Word: mr
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Neville Chamberlain, Lord Baldwin's successor, decided to defend his old Cabinet colleague. Invited to deliver the main speech at the 50th anniversary dinner of London's Foreign Press Association, which includes in its membership German as well as U. S., French, Italian, Polish, Latin American correspondents, Mr. Chamberlain, in preparing his speech, inserted amidst paragraphs of amiable generalities one moderate sentence of criticism...
Advance copies of Mr. Chamberlain's speech, marked "confidential," were given to correspondents (including the German) at No. 10 Downing Street at 3 p.m., five hours before the dinner at distinguished Grosvenor House. At 6 p.m. German Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen, who was to occupy a seat at the speakers' table, got hold of a copy of the speech, telephoned Berlin. At 7 p.m. Ambassador von Dirksen notified 25 obedient Nazi newsmen not to attend, and telephoned his "regrets" to the association. The Ambassador "felt an embarrassing situation might arise if in the course of the evening mention...
...Secretary Viscount Halifax, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon, the Ambassadors of Italy, France, Russia, Brazil-had begun to arrive, 50 chairs reserved for the missing Germans had been removed and table seatings rearranged. Informed of the boycott, Prime Minister Chamberlain was heard to exclaim: "How stupid!" But Mr. Chamberlain made no changes in his speech, got a big hand when he came to the "offending" sentence...
Appeaser. To most polite Britons the German boycott was a shocking lapse of manners. To the London press the "banquet incident" loomed bigger than any far-off territorial dispute. But Mr. Chamberlain's own words at the banquet proved that no question of taste would affect the Prime Minister's appease-the-dictators policy. Avoiding the use of the word "appeasement," a term no longer very popular in England, Mr. Chamberlain said he would continue to make a "prolonged and determined effort to eradicate possible causes of war and to try out methods of personal contact and discussion...
Last week, therefore, it was bad news for Nazis when Lord Londonderry changed his mind. In a speech before the Empire-minded Overseas League in London, he called upon Mr. Chamberlain to pledge his Government not to "sacrifice an inch of territory or one individual" to Nazi colonial demands. For good measure he added: "We cannot hand over any population to a country which seems bent on exterminating a section of its community or on reducing them to a situation which calls for condemnation by every right-minded man and woman throughout the civilized world...