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would ultimately wreck the British Empire. Nevertheless, the cabinet ministers who had been consulted brought pressure upon Chamberlain and while the Foreign Secretary was in Brussels on a state matter, the Prime Minister announced that Halifax would visit the Fuehrer. Eden was furious and after a stormy session tendered his resignation. At that period, however, Eden's resignation might have thrown England into a turmoil--so Chamberlain mollified him. Public sympathy was with Eden and before he was eased out, the country had to be prepared for it. In the quiet and subdued atmosphere of the diplomats' drawing rooms in London they tell, with many a chuckle, how Lord Halifax, his bowler firmly on his head, was sent to Berlin and Berchtesgaden in mid-November, 1937, with instructions not to get into any arguments. Lord Halifax, in the mellow judgment of his close friends, is one of the most amiable and charming of the British peers, earnest, well meaning and--not particularly bright. In Berlin Halifax met Goering, attired for the occasion in a new and bewilderingly gaudy uniform. In the course of their conversation Goering, resting his hands on his enormous paunch, said: "The world cannot stand still. World conditions cannot be frozen just as they are forever. The world is subject to change." "Of course not," Lord Halifax agreed amiably. "It's absurd to think that anything can be frozen and no changes made." "Germany cannot stand still," Goering continued. "Germany must expand. She must have Austria, Czechoslovakia and other countries--she must have oil--" Now this was a point for argument but the Messenger Extraordinary had been instructed not to get into any arguments; so he nodded and in his best pacifying tone murmured, "Naturally. No one expects Germany to stand still if she must expand." After Austria was invaded and Halifax was asked by his close friends what he had cooked up over there, he told the above story, expressing the fear that his conversation was probably misunderstood by Goering, the latter taking his amiability to mean that Great Britain approved Germany's plans to swallow Austria. The French Intelligence Service, however, has a different version, most of it collected during February, 1938, which, in the light of subsequent events, seems far more accurate. Lord Halifax, these secret-service reports state, pledged England to a hands-off policy on Hitler's ambitions in Central Europe if
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