2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 145Rhineland Pact, Schacht, as president of the Reichsbank, declared that
Germany would be able to fulfil the requirements of the Dawes Plan if it
were able to avail itself of the resources of colonies belonging to it. On
the very eve of the signing of the Rhineland Pact, Stresseman was sent a
telegram by the Deutschnationale Volkspartei asking him to obtain from
France and Britain a commitment on paper in regard to a range of con-
cessions. Although, Stresseman did not formulate an official request in
respect to colonies during the negotiations at Locarno, he nonetheless
raised the issue during those negotiations. The response of Briand and
Austen Chamberlain, according to the British under-secretary of state,
Godfrey Locker-Lampson, speaking in the House of Commons in 1926,
was simply to assure Stresseman that Germany, ‘as a member of the
League of Nations, would be a possible candidate for Colonial mandates
like all other members.’ Having pointed this out, Locker-Lampson stated
that it would be ‘incorrect to suggest that any promise or undertaking
was given to the German government.’^201
Despite the fact that no commitment in regard to mandates was
made at Locarno, the fact that the issue was even raised in that con-
text was enough to cause disquiet among imperialists in Britain. This
disquiet caused the Times opine that the idea that ‘remote settlers,’
meaning British settlers, in Tanganyika (what is now the mainland part
of Tanzania), ‘might be given away in the interests of European good
feeling or bartered away in negotiation, is not founded upon any solid
calculation’ and that one should not overestimate the importance of
the German colonial movement: the movement was ‘largely factitious’
because the colonial project was of interest to only a minority of the
German population.^202
(^201) 193 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th series) 18 March 1926, 601–2. On Hjalmar Schacht’s
statement in relation to the Dawes Plan and the telegram of the Deutschnationale
Volkspartei to Gustave Stresemann, see Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem,
- See also Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Colonial Problem: A Report by a
Study Group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (London: Oxford
University Press, 1937), 80–1.
(^202) ‘The Future of Tanganyika,’ Times, October 5, 1926. See also Wood, Peaceful Change
and the Colonial Problem, 63–4. On welcoming Germany’s membership of the LON, the
Times stated that Germany’s ‘supposed ambition to become a Mandatory State under the
League may, for the present, be regarded as a vain aspiration, because no mandate is avail-
able. Moreover the best observers are of the opinion that the agitation for mandates has
been artificially stimulated in Germany and finds no general support.’ ‘Germany in the
League,’ Times, September 11, 1926.