DEFENCE OF MUNICH AGREEMENT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21184, 3 November 1938, Page 7

DEFENCE OF MUNICH AGREEMENT

LABOUR ATTACK ANSWERED BY PRIME MINISTER “ALTERNATIVE WAS WAR” British Official Wireless (Received November 2, 6.30 p.m.) RUGBY, November 1. Rising after the Leader of the Opposition (Mr C. R. Attlee) in the general debate on the motion for the adjournment of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister (Mr Neville Chamberlain) answered Mr Attlee’s criticism regarding the Munich agreement. Mr Chamberlain condemned the tendency to describe the agreement as the defeat of democracy or the cause of law and order. He regarded it, on the contrary, as a step to carry out by discussion between the democracies and totalitarian States, an agreed solution of a problem to which the alternative appeared to be the use of force. Instead of the use of force, the Prime Minister claimed, the agreement had been carried out in an orderly manner. He denied the right of opponents to criticise the results of the agreement, in which it had only been possible to lay down general outlines, leaving to the International Commission the filling in of the details, unless these critics were prepared to say that they would have accepted the alternative of war.

After explaining the conditions in which the proposal for plebiscites had been abandoned as a result of the agreement reached between the Germans and Czechs, Mr Chamberlain said that Mr Attlee could not claim that the right of option provided for in the Munich agreement was illusory, since the German and Czech Commission had not yet formulated its conclusions for submission to the International Commission.