"In June [1931] I attended a meeting in the House of Commons of the India Committee, normally composed of those Conservative back-benchers with a special interest in Indian affairs. It was a sign of the times that most of the party had turned up. Irwin, gaunt and sombre, was flanked by Winterton, Lloyd and Churchill. His replies to their questions were agile and tinged with irony. But his speech, apparently unprepared and certainly unpolished, seemed disappointing, even disillusioning. He asked us to keep the account private, for fear of embarrassing Lord Willingdon, who was to be his successor as Viceroy. Despite this, the Daily Telegraph came out next morning with striking headlines. The speech in its entirety had, however, been even more striking. It began with references to the growth of nationalism and to the fact, as he put it, that owing to the Russo-Japanese war and the looseness of Western women as depicted in films, our prestige in the East was gone. An incredulous gasp greeted this sacrilege."
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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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Sources
Rab Butler, The Art of the Possible (1971), p. 41
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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