MR EDEN'S COLD GREW WORSE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22337, 26 February 1938, Page 21

MR EDEN'S COLD GREW WORSE

"The Man With a Load of Mischief"

The resignation of the Foreign Secretary (Mr R. A. Eden) this week makes of. especial interest this prophetic character sketch published in a Canadian magazine, "Maclean's" this month. The author is Beverley Baxter. »

ONE Sunday evening I drove in from the country to the Foreign Office to attend a conference

with Anthony Eden. Downing Street, which not only houses the Premier but supplies the entrance to the Foreign Office, is impressive enough at any time, but on a misty winter late afternoon its sombre quiet suggests that, deep in the frozen earth, strange and incalculable forces are moving. It was a huge room in which we saw the Foreign Secretary. There was one painting, a fireplace, a table and chairs, while the walls were decorated with Turkish stars. That may not be the correct description, but there was a suggestion of the Bosporus about the stars, and I know no other way to describe them.

As usual Europe was in a state of crisis, although, just for a change, the Far Eastern situation was more urgent. Eden shook hands and then sat down at the table facing us. He wore an ordinary lounge suit with a soft collar, and one missed the immaculate fashion-plate appearance of his early days. His brain was as clear as ever and his manner ■as unassuming. What is more, he showed splendid judgment in the extent to which he was perfectly tfrank and then carefully reticent according to the exigencies of the conversation. But this was a different Eden from the one who less than [two years ago took on the job of ("the man with a load of mischief." (His eyes were deep in shadows. liWhere once his movements exipressed unbounded vitality, now they seemed the result of restlessness and fatigue. For days he had been balancing (the chances of an understanding among France, Germany, Italy, and Britain, and for days there had been a whispering campaign against him. It was loud enough to be heard in every political drawing-room.

He had had a cold which necessitated his absence from the Foreign Office for a day. "Anthony's cold will get worse," said the wise ones cryptically. They even prophesied the course of events.

"You see, Italy won't have anything to do with Eden, and Germany is bored with him. Chamberlain does not want to fire him because Eden still has a following in the country. But when his cold reaches his chest, he will reluctantly be forced to resign and become a political martyr. ' This is not the kind of cold which the doctors can cure."

But after a day the young Foreign Secretary came back to work and got on with his her-rtbreak task.

And what a task it is!

No Respite for Eden

A- Cabinet Minister said to me the other day: "If instead of Eden they had offered me the choice of the Foreign Secretaryship or a knife with which to cut my throat, I would, not have hesitated. I would have taken the knife. When Eden succeeded Samuel Hoare in foreign affairs, he must have known that he did not have a gambler's chance of success but merely the choice between degrees of failure." I do not know what the future holds for Eden. For months on end he has had no respite by day or night, no holiday, no Sundays that are different from Mondays, no chance to sit back and survey the world with any sense of detachment.

In the war he was a front-line soldier. Periodically his battalion was relieved, and the young subaltern could loaf the hours away until it was time to go back again. In the war of foreign affairs, he is in the front line all the time.

When we were leaving the conference, someone asked him about a certain point of policy. "I am seeing the Prime Minister to-night," he said, "to discuss that very thing." That was Eden's Sunday. While others golfed or went to church or played bridge by their firesides, he was a prisoner with the two sides of Downing Street as his prison walls.

A few days before all this, Michael Arlen and I were lunching at the House of Commons. Michael was in grand form as befits the author of "The Green Hat," and I am afraid our laughter was not totally in keeping with the decorum of the surroundings. There was a stir of interest behind us. Eden, his parliamentary private secretary, and Viscount Cranborne, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had come into luncheon. Cranborne and the secretary spread napkins over their knees. Eden spread a red dispatch box. He used one hand for eating and the other for documents. So engrossed was he that it would not have startled us if he had eaten a document and put a piece of toast into the dispatch box. Three hours later I saw him flushed with excitement as he stood in his place in the House of Commons and hurled these words to deafening cheers: "We shall co-operate with every nation, but we shall accept dictation from none."

What is to be the end of the story? Ido not know. All that we can see is that somewhere along the road which Eden has traversed these last two terrible years, he has left his youth.