150 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Although Volk ohne Raum sold very well, the colonial question still
remained an issue of minor importance in Germany.^219 After 1929, the
colonial question ceased to be regarded as a distinct issue and instead
became a subordinate feature of the broader push on the part of
Germany for equality and, in relation to this, treaty revision. By 1931,
opinion in Britain had begun to soften on the question of revision.
The increasing growth of the Hitlerite movement encouraged the view
abroad that moderation should be shown towards Germany, whilst also
compelling the leaders of the German government to become more
insistent in their revisionist demands.^220
In a number of letters to the Times in July 1931, Sir Alexander
Gordon urged that peace should be pursued through a policy of ‘con-
tentment,’ that is, through treaty revision, rather than through a pol-
icy of disarmament. He called on Britain to ‘take a lead at Geneva in
the direction of “appeasement,”’ appeasement being a term that at this
stage had not acquired a negative connotation.^221 Gordon’s position was
assailed the next day by Wickham Steed, a journalist who would later
join the New Commonwealth Society. Steed argued that to talk of treaty
revision was to add ‘highly explosive fuel’ to the ‘flames of discord’ that
were already ‘burning fiercely’ in Europe. Revision, Steed insisted, could
only be considered in a ‘atmosphere of confidence,’ an atmosphere that
would only be revived when people became convinced that it was the
(^219) Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, 83. Peter Gay points out that Volk ohne
Raum was a ‘long-lived best-seller.’ He notes that Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel
Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) which appeared three years later,
had ‘enormous sales’ in Germany and that this ‘aroused’ the Right. It is telling of the rap-
idly shifting political landscape nonetheless, that the voices raised against the film based
on Remarque’s novel upon its release in December 1930, were more numerous and more
openly vicious than they had been upon the actual novel’s release (ibid., 83, 144). Detlev
J. K. Peukert points out that ‘within four months of its publication in January 1929...[Im
Westen nichts Neues] had sold half a million copies.’ He adds that although the novel was
‘generally well received,’ following the film’s release the ‘attacks on Remarque by the hard
right were unceasing.’ Detlev J. K. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, trans. Richard Deveson
(London: Penguin Books, 1991), 173.
(^220) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 75–6.
(^221) Ibid., 76–7. See also Alexander Gordon, letter to the editor, Times, July 15, 1931;
Alexander Gordon, letter to the editor, Times, July 18, 1931; and Alexander Gordon, letter
to the editor, Times, July 23, 1931.