"USED" AT GENEVA ?

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 135, 4 December 1935, Page 11

"USED" AT GENEVA ?

CANADIAN DELEGATE

PULLING ENGLAND'S COALS

FROM FIRE

NEW YORK, December 3,

In a dispatch today, the Ottawa- correspondent of the "New York Times" declares: "A resentful conviction that Dr. Walter Riddell, Canada's representative on the League of. Nations, had allowed Britain's Geneva representatives to use him to pull England's coals out of the fire is understood to have inspired the action of the Canadian Government in repudiating initiative for the oil embargo against Italy. Repeated references to the embargo as 'Canada's proposal' caused much nervousness in Quebec, whose FrenchCanadian population has always opposed participation in European ventures. Furthermore, the Acting Prime Minister, M. Ernest Lapointe, argued during the campaign that to re-elect a Conservative Government was to increase the danger of Canada being embroiled in another war. This might not have found vent in the repudiation of Dr. Riddell's action had it not been for the feeling that if an oil embargo was proposed it should have been done by Mr. Anthony Eden, as representing the Power principally concerned. Resentment has been privately expressed in certain influential , circles that Dr. Riddell 'allowed himself to be used- in Mr. Eden's game.'" •

The correspondent adds, however, that M. Lapointe's statement has not commanded universal approval in Canada. League of Nations supporters are indignant, while what might be described as Imperialist opinion is expressed in a leader in the Toronto "Mail and Empire," headed: "Is Ottawa Giving Comfort to Mussolini?"