Second Hundred Thousand

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, enjoying a quiet post-New Year holiday at the home of Lord Iveagh in Ely, Cambridgeshire, suddenly packed his bags and hurried to London last week. Government spokesmen explained that "bad weather" had forced Mr. Chamberlain to return. Indeed it had. The Prime Minister had hurried back to keep a close watch on the political bad weather which his policy of "appeasement" is now experiencing in Britain.

The most alarming storm signals last week were hoisted over Caxton Hall, not far from Downing Street, where a noisy hodgepodge of 300 anti-Chamberlainites, including Conservative and Liberal M.P.s, Communist Party members and editors of the liberal News Chronicle, set in motion the first all-party united front against the Chamberlain policies. Moving spirits behind the meeting were: its chairman, tall, scented Duncan Sandys (pronounced sands), son-in-law of Winston Churchill and, like him, an independent Conservative; Randolph Churchill, florid son of Winston, who has tried and failed three times to enter Parliament; Her Grace, the Duchess of Atholl, insurgent Conservative who was recently defeated for re-election to the House of Commons; Vernon Bartlett, News Chronicle correspondent and independent M.P., whose recent election was a severe rebuke to the Government's foreign policy; Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, tradition-hating military correspondent for the London Times.

No old parties were to be split, Chairman Sandys soothingly explained, no new party formed. What was sought was a new political group, in which members could keep their party ties while pledging themselves to support: 1) a firmer, anti-dictator British foreign policy; 2) acceleration of British rearmament. Immediate goal, announced Mr. Sandys, was to enlist 100,000 members. To achieve this, the meeting officially titled its organization the Hundred Thousand, set up a recruiting office in London with the Duchess of Atholl as treasurer.

The "First Hundred Thousand," the valiant little British Expeditionary Force of 1914, is a name brimful of heroic associations for Britons. How effective the second Hundred Thousand will be in capturing popular imagination and support in opposing Mr. Chamberlain's policies remains to be seen.

Best interpretation of the meeting was that it was simply a trial balloon, engineered by lesser politicians at the instigation of bigger statesmen, to test how unpopular the Chamberlain appease-the-dictators policy has become. Conspicuously and significantly absent from Caxton Hall were the Conservative but anti-appeasement Big Three--Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Lord Baldwin.

Theatrical Mr. Churchill has long been overtly critical of the Prime Minister. Mr. Eden has been cautiously critical, on occasion abstaining rather than voting against Mr. Chamberlain. Lord Baldwin's opposition has been determined but never in the open. He and other anti-Chamberlain Conservatives realize that an open quarrel would split the party, pave the way for a return of the Laborites to power. They foresee the possibility of keeping Mr. Chamberlain in office but surrounding him with such an anti-Fascist Cabinet of "national unity" that he would no longer be free to appease dictators. Significantly, Chairman Sandys squelched some Hundred Thousand organizers who wanted to adopt the slogan: "Chamberlain Must Go."

Most crucial test of the Chamberlain policy will come this week when the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax go to Rome. They will stop over for a two-hour tea in Paris, where French Premier Edouard Daladier is expected to warn Mr. Chamberlain not to start appeasing Dictator Benito Mussolini with French territory. Mr. Chamberlain's dilemma at Rome will be that he cannot get concessions from Italy (such as less co-operation with Germany, no more menacing gestures toward France) without giving away something, and he cannot give away much without arousing opposition at home.

Meanwhile, last week the harassed Prime Minister experienced two more blasts against his foreign policy. Newspapers in the north of England and Scotland, somewhat removed from the personal influence of Government members, scored Mr. Chamberlain for allowing President Roosevelt to be the democratic leader who has thus far delivered the strongest attack on the dictator states.

The Federation of University Conservative Associations defeated, 14-to-10, a resolution supporting the Prime Minister's foreign policy "and in particular the policy of renewing friendship with Italy." While only 1,000 strong, the Association's reaction is significant, since it supplies the Conservative Party with many of its college-trained candidates. Its president is Oliver Stanley, President of the Board of Trade.

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