CHAMBERLAIN’S METHOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 June 1939, Page 6

CHAMBERLAIN’S METHOD

A PUZZLE FOR HISTORIANS. Mr Chamberlain will puzzle the historian, says “Atticus,” writing in the “Sunday Times.” Was there ever a man who so sedulously avoids the dramatic and who so inevitably attracts the lightning? He concedes nothing to the emotional hunger of his audience. I have never seen him even glance at the public gallery in the House of Commons or show that he is aware of its existence. On a recent occasion it must have been an almost irresistable temptation to pay tribute to the anxious labours of his Cabinet colleagues and thus direct attention to his own intolerable burden. Or he might well have considered denouncing Germany before the world and calling for a holy alliance against her. Instead he spoke like a judge invoking the law because it was the law, and not that it expressed his own prejudice or righteous anger. Yet his method has a compelling advantage over that of the emotion-mongers. When he is finished, his words do not fade like those on a screen when the lights go up. They cut into the memory as if dia-mond-pointed. They leave no misunderstanding, no uncertainty. He announces the principle of armed resistance but refuses to close the dooi’ to discussion. Not a word or a phrase af his speech can be used or misused by a foreign statesman to confuse the issue.