No stranger experience can have happened to Mr. Chamberlain during the past month of adventures than his reception back home in London. He drove from Heston to Buckingham Palace, where the crowd clamoured for him, and within five minutes of his arrival he was standing on the balcony of the Palace with the King and Queen and Mrs. Chamberlain.
The cries were all for ╥Neville,╙ and he stood there blinking in the light of a powerful arc-lamp and waving his hand and smiling. For three minutes this demonstration lasted. Another welcome awaited the Premier in Downing Street, which he reached fifteen minutes later. With difficulty his car moved forward from Whitehall to No. 10. Mounted policemen rode fore and aft and a constable kept guard on the running board of the car.
Every window on the three floors of No. 10 and No. 11 was open and filled with faces. The windows of the Foreign Office across the way were equally full ╤ all except one, which was made up with sandbags. Everywhere were people cheering. One of the women there found no other words to express her feelings but these, ╥The man who gave me back my son.╙
Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain stood for a few moments on the doorstep acknowledging the greeting. Then Mr. Chamberlain went to a first-floor window and leaned forward happily smiling on the people. ╥My good friends,╙ he said ╤ it took some time to still the clamour so that he might be heard ╤ ╥this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany ╘peace with honour.╒ I believe it is peace for our time.╙
COMMENT: WHAT IS IT WORTH?
No one in this country who examines carefully the terms under which Hitler╒s troops begin their march into Czecho-Slovakia to-day can feel other than unhappy. Certainly the Czechs will hardly appreciate Mr. Chamberlain╒s phrase that it is ╥peace with honour.╙
If Germany╒s aim were the economic and financial destruction of Czecho-Slovakia the Munich agreement goes far to satisfy her. But, it may be urged, while the Czechs may suffer economically, they have the political protection of an international guarantee. What is it worth? Will Britain and France (and Russia, though, of course, Russia was not even mentioned at Munich) come to the aid of an unarmed Czecho-Slovakia when they would not help her in her strength?
Politically Czecho-Slovakia is rendered helpless, with all that that means to the balance of forces in Eastern Europe, and Hitler will be able to advance again, when he chooses, with greatly increased power.
