In 1937 Newton was appointed Minister (equivalent to ambassador) at Prague, where the most momentous though to him probably the least agreeable task of his career was to present to President Beneš of Czechoslovakia in September, 1938, the decision of the British and French Governments that he must hand over the Sudeten area to Germany or forfeit all hope of support from the two western powers.
[3] The aristocracy of Bohemia who were German-speaking, Roman Catholic and still loyal to the former Austrian empire disliked Czechoslovakia, a state that was republican, secular and dominated by ethnic Czechs, and Addison had largely adopted their prejudices as his own.
[3] The only thing that Newton appeared to have taken away from his time as the chargé d'affaires at the British Embassy in Berlin in 1935-36 was that the Treaty of Versailles was intolerably harsh on Germany and needed to be revised if the peace of Europe was to be saved.
[7] Sir Robert Vansittart, the Germanophobic and Francophile Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office from 1930-1937 and Special Diplomatic Adviser from 1937-1941, often criticised Newton for the pro-German tone of his dispatches to London.
[6] Shiela Grant Duff, the Central European correspondent of The Observer, wrote how she had been "terribly depressed by the cynical and uncaring attitude of my fellow countrymen", writing that after meeting Newton she had found he was completely convinced of the thesis that the Treaty of Versailles had challenged the "natural" dynamic of Central Europe by putting the Czechs on top of the Germans, and it was Britain's duty to restore the natural state of things by putting the Germans on top of the Czechs.
In one dispatch to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, Newton wrote that the Czechs had a "temperamental obstinacy" which made them incapable of compromising with the Sudeten Germans, stating that Czechoslovakia was becoming "more untenable every day".
[11] Newton's repeated statements in his dispatches, that Czechoslovakia with its mixture of Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, and Magyars, would not last as a unitary state and that her only hope of survival was to become a federation, did much to influence British decision-makers in London.
[11] Lord Halifax cited Newton's analysis in cabinet meetings, asking what was the point of going to war to defend Czechoslovakia, a state that was doomed to break up sooner or later as its unitary constitution simply would not last.
[8] On 16 May 1938, Newton wrote in a dispatch to Halifax that he wondered if there was "any permanent halfway house between a Czechoslovakia within her present frontiers...and the abandonment to Germany of the whole area covered by the Historic Provinces (save perhaps such parts as might be snatched by the Poles)".
[14] On 20 September 1938, Newton advised that "a kind of ultimatum" should be presented to Prague if they rejected the Anglo-French plan to cede the Sudetenland to Germany, saying if the Czechoslovaks refused, "His Majesty's Government will take no further interest in the fate of the country".
[15] On 22 September 1938, Newton reported to London: "My experience of the National Socialist German methods as applied both in Germany and here and I am gravely apprehensive as that those in control of the Reich may now allege that conditions have so gone to pieces in Czechoslovakia that a new situation has arisen entitling them almost as a duty to intervene after all".
[15] Given these views, Newton welcomed the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938 as a triumph of British justice and fair play that overturned one of the great "injustices" of the Treaty of Versailles by allowing the Sudetenland to finally join Germany.
[18] Newton reported to Lord Halifax on 15 August 1939: "There are many, however, among whom Taha al-Hashimi, the Minister of Defense, is conspicuous, who rather that the Iraqi Government took up more actively and openly the cause of the Arabs in Palestine, even at the risk of damaging Anglo-Iraqi relations".