NOW OR NEVE?.

2. Stress the need for Conservatives to produce natiM1:.

unity.

3. Steadily but firmly imply that certain Conservames

stand in the way cf national unity.

This procedure was to be reinforced by applying a critical
eye not only to the foreign scene but also to the devastations
of the Home Front. Eden in the early autumn began a tour
of the special areas and trading estates. He is collecting
ammunition in order to widen the field of his operations
against complacent and inert policy.

In the July 1938 issue of the well-known American
quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Victor Gordon Lennox, whose
diplomatic correspondence has brought him into the closest
touch with Eden, went so far as to bring out from the vast
store of his inside information a prophecy. * Probably he is
destined to remain out of office for some time to come. He
is not likely to accept any new appointment in a Chamberlain
Government. But it is inevitable that he will ** come again "
if only because he is the natural representative of a genera-
tion into whose hands control of public affairs must neces-
sarily pass with the normal march of time.'

But Gordon Lennox added a more compelling reason for
Eden's return—Lord Baldwin—* still in his retirement a
powerful figure in British Conservative circles.' * Lord
Baldwin *, Gordon Lennox concludes, * has rewritten his
former political testament which names Sir Samuel Hoare as
next Conservative Leader after Neville Chamberlain. The
name of Hoare has been erased and that of Anthony Eden
has been substituted.'

Finally, those who in the irresistible rush of adverse events
would be most ready to ask, * Stands Eden where he did ? *
are confronted with only one answer. In spite of all the
trappings of personal success and overthrow, Anthony Eden
has merely been reinforced in his guiding principles. He still
meets opportunism with a modest yet confident alliance ot

373