diplomacy and, having excluded all use of force under the former expression, goes on to
interpret it to mean peaceful change without war. In the context of events, this could only
mean appeasement of Germany. He said: "In international affairs, unless changes are
made in time, war becomes inevitable.... If the collective system is to be successful, it
must contain two elements. On the one hand, it must be able to bring about by pacific
means alterations in the international structure, and, on the other hand, it must be strong
enough to restrain Powers who seek to take the law into their own hands either by war or
by power diplomacy, from being successful in their efforts." This was nothing but the
appeasement program of Chamberlain and Halifax—that concessions should be made to
Germany to strengthen her on the Continent and in Eastern Europe, while Britain should
remain strong enough on the sea and in the air to prevent Hitler from using war to obtain
these concessions. The fear of Hitler's using war was based not so much on a dislike of
force (neither Lothian nor Halifax was a pacifist in that sense) but on the realization that
if Hitler made war against Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, public opinion in France
and England might force their governments to declare war in spite of their desire to yield
these areas to Germany. This, of course, is what finally happened.
Hitler was given ample assurance by the Milner Group, both within and without the
government, that Britain would not oppose his efforts "to achieve arms equality." Four
days before Germany officially denounced the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of
Versailles, Leopold Amery made a slashing attack on collective security, comparing "the
League which exists" and "the league of make-believe, a cloud cuckoo land, dreams of a
millennium which we were not likely to reach for many a long year to come; a league
which was to maintain peace by going to war whenever peace was disturbed. That sort of
thing, if it could exist, would be a danger to peace; it would be employed to extend war
rather than to put an end to it. But dangerous or not, it did not exist, and to pretend that it
did exist was sheer stupidity."
Four days later, Hitler announced Germany's rearmament, and ten days after that,
Britain condoned the act by sending Sir John Simon on a state visit to Berlin. When
France tried to counterbalance Germany's rearmament by bringing the Soviet Union into
her eastern alliance system in May 1935, the British counteracted this by making the
Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 18 June 1935. This agreement, concluded by Simon,
allowed Germany to build up to 35 percent of the size of the British Navy (and up to 100
percent in submarines). This was a deadly stab in the back to France, for it gave Germany
a navy considerably larger than the French in the important categories of ships (capital
ships and aircraft carriers) in the North Sea, because France was bound by treaty in these
categories to only 33 percent of Britain's; and France, in addition, had a worldwide
empire to protect and the unfriendly Italian Navy off her Mediterranean coast. This
agreement put the French Atlantic coast so completely at the mercy of the German Navy
that France became completely dependent on the British fleet for protection in this area.
Obviously, this protection would not be given unless France in a crisis renounced her
eastern allies. As if this were not enough, Britain in March 1936 accepted the German
remilitarization of the Rhineland and in August 1936 began the farcical nonintervention
agreement in Spain, which put another unfriendly government on France's remaining land
frontier. Under such pressure, it was clear that France would not honor her alliances with
the Czechs, the Poles, or the Russians, if they came due.
In these actions of March 1935 and March 1936, Hitler was running no risk, for the
government and the Milner Group had assured him beforehand that it would accept his
actions. This was done both in public and in private, chiefly in the House of Commons
and in the articles of The Times. Within the Cabinet, Halifax, Simon, and Hoare resisted
the effort to form any alignment against Germany. The authorized biographer of Halifax
wrote in reference to Halifax's attitude in 1935 and 1936:
"Was England to allow herself to be drawn into war because France had alliances in
Eastern Europe? Was she to give Mussolini a free pass to Addis Ababa merely to prevent
Hitler marching to Vienna?" Questions similar to these were undoubtedly posed by
Halifax in Cabinet. His own friends, in particular Lothian and Geoffrey Dawson of The
Times, had for some time been promoting Anglo-German fellowship with rather more
fervour than the Foreign Office. In January 1935 Lothian had a long conversation with
Hitler, and Hitler was reputed to have proposed an alliance between England, Germany,
and the United States which would in effect give Germany a free hand on the Continent,
in return for which he had promised not to make Germany "a world power" or to attempt
to compete with the British Navy. The Times consistently opposed the Eastern Locarno
and backed Hitler's non-aggression alternative. Two days before the Berlin talks, for
instance, it advocated that they should include territorial changes, and in particular the
question of Memel; while on the day they began [March 1935] its leading article
suggested that if Herr Hitler can persuade his British visitors, and through them the rest
of the world, that his enlarged army is really designed to give them equality of status and
equality of negotiation with other countries, and is not to be trained for aggressive
purposes, then Europe may be on the threshold of an era in which changes can be made
without the use of force, and a potential aggressor may be deterred by the certain prospect
of having to face overwhelming opposition! How far The Times and Lothian were
arguing and negotiating on the Government's behalf is still not clear, but that Halifax was
intimately acquainted with the trend of this argument is probable.”
It goes without saying that the whole inner core of the Group, and their chief
publications, such as The Times and The Round Table, approved the policy of
appeasement completely and prodded it along with calculated indiscretions when it was
felt necessary to do so. After the remilitarization of the Rhineland, The Times cynically
called this act "a chance to rebuild." As late as 24 February 1938, in the House of Lords,
Lothian defended the same event. He said: "We hear a great deal of the violation by Herr
Hitler of the Treaty because he returned his own troops to his own frontier. You hear
much less today of the violation by which the French Army, with the acquiescence of this
country, crossed the frontier in order to annihilate German industry and in effect
produced the present Nazi Party."
In the House of Commons in October 1935, and again on 6 May 1936, Amery
systematically attacked the use of force to sustain. the League of Nations. On the earlier
occasion he said:
“From the very outset there have been two schools of thought about the League and
about our obligations under the League. There has been the school, to which I belong and
to which for years, I believe, the Government of this country belonged, that regards the
League as a great institution, an organization for promoting cooperation and harmony
among the nations, for bringing about understanding, a permanent Round Table of the