Word: chamberlaine
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Frosty Mr. Neville Chamberlain, hawk-nosed Chancellor of the Exchequer, arrived at the Treasury one morning last week with his striped trousers soaked to the hips, the tail of his morning coat dripping, water squelching from his shoes. Nobody asked any questions, discretion being a hallmark of British civil servants, and Chancellor Chamberlain volunteered no explanation, sat down wet, merely telling his secretary to have his chauffeur bring a change of clothes...
Ordinarily Chancellor Chamberlain is so standoffish that for reporters to get anything of a personal nature out of the Treasury is all but impossible. Last week, however, they found Neville Chamberlain willing to confirm the Irishman's tale in all details. Jubilant were the Chancellor's friends, now busy grooming him to succeed Stanley Baldwin before long as Prime Minister, but fearful that frosty Mr. Chamberlain lacks the human appeal necessary to hold the highest office in Great Britain with success. After his spontaneous duck-pond heroism they all felt immensely more hopeful, and London newspapers blazed...
Earlier in the week potent Chancellor Chamberlain delivered to London's Conservative 1900 Club a speech which was generally considered so pro-Italian, so anti-Ethiopian that it watered down almost completely the British National Government's formerly firm resolve to buck up the League of Nations and enforce its decisions...
...have retained any vestige of common sense," rasped Chancellor Chamberlain, "we must admit that we have tried to impose on the League a task beyond its powers. The circumstances in which the Italo-Ethiopian dispute began offered a most favorable opportunity to exercise the League of Nation's policy of 'collective security,' but that policy, based on Sanctions, has been tried out and has failed...
...Chamberlain then crushingly referred to efforts by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, president of the British League of Nations Union, to rally British public opinion in support of Sanctions and against Italy. Lord Cecil had just issued "the most serious, most urgent communication" he had ever made to the British public, declaring: "Since our honor and the future of our civilization are involved, we have the right to demand that our Gov ernment should openly declare its conviction that the Covenant of the League of Nations must be carried out. . . . Sanctions should be maintained and if necessary increased...