Correlli Barnett on Anthony Eden

“The deal between the French and the Israelis was struck in Paris on 1 October 1956. An eighteenth-century British cabinet would not have hesitated to join in... In contrast, Eden's cabinet was riven by moral squeamishness; so too were the house prefects of the Foreign Office... Eden as Prime Minister marvellously personified these ambiguities, being himself a pre-war moralising internationalist and apostle of the League of Nations, and a statesman-founder of the United Nations Organisation. Who can wonder that in the present crisis he was so edgy and indecisive? His was the dithers of a bishop nerving himself to enter a brothel.”

“The most passionate advocate of absolute fidelity to the Covenant of the League in dealing with the Abyssinian question was, appropriately enough, the Minister for League-of-Nations Affairs, Anthony Eden. Eden, at thirty-seven, was the young man of the Cabinet, a representative of the new generation of public-school officer present here among ageing Victorians, a veteran of the trenches; idealistic, sensitive; something of a Brooke or a Sassoon. His were the kind of delicately and sensitively handsome features which would have well ornamented the wicket on the night when there was a breathless hush in the close, with ten to make and the last man in. The brave cause of the League could have hardly found a more appropriate standard-bearer; and, as Vansittart wrote, Eden's instincts "harboured few enthusiasms except for the League".”

“As Minister for League-of-Nations Affairs during the Abyssinian crisis Eden really acted as a second, and competitive, foreign secretary, urging his own policy in Cabinet, negotiating on England's behalf not only through the League at Geneva, but also directly with foreign governments, as with Mussolini in June. The springs of his policy are to be found in a pure internationalist faith, in a public-schoolboy's sense of honour and doing the right thing. Neither in his actions nor utterances at the time, nor even in retrospect in his memoirs, does he display any interest in, or understanding of, strategy or the world-balance of power, or the likely strategic consequences to England of his League idealism. He was indeed essentially another believer in "moral authority". In a memorandum written at Baldwin's request in the latter half of July, he argued that England must support the League, because otherwise "any opportunity that might still remain of bringing about peace by the use of the League's moral authority [author's italics] will be destroyed".”