Headaches After Holiday

Headaches After Holiday

A great tradition decrees that, no matter how closely Europe may tremble on the brink of crisis, one may safely spend a British week end in the country and take a holiday over Christmas and New Year's. After observing this tradition. His Majesty's Government returned severally last week to London. The Home Secretary and Lady Simon had been having fliers at Monte Carlo. The Prime Minister and Mrs. Baldwin had hobnobbed with Worcestershire neighbors of their estate, "Astley Hall." Squire Baldwin, as he does every Christmas, put aside the fact that he is Conservative Party Leader to welcome home his Socialist prodigal son Oliver, the only reservation being that they never discuss politics.

At Dumbleton Hall in Evesham, the First Lord of the Admiralty and Lady Monsell forgot happily all about the London Naval Conference which is doubly deadlocked (TIME, Dec. 30). Monsell's second daughter is learning Tibetan and had many interesting things to tell. The hawk-nosed, hawk-minded Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mrs. Chamberlain did not go home to gloomy Birmingham, but holidayed in Dorking with a large and merry party. Up in Scotland the superstition that one's New Year will be unlucky unless the first person across one's doorstep is a dark-haired man. kept dark-haired Dominions' Secretary Malcolm MacDonald busy making New Year's midnight calls on Lossiemouth neighbors, while his father, snowy-haired Lord President of the Council James Ramsay MacDonald, diplomatically stayed at home visiting with Daughter Sheila. Not present was Daughter Ishbel who did such a rushing business during the weekend at her 300-year-old Plow Inn in High Wycombe (TIME. Dec. 2) that she was obliged to don an apron, help wait on such distinguished guests as the U. S. Ambassador and Mrs. Bingham.

In a colored paper hat Colonial Secretary James Henry ("Jim") Thomas crawled about on the floor teaching his granddaughters how to work an elaborate motor race track and showing his grand sons how to fire toy machine guns. The holiday was a headache only for new Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. With a self-appraisal deeper than modesty, Mr. Eden judged himself to be uninformed about the Egyptian Question and, since Egyptian students were daily rioting against the British with increasing violence, took away with him on his country holiday a heavy Foreign Office dossier on Egypt.

The students rioted more & more savagely as Anthony Eden read on & on. Urgent cables from the British High Commissioner in Cairo caused "Tony" annoyance. Here he was a new Foreign Secretary, with his career to make, and the Egyptians would not wait for his orderly Eton mind to absorb the facts as they should be absorbed, slowly. In his annoyance the new Foreign Secretary wrote a reply referring the Egyptians to the speech on Egypt of his predecessor as Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, which so inflamed Egyptian passions that turbulence in Cairo has been rising ever since. The speech contained some appeasing phrases, but its gist was that the British Government are set like flint against the aspirations of Egyptian Nationalism. After Mr. Eden's message to Cairo last week, rioting increased to such an extent that it got out of the control of the British Chief of Egyptian Police, and required for the first time the intervention of Egyptian Army units in steel helmets who fired charges of birdshot into students screeching "Down with England!" At the close of his holiday, Mr. Eden set about officially "becoming acquainted'' with the personnel of the British Foreign Office in which he has labored since 1926, when he became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain. All its civil servants who were of sufficient rank to be presented he greeted affably. These were moments to be savored, treasured. Thirty years hence volumes of memoirs will be adorned with versions of what "Tony" said last week if he proves to be a great British Foreign Secretary. What did Lord Curzon say on the like occasion? Foreign Office legend has it that he stared at the inkstand on the Foreign Secretary's desk through his monocle and exclaimed, "What, may I ask, is that remarkable object?"

Upon being told by the nearest British civil servant, he exclaimed, "Indeed! Do you actually inform me that that is the inkstand of His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs? I am accustomed to a silver and crystal inkstand. This appears to be of braass and glaass."

Stout Curzon friends deny that he ever said any such thing but legend is a sturdy oak. Legend also says that in this room Sir Edward Grey worked all one night in 1914 and then at dawn, stepping to the window as London's street lights were being extinguished, cut this gem: "Lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lighted again in our time."

Whatever gems "Tony" cut last week, he has 61 chances this week to cut more, as the 61 foreign representatives accredited to the Court of St. James's call to pay their respects. The Iranian envoy was all primed to hear clever, young Mr. Eden speak Iranian (Farssi), a tongue with which the new Foreign Secretary sometimes amuses pretty ladies at parties.

To be attended to later was a vast mound of matters which have accumulated since Sir Samuel Hoare resigned. Of these the most pressing were the demands upon Britain for a quid pro quo, now being loudly made by Turkey and other countries as a result of Mr. Eden's having got their representatives at Geneva to promise they would aid Britain if she should need help as the result of an Italian attack. The Turks ask to be permitted to tear up the treaty forbidding them to fortify the Dardanelles. The French, having promised Britain the loan of warboats and aircraft for possible use against Italy, demand in return that Britain promise them troops, plus British aircraft and warboats, to fight for France in case of a German attack. Last week the fruits of Mr. Eden's diplomacy as League of Nation's Minister immediately prior to his appointment as Foreign Secretary seemed to be a general European desire to anticipate the next war as far as possible, and get everyone signed up to fight.

In the long speech of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the House of Commons on the occasion of Sir Samuel Hoare's resignation, the chief point was that henceforth the British Foreign Secretary must not go gadding abroad but remain in London, practicing diplomacy through His Majesty's Ministers and Ambassadors abroad. This point was made with a repetition and an emphasis amounting to the most formal kind of pledge. By going abroad Foreign Secretary Hoare was, according to the Prime Minister's fervent presentation, supposed to have been entrapped into a dishonorable "Deal" to partition Ethiopia, which he would never have endorsed in the wholesome atmosphere of England.

Next week the League of Nations resumes its Geneva activity on Sanctions. If "Tony" is hog-tied in London that will be news. At the British Foreign Office last week it was said that while Mr. Eden may possibly not go to Geneva, he probably will be obliged by the gravity of the international situation to go to Geneva.

When the Prime Minister got back to his desk last week, his particular headache was provided by British voters, who strongly resent Mr. Baldwin's efforts to have Father Ramsay & Son Malcolm MacDonald, who lost their House of Commons seats in straight contests in the November election, now returned to the House by running them as candidates in by-elections where the district is supposed to be "safe" in the control of Conservative Boss Baldwin's party machine.

As a "safe" seat to be campaigned for by the elder MacDonald, the Prime Minister picked one representing the Scottish Universities. In so doing good Squire Baldwin evidently failed to remember that in 1931 Labor Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald antagonized the Scottish Universities by doing his Socialist best to have the three seats representing the United Scottish Universities, arid traditionally held by Conservatives, combined into one. Scotsmen who have longer memories than Mr. Baldwin are not fond of an erstwhile Socialist, who has now materialized into a Conservative, while calling himself a "National Laborite."

As a "safe" seat to be campaigned for by the younger MacDonald, the Prime Minister picked Ross & Cromarty in Scotland. There the Conservative party machine blew up last week in Boss Baldwin's face and in open defiance rejected Malcolm MacDonald as their candidate. In a most painful mixup, it seemed possible that Liberals of Ross & Cromarty might adopt the younger MacDonald as their candidate, and that Conservatives of Ross " Cromarty might beat him by putting up as their candidate Son Randolph Churchill whose famed father, Winston, tried all last year to oust Boss Baldwin from the Party's leadership, then made up with him just before polling time.

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