NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

History Today Vol 2 - May 1952 - British Prime Ministers : XI.

By W. N. MEDICOTT - A Monthly Magazine Published From 72 Coleman Street London E.C. 2 -

When Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister on May 28, 1937, he was convinced that "there is no one else:' and he thought that the office had also perhaps come to him "because I have not made enemies by looking after my-self rather than the common cause." It is a useful convention of our political system that a minister must accept individual responsibility for the major disasters that befall his country: national triumphs he is expected to share but he is the guilty man when things go wrong. No statesman could have been better fashioned by the times and his own personality to play this scapegoat role than Neville Chamberlain.

His reputation before 1937 had been made largely inside the party and the cabinet, and the man in the street, willing enough to discover exceptional and appealing qualities in a new national leader, was rather at a loss to know what to make of him. Almost to the last he held the affection of many individuals in all classes who saw him as a dignified, patient rather crafty old gentleman who would out-maneuver Hitler in the end; but much of this was a rather blind groping by ordinary men for the positive qualities which they felt instinctively that every prime minister must possess. Chamberlain, however, never made a rabble-rousing speech; his drawn, unsmiling, rather corvine features offered no hint of sagacious bonhomie, roguish humour, or robust self-confidence; no mild irregularity of dress or taste or speech, no cigar, no funny hat, no affection for pigs or orchids, no ingenious deployment of Celtic idiom, gave a little geniality or humanity to his personality; he was never rude. England in 1937 was already feeling rather badly the need for a leader who could answer the dictators in a style as effective as their own. Chamberlain could not do this.

But this failure of style or personality, which was of quite exceptional political importance during his premiership, was misleading in many ways; positive qualities and achievements explain his almost continuously successful ministerial record down to 1937. He did not enter Parliament until 1918, at the age of 49, but he was in office for 13 of the next 19 years; as Minister of Health from 1924 to 1929, and as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1931 to 1937, his record is one of consistent achievement. His concern for the "common cause" had meant, among other things, that he had busied himself with defence, the special areas, and other rather thankless tasks outside the Treasury during the middle thirties, when the ship of state seemed to be drifting, with Baldwin's somewhat happy-go-lucky hand at the wheel. Chamberlain's lack of affability, his shyness, his dislike of humbug, his rather harsh voice and matter-of-fact delivery irritated opponents and chilled some of his supporters, but somehow these characteristics created a certain confidence in him as an austere, hard man who would accept responsibility and not shirk unpopular decisions. This confidence was justified. His merit lay in his refusal to pursue any policy which did not seem to fit all the facts. The evidence may have been incomplete; he may have misread it; his policy may have been faulty in execution ; but at least the difficulties, as he understood them, were not shirked.

It is clear, however, that if he was more pertinacious he was no more successful as prime minister than Baldwin, and the problem that faces the historian of the thirties is to decide how far the leaders failed, and how far circumstances can fairly be said to have been too much for them. There was certainly no easy solution to the problems that faced Chamberlain in 1937 the objections to every alternative policy were strong. Churchill, disappointed in 1935 at not being invited to join Baldwin's government, wrote in 1948 that he could now see how lucky he had been : "over me beat the invisible wings ". Probably no minister, whatever his qualities, could have avoided some loss of reputation, either because of the circumstances of the times or the ineffectiveness of his colleagues. Chamberlain's tendency to worry about things in general shows that he was well aware of the weaknesses of the MacDonald-Baldwin régime, and in any assessment of his personal record this rather embarrassing inheritance must be taken into account.

Evidence from personal and public documents which has come to light since his death shows that a good many contemporary ideas about him must be abandoned. It is certainly not true, for example, that he had taken no particular interest in foreign policy before 1937; even the familiar " Birmingham business man" gibe is misleading. Business men, even in Birmingham, are capable of anything, and the Birmingham business man who served as Neville's model was an orator, an imperialist, and a particularly bold and original politician: his own father. Neville was indeed intended by his father for a business career, and as a boy and young man was convinced that his father's choice was right; he despaired at that period of ever equaling the elegance and aplomb of his half-brother Austen, six years his senior. But from the start his interests went much beyond those of the Birmingham business world. His first adult job, after being apprenticed to a firm of chartered accountants, was an attempt, from 1890 to 1897, to recoup the family fortunes in exhausting labours on a sisal plantation in the island of Andros in the West Indies; as in the groundnut tragi-comodies of a later day, the enterprise was a spectacular failure, and by the time that it had become clear that the stuff just would not grow, £50,000 of Joseph Chamberlain's money had been lost. Neville had, however, shown plenty of courage, physical energy, organizing ability, and care for dependants, and he ended with a much better first-hand knowledge of the seamy side of Empire-building than his father ever succeeded in acquiring. From 1897 to 1911 Neville was indeed a Birmingham business man; but his repeated disclaimers of political ambition really show that the possibility of a parliamentary career was never very far from his mind. Birmingham was Joseph's and Austen's headquarters throughout this period, and Neville was drawn into their political talk, and in touch with their important visitors; as early as 1902 Joseph decided that Neville was the abler of his two sons, a certain prime minister if he chose to enter politics. He entered Birmingham politics in 1911, and was elected Lord Mayor in 1915 ; and perhaps it was inevitable that at this stage he should inherit his father's interest in local government and social reform; but his interest in external problems remained. He felt strongly about the war, traveled extensively, and was thought of as Austen's successor at the Foreign Office in 1928; in March, 1929, he had even arranged to go to the Colonial Office instead of the Exchequer in a future Conservative government.

He followed foreign affairs closely between 1931 and 1937. He was consistently critical of the Nazi régime; he had " detested " Germans during the First World War, and confessed in 1930 that he still "loathed" them; the first twelve months of Hitler's foreign policy convinced him that an aggressive Germany was up to her old tricks, " encouraging bloodshed and assassination, for her own selfish aggrandisement and pride." The assassination of Dollfuss made him hate Naziism, he confessed on July 28, 1934' with a greater loathing than ever. The solution? Rearmament: force was the only thing that the Germans understood. He was dissatisfied that Britain did not shape her policy accordingly, and grumbled repeatedly at the weakness of Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary. Earlier, in 1932, he had taken the lead in urging the total abolition of reparations in the hope of strengthening the anti-Nazi forces and keeping Hitler out of office. He continued to talk angrily about the Nazi régime and its methods after becoming prime minister. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he had to finance rearmament, and he was certainly as active as anyone in urging it. on the cabinet in 1934, 1935, and 1936. In November, 1935, he thought that sanctions, once threatened against Italy, should be enforced. In all these matters Chamberlain shows himself to be as conscious of, and as distrustful of, totalitarianism, and as anxious for rearmament, as the most warlike of his critics.

Any assessment of Chamberlain's record as prime minister must, therefore, distinguish between plans and their execution, and give great weight to his unique capacity for being misunderstood. Austen complained in 1935 that, with the brilliant exception of Kingsley Wood at the Post Office, the members of the National Government could not "get their stuff across," and in October, 1939, a well-known cartoon by David Low, "the best cause in the world (with the worst propaganda)" summed up much popular exasperation at faulty government publicity. It needs a considerable mental effort today to remind ourselves of the original dictionary meaning of the word "appeasement," and how frequently the word was used before 1938 by Eden, Austen Chamberlain, Briand, and even Churchill without exciting any objections at all. The swift deterioration in meaning was partly a proof that Chamberlain indeed lived in changing times, but it was also proof of a singular incapacity to adapt the language of government publicity to changing needs and moods. Conciliatory speeches often sounded timid; blunt and extremely resolute warnings were wrapped in the bygone circumlocutions of 19th century diplomacy. Some unhappy phrases were gleefully or gloomily misunderstood by his critics at home and abroad. And as diplomacy (before the guns go off) is largely a matter of talking and writing, the inexpert publicist is bound to be a faulty tactician, particularly at a time when hesitant allies and trigger-happy rivals are eagerly seeking someone to blame.

But if we look behind the parody of Chamberlain's foreign policy put out by his opponents (and even by himself), and examine the reality, something more intelligible emerges. When he came into office Germany was quiescent but menacing, Italy had been rampant for two years, and Japan was about to invade China. There were possibilities of war with all three and he wished to prevent it, both because he disliked war and because England was not in a position to fight for at least two years. Thus the policy of tranquillization or appeasement had from the beginning both ideological and practical aspects, which were perhaps confused at times, even in Chamberlain's mind, and were certainly confusing to his contemporaries.

One side of his nature, appalled by thoughts of war and its horrors, led him to an anxious search for the solution of present discontents, and he felt that he was specially fined to mediate and perhaps negotiate a compromise between touchy and headstrong rivals. He was willing for Britain to make contributions - such as the return of German colonies - to a general settlement. On the other hand, he was too shrewd and pessimistic to have much hope of success, and his anxiety for a settlement did not mean that he was any less critical of Nazi and Fascist policy than he had been in the past. He believed in peace but not in the Nazis; the essential fact about his policy of appeasement is not that he accepted Hider's word, but that he pursued his plans so stubbornly in spite of his distrust. After the Berchtesgaden meeting in September, 1938, he said that Hitler appeared to him to be "a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word," but it is clear from the passage in which this remark occurs (in Professor Felling's biography) that he still regarded the Führer as a very odd and rather unpleasant fellow, and that it was a sense of responsibility or of expediency rather than a sense of honour that he thought he had detected.

Appeasement was a forlorn hope, a defiance of probabilities. Was Hitler a fanatic, a little insane, driven on by his own passions and the "wild men" around him? Or was he an astute man, taking calculated risks, knowing when to stop? It was the possibilities of the latter explanation - something very different from any sort of admiration or liking for the German - which raised his hopes for a while; he was pleasantly surprised to find at Berchtesgaden that Hitler did not show any trace of insanity. Hider was exploiting national grievances and living on prestige; economic recovery and the removal of political grievances might perhaps strengthen pacific elements in Germany, reduce the internal value of war propaganda, and allow the Nazi revolution to become respectable. Bad psychology perhaps, but few people in England in 1938 really thought that Hider was determined at all costs to fight a major war in the near future; perhaps the most widespread view was that he was bluffing and had, in the past, always given way when resolutely opposed. No doubt Chamberlain, influenced by his own international experiences as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was too ready to attribute the world's troubles in the late thirties to the world economic crisis of the early thirties, and to regard security as a by-product of recovery; but he was not entirely wrong, and his mind was not closed to other possibilities. In supporting a programme of concessions to Germany he was taking "risks for peace" the risk, among others, of making a fool of himself. He thought the risk worth taking. He seems to have had little hope, except for a moment after Munich, that he would succeed. But someone must try. He would have made a more ingenious use of the language of the 1870's if he had called himself the honest broker instead of promising peace with honour.

This was one side of his policy in 1938, and his missionary zeal was strengthened by a stream of reports from British representatives in Berlin and Prague which seemed to show that the German case against the Czechoslovak government, although exploited by the Nazi leaders for their own glory and advantage, was based on a genuine sense of national grievance in Germany, and that the moral issues were not sufficiently clear-cut to provide, in themselves, a justification for war. To the belief, which the Germans never for a moment shared, that he was acceptable to Europe as a mediator, he added a conviction that even after a successful war the Czechoslovak state ought not to be restored in its 1919 form.

But there is also ample evidence that he was working to a definite military time-table, and was prepared to meet force by force as soon as the military situation seemed to justify the risk of war. Ribbentrop, indeed, was convinced in January, 1938, that, as Britain was behind in her armament programme, Chamberlain was simply playing for time. It is certainly true that Chamberlain had been told by his military advisers that Britain would not be strong enough to risk war until the middle of 1939, and he was of course well aware that British rearmament in its various aspects, including even the preparation for an economic blockade in which he took a great interest, was planned on the assumption that there would not be a war before that year. He was convinced too that little could be expected of other powers. What allies could be found to meet the triple menace of German, Italian, and Japanese aggression? During his first year an a-half of office he could find none. British in the Far East were too weak for isolated action against Japan, and it was only possible to promise to keep in step with the United States; but after some confidential discussions in the early winter of 1937-8, and the preparations of British plans for a blockade of Japan, Roosevelt decided that he could not take any initiative at this stage. Critics of Chamberlain reproached him for not securing in some defined way the more active co-operation of United States at this period, but all that could be done was to leave the astute American to advance at their own pace. Russia he obviously distrusted, but rather because of her apparent weakness and equivocation than because of her revolutionary tradition or form of government; he saw her as a mischief-maker rather than a menace, "stealthily and cunningly pulling all the strings behind the scenes to get us involved in war with Germany," as he wrote in March, 1938. The weakness of French governments, and the relative weakness of the French forces, was depressingly clear in 1938. Italy he regarded as the weaker end of the Axis; if as he hoped, she had the sense to withdraw from Hitler's clutches she must be given the chance to reconcile herself with the western powers. But dearly she had not done so yet. "The plan of the' Grand Alliance,' as Winston calls it, had occurred to me long before he mentioned it," Chamberlain wrote on March 20, 1938; "I talked about it to Halifax, and we submitted it to the chief of the Staff and the F.O. experts. It is a very attractive idea; indeed, there is almost everything to be said for it until you come to examine its practicability. From that moment its attraction vanishes."

Are we then to agree with Ribbentrop that the policy of "appeasement" was merely a rather unconvincing excuse for marking time while Britain and France made themselves strong enough to say no to every German demand? The answer seems to be that Chamberlain regarded rearmament not as an alternative to appeasement but as a means of ensuring it; Germany and Italy, perhaps even Japan, would be more likely to accept a fair settlement and to abandon unreasonable demands if England and France could negotiate from strength. Germany's final destruction of Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, came at a moment when British rearmament at last seemed to have reached a point at which the risk of war could be taken, and the guarantee to Poland followed. There was no more chance of sending direct help to Poland than there had been to Czechoslovakia in 1938; but if Hitler went to war with France and Britain it seemed they would now be strong enough to defend themselves, and hang on until their superior economic resources gave them the ultimate victory. But he still thought of the guarantee as a warning rather than a threat, and he still hoped that peace could be saved; his policy was still appeasement, pursued, he now felt, with greater weight

British foreign policy in these years is rightly thought of as Chamberlain's, for he gave it its peculiar character and direction; but he was not personally responsible for some of the tactical errors of British diplomacy in 1939. There can be little doubt that no effective reply could have been made by any British government to the totalitarian challenge in 1938. But a politician more selfishly conscious of his own interests might have stayed away from Munich, arguing that in view of France's treaty relations with Czechoslovakia the settlement was her responsibility alone; or he might have threatened war, gambling on the chance that Germany would climb down. Chamberlain had a large measure of circumspection, and his willingness to go to Munich was not due to any ignorance of the doubtful expediency of the journey; it was a risk to his own reputation which he took with his eyes open. He had some strange admirers. A New York paper said on September 27, that he had shown more of the spirit of the founder of Christianity than any English-speaking statesman since Abraham Lincoln)

When war came in September, 1939, Churchill joined the government, and Labour stayed out. Chamberlain had been thinking of his own party when he said that he had not made enemies. If Baldwin had taken the bitterness out of English politics, Chamberlain had done much to take it out of Conservative politics, but he had failed to win the personal regard of the Labour and Liberal oppositions. His hostility to Lloyd George, who outlived him, was unrelenting, and as for Labour, "their gross exaggerations, their dishonesty in slurring over facts "and" their utter inability to appreciate a reasonable argument" angered him. " Life, in fact," wrote his biographer, "never taught him that neither mental nor moral integrity have the same power with democracy as an appeal to their heart." On the other hand, while he remained loyal to Baldwin throughout, he maintained reasonably friendly relations with the various Conservative factions; he brought Baldwin and Austen together in 1924, played a complicated mediatory role in the Beaverbrook-Baldwin struggle in 1930-31, and avoided any serious breach with Churchill and the other Conservative opponents of the India Bill. Looking back, we can perhaps conclude that his main service after September, 1939, was to ensure the ultimate accession of Churchill to the leadership of a united party.

Although he still thought of himself as well fitted to appease, or tranquillize, Europe, he was equally convinced that he was not the man to conduct a savage, general war. Whatever his earlier hopes of Hitler, he had no doubt at all after the German attack on Poland that the time for a compromise settlement had passed, and that the war must be fought until victory; he was quite unmoved by the considerable peace campaign in England and elsewhere encouraged by Hitler's hints in October, 1939. But he was already asking himself whether he could bring himself "to give directions that would bring death and mutilation and misery to so many". There followed, however, the period of phoney war, with sanguine hopes that blockade, under its new name of economic warfare, would have solved the problem of making war safe for democracy, and accordingly, as he wrote on May 17, 1940, " the war was so different from what I expected that I found the strain bearable, and perhaps it was providential that the revolution which overturned me coincided with the entry of the real thing." He had had a certain measure of personal success as a wartime prime minister; his austere, calm manner and lucid war commentaries to Parliament created confidence, and if he was himself over-confident he was in good company, for Churchill, too, believed that time was on the Allied side, and that it was to the Allies' advantage to open up a new front in Norway. He was as surprised and hurt as most prime ministers seem to be on their inevitable falls from office, but he and Churchill were both too considerate and public-spirited to allow the change of premiers to produce anything resembling the Asquith-Lloyd George estrangement of 1916. Time may vindicate him. There are fashions in courage as in other things, and Chamberlain fought stubbornly, almost to the last, for his own outmoded form of pacifism.