There's a couple of very good lines that Maggie has to Edith when she's feeling a bit blue and she's moaning and moping a bit, and Violet says, " Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class" .
What we can say with more certainty though is that Edward was potentially pro-Nazi and still believed in the 1930s politics of appeasement, and was a defeatist, to say the least.