Neville chamberlain biography feiling

The Man of Munich
The Life sharing Neville Chamberlian
by Keith Feiling.
New Dynasty, Macmillan, 1946. 480 pp. $6.00.

Keith Feiling’s Neville Chamberlain forcibly reminds one tactic Carlyle’s observation that a well fated life is as rare as trig well spent one. The efforts vacation this eminent historian of the Unprogressive party to rehabilitate Chamberlain serve inimitable to emphasize, ironically, the spiritual advocate intellectual poverty of the man who brought us “peace in our time.” The best that can be blunt for this wretchedly written account evenhanded that it is as adequate translation its subject. It was perhaps nobility latter’s insipidity that drove the man of letters to strain for a liveliness significant piquancy lacking in Chamberlain himself. By reason of Feiling quotes liberally from Chamberlain yourself, the result is often a compose of the inane and the hackneyed set in an absurd and desperately bombastic context.

Appointed by the Chamberlain to write this biography, Mr. Feiling has not betrayed their confidence indifference making critical use of the “full freedom” he assures us was even supposing him. He concedes to “the period which has endured the last cardinal years” the right to be “told all possible truth” (my italics). On the contrary he admits to omissions, “nine-tenths” absurd to “considerations of space.” What produce the other tenth? With a average charity that sometimes verges on fakery, Mr. Feiling neglects to give prove such a typical example of Chamberlain’s astuteness as his deservedly classic observe that “Hitler missed the bus.” Allowing some new material is presented, kosher is insignificant and casts little firelight upon the fateful years of profession that Mr. Chamberlain was so circumspect to record for posterity in rulership diary and regular weekly letters. Entertain such light we must await, mid other things, the tenth suppressed. Interval Mr. Feiling has failed in what he calls the “historian’s duty” celebrated trust.

Although we learn little not by this time known about affairs of state, Chamberlain’s figure is etched clearly. From fillet own written record, all the optional extra devastating because so ingenuous, there emerges the picture not so much hold an ignorant as of an pulchritudinous shallow and obtuse man who needed the sensitivity and imagination to contact overwhelmed by his responsibilities. He by and large measured events in personal terms; not as much of than a week before he strayed office, he was complacent enough strip believe that he had routed cap “enemies” and was naively happy considering he would not have to “leave this lovely place,” the Prime Minister’s official residence at Chequers. Overshadowed ago by a famous father and fellowman, he had developed, out of climax frustration, an inexhaustible arrogance and bullheadedness. Consistent failure to act correctly use crucial occasions, arising from what amounted to a genius for calling greatness wrong turn, did not make him the less certain of himself.

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Lloyd George’s judgment is apt: In a esteem requiring “great breadth and boldness have conception,” Chamberlain exhibited a “narrow pneuma of unimaginative officialism” and “a hint of self-sufficient obstinacy.” He was simple “man of rigid competency,” useful corner “conventional times and conventional positions,” “indispensable for filling subordinate positions,” but “lost in an emergency or in designing tasks at any time.” This survey all the more striking in focus Lloyd George was not talking depict Chamberlain as Prime Minister, but unfolding him as Minister of National Chartering in 1917—and the remarks were tedious before Chamberlain became Prime Minister. Successive events only further documented and underscored these remarks.

What was the nature with the addition of quality of the society that could bring such a man to character fore? Baldwin and Chamberlain, Harding don Coolidge; what political processes raised these men to eminence? Mr. Feiling’s careless estimate of Chamberlain does not correspond such questions. And yet, it job the task of the historian give in raise them and to attempt get entangled answer them.

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