set aside to suit
vanity, obstinacy, and
one man’s ignorance
In a letter to Winston Churchill, Oct. 1, 1938, during the Munich Crisis where Europe gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler in hopes that Hitler would go away, Guy Burgess wrote:
Traditional English policy since the reign of Elizabeth, the policy of Marlborough, of Pitt, of Eyre Crowe, of Vansittart, has been blandly set aside to suit the vanity, the obstinacy, & the ignorance of one man, no longer young. We shall be told he has saved the peace, that anything is worth that. This is not true. He has made war inevitable, & lost it.
Young Mr. Burgess at the time was the BBC representative at the House of Commons, responsible for the Week in Westminster program and had gone to interview Churchill about the efforts of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to placate Hitler and found Churchill, of all people, at a loss for words and unable to take part in a radio interview.
In respect to transparency, it must be mentioned that later in life, Mr. Burgess would be part of what became known as, The Cambridge Five. Five notable figures in Britain who became committed communists during their time at Cambridge and were secret agents for the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, the words, the vanity, the obstinacy, & the ignorance of one man ring loud today.
As does the warning:
We shall be told he has saved the peace, that anything is worth that.
This is not true.
He has made war inevitable, & lost it.
*As recounted in Winston S. Churchill – The Prophet of Truth (1922-1939) The Official Biography of Winston Churchill: Vol 5, by Martin Gilbert (Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, 1966).
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