148 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Germany to be an imperial power once more.^210 Further to this, many
felt that in light of the assurances given at Locarno, the imputation of
the so-called colonial guilt lie could be considered to have been with-
drawn.^211 Indeed, Stresseman stated in Geneva in the course of the
Seventh Assembly in 1926 that it could ‘now be confidently asserted
“that Germany had the same right to possess colonies as any other
people”’. Yet Stresseman, putting his faith in the extension of spirit of
Locarno, ‘made no demands for German mandatization.’^212
La question des matières premières et les revendications coloniales: examen
des solutions proposées was a study prepared by the Parisian barrister Gilbert
Maroger in view of the Paris conference on peaceful change which he
attended alongside his colleague Touzet. The latter, who was described in
the conference proceedings as a former ‘Résident Supérieur in Indochina,’
had just seen published the first volume of Le problème colonial et la paix
du monde: Les revendications coloniales allemandes. In La question des mat-
ières premières et les revendications coloniales, which was published under
the auspices of the Centre d’études de politique étrangère with the assis-
tance of the Rockefeller Foundation, Maroger examined in detail the
German colonial demands. He observed that a great number of them
appeared to be but the contemporary expression of an ‘old and more gen-
eral demand: the demand for the space necessary in order for Germany to
live, the demand for Raum.’^213 Maroger further observed that the con-
temporary German discourses on the subject of colonies often evoked
those images that had for a long time accompanied affirmations of the
necessity for Germany to expand beyond its borders. By way of example,
he pointed out that that Germany was sometimes compared to a ‘seeth-
ing cauldron, of which one must prevent the explosion’ and that Germans
(^210) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 66–7. See also Shelley Baranowski,
Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 148.
(^211) Moresco, Colonial Questions and Peace, 57. Moresco observed that the alleged with-
drawal of the imputation of colonial guilt at Locarno was a tentative withdrawal (ibid.,
57n.).
(^212) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 67. See also Baranowski, Nazi
Empire, 148. Shelley Baranowski notes that all parties except for the Communists were
involved in the Inter-Party Colonial Association.
(^213) Maroger, La question des matières premières et les revendications coloniale, 39.
International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw Materials,
Colonies, 628, 631.