SPEECH IN BERLIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 134, 8 June 1937, Page 9

SPEECH IN BERLIN

BRITISH AMBASSADOR

QUESTIONS IN COMMONS (British Otnclal Wireless.) (Received June 8, 1 p.m.) RUGBY, June 7. Asked in the House of Commons whether the speech delivered by his Majesty's Ambassador in Berlin on June 1 represented the view of the Government, the" Foreign Secretary replied: "The speech of the Ambassador was made on a social and unofficial occasion, when there was no question of expression of the views of his Majesty's Government, and I see no reason for action of any kind." The last observation had reference to a suggestion in another question that Sir Nevile Henderson should be instructed to refrain from giving public expression to views upon the form or method of the State to which he was accredited From the Labour benches a member asked if it' were part of the functions of the Ambassador to criticise the opinion of those in Britain who were opposed to dictatorships, and Mr. Eden replied: "I do not read in the Ambassador's speech the sentiment which has been attributed to him, nor do I understand that he criticised those in this country who preferred, as we all. do in this House, a democratic form of Government." A Berlin cable published yesterday stated that the Press reacted gratefully to a speech by the new British Ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, at a dinner of welcome by the Anglo-Ger-man Society, in which he advocated a better mutual understanding. The Press with a single mind seized on Sir Nevile Henderson's comment that some Englishmen had an erroneous conception of the aims of Nazism' and that they might even learn useful lessons from them, but was silent concerning his'converse criticism of German suspicion that Britain was trying to hem in Germany. The Press made the occasion one for propaganda in favour of Herr Hitler's plan for ensuring peace, stage by stage, in preference to a so-called "collective and indivisible peace."