent suggests and more ; but he would be the last man to suggest that his knowledge and experience of foreign affairs in the past twelve years was comparable with Mr. Eden's. How should it be ? Incidentally, we nowhere referred to Mr. Chamberlain simply as Lord Mayor. We said he had been Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Minister of Health and Chan- cellor of the Exchequer.—ED. The Spectator.]
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