MR EDEN’S POST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25503, 5 April 1944, Page 5

MR EDEN’S POST

FOREIGN SECRETARYSHIP LIKELIHOOD OF A CHANGE (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) LONDON, Apl. 4. There are persistent reports thait Mr .Anthony Eden is to leave the Foreign Office. The likelihood of this move was discussed during the past week, and the Observer’s political correspondent says that Government changes which were almost settled when the confidence crisis was thrust on Parliament are likely to be temporarily postponed. • Mr Eden is both Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, and there have been frequent comments that he cannot continue to do both satisfactorily. The Manchester Guardian’s political correspondent reported that Mr Eden recently “ soothed ” the Conservative Members' Committee. “The committee members have been upset because

they believe we are without a clear, strong foreign policy,” he writes, “ and they argue that Mr Eden is not the man to provide it. They concede the necessity for co-operation with Russia if peace is to be maintained in Europe, but consider a firm, clearly conceived British foreign policy must be just as essential; indeed, they hold that the cause of British and Russian co-opera-tion will itself be better served by a firm than by a weak, hand-to-mouth British foreign policy.” The correspondent asks whether Lord Beaverbrook aspires tc* direct the Foreign Office. The Observer’s correspondent comments: “It would be very surprising if this situation (the possibility of Mr Eden leaving the Foreign Office), in which Lord Beaverbrook*played no small part, were to result in a decision not after all to find the Lord Privy Seal a more clear-cut job for which he has been asking.”