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On 3rd July, Mr. Chamberlain spoke in his native city of Birmingham at a Banquet given at the Council House.

“As I have been listening, my Lord Mayor, to your kind and friendly words and looking round this familiar room, my thoughts have gone back to another occasion thirty-one years ago when another member of my family was similarly honoured. I can well remember my father’s emotion on that occasion. Indeed, I never saw him nearer to a breakdown than he was in making that speech, when he strove to express his sense of the obligations that had been so constantly showered upon him by the city of his adoption; and now it is my turn to try to find words to say how deeply I appreciate all the kindnesses that have been shown me by my fellow-citizens throughout my life, and particularly to thank you for the signal honour you have bestowed upon me by asking me to be your guest to-night as the first son of Birmingham to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

“I should like to add that the value of the compliment you have paid me is more than doubled by the gracious tribute you have been kind enough to pay to my wife—a lady on whom I think some thoughtful good fairy bestowed at her birth just those very qualities that are so desirable and which are not always found in the wife and helpmeet of a statesman.

“Well, my Lord Mayor, I suppose that in time I shall get used to being addressed as Prime Minister, but at present I feel rather like one of those centenarians who are interviewed by enterprising representatives of the Press and are summoned to account for the good fortune that they do not appear obviously to have deserved. I have been running over in my mind various answers which these venerable gentlemen give on these occasions, but I am afraid they do not seem exactly to suit my case. I cannot pretend I have been a lifelong abstainer from alcohol, or from tobacco, or that I am in the habit of spending a few minutes in simple exercises every morning before breakfast. If I told you that I have never told a lie, I suppose probably you would not believe me. (Laughter.) Any suggestion that the moment I stepped out of my cradle I formed the ambition to become Prime Minister before I died I am afraid has not the slightest foundation in truth. And so, I suppose, the only explanation I can give is that I was born and bred in Birmingham. And when I have said that, what other explanation is necessary?

“After all, there can be only a few Prime Ministers in a generation, and there must always enter an element of chance into the question as to whether the office falls to one or another of those who are capable of filling it. In my case, unlike my father and my brother, the die has been cast in my favour; but I should not be my father’s son if I did not recognise that what matters is not the luck that assigns the office, but what is made of it when it comes.

“I regard my present position not as a prize, but as an opportunity for service, and any satisfaction I may derive from it will not be permanent unless I can feel when I lay it down that I have used my opportunity wisely in the interests of the country as a whole.

“We are living in a time of transition, a time when conditions are changing almost from day to day, and no one can say how they will ultimately settle down. When we look abroad we see new systems of government being tried, and although they differ fundamentally from one another, they are alike in this: that in every case their enthusiastic adherents claim they have found the only practical method of dealing with modern conditions. We see every nation vehemently asserting its desire for peace, and every one of them arming as feverishly as if they meant to go to war; and, similarly, every nation declares that it wishes to see freer trade, and yet the barriers that hinder trade seem as firmly fixed as ever.

“Well, perhaps these inconsistencies and incongruities are not really as inexplicable as they may appear at first sight. There is a wide difference between what a nation desires and what it feels it can venture to do in order to attain those desires.

“It seems to me that in these days the task of statesmanship is to find ways and means of inducing Governments to put aside their mutual fears and suspicions and to give rein to the longing which, I believe, is at the heart of every one of them—namely, to live at peace with its neighbours, and to devote its energies and resources to the advancement of the happiness and prosperity of its people.

“Well now, my Lord Mayor, in that task I am convinced that His Majesty’s subjects, through their respective Governments, may play an important part. The members of the British Commonwealth of Nations have already set a striking example to the rest of the world in the establishment among themselves of relations of mutual trust and confidence and in the complete abandonment of any idea that the use of force is a possible remedy for their differences, if ever they should have any.

“It was my privilege to preside over the later meetings of the Imperial Conference which was concluded a few weeks ago.^[1] Around our Board there were sitting representatives of countries divided from one another by vast distances, inhabited by peoples speaking different languages, and living very different lives. With some of them we ourselves had actually been at war within living memory, and yet there was not one of them sitting round that Board who did not feel a sense of kinship with the others. There was not one of them who was not convinced that in any great and serious crisis all of us would be actuated by the same motives of sincerity, honesty and humanity.

“I hope the citizens of the United States will not think me presumptuous if I say that we have the same confidence in their outlook upon these great questions which affect the lives of men and women as we have in that of the British Empire.

“If these several nations, in spite of all their differences, can feel this trust in one another, surely it is not fantastic to imagine that some day all the States which subscribe to the Covenant of the League of Nations may consent to drop their recriminations and to settle down in peace to see how they can make life more worth living for the peoples that inhabit them.

“When I served as a member of the Birmingham City Council, I learned one lesson which I have never forgotten, and that is that in this imperfect world a man cannot have everything his own way, and that those who get things done are those who are ready to work with and for others, and who are prepared to give up something themselves in order that they may receive something in return. There is always some common measure of agreement if only we will look for it, and there is but little satisfaction in standing out for the last item of a programme on which we have set our hearts if, by so doing, we are going to miss the opportunity of obtaining anything at all.

“Those maxims that apply to individuals apply to nations too. We in the British Empire have gone far to solve our problems by mutual accommodation; and if, by our example, by exercising that great and powerful influence which we have in the world, we can induce others to follow the same prescription, why then we shall have justified our faith in ourselves and our mission among the nations of the earth.”

[1]

The Imperial Conference met in May 1937, immediately after the Coronation, under the chairmanship of Mr. Chamberlain. It declared, inter alia: “That for each member of the Commonwealth the first objective is the preservation of peace,” and that the members of the Conference, though “themselves firmly attached to the principles of democracy and to Parliamentary forms of government,” held “that difference of political creed should be no obstacle to friendly relations between Governments and countries, and that nothing would be more damaging to the hopes of international appeasement than the division, real or apparent, of the world into opposing groups.” At the close of the Conference, Mr. Chamberlain used these words:“On all the big issues on which the welfare of mankind ultimately depends, we think alike; and when you consider the nature of the countries whose representatives are gathered round this table, how they are inhabited by many different races, speaking many different languages, with different climates, religions, conditions of neighbourhood, and separated by vast distances of sea and land, surely this solidarity of opinion is profoundly impressive, and cannot fail to exercise its influence far beyond the boundaries even of the British Empire.”