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