The moral prestige of King George was associated last week with "The Deal" to make peace in Ethiopia by giving Italy approximately half that Empire (TIME, Dec. 16). With no subsequent tut-tutting from courtiers, Associated Press put on the world's wires that in highest circles His Majesty was believed to have strongly urged (if he did not command) Captain Anthony Eden, Sanctionist Extraordinary, to assist in making peace quickly by means of The Deal and to desist at Geneva from trying to put through further sanctions.
The test of Minister for League of Nations Affairs Anthony Eden came within a few hours after he was received in private audience at Buckingham Palace. He might have maintained the reputation he has won in 1935 as "The White Knight of Geneva" and the "Lindbergh of Diplomacy" by resigning from the Cabinet and, as a private member, hewing to the line which has made him famed at Geneva.
Many of "Antony" Eden's friends, particularly female, urged him to make this stand. He seemed haggard as he entered the House of Commons and his chief, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who had gone without his dinner in the crisis, also seemed haggard. But when Captain Eden finally spoke, it was for His Majesty's Government and to advocate The Deal— denounced the day before by Laborite Dr. Hugh Dalton, onetime Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, as "condoning a felony and worse than a felony—wholesale murder and treaty breaking!"
Eden can certainly claim a heavy political reward later, was the general impression in Parliament, for stowing away all moral considerations last week and upholding The Deal before the Commons. "Let's face the facts!" barked Captain Eden. "If Italy, Ethiopia and the League accept discussion on the basis of the suggestions which have been made in Paris, there is nobody here that is going to say 'No,' even if some of those proposals may not be particularly appealing to us!"
There was nobody in the House of Commons who took any visible or audible exception to this. Nobody cried "Shame!" as M.P.'s commonly do when an instance of cruelty to animals or a jibe at the Royal Family fires their indignation. There were a few Conservative cheers for Eden, and the Prime Minister was listened to with respect when he replied to Opposition hints that Ethiopia was being sold down the river because Britain was afraid she or her ships might suddenly be attacked by Italian airmen on orders from their Dictator.
"The Opposition has informed me of the feelings of my own supporters," sarcastically declared Squire Baldwin. "I generally have a tolerable knowledge of what are their feelings. . . . Some people speak of the League of Nations as if it was a kind of celestial institution with a volition of its own, as if it was always right, whereas it is a very human body of fallible nations gathered in council and represented by fallible statesmen trying to do what they can to build up the League, which in time may perform all those services for humanity we dreamed of when the League was first founded. I don't propose tonight to say anything about its constitution or deficiencies in the absence of certain great nations."