DIPLOMATIC MAZE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23273, 16 February 1939, Page 5

DIPLOMATIC MAZE

INFLUENCE OF WOMEN POWER BEHIND THE SCENES EXPERT POLITICAL STRATEGY Wielding influence as wives, political hostesses, and go-betweens, women havo become a vital force behind the scenes in world diplomacy. A social call on a society hostess is a convenient cover for political discussions, in which the foundation 'is laid for official negotiations, states an overseas writer.

Working in this way, Lady Chamberlain. widow of Sir Austen and sister-in-law ol: the Prime Minister, put out the preliminary feelers for the pact between Britain and Italy, which to-day is such a vital factor in the Spanish peace moves.

To dj this s.lie used her friendship with both Mussolini and his daughter Edda

When the ladies had found themselves in agreement, tentative official negotiations began. In England, Lady Astor, who is a member of Parliament, became the centre of a political storm, not in her direct political role, but as hostess of Cliveden, where her week-end country parties allegedly turned the course of international affairs.

Countess Ciano, wife of Italy's Foreign Secretary, aud Mussolini's only daughter, is credited with having been an adroit aid to her husband in welding the llome-Ilerlin although she never appealed in any public negotiations. Figure in Four Capitals Latest feminine negotiator to - flit mysteriously around the edge of big events, the beautiful Princess Stefanie Hohunlohe is emerging as an important social-political figure in four capitals. Friend of Heirr Hitler and Hungarian Regent Admiral Horthy, and socially prominent in Prague and Paris, the chic, dark-haired, smiling Princess was intimately concerned in the wanderings of the Fuehrer's personal aide-de-camp and wartime commander, Captain Fritz Wiedemann, during the Czocho-Slovakiiiin crisis. When Viscount Runciman undertook the difficult and delicate task of negotiator between Herr Henlein's Sudetens and the ,Czecho-Slovak Cabinet, lie took his wile with him. ft would not be surprising—and in no way remarkable —if time reveals that the scholarly and important Viscountess Runciman met the socially brilliant Princess Stefanie at some soiree in Prague, and returned with ideas and suggestions destined to become vital factors in the moulding of con tempo ra rv 11 istorv. Power Behind Throne After being carried on the crest of the wave of their newly-won political emancipation right into the Cabinets of various countries in the years following the war, women are veering away from polities, and returning to their traditional role of "the power behind the throne.'' Britain had the first' women members of Parliament, and their advent was hailed with pleasure, as heralding a new and beneficent influence in politics.

However, the high hopes that international politics had entered a new phase ol open diplomacy, in which women coild take a direct part, were not fulfilled

Europe began to sink back into the pre-war system of politics, intrigue and secret diplomatic finessing, and, with this return to the old system, women sank into comparative political obscurity.

Defeated in their efforts to play a direct part, women have turned again to the indirect role. And they are playing it, not in the way of some of the sinister charmers of last century, but as keen thinkers and experts in diplomatic strategy.