There is generally understood to be some special link between morals and the career of the politician. Every professional man, the business executive, the professor, the actor, the doctor and the barrister (to confine ourselves to laymen) encounters plenty of moral problems in the course of his career and in the case of the last two categories—lawyers and doctors—a number of well-known issues are recognized under the headings of forensic and medical ethics. But there is generally thought to be more to it than this in the case of politicians. They not only encounter personal problems in politics, but they assume a duty, consciously or unconsciously, of applying political principles which are often presented as an extension of the principles of ethics.

The three distinguished men whose lives are wholly or partly portrayed in three recent books were outstanding national figures in the 1930’s and it is tempting to compare them in their respective attitudes to the tremendous challenges of that period. There is bound to be something artificial in doing so, for whereas the first volume of Mr Bevin’s Life and the full life of Lord Lothian come to an end in 1940, Full Circle is the second volume of Sir Anthony Eden’s Memoirs (published first) and covers only the period from 1951 to 1957. And yet it is perhaps possible to abstract from all else, including Mr Bevin’s truly heroic creation of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and study one question only which faced Lord Lothian in the thirties, Mr Bevin, in fact, in the thirties and forties, and Sir Anthony Eden in the thirties, forties and fifties. It is a question which faces us still—the question of the moral reply in terms of political action to what one judges to be organized evil.