For well over two hundred years my family has lived in the same village. My grandfather and father were tenant farmers and small tradesmen. I grew up on a farm on the chalk hills of south England. Not a very good farm, not too wel] fernied perhaps, certainly not very profitable; But it has been ours beyond dispute as long as we paid our rent and kept the King's peace. The hills I farm were ploughed before history. The village must have been about the same size at the time of the Domesday Book. All my life I have had that background and a tradition of permanence and freedom. I had not any doubt but that Germany's claims could be settled by reasonable men talking together. It is like that we have always settled hings in England—soberly, with mutual respect and trust in each other's word.
The attack on Czechoslovakia was a rude shock to me. Even when war came I thought we could remain calm and play it according to fixed rules—as if it were a game. It's only recently that' I've realized what it means. In the beginning, I just went on with my job in the reserved occupation of agriculture. and left the rest to the Army, Navy and Air Force. Now I have talked to the men of the B.E.F. back from Flanders: fellows with whom I have played hockey and cricket in peace time; decent, kindly chaps who like a glass of beer; boys who played.a good clean sporting game and held no malice for hard knocks. Some are dead, some maimed, all had that in their eyes which
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.