There are few recorded cases in history of a politician being embarrassed by applause. One instance, however, which occurred 60 years ago this week, is well attested and concerns the French prime minister, Edouard Daladier.
At the end of a summer which had seen Europe increasingly seized by war panic, Daladier, at the suggestion of the British premier, Neville Chamberlain, flew on September 29th, 1938, to Munich to meet Hitler and Mussolini. His mission was to save Europe from the disaster of another war: the means to achieve it was the dismemberment, at Hitler's behest, of France's ally, Czechoslovakia.
On the following day, their business concluded, Chamberlain and Daladier flew home, where the former proudly brandished on his arrival at Heston Airport "the paper which bears his [Hitler's] name upon it as well as mine" and which he firmly believed would mean "peace for our time".
For Daladier it was a little different. Jean Paul Sartre tells the story in a lightly fictionalised form in his novel The Reprieve. As the prime minister's plane banks over Le Bourget Airport, Leger, the senior foreign office official accompanying him, draws his attention to the huge crowd waiting on the tarmac. Daladier looks out and speaks for the first time since leaving Munich: "They've come to break my face."
The plane lands, and as the prime minister prepares to descend the gangway, the crowd breaks and runs towards him. They are carrying bouquets and waving tricolours. They begin to cheer. Daladier turns to Leger and mutters through his teeth: "Ah, the fools."
The peace of Munich was to last not "for our time" but for a year. Chamberlain, if not entirely a fool, was naive, badly advised, inexperienced in foreign affairs and wedded to a policy of myopic "national self-interest". Earlier in the summer of 1938, as the civil authorities arranged the digging of trenches and the distribution of gas masks in London, he had expressed disbelief that Britain might be preparing for war "because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing".
Daladier was certainly no fool. Nor indeed was he a knave. Sacrificing an ally to save oneself can never be an entirely pleasant experience. But without British support in facing down Hitler - support which was clearly not forthcoming - he felt he had little alternative. What ate at his soul was his firm conviction that the sacrifice would prove unavailing.
Adolf Hitler had come to power in 1933 determined to undo those clauses of the Versailles Treaty which continued to punish Germany for its role in provoking the first World War. In 1935, in defiance of Versailles, he re-introduced compulsory military service. Nothing happened. In 1936 German troops reoccupied the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland. France blustered but did nothing.
In March 1938 Austria was annexed, leaving western Czechoslovakia a tempting morsel between German jaws. The ethnic German minority there, the Sudetens, spurred on by Berlin, began an agitation for, first, autonomy then incorporation into the Reich. The Czech government looked to its French allies, who, conscious of their military weakness, in turn looked to London.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, France had sought to contain the threat of Germany both by building a strong defensive structure (the "Maginot Line") and by forging a system of alliances. It was a strategy that was not without its problems and contradictions. In the first place, few of the potential alliance members - France, Britain, Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Italy - entirely trusted the others. In the second, France's military capacity being almost entirely defensive, how could she actually help her allies in time of need?
Hitler had a shrewd appreciation of his opponents' weaknesses, both military and psychological. On several occasions throughout the summer and autumn of the Sudeten crisis he chose to raise the stakes, increasing his demands on the Czechs and uttering threats of immediate war should they not be met. Chamberlain and Britain had no policy other than surrender. Daladier, initially in favour of firmness, was worn down by the British and by the duplicitous independent diplomacy of his foreign minister, Georges Bonnet.
At Munich the Czechs lost the Sudetenland, which contained virtually all their military fortifications. They were soon, however, to lose everything, for Hitler, of course, was not satisfied: in March 1939 the Germans marched into Prague, establishing the "protectorate" of Bohemia and Moravia. From there it was on to the Danzig crisis and finally, in September, with appeasement at last discredited and nowhere left to go, war.
Why had Hitler been left unmolested for so long? Part of the reason must lie with national psychology, a "disease of the will" in Churchill's phrase which afflicted both of Europe's strongest democracies. In Britain there was also a tendency towards isolationism, a fear of being entangled in the "schemes" of the French and, in some ruling circles, a feeling that Hitler, though perhaps not a gentleman, might well have his uses in the much more fundamental struggle against socialism and communism.
As the 1930s progressed, these sentiments were increasingly shared by the - traditionally germanophobe - French right, while most on the left wavered between an idealistic and hazy pacifism and an equally nebulous - and toothless - "anti-fascism". Above all there was fear, fear and the hope, as it transpired misguided, of self-preservation.
An American correspondent in Paris, William L. Shirer, found Parisians euphoric in September 1938 that war had been averted. They had fought in one war, they told him, and that was enough. "That would be OK," he observed, "if the Germans, who also fought in one war, felt the same way, but they don't."
What can we learn from the story of Munich and the failure of appeasement? History seldom "repeats itself", though circumstances, across the decades, can occasionally look disconcertingly familiar. There are no Hitlers in Europe today, but there are indeed perplexing quarrels in faraway countries between people of whom we know little.
And if a certain Serbian leader, assailed for eight years now by the vociferous disapproval of the West, should have come to the conclusion that liberal democracy is the dog which barks but does not bite, who could blame him?