Peace Plans

Fortnight ago Soviet Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov frankly expressed his doubts about the sincerity of the British Government's desire to stop Adolf Hitler on all fronts. Last week, from the lips of highly placed British statesmen themselves, he had plenty of evidence to support these doubts.

First witness was Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, who spoke in the House of Lords. Ostensibly the Foreign Secretary simply reassured Germany that the idea of "encirclement" was furthest from British thoughts. But when he talked about "problems which may now or hereafter appear likely to disturb international order," looked forward to a "peace settlement" and even referred to "economic Lebensraum" for Germany, many anti-Nazi Britons were sure that the British Government, through its Foreign Secretary, was talking appeasement again on the pre-Munich model.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought Lord Halifax's speech "remarkable" and in two of his own speeches, one before the House of Commons and the other at Birmingham, amplified the Foreign Secretary's sentiments by quoting his own speech of May 19. "We would not refuse to discuss any method by which reasonable aspirations on the part of other nations could be satisfied, even if this meant some adjustment of the existing state of things," said Mr. Chamberlain. Day later he repeated his offer: "We are ready to discuss around the table claims of Germany or any other country, provided there seems a reasonable prospect of settlement."

President of the Board of Trade Oliver Stanley and Sir John Simon, an appeaser from way back, swelled the chorus, but the strangest note was struck by Sir Francis Lindley, onetime Ambassador to Japan, longtime foe of Soviet Russia, stanch friend of and host to Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Francis told the Conservative Party's Foreign Affairs Committee that British prestige would rise if the projected pact with Russia fell through.

Across the Channel in France two onetime French Premiers openly talked appeasement. Pierre Laval, signer of the 1935 pact with Italy and saboteur of the French eastern European alliance system, urged before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee a return to friendship with Italy, warned that a Soviet pact would be more dangerous than helpful. Pierre Etienne Flandin, who wired congratulations to Adolf Hitler last autumn after Munich, called for "mediation" with Germany.

While the British Government insisted that it had no thought of going back to the discredited policy of appeasement, this was hard to believe in the light of previous Cabinet remarks. Journalist Virginio Gayda, of Rome, welcomed the "change of temperature" in London, predicted that Rome would cooperate in "any responsible peace endeavor." It was even rumored that Fuehrer Hitler was making a list of his "national aspirations" while in his Bavarian retreat. But at home the anti-appeasers were raising such trouble that even the London Times professed worry, admitted that suspicion of new concessions to the dictators had been aroused in "not a few quarters, both at home and abroad." Some British newspapers called for the Government's resignation, and His Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Parliament prepared to give the Prime Minister a good going-over. Bluntest of all was Laborite Hugh Dalton, who asked the Prime Minister if he were not "stalling" with the Russian pact until the Government was able to "wriggle back to the Munich policy." Answered Mr. Chamberlain: "The honorable Member is very offensive in his suggestion."

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