(1) Violet Bonham Carter, speech to the National Liberal Federation (1923)

In Germany today one feels there is always a revolution in the offing, if not in full swing. A new and unsteady Democracy is struggling on to its feet, and we've got to keep it there: we've got to help it and back it up. French action in the Ruhr is threatening with extinction this new spirit which is struggling for life, and if the German workers are defeated in their fight against militarism it may have far-reaching and disastrous international consequences, for which our children and the children of the world will have to pay.

 

(2) Violet Bonham Carter, speech in Scarborough (18th May, 1933)

In Germany freedom as we conceive it seems to have perished in the last few weeks, in the twinkling of an eye, almost without a struggle, and given place to a nightmare reign of force whose horror how this nightmare can have arisen - how it has become possible.

I can truthfully say that nothing within my political memory has ever moved me more deeply to horror and indignation than recent events in Germany. We in this country have looked on with dazed astonishment at this nightmare. We have seen libraries burnt. We have seen monuments erected to murderers. We have seen faith and race persecuted and proscribed, thought and art forbidden unless confined in the straight-jacket of State control. We have seen Germany banish and despoil many of her greatest and most distinguished sons, men whose high achievements in every field of endeavour have brought her honour throughout the world.

 

(3) Violet Bonham Carter was a member of the Liberal Party and had been strongly opposed to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy. She record her thoughts about Chamberlain's resignation in her diary (10th May, 1940).

At 9 o'clock I went downstairs and listen in to (the radio) and heard Chamberlain make a very dignified resignation speech - and say he had recommended the King to send for Winston as his successor. What a moment to take on! He will have to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm. If any man can he will, but he has as a heritage the years that the locust has eaten. How different if he had been allowed to take a part during the last 5 years in preparing for the peril which he so clearly foresaw.