Why on earth would we want to risk turning a small local conflict over a nation that is next door to Russia into World War 3
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.
Neville Chamberlain, 27 September 1938