MR. EDEN'S RESIGNATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 9

MR. EDEN'S RESIGNATION

EFFECT IN U.S.A.

ISOLATIONISTS' HANDS

STRENGTHENED

WASHINGTON, February 25.

Careful inquiries among high Government officials responsible for Amecan foreign policy convince the correspondent of the Australian Associated Press that the immediate effect on Mr. Anthony Eden's resignation as British Foreign Secretary has been to strengthen the hands ot the isolationists, but probably it has not affected the United States long-range view.

The more realistic groups in the State Department can be said not. to have been surprised at Mr. Eden's resignation, but are not a little surprised at the time it came: It can also be said that the realistic groups are not sorry over his leave-taking, not because they do not sympathise with his viewpoint, but because strong isolationists here are extremely suspicious of his efforts, alleging that they are designed or destined to involve the United States in foreign entanglements.

These isolationists have proved the greatest single force for interference with the State Department's conduct of American foreign affairs. President Roosevelt's position is described as something in the nature of an umpire. It can now be said that the concepts of his Chicago speech concerning the quarantining of aggressor nations have not been acceptable to the bulk of American opinion, and that they have been abandoned by the President himself.

It is stressed that President Roosevelt is trying to keep the door open to all schools, his advisors, isolationists, and parallel-actionists.

BRITISH GESTURE IN FAR EAST.

The State Department may be inclined to dislike to see; England negotiating with dictator Powers, but--it

is hardly unwilling to accept the benefit, if any arise from the situation.

It is telt that Britain, it freed from Mediterranean preoccupations, is likely to make a definite gesture in the Par East. Some quarters conjecture that this may possibly take the form of stationing half a dozen battleships at Singapore, as a token of her determination to make redress for the position in the Pacific Such a move would immeasurably strengthen parallel-actionists here, and it even stresses/ that the success of Anglo-Italian negotiations would automatically prove a restraining influence upon the military clique in Japan The best-informed circles here are completely convinced that any action, either by England or America, in the Far East would necessarily be parallel. Considerablf •riterest was aroused

here by Hen Hitler's references last Sunday to the Pacific, and diplomatic circles interpret his remarks to mean that he is _ot aiming at New Guinea, as well as assuring Japan that he does noi aim at her mandated territories

Viscount Halifax, K..G., wno nas been Lord President of the Council since Mr. Baldwin's resignation, was born in 1881, and is a Fellow ot All Souls* College, Oxford. He was President of the Board ol Education in 1922-24,. and Minister ol Education hi 1924-25 From 1910 to 1925 he was a Conservative member of Parliament, and for the five years from 1926 was Viceroy of India. In 1932 he became President of the Board of Education. He was Secretary for War in 1935 and Lord Privy Seal in 1935-37. He became Baron Irwin in 1925. and succeeded his father as Viscount Halifax in 1934. In 1933 he became Chancellor of the University of Oxford in November last year he paid a visit ■•"• Germany, to a hunting exhibition, and had talks with German leaders on foreign policy. Mr. Richard Austen Butler was born in December; 1902, and is the eldest son of Sir Montagu S. D. Butler, the Master of Pembroke College, , Cambridge University, and previously Governor of the 'Central Provinces, India. He was educated at Marlborough and at Pembroke College. Cambridge, and took a double firstclass in the modem languages tripos and historical tripos. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1929, and in 1932-37 was Parliamentary UnderSecretary to the India Office. Last year he became Parliamentary Secre: tary to the Minister of Labour. He married, in 1926. the eldest child ol" Mr. Samuel Courtauld.

Mr. Alan Tindali Lennox-Boyd, who succeeds Mr. Butler at the Ministry of Labour, was born in November, 1904, and educated at Sherborne School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a prizeman and president of the Union. He married a daughter of the eighth Lord Napier, He has been in the House of Commons since.l 932.