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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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That was being done all over England. Shelters were being put up. They were thinking in terms of the kind of bombing that they had known at the end of the First World War, which, of course, was not at all what came when it did come. It was so much worse.

However, people in this country were not so anti-Munich. They were certainly in favor of keeping off this war. If Chamberlain could keep it off, that was fine. There was a certain unrealistic quality in the attitude which thought that Chamberlain could do it with his umbrella and by reason. You heard it expressed many times, “These Germans are no fools. They are clever, intelligent, highly educated and well-informed people. Certainly they're not going to start something they can't finish. This new political leader, Hitler, is a bombastic kind of a bully, but the Germans aren't going to walk into a war. They know what the odds are. They know how disastrous it will be. He may be able to get a lot of favors by talking big and frighten people into concessions, but certainly the Germans are too intelligent to start a war. It will ruin them more than it will ruin anybody else.” That was the general attitude, belief that it just couldn't happen. There had to be another way out. You heard again and again,





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