Abstract
‘YOU have everything in your own hands now — for a time — and you can do anything you like. Use that time well, for it won’t last’, had been Lord Baldwin’s advice to Mr. Chamberlain in congratulating him on his return from Munich,1 and it is true that, in certain respects, the Prime Minister took this advice to heart. He had received other wise counsel as well. Driving back to London from Heston on that great and exalted afternoon of September 30, Lord Halifax had made two important suggestions to Mr. Chamberlain — one negative, the other positive; first, that, if pressed by the Conservative Central Office to exploit his present overwhelming popularity to have a ‘snap’ General Election, he should refuse; and secondly, that he should now take the action he had intended to take should war have come and reconstitute his Cabinet as a truly National Government by bringing into it such outstanding Conservative figures as Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Anthony Eden and Lord Cranborne, and also Leaders of the Labour and Liberal Parties if they would consent to join.2
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