Sound & Adequate?

With London's airport fogbound last week British Foreign Secretary "Flying Sam" Hoare left for Paris by train & boat instead of plane. Ninety minutes after his arrival Sir Samuel was closeted with Premier Pierre Laval and the permanent experts who make British and French foreign policy, Sir Robert Vansittart and M. Alexis Leger, plus their sub-experts on Ethiopia, Mr. Maurice Peterson and Count Rene de Saint-Quentin. The tension and excitement were terrific. Upon the table lay in draft form on crisp sheets "The Deal."

The recent British General Election was fought and won on a plane of loftily denying the simultaneous diplomatic work which went steadily forward to make The Deal for peace between Italy and Ethiopia (TIME, Oct. 14). Last week 24 days had passed since Britons voted. The Deal, involving dismemberment of Ethiopia to the extent of Italy's securing approximately half of Haile Selassie's Empire, was briskly approved in Paris last week by Sir Samuel Hoare who had just finished announcing in the House of Commons that to be "acceptable" any terms of peace must satisfy Italy, the League and Ethiopia (see p. 21). To make Emperor Haile Selassie more satisfied than he otherwise might have been, Dictator Mussolini opened up last week for the first time with 200-lb. air bombs (see p. 21). Premier Laval, who months ago as Foreign Minister sold Il Duce a free hand in Ethiopia so far as France is concerned (TIME, Jan 14), was glad to have The Deal approved last week by the British Foreign Secretary--disavowal of whom by His Majesty's Government would be an international scandal of the first magnitude-- but he realized that the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin is a character who is accustomed to act from feeling and intuition with the casualness of a friendly sheepdog.

The Quai d'Orsay switchboard operator was told to get Stanley Baldwin on the telephone. She reported that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was not to be reached by telephone even on the joint request of His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the President of the Council of Ministers of France. There was nothing unusual in this. Mr. Baldwin often refuses to use the telephone. Instinct and experience warned him that he would be better able to make up his mind as to the justice and wisdom of dismembering Ethiopia after he had read and heard the first reactions of news-organs and British political henchmen to the startling events in Paris--startling to millions who balloted under the distinct impression that His Majesty's Government intended to preserve, protect and defend through the League of Nations the territorial integrity of Ethiopia. Neither Squire Baldwin nor any member of the British Cabinet ever promised to do this. In respect to Ethiopia they merely promised to be sound and adequate.

To convince Squire Baldwin that The Deal is sound & adequate, Mr. Maurice Peterson clapped it into his briefcase and caught the next train for London. With humor and irony, Sir Samuel Hoare left for a Swiss winter sports centre, saying he would leave The Deal, if Mr. Baldwin approves it, to be presented to the League of Nations, by handsome young Captain Anthony Eden.* That "White Knight of Geneva" was reported to be extremely angry at what he considered the sabotaging of his high-minded efforts in behalf of the beleaguered blacks. He gave ear to friends who urged him to resign. After a closeted talk with George V, however, and after the Cabinet had expressed formal approval of The Deal, Mr. Eden said he would go to Geneva this week.

In Rome meanwhile Benito Mussolini, who has little if any sense of humor, angrily reminded his cheering Chamber of Deputies that Italy's "minimum demands" are somewhat greater than even Sir Samuel Hoare approves. To Latins and even to Slavs and Teutons last week Britons seemed to have behaved throughout the Ethiopian crisis in a manner which called for nose-holding. However hypocritical Continentals may be themselves, they like to think of Britons as paragons of perfidy. In Rome, with II Duce on the Chamber rostrum toying with a rose, Deputies openly sneered at Perfidious Albion as Orator Mussolini, citing "flying Sam's'' speech to the House of Commons, 'declared with acid sarcasm in his tone: "We note that the British Foreign Office wants a strong Italy with a strong Government such as the Fascist Government is, an Italy capable of keeping the place that is her due in the life of Europe and the world! [langhter, jeers, applause]. . . . The Italian people listen to words [jeers] but base their judgment upon facts!"

Among facts of the week was the quiet withdrawal to the Atlantic for "fleet exercises" of several major British warships sent to Gibraltar as a form of pressure upon Italy (TIME, Sept. 30). On Dec. 12 the League's Sanctions Committee meets. At the Quai d'Orsay, where Premier Laval as usual professed no undue optimism, it was announced that Dictator Mussolini has been given the "alternative" of either accepting "in principle" what Prime Minister Baldwin decides upon or being subjected to the addition by Geneva of oil to the list of sanctions. Since "acceptance in principle" is the traditional diplomatic high sign for further bargaining, The Deal, although notably advanced, appeared to be still in a preliminary stage this week.

*Exact details of The Deal were kept rigorously secret last week but Europeans assumed that not only Italy but also Britain and France were to gain at Ethiopia's expense. Germany's leading satiric weekly Kladderadatsch savagely cartooned John Bull at first exhibiting righteous indignation at the sticking of the Ethiopian wild boar, then sitting down with France and Italy to carve it on a platter.

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