3 FEBRUARY 1939, Page 15

How came it that on this historic occasion Parliament should

merely have hemmed and hawed? The answer is simple. Nobody had really had time to digest Herr Hitler's appeasement pottage of the night before. Three months ago that speech would have been hailed as a message from heaven. The House on Tuesday evening was not quite so sure. They had an uneasy feeling that the Fiihrer and his jackal are consolidating strategic positions (if I may use the words of Mein Kampf) "in alley Ruhe." The House, with its intuitive wisdom, realised that a real debate would be premature. It decided therefore to go through all the motions of a debate which should not be real.