Nobel? Shameful?

Nearly the whole world last week undertook to pass judgment in one form or another on Britain's Prime Minister. That Neville Chamberlain will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was taken for granted by the Norwegian press. The influential Aftenposten went on to urge that, without waiting for the next scheduled date for the Nobel award--December 10, anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel--the committee should "immediately" give Mr. Chamberlain the prize (about $40.000). Norwegian joy at the peace was such that all Oslo school children were given a holiday.

Every Norwegian recalled that the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize went to half-brother Sir Austen Chamberlain and Charles G. Dawes for their part in paving the way for the Pact of Locarno. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, as he then was, received from King George V a much rarer honor than elevation to the peerage, knighthood in the Order of the Garter, and in British circles this week Mr. Neville Chamberlain was slated to receive equal honors at the hands of King George VI. Birmingham University was at once presented last week with a $50.000 scholarship fund, donated by Midland Publisher Sir Charles Hyde "to commemorate the services for peace of the Prime Minister."

Really scathing attacks on Neville Chamberlain were made almost entirely from extremely safe distances of several thousand miles, notably by certain Manhattan radio news broadcasters. Of these. Johannes Steel, a German agent on mysterious missions in Brazil until the Nazis came into power, was the most caustic: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen. So they call it peace! . . . They call it peace because the victim, not being able to save itself from its friends, cannot face the enemy alone. They call it peace because the victor received the spoils before instead of after battle! . . . The England of Mr. Chamberlain is not the true England, the Democratic England--just as the France of M. Daladier is not the France of the Popular Front, the true Democratic France. . . . This is the first time in my career as a commentator on international affairs that I am left largely speechless. . . . The thing that I cannot understand and seems almost inconceivable is that no storm of indignation in England or France has yet swept the Chamberlain and Daladier Governments out of office! . . . What has happened to the leaders of the Popular Front--to the elements that compose the Popular Front--that they do not protest against the most shameful betrayals in modern history? . . . Does Chamberlain really intend to deliver Western Civilization to the new Anti-Christ?"

In Manhattan, famed Rabbi Stephen S. Wise drew loud boos for Neville Chamberlain from 1,000 members of the United Czechoslovak Societies, declaring: "Chamberlain has not brought back peace with honor, but dishonor without peace!" Simultaneously 5,000 Manhattan high-school boys and girls of the Young Communist League marched with placards denouncing Hitler and Chamberlain until sent home by police.

In Moscow the powerful Comintern station went on the air with Popular Front declarations that "Chamberlain has saved the ruling classes at the expense of the toiling masses. . . . France has ceased to be a great power." In France, the General Confederation of Labor, representing some 3.000,000 trade unionists, announced its "acceptance of the Munich accords for suspending the course to war." but expressed fear that "these accords, limited to some powers, may create a preface to the Constitution of a Four-Power-Pact condemned by public opinion of all democratic countries'' (see p. 19). Paris-Soir, with a circulation of 1,800.000, launched a popular subscription campaign to buy Fisherman Chamberlain a house on a French stream to be known as "Peace House" and be given by the State extraterritorial status.

Prime Ministers of British Dominions cabled to Neville Chamberlain their Cabinets' warmest congratulations. The British Labor movement, never militantly class-conscious and just plain anxious not to fight, was this week--as usual--the despair of those British forces which would have liked to ashcan Stanley Baldwin, would now like to ashcan Neville Chamberlain. It was no worker but an especially gilded British aristocrat, the husband of Mayfair's glamorous Lady Diana ("The Virgin in Max Reinhardt's The Miracle") Duff Cooper, who was first in London to take up potent cudgels against the Prime Minister (see p. 19) by resigning from the Cabinet.

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