Facing the Commons
Wednesday, December 18, London. The American reporter, the London correspondent for a big New York daily, was simply stunned—a spokesman had come out of the cabinet meeting and announced that Sir Samuel Hoare had resigned. Before the meeting, the reporter was given to understand that Sir Samuel was to deliver the government’s case the following day in support of the peace proposals in the House of Commons, proposals that he himself had co-authored with French Premier Laval ten days ago in Paris.
Now the cabinet had decided to condemn the proposals. Even more dramatically, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would personally deliver the condemnation in opposition to the Labor party’s motion of censure.
However, tomorrow Sir Samuel would still speak, the reporter discovered, but as a private member from a backbench, in a personal statement outlining his participation in the Hoare-Laval proposals.
What had happened? The reporter buttonholed cabinet members as they appeared. The story tumbled out: the cabinet had simply revolted at Sir Samuel’s proposed speech as it was explained to them. He took notes.
Then the reporter spoke with cabinet aides over in the corners and moved among his colleagues, swapping information. Another story emerged: that day a powerful cabal of senior members had formed against Sir Samuel, fueled by discontent among young Conservative members. A plot was hatched at the Carlton Club, long-time bastion of the parliamentary establishment. The club’s backrooms had spawned many a parliamentary coup over the past century or two. A resolution demanding an expression of regret about the Paris negotiations emerged. Confronted by the dissidents, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was forced to ask the foreign secretary for changes to tomorrow’s speech to the House of Commons.
Sir Samuel refused pointblank. Instead, he brought a letter of resignation with him to the cabinet meeting. At the meeting, he explained to his cabinet colleagues that he was not about to change the speech to express regret at what he had done in Paris. The cabinet members in turn explained to the foreign secretary that Sir Samuel’s proposals were in conflict with the recent general election and that the government would come perilously close to falling on a motion of censure. Sir Samuel tendered his resignation.
The reporter went to a vacant writing desk, quickly rewrote his story, and headed for the wireless office.
Thursday, December 19, London. The Prince of Wales approached his seat in the gallery overlooking the hall of the House of Commons, reaching out and shaking hands with lords and ambassadors, giving greetings with his big toothy grin, the winsome Windsor charm at full wattage. He took his seat; the ambassadors and lords sat down. All knew one of the great dramatic moments of modern parliamentary history was at hand.
Below, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Sir Samuel Hoare entered the chamber, cheers rising from the Conservative side of the House. The prime minister took his position at the government bench. Sir Samuel Hoare walked past the government bench and mounted the steps to a third-tier bench, the other members squeezing down to make room for the now private member who was once foreign secretary.
The day’s proceedings began and were quickly disposed. The speaker called, “Sir Samuel Hoare.” Long tradition allows a retiring cabinet minister to state his own case to the House when circumstances force him out of government.
Sir Samuel stepped forward and outlined the Paris proposals, explaining their reasonableness. He went on to say that he had been driven by an “obsession” that Italy might attack Great Britain. He expressed his great dread that such a war would likely lead to a general European war, a “conflagration” he called it.
He described the lack of cooperation among the European powers to enforce restraint on the aggressor. “You cannot have one-hundred percent peace if you have only five percent of the cooperation that goes to making it.”
Hoare drove home the point. “Not a ship, not a machine, not a gun has been moved by any other member state.” The members understood. The British had moved their fleet in response to Italian aggression, the French had done nothing.
Sitting in the press gallery, the New York reporter listened intently and then found himself spellbound as Hoare continued:
“I have been terrified with the thought—I speak very frankly to the House—that we might lead Ethiopia on to think that the League could do more for them than it can do, that in the end we should find a terrible moment of disillusionment in which it may be that Ethiopia would be destroyed as an independent state…”
“I could not help thinking of the past, in which…we have given all our sympathies to some threatened or downtrodden race, but because we had been unable to implement and give effect to those sympathies, all that we had done was to encourage them, with the result that in the end their fate was worse than it would have been without our sympathy.”
The reporter wrote all this down, thinking that like great art, these eloquent words carried the gift of prophecy, a warning of the terrible risks incurred when cheap assurances are tossed onto the playing table of world politics.
As to Ethiopia, Hoare said that peace could come by either negotiation or surrender. He preferred negotiation. He acknowledged that for now negotiation had failed but he gave a clear opinion that eventually peace would have to be negotiated according to the main principles implied in the Hoare-Laval plan.
He closed. “I say to this House that I cannot honestly recant—and I sincerely believe that the course that I took was the only course that was possible under the circumstances.” Hoare turned and returned to his bench, his great dignity magnified by the prophetic truth of the words he had spoken.
The leader of the Opposition, Clement Attlee, rose and offered the motion of censure, a now formalistic ritual. He launched a rhetorical attack on the government. “If it was right for the foreign minister to resign, the whole government should resign. Not only the honor of this country is involved in these proposals to give half of Ethiopia to Italy, but the honor of the prime minister himself.”
The government now offered up an amendment on which the real vote of confidence would turn, a motion disowning the Hoare-Laval proposals but sustaining the government’s continued efforts to find peace at Geneva through the League of Nations.
Conservative supporters rose and spoke in strong defense, one cabinet member making the point that Germany was the real issue. At the end, Stanley Baldwin closed for the government, admitting error that the proposals had gone too far and that the government did not have “that volume of popular opinion which it is necessary to have in a democracy behind the Government in a matter so important as this.”
The government carried the vote. The New York reporter watching from the press gallery quickly descended to the lobbies to hear comments. One Conservative eminence said, “Hoare says, ‘I have done nothing wrong and I resign,’ and Baldwin says, ‘I have done everything wrong and I do not resign.’”
Writing this down in his pad, and without looking up, the reporter asked a question with a statement, “Hoare has the sympathy and respect. Baldwin gained the votes.”
The Conservative sighed and said, “Yes, that is the way these affairs are designed to work.”
The reporter made an inward smile and turned to another Conservative grandee standing in the circle, a veteran of many cabinets in the past, and asked, “The prime minister?”
The old man stood a little more erect, glanced off into the distance of his memories, and then looked at the reporter, “Neither the prime minister nor the foreign minister spoke of principles or ideals. They, looking over the heads of their countrymen to the far horizons, saw the horror of war and moved in the real interests of their people.”
An English reporter asked, “Did Laval in Paris move in the real interests of his people?”
The grandee raised a skeptical eyebrow and shrugged. The reporters all laughed. The grandee, thinking better of it, turned thoughtful and said, sympathetically in French, “Peut-être.” Perhaps.
Sunday, December 22, Sandring
ham House, rural England. The limousines brought the official party up the drive, past the broad lawns, to the front steps leading into the large country house owned by the royal family. In the bitter cold, the officials got out of the limousines and hurried up the steps and into the warmth of the grand edifice. Entering a large meeting room, the Privy Council met under the auspices of King George V. Anthony Eden stepped forward, took the oath of office as foreign secretary, received the seals of office, and “kissed hands” with the monarch on his appointment. Congratulations were made all around. The king invited Eden for a private audience.
In a smaller, warmer room, the aged and now quite frail king sat down and Eden took a chair just across. The king, coughing now and again somewhat painfully, spoke understandingly of the difficulties Eden had inherited, adding, “I am very interested in foreign affairs and in the appointment of ambassadors. Please keep me fully informed. We shall give you all that help that we can.”
The king grew reflective and spoke of his last meeting with Sir Samuel Hoare when he had come to surrender the seals. “I told him that the Hoare-Laval proposals had been a blunder.” The king explained that a train could not go full steam in one direction, and then without warning change direction without somebody coming off the rails. Eden thought how true. He also recollected in his own mind that at an earlier audience the king had spoken to him with vehemence about the importance he attached to good relations with Italy. Yes, Eden thought, the problem with dual policies—sometimes they come off the tracks. Even for a king.
The king continued, amusement in his voice, “I said to your predecessor: ‘You know what they’re all saying, no more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.’ The fellow didn’t even laugh.” Eden smiled and gave a light chuckle to the chestnut going around the upper crust clubs in London.