If Hitler Comes Read Online Free PDF

The Treasury Bench tried to look as though nothing remarkable was happening.
    At last the Speaker found his voice. It shook as he took the only dignified course, picking up the thread that had been rudely, perhaps permanently, broken. “The Right Honourable the Minister of Health,” he said, looking straight in front of him; and the thin voice that had been interrupted resumed its part in the orderly proceedings of the Mother of Parliaments .
    At last the Foreign Secretary rose to open for the Government in the big debate. He had quite regained his self-possession; one could see that he knew exactly what he was going to say, that he was prepared to answer certain objections and determined to ignore others, and that by the sheer force of his personality he intended to keep the debate on the plane of slightly cynical, but genial, common sense.
    His brisk, cheerful tones dispelled some of the gloom of the “Heil Hitler!” incident. He was, in fact, brilliantly persuasive. For all his tortuousness he had always been a good Commons man, and he wooed the House like a rather too practised lover. There at least he was sure of himself, however delicately he might still have to tread before the representatives of the Wilhelmstrasse.
    There is no need to repeat his arguments. They look false enough now, but most people welcomed them gladly enough at the time, as holding out the one chance of a prosperous and not undignified future for Great Britain. The House listened to them hopefully, but in silence.
    He came at length to the circumstances of the last fatal week-end.
    “As time went on”, he said, “it became increasingly clear to His Majesty’s Government and to the Government of the German Reich that the new situation should be clarified and crystallized, for all the world to see, in a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance. This instrument, freely negotiated, is that which the House——”
    It was here that the first interruption occurred. There were cries of “Question”, and Churchill was first on his feet to ask with calm deliberation whether His Majesty’s Government, in these “free negotiations”, had been uninfluenced by the fact that Germany on the previous Thursday had begun the transport of twenty divisions from the interior to the north-east coast.
    “And by Hitler’s threat on Friday night to bomb London to bits,” added a bold member of the Labour Opposition, guessing at the truth.
    Almost the whole House was now on its feet, the Opposition back-benchers emboldened at last to make a demonstration, screaming “Traitors!” at the Government, and the Government members calling “Mischiefmakers!” in reply. The Speaker made no attempt to quell the tumult, and Naker remained seated until it had died down. Then (says my Hansard ):
    “Honourable members opposite”, he said (with a deprecating gesture of his hands), “are inclined to ignore the processes of history. Their antique jingoism has little meaning to-day. One could not but admire their valour (were it ever put to the test), but we on this side of the House prefer a higher patriotism. To us the British Empire is no mere temporary phenomenon, consistent with but one phase of historical development. We do not seek to preserve it by vainly trying to keep the rest of the world unchanged; we seek to develop it by meeting changing conditions in a spirit of realism and co-operation.”
    So he went on, and no interruptions could break his apparent complacency. He became very plain and matter-offact, almost casual, and in a bare twenty minutes he had finished the speech in which, as British Foreign Secretary, he virtually handed his proud country to the mercy of the enemy. But when he sat down there was sweat on his forehead .
    Some of the speeches that followed, on the Opposition side, were almost worthy of this great and tragic occasion. One notable Tory Parliamentarian evoked the great leaders of past times, who would have wept had they seen the