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All these pronouncements were carefully timed and coordinated as an official buildup for the Prime Minister's own week-end speech before the Birmingham Jewelers' and Silversmiths' Association, a trade guild before which his halfbrother, Sir Austen Chamberlain, and his father, old Joseph Chamberlain, got off some of their most important political utterances. Neville Chamberlain's speech, in turn, was a carefully timed prelude to Chancellor Hitler's speech before the Reichstag this week. The Prime Minister lauded Premier Mussolini's "peace" efforts at Munich and repeated his assertion that the policy of "appeasement" would be pushed as soon as he received a "sign" from uncooperative Adolf Hitler. But the best-received part of his speech was devoted to a rosy picture of Britain's rearmament. Wildly applauded was the deferential Prime Minister when he thumped: "Our motto is not defiance and—mark my words—it is not deference either. It is defense!"