A year ago we had undertaken no specific commitments on the Continent of Europe, beyond those which had then existed. ... To-day we are bound by new … - Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

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A year ago we had undertaken no specific commitments on the Continent of Europe, beyond those which had then existed. ... To-day we are bound by new agreements for mutual defence with Poland and Turkey; we have guaranteed assistance to Greece and Rumania against aggression. ... We know that, if the security and independence of other countries are to disappear, our own security and our own independence will be gravely threatened. We know that if international law and order is to be preserved, we must be prepared to fight in its defence.

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About Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as The Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and as The Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a British Conservative politician. He is usually considered as one of the architects of appeasement before World War II. During the period, he held several ministerial posts in the cabinet, including Foreign Secretary at the time of the Munich crisis in 1938. He later was dismissed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940 when he expressed support for a negotiated settlement with Nazi Germany, although he was then appointed British Ambassador to the United States. He succeeded Lord Reading as Viceroy of India in April 1926, a post he held until 1931. In this role he held negotiations on constitutional reforms to the British Raj with the Indian National Congress under Mohandas Gandhi.

Also Known As

Native Name: E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax
Alternative Names: Lord Irwin Viscount Halifax Lord Halifax Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax
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Additional quotes by Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

The advent of Hitler to power in 1933 had coincided with a high tide of wholly irrational pacifist sentiment in Britain, which caused profound damage both at home and abroad. At home it immensely aggravated the difficulty, great in any case it was bound to be, of bringing the British people to appreciate and face up to the new situation which Hitler was creating: abroad it doubtless served to tempt him and others to suppose that in shaping their policies this country need not be too seriously regarded.

[The Hoare-Laval proposals] were not so frightfully different from those put forward by the Committee of Five [of the League of Nations]. But the latter were of respectable parentage: and the Paris ones were too much like the off-the-stage arrangements of nineteenth-century diplomacy.

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