"Hitler's open atrocities against the Jews in the autumn of 1938 certainly deeply impressed Chamberlain... And of course Halifax was certainly no less shocked. Many people who did not know Chamberlain personally had the impression that he was a gullible and obstinate old man. During all that ghastly time I saw almost as much of him as I did of Halifax and I will say, from my observation of him, that nothing could be further from the truth. He was haunted day and night by the prospect that he saw clearly enough, he gave everything of his strength to try to avert it. Many people thought he was a cynic. Cynicism was a virtue with which he was perhaps not sufficiently equipped, or he would not have been taken in by Hitler's rather transparent "piece of paper". On the other hand he had quite a streak of the sentimental and emotional in him, which betrayed him into uttering those unguarded words to the crowd in Downing Street after his return from Germany."