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                         -3-
 
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
 
 
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