If the British public falls for this, I think it would be stark, staring bonkers. - Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone

To our refusal to accept the French view of German duplicity and to our failure to regard the peace treaties as binding, many of our present troubles are due.

The fact is that the 1935 election was fought very largely on the subject of armaments. The Government wanted to rearm "too little and too late", but still on a considerable—if not a "huge"—scale. The Socialists and Liberals condemned this policy as wrong, as false to "collective security", and as leading to a war that could otherwise be avoided... [T]his was the issue which the Labour Party chose to fight, late in 1935—the Government arms policy versus the Socialist policy of disarmament by agreement and an international air police force. Looking back on this issue in 1945, who can possibly doubt to-day that the Conservatives were right and that the Left was pitifully wrong?

There is a sense in which all law is nothing more nor less than a gigantic confidence trick.