largely with Soviet-German relations, we find the significant sentences: "The Western
democracies appear to be framing their policies on the principle of ‘letting Germany go
east.'. . . [Russia faces] the fundamental need of preventing a hostile coalition of the great
Powers of western Europe."
The final judgment of the Milner Group on the Munich surrender could probably be
found in the December 1938 issue of The Round Table, where we read the following:
"The nation as a whole is acutely aware that Anglo-French predominance, resulting from
victory in the great war, is now a matter of history, that the conception of an international
society has foundered because the principle of the rule of law was prostituted to
perpetuate an impossible inequality.... The terms of the Versailles Treaty might have been
upheld for some time longer by the consistent use of military power—notably when
Germany remilitarized the Rhineland zone—but it was illogical to expect a defeated and
humiliated foe to accept inferiority as the immutable concomitant of a nobler world, and
it was immoral to try to build the City of God on lopsided foundations."
As late as the March 1939 issue, The Round Table point of view remained unchanged.
At that time it said: "The policy of appeasement, which Mr. Chamberlain represents and
which he brought to what seemed to be its most triumphant moment at Munich, was the
only possible policy on which the public opinion of the different nations of the
Commonwealth could have been unified. It had already been unanimously approved in
general terms at the Imperial Conference of 1937."
The German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 marked the turning
point for the Milner Croup, but not for the Chamberlain group. In the June 1939 issue,
the leading article of The Round Table was entitled "From Appeasement to Grand
Alliance." Without expressing any regrets about the past, which it regarded as embodying
the only possible policy, it rejected appeasement in the future. It demanded a "grand
alliance" of Poland, Rumania, France, Britain, and others. Only one sentence referred to
Russia; it said: "Negotiations to include Soviet Russia in the system are continuing."
Most of the article justified the previous policy as inevitable in a world of sovereign
states. Until federation abolishes sovereignty and creates a true world government
amenable to public opinion, the nations will continue to live in anarchy, whatever
their contractual obligations may be; and under conditions of anarchy it is power
and not public opinion that counts.... The fundamental, though not the only, explanation
of the tragic history of the last eight years is to be found in the failure of the English-
speaking democracies to realize that they could prevent aggression only by unity and by
being strongly armed enough to resist it wherever it was attempted."
This point of view had been expressed earlier, in the House of Lords, by Lothian and
Astor. On 12 April 1939, the former said:
“One of Herr Hitler's great advantages has been that, for very long, what he sought a
great many people all over the world felt was not unreasonable, whatever they may have
thought of his methods. But that justification has completely and absolutely disappeared
in the last three months. It began to disappear in my mind at the Godesberg Conference....
I think the right answer to the situation is what Mr. Churchill has advocated elsewhere, a
grand alliance of all those nations whose interest is paramountly concerned with the
maintenance of their own status-quo. But in my view if you are going to do that you have
got to have a grand alliance which will function not only in the West of Europe but also
in the East. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Snell has just said that in that Eastern
alliance Russia may be absolutely vital.... Nobody will suspect me of any ideological
sympathy with Russia or Communism. I have even less ideological sympathy with Soviet
Russia than I had with the Czarist Russia. But in resisting aggression it is power alone
that counts.”
He then went on to advocate national service and was vigorously supported by Lord
Astor, both in regard to this and in regard to the necessity of bringing Russia into the
"grand alliance."
From this point onward, the course of the Milner Group was more rigid against
Germany. This appeared chiefly as an increased emphasis on rearmament and national
service, policies which the Group had been supporting for a long time. Unlike the
Chamberlain group, they learned a lesson from the events of 15 March 1939. It would be
a mistake, however, to believe that they were determined to resist any further acquisition
of territory or economic advantage by Germany. Not at all. They would undoubtedly
have been willing to allow frontier rectifications in the Polish Corridor or elsewhere in
favor of Germany, if these were accomplished by a real process of negotiation and
included areas inhabited by Germans, and if the economic interests of Poland, such as her
trade outlet to the Baltic, were protected. In this the Milner Group were still motivated by
ideas of fairness and justice and by a desire to avoid a war. The chief changes were two:
(1) they now felt, as they (in contrast to Chamberlain's group) had long suspected, that
peace could be preserved better by strength than by weakness; and (2) they now felt that
Hitler would not stop at any point based only on justice but was seeking world
domination. The short-run goal of the Milner Group still remained a Continent dominated
by Hitler between an Oceanic Bloc on the west and the Soviet Union on the east. That
they assumed such a solution could keep the peace, even on a short-term basis, shows the
fundamental naivete of the Milner Group. The important point is that this view did not
prohibit any modification of the Polish frontiers;, not did it require any airtight
understanding with the Soviet Union. It did involve an immediate rearming of Britain and
a determination to stop Hitler if he moved by force again. Of these three points, the first
two were shared with the Chamberlain group; the third was not. The difference rested on
the fact that the Chamberlain group hoped to permit Britain to escape from the necessity
of fighting Germany by getting Russia to fight Germany. The Chamberlain group did not
share the Milner Group's naive belief in the possibility of three great power blocs
standing side by side in peace. Lacking that belief, they preferred a German-Russian war
to a British-German war. And, having that preference, they differed from the Milner
Group in their willingness to accept the partition of Poland by Germany. The Milner
Group would have yielded parts of Poland to Germany if done by fair negotiation. The
Chamberlain group was quite prepared to liquidate Poland entirely, if it could be
presented to the British people in terms which they would accept without demanding war.
Here again appeared the difference we have already mentioned between the Milner
Group and Lloyd George in 1918 and between the Group and Baldwin in 1923, namely
that the Milner Group tended to neglect the electoral considerations so important to a
party politician. In 1939 Chamberlain was primarily interested in building up to a
victorious electoral campaign for November, and, as Sir Horace Wilson told German
Special Representative Wohl in June, "it was all one to the Government whether the