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Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

38 quotes

“Instead of deluding public opinion with a notion that a sufficient application of force will provide a remedy, a wiser course would be to set about taking such steps as may be the means of recovering that consent without which society in Ireland cannot exist...[an offer should be made to the Irish] conceived on the most generous lines.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Irish insurgency after the Great War, quoted in Lord Birkenhead, Halifax (1965), pp. 121-122
“Though I am, as you know, a pacifist by nature, I am not disposed to go to all lengths to meet people who seem to be behaving with utter unreason.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to William Wedgwood Benn, quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (1965), p. 275
“I am authorized on behalf of His Majesty's Government to state clearly that in their judgment it is implicit in the declaration of 1917 that the natural issue of India's constitutional progress, as there contemplated, is the attainment of Dominion status.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement in a Gazette of India Extraordinary (31 October 1929), quoted in The Times (1 November 1929), p. 16
“[It is] a question of personal appeal and conviction, rather than any argument. The cards I fancy are sympathy, understanding of his hopes, suspicions and disappointments, but above all, striving to convey to him, through what one says, a real echo of the sincerity that pervaded your doings in London.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter (16 February 1931), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (1965), p. 296
“[The Hoare-Laval proposals] were not so frightfully different from those put forward by the Committee of Five [of the League of Nations]. But the latter were of respectable parentage: and the Paris ones were too much like the off-the-stage arrangements of nineteenth-century diplomacy.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In 1935. Quoted in Keith Feiling, A Life of Neville Chamberlain (1970), p. 275
“Nationalism and Racialism is a powerful force but I can't feel that it's either unnatural or immoral! I cannot myself doubt that these fellows are genuine haters of Communism, etc.! And I daresay if we were in their position we might feel the same!”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Stanley Baldwin (15 November 1937), quoted in Andrew Roberts ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), p. 282
“Hitler was on the whole quiet and restrained, except now and again when he got excited; over Russia or the Press. I can quite see why he is a popular speaker; very much alive, eyes, which I was surprised were blue, moving about all the time, points in the argument reinforced by sharp gestures of the hands. And the play of emotion—sardonic humour, scorn, something almost wistful—is rapid.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), pp. 188
“Nothing was more likely to aggravate the difficulties of the present situation than any suggestions that our ultimate objective was to unite France, Italy and ourselves against Germany.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (15 March 1938), quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (1972), p. 450
“[W]e are all alike determined to throw all our weight on the side of securing world peace through respect for law based on just settlements. We have no use for a world society in which law would be expected to be the obedient handmaid of lawless force; and we are all resolved to preserve British rights and liberties against attack, from whatever quarter within or without the State these may come.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (21 June 1938), quoted in The Times (22 June 1938), p. 18
“[A] great mistake would be made abroad if it was ever thought that our domestic controversies upon the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy would in the least degree affect the primary instinct of our people to stand solidly together in any real emergency. Both our history and our character had given us a sense of community which, while enabling us to face facts and make peaceful changes, protected us from being revolutionary.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (21 June 1938), quoted in The Times (22 June 1938), p. 18
“Herr Hitler was possibly or even probably mad.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (12 September 1938), quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (1972), p. 521
“[O]ne of the principal lessons of these events is that the diplomacy of any nation can only be commensurate with its strength, and that if we desire this country to exercise its full influence in world affairs, the first thing that we have to do is to ensure that it is in all ways fully and rapidly equipped to do so.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords on the Munich Agreement (3 October 1938)
“In a time of crisis, with grave questions demanding urgent answer at every moment, no body of men would dare claim to be judged infallible. There was indeed no clear way, but almost always a hideous choice of evils. I can only know, for myself, that my mind will be at rest for having taken no decision inconsistent with what on all the facts I felt right.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords on the Munich Agreement (3 October 1938)
“A year ago we had undertaken no specific commitments on the Continent of Europe, beyond those which had then existed. ... To-day we are bound by new agreements for mutual defence with Poland and Turkey; we have guaranteed assistance to Greece and Rumania against aggression. ... We know that, if the security and independence of other countries are to disappear, our own security and our own independence will be gravely threatened. We know that if international law and order is to be preserved, we must be prepared to fight in its defence.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
“What is also now fully and universally accepted in this country, but what may not even yet be as well understood elsewhere, is that, in the event of further aggression, we are resolved to use at once the whole of our strength in fulfilment of our pledges to resist it.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
“At this moment the doctrine of force bars the way to settlement and fills the world with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. But if the doctrine of force were once abandoned, so that the fear of war that stalks the world was lifted, all outstanding questions would become easier to solve.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
“The threat of military force is holding the world to ransom, and our immediate task is...to resist aggression.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
“The racial doctrine, as interpreted in the Nazi creed, may be, and in my view is, sheer primitive nonsense; and we are no more prepared to admit German superiority of race than we are concerned to assert our own. ... when this doctrine is invoked in justification of the oppression of other races it becomes a crime against humanity.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
“My message to you to-day...is to be so proud of the race to which you belong that you will be as jealous of its honour as you are of its safety, and that you will fight for both with equal determination. The struggle will be arduous, it may be long, and it will certainly demand of our nation that it should withhold nothing that may contribute to our strength.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
“[W]e had to face the fact that it was not so much now a question of imposing a complete defeat on Germany but of safeguarding the independence of our own Empire and if possible that of France.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (26 May 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), p. 216
“[I]f he [Mussolini] would use his influence [on Hitler] to get reasonable terms which did not menace our independence and offered a prospect of a just and durable settlement of Europe we would try and meet his own claims. ... If the terms were impossible we could always reject them.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (26 May 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), pp. 216–217
“[I]f we got to the point of discussing the terms of a general settlement and found that we could obtain terms which did not postulate the destruction of our independence, we should be foolish if we did not accept them.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (26 May 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), p. 218
“[Churchill's plan] meant that the future of the country turned on whether the enemy's bombs happened to hit our aircraft factories. ... he was prepared to take that risk if our independence was at stake; but if it was not at stake he would think it right to accept an offer which would save the country from avoidable disaster.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (27 May 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), p. 220
“[W]e should be prepared to say that we were prepared to fight to the death for our independence, but that, provided this could be secured, there were certain concessions that we were prepared to make to Italy.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the War Cabinet (28 May 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), p. 224
“If only we could find out for certain where Hitler and Mussolini are meeting tomorrow, and get one well-placed bomb, then the world might really take on a different appearance.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (17 June 1940), quoted in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’: The Life of Lord Halifax (1997), p. 237
“Bad faith, cruelty, crime become right by the fact that it is he, Hitler, who ordains them. That is the fundamental challenge of anti-Christ; which it is our duty as Christians to fight with all our power. The peoples of the British Commonwealth, along with all those who love truth and justice and freedom, will never accept this new world of Hitler's. Free men, not slaves; free nations, not German vassals; a community of nations, freely cooperating for the good of all—these are the pillars of the new and better order that the British people wish to see.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast (22 July 1940), quoted in The Times (23 July 1940), p. 5
“Hitler may plant the swastika where he will, but unless he can sap the strength of Britain the foundations of his Empire are built on sand. In their hearts the peoples that he has beaten down curse him and pray that his attacks may be broken on the defences of our island fortress. They long for the day when we shall sally forth and return blow for blow. We shall assuredly not disappoint them. Then will come the day of final reckoning when Hitler's mad plans for Europe will be shattered by the unconquerable passion of man for freedom.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast (22 July 1940), quoted in The Times (23 July 1940), p. 5
“The advent of Hitler to power in 1933 had coincided with a high tide of wholly irrational pacifist sentiment in Britain, which caused profound damage both at home and abroad. At home it immensely aggravated the difficulty, great in any case it was bound to be, of bringing the British people to appreciate and face up to the new situation which Hitler was creating: abroad it doubtless served to tempt him and others to suppose that in shaping their policies this country need not be too seriously regarded.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fulness of Days (1957), p. 181
“In the name of Indian national life, in the name of religion, I appeal to all in each of the two countries who hold position...let them begin each in their own community to work untiringly towards this end: boldly to repudiate feelings of hatred and intolerance, actively to condemn and suppress acts of violence and aggression, earnestly to strive to exorcise suspicions...I appeal in the name of national life because communal tension is eating into it as a canker...I appeal in the name of religion because I can appeal to nothing nobler, and because religion is the language of the soul, and it is a change of soul that India needs today.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech as Viceroy of India (1926), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (1965), pp. 223-234
“After a day in Berlin I was taken off to Berchtesgaden which we reached after a night in the special train, and were driven by what I assumed to be storm-troopers straight up to Hitler's chalet. Snow was on the ground and a path had been swept up to the steep steps to the house. As I looked out of the car window, on eye level, I saw in the middle of this swept path a pair of black trousered legs, finishing up in silk socks and pumps. I assumed this was a footman who had come down to help me out of the car and up the steps, and was proceeding in leisurely fashion to get myself out of the car when I heard Von Neurath or somebody throwing a hoarse whisper at my ear of ‘Der Führer, der Führer’; and it then dawned upon me that the legs were not the legs of a footman, but of Hitler.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), p. 185
“Hitler invited me to begin our discussion, which I did by thanking him for giving me this opportunity. I hoped it might be the means of creating better understanding between our two countries. The feeling of His Majesty's Government was that it ought to be within our power, if we could once come to a fairly complete appreciation of each other's position, and if we were both prepared to work together for the cause of peace, to make a large contribution to it. Although there was much in the Nazi system that profoundly offended British opinion, I was not blind to what he (Hitler) had done for Germany, and to the achievement from his point of view of keeping Communism out of his country.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), p. 185
“He [Hitler] did not challenge this and said that formal agreement between the four Powers [Britain, France, Germany and Italy] might not be very difficult to achieve. It would not, however, be worth much unless it took account of realities, even if unpleasant. Germany had had to recognise such a reality in the shape of Poland; and we all had to recognise such a reality in acknowledging Germany to be a great Power; we had to get away from the Versailles mentality and recognise that the world could never remain in statu quo. To this I replied that nobody wished to treat Germany as anything but a great Power, and that nobody in their senses supposed the world could stay as it was for ever. The whole point was how changes were to be brought about. This led him to say that there were two, and only two, alternatives: the free play of forces that meant war; and settlement by reason. The world had had experience of the first: was it able to prefer the second?”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), pp. 185-186
“He [Hitler] then asked me what other problems there were between us... I replied that British opinion would be glad to know what might be his present attitude to the League of Nations and to Disarmament. There were no doubt other questions arising out of the Versailles settlement which were capable of causing trouble if they were unwisely handled:—Danzig, Austria, Czechoslovakia. On all these matters we were not necessarily concerned to stand for the status quo as of to-day, but we were very much concerned to secure the avoidance of such treatment of them as would be likely to cause trouble. If reasonable settlement could be reached with the free assent of those primarily concerned, we certainly had no desire to block them.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), pp. 186-187
“One had a feeling all the time that we had a totally different set of values and were speaking in a different language. It was not only the difference between a totalitarian and democratic state. He gave me the impression of feeling that, whilst he had attained power only after a hard struggle with present-day realities, the British Government was still living comfortably in a world of its own making, a fairy-land of strange, if respectable, illusions. It clung to shibboleths—‘collective security,’ ‘general settlement,’ ‘disarmament,’ ‘non-aggression pacts’—which offered no practical prospect of a solution of Europe's difficulties. He regards the whole conception embodied in a League of States equal in their rights of sovereignty as unreal, based on no foundation of fact; and consequently does not believe that discussions between large numbers of nations, with varying interests and of quite unequal value, can lead anywhere. Hence his preference for dealing with particular problems in isolation. With this goes the distrust of the democratic method, to him inefficient, blundering, paralysed by its love of talk, and totally unsuited to the rough world, constantly changing, in which we had to live.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (19 November 1937), quoted in Lord Halifax, Fulness of Days (1957), pp. 189
“Not only does it deny the corporate claim to liberty of men and women organized in national societies, but it refuses the much more fundamental claim of men and women to the free expression of human personality, which rests upon the eternal value of every human soul. True pride of race may be tested by the behaviour of its possessors towards their own fellow citizens and towards others. It will forbid conduct to individuals of which they should be ashamed in their private lives. It is thus evidently something far removed from the ideal of a race which by the German philosophy of to-day is called to stamp out the civilization of another. Between these two conceptions there is a great gulf fixed. ... Until these false creeds are abjured, and replaced by a wider toleration, they must continue to excite resistance. The future of humanity must not be left in the hands of those who would imprison and enslave it.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
“[T]he broad record of the British race stands to be judged on facts that are incontestable. It is the fact that during the nineteenth century, when the power of this country was unchallenged, there was no nation in Europe that felt for that reason insecure, or that did not recognize our power to be an instrument of peace. The Pax Britannica has been no empty or self-righteous boast of purpose. It is the fact too that in every corner of the world where men of British race have established influence, there by immutable law of nature you find established the seed and plant of liberty. It is the trail by which is marked their progress, interpreted to all by the standards of good faith, respect for law, and equal justice. Most truly, therefore, of our people was it said: “Their country's cause is the high cause of freedom and honour. That fairest earthly fame, the fame of freedom, is inseparable from the names of Albion, Britain, England.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
“As we begin to look beyond the war to the re-ordering of the world which must follow, we see three great Powers, the United States, Russia, and China. ... In the company of these Titans Britain, apart from the rest of the Commonwealth and Empire, could hardly claim equal partnership. ... If, in the future, Britain is to play her part without assuming burdens greater than she can support she must have with her in peace the same strength that has sustained her in this war. Not Great Britain only, but the British Commonwealth and Empire must be the fourth Power in that group upon which, under Providence, the peace of the world will henceforth depend.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to centenary dinner of the Toronto Board of Trade (24 January 1944), quoted in The Times (25 January 1944), p. 3
“One such interlude early in June 1940 is for ever graven into my memory. It was just after the fall of France, an event which at the time it happened seemed something unbelievable as to be almost surely unreal, and if not unreal then quite immeasurably catastrophic. Dorothy and I had spent a lovely summer evening walking over the Wolds, and on our way home sat in the sun for half an hour at a point looking across the plain of York. All the landscape of the nearer foreground was familiar—its sights, its sounds, its smells; hardly a field that did not call up some half-forgotten bit of association; the red-roofed village and nearby hamlets, gathered as it were for company round the old greystone church, where men and women like ourselves, now long dead and gone, had once knelt in worship and prayer. Here in Yorkshire was a true fragment of the undying England, like the White Cliffs of Dover, or any other part of our land that Englishmen have loved. Then the question came, is it possible that the Prussian jackboot will force its way into this countryside to tread and trample over it at will? The very thought seemed an insult and an outrage; much as if anyone were to be condemned to watch his mother, wife or daughter being raped.”
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fulness of Days (1957), p. 215