New British Strategy

(See front cover)

The most crucial job in the Empire was briskly shouldered last week by the new First Lord of the British Admiralty, Sir Samuel John Gurney Hoare. Few months ago he was Foreign Secretary, and in those now distant times it was still possible for Great Britain to have made a friendly peace with Benito Mussolini--such a peace as the Hoare-Laval Deal for which British public opinion was not yet ready when Sir Samuel signed it in Paris (TIME, Dec. 16 & 23). Last week not peace but a capitulation to II Duce was made by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden amid cries in the House of Commons that His Majesty's Government were "cowards" and "pol-troons". These cries were hollow, ignored by the Baldwin Cabinet like so much wind, because in fact the Empire has now scrapped all reliance on the League of Nations and is arming at breakneck speed--not necessarily for war, per-haps for Pax Britannica to be imposed on restless Europe in the future. It was more than ever clear last week that Sir Samuel Hoare is now the spokesman of His Majesty's Government to the King's subjects on this greatest shift in British policy since the War. Sounding the new keynote, the new First Lord declared:

"Let us members of the Empire remain firm in the conviction that we can best help the cause of peace by being true to type, by holding firmly to the policy that conforms to our traditions, by undertaking nothing that we cannot fulfill and by remembering always that, while our influence will always be on the side of European peace and that we will faithfully carry out our obligations to that end, --we are an imperial and an oceanic rather than a Continental power. Thus shall we best serve the cause of peace!"

"Imperial and Oceanic" were the significant words in this key pronouncement by Sir Samuel Hoare, for they implied a brand new concept of Empire strategy. Since the Suez Canal was opened (with Britain as a major shareholder since 1875 by Disraeli's finesse), the King's subjects have been taught that the "Lifeline of Empire" runs through Suez. This shortest route to India must at all costs be dominated by Britain, so ran the popular dogma and so the British Admiralty has stiffly held. Today, however, with Italy triumphant and formidably facing Suez, London was fast telling itself last week that an alternative route to India must at once be got into safe shape. In this queasy moment it was British and it was brave to get ready to believe that the new Lifeline of Empire is better, stronger and more glorious than the old. It runs clear around Africa, past the ominous Cape, whose storms were once so deadly to sailing ships. It is no narrow, canalized affair of jealous Europe's pesky little Mediterranean or rebellious Egypt's Suez, but a broad route over the bounding main.

Sir Samuel Hoare, though his keynote is now perfectly understood and clear to Britain's ruling class and may soon be popular with Britain's masses, last week had to be careful as First Lord. It would not do, while Mr. Eden was diplomatically capitulating to II Duce, for the British Admiralty to confirm rumors flying in the Press that Britain is "about to abandon Malta as a naval base."

With a nice sense of psychologies, both British and Italian, new First Lord Sir Samuel had spectacular "sham battles" fought at Malta during the week. Simulating Italian bombers, British planes droned over Malta for three hours. On land antiaircraft batteries belched sheets of flame. British first-aid squads dashed about the streets pretending to succor the imaginary wounded, this bit of realism being frankly copied from Germany and Japan.

In the House of Commons same day there were cries of ''Hear! Hear!'1 for a judicious announcement by Sir Samuel Hoare that Britain will not abandon Malta. In other words, the wholly inadequate Malta defenses will be maintained as they are, for moral effect. Virtual abandonment of Malta as a main Empire naval base took place months ago when the major units of the British Mediterranean Fleet scuttled off to Alexandria (TIME, Sept. 30 et seq.).

To a great extent the new Lifeline of Empire is already tingling with British trade. Last week London newsreaders were assured that an amazingly large volume of British tonnage which used to go via Suez is now rounding Africa, with the further good news that so much is saved by not paying canal tolls that the cost is "about the same." Famed Hector Charles Bywater, usually considered the journalistic mouthpiece of the British Admiralty, came out with the great discovery, which would have been dismissed a short time ago as nonsense, that via the Cape of Good Hope it is only 10% longer to Melbourne, Australia than via Suez; only 37% longer to Hong Kong; 44% longer to Singapore; 51% longer to Calcutta; and a mere 77% longer to the "Gateway of India," Bombay. That His Majesty's subjects should be invited by Hector Bywater thus to rearrange the contents of their minds and fix on a new lifeline of Empire is fundamentally significant, "imperial and oceanic!"

Pomp for Hoare. Motto of the House of Hoare is Hora Venit, and last week it seemed indeed that the hour of Sir Samuel and Lady Maud had come. They were still in their big house at No. 18 Cadogan Gardens, but the estate agent's sign over their door read cheerfully: "LONG LEASE FOR SALE." An army of re-furbishers was busy in Admiralty House on Whitehall, cleaning and redecorating the official residence of the First Lord. Its 20 rooms are lofty, dignified and spacious, ideal for entertaining in the grand manner of the British Admiralty.

Mostly, the first Lord's official home is furnished with antiques of a quality which made them costly even when bought at auction by an astute namesake of the British Admiralty's famed Samuel Pepys. In the great hall, between gleaming white Corinthian columns, long-dead British Admirals look down from heavily encrusted frames. After running this gantlet, guests arriving for an Admiralty ball admire the graceful, branching staircase, pass on to the drawing room, its walls hung with paintings of the voyages of Captain Cook. The amazing gilded furniture is the cele brated "Fish Set" presented in 1815 as a memorial to Lord Nelson by wealthy John Fish, who had the chair legs carved as dolphins standing on their heads.

Only last month this setting of pomp spelled nothing much in London, socially or politically, but, with the new First Lord Sir Samuel and his Lady Maud sailing in, Admiralty House became another thing entirely than what it had been when occupied recently by vague Viscount Monsell. To be definite and final on the gravest issues is Sir Samuel Hoare's major characteristic. He is slender, soft-voiced and a considerate host, but the pale blue of his eyes is that of ice. When he was Secretary of State for India he used to be driven daily to St. James's Palace in a minute Baby Austin, while the rajas and tnaharajas arrived in mammoth Daimler limousines in imitation of the King -- but Sam Hoare soon showed who was master. At his first encounter with Mahatma Gandhi, then virtually a saint with tremendous kudos which had carried him straight from jail to Bucking ham Palace, Sir Samuel declared bluntly that he would give India just so much additional freedom and no more. "If this displeases you. Mr. Gandhi," said the Secretary of State for India. "I shall not take it in the least amiss if you prefer that we do not meet again."

Result was a queer, behind-the-scenes friendship struck up between the Mahatma, whose prestige was to ebb slowly away thereafter, and Sir Samuel Hoare, who was to give the 350,000,000 souls of India a new Constitution, the longest measure ever enacted by the Mother of Parliaments (TIME, Aug. 12). In putting through this immensely complicated charter against bitter opposition led by brilliant Winston Churchill and grim Lloyd George, the aim of sagacious Sir Samuel was to make a vast number of decisions as wisely as possible and get them fastened irrevocably upon India, rather than to mull over the Indian Question idealistically ad infinitum. Today the great fact in India is that the Indians have accepted their new Constitution as poets accept the structure of a sonnet. It is utterly a thing imposed by London, but within its frame a talented people of wanglers and weaselers can perform all sorts of feats of freedom: within the Empire, and not with "dominion status" as St. Gandhi had demanded of the statesman in the Baby Austin.

Recently, when Sir Samuel's policy of making peace between Italy and Ethiopia crashed and he resigned as Foreign Secretary (TIME, Dec. 30), Mr. Gandhi was prompt with a letter of personal sympathy posted to No. 18 Cadogan Gardens. Sir Samuel's prompt decision to resign then was, last week in British eyes, a symbol of the qualities of firmness which should make him a great First Lord. In contrast to this, his successor as Foreign Secretary, young Anthony Eden, cut a sorry figure in the House of Commons as his Sanctionist policy crashed and he did not resign. Nowadays there is an almost frightened apology in young "Tony" Eden's eyes as he goes about with the Foreign Office's astute Permanent Undersecretary Sir Robert Gilbert Vansittart, coauthor with Sir Samuel of the realistic policy which has proved "right."

Ominous Pirow. In rigging an alternative Lifeline of Empire around Africa which may soon become in British minds the Lifeline of Empire, Sir Samuel Hoare had on his hands last week an exceedingly tough subject of His Majesty with whom to deal, Union of South Africa's dynamic Defense Minister Oswald Pirow.

No love is lost between bumbling Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin of Great Britain and bawling Premier General James Barry Munnik Hertzog of South Africa. Last week Mr. Hertzog did his blatant best (at his exceedingly safe distance from Benito Mussolini) to make Mr. Baldwin seem cowardly in not pressing Sanctions against Italy. By a tremendous majority the South African Senate voted its undying support of the League of Nations, its defiance of the Conqueror of Ethiopia. And in London was Oswald Pirow. He was received in audience by Edward VIII. His Majesty's discerning former private secretary, Sir Godfrey Thomas, dined with Oswald Pirow, both being guests of the South African diamond tycoon, Sir Abe Bailey. Mr. Pirow called on the Secretary for Dominions, dry and cheerful little Son Malcolm MacDonald. Mr. Pirow made the official rounds of London and to intimates he confided that he thought his welcome, if anything, too hospitable. The British Islanders, he was resolved, should not take in the Union of South Africa. She had something more precious than diamonds to sell the Mother Country, and Oswald Pirow had come all the way from Pretoria to London to sell it at the highest possible price. In the end the price Mother Britain might be willing to pay South Africa must be named by the British Admiralty--by Sir Samuel Hoare.

The bold purpose of Oswald Pirow and his chief, Premier Hertzog, was understood in London to rest on their assumption that the Mother Country must establish an imperial and oceanic naval base of the first magnitude on the new Lifeline of Empire, presumably at or near Capetown, and that for the right to do so she could be made to pay a stiff price by South Africa.

Oswald Pirow was authoritatively said to want: 1) surrender by Britain to South Africa of the so-called "native protectorates" in the dominion to make its sovereignty complete; 2) Britain to pay the enormous cost of establishing near Capetown a naval base ranking with $150,000,000 Singapore, but South Africa to retain full sovereignty over the territory of the base; 3) Great Britain to recognize explicitly that South Africa is not bound to participate in a war entered by the Mother Country; 4) mutual agreement between Mother and Daughter that if, as South Africa anticipates, the Government of Portugal encounters heavy weather and its African colonies "fall upon the market," South Africa will share with Great Britain in determining their fate.*

Sitting in at London as the naval base dickering began was the Admiralty's keen Vice Admiral Sir Edward Ratdiffe Garth Russell Evans, lately commander in chief of the Navy's Africa Station. Sir Edward is supposed to be deep in the confidence of his friend South African Defense Minister Oswald Pirow, so much so that some British editors spoke of what was under discussion as "the Pirow-Evans Defense Plan." It was supposed to envision, in addition to what Mr. Pirow asked of Great Britain, the following contributions by South Africa: 1) raising of a great South African air battle fleet to back the war-boats of Great Britain in defending the Lifeline of Empire; 2) establishment on a basis for quick conversion into combative use of British commercial air liners constantly winging up and down both the East and West coasts of Africa; 3) erection of munitions plants and factories for building motorized war equipment in South Africa for quickest use wherever it would serve the Empire.

The Whim, Not only the new Lifeline of Empire preoccupied Sir Samuel Hoare last week. Adolf Hitler was off on his white yacht The Whim to secret German Navy maneuvers in the North Sea, "and in Danish waters!" screamed indignant Danish editors. It was by this sort of thing that Der Kaiser in the fateful days before 1914 made his uncle King Edward VII and eventually all Britain so nervous.

Britons read with bug-eyes last week that the secret Nazi fleet maneuvers had been observed and reported by a method which smacked of the British Intelligence Service and of smart Sir Samuel Hoare. As a young Intelligence officer in Tsarist Russia, ingenious Sam Hoare knew of the assassination of Rasputin so soon after it occurred that the Imperial Police investigated. It was ultimately necessary for the British Ambassador to assure Nicholas II that Sam positively had not had advance knowledge of the deed done by assassin Prince Felix Youssoupov and friends. Last week Augur (Vladimir Poliakoff) famed London special writer for the New York Times, cabled that "a daring airman, whose nationality cannot be disclosed for the present, has flown over the North Sea at a dizzy height. His mission was to use specially sensitized plates to photograph the movements of the German fleet executed in the presence of Hitler. For it was highly important to learn the exact state of preparedness of the German naval forces and even more, the new methods their chiefs intend to apply in case of real warfare." Concluded Augur in London proudly: "At least one great Western power now possesses accurate information in this respect."

During the Ethiopian crisis, while Sir Samuel Hoare was Foreign Secretary, he was one statesman who knew perhaps the major secret of which Italian success depended, if it was a secret. Anyone could then read, in almost any newspaper, stories about the quantities of arms being smuggled to Ethiopia's Emperor across British Somaliland; smuggled by venal Frenchmen up their railway; even smuggled in from the Sudan. Close friends of Sir Samuel say secret agents kept him informed that Ethiopia's Emperor was in fact not receiving arms in anything like the quantity generally assumed and even feared by Italy. It was chiefly upon this that smart Sam Hoare based a shrewd foreknowledge that Benito Mussolini was extremely likely to conquer all Ethiopia, had better be brought to peaceful terms before he could do so. Sir Samuel's realistic mind also made it easy for his ice-blue eyes to see that poison gas would be used in the final and decisive actions, a vision denied many muddling British statesmen who today wonder why on earth they did not see with Sam. "My Husband's Work." Having only just taken office, the new First Lord must cope with Oswald Pirow, keep a naval eye on Adolf Hitler, rattle British arms in the Mediterranean so that Italians do not get too chesty, prepare the British Admiralty's brief for forthcoming naval negotiations with the United States, maintain constant naval liaison with the French and in spare moments devote himself to British naval problems in the Far East where white prestige is certainly not climbing. In all this Lady Maud will be up to her usual job of aiding her "Flying Sam," as he became known when Air Minister some years ago. Recently she wrote of

"My Husband's Work and Mine": "Elections are fought on the tummies (and tempers) of the candidate and his helpers," she declared. "A succession of appetizing meals and boiling bathwater up to 2 a. m. are essential, in spite of a leaking boiler or the cook's sick relation." About to move into the palace on Whitehall of the First Lord, his politically-wise Lady concluded: "Chelsea people will, I hope, remember us in the same friendly way when we move into our new quarters. . . . It means real intimacy when the casual errand-boy can direct an inquirer to 'Sam 'Oare's 'ouse.' "

Plum For Astor-- Most numerous family in Parliament is that of Viscount and Viscountess Astor and their related M. P.'s (a brother, son, son-in-law, brother-in-law, cousin). Only seven months ago the National Government landslide elected Hon. William ("Bill") Waldorf Astor, chipper young heir of Viscount Astor. During the campaign Hon. Bill would pop up through the sliding roof of his little sedan, harangue constituents, then pop down and off to the next gathering. He scored an outstanding win from a previously strong Labor candidate. Last week potent Clan Astor was overjoyed when Hon. Bill was picked by Sir Samuel Hoare to be Parliamentary Private Secretary to the First Lord, this sort of job under a minister with a future being the surest leg up in Britain to swift promotion for a smart young politician. Reputedly Hon. Bill attracted Sir Samuel's attention by his energy and gumption as private secretary to Lord Lytton on the commission which went to the Far East, reported on Japan's grab of Manchukuo (TIME, Oct. 10, 1932).

*Too dark a piece of presumptive skulduggery to be elucidated last week is the reputed presence in Portugal of Nazi insurrectionists from Germany. In the opinion of Portuguese secret police, these Nazis are deliberately seeking to upset the regime of Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who for seven years has run Portugal with such success as to give it one of the best records of any country during Depression. Given the fall of the Salazar regime, the way would be open to satisfy Adolf Hitler's land hunger by the passing into German hands, through purchase or otherwise, of Portuguese colonial territory in Africa. This has been vaguely discussed by London's leading newsorgans for months as though it would be a good thing, notwithstanding that Britain is the traditional friend and patronly ally of Portugal. In their jittery alarm last week, Portuguese hotly aired suspicions that Mr. Pirow is on close terms with the Nazis.

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