THE CONSEQUENCES OF MUNICH
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—May I thank you for the one bit of really amusing satire which the crisis has produced—your article last week called " More Tortured Creatures " ? I hope you will go on pointing out to your readers that the consequences of the Munich Pact are that a dictator has, in the words of the New York Times, " scored over the democracies of Europe the greatest diplomatic triumph of modern times."
A road cleaner, talking to me, summed up his view of the situation in a sentence : " Mr. Chamberlain says he's brought us peace. Perhaps it is peace for Mr. Chamberlain. He's an old man ; but I've got sons."
Mr. Chamberlain seems for the moment to have effectively freed himself from Parliamentary Government. The House of Commons last Wednesday was in the position of a Reichstag asked to applaud the accomplished deeds of a Fiihrer. Carried away by their hope of peace, they did applaud him. We and the Members of the House should remember the words of that great Englishman and Parliamentarian, John Pytn. He said : " Lands where the ruler is loose and absolved from all rules of government, are frequent in combustion, full of massacres, and the tragical end of princes." Those who applaud Mr. Chamberlain now will, I .fear, in a few months when further demands are made by the dictators feel that it was Mr. Duff Cooper's and not Mr. Chamberlain's policy that might have brought us peace.
My father, St. Loe Strachey, used to tell me that in politics he believed in the principle of never giving in to a black- mailer, and that a free Press was the watchdog of the State. Let us hope that The Spectator will carry on his policy and warn its readers against the folly of believing that the man who was so ready to pay Danegeld has in fact freed us from Romney's House, Holly Bush Hill, Hampstead, N.W. 3. -
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