146 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Imperial circles were further disquieted by a request on the part of the
Reich Colonial Task Force (the Kolonialen Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft
otherwise known as KORAG), that the German government insist that
Germany’s former colonies be returned as a condition of its entry to
the LON. KORAG was lightly rebuked in an editorial in the Times for
making this request on the basis that it displayed ‘a certain impetuos-
ity which it may be hoped will be restrained when German representa-
tives find themselves actually cooperating in the work of the League.’^203
The year 1926 also saw the appearance of an English translation of a
polemic penned by Heinrich Schnee, the former governor of East Africa,
called Die koloniale Schuldlüge (1924) under the heading of German
Colonization, Past and Future: The Truth About the German Colonies.^204
In his book, Schnee sought to disprove ‘the theory that the German
administration of her colonies had been so unsatisfactory that she had
thereby forfeited her right to colonial territory’: what became known in
Germany as the colonial guilt-lie, this being the English translation of
name of Schnee’s book in German.^205 Citing praise of German colonial
administration and criticism of mandate administration, Schnee attacked
the ‘the entire structure of calumny and defamation’ with which the
annexationist Powers had hitherto ‘succeeded in concealing the real
motives of their illegal action,’ and insisted that Germany should be
‘reinstated in the ranks of colonising powers, with a status equal to that
which she won for herself by untold exertions and sacrifices during a
struggle over thirty years.’^206
Schnee’s defence of the German colonial record won some sympathy
in Britain, but also lead Leopold S. Amery, secretary of state for domin-
ion affairs and for the colonies, to emphatically insist on Britain’s legal
title to Tanganyika. Amery was the chief guest at a dinner held at the
Savoy Hotel on the evening of June 11, 1926, which was described in
(^203) ‘German Colonial Aims,’ Times, July 29, 1926. See also Wood, Peaceful Change and
the Colonial Problem, 65.
(^204) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 65n.
(^205) Moresco, Colonial Questions and Peace, 57. Moresco noted that students of colonial
administration were ‘unwilling to generalize’ on Germany’s ‘colonial methods which varied
according to circumstances’ (ibid., 57n.).
(^206) Heinrich Schnee, German Colonization, Past and Future: The Truth About the
Germany Colonies, with introduction by William Harbutt Dawson (London: George Allen
and Unwin, 1926), 174–75. See also Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 65.