As Americans begin a two-year celebration of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln?s birth, another anniversary approaches with far more significant and immediate implications.

This fall will mark the 70th anniversary of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain?s accord with Adolf Hitler at Munich, a bargain with the devil that sought to buy “peace for our time” but cost Czechoslovakia its freedom and led to World War II, which cost even more in freedom and blood.