Neville Chamberlain: let’s take another look
Recently I’ve made some comparisons to Munich and Neville Chamberlain’s surrender of the Sudetenland to Hitler. But I didn’t go into any real depth while referencing him.
But then I realized that his name has become synonymous for “surrender” and even (for some) “shortsided stupidity.” Actually, I don’t think that’s the whole story, and I want to attempt to correct the perception that it was.
It’s so easy – in retrospect – to simplify a situation and think the answer would be clear. But history is lived forward, not backward. First, a summary of the perception, and Chamberlain’s tragic words afterwards:
After this monumental failure of policy Chamberlain’s name became an abusive synonym for vacillation, weakness, immoral great-power diplomacy and, above all, the craven appeasement of bullies – whatever the price in national honour. Despite his many achievements in domestic policy, therefore, ultimately Chamberlain’s reputation remains indelibly stained by Munich and the failure of his very personal brand of diplomacy.
As he confessed in the Commons at the outbreak of war, “Everything I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins.”
Posterity has judged him accordingly…
As he noted stoically in January 1938, “In the absence of any powerful ally, and until our armaments are completed, we must adjust our foreign policy to our circumstances, and even bear with patience and good humour actions which we should like to treat in a very different fashion.”
His pragmatic response to this conundrum was a “double policy” of rearmament at a pace the economy could sustain, while simultaneously seeking better relations with the dictators in the belief that only by redressing Germany’s legitimate grievances would it be possible to remove the military threat – or failing that, to expose Hitler as an insatiable megalomaniac bent on world domination. As Chamberlain told Lord Halifax, his foreign secretary, the underlying strategy was to hope for the best while preparing for the worst.
I do see Chamberlain as naive and too trusting regarding Hitler and the strength of diplomacy to stop a person like that. Yet, in Chamberlain’s defense, his own options weren’t strong, and Hitler had not yet utterly revealed himself for what he was – although more perceptive minds such as Churchill were able to see it. But here is the situation Chamberlain had faced at the time of the conference:
By the mid-1930s Britain was defending a vast and vulnerable empire encompassing a quarter of the world’s territory and population, with the dismally depleted military resources of a third-rate power.
Worse still, since 1934 the Cabinet had grimly recognised that it was “beyond the resources of this country to make proper provision in peace for defence of the British Empire against three major powers in three different theatres of war”. Furthermore, the threat posed separately by Japan, Germany and Italy was compounded by the conviction that war with any one of them would inevitably provoke opportunistic “mad dog” acts by the others.
As the leader of a militarily weak and overstretched empire, such fears were crucial in shaping Chamberlain’s strategy, but this meant steering a course within the relatively narrow parameters defined by a complex inter-related web of geo-strategic, military, economic, financial, industrial, intelligence and electoral constraints.
Churchill actually praised Chamberlain later in a speech Churchill gave on the latter’s death in 1940. Here’s part of it:
It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong.
Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values.
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days…
It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed?
‘What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused?
‘They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour.
Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged.
‘This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned…’
When, contrary to all his hopes, beliefs and exertions, the war came upon him, and when, as he himself said, all that he had worked for was shattered, there was no man more resolved to pursue the unsought quarrel to the death.
The same qualities which made him one of the last to enter the war, made him one of the last who would quit it until the full victory of a righteous cause was won.
I had the singular experience of passing in a day from being one of his most prominent opponents and critics to being one of his principal lieutenants, and on another day of passing from serving under him to become the head of a Government of which, with perfect loyalty, he was content to be a member.
We all voice opinions here and often make analogies to historical events. But – as Churchill correctly said – none of us can see the future. And none of us bear the burdens of actually having to make such decisions and seeing them affect history, sometimes for the worse.
You’ll see an article in Policy Review from around about 1981 defending Chamberlain on this point. George Liska also thought this a viable argument.
The counter-argument is provided by William L. Shirer, who maintains that the Germanophone borderlands in Bohemia and Moravia had excellent fortifications that it would have been challenging to the Germans to penetrate. Shirer also provides a brief inventory of the share of Czechoslovakia’s proven reserves of coal and minerals in those borderlands, as well as a brief inventory of what share of their industrial capacity was found there.
Note, the Munich agreement bought less than five months time. The rest of Bohemia and Moravia were seized by Germany in March 1939. Significant especially because in contrast to other territories acquired by Germany (de facto and de jure) prior to 1939, rump Bohemia and Moravia did not have much of a German population.
Note, north of 60% of the ethnic German population cast a ballot for Konrad Heinlein’s pro-Nazi party in parliamentary elections in Czechoslovakia in 1935. More than 90% of the ethnic German population was forcibly expelled in 1945-48.
Art Deco:
One of my great-grandfathers came here from that part of Bohemia in the 1860s, age of 19. I thank him greatly for having the foresight to leave, for whatever reason.
But then I realized that his name has become synonymous for “surrender” and even (for some) “shortsided stupidity.” Actually, I don’t think that’s the whole story, …
The name Quisling lept to my mind as being synonymous with surrender, though reading a bit of Wiki material suggests that perhaps “traitor” is a more common interpretation. This Wiki factoid was interesting:
Chips Channon described how during the Norway Debate of 7–8 May 1940, he and other Conservative MPs who supported Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Neville Chamberlain called those who voted against a motion of no confidence “Quislings”.[7]
So …, Channon who had supported Chamberlain is here urging a vote of no confidence against Chamberlain, and calling those who refused the vote of no confidence, Quislings. Did I get that correct?
Quisling was a traitor. He was not a Norwegian government official at the time the country was occupied, but a ready and willing collaborator with the Nazis.
I think Chamberlain was also motivated by trying to avoid a reprise of WWI; the war to end all wars.
WWI bankrupted the UK and produced over a million UK military deaths (the death toll was higher for France and Germany). The death and destruction of this war was unparalleled in world history. And WWI had ended only 20 years earlier, so the horrors of WWI were still fresh in everybody’s mind.
I used to think Chamberlain was a big time loser; I no longer do.
After experiencing a conflict like WWI, I could understand why Chamberlain would give away too much in the hopes that another war could be averted.
Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf,” written in 1925 outlined pretty well Hitler’s goals for Germany.
Apparently nobody read it or if they did, it was not taken seriously.
Every once in a while a crazed dictator will literally tell the world what his goals are.
Hitler took power in 1933; WWII began in 1939 . In that 6 year period Hitler learned that he could pretty much do what he pleased and not get any push back from, specifically, the UK and France. His invasion of Poland finally caused the UK and France to declare a war.
Putin’s incremental steps leading to his invasion of Ukraine followed that same path.
“I thank him greatly for having the foresight to leave, for whatever reason.”
My grandfather came by himself to America at the age of 14 in 1900 from the Russian Empire town of Volkovysk, now in Belarus. When my father died about 25 years ago a friend of the family whose father also came from Volkovysk visited us sitting shiva. He had a book, the Volkovysk Yizkor Book, that described the history of the Jews in Volkovysk going back hundreds of years. A very interesting artifact even though I didn’t understand most of it since it was written in Yiddish.
But the last chapter was in English and described what happened after the German invasion in 1941. To make a long story short, the Jews of Volkovysk were rounded up, driven into underground bunkers for a few weeks, and then deported to the death camps thus ending Jewish life in Volkovysk. I had always known something like that must have happened but it was still pretty sobering to see it in black and white.
Churchill knew Chamberlain well and his assertions about him convey a man of sincere integrity.
But goodness alone cannot dispell evil for evil recognizes only greater strength.
I had always known something like that must have happened but it was still pretty sobering to see it in black and white.
My maternal grandparents came as children from a couple of Jewish towns in western Ukraine, Storozhynets and Radychiv, something I discovered from ancestry.com. I looked the towns up in Wikipedia. Not much on Radychiv, but on Storozhynets:
I too was grateful that my great-grandparents had the foresight to leave around 1910.
The actual fact is, though, that the people behind Hitler thought for sure he was over-reaching, and were prepared to remove him from power if there was ANY sign of resistance from the allies — remember, this was before the Blitzkrieg had shown how massively effective it was.
The whole enchilada — WWII, the Holocaust, ALL of it — might have been avoided had Chamberlain shown ANY kind of spine.
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to lose a fight if you get into it, you MUST STILL STAND YOUR GROUND.
This is all the more so with bullies — yeah, they may be forced to fight you, just to save their own face. But they’re less likely to pick you out the next time, because they know you’ll stand up to them, and they are generally cowards.
But in this case, the bully had no backing from his gang, and the gang was terrified of getting into a fight… so they would have pulled him away from the fight, if Chamberlain had had a spine of any sort.
It’s easy to make excuses, but, no. There is no excuse for what Chamberlain did. It was spineless cowardice of the worst sort.
Nothing that might have happened if Hitler, et al, had actually turned and fought was that bad, was anything they could not recover from. Moreover, if you’re going to have to fight someone, better to do it before they have built up their fighting machine to a higher level, when they are building faster than you are.
}}} Putin’s incremental steps leading to his invasion of Ukraine followed that same path.
And China’s are not too far behind.
“The actual fact is, though, that the people behind Hitler thought for sure he was over-reaching, and were prepared to remove him from power if there was ANY sign of resistance from the allies”
And was that known at the time?
Mike
And it continues.
https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/
Monday, March 07, 2022
In Ukraine, We Enter a More Brutal Stage
By guaranteeing Poland’s independence, Chamberlain and the French made a significant military mistake. Because Germany lies between France and Poland, Poland could only be defended if both countries were willing to invade Germany. They had no way to put armed forces in Poland to defend its borders as Germany controlled the Baltic Sea and all the air corridors to Poland. Had Britain sent military units to Poland before German attacked, Britain would have had no way to resupply them, re-enforce them or evacuate them if needed. The Allies were not willing to be seen as waging an offensive war for fear of alienating an isolationist America. The result was the Phony War until German was willing to attack.
I remember reading Shirer 60 years ago. I don’t think he ever addresses the issue of how the forces are to be supplied and re-enforced. Any British forces in eastern Europe are cut off and surrounded.
From the great British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle’s autobiography (_Home Is Where the Wind Blows_), a passage about Chamberlain:
“In retrospect, the only politician in the British government of the thirties about whom I have second thoughts is Neville Chamberlain. He became prime minister in May 1937 — which is to say, after the main mistakes of British foreign policy had already been made. To the extent that Chamberlain had been chancellor of the exchequer under Baldwin, he carried some responsibility for the previous mistakes; but I would suppose that, while a chancellor of the exchequer can make his views on foreign policy known, he cannot regard foreign policy as his primary concern, otherwise he would soon be at loggerheads with the foreign secretary. While the Chamberlain government of 1937 – 1939 outwardly pursued an appeasement policy, Britain underneath was actively preparing for war. The fighter planes and the radar screen that saved Britain in 1940 did not come out of nowhere. They were planned, designed, and manufactured by the Chamberlain and earlier governments. Britain survived the air battles of 1940 because the dates at which designs were frozen turned out to be optimally chosen. German designs were frozen a little earlier, and their products were therefore not quite so technically good — in the air, at any rate. All this eventually accrued to the advantage of Churchill’s government, which, in my opinion, did not have the same positive technical flair as was shown in the Chamberlain era. Churchill did things politically right but often technically wrong, whereas Chamberlain did things technically right but politically wrong.” [p. 115]
From earlier in the same chapter:
“From 1936 to 1939, we oscillated between a despairing hope that war might be avoided and the equally despairing conviction that, the sooner it came, the better. To many people, again including myself, it seemed that the reoccupation of the Rhineland provided Britain and France with a last opportunity for cutting the Nazis down to size without involving the world in a full-scale war. Disgust at the weakness of the British government was felt in many quarters. Ray Bell, later a Treasury mandarin and vice-president of the European Investment Bank, was a fellow student at Cambridge. His parents lived in Bradford, and, while on vacation in April 1936, he and I did a longish walk in the environs of Ilkley, just before returning to Cambridge for my last undergraduate term. I was invited to dinner that night at the Bell household, and I still remember the father saying, with intense regret, but prophetically: ‘If only Winston Churchill were prime minister now.'” [p. 109]
I read over the Christmas break “Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War”. It echos most of the comments and books above. It is a good read. One aspect that the book explored is that the British public earnestly did not want war. The crowds were delirious when Chamberlain waved his paper outside the airplane. Only after the perfidy of Hitler was revealed from the occupation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia did public opinion start to turn.
It is a fast read and informative.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/appeasement-chamberlain-hitler-churchill-and-the-road-to-war_tim-bouverie/23528057/item/51378815/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA95aRBhCsARIsAC2xvfwSerwCyZkImQPdYj0u0pY48vUiR-vc7pjGoo9BFDj7X7fJ0uGdL9YaAqlGEALw_wcB#idiq=51378815&edition=20706904
It’s easy to say that appeasement is bad, but I have often wondered what the best alternative was. What could Britain really do about it, invade Germany in 1938?
Neville was playing from a very bad hand, it seems to me, and it’s hard to blame him for losing the round.
And yet, and yet…
Hitler also miscalculated.
If Albert Speer is to be believed (and YMMV), Hitler didn’t think a major war would start until 1943 (IIRC), at which point Germany would be “ready”…or “more ready”—they didn’t do too badly in 1939-40, did they?…
(This according to Dutch historian Dan van der Vat in his biography of Speer, “The Good Nazi”.)
IOW, given the responses of both England and France to his policy of annexations in the preceding five years Hitler didn’t believe that the Anglo-French treaty to defend Poland would be honored.
(And in fact, I think it’s fair to say that England and France had hoped that their treaty with Poland would be sufficient as a “preventative” measure—would make Hitler think twice before continuing his expansion eastward…which was more wishful thinking and miscalculation, as it turned out…. IIRC, France was in fact not eager to honor the treaty but when England believed that the treaty HAD to be honored, France felt forced to join in.)
In any event, in preparation for attacking Poland Hitler first concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Stalin to divide Poland between them, Stalin having had “issues” of his own with England and France, believing, in spite of ongoing negotiations between him and them—to ally against Germany—that they were in fact angling to enable Hitler to attack HIM, instead of THEM…and so Stalin—extraordinary paranoiac that he was—“pre-empted” that perceived potential betrayal with one of his own: Molotov-Ribbentrop.
Wishful thinking. Miscalculations. Nothing new.
(Though it should be said that the year and eight month period between the pact and Operation Barbarossa DID enable Russia to prepare somewhat. OTOH, Stalin had just finished decimating his officers corps and, according to Solzhenitsyn, he was entirely blind-sided by Hitler, believing the latter to be his only true friend, though Solzhenitsyn may have been “merely” being ironic here; but perhaps not only ironic…)
History rhyming? Repeating? Other?
Chamberlain was dying of stomach cancer during 1937-1940. The pain could not have helped him keep a clear mind. I give him credit for buying what time he could.
Excellent comment, Paul.
IIRC, the plans for the Spitfire were ready by 1935. And the plane’s design and abilities were indeed miraculous.
Engaging in a bit of “post hoc” speculation, one wonders, when all is said and done, after the Rhineland, massive German rearmament and the Anschluss (and ensuing debacles, e.g., Czechoslovakia, not to mention developments in Italy and more peripherally, Spain), whether in fact WWII could have been avoided at all.
Or whether things HAD TO have happened the way they did.
One speaks if “if only” this or that had been done; “if only” governments responded with resolve, then Hitler could have been stopped, etc.
However, the governments of the western powers (England, France and let’s throw in the US as well) represented the wants/opinions/needs of their peoples—or most of them and their peoples wishes to avoid war.
Even when war was known—or should have been known—to have been inevitable (cf. Czechoslovakia), “the people” wished, desperately—wishfully—to avoid it. (There were, of course, some exceptions—some who saw that war WAS unavoidable; who COULD stare reality directly in the face.)
IOW (if such speculation is correct) Churchill could NOT have been voted (by his party) to replace Chamberlain earlier than he was. Militarization, conscription, stepped up military training could not, unfortunately, have been implemented that much earlier than it was, simply because the public, i.e., most of it (AND the politicians, or most of them) did not want to deal with this grim reality.
ONLY when war was perceived as unavoidable by the masses—ONLY when the war was actually upon them—did they realize what had to be done. And they then rolled up their sleeves and did it. But even then there were those, including in government, who believed that war could be avoided. That Hitler could be reasoned with.
This degrading of resolve (including military budgets), essentially an embrace of delusional thinking, would appear to be a general characteristic of democracies, (with exceptions, e.g., the US during—or at certain points during—the Cold War; along with other campaigns, e.g., Kuwait, Kosovo), but it’s something that has to be acknowledged and dealt with.
What Barry Meislin said.
In addition, the “Oh, there must be a way to avoid war, there MUST be a way to avoid war” delusion led to a worse delusion, that Germany hadn’t wanted war in 1914 (in fact, with the exception of the Kaiser, everyone in Germany’s govt. and military decision-making circles wanted war in 1914, and deliberately started war with Russia and France).
Similarly, France and Britain convinced themselves that Germany must regret that WWI occurred, when what Germany actually regretted was losing. And having convinced themselves they’d been stabbed in the back by Jews and socialists, the Germans were ready for another go. All this was intensified by Communist propaganda saying that WWI was started by greedy capitalists, when in fact all the decision makers of 1914 were various kinds of anti-capitalists.
But the French and British refused to believe the Germans wanted another war, once they thought they were ready. It wasn’t until the spring of 1939 that Britain faced reality, and France arguably never did.
What could Chamberlain due? In Munich, 1938, he could have said that invasion of Czechoslovakia meant war – and that the UK and France would declare war, and fight to uphold their treaty obligations.
Instead of a two-pronged blitzkrieg, the Nazis would be facing a fortified defense with lots of weapons and ammunition. So, not so different from Nato using Ukraine to fight superior Russia now, the UK would use Czechs & Slovaks to fight the Nazis. And move more quickly to the war footing that turned out to be inevitable…
Except, had Chamberlain not agreed with Hitler at the Munich Betrayal, it’s possible Hitler would merely wait and not invade for a few months of low-shooting war on all sides.
Should’a, could’a, maybe would’a. Alt-history.
But what are the lessons?
Do not appease aggressive bullies.
It wasn’t like Chamberlain had no one in Britain telling him what a threat Hitler was. The stark difference is kind of hard to miss.
Chamberlain is regarded as a fool because he acted like a fool
He didn’t have to claim to have insured peace in our time. That was the ultimate in unenforced errors. He over-promised and under-delivered. Bigly.
That Churchill chose to be classy after his death tells us more about Winston than it does Neville. Not to mention that he had a war to win and unnecessarily alienating the friends of the deceased served no purpose.
Chamberlain was sincere. But he was foolish and naive.
“But he was foolish and naive.”
And if someone like Winston Churchill had been in office during the Cuban Missle Crisis, tens of millions of people could have died.
There’s an inherent bias here. Trying to avoid war and failing is for some reason classified as a greater failure than running headfirst into war.
Mike
Counter factuals and alternate history are notoriously hard to prove. Just saying ….
By guaranteeing Poland’s independence, Chamberlain and the French made a significant military mistake.
I agree the Polish guarantee was Chamberlain’s real mistake. That assumes rearmament would have continued, of course. There was no chance that France would agree to attack Germany in 1938 or 39. Hitler would probably have attacked France when he did in 1940 but we cannot know for sure.
Mike,
you completely failed to address my point. Try harder.
Chamberlain made the most incredibly stupid and hubristic declaration of accomplishment in history. That makes him a fool.
MBunge:
I’m curious what policy of Churchill’s during WWII or the Cold War makes you say that about the Cuban missile crisis and Churchill?
stan:
Churchill had criticized Chamberlain when Chamberlain was in power, so whatever alienation had occurred had already occurred. But once war began, Chamberlain – as Churchill mentions in his speech – participated in the defense of Britain with vigor and helped Churchill and the war effort. Churchill was not just being polite.
“I’m curious what policy of Churchill’s during WWII or the Cold War makes you say that about the Cuban missile crisis and Churchill?”
From the JFK museum website:
“No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the naval blockade and US demands. But the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.”
Would Churchill have made that deal? Would he have trusted the Soviets to keep up their end? To echo that line from Braveheart, it’s easy to admire uncompromising men until they get you and everyone you’ve ever loved killed.
Winston Churchill was exactly the right man to save the civilized world in the mid-20th century, but if you think a man like him is ALWAYS the right choice for EVERY situation, you’re a fool.
Mike
“Chamberlain made the most incredibly stupid and hubristic declaration of accomplishment in history. That makes him a fool.”
I’ll try harder to engage you on the infantile level you seem to understand history. Chamberlain was wrong but using 20/20 hindsight to proclaim the only problem was his foolishness is a shallow and ultimately useless analysis of the man and his time.
Mike
Bunge:
Try looking in an
mirror when you throw out “always” and “every” statements, you may see The Scarecrow staring back at you.
MBunge:
What Churchill did during WWII to defend Britain from a conventional war takeover by the Germans (or to warn against Germany prior to that) has no connection to what he would have done in the completely different nuclear world and nuclear standoff with the USSR.
Neither you nor anyone else has a clue what he would have done. But Churchill was neither an appeaser nor suicidal.Maybe with Churchill at the helm, the standoff wouldn’t even have happened, because you may recall that most people thought Khrushchev did what he did because he perceived JFK as immature and weak. Churchill was neither.
“Counter factuals and alternate history are notoriously hard to prove”
Try impossible. 99% of “alternate history” is somebody trying to squeeze yesterday’s events into today’s politics.
Bunge: your reply did not prove one single thing about Churchill. That is coming totally out of your own head.
Chamberlain claiming to insure peace in our time was a stupid, over-the-top, completely unnecessary brag.
I am shocked, appalled and even awed that anyone capable of graduating high school could disagree. There must be some really, really serious psychological issues at work here. C’mon man. It’s okay to admit error. You can, if you try.
Let’s start with the simple stuff. Explain why Chamberlain had no choice but to make such an extreme claim. Surely you recognize that significantly less grandiose assessments were available.
stan:
Chamberlain was trying to calm people.
In addition, I can’t quite imagine anyone who had done what he did coming back and saying something like, “I don’t trust Hitler but I had to appease him because we’re not strong enough yet to fight him.”
I also can’t quite imagine anyone in his position saying something like “Well, maybe giving away the Sudetenland will work to stem the tide of war against this terrible person. I’m not sure, but I’m hoping for the best.”
Lastly, if you look at his actual speech, I don’t think it sounds like some over-the-top brag. He is hopeful but does not state it as an absolute. Instead he uses phrases such as ” in my view” and “I believe it is peace for our time.”
Lastly, what is the following about from you?:
Quit insulting people like that.
Did you even go back and read Chamberlain’s speech? Perhaps it is you who needs to admit error? Not the possible error of believing what you believe about Chamberlain, but the error of insulting anyone who disagrees with you about it.
The best “concession speech”, if that is what it is called in Britain, ever was Chamberlain’s when Churchill was voted in. Look it up. It is a masterpiece of humility and support for the new leader. Would that we had such levelheadedness (is that even a word?) in our country today.
Look it up. It is a masterpiece of humility and support for the new leader. Would that we had such levelheadedness (is that even a word?) in our country today.
CS Lewis:
““We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
I’m not sure there’s been a time in our history when our political class has been grosser.