The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 19, 1935

EDITORIAL

 

Death of the Peace Plan.

What killed the Franco-British peace plan--by Captain Eden's own description it was called dead--must have been either the pressure of opposition from other members of the League of Nations or the sheer force of outraged public opinion in England. The preparation of the Conservative sacrificial offering in the person of Sir Samuel Hoare, foreign secretary, indicates that it probably was the latter. And the smell of Sir Samuel's burning flesh is calculated to divert inimical attention from Stanley Baldwin's and the Government's complicity in winning a general election on the strength of an Italian policy which even during the campaign the Government was scheming to jettison.

No such pressure of public idealism prevails in France. There, it was the resignation of a lone cabinet officer, Edouard Herriott, Minister of State, which threatened the stability of Laval's government. The disapproving officer has been persuaded to reconsider and to withdraw his resignation, but the attitude of the French government toward Italy is likely to continue amicable, or at most reluctantly unfriendly.

The change of England's course, however, is noteworthy. It holds the thrilling promise that the League of Nations, upon the framework of which England and France were willing to perform their old tricks of diplomacy, will now be compelled by English voting and working men to stand by its original premise: that Italy's aggression is not to be tolerated.


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