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British Foreign Office men took comfort from the fact that Hugh Dalton's hope of succeeding Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary now seemed dead once & for all. Wrote the Manchester Guardian: "Mr. Dalton must be tethered to a post in one of his national parks and kept strictly out of foreign affairs."
Mockery. Meanwhile, unhappy Clement Attlee spent several highly uncomfortable days trying to explain to the House of Commons what had happened. The whole matter, he suggested, was something of an accident. Said he: "[The document] happened to be published on that day—I think through having gone to the printer at a certain time. I think it was unfortunate, myself."
The Tories, who have themselves refrained so far from championing the Schuman Plan, did not miss the chance to harass the government. With deadpan mockery, Winston Churchill asked if the Prime Minister's statements had been "collated" with Labor Party policy. The party document, replied Attlee, did not represent official government policy. Said he: "His Majesty's Government desire to help and not to hinder in this matter [of the Schuman Plan]."
His Majesty's ambassadors abroad were charged with the task of explaining this paradox to foreign governments. In Washington, Dean Acheson was inclined to accept the explanation. In Paris it was less successful. At a luncheon party, British Embassy officials tried to impress on French newsmen the fine distinction between the opinions of British cabinet ministers speaking as cabinet ministers and those of British cabinet ministers speaking as officers of the Labor Party. Said one of the Britons ruefully, "a very, very sticky luncheon . . . but it proved impossible to make our story stick."