COOPER

He was first elected to Parliament in 1924, lost his seat in 1929 but returned to Parliament in the 1931 Westminster St George's by-election, which was seen as a referendum on Stanley Baldwin's leadership of the Conservative Party. He later served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty. In the intense political debates of the late 1930s over appeasement, he first put his trust in the League of Nations, and later realised that war with Germany was inevitable. He denounced the Munich agreement of 1938 as meaningless, cowardly, and unworkable, as he resigned from the cabinet.From a small collection of letters to James Strachey BARNES (1890-1955) who was a theorist of British Fascism. During World War II Barnes worked to publicise Fascist Italy. His own Fascist views included palingenesis, anti-Semitism, and opposition to liberalism. After the war he lived in Italy.