"He [Hitler] did not challenge this and said that formal agreement between the four Powers [Britain, France, Germany and Italy] might not be very difficult to achieve. It would not, however, be worth much unless it took account of realities, even if unpleasant. Germany had had to recognise such a reality in the shape of Poland; and we all had to recognise such a reality in acknowledging Germany to be a great Power; we had to get away from the Versailles mentality and recognise that the world could never remain in statu quo. To this I replied that nobody wished to treat Germany as anything but a great Power, and that nobody in their senses supposed the world could stay as it was for ever. The whole point was how changes were to be brought about. This led him to say that there were two, and only two, alternatives: the free play of forces that meant war; and settlement by reason. The world had had experience of the first: was it able to prefer the second?"
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomAmbassadorsUniversity of Oxford facultyGovernment ministersConservative Party (UK) politicians
Original Language: English
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Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), pp. 185-186
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Wood%2C_1st_Earl_of_Halifax
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Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as The Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and as The Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a British Conservative politician. He is usually considered as one of the architects of appeasement before World War II. During the period, he held several ministerial posts in the cabinet, including Foreign Secretary at the time of the Munich crisis in 1938. He later was dismissed by Prime Minister Winston Churc
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