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After breakfast Mr. Chamberlain received Count Grandi who left No. 10 grinning. Then the Prime Minister drove to Buckingham Palace and King George kept Mr. Chamberlain for lunch.
It is possible that Anthony Eden, by resigning just when he did, can place himself at the head of a political faction which may ultimately make him Prime Minister. David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, two much disgruntled Government outsiders, were already openly Eden's backers this week. That afternoon, Mr. Lloyd George took bows and cheers as he entered the House of Commons just ahead of Mr. Eden and the latter's faithful Foreign Office henchman, Lord Cranborne, who had announced he was resigning, too. Then the Prime Minister entered, got 1½ minutes' cheering from Conservatives, while Laborites booed.
"No man can be the keeper of another man's confidence!" cried ex-Secretary Eden, neatly suggesting that he was above keeping Businessman Chamberlain's squalid conscience. "Agreements that are worthwhile are never made on the basis of threats. . . . The Prime Minister has strong views on foreign policy and I respect him for it. I have strong views, too! Of late the conviction has grown steadily on me that there has been too keen a desire on our part to make terms with others—rather than for others to make terms with us. . . . Propaganda against this country by the Italian Government is rife throughout the world. I myself pledged this House not to open conversations with Italy until hostile propaganda ceased."
Viscount Cranborne chimed in: "To enter into conversations with Italy now would be regarded not as a contribution to peace but as a surrender to blackmail!"
The Prime Minister said: "As a result of my conversation today with the Italian Ambassador, I never was more convinced of the right of any decision than that which the Cabinet took Sunday" [drop ping Eden].
The Deal No. 2. Cautiously testing British public opinion, as one inches for ward on thin ice, Neville Chamberlain an nounced that "temporarily" the new Foreign Secretary would be Viscount Halifax. Pro-German but High-Church and idealistic, Lord Halifax—who "sees the in scrutable hand of Divine Providence at work almost everywhere," even in Germany and Italy—was Mr. Chamberlain's personal envoy last November to Herr Hitler. But His Majesty's Government this week obviously were thinking almost exclusively about Rome.
Mr. Chamberlain finally told the House straight out that Mussolini thought the retention of Eden as Foreign Secretary had meant that Britain "was trying to lull the Italians into inactivity while Britain completed her rearmament and was in a position to take revenge for Ethiopia. That idea is fantastic and never entered our heads, but it is the idea held in Rome!"
Meanwhile, Laborites proposed a motion of censure, which if carried would call for the fall of the Cabinet. The Leader of the Opposition, Laborite Clement Attlee, shrilled: "Mussolini is a bankrupt dictator, yet it is just at this time that the Prime Minister goes whining to him for an agreement on any terms!"