William E. Gladstone Quotes
Peace, retrenchment and reform.
William E. Gladstone, 1809-1898, British Prime Minister (Liberal), Slogan
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1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. Chamberlain was about to leave for the Munich Conference where his appeasement emboldened Hitler and the Germans and dashed all hope of peace. Baldwin was out of office, but his support of the Munich appeasement changed his image from that of a popular statesman, to a craven appeaser. See {626930} for Churchill’s view of Baldwin.
This is one of the earliest instances in which formal American foreign policy called for aggressively preventing other nations from war. This speech was audio recorded -- quite unusual for the time -- and can be heard to this day.
This is the quotation that came to define Chamberlain’s naivety for history and the icon of failed diplomacy. However to see the beginning of the sequence of events that would lead up to this statement, see {585940} when Chamberlain suggested the infamous meeting in Munich. There had been an interesting history to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany. 39 years earlier, Chamberlain’s father, then Britain’s Colonial Secretary, and advocated a natural alliance with Germany. See Joseph Chamberlain, 1836-1914: {585939}.
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times, serving over 12 years.
