LONDON LETTER END OF GREAT TENSION

Southland Times, Issue 23648, 25 October 1938, Page 4

LONDON LETTER END OF GREAT TENSION

People Crazed With Relief AMAZING SITTING OF PARLIAMENT (From Our Own Correspondent)

LONDON, October 3. No adult or adolescent among all the millions in this mighty city will ever forget the last week f September. You will have been told the story in your news cablegrams: a story of numbing fear and magnificent national courage; of the public’s nerves strained as they seldom were even in the darkest hours of the Great War; of fevered digging of trenches in parks and gardens; of women and children lining up to receive their gas masks; of the most amazing sitting in the whole long, colourful history of the House of Commons. And then, when the tension snapped . . . once . . . twice ... of a people almost crazed with relief; of staid Cabinet Ministers cheering like New Zealand school boys at a Rugby match; of the King and Queen standing back in the shadows of the Palace balcony, and motioning a diffident Commoner to step forward to receive the greatest spontaneous reception given anyone since London . was a Roman. camp, of the crowd that packed Downing Street singing “O God Our Help in Ages Past” with a fervour and a reverence worthy of the nearby Abbey itself. .

THE MAN OF THE HOUR

Presently, no doubt, we shall find all manner of differences rising again—as I write the newsboys aie crying the resignation of the First Lord of the Admiralty—but this week Mr Chamberlain is a hero indeed. In fjur brief, emotion-charged days, Londoners have looked into the open mouth of Hell and drawn near the gates of Paradise. That scene in the Commons will be a highlight of political history as long as democratic institutions ■ last. ) The Duke of Kent clapped his hands; the Archbishop of Canterb—y thumped the rail in front of him; Lord Baldwin hammered the floor with his stick. This in the ordinarily dignified Peers’ Gallery. On the floor below was pandemonium. An hour earlier members had gathered in strained silence, knowing that when next they met a tenth of them might be in uniform; when next again, some of them dead. At two o’clock that morning word had been passed round inner official circles that war was practically certain. Although private members did not know that, most of them feared it. The climax of the Prime Minister’s speech, therefore, rolled a burden from every heart in the House. In the climax itself there was just a little stage management. His colleagues on the Front Bench had the momentous message from Herr Hitler some minutes before Mr Chamberlain reached the appropriate place in his speech, and Sir John Simon, with a barrister’s eye for psychological effect, did not interpose immediately. The first outburst lost something from the seated silence of the Opposition; but so promptly ai.d so generously did Mr Attlee make amends in his short speech, that the whole of the Government benches, as well as his own supporters, cheer him. For a moment the Leader of the Opposition took this as a fresh tribute to the Prime Minister, and himself rose again, until ■a friend behind thrust him back into his seat. When the House adjourned; members from all parts crowded round Mr Chamberlain to shake hands; and one of the first was Mr Churchill. Outside, in Parliament street and Whitehall, the demeanour of the people whs an index of their feelings. Mi Chamberlain had driven to the House through avenues of set, white faces, some of them worn with sleeplessness, of them wondering fearing, only fitfully hoping. He drove home as it were through'a carnival crowd that laughed ard joked and cheered. Next morning, when Mrs Chamberlain went for her daily walk in St. James’s Park, Grateful women mobbed her. Last night when the Prime Minister spoke from a first floor window to the insistent throng i: front of Number 10, many women were openly crying for joy. One was saying over and ever again, “He has given me back my son! He has given me back my son!” Her husband was killed in the last war; her son had rushed to enlist at the first mention of another.

PEACE WITH HONOUR? Borrowing a phrase from Disraeli, Mr Chamberlain told Londoners that for the second time an Englishman had brought back from Germany to Downing Street “peace with honour.” One need be no prophet to foresee the critics and publicists asking themselves and each other next week, “Is it peace?”

and “Is it with honour?” Sympathy with Czechoslovakia is widespread and deep, and many people would have been much happier if Dr Benes had been invited to Munich. Also, a section of opinion, that is far from echoing the “betrayal” shout heard on the Left a week ago, is already weighing the realities' of the settlement and finding them in the dictators’ favour. One report says Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini were smiling broadly after the signing, whereas Mr Chamberlain and M. Daladier looked wan and tired. Three leading Conservative newspapers refuse to become excited:— The Daily Telegraph: Prudence comnels us as yet to refrain from setting undue store by the joint Anglo-Ger-man declaration [renouncing war]. If we could accept at its face value Hen. Hitler’s latest assurance that territorial demands in Europe are now at an end, the hopes that could be reposed in the declaration would be considerably enhanced. But it is impossible to forget that after the retrocession of the Saar and the reoccupation of the Rhineland he gave similar pledges, the practical outcome of which has been vividly impressed on our minds during the current year. Certain it is that the declaration would not survive a repetition of the policy of threats and “surprises” which has just brought all Europe to the verge of a general conflagration. The Glasgow Herald: One dare not forget that the revision of Czechoslovakia’s boundaries, however it may be justified on “racial” grounds has been made as a concession to the threat of European war, and . in defiance of German promises given little more than six'months ago . . . The Munich Agreement is in fact a “dictate,” just as the Treaty of Versailles was a “dictate”—an agreement enforced upon a State which has had no real opportunity of discussing its terms. Such an arrangement may be necessary to European peace, but as a diplomatic precedent it may rouse a certain feelmg of uneasiness in the future.

The Yorkshire Post: Mr Chamberlain knows, as all the world knows, that his efforts of recent days have been made under threat. He must be conscious that force or the menace of force has in fact largely prevailed . . . The Munich procedure, though it is called peaceful, is so harsh as to be horrifying. The Czechs were given barely a few hours to accept what is really a decree of political and economic suicide . . . Mr Chamberlain, if his hands had not been tied, would certainly have insisted on less barbaric surgery. We yielded to a remorseless will and an iron discipline which we had not prepared ourselves to confront.

WORLD LONGING FOR PEACE

To have doubts, however, is not to deny the Prime Minister his triumph, nor to belittle the magnitude of his work. What the crisis and its relaxing have shown above all else is the world’s passionate hunger for continued and continuing peace. As the bells of London rang out to. welcome Mr Chamberlain, so Paris was acclaiming M. Daladier, and Rome the Duce. “When Mr Chamberlain appeared on the balcony of his hotel,” reports Vernon Bartlett, the Liberal commentator, from Munich, “he received such an ovation as no other British statesman has ever received in Germany . . . There are plenty of Germans who are enthusiastic about Chamberlain because he has helped them to extend their frontiers without fighting; but there are millions more who are grateful to him because they believe he has savea them from war.” The Prime Minister may fairly be said to be the incarnation of this worldwide longing. “I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul,” he said in his broadcast. “Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me.” What of Herr Hitler? He, too, may be now a lover of peace, although his whole record throws doubt upon the possibility. Unless his future is to belie his past, neither the trimming of territory from Czechoslovakia nor the signing of pious declarations will avail to keep the peace in Europe. If all the Continental peoples were led by Chamberlains—who would best reflect their common aspiration to live in peace—we could sleep easily. As things are, a variety of “experts” is beginning to tell us, we dare not.