Peace & Prejudice

The neat package that Britain's Anthony Eden carried to Geneva a month ago seemed as sound and commonsensical as the British character, and guaranteed to please all domestic customers.

P:By refusing to join the U.S. in "united action" before Geneva (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), Eden had the approval of Britons, from cautious Tories to hot-eyed Bevanites.

P:By insisting on doing nothing without consulting Asian Commonwealth countries, he angled for the good will of India's Nehru and those Britons who worry about Nehru's opinions.

P:By holding out the hope that the Geneva negotiations might save Britain from tangling with the Communists, he had the hearty backing of those who instantly related talk of military action to the catastrophic prospect of superbombs falling on Britain.

P:By casting Britain once more in its historic role as wise and experienced mediator, he proposed to achieve historic prestige for Britain and a personal triumph for himself.

But in four weeks, his policy had led Britain into appallingly deep trouble.

Items:

P:It had created a rift in U.S.-British relations which a Foreign Office spokesman admitted was "the most serious since the end of the war."

P:Though it had indeed pleased India's Nehru, it had risked Commonwealth ties in other quarters, annoying Australia and New Zealand, which are both anxious to get on with the Southeast Asia alliance for their own security.

P:It made Churchill and Eden, who 16 years ago had been the proud leaders of the fight against Munich, look alarmingly like appeasers.

P:It allowed the world in general, and Asians in particular, to conclude that Britain would not defend anything in Asia against Communism, even Malaya, if it meant risking a world war.

Profitable Hours. The fact was that the policy was doomed from the start because it was made in a vacuum of unreality. It ran contrary to the basic policy of Britain's major ally, the U.S. (although U.S. policy fluttered indecisively under the impact of Eden's rebuff). Its premise was that the situation in IndoChina was an old-fashioned military stalemate, and that it was possible to negotiate with the Communists, even though, in this case, it was negotiation from weakness. Eden talked of not "prejudicing" the negotiations by hasty action, while the more realistic Communists prejudiced the Geneva talks decisively by resolutely attacking Dienbienphu.

By publicly binding himself to inaction as long as the Communists were willing to talk, Eden made every hour profitable for the Communists. The longer they could keep Britain at the conference table, the longer they kept Britain and its allies paralyzed, and the wider the rift between Britain and its allies pressing for "united action."

Peacemaker. From London, TIME'S Bureau Chief Andre Laguerre cabled:

To explain how Britain was led into this deadfall, it is necessary to understand 1) Sir Winston Churchill, 2) Anthony Eden, and 3) the Tory Party.

Though most outsiders know that Churchill is getting old, few realize just how old and feeble he has become. Those who meet him, impressed by his vigor, fail to realize that his states of mind and health are fitful, and that his bad periods border on ineffectiveness. He wants to retire soon, but his obsession is to do it as the Great Peacemaker. For long, he dreamed of a dramatic personal meeting with Stalin or Malenkov, a "parley at the summit." Now, Churchill has settled his hopes on a spectacular Asian compromise as a suitable valedictory gesture.

Eden is impatient to take over as Prime Minister himself. An Asian settlement would let Churchill out and himself in. And as architect of the settlement, Eden would enter 10 Downing Street bathed in glory. The outside world has a mistaken image of Eden. It tends to think of him as the courageous anti-appeaser of the Munich days, who resigned rather than go along with Chamberlain's policy. But the truth is that he resigned only under pressure from his Under Secretary, the present Lord Salisbury. At the time, there was growing popular opposition to appeasement policies, and resignation was an astute political move which made Eden a hero not only to some Tories but also to many liberal and left-wing Britons.

Today he is again a hero--but for opposite reasons. With the exception of Punch (see cut), no public voice has been raised against his policies. Even the far left New Statesman and Nation has hailed him as "the new darling of the Labor Left." Eden obviously relishes his role in Geneva, delights in recapturing the glamour of his League-of-Nations days. His friends picture him as the only real diplomat on the Western side. Is he not the only one who can lunch with the U.S.'s Bedell Smith or France's Bidault, yet take tea with Chou En-lai and dine with Molotov? The British newspapers are running over with enthusiasm for these exploits, without stopping to consider whether anything is gained by drinking tea with the Chinese Communists.

Business as Usual. As for the Tories, they are suffering from the same blindness which crippled them 20 years ago. Remember, it was the Tories, not the Socialists, who advocated appeasement of Hitler. No ideologists themselves, they find it hard to believe that the other fellow can be dominated by a philosophy or by a ruthless ambition. It is not gentlemanly. Just as they thought the Germans would be more tempted by Chamberlain's slogan, "Business as usual," than by dreams of territorial aggrandizement, so now they think the Russians and Chinese are more interested in consolidating what they have and in developing foreign trade than in expanding the Communist empire.

The Tories are also looking toward a general election. To win the extra 50 seats they need for a solid majority, the Tories will have to capture the floating vote, which just now seems to be drifting toward Labor. Their best chance, the strategists feel, is to disarm Labor's charge that Churchill meekly follows irresponsible U.S. policies which carry the risk of world war.

By and large, British voters do not think about foreign policies. They react, with decency but without information or reflection, and consequently emotionally. More than in the U.S. or France, the English voter is content to humbly leave such judgments to the experts. This is a situation which ensures a certain political stability, but it can become catastrophic when a government allows itself to be led instead of leading. It may be presumed that if the Tories had a substantial majority, they would show themselves more responsible than they are now. But that is a hypothetical situation.

Two Truths. Fortunately, within the Tory Party itself there are some who have become increasingly uneasy over the waituntil-after-Geneva policy, and acutely worried over the possibility of a permanent Anglo-American breach. Their spokesman is the Marquess of Salisbury, Lord President of the Council and one of Churchill's closest advisers on foreign policy. Salisbury was the only Tory to publicly dissociate himself from Britain's recognition of Red China. At last summer's Washington conference, where he deputized for the ailing Eden, he was the only Western minister to declare that the Berlin conference (which led to Geneva) was a mistake. Then, he was overruled by Dulles and Bidault. Salisbury still holds two truths to be self-evident: 1) that British foreign policy should never diverge far from U.S. policy; 2) that it never pays to appease a scoundrel, whether fascist or communist.

In the present crisis, Salisbury has urged Churchill to set some time limit on talking to the Communists at Geneva, after which Britain could feel free to proceed with "united action." By failing to do this before, and by disregarding Salisbury's two principles, Eden and Churchill last week had brought Britain to one of the most unstable positions in its diplomatic history.

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