The Week in Parliament
ACROWDED House assembled on Tuesday to hear the Prime Minister make his statement upon the subject of the Arcos raid. Mr. Baldwin, who looked, and is, extremely ill, read from his typescript with an air of determination if not of enthusiasm, and was listened to in complete silence. It was a melancholy story which he unfolded. At the conclusion there was a cheer from the Unionist Party, but it would be a profound mistake to assume that the announcement of a complete break with Russia was received with unfeigned delight on the Government benches. Commander Locker-Lampson, Sir William Davidson, Sir Alfred Knox, Major Kindersley, and other members of the " anti-Russian " brigade looked genuinely pleased, as well they might be. Assuming that a break had to come, it would have been far better if their advice had been taken months or even years ago, and we had got it over. Others took a different view.
It was felt that once the Government decided to publish the information in its possession, a break was almost inevitable. But a question which is now being frequently asked is : " Why publish this information at the moment ? " The answer is, of course, the Arcos raid, and it is just this that has caused consider able uneasiness. The raid was authorized by the Home Secretary, and was carried out without Cabinet consultation and sanction. Nothing of real importance was discovered. But the aetion had to be justified. Consequently, the Foreign Office was hauled into the breach, and compelled to dis- gorge vital facts of a kind which have been in its pos- session ever since the War. Let there be no mistake about it ; it was the Borodin and Rosengolz revelations which came home to the House with crushing effect, rather than the melodramatic incidents connected with the Arcos raid. And there is a pretty general feeling that the Foreign Office could have produced evidence against the Soviet Government just as damning at any time since the Government assumed office in 1924.
The indictment is terrific. The Soviet Government is convicted of having conducted, through officials who have been accorded special diplomatic privileges, sub- versive propaganda designed to overthrow the Govern- ment of this country and induce revolution. Despite the repeated warnings, not only of our own Foreign Office but of their own friends and well-wishers in this country, the Russians have violated the Trade Agreement over and over again, and have provoked us in every possible way. There is no sympathy for them in any quarter of the House. The only excuse for their actions is that they arc mad, and if the consequences and implications of the break were not so formidable, everyone would be thankful to see the last of them.
What is worrying a good many members of Parliament is the suspicion that we have been forced to take this very grave action at this juncture in order to justify an ill-timed raid upon the Amos offices, undertaken without due consideration, and without Cabinet authority. It is a grave action, because of its possible effect upon Euro- pean stability. What is going to be the reaction in the Baltic States, in the Balkans, in Poland, above all in Germany ? And what do we stand to gain ? Nothing. Our last vestige of bargaining power has been cast away. We shall undoubtedly lose some trade, and, worse still, some gold. Propaganda will increase, and we shall have no right to protest, and no one to protest to. It was only last June that Lord Balfour observed : " Nothing is gained by these formal gestures which show that we greatly disapprove of people whose actions we cannot in any way control. It is an operation which carries with it no substantial advantages." These words are as true
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