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
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
be persuaded, or if Germany marched, the fat was in the fire anyway; if the Poles could
be persuaded to yield, the guarantee was so worded that Britain could not act under it to
prevent such yielding. This was to block any possibility that British public opinion might
refuse to accept a Polish Munich. That this line of thought was not far distant from
British government circles is indicated by a Reuters news dispatch released on the same
day that Chamberlain gave the guarantee to Poland. This dispatch indicated that, under
cover of the guarantee, Britain would put pressure on Poland to make substantial
concessions to Hitler through negotiations. According to Hugh Dalton, Labour M.P.,
speaking in Commons on 3 April, this dispatch was inspired by the government and was
issued through either the Foreign Office, Sir Horace Wilson, John Simon, or Samuel
Hoare. Three of these four were of the Milner Group, the fourth being the personal agent
of Chamberlain. Dalton's charge was not denied by any government spokesman, Hoare
contenting himself with a request to Dalton "to justify that statement." Another M.P. of
Churchill's group suggested that Geoffrey Dawson was the source, but Dalton rejected
this.
It is quite clear that neither the Chamberlain group nor the Milner Group wanted an
alliance with the Soviet Union to stop Hitler in 1939, and that the negotiations were not
sincere or vigorously pursued. The Milner Group was not so opposed to such an
agreement as the Chamberlain group. Both were committed to the four-power pact. In the
case of the Chamberlain group, this pact could easily have developed into an anti-Russian
alliance, but in the case of the Milner Group it was regarded merely as a link between the
Oceanic Bloc and a Germanic Mitteleuropa. Both groups hated and despised the Soviet
Union, but the Milner Group did not fear it as the Chamberlain group did. This fear was
based on the Marxist threat to the British economic system, and the Milner Croup was not
wedded nearly as closely to that system as Chamberlain and his friends. The Toynbee-
Milner tradition, however weak it had become by 1939, was enough to prevent the two
groups from seeing eye to eye on this issue.
The efforts of the Chamberlain group to continue the policy of appeasement by
making economic and other concessions to Germany and their efforts to get Hitler
to agree to a four-power pact form one of the most shameful episodes in the history
of recent British diplomacy. These negotiations were chiefly conducted through Sir
Horace Wilson and consisted chiefly of offers of colonial bribes and other concessions to
Germany. These offers were either rejected or ignored by the Nazis.
One of these offers revolved around a semi-official economic agreement under
which British and German industrialists would form cartel agreements in all fields
to fix prices of their products and divide up the world's market. The Milner Group
apparently objected to this on the grounds that it was aimed, or could be aimed, at
the United States. Nevertheless, the agreements continued; a master agreement,
negotiated at Dusseldorf between representatives of British and German industry, was
signed in London on 16 March 1939. A British government mission to Berlin to help