Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 1936. WORD AND DEED IN POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 75, 28 March 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 1936. WORD AND DEED IN POLITICS

Anyone with a mind for analysis and synthesis will burden himself with a tough mental contract if he concentrates on the complex of findings and opinions registered by publicists and writers on the December crisis and the Hoare resignation. Yet the issue goes so surely to the roots of the League of Nations and of the world-conflict between dictatorship and democracy that the chorus, or rather discord, of opinions should not be ignored. The basic facts, in themselves, are challenging. In November, British democracy votes decisively for collective security and for League of Nations sanctions; in December, less than a month later, the Foreign Secretary, who led the electors in that crusade, is found guilty by the same democracy of not crusading and is forced to resign. There is no dispute as to the facts. Sir Samuel Hoare made it plain in December that he regarded extension of sanctions as meaning war. So within a month the democratic mandate led ■to the anti-climax of the fall of its exponent. Does this mean that the co-operation of the old diplomacy (complex) with the new Leagueminded democracy (simplex) is difficult or impossible, and that democrat diplomacy cannot stand with dictator diplomacy? To that simple and vital question an amazing variety of ansAvers have been offered. In the pages of the February "Fortnightly"—to take a comparatively narrow field—they shout contradiction at one another. Mr. Frederick Hammond starts off with the assumption that democracy has never been suspected of being inferior to dictatorship in thought, but has been accused of being inferior in execution, being less decisive and slower than dictatorship. But the December crisis, as he sees it, brilliantly vindicates democracy in the executive field. Note his initial admission:

If democracy, despite its closer approximation to truth, is inherently more feeble and hesitant than autocracy in decision and action, then democracy is bound to give way to dictatorship. But the result of the December crisis shows that democracy can equal dictatorship in the larger measures of execution; can even excel it. ... A Government just elected with an overwhelming majority; the accepted and popular leaders of that Government pledged to the letter of a specific undertaking; a long tradition of the continuity of foreign policy. Yet in a few short days the people of England were stirred deeply, spoke, acted. By reversing the Laval-Hoare undertaking, adds, Mr. Hammond, the people of Britain restored "the moral standing of Britain, jeopardised by its Government." He does not say, though he might have said, that the people of Britain demonstrated in December their own consistency, and their loyalty to their 'own November instructions. But, at the date he wrote, he was not in a position to know what we now know—that March is nearly over, and "execution" (except in Sir Samuel's case) still remains where it was.

Consider now the contribution, in the same "Fortnightly," of Mr. Sisley Huddleston. He does not deny that when the British people voted in November—and ousted Sir Samuel Hoare in December—in the cause of collective security and League sanctions, they voted and acted not as flexible diplomats but as sincere cast-iron believers in a principle. But between the principle and the execution thereof he can find no correspondence. "We pretended we were bound by our League of Nations pledges, but nevertheless arbitrarily 'interpreted' the famous Article 16 in an entirely unauthorised manner." We (Britain) acted beyond League obligations in moving the fleet to the Mediterranean, and went away from Geneva to Paris to concoct the proposals that British public opinion immediately condemned.as reward to an aggressor. Far from seeing democracy successful.in the executive field, Mr. Huddleston writes: The public was of. course easily persuaded that we were acting in fulfilment of our obligations, and that we had nc Choice in the matter, whereas at1 every step we made a choice, sometimes in one sense and sometimes in an opposite sense. ... It is not difficult to arouse the passions of the public, whose instincts are generous though ignorant. The greatest catastrophes have been brought about by an appeal to these generous and ignorant instincts. Quite as serious as the lack of harmony between public idealism and the executive realism of the Ministers and officials is the impression of insincerity which this inconsistency creates in Europe. "It is better that the British public should be informed that on the Continent of Europe the thesis of British disinterestedness is hardly accepted." When the British fleet went to the Mediterranean, the Continent saw the League merely as an instrument used by Britain against Italy. The old Imperialist versus the new! The tragedy of all this is that the British democracy did vote with sincerity. The British democracy did sincerely hope that its mandate

would be put into execution, and with a peaceful result. With equal sincerity it hoped that its sincerity would be recognised at Geneva and in all League countries. In neither respect has it succeeded. Sanctions, now side-tracked by a bigger European peril, stand where they were; and that Europe is sceptical of the faith behind the Abyssinian policy is affirmed by other writers than Mr. Hudrlleslon. So far as democracy is concerned, this disappointment need not be construed as the defeat of a cause that is essentially conscientious and just, but must be accepted as a timely warning of the need of a greater correspondence between the national principles and the national actions. Is it that a Government well aware of the hazards of a collective policy like sanctions is yet politically tempted to offer it in simple form, to the simple-minded voter, as something clear-cut and for immediate execution? What is known in philosophy as over-simplification^—the statement in too simple and too positive terms of a truth that is complex and loaded with reservations—is not unknown to politics. The dictator hedges himself round with conditional promises, and is ever ready to break them. The democrat comes down, at election time,' to simple people, with a simple statement — and it breaks him! Can this handicap be carried by a democratic Power?

Now for a third impression. With friendly tact —or is it Gallic irony? —M. Andre Maurois contributes his piece to the mosaic of December crisis comments in the February "Fortnightly" and suggests that the two British voices (regarded above as the voices of the new democracy and the old diplomacy) arc but the voices of man and wife, the wife being British public opinion, and the husband being the British Government. The wife controls • the public statements, but the husband writes the Stale correspondence. Sir Samuel Hoare became too much identified with both these not always reconcilable functions. "The masters of old Europe," says M. Maurois, "would have understood better the language of self-interest than that of moral passion." Yet, he adds, "it is for us" (the French) to interpret the words of the wife and the silences of the husband. He is far too tactful to suggest a divorce. The advice that diplomacy must be divorced from democracy comes readily enough from Berlin, but not (yet) from Paris. If crisis were to create dictatorship in France, then indeed the danger that confronts freedom in Europe would deepen, and once again democracy would find its last substantial refuge in insular Britain.