Man of Geneva

Sixteen years ago, Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich, his furled umbrella in one hand, a piece of paper in the other, and rode through cheering crowds from Heston aerodrome to No. 10 Downing Street. To the crowd gathered before his door in Downing Street he proclaimed: "For the second time in our history a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor." King George VI welcomed him at Buckingham Palace; Britons stood in the rain cheering him as he declared, "I believe it is peace for our time."

Last week when Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden returned from Geneva, no crowd milled in front of No. 10 Downing Street. Before going off to a welcome at Buckingham Palace, Anthony Eden met the press, and there was an unhappy echo of history in what he said. The Geneva Conference had averted the danger of a third world war. "I have little doubt," he added, "that the settlement will be beneficial for the outlook of peace in the world."

For Anthony Eden and his course of capitulation at Geneva, approval came from all quarters of the political spectrum, from Bevanites to Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. But. except for the cries from the Bevanite left, even the loudest cheers had no note of jubilation, and the warmest congratulation betrayed a nagging suspicion that not peace, but trouble, lay ahead. Britain sighed in gratitude for a respite. Said the Times: "There is cause for deep thankfulness in the news about Indo-China. There cannot be joy." Said the News Chronicle: "You can do something constructive with peace. You can only win a war . . . [But] a war averted can be a trap if it turns out to be only postponed."

Hard Terms, Wide Dangers, In the House of Commons, Eden rose to warm but not exuberant cheers to report on the agreement. Bronzed by the Geneva sun, he broke off from his prepared text to raise a finger heavenward and declare emotionally: "Let us remember that these terms, hard though they may be, are the only alternative to continued fighting, further misery and suffering, and the certainty of even greater sacrifices in the end. What is more, there was a wider danger for us all."

At this, cries of "hear, hear " rose to a roar from the Labor benches; the Tories responded only desultorily. In the brief debate the Tories were uneasy and reticent. To a demand for more details, Eden responded with the weary patience of a worried nursemaid to a pestering child, begging his questioners to avoid pessimism until the full texts were published. To Eden's embarrassment the most lavish praise came from the Bevanites.

Two months ago, Punch's Editor Malcolm Muggeridge had lifted a rare voice of dissent from Britain's course, comparing Eden to Chamberlain: "The fault of Chamberlain was not in sacrificing Czechoslovakia, but in believing that Nazi aggression and Hitler's long record of perfidy would thenceforth come to an end. It was Chamberlain's sincerity, not his villainy, which led him astray. His crime was to make a fool of himself, and therefore of us."

Had Britain made the same mistake again? There was talk of going ahead firmly with a Southeast Asia treaty to protect what was left. But no sooner had Eden returned than Churchill summoned the Cabinet. Having "achieved" an Indo-China peace, Churchill was thinking that now was the time, when the Communists were being "reasonable," to repeat the pattern and get a settlement with the Communists on Germany. Molotov, who had planned it that way, promptly helped the move along by his proposal for a new conference on "European security."

The comparison between Munich and Geneva, so widely made last week, was also widely resented by those who argued that Eden and Mendes-France had only done what had to be done in the face of defeat on the battlefield. Asked about Munich, the U.S.'s Bedell Smith snapped: "A damned poor term. At Munich things were given away when there was no fighting. This is a war." The real test of the comparison would be whether Eden had learned a new urgency or been lured into a new complacency.

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