Editing Alec Douglas-Home (section)

===Chamberlain and war===
By the time of Dunglass's appointment, Chamberlain was generally seen as the heir to the premiership,<ref>Pike, p. 408</ref> and in 1937 the incumbent, [[Stanley Baldwin]], retired, and Chamberlain succeeded him. He retained Dunglass as his PPS, a role described by the biographer [[D. R. Thorpe]] as "the right-hand man&nbsp;... the eyes and ears of Neville Chamberlain",<ref>Thorpe (1997), p. 59</ref> and by Dutton as "liaison officer with the Parliamentary party, transmitting and receiving information and [keeping] his master informed of the mood on the government's back benches."<ref>Dutton, p. 9</ref> This was particularly important for Chamberlain, who was often seen as distant and aloof;{{Sfnp|Young|1970|p=46}} [[Douglas Hurd]] wrote that he "lacked the personal charm which makes competent administration palatable to wayward colleagues&nbsp;– a gift which his parliamentary private secretary possessed in abundance."<ref name="dnb">Hurd, Douglas [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60455 "Home, Alexander Frederick Douglas-, fourteenth earl of Home and Baron Home of the Hirsel (1903–1995)"],''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 14 April 2012 {{Subscription required}}</ref> Dunglass admired Chamberlain, despite his daunting personality: "I liked him, and I think he liked me. But if one went in at the end of the day for a chat or a gossip, he would be inclined to ask 'What do you want?' He was a very difficult man to get to know."<ref>''Quoted'' in Dutton, p. 9</ref>

As Chamberlain's aide, Dunglass witnessed at first-hand the Prime Minister's attempts to prevent a second world war through [[appeasement]] of [[Adolf Hitler]]'s Germany. When Chamberlain had his final meeting with Hitler at Munich in September 1938, Dunglass accompanied him. Having gained a short-lived extension of peace by acceding to Hitler's territorial demands at the expense of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain was welcomed back to London by cheering crowds. Ignoring Dunglass's urging, he made an uncharacteristically grandiloquent speech, claiming to have brought back "Peace with Honour" and promising "peace for our time".{{Sfnmp|ps=none|1a1=Heath|1y=1998|1p=120|2a1=Thorpe|2y=1997|2pp=85–86}} These words were to haunt him when Hitler's continued aggression made war unavoidable less than a year later. Chamberlain remained prime minister from the outbreak of war in September 1939 until May 1940, when, in Dunglass's words, "he could no longer command support of a majority in the Conservative party".{{Sfnp|ps=none|Home|1976|p=75}} After a vote in the Commons, in which the government's majority fell from more than 200 to 81, Chamberlain made way for [[Winston Churchill]]. He accepted the non-departmental post of [[Lord President of the Council]] in the new coalition government; Dunglass remained as his PPS,<ref name=dnb/> having earlier declined the offer of a ministerial post as Under-secretary at the Scottish Office.{{Sfnp|ps=none|Thorpe|1997|p=65}} Although Chamberlain's reputation never recovered from Munich, and his supporters such as [[R. A. Butler]] suffered throughout their later careers from the "appeasement" tag, Dunglass largely escaped blame.{{Efn|In a 1964 study of Douglas-Home John Dickie comments that Dunglass as a PPS lacked influence in decision making, and that such opprobrium as later attached to him was "guilt by association".<ref>{{Citation |title=Foreign and Comparative Government |date=March 1965 |journal=[[The American Political Science Review]] |volume=59 |issue=1 |pages=184–207 |doi=10.2307/1976143 |jstor=1976143 |s2cid=151984436}}{{Subscription required}}</ref> Thorpe in his biography of Harold Macmillan writes that Butler's career was blighted by his support for the Munich agreement as a Foreign Office minister, but that {{"'}}Munich' was never held against Alec Douglas-Home".{{Sfnp|ps=none|Thorpe|2010|p=135}}}} Nevertheless, Dunglass firmly maintained all his life that the Munich agreement had been vital to the survival of Britain and the defeat of Nazi Germany by giving the UK an extra year to prepare for a war that it could not have contested in 1938.<ref name=dnb/> Within months of his leaving the premiership, Chamberlain's health began to fail; he resigned from the cabinet, and died after a short illness in November 1940.