BRITISH POLITICS

Evening Star, Issue 23620, 5 July 1940, Page 2

BRITISH POLITICS

AND THE NAZI MENACE AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN'S WARNING VIEW OF HIS PARTY The second volume of Sir Charles Petrie’s biography of Austen Chamberlain, which covers the years from 1914 to its subject’s death in March 1937, leaves one with a much keener appreciation of Austen Chamberlain as a man and a high-minded and devoted public servant, while adding a good deal to history, especially about the divisions in the inner Conservative ranks after the war, says the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ Austen Chamberlain was fortunate in the time of his death. He. died in March, 1937, full of forebodings; he had watched with fear the rise of the Nazis and the weakness of British policy, but he was spared the crowning spectacle of his brother’s attempts to appease the unappeasable Hitler. Austen had few illusions about Hitler, although he cherished them about Mussolini. He uttered a prophetic ■warning in the House as long ago as 1935. Early in 1936 he was writing about the heed for a Minister of Defence: “ In my view there is only one man who by his studies and his special abilities and aptitudes is marked out for it, and that man is Winston Churchill. I don’t suppose that S.B. will offer it to him. and I don’t think that Neville would wish to have him back; but they are both wrong. He is the right man for that post, and in such ■ dangerous times that consideration ought to be decisive.” AFTER THE RHINELAND. But Mr Baldwin and Mr Neville Chamberlain preferred Sir Thomas Inskip. Then Hitler invaded the Rhineland, and Austen felt that nest time “ the Army chiefs will not again seek to hold him back, every country in Europe will feel that England is a broken reed, and the end can only be ■ the complete triumph of Germany and, I fear, -our dwn ultimate' ruin. - / ; ■ Austen di.d’not live*to > see the fate of Austria and the humiliation of Britain at Munich under his own brother, over whose career he had watched with such passionate concern, like a hen with one chick,” as lie said. The book begins ip 1914, and has some curious glimpses into the hot tempers of those times. The Conservative Party is fond .of professing its patriotism, yet it was possible for a man like Chamberlain in -The first month of the war to rate Mr ChurchilTand Mr Lloyd George in the most offensive terms because the Liberal Government sought to get a political truce that would treat the Irish fairly It is not a pleasant episode. Nor, as we know from so many other memoirs, was the jockeying of offices in the first and second Coalitions. Chamberlain wont into the first as Secretary for India. TOUCHY CONSERVATIVES. The Conservatives were extremely touchy. In J une, 1916, when Kitchener was drowned and was followed at the War Office by Mr Lloyd George, Asquith asked Austen to take the Ministry of Munitions. He took the offer as something like an insult, since “ whatever credit was to be secured at the Ministry of Munitions had been reaped by Lloyd George ” and any discredit was to be left to a Unionist, He sent his memorandum to his brother Neville, who replied;— “ 1 agree entirely with what you say about LI.G. I rather hoped Derby might have had the W. 0., but under LI.G. the Munitions Ministry has got into such a chaotic muddle that a change there is certainly necessary.’ Austen’s account of the formation of tho second Coalition is critical of Bonar Law, who, he thought, misled Asquith into thinking that his Conservative colleagues had deserted him for Mr Lloyd George, when actually they were trying to hold aloof from the personal quarrel: “ We have little confidence in Bonar Law’s judgment and none in his strength of character. Austen remained at the India Office, although he 11 profoundly distrusted ” the new Premier. Yet when Austen returned to office after the Mesopotamia interruption his personal contact with Mr Lloyd . George developed a strong sense of loyalty and admiration. It was this, of course, ia the late years of the Coalition that led Austen once more into the wilderness and lost him for the second time his chance of the Premiership. BALFOUR ON BALDWIN. Sir Charles Petrie adds some interesting points -to our knowledge of the Carlton Club “ revolution ” by , which the Coalition was overthrown. There are some painful pages on Austens relations with his party and on Mr Baldwin’s tactless handling of him. This Austen felt deeply, and his opinion of Mr Baldwin was not increased by the clumsiness with which the reuniting of the party was brought about in 1923. Balfour’s comment “ upon the two days’ proceedings was that they would be the richest comedy if the] consequences had not been ' likely to j prove so serious.” “ Obviously,” be i said, 11 Baldwin is an idiot—the only | question is whether he is an inspired j idiot!” The inspiration was not clear, for the first result was the lost election of 1923.• Austen’s four and a-ba!f years at the Foreign Office, from 1924 to 1929, were his happiest, and in Locarno be had the triumph of his career, dust and ashes as it now seems. He was bitterly disappointed at not receiving the same office in 1931. and bad the gravest dis- | trust of Sir .lohn Simon. Poor Dollfuss came to London in 1933, not long after I Hitler seized power. Austen agreed

passionately that Austria was the key.. If only Britain would say plainly sho w,as interested in Austria’s independence! “ HAVE WE A POLICY? ” “I urged him (Dollfuss) to put hi* whole case before Simon as strongly .as he could, but will Simon understand or act? Alas! none of them seem to turn, to Simon or to trust him. . It is a terrible misfortune.” , j The Government showed only inertia. “ Have we, in fact, a policy, and is the Cabinet behind it, and do; our representatives abroad know : what it is, if it indeed exists? ” Austen saved the Government. with some misgivings,' in 1935, when he decided not to vote against.it, on the Hoare-Laval-blunder, and he was contemptuous when Mr Baldwin asked him then to join the Government as “ Minister of State ”■ without a department, but with the special task of giving advice on foreign policy and'defence. He felt thatiHiat Mr Baldwin wanted “ was not my advice or experience,' hut the use of my name to help' patch up the damaged prestige of his Government.” Again, after the invasion of the Rhineland ho wrote; ” And. our Government has no policy. As far as I can make out. it is as much divided as Asquith’s Cabinet on the eve of the Great War. My confidence is rndety shaken.” It wall never restored . j