When a Cecil Quits

Britain's somnolent, outdated and all but powerless House of Lords rarely lives up to what little is left to it, the promise of high-minded and disinterested eloquence. Not only spectators but members themselves stay away in droves. But one afternoon last week the crimson benches were packed with obscure "backwoods" noblemen, the steps of the throne were black with ministers, privy councillors and the sons of peers, and the visitors' gallery bulged with gentlemen and their wives up from the shires for the London season. In a rare demonstration of aristocratic solidarity, the flower of the Tory Party had turned out to hear the Marquess of Salisbury, spare, stooped scion of the ancient and powerful house of Cecil, lambaste his kinsman and old friend Harold Macmillan for Britain's crawl-down over Suez.

It was the first major speech Salisbury had made since his resignation from the

Macmillan Cabinet over Cyprus policy (TIME, April 8), and he began it with a dutiful avowal that he did not want to "rock the boat." Then, in a high, carrying voice, he declared that "a nation, if it is to be great, must always be ready to risk severe material sacrifices in defense of the principles in which it believes," What Britain should have done after the failure of the Suez invasion was to institute a boycott of the canal that would "make clear to Nasser and to all the world what happens when a country destroys the confidence of other nations by unilateral repudiation of its international engagements." Instead, said Lord Salisbury scornfully, Britain's reaction was to "immediately instruct our ships that they could use the canal." From now on, he predicted, other nations would assume that Britain is "always bluffing."

Near the end of his speech Salisbury's voice wavered. He had served in every Tory government since 1935 and for 16 years had led the Conservatives in the House of Lords. "All that, of course, is now past," said he. "I am now over 60, and it is, I suppose, unlikely that I shall hold office again." Then, pride overcoming all, he added: "I took my decision and I do not regret it."

Offended Marquess. By the aloof and correct Cecil standards, this was a rare outburst of emotion. As he sat down, Labor's Earl Attlee, his pale blue eyes flashing, sprang to the attack with the most vigor he has shown since ascending to the House of Lords. "During the last 90 years," he began, "members of the house of Cecil have resigned office on four occasions. On each occasion there was some great moral issue ... I am bound to say that this resignation seemed quite different. What has offended the noble marquess has been that the government of the day has had to face the results of its own folly. The complaint of the noble marquess is that they will not persist in that folly." Mercilessly, Attlee drove his point home: "I can remember three occasions on which this country has stood ill in the face of the world. One was the-Boer War, another was Munich and the third is this. It is unfortunate that Conservative governments, who are supposed to have some conception of the dignity of this country, should invariably drag it in the dust."

Too Late to Cry. The next attack came from a surprising source, from a man almost as respected by the Tory gentry as Salisbury himself--lantern-jawed Earl of Halifax, a staunch Conservative who very nearly became Prime Minister in 1940 instead of Winston Churchill.* Halifax thought that if the government had handled itself better before the Suez invasion, "we might have avoided the discredit of a course of action which we could not in fact carry through." Lord Salisbury, said Halifax, was a member of the government which launched the Suez invasion, "and if he was--as no doubt he was--a convinced believer in that action, I should have thought that the right time for him to resign was when those gears were put into reverse. I cannot see what is gained now by an attempt on his part to find fault with his late colleagues for making the best of a bad job."

At 8:30 in the evening, when the House of Lords finally emptied, even the Tory squirearchs who respect Salisbury had to concede that their hero had not won a glorious victory.

Aware of opposition like Salisbury's in his own party, Harold Macmillan has worked to reverse Sir Anthony Eden's Suez policy without openly repudiating it. As one way of accomplishing this delicate task, Macmillan kept in office Eden's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, 52, whose disingenuous justification of Eden's Suez policy was not a high point in Britain's long diplomatic history. The press has been crying for Lloyd's resignation, and within the Tory Party itself, there is considerable malicious glee at the report that Sir Winston Churchill refers to Selwyn Lloyd as "Mr. Celluloid." Last week, in implicit answer to all criticisms, Macmillan publicly described Lloyd as "a loyal and sagacious colleague" with "a stout heart and a cool head," but carefully refrained from committing himself to keeping Lloyd in the Cabinet for any specified length of time. "In politics, as in rowing a boat," noted the London Economist, "it is sometimes easier to move swiftly in one direction if one's eyes are fixed pointedly in the other."

*In his autobiography published in England last week, Lord Halifax recalls a grim May afternoon when he met with Churchill and Neville Chamberlain to decide who should replace the discredited Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Halifax, Chamberlain's choice, opened the discussion by declaring that as a peer, forbidden to enter the House of Commons, he could not hope to run the government effectively. Dryly he records that Chamberlain "reluctantly and Churchill, with evidently much less reluctance, finished by accepting my view."

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