As for the offer by Mr. Eden of territorial adjustments
designed to facilitate a settlement between Italy and Abyssinia, it may or may not have been well conceived, and Signor Mussolini may or may not have been justified in rejecting it on its merits, but at least it is evidence of the lengths to which this country is prepared to go in its efforts to avert the threatened war. The fervour expended in certain quarters here on protests against this " bartering of British citizens " is singularly uncon- vincing. What is in question is a strip of land occupied by a few wandering Bedouins, and a port whose name not one Englishman in a hundred thousand ever heard of. The indignation has a particularly hollow ring when it emanates from organs which have, quite legiti- mately, urged the return to Germany of some of her lost colonies. Most French comment on the whole episode has been the reverse of helpful. We are anxious to work in all things in close co-operation with France, but we are not thereby precluded from having a foreign policy of our own.
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