Tall, reedy, gentle, devoutly religious and pro-German is Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Viscount Halifax of Monk Bretton in the West Riding of York, Baron Irwin of Kirby Underdale York, Knight of the Garter, onetime Viceroy of India (TIME, May u, 1931, et ante), today Lord President of the Council and Government Leader in the House of Lords. In London, the abrupt decision of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Lord Halifax should go to visit Adolf Hitler last week came more & more to be regarded as a "humiliation" to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who is not pro-German.
The Yorkshire Post, owned by Mrs. Eden's family, did its best to sabotage Lord Halifax's visit. It was rebuked by the London Daily Telegraph (which is close to Mr. Chamberlain) for printing rumors that "There exist and are known to Germany to exist in this country [Britain] a "certain number of people—not all of them obscure [Halifax & friends]— who would be prepared to welcome a German campaign of territorial expansion in the East [Austria, Czechoslovakia, Russia] if by that means Germany could for the time being be diverted from exploiting her nuisance value in other directions [colonies]. Accordingly it requires no great exercise of the imagination to conjecture that Hitler at his meeting with Viscount Halifax will test the ground for some such policy." To the Chamberlainian Daily Telegraph'?, sharp rebuke for printing this rumor, the Edenesque Yorkshire Post sharply retorted that its information was from a "reliable source."
In the House of Lords, prominent Jewish and Labor peers surprisingly outdid themselves in speeches calculated to dispose Adolf Hitler favorably to touch wood, that is Lord Halifax. One of Britain's top Jews, Viscount Samuel urged in the House of Lords that Germany be explicitly absolved of her 1914 "War guilt," that her former colonies be returned, and that the Covenant of the League of Nations be detached from the Treaty of Versailles in hopes of getting the Reich to rejoin the League.
"Those who disapprove of Germany's political regime," said Lord Samuel in his peroration, "have to resist the temptation to take a negative view of all the claims advanced by that regime."
Lord Allen of Hurtwood, a National Laborite; the Marquess of Crewe, Liberal; and Lord Plymouth, Conservative, were among peers who joined Lord Samuel in publicly resisting the temptation to take a negative view of Nazi demands and ambitions. However, Lord Allen plaintively admitted that Britain "cannot hand out colonies like cards in a game of 'beg of my neighbor'."
Among Germans last week the news from London of dissension in the British Cabinet and fawning in the House of Lords produced an immediately stiffened attitude toward Lord Halifax. British references to the Viscount's visit as one of "exploration" caused a whole string of Nazi news-organs—reciting the words of the official Nazi press service—to retort: "Adolf Hitler's Germany needs no 'exploration.' The German position is perfectly clear. 'Explorations' might better be sent into the jungle of England's own policy."