Commons in Uproar over British Envoy’s Overture to Berlin

The House of Commons was thrown into an uproar today when Arthur Henderson, Laborite, and Miss Eleanor Rathbone, Independent, challenged the right of Sir Neville Henderson, British Ambassador to Berlin, to express sympathy for the National-Socialist regime, the Havas News Agency reported.

They referred to the speech made by Sir Neville in Berlin last Wednesday, in which he was said to have emphasized the urgency of erasing “misunderstandings” between the two countries. He was further quoted as stating that these “misunderstandings” had given a false impression of the Nazi regime in England.

Henderson, son of the late president of the disarmament conference, and Miss Rathbone queried the Government as to whether the Ambassador’s discourse corresponded to the view of the British Government.

Miss Rathbone’s dry suggestion that the Ambassador be asked to abstain from expressing his opinion on the form of the Government to which he is accredited was greeted with applause from the Labor and Liberal opposition benches and protests from Conservatives.

Replying to the Laborite M.P. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden declared the question of an expression of Government views was in no wise involved.

“The speech which Henderson refers to was made on a social and unofficial occasion,” he told the Commons. “I see no reason for action of any kind.”

Henderson then insisted on knowing whether it is a part of the function of an Ambassador, when eulogizing the Nazi regime, to criticize those sections of opinion in this country who are opposed to dictatorships, and is it an erroneous conception of what the National-Socialist party in the Reich stands for?”

Henderson attacked the Nazis for having “oppressed the Jews, suppressed all political opposition, placed many of their opponents in concentration camps and destroyed the trade unions.”