Word: foreignism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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First witness was Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, who spoke in the House of Lords. Ostensibly the Foreign Secretary simply reassured Germany that the idea of "encirclement" was furthest from British thoughts. But when he talked about "problems which may now or hereafter appear likely to disturb international order," looked forward to a "peace settlement" and even referred to "economic Lebensraum" for Germany, many anti-Nazi Britons were sure that the British Government, through its Foreign Secretary, was talking appeasement again on the pre-Munich model...
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought Lord Halifax's speech "remarkable" and in two of his own speeches, one before the House of Commons and the other at Birmingham, amplified the Foreign Secretary's sentiments by quoting his own speech of May 19. "We would not refuse to discuss any method by which reasonable aspirations on the part of other nations could be satisfied, even if this meant some adjustment of the existing state of things," said Mr. Chamberlain. Day later he repeated his offer: "We are ready to discuss around the table claims of Germany or any other...
...Oliver Stanley and Sir John Simon, an appeaser from way back, swelled the chorus, but the strangest note was struck by Sir Francis Lindley, onetime Ambassador to Japan, longtime foe of Soviet Russia, stanch friend of and host to Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Francis told the Conservative Party's Foreign Affairs Committee that British prestige would rise if the projected pact with Russia fell through...
Across the Channel in France two onetime French Premiers openly talked appeasement. Pierre Laval, signer of the 1935 pact with Italy and saboteur of the French eastern European alliance system, urged before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee a return to friendship with Italy, warned that a Soviet pact would be more dangerous than helpful. Pierre Etienne Flandin, who wired congratulations to Adolf Hitler last autumn after Munich, called for "mediation" with Germany...
Though appeasement peeps from Prime Minister Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax were credited to papal efforts, Britain went forward last week with its plans to send Chief of the Central European Bureau of the Foreign Office William Strang to carry its latest message to Moscow in the tiresome seesawing of Anglo-Soviet bargaining. Though Russian vanity was nicked because Prime Minister Chamberlain did not visit the Kremlin in person, observers of practical Diplomat Strang's busy career (companion of Captain Anthony Eden on his 1935 swing through Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Prague; translator for Hitler and Chamberlain at Berchtesgaden...