By Lord Camrose.
The War Illustrated, Volume 3, No. 65, Page 582, November 29, 1940.

Mr. Chamberlain who was Britain’s Prime Minister on the fateful September 3, 1939, and for the war’s first eight months, died on November 9, 1940. The words of appreciation that follow are reproduced here by courtesy of the "Daily Telegraph."

The ceremony at Westminster Abbey on November 14 saw the final passing from our midst of one of the most honest, self-sacrificing statesmen who ever achieved the glory of being First Prime Minister of the Crown in this country.

Perhaps history will say that Neville Chamberlain was one of the most misunderstood statesmen of this country. After Munich many thousands of people made it definitely their opinion that Chamberlain was a political weakling; that he feared Hitler and his power, that he thought our only course was to conciliate the monster in any and every way.

Nothing could have been more untrue. Munich undoubtedly crystallized his view of Hitler and his works, but fear was never the motive which actuated his policy towards Hitler or, indeed, towards anything else. He was not built that way. Neville Chamberlain was the type of the solid, slow but sure reasoning Englishman who has made the British Empire what it is today. There was nothing sham about him in any way shape or form. Shy, unassuming, diffident of his own abilities, he was strong as steel when his mind was made up, and as determined, dogged and true as any statesmen England has ever possessed.

What the Prime Minister said of his conduct on May 8, when the House of Commons registered its vote against him in partial but convincing form, characterized with exactitude the man Chamberlain was. Those who were present in the House that night will never forget the scene. The debate had travelled far from the real subject. He and his Government had been blamed for crimes which were not theirs at all. Mr. Lloyd George stung him to the remark-persistently misconstrued by subsequent speakers - "Even I have my friends in the House, and we shall see what they think when the vote comes." Sir Samuel Hoare had delivered a speech which left the House freezingly cold and unsymphathetic, and Mr. Churchill, who was left with a difficult enough task. He vigorously defended the Government policy, for the rights and wrongs of which he took his full share of responsibility; but the vote revealed a sensational fall in the Government majority.

There were loud cheers and counter cheers. Chamberlain rose from his seat on the Front Bench and walked slowly out of the House. As he went his followers, including men who had given an adverse vote, rose and cheered him, waving their order papers in the air. It was an expression of respect and esteem such as the House has seldom seen. It was as though those who had voted against him wished him to know how much they regretted having to do so, and the conversation in a crowded and excited Lobby afterwards showed that the vote was against the Government and not the Leader.

It was Chamberlain’s firm intention right from the early days of 1939 that, if war came, he would offer Winston Churchill a seat in the War Cabinet. Indeed, I can go farther, and say from personal knowledge that it was his original intention when he came into power to make the offer as soon as he had felt his feet as leader. He had always the greatest admiration for Churchill, but a fear of his restless genius in a peacetime Cabinet. When war came he acted on his preconceived plan. Winston was first of all to be a Minister without portfolio; but when it was decided that all the Service Ministers must be in the War Cabinet he became the First Lord instead.

Almost from the very first the two men achieved the kind of association that one would have thought impossible taking into account the relations between them for the last few years. They worked together in absolute accord; each seemed to find in the other the complement of himself. Chamberlain immediately saw in Winston the forceful, imaginative genius which no other member has become so manifest since he became First Minister of the Crown. On the other hand, Winston learned to respect the slower, more precise and steady qualities traditional in the Chamberlain family.

They worked together for eight months with a loyalty and understanding of the most perfect character and, after the first months, passed almost unconsciously to terms of intimacy and friendship. When the change came, and the chief became the assistant for the brief time fate permitted, the same loyalty and unity existed between them.

In the early days of the war Churchill quickly stood out as the leading figure in the Government. In the short space of time given to him after the advent to power of the man who had become a close and warm friend, Chamberlain was perhaps the most valuable member of Churchill’s Government. He supplied ability of a kind that every Government needs, and the new Prime Minister recognized the fact in no uncertain manner.

The combination of the two men was a wonderful thing for the country, and the Prime Minister made no secret of the trust he reposed in his former chief’s sagacity and sure-mindedness. The letters which passed between the two men when the state of Chamberlain’s health compelled his resignation were not the ordinary letters that are usually penned on such occasions; they were sincere expressions of mutual esteem and loyalty, every word of which came from the hearts of the writers.

Of Neville Chamberlain it has been said that he was cold, harsh and pitiless. Nothing could have been more wrong. Naturally of a modest and diffident nature, he possessed none of that joy of the clash of private debate and discussion so beloved of the ordinary politician, and his powers of putting his real personality across to his followers and to the public were limited thereby. In him capacity for self-assertion did not exist. When he did enter the discussion, clearness of mind and powers of logical reasoning quickly made him recognized; but he had none of the exhilaration in convivial discussion which has been so marked a habit in English political life and in which so many have excelled.

He was fond of good music and his knowledge of natural history was unusually great. But he was never, and never could have been what is called a good "mixer." Few of the Members of the House of Commons really knew what was behind the seemingly cold façade which he presented in his public life. Those who did never ceased to regret that it was not possible to exhibit the kind and tolerant nature which was really his.

Munich will be discussed and debated for many years to come. It is already one of the landmarks in our history, s cross-roads in the terrible sequence which has led to the gigantic struggle on which we are engaged today. Chamberlain may have done the only thing possible in the circumstances or he may have been totally mistaken in his whole policy; the argument on that will never cease. But nothing could be more true than the Prime Minister’s statement: "Whatever else history may or may not say about these tremendous, terrible years, Neville Chamberlain acted in perfect sincerity according to his lights."

No statesman could earn a better epitaph than that.