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From that point on, however, Mr. Eden's speech trailed off into saying that the White Paper sent to Adolf Hitler contained only "proposals, and they have never been an ultimatum. ... I freely admit it is not impossible to find faults with the White Paper. I could find a few myself."
Leaving Adolf Hitler to find the rest, Anthony Eden and Stanley Baldwin ended the speech in an affecting little British tableau, the Prime Minister putting a fatherly arm around the slim Foreign Secretary's shoulder and clapping him on the back with repeated little pats while the Conservative Party raised cheer on cheer.
"Definitely Not." No vote of confidence was asked by His Majesty's Government, but the conclusion of the debate contained its only clear-cut utterances:
His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, replying officially to Mr. Eden's speech in the person of the last Labor Cabinet's Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Hugh Dalton: "Great Britain should tell the German people in friendship and frankness that their political and economic equality is recognized. But that does not mean that we recognize the right of any nation to an overbearing, brutal predominance. Germany should be told that if she returns to the League she will have no need for overpowering armaments because she will be collectively guaranteed as to the inviolability of all her frontiers.
"If Germany refuses, other countries must organize peace without her and Britain must make it clear that Germany is to have no free hand to attack Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria or Russia. If Britain speaks plainly in Europe there can be no war."
Winston Churchill: "The German people cannot be blamed for enjoying Hitler's victories. Where will it be next? Austria or Memel? What other disputed areas has Hitler already in view?
"You must invite Germany to state her grievances, lay them on the Council board and let us have them out, but don't let us have them out as if we are a rabble fleeing before forces we cannot resist!"
His Majesty's Government, in the person of the Chancellor of the Exchequer: "It does not follow because particular proposals [the White Paper] here are rejected by Germany that the negotiations have failed. . . . On the contrary, we are going to have further proposals, and we have to consider what is in them. The fact that we have to establish or continue contact between the general staffs of Britain, France and Belgium does not involve us in any obligation to undertake, in company with France, expulsion of German troops from the Rhineland. Most definitely not!"
If Britain's "Most Definitely Not!" was disheartening to harassed Belgians, it was nonetheless of little solace to Germans this week when it appeared that Anglo-Franco-Belgian conversations would take place over the vehement protests of Ambassador von Ribbentrop.