Peace for our time
"Peace for our time" was a declaration made by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in his 30 September 1938 remarks in London concerning the Munich Agreement and the subsequent Anglo-German Declaration.[1] The phrase echoed Benjamin Disraeli, who, upon returning from the Congress of Berlin in 1878, had stated, "I have returned from Germany with peace for our time." The phrase is primarily remembered for its bitter ironic value since less than a year after the agreement, Germany's invasion of Poland began World War II.
For other uses, see Peace in Our Time.It is often misquoted as "peace in our time", a phrase already familiar to the British public by its longstanding appearance in the Book of Common Prayer. A passage in that book translated from the 7th-century hymn "Da pacem Domine" reads, "Give peace in our time, O Lord; because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God."[2] The phrase also appears in the English hymn "God the Omnipotent!" at the end of the refrain: "...give to us peace in our time, O Lord!" It is not known how deliberate Chamberlain's use of such a similar phrase was.
Cultural references[edit]
Peace in Our Time is the title of a 1947 stage play by Noël Coward. Set in an alternative 1940, the Battle of Britain has been lost, the Germans have supremacy in the air and the United Kingdom is under Nazi occupation. Inspired to write this play in 1946 after seeing the effects of the occupation of France Coward wrote: "I began to suspect the physical effect of four years' intermittent bombing is far less damaging to the intrinsic character of a nation than the spiritual effect of four years of enemy occupation".
"Peace in Our Time" is a 1984 satirical song by Elvis Costello which references Chamberlain. It is featured on the album Goodbye Cruel World.[8]
"Hold On to What?" a 1994 song by the Beautiful South from their album Miaow[9] includes the lyrics, "Chamberlain had his paper/Jesus had his cross/They held on/We held on to what?".
U.S. President John F. Kennedy alluded to the speech in his 1963 American University commencement address in which he stated that he sought "not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time."[10]
Monty Python's 1969 The Funniest Joke in the World sketch references "Britain's pre-war joke" and shows an image of Chamberlain holding up the Munich Agreement paper.
In the 2015 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark uses the phrase "Peace in our time" after creating the eponymous and seemingly benevolent artificial intelligence. Since this backfires, the phrase bears similar ironic value to Chamberlain’s utterance.[11]
Robyn Hitchcock’s 1990 song “Cynthia Mask” references the incident in the lyrics of its second verse.[12]