Word: austen
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Austen Chamberlain began by regretting that on the two capital naval and military questions the French and British found themselves in diametrically opposed positions. English public opinion believes traditionally that volunteer armies have a defensive character, whereas conscript armies are intended for offensive warfare. On the other hand, he understands that in French opinion obligatory military service appears as a guarantee of a policy of peace, while a volunteer army takes on the character of a pretorian guard...
...continued by saying concessions were necessary on both sides to reach a general agreement, and that if he could obtain a concession from the French on the naval side British public opinion would probably give its adhesion to Sir Austen Chamberlain's ceding a point on the military aspect of the problem...
...Himalayan Blunder." Since the whole ill-starred affair seems to have sprung from the blundering brain of Sir Austen Chamberlain, the duty of flaying him may properly be left to the press of his own country. Last week the Daily Express, an independent paper with strong leanings toward Sir Austen's own party (Conservative) said: "There is hardly a line in this long series of telegrams and despatches that does not betray a naive misunderstanding of all outside opinion and psychology such as Germany herself hardly surpassed in the days...
...Liberal Daily Mail thought that Sir Austen had committed a "Himalayan blunder";* and David Lloyd George, famed Liberal Party leader declared: "The Government has given away its whole position with regard to the immense reserves of Continental armies. ... It is a complete betrayal of the cause of the peace of the world...
...world press was just on the scent of the Anglo-French negotiations by Sir Austen himself, when he committed the crowning blunder of formally alluding to them in an indirect, tantalizing manner before the House of Commons. These indefensibly premature remarks, amounting to an open boast that he had done something clever in secret which he was not yet prepared to reveal, placed upon Sir Austen Chamberlain personally an imputation of sheer obtuseness which his political enemies are now loudly tooting up and down England, in view of the approaching General Election...