Captain Eden, Lord Privy Seal

JOHN GUNTHER

An account of England's Man-of-the-Hour, "Lord Eyelash ': the dapper gentleman, with a future, who shook hands with Stalin

No one understands the British, not even the British themselves. The country is a thicket of stylistic difficulties. It is funny, yes, when some French or German newspaper calls Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, "Sir Simon." The ritual of English names and titles is bewildering. It is incomprehensible, even to many British, let alone a continental visitor, that the King's son, the Duke of Kent, only became a peer on the occasion of his recent marriage, that a peeress like Lady Astor sits in the House of Commons, and that Mr. Anthony Eden, the Lord Privy Seal, is—a commoner.

The Rt. Hon. Capt. Anthony Eden, M.P., P. C., aged 37, the best-looking and best-dressed diplomat in Europe, is Not-SoSimple-Simon's assistant in the realm of foreign affairs. As Lord Privy Seal, Eden is a sort of minister, without portfolio. Be it noted, however—another idiosyncratic confusion—that he is not yet in the cabinet, although traditionally the Lord Privy Seal is a high-ranking cabinet member. Not so long ago Eden completed a tour of Berlin, Moscow, Warsaw, and Prague, an emissary-at-large for the British government, and did the job brilliantly, though illness stopped him at the end. "Thank goodness," I heard it said in London, "that we sent Simon to Berlin, Eden to Moscow." Because the frigid and unpopular Simon was just the person to throw cold water on Hitler, Eden, with his plausibility and charm, was just the person to shake hands, after all these years, with Stalin.

Robert Anthony Eden was born in June, 1897, the second son of a "county" baronet. He went to Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, thus charting a course of perfect orthodoxy. The war came, and, at the ripe old age of eighteen, he joined up, emerging a captain and wearing the Military Cross. He and Hitler discovered in Berlin that they had faced each other on the same segment of battlefront. Returning to Oxford, Eden began to show his talent for the unusual; he took First Class Honors in as dubious and unorthodox a subject as Oriental Languages. "Unexpected fellow! a friend of his exclaimed when I asked what the languages were. "Known Anthony ten years, never knew till this minute he had done Oriental languages at all."

In 1923 Eden married the 18-year-old daughter of Sir Gervase Beckett, and promptly encountered a typical enough politico-personal "county" confusion. He had decided to enter politics, and was adopted as Conservative candidate in the constituency of Warwick. Only a genealogist could get the details straight, but the labor candidate opposing him was a lady, the Countess of Warwick, who was both his sister's mother-in-law and his wife's step-mother's sister. Incidentally, just to show the occasionally strange ramifications of county families, Eden's brother-in-law, the husband of his wife's sister, is London correspondent of the Berliner Tageblalt, an amiable German.

Eden entered Parliament, having vanquished the lady who was so complicatedly related to him, and his rise thereafter was phenomenal.

He made an exploratory trip to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, in 1925, writing a series of articles for the Yorkshire Post which later were assembled in an excellent little book, "Places in the Sun." His journalism showed brains and common-sense, plenty of hard statistical digging and a graceful style. Settling down in the House, Eden specialized in foreign affairs. He gained attention quickly. The Prime Minister, then Stanley Baldwin, himself wrote a foreword for his book, and in 1926 he became Parliamentary private secretary to Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Foreign Secretary. This was partly because of Baldwin's friendship, partly because the Conservative back-benchers were demanding jobs for their young men.

In 1931, he was named Parliainentary under-secretary to tin* Foreign Office, in which position he was virtually Disarmament Minister, or Minister to the League, because he began going to Geneva regularly, and came to be trusted with most of the tiresome and difficult disarmament negotiations. Whenever a big coup was ready, Simon, who had become Foreign Secretary, flew to Geneva to superintend it and reap the kudos. Eden stayed and did the work, lie became immcnscL popular at Geneva; he liked the League and believed in it. Finally, in 1934, when London-plus-Geneva was too much work lor one man, the duties of the foreign office were more or less divided, and Eden became Lord Privy Seal.

It doesn't matter a tinker's dam that Anthony Eden's trousers are the best-pressed in all Mayfair. What really matters is that this young man is possessed of two great qualities, charm and real intelligence. One might think, from his background, that he was the perfect type of dumb British man-about-politics. Good family, war service; handsome wife; two sturdy boys; comfortable private means; impeccable clothes; conventional good looks-everything would seem to point to an entirely standardized character.

Product of county aristocracy, Eton. Oxford, a good regiment, Whitehall, and Mayfair, he might have been as handsome and colorless as a tailor's dummy. But people who took him for a decorative dilettante were extremely wrong. Eden is the perfect gentleman, indeed, but with a difference; he has brains.

The discriminating among outsiders first grasped his quality when, in 1929, he spoke in defense of the Anglo-French naval compromise. He followed Chamberlain, who was vacuous in the extreme, and talked to an almost empty House; but the speech, delivered extemporaneously, was one of the most subtle and trenchant expositions of a difficult subject that the Commons had ever heard from so young a member. People began to note his charm when, last year, he reported on a mission of investigation in Berlin, when he first saw Hitler. Winston Churchill rose to heckle him with congratulatory hut skeptical wit. First. Eden crossed his long legs and looked at the ceiling. Second, he tried to conceal a modest yawn. Third, as Churchill's banter continued, he blushed like a baby; his cheeks turned flaming red; he boiled in embarrassment at being praised.

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Plenty of young men have Eden's background: a good many have his tact and charm; a few may be as smart. What else accounts for his precocious and meteoric rise? For one thing, he has an infinite capacity to make people like him. He is one of those perfectly balanced men, honest and disinterested, whom it is almost impossible to dislike. Among journalists at Geneva, he was called "Lord Eyelash," not in derision, but as a compliment to his charm and his sartorial savoir faire and he is the most popular Englishman who ever came to the League. In the Foreign Office, which adores him, no one ever thinks of calling him anything but "Anthony. Simon is supposed to be jealous of him, and with reason.

Two events recently revived the moribund League of Nations to considerable prestige and power. One was the decision to send an international army to the Saar for supervision of the January plebiscite. The other was the settlement of the Hungaro-Jugoslay dispute which threatened Europe with an ugly crisis in December. The architect, in each case, was Eden. He terrified the British cabinet by insisting that British troops be sent to the Saar, against the vociferous protests of the isolationist press; and he was right, because this step, far from being unpopular, turned out to be a cardinal achievement of the National Government. He wheedled, coddled, cozened the Hungarians and Jugoslavs into agreement on an almost insoluble issue, a task something like putting Goering and Trotsky togther and making them kiss.

In March, 1935, Eden set out on his flying tour to Moscow. He was the first British minister to enter Russia since the revolution in 1917. The job called for the maximum of tact, resilience, and negotiating power. The Soviets have been deeply suspicious of British policy, and the British conservatives, whom Eden represents, thought Stalin and his friends were poison. Eden and Stalin "clicked," the moment they met. They began a conversation both cordial and pointed, and Stalin asked Eden if he thought the danger of war in 1935 was as great as it had been before 1914. Eden said No. Stalin thought Yes. They began to argue. At the end, they signed a joint communique of great historic importance, pointing out that there is no conflict of interest between their respective countries, and recognizing that the "integrity and prosperity of each are to the advantage of the other. Far cry from the days of the Arcos raid in London, when Austen Chamberlain was burned in effigy in Moscow!

Eden returned to Warsaw and there met that complicated and inscrutable old villain, Pilsudski of Poland. Their talk was brief, because Pilsudski is too old for sustained mental effort. He patted Eden on the back, called him a nice young fellow, congratulated him on his precocity, and told him to come back some day.

Journeying further, Eden saw Dr. Benes, the pertinacious Czechoslovak foreign minister, in Prague. They saw eye to eye on the necessity of collective security in Europe. Returning to London by air, Eden and his entourage encountered a violent storm over Germany, and the Lord Privy Seal was violently ill. When the plane stopped at Cologne, he was unable to rise from his seat for about five minutes. Then he pulled himself together, left the plane to get a breath of air, and insisted on going on. The pilot refused. When Eden arrived in London the next day, he was sent to bed for a month, suffering from heart strain, but the illness is not expected to be permanent or serious.

The trouble with Eden is his job, especially if he becomes Foreign Minister. The British are confronted with the same dilemma as in 1914, and seem to be facing it with similar equivocation. Eden may have a policy, but Britain is bigger than he is, and British policy is always to walk the fence, play both ends against the middle. Haldane went to Berlin in 1912 on just such a mission as Simon's; Hitler has proclaimed air parity with Britain just as the Kaiser sought to assert naval parity. Fearful of joining France and Soviet Russia in an outright alliance against Germany, the British are temporizing and compromising, just as they did in 1914. I he danger is that Hitler, like Bethmann-Hollweg, may be deceived into believing that the British could afford to remain neutral in the event of war. Which may encourage Germany to fight. Eden is pro-League and pro-peace, and his personal instincts are on the French side, not the German,—in fact, the whole set of his mind, culturally, is Gallic. He collects the French classics of the 16th and 17th centuries, the delicate early French etchings, while at Oxford, for choice, he read Proust, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. His colleagues, however, may prevent him from taking the strong line that is necessary.

At 37, Eden is Lord Privy Seal, and the most popular and promising politico in England. The quickness of his rise has its dangers. Britain has a certain quaint tendency to venerate senility in politics, as in literature, and there is a tradition that no man becomes Foreign Minister until he has filled other cabinet posts and is sixty at least. Eden may spend twenty years getting old enough to be respectable. On the other hand, the present National Government is breaking up, and will reconstruct itself after the Jubilee, perhaps in June.

If another job is found for the glacial Simon, Eden is a certain candidate for Foreign Secretary, despite his tender years. He is the coming man. And the prophets have it that he is almost sure to become Prime Minister some day in the future, if his luck, his health, and the British Isles themselv es, hold out.