The play also shows the power of the media in guiding public opinion and raises some more general questions like: Preventative wars do they ever achieve anything? Can democracies ever win against fanatics? How far should a democratic government go in accommodating dictators?
The scenario painted within the play is plausible. The views and acts of the various characters are in line with what they could have been expected to say and do at the time, and what we now know from various historical sources, e.g. Lansbury statement about disarmament, Lloyd Georges account of his meeting with Hitler, the French Prime Ministers speech on the day the Germans moved into the Rhineland and reminiscences from Churchills war memoirs including his visit to Germany in 1932.
Laszlo Solymar was born and educated in Hungary. In the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution he escaped to England. He joined the University of Oxford in 1966 where he is now an Emeritus Professor. During his career he had Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Paris, Copenhagen, Osnabruck, Berlin, Madrid and Budapest.