Perhaps the happiest note in Mr. Anthony Eden's speech was his emphasis on the incapacity of the British temperament for maintaining a vendetta. The mere fact that the English dictionary has to fall back on a foreign importation to describe that peculiar emotional state is in itself significant, It is true, of course, that there is a tendency on the part of British disputants as of others in the game to flog dead horses and harbour suspicions too long, but generally the attitude of the British nation is to allow dead controversies to bury their dead. Sometimes this characteristic is the cause of accusations of perfidity from those who fail to grasp its true import. British policy is not beyond criticism, In times of international complexity it seems to have an elasticity which is less reputably termed indecision. On the point made by Mr. Eden there is no doubt, It takes authority irom {he fundamental rule of British sport—accept the umpire's decision ana take victory and defeat with the same grace, No back reckonings, no hard feelings—that is another way of putting it. Those qualities have justified Great Britain in the belief that her pry posals for solving the Intervention problem in Spain may find acceptance. They shine in the Palestine Report which, though undergoing the expected ordeal of fire from both partes, may eventually be found to provide the only possible solution. It is highly satisfactory to find that Mr. Eden's speech has had a good press in Rome, That is after all, not surprising, Putting recent differences aside, no country knows the idiosyncrashes of British friendship as well as Italy. No country has in recent years taken such pains to stamp out ihe poison of the vendetta.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.