144 J.-A. PEMBERTON
‘mismanagement of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway line and the port
of Djibouti itself.’^198
Rome’s later rhetorical antics on the territorial front aside, at the
time when the 1937 session of the ISC commenced, the so-called colo-
nial problem was widely seen as being of concern only in relation to
Germany. This point was reflected in the following statement made by
Whitton at the conference:
Any solution to the problem of raw materials must be partly political; such
a solution, if there is one, must be a synthesis of economics, politics and
law. The very origin of this movement was political; you will remember
that the statement by Sir Samuel Hoare [at the LON in 1935] was mainly
an attempt to meet the claims of Italy for colonies. The movement was
continued in the hope of meeting the German demand for colonies.^199tHe germAn coloniAl cAmPAign: from versAilles to 1933
At this point in time, Germany was conducting a vigorous campaign for
the return of its colonies. It should be noted that in the early years of the
Weimar Republic, the German government showed no interest in enter-
ing into diplomatic discussions concerning equality of status in the colo-
nial field, such was its preoccupation with the pressing issues of internal
strife, hyperinflation and the payment of reparations. Nonetheless, a
minority of Germans continued to harbour a desire for such equality of
status and due to this minority’s propaganda efforts, the issue was kept
alive in the public domain. In 1924, at the first German colonial con-
gress to be held in the post-war period, a resolution was passed ‘asking
the Government to make its entry into the League of Nations condi-
tional upon Germany’s being granted territory under mandate.’^200
By the time of the next colonial congress in March 1925, German
efforts on the colonial front had broadened and had begun to acquire
a quasi-official cast. For example, not long before the signing of the
(^198) Ibid.
(^199) International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw
Materials, Colonies, 334; and Gilbert Maroger, La question des matières premières et les
revendications coloniales: Examen des solutions proposées (Paris: Centre d’Études de Politique
Étrangère, 1937), 14.
(^200) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 60–61.