Death of a Peacemaker
In the old Norman Church of St.Michael's, at Oldham, in Hampshire. England, a congregation of 14countryfolk prayed last Sunday evening for the soul of Arthur NevilleChamberlain. The village vicar, the Rev. H. R. P. Tringham, took as thetext of his sermon, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall becalled the children of God." Said the vicar in his sermon: "No onelabored more hard, or so spared himself rest, to obtain for you and meand for all fellow men the blessings of peace. Although it seemed afailure, it was a grand failure."
Even to some of NevilleChamberlain's neighbors, this seemed too charitable a judgment of theman who had just died beneath the camouflaged roof of a cottage nearthe church. For the grandeur of Neville Chamberlain's failure might bethe grandeur of an Empire's fall. And its cause was not grandeur, oreven breadth, of vision; its cause was narrowness of mind.
Nature had done nothing dramatic for Mr. Chamberlain. He was tall andstringy, with the distinction of being the only British statesman whocould sing Negro spirituals , and the biggest feet in the Cabinet. Healso had gout and bunions. Clement Attlee once said that Chamberlain'ssmile reminded him of the silver handles of a coffin. A kindlier womansaid his eyes were "cold and smiling, like a Scandinavianriver."
Within his range he thought clearly and energetically, buthis ideas were the liberal ideas of the late 19th Century. His father,"Old Joe" Chamberlain, had represented the passing of rulefrom the aristocracy to the mercantile class. When Neville Chamberlainentered politics at the age of 42 his mind was already set inmercantile ways—the ways of negotiation, compromise and trade.
Groomed for business, he went into politics by way of the BirminghamCity Council. That was in 1911, the year he married Annie Vere Cole,and during his long climb to the top she encouraged, guided and warnedhim. She remembered names he forgot, supplied the human touch that waslacking in his personality.Although he was eclipsed for years by his more colorful half-brotherAusten, just before Sir Austen's death he rose rapidly.When he succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937, the LondonStar characterized him as "practical as a plumber, precise as atimetable."
But in the stern test of events the plumbing provedout of order, the timetable out of date. The love of Empire which hadcaused Father Joe to break with Gladstone over Home Rule for Irelandwas the driving force of Neville Chamberlain's life. It was a perverseand shortsighted love. It was said that he would sacrifice, not onlyEthiopia, Spain and Czecho-Slovakia, but the half of the world that wasnot Britain's, to save the British Empire. Alert to the danger of war,he made it his policy to avert war at all costs —even, as it turnedout, at the cost of making it inevitable. His failure at Munich was alugubrious failure to realize that Hitler was not an English gentleman.As Alfred Duff Cooper later said, "Chamberlain had never metanybody in Birmingham who in the least resembled Adolf Hitler."
His failure after Munich was less spectacular, but more costly. Notonly was war hateful to him, but all military and naval matters weredistasteful. When Hitler broke his word of honor as a gentleman andoccupied the rest of Czecho-Slovakia, Chamberlain determined thatBritain must rearm. But he believed that rearmament would be used fornegotiation, not for war. And so the rearmament of Britain was mostlyon paper, and Hitler also knew that.
Chamberlain was too stubborn to quit as Prime Minister until he wasforced to quit, too stubborn to quit the Government then. His lastmonths were bitter. The cancer that gnawed at his vitals was a part ofhis personal feud with Hitler, and like most people who have thatdisease he clung to life while hating it. When it became clear that hisoperation had not saved his life for long, he resigned from the Cabinetat last.
When they moved him from London to his aunt's house in Hampshire, heknew he was dying, but still he ordered the secret kept. He was tooproud to ask for sympathy. He lay in a room whose windows looked out ona grove of larch trees, with placid fields beyond. His wife stayed withhim. Occasionally his thin lips curled back from his long, uneven teethin a grimace of pain. Once a German airman flew over Oldharn Villageand dropped a rack of bombs. One fell within 40 yards of whereChamberlain lay and the man who had said "I think it is peace in ourtime" shuddered. When the end was near they gave him drugs to dull thepain. Later he sank into a coma. After a while he died.
One of his friends had said of him: "Neville is a man to die with, butnot for." Chamberlain had died for his country, in his own queer,lonely way, while his country still fought for its life. It was toosoon to know whether the life and death of Neville Chamberlain was thetragedy of a man and a class, or of a nation, an empire and a race.
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