Evening Post.

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 117, 21 May 1925, Page 4

Evening Post.

THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1925.

POOR MR. CHAMBERLAIN !

Real news being exceptionally scarce just now, the imagination of some enterprising people and of the "reliable authority" who is fully aware of his needs is more than usually ready to supply a substitute. After the last of the unsavoury law-suits which have recently supplied the English newspapers with so much of their pabulum has concluded, the public is free to pay some attention" to greater issues, but as a humdrum fare of plain facts would fail to please its jaded appetite, rumour and speculation and unverified hearsay must be made to provide the seasoning that is needed. The process has received one good illustration this week. On Monday the '•'Daily Chronicle" was quoted as saying that a split in the British Cabinet which was likely to result in Mr. Austen Chamberlain's resignation was the subject of " persistent rumours both in London and Paris.' 1 Though a Cabinet which was so sharply divided on the gravest of issues as to be about to lose one of its leading members might be reasonably inferred to be in desperate straits, ifc was nevertheless represented on the following day, and without any reference to a division of opinion was engaged iv promoting au ultimatum to the Soviet Government of Russia of which the probable outcome would be war.

Standing alone, cither of these reports would have been of the utmost gravity, if we could have accepted it as true, but the effect of the combination was fortunately not cumulative. They were, on the contrary, to a large extent mutually contradictory. Ifc was hardly credible that a Cabinet which internal trouble had brought to death's door was nevertheless so strong in "the exuberance of superfluous health " as to be light-heart-edly planning another Armageddon. With the " Daily Herald's " allegation of the threat that is in preparation for the Soviets we dealt at sufficient length yesterday. The story to which the " Daily Chronicle " gives currency is not so intrinsically improbable. Such "persistent rumours" as those which the " Chronicle" has thought fit to mention do not as a rule deserve any attention at all. What Beaconsfield described as " coffee-house babble" is always available for those who care to pick it up, and the fact that it is "persistent" does not necessarily improve its quality. The multiplication of zero even by a million leaves it zero still. If rumour is "a lying jade," her persistence may prove nothing more than that she is a persistent liar. But when a leading newspaper prints the substance of a rumour, however persistent, and without actually vouching its accuracy treats it with respect and bases argument upon it, the position is altered. The publication involves a responsibility which is neither legally nor morally distinguishable from that attached to a direct statement, and the status of the subject matter is accordingly raised.

In the present case the " Daily Chronicle" went so far towards accepting the story of Mr. Chamberlain's pending resignation as to name Lord Birkenhead as his probable successor. The article seems to have been published on Saturday, and the Sunday papers to have been unanimous and emphatic in denying that Mr. Chamberlain was thinking of resigning. The Empire was glad to get the denial, but the statement of the " Daily Telegraph's" diplomatic correspondent which was reported yesterday and a message which appears to-day show that the vital problem of security is still giving serious trouble to tho Cabinet. The phase of the problem immediately under discussion is said by the " Daily Telegraph's " correspondent to be the proposed reply to the German security proposals. Those proposals, though vague, were welcomed by Mr. Chamberlain as " a signal advance." The original demand of France, which President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George sought to ratify by the Reinsurance Treaty executed contemporaneously with the Treaty of Versailles, is now recognised as impossible. Mr. Chamberlain had to admit as much in the same speech in which he expressed his approval of Germany's proposals.

I owe to France, he said, tho frankness of a friend. . . . It is not in the power of the British Government to offer to the French Government or to the Belgian Government a one-sided practical guarantee of the frontier directly against Germany.

When the man whom the " Manchester Guardian " calls " the most Francophile Foreign Minister since the war " can reject the French demand in such precise terms as these the judgment must be accepted as final.

With the Protocol dead and the Reinsurance- Treaty dead, it was only natural that Mr. Chamberlain as the advocate not so much of Prance but of peace should turn with relief to the hopeful avenue that was opened up by the German offer. Except for those who arc still unable to believe in the good laith of any proposal coming from O'e.nuiMiy, Lhn -willingness expressed hy liuf .Guvcmtucut Uj cutei; iulo

o general security pact which would recognise the delimitation of her Western frontier by the Versailles Treaty as absolute while leaving the position of her Eastern frontiers open to diplomatic negotiation fully justified the hope expressed by Mr. Chamberlain. If a German Government so largely subject to Nationalist influences as that of Dr. Luther could be got to renounce formally and for ever its claim to Alsace-Lorraine, the Diehards' hope for a war of revenge might well be postponed indefinitely. Prom the British standpoint the leaving of Germany's impossible ' Eastern frontiers formally open to amendment by diplomacy would be a trivial price to pay for such a boon. But France apparently stickles as rigidly as ever for the permanence, of all the frontiers fixed by the Treaty, and inside the Cabinet so doughty a fighter as Mr. Amery appears to object to any security pact at all. Yet, as Lord Grey says, " security is the master key." Poor Mr. Chamberlain!