"What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace...It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather". We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all."
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomUniversity of Cambridge alumniAcademics from the United KingdomGovernment ministersConservative Party (UK) politicians
Original Language: English
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Speech in the House of Commons defending the Munich Agreement (5 October 1938)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rab_Butler
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Rab Butler
Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG, CH, DL, PC (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), also known as R. A. Butler, was a British Conservative politician. Butler was passed over twice as a potential Prime Minister, but did serve in the other three Great Offices of State (Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary).
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