THE BRITISH ENIGMA
Hanighen, Frank C.
The British Enigma By FRANK C. HANIGHEN Washington, D. C. WATCH BRITAIN! Again I warn American readers that what happens in Britain may prove of greater importance to the course of the war than...
...A mistake ? It is doubtful...
...Lt...
...Today, a powerful British statesman, Premier Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa, confirms this trend...
...In London, he became one of the most active members of the War Cabinet and of diplomacy during and after the war...
...She wants the defeat of Germany and Japan...
...ticklish League of Nations and Abyssinian situation in that year...
...Again I warn American readers that what happens in Britain may prove of greater importance to the course of the war than what happens in Russia or Germany...
...Make the obvious inference from the way this reads and you get the notion that the contracting powers can undertake to enter negotiations with,the Hitlerite Government if it does renounce all aggressive intentions...
...Next, Smuts talks much of "leadership" in world affairs...
...They say them in order to warn their people of a danger...
...It may be that Churchill will find an ingenious and satisfactory solution for this complicated problem...
...He has more...
...1. Voigt, the intellectual spokesman of an important part of the British ruling class, is still at it...
...But while Hoare was speaking noble words in the League against Mussolini's designs, he was also working for the compromise with Italian imperialism which history calls the Hoare-Laval pact...
...Does this mean that Smuts wants a line-up of Britain, with the United States in its pocket, as a counterpoise to the weight of the new "colossus," Russia...
...This spokesman bears watching...
...Smuts sees that after Allied victory, the world will be ruled by a "trinity of powers"—Britain, United States, and Russia...
...At one phase of his early career he said, "I have learned in this life that humiliation and disgrace are sometimes necessary in order to effect a-great public service...
...F. L. G. Holland, director of education for the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony until the Japanese came, were present at the ceremony...
...Britain's Conflicting Desires The fact is that Britain in 1935 faced a bitter choice...
...The climax of the fathers' draft bill deferment should caution those enemies of the Administration who go on the theory that the President has completely-lost his domestic political touch...
...For the very same wording was used, also without comma, in the Anglo-Soviet Alliance pact of June 1942...
...There's a comma missing in Article II of the Soviet-Czechoslovak Mutual Aid Treaty signed the other day...
...Jottings and Joltings...
...Suddenly, in December 1935, the world—and not least, the British public—learned that Hoare and Premier Laval of France had made a deal with Mussolini to give him half a loaf (part of Abyssinia) rather than none at all—as the League proposed...
...But, obviously, that falls far short of bolstering the weakened Father of the Trinity...
...4. Smuts is scheduled to come to the United States...
...He was told off to do a number of big diplomatic jobs—in Palestine, Ireland, France...
...What Does Smuts Want...
...If there had been a comma after "Hitlerite Government," this inference could not be drawn...
...But Britain also wanted peace and the maintenance of the balance of power...
...Smuts is apparently playing with a very daring vision...
...Hence, some other things he says indicate a more ambitious sphere...
...At that time, David Lawrence, Washington columnist, noted.±he omission and queried the British officials...
...The emphasis on this confirms what a number of American observers back from abroad keep saying—that Britain wants a team of the two Anglo-Saxon powers, with Britain furnishing the "leadership" and the United States the "brawn...
...3. British spokesmen around Washington are already spreading the Smuts gospel...
...In the current issue of his magazine, he starts a new series of articles aimed at Russia...
...Therefore he explores the possibility of constructing a British-controlled zohe or sphere on the continent of Europe, to create the proper balance of power within the "Trinity...
...Time will soon tell how the British succeeded in weaving their diplomatic net...
...This is the flag that now flies over Betio and signifies that the Gilbert Islands are again in the Empire...
...So far so clear...
...And did he make the speech to head off another possibility—a Russo-American combination in the Trinity...
...Later, reconciled with the British, he rose to high place in the politics of the dominion of South Africa...
...But Britain, as he views it, will emerge the weakest of the three...
...Britain wanted the League to survive as a protection for the Empire...
...On the surface, it looks as if Smuts wants a line-up of small western democracies, like Holland and the Scandinavian countries, under British control...
...He worked tirelessly in the interests of the Empire...
...Judge Rosenman even wrote a veto, message, called in both War Manpower Commissioner McNutt and officials from the War and Navy Departments, who okayed his composition...
...It may well be that Smuts is the leader of a profound turning-movement in British policy today...
...He had a bag that contained only some clean clothes and a British Flag...
...He elaborates the "immutable principles of British survival...
...After the bill had passed both houses of Congress, it was assumed that the'President would veto it...
...The Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack were raised to the top of two high palm trees...
...This may prove an epochal visit...
...Holland carried very little...
...But, at this point, British diplomatic tact obscures the outline and composition of this sphere of influence...
...For Smuts emphasizes with all the heavy artillery of British diplomatic rhetoric the enormous power of Russia, "the new colossus that bestrides the continent," "mistress of the continent," etc...
...Like Stalin the Caucasian who reincarnated Peter the Great, and Hitler the Austrian who exalted Germany, Smuts became more of a British imperialist than many British...
...From the New York Times, Dec...
...Mussolini forced Britain to place the balance of power in a higher priority than the League...
...V. Fox-Strangways, who is to be the British commissioner of the Gilbert Islands with his station at Betio, and Maj...
...He played a big role in giving birth to the League of Nations plans, the plan whkh in effect recognized the British Empire as a permanent institution to be upheld by the whole world...
...The rising power of Russia threatens this balance...
...If a liberal organ takes this attitude, one can imagine what the ruling Tories are saying...
...They assured him that the comma was "understood...
...Smuts has the ability to perform any such task...
...Over a month ago, I pointed to a significant article by F. A. Voigt in the London Nineteenth Century, which foreshadowed a crisis in the charting of British policy...
...Watch Britain—but also watch Smuts...
...But Mussolini won and Britain followed Hoare's policy, known as appeasement, until 1939...
...As a matter of fact, Smuts himself advocated negotiating with the enemy in his Glasgow speech of May, 1918...
...Smuts has had a fascinating career...
...Smuts throws open the dilemma of Britain to the eyes of the public...
...British survival, he says, res'z not only on the defeat of Germany, but on the survival of Europe, on the creation of a European "order" balanced against the possible domination of "a"hy one power or coalition of powers...
...As in the case of the Abyssinian crisis, Britain face's the present situation with a split personality...
...It may be interesting to know that he met with an enemy diplomat, the Austrian Von Mensdorff, in Switzerland to explore the possibilities of a negotiated peace...
...Mussolini threatened to upset this balance of power by war unless he got what he wanted...
...No wonder, also, that Smuts delivered this last significant speech as these conferences were sitting...
...Sir Samuel Hoare played a similarly leading role in a like turning-movement in the year 1935...
...It is notable, for instance, that Smuts foresees postwar "qualities" in Germany which he doesn't find in France...
...He resigned from the Cabinet, thereby playing the good fellow for his class...
...In 1914, he backed the Empire in the war against Germany...
...But, for the present, it may be worth while to underline several signs and portents among the British indicating that this crisis in Britain deserves the most serious consideration...
...Ever since the last war, Smuts has grown in stature as one of the British Empire's key men...
...Voigt leaves no doubt as to whom this new European order is to be balanced against...
...But, if a difficult job is to be done in connection with it, he has ready a man whom his own biographer calls "The Empire's Handyman...
...He fought with his fellow Boers against the Empire 40 years ago...
...With explosive candor, Smuts stated the "immutable principle of British survival"—the Balance of Power...
...This, he says, cannot be permitted...
...The boys in the Press Club now know what to think about it all...
...Hoare, who had performed various big jobs for the empire, was assigned to handle the...
...This article (as published in the New-York Times) reads: "The two high contracting powers undertake for the period of the war ntft to enter any sort of negotiations with the Hitlerite Government or any other Government of Germany which does not explicitly renounce all aggressive intentions...
...1, 1943, dispatch from Betio, Tarawa, Gilbert Islands: "Two flags fly over the atoll which before Japanese occupation shortly after Pearl Harbor was the administrative center of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Crown Colony...
...Such a danger can be "countered only by the balancing of power in Europe by some such sphere as above described...
...It has to be daring...
...Something to remember...
...Yet the President, although abroad on his conference tour, had the political sapience to give the bill his approval and sign it...
...The British Government threw Hoare to the dogs...
...Reaction To Smuts' Speech 2. The liberal Manchester Guardian appears to criticize Smuts' tact rather than what he says...
...The British public, outraged by his double-dealing, howled for a victim...
...If Smuts envisages Britain controlling postwar Germany and France, such an expanded British Empire might well disturb at least one, if not both of the other members of the Trinity...
...Servant Of The Empire By this time, Smuts had evolved a philosophy of empire which ripened into the phrase, "British Commonwealth of Nations...
...It was meant for the ears of Roosevelt, Stalin, and the world...
...No wonder, then, that Churchill left him as his deputy in charge of the War Council in London when the former went to Cairo and Teheran...
...British statesmen like Smuts don't say such things to flatter Russia...
...For we will unroll the red carpet for a man who stands only second to Churchill as a leader of the Empire...
...But she also wants maintenance of balance of power in Europe and the Far East...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 52
