Lord Halifax Quotes

If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls." Czechoslovakian foreign minister Jan Masaryk to Lord Halifax as reaction to announcement of allies' betrayal in 1938.

Service is the rent that we pay for our room on earth.

Kennedy, in turn, was not well liked in London. The wife of Churchill’s foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, detested the ambassador for his pessimism about Britain’s chances for survival and his prediction that the RAF would quickly be crushed. She wrote, “I could have killed him with pleasure.

Wenn die Menschen um ihre Freiheit kämpfen, erhalten sie durch ihren Sieg selten neue Herren.

careful reconstruction of the British war-cabinet meetings between Friday, 24 May and Tuesday, 28 May, five days that could have changed the world. Lukac’s conclusion is inescapable: never was Hitler as close to total control over Western Europe as he was during that last week of May 1940. Britain almost presented him with a peace agreement which he would probably have accepted, and only one man was finally able to stand in the way: Churchill. Besides Churchill, the British war cabinet in those days had four other members, at least two of whom could be counted among the ‘appeasers’: Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax. The other two, Clement Atlee and Arthur Greenwood (representing Labour), had no experience in government at that time. On

In his last letter to Hitler, on December 1941, Gandhi praised the Führer’s ‘bravery [and] devotion to your Fatherland . . . Nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.’82 Gandhi was fortunate that it was the Viceroy who ruled India rather than Hitler; the Führer’s advice to Lord Halifax when they met at Berchtesgaden in 1937 had been ‘Shoot Gandhi.

This revitalization over drink and dinner was something of a pattern, as Lord Halifax’s wife, Dorothy, had noted in the past: Churchill would be “silent, grumpy and remote” at the start of a meal, she wrote. “But mellowed by champagne and good food he became a different man, and a delightful and amusing companion.” After Clementine once criticized his drinking, he told her, “Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

In May 1940 Gandhi told a friend, ‘I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.’81 In his last letter to Hitler, on December 1941, Gandhi praised the Führer’s ‘bravery [and] devotion to your Fatherland … Nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.’82 Gandhi was fortunate that it was the Viceroy who ruled India rather than Hitler; the Führer’s advice to Lord Halifax when they met at Berchtesgaden in 1937 had been ‘Shoot Gandhi.

In May 1940 Gandhi told a friend, ‘I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.’81 In his last letter to Hitler, on December 1941, Gandhi praised the Führer’s ‘bravery [and] devotion to your Fatherland . . . Nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.’82 Gandhi was fortunate that it was the Viceroy who ruled India rather than Hitler; the Führer’s advice to Lord Halifax when they met at Berchtesgaden in 1937 had been ‘Shoot Gandhi.

25 May, as the extent of the French defeat became apparent, Lord Halifax carefully began sounding out the Italian ambassador to find out what concessions would be needed to ‘bribe’ Italy from entering the war. Gibraltar, perhaps, or Malta? He hoped that Italy could provide the initiative for a peace conference with Hitler, leading to a ‘general European arrangement’. England was to keep the sea and its empire, while Germany could do as it pleased on the continent. Hitler would probably have agreed to such a proposal: it was roughly the same division of roles Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers had contemplated in 1914. As a result, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Norway – the lion’s share of Europe – would have been transformed into a federation of Nazi

fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. The words that Churchill used in these short, punchy sentences were all but two derived from Old English. ‘Confidence’ derives from Latin and ‘surrender’ comes from the French. In November 1942, the Conservative minister Walter Elliot told Major-General John Kennedy that after Churchill had sat down he whispered to him: ‘I don’t know what we’ll fight them with – we shall have to slosh them on the head with bottles – empty ones of course.’50 Churchill’s public insistence on continuing the struggle represented a victory for him inside the five-man British War Cabinet, which for five days between 24 and 28 May discussed the possibility of opening peace negotiations with Hitler, initially via Mussolini.51 The proponent of this course, the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, nonetheless always made it clear that he would not countenance any peace that involved sacrificing the Royal

The sheriff listened uneasily to a sound, very uncommon at elections, of the populace expressing an opinion contrary to that of the lord of the soil.

Friendship cannot live with ceremony, nor without civility. —LORD HALIFAX

Even more thaqn making money, Joe Kennedy's special gift is elf promotion. Chamberlain can't go to the bathroom without Kennedy.

France was about to fall to the Germans, and Neville Chamberlain was about to resign as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He called Winston Churchill and Lord Halifax into his office. He said, “Well, one of you two will have to replace me. Who’s it going to be?” Churchill wrote, “I knew no Englishman could ever say ‘Give it to me’. So whoever spoke first would be the loser. It was the longest 30 seconds of my life, but nothing would induce me to speak.” Eventually Halifax couldn’t bear it any longer. He cracked. He said, “Well, I suppose you’d better give it to Winston.” Churchill accepted, and became Prime Minister. Imagine the course of history if Churchill had spoken first.

United States ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, who had just told Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, that he was disgusted with Britain’s performance. Britain would, Kennedy was quite sure, lose the war.

For Lord Halifax, Britain was a geographical entity, a place of hills, dales, moors and tors, an H. E. Bates world durable enough to resist whatever brutal regime was in effective charge. For Churchill, Britain was more than this. It was the original model of liberty, a land whose existence depended on freedom and the rule of law. If these were extinguished, her survival meant nothing. And while both views were rosy and sentimental in their different ways, the latter was closer to the truth – and a great deal more humane.

The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly represented the statesmen of the Revolution as the legitimate ancestors of modern liberty. It is humiliating to trace a political lineage to Algernon Sidney, who was the paid agent of the French king; to Lord Russell, who opposed religious toleration at least as much as absolute monarchy; to Shaftesbury, who dipped his hands in the innocent blood shed by the perjury of Titus Oates; to Halifax, who insisted that the plot must be supported even if untrue; to Marlborough, who sent his comrades to perish on an expedition which he had betrayed to the French; to Locke, whose notion of liberty involves nothing more spiritual than the security of property, and is consistent with slavery and persecution; or even to Addison, who conceived that the right of voting taxes belonged to no country but his own. Defoe affirms that from the time of Charles II. to that of George I. he never knew a politician who truly held the faith of either party; and the perversity of the statesmen who led the assault against the later Stuarts threw back the cause of progress for a century.

The Rev. Brown, the Wesleyan minister, sturdily declares that he cares nothing for creeds, but only for education; meanwhile, in truth, the wildest Wesleyanism is tearing his soul. The Rev. Smith, of the Church of England, explains gracefully, with the Oxford manner, that the only question for him is the prosperity and efficiency of the schools; while in truth all the evil passions of a curate are roaring within him. It is a fight of creeds masquerading as policies. I think these reverend gentlemen do themselves wrong; I think they are more pious than they will admit. Theology is not (as some suppose) expunged as an error. It is merely concealed, like a sin. Dr. Clifford really wants a theological atmosphere as much as Lord Halifax; only it is a different one.