Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford, (19 November 1870 – 14 November 1949) was a prominent Liberal and later National Liberal politician in the United Kingdom. His 1938 diplomatic mission to Czechoslovakia was key to the enactment of the British policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany preceding the Second World War. Background Runciman was the son of the shipping magnate Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman. He was educated at South Shields High School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an MA degree in history in 1892. Political career 1899–1913 Runciman unsuccessfully contested Gravesend in a by-election in 1898, but was elected as a member of parliament (MP) in a two-member by-election for Oldham in 1899, defeating the Conservative candidates, James Mawdsley and Winston Churchill. After winning, Runciman is reported to have commented to Churchill: "Don't worry, I don't think this is the last the country has heard of either of us." The following year in the 1900 general election Churchill stood against Runciman again and defeated him. Runciman soon returned to Parliament for Dewsbury in a by-election in January 1902 and steadily rose through the ranks of the Liberal Party. A progressive, centrist reformer, he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905, a post he held until 1907. Runciman's friends in Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet were Sydney Buxton, Charles Hobhouse and John Morley, all on the left. He then served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury until 1908. In April of the latter year he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed to his first Cabinet post, President of the Board of Education, by the new prime minister, H. H. Asquith, which position he retained for three years. Runciman approved of financing the purchase of land in Ireland, but the policy was becoming prohibitively expensive. He was one of the small group, that included Reginald McKenna, who believed in sound public finances; they had witnessed the lax administration of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. Runciman, along with McKenna and Lord Haldane, pressured Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to reject Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George's 1910 People's Budget raising taxes on the landed aristocracy and upper class to pay for welfare programs. He then served another three years as President of the Board of Agriculture. Runciman did not want war with the German Empire and favoured an understanding with