The combination of the Liberal and Labour Parties is much stronger than the Liberal Party would be if there were no third Party in existence. Many me… - Austen Chamberlain

No country is more exposed to danger than ours. We will all do our best, wherever we sit in this House, according to our lights, to preserve peace, but we can none of us guarantee it by fine phrases; we can none of us guarantee that the whole of the nations will combine in case of aggression. If war breaks out, if we become the victims of aggression or become involved in a struggle, and if the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) and his friends be sitting on the Government bench while London is bombed, do you think he will hold the language that he held to-day? Do you think that that is the defence he will make? If he does, he will be one of the first victims of the war, for he will be strung up by an angry, and a justifiably angry, populace to the nearest lamp-post.

The first thoughts of an Englishman on appointment to the office of Foreign Secretary must be that he speaks in the name, not of Great Britain only, but of the British Dominions beyond the seas, and that it is his imperative duty to preserve in word and act the diplomatic unity of the British Empire. Our interests are one. Our intercourse must be intimate and constant, and we must speak with one voice in the Councils of the world.

The affairs of the world do not stand still...I could not go, as the representative of His Majesty's Government, to meeting after meeting of the League of Nations, to conference after conference with the representatives of foreign countries, and say, "Great Britain is without a policy. We have not yet been able to meet all the Governments of the Empire, and we can do nothing." That might be possible for an Empire wholly removed from Europe, which existed in a different hemisphere. It was not possible for an Empire the heart of which lies in Europe and next door to the Continent of Europe, and where every peril to the peace of Europe jeopardised the peace of this country.