2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 175Schacht was disputed by many commentators in Britain and France.
The grounds for disputing it were as follows: that the stringent eco-
nomic conditions in Germany were largely a consequence of the prior-
ity given to rearmament and the diversion of foreign exchange to that
end. Even those who favoured a policy of ceding colonies to Germany
for the most part did not contend that concessions of this kind would
solve Germany’s economic problems in general or ameliorate the strin-
gencies required by the Four-Year Plan. Almost no-one seriously argued
that Germany’s former colonies were so richly endowed with raw mate-
rials that the economic distress being experienced by German consum-
ers could be overcome by virtue of their return. Those sympathetic to
the cause of colonial retrocession framed their arguments in terms of the
requirements of either peace or justice or both. As one contemporary
observer pointed out, it was ‘clear that no matter how many colonies
were ceded, the maws of the armament factories, rather than mouths of
civilians’ would be the beneficiaries of such a policy.^307
At the time of the scheduled talks with Schacht in Paris, the British
and the French governments were contemplating granting Germany eco-
nomic assistance and as part of that, colonial concessions. It should be
noted that here that on July 27, 1936, Eden stated in a speech to the
House of Commons that the government was willing to discuss at ‘an
international conference under the auspices of the League of Nations’
the issue of giving ‘to foreign countries freer access to the raw materi-
als as are produced in the Mandated Territories and in the Colonies.’^308
In the same speech, Eden addressed the question of whether an actual
transfer of territory held by them was contemplated by the government.
In this regard he declared the following: ‘Let me make it clear that this
question is one which affects, of course, all Mandatory Powers...The
Government have not had any consultation with them upon it, but, so
far as His Majesty’s Government are concerned, the question of any
transfer of Mandated territories would inevitably raise grave difficulties,
moral, political and legal, of which His Majesty’s Government must
frankly say that they have been unable to find any solution.’^309
(^307) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 103–5. See also Gregory, ‘The
Economic Bases of Revisionism,’ 76, and ‘Dr. Schacht’s Paris Visit: Considerable Political
Importance,’ Straits Times, May 27, 1937.
(^308) 315 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th series), 27 July 1936, 1132–133.
(^309) Ibid., 1133.