APPEASEMENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 24 November 1938, Page 6

APPEASEMENT

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER’S AIM [By Air Mail— Owo Correspoudeutl LONDON, 3rd November. The Prime Minister’s political critics, who are vociferous and barbed-tongued but not nearly so numerous as his adherents, are now saying that Mr Neville Chamberlain has "gone all Hitler.” By this they do not mean to imply that Mr Chamberlain's son has become an admirer of Der Fuhrer, but merely that he is establishing fi Cabinet autocracy which is near akin to a dictatorship. From the moment he inherited Earl | Baldwin’s mantle as Premier, Mr Chamberlain evinced a disposition to kick over the conventional Foreign Office i traces. He wrote a personal note of , reconciliation to Mussolini, side-tracked his diplomatic Permanent Head, and took foreign policy entirely under his own personal wing. This was all in the same spirit as his Munich gesture, when he put his pride and F.O. tradition in the waste-paper basket, and flew to intercede with Hitler for peace. For good or for ill, Mr Chamberlain is concentrating on appeasement, and for this reason he regards with philosophic calm, even perhaps with satisfaction, the panic over our revealed state of unpreparedness. NO EARTHQUAKE No such upheaval marked the reassembling of Parliament as some of the Government’s critics half expected. Twenty years ago there would have been a revolt against any Ministry which appeared to have so neglected an obvious duty. Rosebery’s Ministry was east into the outer darkness over a vote on cordite reserves. But nowadays the Government’s back-bench men are tamed. The Whips have them feeding out of their hands. And the Labour Opposition, having been pioneers in our all-round disarmament and having firmly opposed rearmament, obviously feel themselves on somewhat precarious foothold in attacking the Cabinet for failure to be ready to wage another big European war. Winston Churchill and L.G., of course, are both willing to wound and not half afraid to strike. But they are now more or less voices crying in the wilderness. They belong to the brontosaurus age of parliamentary history. No doubt Lord Runciman’s return to- the Cabinet, and the inclusion of that strong administrator, Sir John Anderson, as chief of A.R.P. strengthens the Ministry a little. But the Chamberlain policy is to run the thing as a one-man command. The Prime Minister is having no more intransigeant subordinates round him. It will make his trumph the greater, if he succeeds, but it will not ease the crash, if he fails.