London, Mar. 2.
243 votes to 134, the House of Commons to-day rejected an Opposition motion criticizing the Government's foreign policy after a long debate in which the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Anthony Eden, explained his recent statement that British arms might if occasion arose, would be used in defence of France and Belgium against unprovoked aggression.
Mr, Eden repeated that if a new treaty could be negotiated, a similar undertaking would readily and willingly be extended towards Germany.
Contrary to expectations in some quarters, neither Mr. Lloyd George nor Mr. Winston Churchill took part in the debate which followed traditional party lines.
The Opposition ascribed much of the present evils to the alleged feebleness of the League of Nations in handling the Sino-Japanese dispute and the Abyssinian War.
The British Government, it was contended, had to share the blame for the result.
In winding up the debate, Viscount Cranborne, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, appealed to the Opposition to moderate its attitude to avoid giving abroad an appearance of a disunity which, he sai did not exist.
Speaking during the debate, Mr, P. J. Noel-Baker, Lab6ur member for Derby, said the Labour Party favourced the' use of armed forees to uphold international law. If the British Government, he declared, wore to obfain the support of France, Russia, the Little Entente, Belgium, 'Holland, Scandinavia, Finland and' Bolan they would make an' irresistible combination.
The debate was initiated for the Opposition by Mr, David R. Grenfell, Labour member for the Gower divi sion of Glamorgan, who said that the backbone of the League of Nations had fallen apart, and that they had lapsed into conditions of secret diplomacy and balance-of-power in politics, which had been 0 generally: denounced after the Great War and 50 Infgely accepted as, being responsible for that eatastrophe, Mr. Eden's Declarations Mr. Eden told the House that he would avoid what was known as the "Baldwin confidence trick" while at the same time not saying too little The principal points of his statc~
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.