It was never part of the Covenant system that force should be used in order to compel
some particular settlement of a dispute. That, we thought, was going beyond what public
opinion of the world would support; but we did think we could go so far as to say: 'You
are not to resort to war until every other means for bringing about a settlement has been
exhausted.' " This was merely a restatement of the point of view that Lord Cecil had held
since 1918. It did not constitute collective security, as the expression was used by the
world in general. Yet this use of the words "collective security" to mean the enforcement
of a three months' moratorium before issuing a declaration of war—this weaker
meaning—was being weakened even further by the Milner Group. This was made
perfectly clear in a speech by Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr) immediately after Lord Cecil.
On this day the latter parted from the Milner Group program of appeasement; more than
ten years after Zimmern's, this defection is of less significance than the earlier one
because Lord Cecil did not see clearly what was being done and he had never been,
apparently, a member of the inner circle of the Group, although he had attended meetings
of the inner circle in the period after 1910.(9)
Lord Lothian's speech of 5 December 1934 in the House of Lords is, at first glance, a
defense of collective security, but a second look shows clearly that by "collective
security" the speaker meant appeasement. He contrasts collective security with power
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