Anglo-American Establishment полностью

sentence, The Round Table tossed onto the scrap heap its basic argument in support of

appeasement, namely the "injustices of Versailles." The sentence reads: "It is not

Versailles but defeat that is the essential German grievance against the western Powers."

This sentence should have been printed in gold letters in the Foreign Office in London in

1919 and read daily thereafter.

It is worthy of note that this issue of The Round Table discussed the Czech crisis in

two articles of twenty-seven pages and had only one sentence on Russia. This sentence

spoke of the weakness of Russia, where "a new Tiberius had destroyed the morale and

the material efficiency of the Russian Army." However, in a separate article, dealing

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