Word: chamberlaine
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Amazingly last week the British Delegation were sniped at in a manner definitely "not cricket" by hawk-nosed Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain. He suddenly took it on himself to say that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister had no authority from Britain's Cabinet to make fresh commitments at Stresa last week or at Geneva this week when the League Council meets. Mr. Chamberlain hinted that Mr. MacDonald and Sir John could not be trusted not to exceed their authority and that he was therefore obliged to expose their real position. Next day they hotly retorted...
...idealistically on & on. Mussolini & Flandin urged the British to join them in direct demands that the League Council take punitive steps against Adolf Hitler's raising of a conscript army of 550,000 in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. MacDonald & Simon, though they had in effect told Chamberlain that he could go to the devil, were actually intimidated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the point of pleading with France not so much as to mention Germany by name but merely to fulminate at Geneva against treaty-breaking in general...
Such a power in British politics is stern, hawk-featured Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the House of Commons received him and his 1935-36 budget with cheers this week after his un-English hamstringing of the Prime Minister and Sir John Simon while they were away at Stresa...
...Chamberlain is at home in the latter part of the book, where he deals with Osborne's problems in a convincing manner. Still it is "the great Osberne," but he has reached a position where, the attitude is more justified and the narrative springs to life with primary source experiences. The warden goes from Ossining to Porstmouth Naval Prison and experience the same trials because of his advocacy of liberal methods, but again comes away victoriously...
From a purely literary standpoint the treatment of Osborne's death ranks high enough so that we regret that the same inspiration is not evident throughout the volume--just as we regret that Chamberlain did not start his story in the middle...