PRIME MINISTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 33, 9 February 1939, Page 15

PRIME MINISTER

BRITISH SUCCESSION

WHEN CHAMBERLAIN GOES

THE ALTERNATIVES

i No man in Britain's Parliamentaryhistory has had to undergo such an ordeal as did Mr. Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, writes Ellen I Wilkinson, M.P., in the "Winnipeg Free Press." Acclaimed almost as a demigod by the street crowds of Cologne, Munich, and London, showered with flowers and congratulations, he went to Parliament for four days of searching criticism of his policy. Mr. Chamberlain did not shirk it. He sat through hours of it that no one could have blamed him for missing. At the end of it, despite the automatic party majority, the House, as a whole, thought better of the man than of his policy. The crowd in the streets had believed that he had brought peace. The men behind the scenes know better. The critics of his own party and in the city, the Stock Exchange, and in factory board rooms have to deal with the serious-, results. That a great series of fortifications against German aggression, with over £25,000,000 worth of war material and 30 trained army divisions, have been handed to Hitler, is not all. The certainty of intensified economic competition is regarded as even more serious for Britain. .. All Czechoslovakia will soon be within the German orbit, The Sudeten textile industry is already promised heavy German subsidies. This will end what is left of the Central European markets of the Lancashire cotton mills. The great steel works now drawn, into the Herman Goering steel combine will become still keener competitors for British steel workers, especially when to subsidised prices can be added the exclusiye barter arrangements which Dr. Schacht so adeptly fixes with countries under German influence. POSITION OF STEEL. The next quota arrangements which British steel has to arrange \with the .International Steel Cartel will be made under very much less favourable conditions to Britain. British prestige in Central and Southeastern Europe is now at zero . . . and trade has a nasty habit of following prestige, as the figures of unemployment in Britain will begin to show. All this would have to be faced if it were really the price of peace. What 1 is being uncomfortably realised is that there was no necessity to pay this fantastically high price to Hitler. Mr. Chamberlain, a kindly gentleman of 70, cuts himself off from his Foreign Office experts, arid though inexperienced in foreign affairs, goes to face a set of desperate gamblers, who could hardly believe their good luck as they realised how squeezable he was. That, Mr. Chamberlain told us himself quite guilelessly. "Herr Hitler told me that he had not expected that I should agree." Hitler and his advisers, -having had experience of that tough-guy bargainer Mussolini, decided there must be a catch in it somewhere, and raised their terms to find out . . . they got those,, too. • . i ; The queer thing was that the House of Commons itself did not realise how much had actually been given away, until the debate had gone on two days.! CONSERVATIVE DILEMMA. The dilemma before the Conservative Party is a practical one. How far does Chamberlain's popularity with the crowd outweigh the anger of the big men who have /to try to mop up the mess? The difficulty facing all the parties is that no one really knows. M.P.s have been asking each other, "Are the people in your constituency cheering the Chamberlain newsreels?" A- curious modern detail that should be regarded by everyone as the best available : test. A couple of Labour M.P.s and three Conservatives gave up one night to going the round of a number of moving picture theatres casually selected. When they compared notes the report was: No cheering, a little clapping in some, on the whole the usual silence of j the cinema, occasionally some booing. Which did not tell us much except that the ordinary people were feeling no special enthusiasm. It is significant that, at the moment of his vote of confidence from the House of Commons, even M.P.S who had swelled his majority were discussing possibilities of a successor. There are two possibilities, both depending on the foreign situation. The General Election must come within a few months, anyway. If Hitler contents himself for the time being with digesting Czechoslovakia and his preparations for swallowing Rumania, there will be an appearance of calm after the storm. MUSSOLINI'S INSISTENCE. Spain, meanwhile, will have a new importance. Mussolini, through Count Ciano, is insisting that his prestige needs a diplomatic success in Spain to balance Hitler's at Munich. He has hinted that "the world prestige of the British Premier as peacemaker" could afford him that trifle. In return for the Anglo-Italian agreement he will agree to withdraw some Italian infantry. They don't matter, as long as he can leave the airmen and technicians and service them with munitions and machines. With a little expert handling this can be made to look like another triumph for peace . . . at the expense of leaving the southern flank of France —Britain's only remaining ally—exposed to Fascist aeroplanes. It is hoped that in this way the halo of peace can be kept round Mr. Chamberlain. But suppose it can't. Hitler has never yet settled down after a triumph. His genius is that he realises that that is the moment to demand more, because no one expects him to. That is why he demanded Czechoslovakia as soon as he had got Austria. Rumania, the ripe plum of the great oil wells, hangs there for the taking. If the heavily-armed Czechs, behind mountain barriers and immense fortifications could be handed to him on a plate by Mr. Chamberlain, who can stop his walking over the Rumanian plain? Britain dare not risk another flight to Berchtesgaden. So either events or time, at which Mr. Chamberlain himself hinted when he talked of handing over his work to a younger man, will presently bring Britain to tHe question—who will take Mr. Chamberlain's place? SIR JOHN SIMON FAVOURED. If by some unfortunate accident Mr. Chamberlain died tomorrow, the choice would be either Sir John Simon or Sir Samuel Hoafe, with heavy betting on the former. Sir John is believed to have a strong and influential following among the noncomformists. But if the change had to be made because the Chamberlain policy could no longer be tolerated, these two men are too identified with the Berchtesgaden policy to take over in such a situation. 1 The obvious successor normally.