resolution of European problems. At his first meeting with Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, the subject was Sudetenland, and Dirksen assured Halifax that his government was "very anxious to keep things quiet in Czechoslovakia". Dirksen reported that Halifax had promised him that London and Paris would send a joint démarche to Prague urging the Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš to make "concessions to the utmost limit" to the Sudeten Heimatfront, which had demanding autonomy. To show to the British the apparent reasonableness of the Sudeten Heimatfront, Dirksen had Henlein visit London starting on 12 May 1938 to meet various British politicians. Henlein denied working for Hitler and talked much about the Czechs were "oppressing" the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland by forcing ethnic German children to attend schools in which they were taught in Czech. He insisted that he wanted only autonomy for the Sudetenland, but he admitted that if Prague refused to give in to all of eight demands of the Karlsbad Programme, Germany would definitely invade Czechoslovakia. At a luncheon hosted by the National Labour MP Harold Nicolson, Henlein met with various backbenchers from all parties, where he impressed them with his genial charm and mild-mannered ways. However, several of the MPs, like General Edward Spears, a Conservative, expressed some concern about the Karlsbad Programme since it declared that Prague should "harmonise" its foreign policy with Berlin's and that to be German was to be a National Socialist and so the Sudeten Heimatfront was to be the only legal party in the proposed autonomous Sudeten region. Starting with the May Crisis in May 1938, Dirksen received warnings from the Foreign Office that Germany should not attempt to resolve the Sudetenland dispute by war. During the May crisis, Dirksen reported to Berlin that Britain did not want to go to war with Germany for the sake of Czechoslovakia but that it probably would go to war if Germany actually invaded Czechoslovakia. Dirsken reported that Halifax had told him that "in the event of a European conflict it was impossible to foresee whether Britain would not be drawn into it". Dirksen interpreted Halifax's statement as meaning that Britain probably would go to war if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia but noted that Halifax was unwilling to say so explicitly. At the same time, Dirksen was friendly with Joseph Kennedy Sr., the American ambassador to Britain. Dirksen often reported to Berlin the anti-Semitic remarks from