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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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confusing it all was. Neville Chamberlain was almost as popular in the USA as he was in England. I was in England briefly at that time and Chamberlain was the guardian angel with an umbrella. He had kept off war “Peace in our time” as Ramsay MacDonald used to say. There was a feeling that Chamberlain, with his umbrella, had done it. There were an awful lot of good people who participated in that - not only Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, but people like Sam Hoare. Certainly during the period when these negotiations were going on there were many people in favor of them.

Shortly before Munich, in the summer of '38, one of the things that was disturbing to a traveler who knew London well was to see men digging trenches in St. James's Par and in the Green Park. You suddenly realized that somebody in high authority thought there was danger. Up until that time I, and I suppose a lot of other people, thought, “This will pass. This is talk. This crowd in Germany are just talking, open threats. Nothing is going to happen.” But when I saw English soldiers and park laborers engaged in digging trenches, taking down iron railings that would have impeded the flow of people into the parks to get into the trenches, one realized how serious it was.





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