Appeasement lags in Europe and tension builds in the Far East
Somebody must have reminded Neville Chamberlain that he had become
the Prime Minister in a supposedly national government rather than a Conservative
government supported by a couple of minor, fringe elements. A mass meeting of
the supporters of the three parties concerned was held at the Albert Hall,
which attracted a respectable audience of 8,000. The only precedent had been in
the election year of 1935. The giveaway were the representatives chosen to
represent the two minor parties: Malcolm Macdonald, son of the National
Government’s begetter, and one of the tiny handful of National Labour MPs, and
Sir John Simon for the National Liberals, a party affiliation that only
dedicated historians will recall. Chamberlain’s 45 minute speech was felt to be
rather perfunctory and the reference to the fact that it was his late father’s
birthday, redundant. Beyond deploring the failure of his plan for the German
Foreign Minister to come to London – appeasement was still very much on the
agenda – there was little of consequence.
In the US it was clear that something should be done to deter
Japan. There was a financial/military left and right. The US Treasury announced
an agreement on a three way transaction involving gold and US dollar purchases by China matched
by silver purchases by the US with the goal of bolstering Chinese finances as
well as reflating the US economy. On a more practical level the State Department
confessed bafflement at the failure to obtain general agreement for naval arms
limitation and “reluctantly” announced that two new battleships would mount 16”
guns in place of the less powerful 14” originally anticipated in negotiations.
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