Story of International Relations

2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 157

dating from 1935 down to early months of 1937 to the effect ‘that for
Germany the acquisition of colonial territory had become today a ques-
tion of honour’: that among the principal powers, German alone was
denied any overseas territory and that the restoration to Germany of
equality of rights could not be considered to have been realised until
this remaining form of discrimination had been removed.^242 In what
was before revisions a confidential memorandum that he submitted
to the ISC’s general rapporteur on peaceful change and to the IIIC,
Frederick Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard, former governor of Hong Kong,
former governor-general of Nigeria and from 1922 to 1936 a member
of the Permanent Mandates Commission, pointed to an article appear-
ing in a monthly magazine entitled League of Nations and International
Law (Völkerbund und Völkerrecht). Therein, the magazine’s publisher, the
jurist Axel von Freytagh-Loringhoven, said that ‘though the question of
raw materials and room for emigration are important, the decisive issue
is that a restitution of Germany colonies is a question of Right and of
Honour.’^243 Yet according to Maroger’s analysis, what mostly character-
ised the German colonial demands in the period which concerned him,
was the stress placed on the economic aspect of the colonial question and
it was this, he contended, that distinguished the German colonial propa-
ganda from that of Japan and Italy.^244 Maroger stated in this regard the
following:

Doubtless, Japan and Italy had already explained their politics of expansion

in relation to some economic preoccupations; but there were numerous

declarations which insisted on the political aspect, on the moral aspect of

the problems posed. Most of the German declarations, to the contrary, put

the accent on the links between the colonial problem and the monetary

problem: in the speeches of Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering, economic pol-

icy holds a place the extent of which astonishes.^245

(^242) Maroger, La Question des Matières Premières et les Revendications Coloniales, 36–37.
(^243) International Study Group: Note (in absentia) by Lord Lugard March 13–14, 1936,
AG 1-IICI-K-I-18.b, UA, and Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 51n. Emphasis in
the original.
(^244) Maroger, La question des matières premières et les revendications coloniales, 39.
(^245) Ibid., 13.