By A. M. Titomrson If this newspaper had started' a [guessing competition a year ago, as to who would be in August 1929 the most popular minister in Britain, not one competitor in a million would. have picked Mr. Philip Snowden.
In Parliament Mr. Snowden has been feared rather than loved: "hi bite," said a member of the Labour Government to me once, "is always worse than his bark." Amongst his most enthusiastic admirers he has won more respect for his high intellectual quality than affection for his personal character. He is too frigidly precise, too acidly clever to {be a popular hero.
Thave heard him speak at. a Mansion House meeting where his audience were mostly his bitter political opponents. When he began they looked at him with expressions. varying from supercilious sneers to amused tolerance. What could this jumped up tub-thumper teach them? Presently, the expression changed to surprised attention. After half an hour, when the speaker had warmed vp to his subject—no, Mr. Snowden never warms up to his subject, he nly becomes gradually more clear: in his earnestness, more convincing in his intense sincerity—that hostile audience burst into a frenzy of applause, That is Snowden, Chamberlain Cameo Now another picture. Some thirty or more years ago, I. m Austen Chamberlain in the salon of a professor at the Sorbonns 'Very span and spick, this son of an illustrious English statesman, quite sufficiently conscious of his import. ance, but most intent, it seemed to' me, to impress everybody with his Parisianisms. He spoke French well, but his accent was not as remarkable as his ostentatious familiarity with the affairs of France, He knew all about our mais, voyons, ce nest pas aéricige—you know the gesture and tone of iff <un type absolument impossible. There is a shoulder-shrugging. ait of outraged innocence which id peculiar to the French—a shrill not too of surprised suitoring, which, Moliere must have had in mind whet he said, Délivres moi, monsieur, Delegates and journalists in the corridors fairly shrieked. Ak, mara voyens—this Snowden, a cantons erous eccentric, an, il-natured crib ple, a political nonentity who, factious American put it, would self. 1 never cut any ice unless he cut, hima
Then came MacDonald's telogranty 'A bombshell! Mon Dien, you should have seen the faces Vraiment, alor: insignificant little workman, who spoke, he spoke with the might and majesty of England? This schoolmaster, this invalid, thi nobody—his voice was really that of English History, the voice of Waterloo?
Grecy, Agincourt, Trafalgar, and
Our exeolient French, Belgian, and Italian friends had at long lest, grasped: a Fact beyond the dream lof their complacency. They ha Tearnt that the complaisance off Austen Chamberlain was finished— that the mild Come Valley Pacifist had brought England back to the spirit of Cromwell, Pitt, Palmerston, land Disraeli. Philip Snowden as thd mouthpiece of itis Majesty King George the Fifth! Could—sucl things be? They could, They were, When the Chancellor of the Ex" chequer returns to England he will have such a reception as no British statesman has had since Beaconsfield brought "Peace with Honour back from Berlin." various methods of tuition at thi host's lectures at the Sorbonne, the}
Paris Iyoées, the pla 4 Francais and the Odeon, the go: of the Boulevards, and" in short, everything.
My impression of him at the time was that the young man was. too comprehensive: he obviously wanted to be regarded as a brilliant specimen of the Perfect English Gentleman, and,' at the same time, at the Perfect Parisian, In lateé years, as Britain's Foreign Minister, he was. constantly. confirmed that impression. The lending Conservative newspaper charges him with a "passion for surrender." That does not describe him. His passion was for posing amongst Frenchmen as one of themselves; and the astute Aristide Briand played on this little vanity with consummate cunning. He flattered him by treating him' ai the "'milord" of French fiction—the splendid representative of an infinitely wealthy nation to whom million here or there was a contemptible trifle—and yet, at heart, a geod Frenchman, a kindred soul, an {intimate who really knew and understood. I have seen this game }going on for years, and have heard a famous French journalist exclaim in a burst of convivial candour at Geneva, "ak, comme on Na roulé, ce bon Monsieur Chamberlain—rowé dans les grands numeros." (Ab, how we've bamboozled him, this good Mr. Chamberlain, fooled him to the top of his bent").
Instead of which, at The Hague, turns up_an acid drop from Yorkshire—a plain blunt person with-no French polish on him, who knows his own mind, and has a plain blunt way of expressing it. A million here or there is not to his thrifty Yorkshire view, a contemptible trifle. His wife had gone to market twenty years ago with a basket on her arm, to cheapen cabbages for dinner. He had examined the Young Plan, and had decided that it would impose an unfair tax on the cheapening of cabbages for English housewives. He went to The Hague to say s0, Jand said it, The wonder of it! The amazing, incredible wonder of it!
A friend who was present at the Conference writes me: "You never saw, you could' never conceive such a shock. This pale, lame little man—an' insignificant schoolmaster—a member of a Workmen's Party—ah,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.