Stst,—You are urged by Sir Stanley Reed to "place an
embargo on cheap sneers at the policy of Munich." So controversial a policy could not fail to draw exaggerated expressions of approval and of dis- approval—the one from those who felt•that.a war in September, 1938, would be disastrous, the other from those who felt that there could be no bigger disaster than the failure to fulfil our moral obligations to the Czechs. There is much to be said for either view, and a fair judgement can hardly be reached until all the relevant documents are published.
But, although what in fact was done may have been right or wrong, surely tne self-satisfaction of those who did it deserves con- demnation. It may have been necessary for us to present the Czechs with a virtual ultimatum, or even to fix the terms of the Munich settlement without consulting them, but who can defend Mr. Cham- berlain's claim to have brought "Peace with Honour "? Certainly he averted immediate war and obtained a valuable respite for this country, but how could the Munich settlement be coupled with the word " honour "? To have adopted Disraeli's cliché of 1878 is to have earned from the Czechs an even more bitter comment than that of Cambon in 1914, when he said that it would be seen whether the word " honour " had been blotted out of the English language.—
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