in Europe. The member of the cabinet whom Lothian was closest to was Lord Halifax, who served as the Foreign Secretary between 1938 and 1940. By early 1938, Lothian had become convinced that "a momentum behind power politics which is becoming dangerous". Lothian felt that "a little more international vigour" was needed on the part of Britain and France, whose governments now needed to make clear "that there are conditions under which we are willing to face war", the totalitarian states would "begin to get out of hand". From the spring of 1938 onward, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax had considered appointing his friend Lothian to replace Ronald Lindsay, the retiring ambassador in Washington. The Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, vehemently objected to Lothian as ambassador, saying the post should go to a professional diplomat rather than an "outsider", one who moreover had set himself up as an opponent of the Foreign Office with regard to Germany. Additionally, Lothian's most important political post had been as the right-hand man to Lloyd George, and there were concerns that "he had never a position of independent responsibility". However, the fact that Lothian as the general secretary of the Rhodes Trust had often visited the United States; had many American friends including President Roosevelt; and was well known as a proponent of closer Anglo-American ties led Halifax to override Cadogan's objections. Lindsay himself endorsed Lothian as his successor, writing to Halifax that Lothian was the best man to deal with the American media. When Chamberlain visited Germany in September 1938 to meet Hitler to resolve the Sudetenland crisis, Lothian felt the initiative was "noble and heroic". Lothian wrote that "having gone as far as we have I’m inclined to think that rather than split the country and the democratic world by immediate concessions we ought to say that if Hitler invades Czechoslovakia it means war...We have, I think, strong cards in the long run and I think Hitler would hesitate. But if, having gone as far as we have in the last three weeks, we run away now and do something which is tantamount to "selling the pass" the prestige of the totalitarian methods and powers will be such, and the derision and depression of the democracies so acute, that it will go hard with the old British Empire." After Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1938,