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 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
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
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
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
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