“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is…”

“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is…” is Neville Chamberlain’s description of the prospect of digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a faraway country. The phrase gives the danger of the 1938 crisis a sharply domestic image: a distant dispute has entered British life through preparations for war. Its return in Chamberlain’s address turns a sentence prepared for a statement into a public expression of anxiety, even as the speech proceeds toward reassurance about a possible settlement.

Preparation and Revision

The phrase first appears while Chamberlain is dictating the words of a statement about the events leading to the critical situation. As the typist waits, he takes out his fountain pen and corrects the draft: “the events that have led” becomes “the events which have led.” He then continues into the sentence about trenches, gas masks, and a quarrel in a faraway country. The small grammatical correction and the immense stakes of the words occupy the same working moment: the statement is being carefully shaped while its subject is already pressing into ordinary life.

The scene also places the phrase within a human encounter rather than presenting it as finished political rhetoric. The typist stops when Chamberlain frowns; he notices her appearance, and she asks irritably whether something is wrong. The episode supplies no explanation of his frown, but it places the drafting of a national statement amid the pauses and distractions of a room where the words are being typed and revised.

From Draft to Address

The phrase returns when Chamberlain speaks to “men and women of Britain and the Empire, and perhaps to others as well.” He enunciates carefully, in a tone the narration describes as euphonious and melancholy, “as inspiring as a dirge.” In the address, the line is no longer merely part of a dictated document: it is delivered to an audience whose daily preparations for danger it names directly.

‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’ Chamberlain’s wording sets “here” against “faraway,” drawing attention to the disconcerting distance between the dispute and the British public’s exposure to its consequences. The phrase’s three accumulating adjectives intensify that disjunction; the concrete images of trenches and gas masks give the alarm its force without turning the speech into a description of combat.

Alarm and Reassurance

The address does not remain at the level of distress. Chamberlain goes on to say that the quarrel has, in principle, already been settled, acknowledges that the Government of Czechoslovakia has felt unable to accept the terms presented in the German memorandum, and argues that time might allow the transfer of territory to be arranged by agreement with fair treatment for the population concerned. He also invokes Adolf Hitler’s stated assurance that, after the Sudeten German question was settled, Germany would have no further territorial claims in Europe. The phrase therefore begins a speech whose movement is from the apparent absurdity of war preparations toward the possibility of negotiation.

Hugh Legat looks across the table at Sir Alexander Cadogan, who nods in agreement as Chamberlain advances this argument. That gesture anchors the public-facing language in the reactions of those present, while the speech itself holds two positions together: the immediate horror of preparing for war and the hope that agreement may still avert it. The phrase’s significance lies in that tension. It makes the crisis feel close and bodily, even as the address seeks to present it as something that can still be resolved.