It would be impertinent for a country that did not suffer occupation to carry a judgment on another one that suffered one. - Anthony Eden

I have attempted to state our reasons for refusing to take isolated action. Yet we have to face the facts, and we shall face them. We have to admit the failure of the League in this, and we have to admit our own disappointment; and it may surprise the hon. Gentleman if I tell him that my disappointment is at least as great as his. Where I differ from him is that I say that, if success is collective, failure must be collective, too. Without doubt a blow has been struck at the structure of the League and the conception of collective security... What of the immediate future? It is clear that the League must go on; in a modern world it is absolutely indispensable to the organisation of international affairs. That is clear.

[W]e cannot ignore that, while increasing anxiety in Europe and elsewhere has resulted in many countries increasing their armaments, our own armaments have shown no comparable increase. On the contrary, when compared either with the immediate post-War period or with the period before the War, it will be found, I am confident, that whereas the trend of the armaments of the nations as a whole shows a definite increase, our own armaments show a reduction. I will give you one example. The tonnage of our Navy in 1914 was 2,160,000. This month it is 1,180,000. The personnel in our Navy in August, 1914, was 152,000, whereas today it is 92,338. At the close of the War there was no air force in the world superior to ours. Today we are only fifth among the air Powers. Our Army, as the world knows, is little more than a police force. Those facts do not justify any suggestion that we as a nation have rearmed, or are rearming, excessively; still less do they afford the flimsiest basis for the fantastic charge that we are leading an armaments race. On the contrary, the truth is that we have for long delayed the most elementary measures of national defence in the hope that international agreement would eventually make them unnecessary.

Britain's military defences were miserably weak [in 1935]. Many members of the Government thought that the Foreign Office ought to be able to resolve our European difficulties and so render rearmament unnecessary. I, on the other hand, was convinced that we could only reach worthwhile agreements if we were strong in spirit as our rearmament made itself felt. The Labour and Liberal Oppositions, though detesting the dictators, failed in their duty by voting and speaking against all measures to provide their country with the armaments to which alone Nazis and Fascists would give heed.