elections were held under the cry 'Be Ready for a Coming War' or under a cry 'A Lasting
Understanding with Germany.'"
These distinctions between the point of view of the Milner Group and that of the
Chamberlain group are very subtle and have nothing in common with the generally
accepted idea of a contrast between appeasement and resistance. There were still
appeasers to be found, chiefly in those ranks of the Conservative Party most remote from
the Milner Group; British public opinion was quite clearly committed to resistance after
March 1939. The two government groups between these, with the Chamberlain group
closer to the former and the Milner Group closer to the latter. It is a complete error to say,
as most students of the period have said, that before 15 March the government was
solidly appeasement and afterwards solidly resistant. The Chamberlain group, after 17
March 1939, was just as partial to appeasement as before, perhaps more so, but it had to
adopt a pretense of resistance to satisfy public opinion and keep a way open to wage the
November election on either side of the issue. The Milner Group was anti-appeasement
after March, but in a limited way that did not involve any commitment to defend the
territorial integrity of Poland or to ally with Russia.
This complicated situation is made more so by the fact that the Milner Group itself
was disintegrating. Some members, chiefly in the second circle, like Hoare or Simon,
continued as wholehearted, if secret, appeasers and became closer to Chamberlain.
Halifax, who did not have to run for office, could speak his mind more honestly and
probably had a more honest mind. He was closer to the Milner Croup, although he
continued to cooperate so closely with Chamberlain that he undoubtedly lost the prime
minister's post in May 1940 as a result. Amery, closer than Halifax to the inner core of
the Group, was also more of a resister and by the middle of 1939 was finished with
appeasement. Lothian was in a position between Halifax and Amery.
The point of view of the inner core can be found, as usual, in the pages of The Round
Table. In the issue of September 1939, the leading article confessed that Hitler's aim was
mastery of the world. It continued: "In this light, any further accretion of German
strength—for instance through control of Danzig, which is the key to subjection of all
Poland—appears as a retreat from the ramparts of the British Commonwealth itself.
Perhaps our slowness to realize these facts, or at least to act accordingly in building an
impregnable defence against aggression in earlier years, accounts for our present
troubles." For the Milner Group, this constitutes a magnificent confession of culpability.
In the December 1939 issue of The Round Table, the whole tone has reverted to that of
1911-1918. Gone is the idea that modern Germany was the creation of the United States
and Britain or that Nazism was merely a temporary and insignificant aberration resulting
from Versailles. Instead the issue is "Commonwealth or Weltreich?" Nazism "is only
Prussianism in more brutal shape." It quotes Lord Lothian's speech of 25 October 1939,
made in New York, that "The establishment of a true reign of law between nations is the
only remedy for war." And we are told once again that such a reign of law must be sought
in federation. In the same issue, the whole of Lothian's speech was reprinted as a
"document." In the March 1940 issue, The Round Table harked back even further than
1914. It quoted an extensive passage from Pericles's funeral oration in a leading article
entitled "The Issue," and added: "That also is our creed, but it is not Hitler's."
The same point of view of the Group is reflected in other places. On 16 March 1939,
in the Commons, when Chamberlain was still defending the appeasement policy and
refusing to criticize Germany's policy of aggression, Lady Astor cried out to him, "Will
the Prime Minister lose no time in letting the German Government know with what
horror the whole of this country regards Germany's action?"
The Prime Minister did not answer, but a Conservative Member, Major Vyvyan
Adams, hurled at the lady the remark, "You caused it yourself."
Major Adams was not a man to be lightly dismissed. A graduate of Haileybury and
Cambridge, past president of the Cambridge Union, member of the Inner Temple Bar, an
executive of the League of Nations Union, and a vice-president of Lord Davies's New
Commonwealth Society, he was not a man who did not know what was going on. He
subsequently published two books against appeasement under the pseudonym
"Watchman."
Most of the members of the inner core of the Group who took any public stand on
these issues refused to rake over the dead embers of past policy and devoted themselves
to a program of preparedness and national service. The names of Amery, Grigg, Lothian,
and The Times became inseparably associated with the campaign for conscription, which
ultimately resulted in the National Service Act of 26 April 1939. The more aloof and
more conciliatory point of view of Halifax can be seen in his speech of 9 June in the
House of Lords and the famous speech of 29 June before the Royal Institute of
International Affairs. The lingering overtones of appeasement in the former resulted in a
spirited attack by Lord Davies, while Arthur Salter, who had earlier been plumping for a
Ministry of All the Talents with Halifax as Premier, by the middle of the year was
begging him, at All Souls, to meet Stalin face to face in order to get an alliance.(17)
The events of 1939 do not require our extended attention here, although they have
never yet been narrated in any adequate fashion. The German seizure of Bohemia and
Moravia was not much of a surprise to either the Milner or Chamberlain groups; both
accepted it, but the former tried to use it as a propaganda device to help get conscription,
while the latter soon discovered that, whatever their real thoughts, they must publicly
condemn it in order to satisfy the outraged moral feelings of the British electorate. It is
this which explains the change in tone between Chamberlain's speech of 15 March in
Commons and his speech of 17 March in Birmingham. The former was what he thought;
the latter was what he thought the voters warred.
The unilateral guarantee to Poland given by Chamberlain on 31 March 1939 was also
a reflection of what he believed the voters wanted. He had no intention of ever fulfilling
the guarantee if it could possibly be evaded and, for this reason, refused the Polish
requests for a small rearmament loan and to open immediate staff discussions to
implement the guarantee. The Milner Group, less susceptible to public opinion, did not
want the guarantee to Poland at all. As a result, the guarantee was worded to cover Polish
"independence" and not her "territorial integrity." This was interpreted by the leading
article of The Times for 1 April to leave the way open to territorial revision without
revoking the guarantee. This interpretation was accepted by Chamberlain in Commons on
3 April. Apparently the government believed that it was making no real commitment
because, if war broke out in eastern Europe, British public opinion would force the
government to declare war on Germany, no matter what the government itself wanted,
and regardless whether the guarantee existed or not. On the other hand, a guarantee to
Poland might deter Hitler from precipitating a war and give the government time to
persuade the Polish government to yield the Corridor to Germany. If the Poles could not