BRITISH POLITICS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4043, 4 May 1938, Page 4

BRITISH POLITICS

the Foreign situation. Said Mr Chamberlain: “Mr Eden, I am certain, in his statement was anxious to put the situation as objectively as he possibly could, but I must ask him to forgive me if I say that in one point it is not quite fair. He represented to the House that the Italian Government had called upon us to enter upon conversations now or never, and that we were being asked to submit to a threat. There is nothing in any of the communications which have passed between us and the Italian Government which in my judgment would justify that description. In my judgment, and I think, in the judgment of my colleagues, nothing that has been said to us on behalf of the Italian Government would justify anybody in saying that they had used threats. And it is therefore I think, not quite fair to the House to suggest that they are being asked to submit to demands from another Government to which it would be derogatory to our dignity to submit.” Said Mr Eden; “ . . . We are in the presence of the progressive deterioration t of respect for international obligations. In the light of the present international situation this is a moment for this country to stand firm, not to plunge into negotiations unprepared, but with the full knowledge that the chief obstacles to their success have been dissolved. It is the traditional method of diplomacy to prepare for conversations before they are formally It is seldom right to depart from that traditional method which has been tested by time and experience. It is certainly never right to do so because one party to the negotiations intimates that it is ‘now or never.* Agreements that are worth while are never made on a basis of a threat. Nor in the past has this country been willing to negotiate under such conditions.”