British Politics in the wake of the Munich Agreement

The British are still celebrating their escape from war, in their different ways. The King has thanked his people for their steadfastness and his prime minister for his peacemaking. The churches were packed with thanksgivers yesterday, ‘Peace Sunday’.

Chamberlain is still "The Man of the Hour". The new Westminster Hospital has been endowed with £1,000 for a bed, to be named ‘The Neville Chamberlain Bed’, ‘in perpetual remembrance of great efforts made by the Prime Minister in the cause of European peace’. Lucio, in the Manchester Guardian quotes some of the more fulsome paeans of praise from the press, for example this one from James Douglas in Saturday’s Daily Express:

God has raised up in Neville Chamberlain a deliverer. Are we going to waste him? Are we as great as he is? Are we as noble? Are we as pure in heart? Beware of the old evil that is lurking within us, thirsting to destroy us.

More prosaically, there is speculation that if the House of Commons is hostile to Chamberlain’s report on Munich today, then he may take the country to a general election to capitalise on his popularity among the people. (An election isn’t due until 1940.) Chamberlain has already lost one minister over Munich, Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty. His resignation speech, if fiery enough, could spark a revolt among those backbenchers who think too high a price has been paid for peace. Certainly Labour will be critical: one prominent Labour MP, Harold Nicolson, spoke in Manchester on Saturday and said

We have betrayed a valiant little country and a great democratic idea. There are many people who feel that in so doing we have achieved peace for a generation. They are wholly mistaken. We have not achieved peace for a generation: we have achieved it only for eight months.

And the ‘Peace Pact’ which Chamberlain signed with Hitler was "not worth the paper it is written on".

The preparations for war are winding down. But there are still political activities after the Agreement. Sydney King-Farlow, in a letter to the editor of The Times, describes the disaster which has been averted:

Had war come upon us, and it was hanging on a hair, it would have begun with repeated attacks by fleets of aircraft which speedily would have converted the capital cities of Europe into heaps of smoking rubble. The noblest works of man which belong not only to particular countries but to the whole world would have disappeared for ever and the destruction of human life would have been appalling.

He asks if this is not an opportune moment to try to reach an international agreement to prohibit the bombing of architectural and historical treasures in the great cities?

Germany begins taking the Sudeten

So, after all those weeks of mounting tension over the fate of the Sudetens, it’s finally being resolved: German troops have begun occupying the Sudetenland. Polish troops have also moved into Teschen, and the Czech government has agreed to let a mixed commission decide the fate of the territory claimed by Hungary. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia has begun.

House of Commons on the Munich Agreement

The British House of Commons begins to discuss the Munich Agreement. The House will vote on the agreement in the very near future