"British policy was therefore the child of their insemination of the politicians – politicians like Baldwin and MacDonald, the Chamberlains, Simon and Henderson, Halifax, Eden. It was as if the encumbents of quiet early-nineteenth-century rectories and nonconformist minister's houses had been miraculously transported into the great offices of State of a hundred years later. Instead of the suspicious minds of pre-Victorian statesmen, there was trustfulness; instead of a worldly scepticism, a childlike innocence and optimism. And instead of a toughness, even a ruthlessness, in the pursuit of English interests, there was a yielding readiness to appease the wrath of other nations. For the very bedrock of the national character had been crumbled since the eighteenth century. Whereas the pre-Victorian Englishman had been renowned for his quarrelsome temper and his willingness to back his argument with his fists – or his feet – now the modern British, like the elderly, shrank from conflict or unpleasantness of any kind. In Lord Vansittart's words: "Right or Left, everybody was for a quiet life.""