"Chamberlain thought that Germany could be economically placated, and picked himself for mediator with the insatiable. He was always too sensible to see with A. N. Whitehead how "history exceeds all limitations of common sense". He was anti-Nazi right enough but not enough. He embodied too little and too late. His little however looked a lot to those who, unaware that we had jettisoned every safeguard devised after the war, supposed Hitler to be "a moderate patriot". They gasped when on the verge of catastrophe the Chancellor brought himself to spend on defence £1,500 extra millions financed mainly by income-tax. I still see our Minister in Paris, handsome Hugh Thomas, the finest rider of his day, bursting radiant into my room. "You've done it, Van." "I haven't. The money is spread over five years. There won't be time to spend it before the balloon goes up." Hugh's horse jumped into the bottom of a fence and killed him before he found out. Revelation killed Chamberlain more slowly."