Hurrah! I was ready to hurl my hat into the air.

We have emerged from a very great danger. We have preserved the possibility of staying out of an imperialist war. And we have gained what we wanted: Leningrad and our north-western borders are now secure.

In the afternoon I went to parliament, where Chamberlain was due to make a statement about the conclusion of peace. The diplomatic gallery was practically empty. There were only myself, the Bulgarian and… the duke of Alba (the Spaniard). But the House was packed to the rafters and the air was humming, as before a storm.

Chamberlain made a brief statement consisting of little more than formalities. Attlee and Sinclair said a few words appropriate to the occasion. Sinclair let it be understood that he was not entirely sure whether the British government had fulfilled its ‘duty’ with regard to Finland. Hore-Belisha made this point far more sharply in his statement, asking the prime minister a few awkward and rather barbed questions. Hore-Belisha, supported by Macmillan and Sinclair, demanded that a closed session of parliament be convened to discuss the government’s conduct during the Finnish war. Labour, however, did not second Belisha’s demand. In his response Chamberlain did his best to wriggle out of the situation, arguing that the British government had ‘fulfilled its duty’. Whether this is true or not is another matter; at any rate, the activists didn’t get their way at this session.

But as for parliament … I can’t recall seeing it in such a state of excitement and fury. Indeed, the only word to describe the mood of the majority of all the MPs, with only a few exceptions, was fury. Impotent fury, but fury nonetheless – vivid, seething, overflowing fury…

‘It’s fallen through! What a pity, it’s fallen through,’ were the words that seemed to hang in the air.

This frenzy was expressed in the House’s reactions to the various anti-Soviet volleys by ministers and MPs. When Chamberlain referred to ‘aggression’ in reference to the Finnish events, the House shook with shouts of approval. When the ‘Independent’ McGovern

John McGovern, Scottish ILP MP, 1930–59, and chairman of the ILP, 1941–43.

took aim at the USSR and C[omrade] Stalin, the hall resounded for an entire minute with deafening yells, ‘Hear! Hear!’

Looking down from the diplomatic gallery, I watched that vile display of angry impotence with a sense of superiority. And at the same time it was clearer to me than ever that peace had been concluded at just the right time.

A feeling shared by Halifax: ‘I can’t myself resist some feeling of thankfulness at not having got an Expedition bogged where it could not be maintained, and I don’t believe anything in the long run would have made much difference. But I certainly shall not say this in public’; Halifax papers, diary, A7.8.3, 13 March 1940. He was surely influenced by Eden’s rather cynical (but pragmatic) long letter to him earlier in the month, in which he raised doubt whether it was ‘a world-rocking tragedy’ for the Allies if ‘the Finns go under?’; TNA FO 800/281, 2 March 1940, pp. 394–400.

Newspapers and politicians may carry on fussing about the ‘cruelty’ of the Soviet–Finnish peace for a few days but, so long as new unexpected factors do not come into play, the frenzied anti-Soviet wave which gathered force at the beginning of the Finnish war will soon ebb. It seems as if Anglo-Soviet relations may succeed in keeping their feet on the current ‘ledge’. Their fall has stopped. Will they begin to climb back up?

I can’t rule it out. But time will tell.