>>18089823
>We all have vivid recollections of September of last year. In Berlin on September the 26th 1938, Hitler said, referring to the Sudeten German problem, which was then approaching its acutest stage, ‘And now the last problem which must be solved, and which will be solved, concerns us. It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe.’ Four days later, at Munich, when the problem had been settled on terms which provided for the absorption of the Sudeten country into Germany, and which otherwise professed to respect the integrity of the remainder of the Czechoslovak state, Hitler participated with the Prime Minister of Great Britain in a statement which went out to all the world. It’s most important sentence was this: ‘We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other question that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible causes of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.’

>What a strange piece of irony that seems today, only 12 months later. In those 12 months, what has happened? In cold-blooded breach of the solemn obligations implied in both the statements I have quoted, Hitler has annexed the whole of the Czechoslovak state. Has, without flickering an eyelid, made a pact with Russia, a country the denouncing and reviling of which has been his chief stock-in-trade ever since he became chancellor. And has now, under circumstances which I will describe to you, invaded with armed force and in defiance of civilised opinion, the independent nation of Poland. Your own comments on this dreadful history will need no reinforcement by me. All I need say is, that whatever the inflamed ambitions of the German Fuhrer may be, he will undoubtedly learn, as other great enemies of freedom have learned before, that no empire, no dominion, can be soundly established upon a basis of broken promises or dishonoured agreements.