A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography of Diana Mosley by Diana Mitford

Author:Diana Mitford
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781903933206
Publisher: Gibson Square Books Ltd
Published: 2003-04-06T05:00:00+00:00

16.

WAR

I was not particularly in favour of what came to be called appeasement as practised by the unfortunate Neville Chamberlain. Naturally everyone with a grain of sense prefers peace to war, but flying to and from Germany and waving little bits of paper ‘signed by Herr Hitler’ was no way to achieve lasting peace. The Munich settlement was not a settlement, it left almost as many loose ends and injustices as there had been before.

In order to strengthen his hand at home, Chamberlain should have dissolved parliament and had an election on the issue of peace or war. In this way he could have trounced the Churchills and Edens. A conference of all the countries involved should have followed, and plebiscites in disputed territories. Ever since the Saar had voted by over ninety per cent to become part of the Reich, plebiscites, formerly so well regarded, had been unpopular with politicians in the democracies. Yet they were probably the only way whereby war could have been avoided, and where ethnic groups were mixed the losing group should have been offered rich inducements to move into its own mother country. Those who refused would do so with their eyes open.

The same should have been done for the Jews, if they had so desired, not only in Germany but throughout central Europe. The millions spent in re-settling them would have saved their lives and endless suffering. In his book Peace Making at Paris published in 1919 Sisley Huddleston, a well-known journalist on the Westminster Gazette, writes: ‘Throughout the proceedings one had perpetually news of pogroms in Rumania or in the Ukraine or in Czecho Slovakia. The Jewish problem was not the least difficult.’ It is interesting to note that he does not mention Germany as one of the countries where there were perpetually pogroms. Thousands of Jews poured into Germany at that time from the east, and made an acute Jewish problem there. Nothing much was done, either by the League of Nations or by world Jewry, and they were left to their fate.

‘Munich’ was a watershed. Although at first many people and most conservatives were delighted with Chamberlain (a newsreel film of the cabinet greeting him at the airport upon his return from Germany showed his colleagues shouting with joy, one could even see Lord Halifax’s tonsils) they began to have second thoughts, and no wonder. Given the premise that Britain had a duty and a right to interfere in central Europe, what had happened was unsatisfactory. We, of course, did not accept the premise; our slogan at that time was Mind Britain’s Business, the very last thing politicians of either party intended to do. The Munich ‘settlement’ had been quick and easy, and hard conundrums involving nations, sovereignties, transfers of population cannot be solved in this slap-dash style.

In England re-armament went apace at last; plans were made for the evacuation of women and children from the big cities and it became more and more obvious that the politicians were preparing for war.

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