Ducks & Sanctions

Frosty Mr. Neville Chamberlain, hawk-nosed Chancellor of the Exchequer, arrived at the Treasury one morning last week with his striped trousers soaked to the hips, the tail of his morning coat dripping, water squelching from his shoes. Nobody asked any questions, discretion being a hallmark of British civil servants, and Chancellor Chamberlain volunteered no explanation, sat down wet, merely telling his secretary to have his chauffeur bring a change of clothes.

Meanwhile Fleet Street editors scoffed at the cock & bull yarn some reporters had telephoned in. They said they had talked to an Irishman who said he had talked to a woman who said her little boy had been rescued from drowning in the duck pond of St. James's Park by a tall man in top hat and impeccable morning clothes who looked exactly like the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This Irish yarn seemed all the more unlikely because several men were said to have been standing nearby when the child fell in, while the top-hatted rescuer had sprinted from the gravel walking path, vaulted over a low railing, waded rapidly into the duck pond and grasped the floundering child.

Ordinarily Chancellor Chamberlain is so standoffish that for reporters to get anything of a personal nature out of the Treasury is all but impossible. Last week, however, they found Neville Chamberlain willing to confirm the Irishman's tale in all details. Jubilant were the Chancellor's friends, now busy grooming him to succeed Stanley Baldwin before long as Prime Minister, but fearful that frosty Mr. Chamberlain lacks the human appeal necessary to hold the highest office in Great Britain with success. After his spontaneous duck-pond heroism they all felt immensely more hopeful, and London newspapers blazed out with the first human interest story of all time about Rt. Hon. Arthur Neville Chamberlain, Privy Councilor to His Majesty and M. P. for Ladywood.

Earlier in the week potent Chancellor Chamberlain delivered to London's Conservative 1900 Club a speech which was generally considered so pro-Italian, so anti-Ethiopian that it watered down almost completely the British National Government's formerly firm resolve to buck up the League of Nations and enforce its decisions.

"If we have retained any vestige of common sense," rasped Chancellor Chamberlain, "we must admit that we have tried to impose on the League a task beyond its powers. The circumstances in which the Italo-Ethiopian dispute began offered a most favorable opportunity to exercise the League of Nation's policy of 'collective security,' but that policy, based on Sanctions, has been tried out and has failed."

Mr. Chamberlain then crushingly referred to efforts by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, president of the British League of Nations Union, to rally British public opinion in support of Sanctions and against Italy. Lord Cecil had just issued "the most serious, most urgent communication" he had ever made to the British public, declaring: "Since our honor and the future of our civilization are involved, we have the right to demand that our Gov ernment should openly declare its conviction that the Covenant of the League of Nations must be carried out. . . . Sanctions should be maintained and if necessary increased!"

Referring directly to Lord Cecil's appeal, Chancellor Chamberlain declared, "That is very midsummer madness!" He advocated instead the most rapid possible British rearmament, "for we have but a short time to prepare ourselves for eventualities" and the signing of regional pacts to guarantee the peace of specific, limited areas after consulting the British Dominions. Next day the anti-Fascist Daily Herald, chief newsorgan of British Labor, bitterly declared, "Sanctions are over for Britain," and reported that British trade agents were leaving for Italy by every train to sign contracts for the import of Italian products into Britain the moment Sanctions were lifted.

After several days of evasiveness on the part of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Cabinet held a solemn meeting, definitely decided to abandon Sanctions. In this decision concurred even fervent Sanctionist Anthony Eden, on whom fell the unwelcome task of announcing it to the House of Commons.

Ousted Emperor Haile Selassie, kinky-poked cause of all this Sanctions talk, continued last week to have no success in his efforts to be received by King Edward VIII in London, but one member of the Royal Family did call at Haile Selassie's cream-yellow sanctuary in Princes Gate. To represent King George V six years ago at the Coronation of Haile Selassie as Power of Trinity I, Emperor of Ethiopia, the Duke of Gloucester went to Addis Ababa with a resplendent suite, stayed a fortnight as Haile Selassie's guest (TIME, Nov. 10, 1930). Last week the Duke of Gloucester made what his aides called "an unofficial although formal call" upon Haile Selassie, stayed five minutes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.