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But Lord Irwin made British rule less onerous for India. He acknowledged that India had a Nationalist movement afoot. He was willing to work on a long-term basis, for some measure of self-government—with many safeguards for Britain. He made the British Government's historic statement on Indian home rule: "I am authorized on behalf of His Majesty's Government to state clearly . . . that the natural issue of India's constitutional progress is the attainment of dominion status." When he left India the British press almost unanimously acclaimed him as having saved India from a blood bath.
Appeasing. Having had potentates at his beck & call, he returned to England to a new triumph. He was at last elected Joint Master of the Middleton Hunt. In 1932, he got back his old job on the Board of Education; in 1935 he spent a few months as War Secretary (a job he did not like); later that year he became Lord Privy Seal. That being a job of few duties, Lord Halifax began, from time to time, to pinch-hit for Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden when Mr. Eden was away on diplomatic trips. Soon he was to do more than pinch-hit. On the same day that Adolf Hitler mocked Mr. Eden in a Reichstag speech, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided to change Foreign Secretaries.
By that time the sands of peace had almost run out. The Prime Minister, with his faithful civil servant Sir Horace Wilson as economic adviser, set out to direct foreign policy along the lines he had chosen when he parted with Anthony Eden. To carry out that policy he had to have a man who had the sympathy and respect of both friends and foes of appeasement.
During the now well-known diplomatic negotiations that went on & on till peace finally collapsed, Viscount Halifax occupied a unique place as Foreign Secretary. Even at the time of Munich he had the sympathy and respect of such men as (appeaser) Sir John Simon and (vigorous anti-appeaser) Winston Churchill. To all of them he was a sort of civil servant of the highest order. Winston Churchill recently called him "a gentleman, a fox hunter, a friend."
War Diplomacy. His servant calls the Foreign Secretary at 7 in the morning but he does not breakfast until 8:45, for like his father he goes to church before breakfast. From 9:30 in the morning till 11:30 at night he is occupied at home, at the Foreign Office, across the street at the Prime Minister's (No. 10 Downing Street) or in the House of Lords. He allows himself only about an hour out for lunch and the same amount of time for dinner. The rest of his day is work. It is no life for a fox-hunting gentleman, but to a man of his vanishing species, it is what one does for his country.
After Ethiopia and Spain, after Munich and the rape of Czecho-Slovakia, after the final diplomatic defeat of letting Russia sign with Germany instead of the Allies—British diplomacy came to World War II with a minus score. But since war began British diplomacy has a wholly different record.
Germany has lost Italy and gained no new allies. Britain cemented friendship with Rumania and Turkey. The Scandinavian democracies, maintaining a poker-faced neutrality, did their best to hide their patent sympathies. A friendly U. S. repealed its arms embargo. Lord Halifax's diplomatic machine is in fine fettle.