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and there seemed any practicable plan of security offered,
he would not discard such an opportunity of striving for a
real and lasting peace merely because the present Nazi
regime remained in power.
But Hitler must give an "earnest" of his sincerity.
Such an "earnest" might well be the evacuation of German-
occupied Poland, and of Bohemia and Moravia. Mr. Chamber-
lain would not be in any sense intranslgent with regard to the
ultimate frontiers of Poland, nor with regard to the boundaries
of a new Czech state. Slovakia was now divorced from "Czechia."
and he saw no reason to change that situation. He believed it
would make for a lasting peace to arrange for the inclusion
of Danzig and of the really German minorities of the old Poland
within the new German Reich. With regard to Austria he was
prepared to accept the principle of self-determination
through a free and impartial plebiscite. But the "earnest"
in the form of millgary evacuation, pending final agreement,
of German-occupied Poland and Bohemia-Moravia, he considered
in dispensable if any negotiations were to be undertaken with
the Hitler regime. In no other way could he retain the sup-
port of British public opinion.
Under such conditions he saw no insupersable obstacle
with regard to political and territorial problems as a basis
for peace.
At this point Lord Halifax interjected to say that he
thought a further indispensable basis for peace negotiations
should be a prior agreement in principle upon "freedom of in-
formation", so that all peoples concerned would know from the
moment peace talks were seriously commenced exactly what the
true facts involved in the negotiations might be. To this
Chaberlin agreed.
At the same time it should be understood that an agree-
ment