Capitulation

In England the position of frail little Haile Selassie grew so painful last week that His Majesty abruptly departed with his children for Scotland, unable to endure in London what was about to be done in the House of Commons.

Before Haile Selassie left, 400 sorrowful and sympathetic British mothers called upon and curtsied low to the Ethiopian Emperor, many offering him bouquets of blossoms from their gardens. Feminist Sylvia Pankhurst even started a new London newspaper devoted to Haile Selassie's cause, called The New Times & Ethiopian News.

Meanwhile South Africa and Australia, as soon as His Majesty's Governments in these dominions were privately advised of what His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom were about to do last week, promptly disassociated themselves from the impending move. At Capetown forthright General James Barry Munnik Hertzog, South African Premier, boomed: "If other nations like the United Kingdom and France are not prepared to face the possible outcome of continuing League Sanctions against Italy, that does not affect South Africa, which intends to support the League to the last! If the League now collapses, South Africa at least will have the satisfaction that the world knows South Africa was not among those countries which ran away from their duty to the League of Nations."

No Apologies, No Regrets. Every member of the House of Commons knew that the United Kingdom was about to climb down before the Italian Kingdom when handsome young British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden rose to speak. In the gallery sat Italian Ambassador Dino Grandi, whose spade beard turned from black to grey during the weeks and months of British-Italian threats and bickering over Ethiopia. Suavely Captain Eden, with the complete aplomb which he gained at Eton, Oxford and in the trenches, told the House that the pro-Ethiopian, pro-League and anti-Italian policy upon which his whole career and promotion to Foreign Secretary was based, is now no more. Said the Foreign Secretary sonorously: "His Majesty's Government, after mature consideration on advice which I, as Foreign Secretary, thought it my duty to give them, have come to the conclusion that there is no longer any utility in continuing these measures [Sanctions] against Italy."

At once the Commons rang with cries of "Shame!" "Sabotage!" and "Why don't you resign?"

"The fact has got to be faced," said Captain Eden, "that Sanctions did not realize the purpose for which they were imposed. The Italian military campaign succeeded. . . . If this means admitting failure, this is one instance in which it has got to be faced." The Foreign Secretary concluded that so far as he knew there was no stomach among the Great Powers to go to war to "enforce in Ethiopia a peace of which the League could rightly approve," so they simply would not try. Captain Eden said that there was nothing to apologize for and nothing to retract.

"This is your swan song!" cried some Laborites but others jeered: "You're holding your job!"

His face beet-red, Old Etonian Eden snapped: "Honorable members are making cheap gibes not appropriate here!"

Cowards, Poltroons, Jellyfish! Next, with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the whole of His Majesty's Government looking flushed and uncomfortable--ex-cepting Sir Samuel Hoare -- the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George bounded to his feet, shook his fist deliberately at Eden, then at Baldwin and led members of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition in calling the British Cabinet "cowards . . . poltroons . . . jellyfish . . . skulkers . . . flying fleas!"

Thundered the hoary little Welshman who in his day spunkily steered the Empire to its greatest victory: "The Foreign Secretary is going to Geneva to smash the League of Nations. There is nothing but international anarchy as an alternative!

. . . For nearly half a century I have sat in Parliament and never before have I heard a British Foreign Secretary confess that Britain had been defeated. This is British surrender to Italy without the firing of a shot! Surrender in fear of the Italian air force."

Finally Britain's Wartime Prime Minis ter beat his chest with doubled fist and roared: "A few months ago 50 nations trusted Britain. The nations now will never trust this crowd! [gesturing at the Cabinet]. Tonight we have listened to a cowardly surrender and there on the Brit ish Government front bench are the cow ards!"

Trustees of the People. During this scathing arraignment, the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin had turned as red as Captain Eden, but when he rose to reply the Prime Minister was white with controlled fury. "People may say we are acting from cowardice," he growled. "We, as trustees of the people, ought to remember that if there be war in this country--I mean nearer than the Mediterranean--they will pay for it on the first night with their lives! . . . The first blow may come on the day that Sanctions are applied against an aggressor."

Having thus made a clean breast of the fact that caution was indeed the mainspring of wisdom last week for Great Britain, the Prime Minister added with further candor that so far as he could see the people of Italy and the people of Germany are now just about the only ones in Europe who do have stomach to fight. "I feel convinced," added Mr. Baldwin, "that in many countries, including our own and France, there is such loathing of war . . . that I sometimes wonder if they would march [i.e., fight] on any other occasion than if they believed their own frontiers were in danger. I do not know the answer to the question, but I often ask myself the question, and I wonder--and when you begin to wonder on these points your wonderings may travel a long way."

The wonderings of the House of Commons did not travel last week far beyond the point at which Stanley Baldwin had stopped with intuitive wisdom. Mourned disgusted Arthur Greenwood for the Labor Party: "During the whole of this debate there has been not a single word of sympathy for a broken nation [Ethiopia], no word of condemnation for the Power [Italy] which deliberately organized the use of poison gas!"

Hottest liberal blast of the week came from Dr. Ramsay Muir, president of the National Liberal Federation. "The Baldwin Cabinet has betrayed our national honor," cried he. "The judgment of the world on Britain now is 'Beast--mean, cowardly beast!'"

De Valera and King with Baldwin, Although His Majesty's obstreperous Irish Free State Government usually like to bait His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, last week lean President Eamon de Valera played an obliging Don Quixote to rotund Stanley Baldwin's earthy Sancho Panza. "May the fate of Ethiopia be a warning to the small States of Europe," President de Valera told Free State Deputies. "Sanctions have failed and at Geneva our Free State will support the lifting of Sanctions from Italy."

So flustered in Paris was new French Premier Leon Blum last week that Sir George Russell Clerk, the British Ambassador, was called to the Quai d'Orsay and quaveringly told by new French Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos that, although France will "support" Captain Eden when he proposes abolition of Sanctions at Geneva late this month, this will be "a move in which France can neither take nor share the leadership." In other words, Premier Blum's Communist and Socialist supporters are willing to agree to an historic League capitulation before Fascism, but demand that as much of the odium as possible be borne by Britain. Headlined contented Rome newsorgans last week: 'BRITAIN CAPITULATES."

Failed but No Failure-- This week devotees of the League of Nations could find comfort only in such crumbs as the following, dropped by Canadian Premier William Lyon Mackenzie King, a kindly optimist: "The League of Nations has failed, but the League is not a failure. Its machinery for conferences and conciliation is always available. We must not despair of the League!"

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