feb 22, 1938 - Resignation of Anthony Eden

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On Sunday, 20 February 1938, after two days of fraught Cabinet discussion, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that he must resign rather than agree to enter into early talks with the Italian government led by Mussolini. Eden’s resignation has often been portrayed as a principled rejection of appeasement, but in fact, as the Cabinet discussions showed, he and Chamberlain differed not on principle but on method and timing. Eden felt Mussolini must offer some sign of good faith first, such as stopping Italian submarines attacking British ships off the coast of Spain. Chamberlain, though he described Italy as a ‘hysterical woman’, felt it important to show Mussolini ‘that he might have other friends beside Herr Hitler’.

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