Lips Unsealed

Whether or not Britain's Prime Minister can accurately be called "Bumbler Baldwin" has been a grave Empire question to which Sir Austen Chamberlain, K. G., last week gravely addressed himself in the House of Commons.

The Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister, is the No. I member of the ruling British Conservative Party. No. 2 member is the Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and younger half-brother of Sir Austen, who today figures as perhaps the Empire's leading "elder statesman."

In measured accents before a hushed House of Commons last week, Sir Austen charged that the Cabinet's "thinking machine" does not seem to be working properly, and that in consequence the safety of the United Kingdom has been endangered. Since Mr. Baldwin, as Prime Minister, is also President of the Council of Imperial Defense, it was no bunch of roses which Sir Austen threw when he said: "Very reluctantly I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible in the present circumstances for the Prime Minister to be the effective head of the Imperial Defense Committee."

Interjected was the view of Liberal M. P. George Lambert (see col. 2) that the Prime Minister is "not exactly a Simple Simon, but as for the Committee of Imperial Defense, whose members have had 1,000 meetings in the past four years, they are like squirrels running around a cage!"

In his more dignified style, Sir Austen proceeded to examine at great length the public statement by Mr. Baldwin on Nov. 13, 1934 that Britain's air force was 50% superior to Germany's, and his avowal on May 22, 1935 that he was "completely wrong," the air might of Germany having in fact very possibly equaled or eclipsed that of Britain.

With even greater care, Sir Austen went on to scrutinize the Prime Minister's conduct, remarks and policy respecting the Ethiopian Question (TIME, Dec. 30). Of portly, pipe-sucking Mr. Stanley Baldwin's confused statements in the House of Commons on that occasion, austere, hawk-featured Sir Austen Chamberlain concluded at crushing length: "I recall no comparable pronouncement by the head of the Government on a fundamental issue of defense in the 40 years of my parliamentary experience. Is it to be wondered at that some of us who are not alarmists, some of us who had a large measure of responsibility until recently, feel profoundly anxious?

"In the course of debates last December, the Prime Minister startled the House and country by the use of language such as none of us had heard in our experience from a Minister of the Crown. Referring to the Hoare-Laval proposals, Mr. Baldwin then said, 'Were these troubles over, I would make my case, and I guarantee not a man would vote against me, but my lips are sealed.'

"A few days later the proposals were published and the Prime Minister's lips were unsealed. He made a speech again. It was a speech in which he confessed his error, but he said nothing to explain what had caused him to say that, when his lips were unsealed, he could tell us things which would prevent any single man from voting against the proposals which five days later he abandoned, confessing they had been made or sanctioned by the Cabinet in error."

Ostensibly Sir Austen had been speaking on the bill of Rear Admiral Sir Murray Sueter to replace the "squirrels" of the Imperial Defense Committee with a Ministry of Defense to coordinate Navy, Air Force and Army under a single Minister distinct from the Prime Minister. A parliamentary stickler, Sir Austen argued against this private bill which thereupon was withdrawn; argued for a similar reform by the Government, thus associating himself with His Majesty's Government in debate. Yet in so doing Sir Austen delivered the maximum blow to "Bumbler Baldwin." After Sir Austen resumed his seat, the House of Commons lobbies heard for the first time serious talk that the long British political reign of Squire Baldwin, famed "archtype of John Bull," could be considered as drawing to its close.

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