A POLITICAL COME-BACK?

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 100, 29 April 1936, Page 10

A POLITICAL COME-BACK?

A return to the British Cabinet of Sir Samuel Hoare is unofficially forecast, and at time of writing lias received no official contradiction. Does his resignation, last December, of the Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs constitute au insuperable obstacle? Taking party politics on its averages, the answer seems to be no. Sir Samuel Hoare resigned from the Foreign Office because, as he said, the Paris peace proposals to which he had given provisional assent were rejected by British public opinion. The, British public had been led to believe, in the Government election campaign of October-November, that the Government stood for sanctions, and still more sanctions, including oil sanctions. As the date for a League decision for or against oil sanctions drew near, Sir Samuel Hoare, as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, became convinced that oil sanctions meant war with Italy. He had two courses. He could have stuck to oil sanctions, maintaining the Government's reputation (and his own) for consistency, and accepting the I'isk of a British-Italian war over Abyssinia. Or he could have sacrificed consistency, thereby risking his own position, in the hope of inducing Abyssinia to accept a settlement that would satisfy the Italian aggressor and would remove the hazard of a greater war. He chose the latter. No one attempts to reconcile the Laval-Hoare Paris proposals with British pre-election speeches. But, assuming their irreconcilability, shall a Foreign Secretary be condemned utterly and permanently because he formed the opinion that oil sanctions meant a greater war, and on that opinion founded the resolve to buy off the aggressor with peace terms? In what was he wrong —in the opinion, or in the resolve? If he was wrong in the opinion that oil sanctions meant war, then surely his successors would have at once proceeded to implement oil sanctions; but they have not done so, though more than four months have elapsed since he resigned. This failure of the League to advance any further without Hoare than with him is a pertinent, fact. Without either praise or blame to either Sir Samuel. Hoare or Mr. Eden, it can be said that no oil sanctions have materialised, that the Italian aggressor has gone unrestrained, and lhat the Laval-Hoare proposal to give Italy about half Abyssinia is far more in line with the military facts of April (after four months more of League effort) than with the military facts of December, when Hoare dared to consider buying off Italy —and lost his official head. If no consideration of realism versus idealism excuses, in a democracy, breach of pre-election pledges, and if the punishment of a' Ministerial offender is eternal, then the way back to Cabinet is barred. But, if the prescribed punishment fits the crime, Sir Samuel Hoare has paid in full. He shirked nothing, and he resigned. His account at the Foreign Office is squared, and might be ruled off. He is certainly not in the category of those agile politicians who break their, pledges and "get away with

it," nor yet in the class of those who, faced Avilh a choice between personal consistency and ■ a public calamity like war, would deem the public calamity the lesser evil. There are some political offences in which the offender, technically guilty, yet appears as a' man of mettle. Can it be denied that Sir Samuel Hoare's is one of these?