Protocol was rejected on the advice of the Committee of Imperial Defence and that he
accepted that decision only when he was promised a new project which subsequently
became the Locarno Pacts.(8)
The rejection of the Protocol by Britain was regarded subsequently by real supporters
of the League as the turning point in its career. There was an outburst of public sentiment
against this selfish and cold-blooded action. Zimmern, who knew more than he revealed,
went to Oxford in May 1925 and made a brilliant speech against those who were
sabotaging the League. He did not identify them, but clearly indicated their existence,
and, as the cruelest blow of all, attributed their actions to a failure of intelligence.
As a result of this feeling, which was widespread throughout the world, the Group
determined to give the world the appearance of a guarantee to France. This was done in
the Locarno Pacts, the most complicated and most deceitful international agreement made
between the Treaty of Versailles and the Munich Pact. We cannot discuss them in detail
here, but must content ourselves with pointing out that in appearance, and in the publicity
campaign which accompanied their formation, the Locarno agreements guaranteed the
frontier of Germany with France and Belgium with the power of these three states plus
Britain and Italy. In reality the agreements gave France nothing, while they gave Britain a
veto over French fulfillment of her alliances with Poland and the Little Entente. The
French accepted these deceptive documents for reasons of internal politics: obviously,
any French government which could make the French people believe that it had been able
to secure a British guarantee of France's eastern frontier could expect the gratitude of the
French people to be reflected at the polls. The fundamental shrewdness and realism of the
French, however, made it difficult to conceal from them the trap that lay in the Locarno
agreements. This trap consisted of several interlocking factors. In the first place, the
agreements did not guarantee the German frontier and the demilitarized condition of the
Rhineland against German actions, but against the actions of either Germany or France.
This, at one stroke, gave Britain the legal grounds for opposing France if she tried any
repetition of the military occupation of the Ruhr, and, above all, gave Britain the right to
oppose any French action against Germany in support of her allies to the east of
Germany. This meant that if Germany moved east against Czechoslovakia, Poland, and,
eventually, Russia, and if France attacked Germany's western frontier in support of
Czechoslovakia or Poland, as her alliances bound her to do, Great Britain, Belgium, and
Italy might be bound by the Locarno Pacts to come to the aid of Germany. To be sure, the
same agreement might bind these three powers to oppose Germany if she drove westward
against France, but the Milner Group did not object to this for several reasons. In the first
place, if Germany attacked France directly, Britain would have to come to the help of
France whether bound by treaty or not. The old balance-of-power principle made that
clear. In the second place, Cecil Hurst, the old master of legalistic double-talk, drew up
the Locarno Pacts with the same kind of loopholes which he had put in the crucial articles
of the Covenant. As a result, if Germany did violate the Locarno Pacts against France,
Britain could, if she desired, escape the necessity of fulfilling her guarantee by slipping
through one of Hurst's loopholes. As a matter of fact, when Hitler did violate the Locarno
agreements by remilitarizing the Rhineland in March 1936, the Milner Group and their
friends did not even try to evade their obligation by slipping through a loophole, but
simply dishonored their agreement.
This event of March 1936, by which Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, was the most
crucial event in the whole history of appeasement. So long as the territory west of the
Rhine and a strip fifty kilometers wide on the east bank of the river were demilitarized, as
provided in the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pacts, Hitler would never have
dared to move against Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. He would not have dared
because, with western Germany unfortified and denuded of German soldiers, France
could have easily driven into the Ruhr industrial area and crippled Germany so that it
would be impossible to go eastward. And by this date, certain members of the Milner
Group and of the British Conservative government had reached the fantastic idea that
they could kill two birds with one stone by setting Germany and Russia against one
another in Eastern Europe. In this way they felt that the two enemies would stalemate one
another, or that Germany would become satisfied with the oil of Rumania and the wheat
of the Ukraine. It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and
Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West. Even less did it
occur to them that Russia might beat Germany and thus open all Central Europe to
Bolshevism.
This idea of bringing Germany into a collision with Russia was not to be found, so far
as the evidence shows, among any members of the inner circle of the Milner Group.
Rather it was to be found among the personal associates of Neville Chamberlain,
including several members of the second circle of the Milner Group. The two policies
followed parallel courses until March 1939. After that date the Milner Group's
disintegration became very evident, and part of it took the form of the movement of
several persons (like Hoare and Simon) from the second circle of the Milner Group to the
inner circle of the new group rotating around Chamberlain. This process was concealed
by the fact that this new group was following, in public at least, the policy desired by the
Milner Group; their own policy, which was really the continuation of appeasement for
another year after March 1939, was necessarily secret, so that the contrast between the
Chamberlain group and the inner circle of the Milner Group in the period after March
1939 was not as obvious as it might have been.
In order to carry out this plan of allowing Germany to drive eastward against Russia, it
was necessary to do three things: (1) to liquidate all the countries standing between
Germany and Russia; (2) to prevent France from honoring her alliances with these
countries; and (3) to hoodwink the English people into accepting this as a necessary,
indeed, the only solution to the international problem. The Chamberlain group were so
successful in all three of these things that they came within an ace of succeeding, and
failed only because of the obstinacy of the Poles, the unseemly haste of Hitler, and the
fact that at the eleventh hour the Milner Group realized the implications of their policy
and tried to reverse it.
The program of appeasement can be divided into three stages: the first from 1920 to
1934, the second from 1934 to 1937, and the third from 1937 to 1940. The story of the
first period we have almost completed, except for the evacuation of the Rhineland in
1930, five years ahead of the date set in the Treaty of Versailles. It would be too
complicated a story to narrate here the methods by which France was persuaded to yield
on this point. It is enough to point out that France was persuaded to withdraw her troops
in 1930 rather than 1935 as a result of what she believed to be concessions made to her in
the Young Plan. That the Milner Group approved this evacuation goes without saying.
We have already mentioned The Round Table's demand of June 1923 that the Rhineland