nations in conference . . . provided always that it did not have at the background the
threat of coercion. There is another school which thinks that the actual Articles of the
Covenant, concocted in the throes of the peace settlement and in that atmosphere of
optimism which led us to expect ten million pounds or more in reparations from
Germany, constitute a sacrosanct dispensation, that they have introduced a new world
order, and would, if they were only loyally adhered to, abolish war for good and all. The
Covenant, I admit, as originally drafted, embodied both aspects and it was because the
Covenant contained the Clauses that stood for coercion and for definite automatic
obligations that the United States . . . repudiated it. From that moment the keystone was
taken out of the whole arch of any League of coercion.... The League is now undergoing
a trial which may well prove disastrous to it. In this matter, as in other matters, it is the
letter that killeth. The letter of the Covenant is the one thing which is likely to kill the
League of Nations.”
Amery then continued with a brief resume of the efforts to make the League an
instrument of coercion, especially the Geneva Protocol. In regard to this, he continued:
"The case I wish to put to the House is that the stand taken by His Majesty's Government
then and the arguments they used were not arguments merely against the Protocol, but
arguments against the whole conception of a League based on economic and military
sanctions." He quoted Austen Chamberlain in 1925 and General Smuts in 1934 with
approval, and concluded: "I think that we should have got together with France and Italy
and devised some scheme by which under a condominium or mandate certain if not all of
the non-Amharic provinces of Abyssinia should be transferred to Italian rule. The whole
thing could have been done by agreement, and I have no doubt that such agreement
would have been ratified at Geneva."
This last statement was more then seven weeks before the Hoare-Laval Plan was made
public, and six weeks after its outlines were laid down by Hoare, Eden, and Laval at a
secret meeting in Paris (10 September 1935).
In his speech of 6 May 1936, Amery referred back to his October speech and
demanded that the Covenant of the League be reformed to prevent sanctions in the future.
Once again he quoted Smuts's speech of November 1934 with approval, and demanded "a
League which is based not upon coercion but upon conciliation."
Between Amery's two speeches, on 5 February 1936, Sir Arthur Salter, of the Group
and All Souls, offered his arguments to support appeasement. He quoted Smuts's speech
of 1934 with approval and pointed out the great need for living space and raw materials
for Japan, Italy, and Germany. The only solution, he felt, was for Britain to yield to these
needs.
“I do not think it matters [he said] if you reintroduce conscription and quadruple or
quintuple your Air Force. That will not protect you. I believe that the struggle is destined
to come unless we are prepared to agree to a fairer distribution of the world's land surface
and of the raw materials which are needed by modern civilized nations. But there is a
way out; there is no necessity for a clash. I am sure that time presses and that we cannot
postpone a settlement indefinitely.... I suggest that the way out is the application of those
principles [of Christianity], the deliberate and conscious application of those principles to
international affairs by this nation and by the world under the leadership of this nation. . .
. Treat other nations as you would desire to be treated by them.”
The liquidation of the countries between Germany and Russia could proceed as soon
as the Rhineland was fortified, without fear on Germany's part that France would be able
to attack her in the west while she was occupied in the east. The chief task of the Milner
Group was to see that this devouring process was done no faster than public opinion in
Britain could accept, and that the process did not result in any out burst of violence,
which the British people would be unlikely to accept. To this double purpose, the British
government and the Milner Group made every effort to restrain the use of force by the
Germans and to soften up the prospective victims so that they would not resist the
process and thus precipitate a war.
The countries marked for liquidation included Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland,
but did not include Greece and Turkey, since the Group had no intention of allowing
Germany to get down onto the Mediterranean "lifeline". Indeed, the purpose of the
Hoare-Laval Plan of 1935, which wrecked the collective-security system by seeking to
give most of Ethiopia to Italy, was intended to bring an appeased Italy into position
alongside England, in order to block any movement of Germany southward rather than
eastward. The plan failed because Mussolini decided that he could get more out of
England by threats from the side of Germany than from cooperation at the side of
England. As a result of this fiasco, the Milner Group lost another important member,
Arnold J. Toynbee, who separated himself from the policy of appeasement in a fighting
and courageous preface to The Survey of International Affairs for 1935 (published in
1936). As a result of the public outcry in England, Hoare, the Foreign Secretary, was
removed from office and briefly shelved in December 1935. He returned to the Cabinet
the following May. Anthony Eden, who replaced him, was not a member of the Milner
Group and considerably more to the public taste because of his reputation (largely
undeserved) as an upholder of collective security. The Milner Group was in no wise
hampered in its policy of appeasement by the presence of Eden in the Foreign Office, and
the government as a whole was considerably strengthened. Whenever the Group wanted
to do something which Eden's delicate stomach could not swallow, the Foreign Secretary
went off for a holiday, and Lord Halifax took over his tasks. Halifax did this, for
example, during the first two weeks of August 1936, when the nonintervention policy
was established in Spain; he did it again in February 1937, when the capable British
Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, was removed at Ribbentrop's demand and
replaced by Sir Nevile Henderson; he did it again at the end of October 1937, when
arrangements were made for his visit to Hitler at Berchtesgaden in November; and,
finally, Halifax replaced Eden as Foreign Secretary permanently in February 1938, when
Eden refused to accept the recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in return for an
Italian promise to withdraw their forces from Spain. In this last case, Halifax was already
negotiating with Count Grandi in the Foreign Office before Eden's resignation statement
was made. Eden and Halifax were second cousins, both being great-grandsons of Lord
Grey of the Reform Bill of 1832, and Halifax's daughter in 1936 married the half-brother
of Mrs. Anthony Eden. Halifax and Eden were combined in the Foreign Office in order
that the former could counterbalance the "youthful impetuosities" of the latter, since these
might jeopardize appeasement but were regarded as necessary stage-settings to satisfy the
collective-security yearnings of public opinion in England. These yearnings were made
evident in the famous "Peace Ballot" of the League of Nations Union, a maneuver put
through by Lord Cecil as a countermove to the Group's slow undermining of collective
security. This countermove, which w as regarded with extreme distaste by Lothian and