Edward Frederick Lindley Wood 1st earl of Halifax

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Edward Frederick Lindley Wood Halifax, 1st earl of 1881–1959, British statesman. He entered the House of Commons (1910) as a Conservative and was president of the Board of Education (1922–24) and of the Board of Agriculture (1924–25). Created Baron Irwin in 1925, he served (1926–31) as viceroy of India. Confronted with the civil disobedience campaign of Mohandas Gandhi and his followers, he promised (1929) dominion status for India and induced Gandhi to participate in the further roundtable conferences on India's future. Succeeding his father as Viscount Halifax in 1934, he became Conservative leader of the House of Lords in 1935, serving also as secretary for war (1935) and lord privy seal (1935–38). As foreign secretary (1938–40) Halifax firmly supported Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. From 1941 to 1946 he was ambassador to the United States. He was created an earl in 1944. He wrote John Keble (1932); his speeches are collected as Indian Problems (1932), Speeches on Foreign Policy (1940), and American Speeches (1947).

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Fullness of Days (1957); biographies by A. Johnson (1941), the earl of Birkenhead (1965), and A. Roberts (1991).

Halifax, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of (1881–1959), British Conservative politician. From 1925 to 1931 he was governor-general and viceroy of India (as Lord Irwin), and was involved in that country's struggle for independence. Halifax, who favoured DOMINION status for the subcontinent, ordered the imprisonment of Mahatma GANDHI after the SALT MARCH. As a member of CHAMBERLAIN's government, he visited Germany and met Hitler. An advocate of APPEASEMENT, Halifax accepted the post of Foreign Secretary in 1938 on EDEN's resignation. He accepted, de facto, the ANSCHLUSS of Austria and the dismemberment of CZECHOSLOVAKIA after the MUNICH PACT. Halifax refused an invitation to Moscow, thus losing the chance of agreement with the Soviet Union, and leaving the door open for Hitler and Stalin to draw up the NAZI-SOVIET PACT. During World War II he was British ambassador to the USA.