2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 185At the conference itself, Berber did not speak until a late stage in the
discussion, his point of departure being a methodological observation.
Echoing a point he had made at the 1935 collective security conference,
Berber stated that it was a ‘scientific or intellectual fallacy’ to fail to ‘dis-
tinguish between the abstract and the concrete method.’ He advised that
the abstract method should only be applied where there existed a ‘long
series of similar cases with analogous conditions,’ thus allowing for the
development of general rules. In the absence of such cases, he further
advised, the use of ‘abstract formulae’ would only serve to conceal ‘the
real issues’.^345
Having noted that Hitler had ‘semi-officially’ made a claim for the
return to Germany of its former colonies in a speech on January 30
that year, Berber declared that the German case was not that Germany
had a ‘right to get colonies from other Powers’ provided it could show
that it needed them for its emigrants or in order to obtain raw materi-
als. He insisted that such a case had never been made by Germany and
that Germany did not need to demonstrate ‘compliance with those con-
ditions’. To demand that Germany should show that it needed colonies
for these reasons Berber stated, was to commit the fallacy of the abstract
method: it was to make the mistake of locating Germany within the gen-
eral category of have-not states. Classifying Germany as a have-not state,
Berber maintained having noted Italy’s self-declared satiation, explained
‘nothing’ and was ‘absolutely false’.^346
Germany’s claim to colonies, Berber declared in Paris, had nothing to
do with its supposed have-not status: Germany’s position was that it had
been wrongly deprived of its colonies in 1919 under Article 119 of the
Treaty of Versailles. Berber noted that the reasons advanced for depriving
Germany of its colonies in 1919 were first, that it was unable to adminis-
ter them and second, that Germany had ‘used its colonies to prey upon
the world’s commerce’.^347 In relation to the first reason, Berber stated
that no-one dared to advance it anymore; in relation to the second, he
stated that it was a ‘fact that not a single German vessel during the war
used the colonies to prey upon the world’s commerce,’ even though, he
added, it ‘is a privilege accorded to nations in war-time from the time of
(^345) Ibid., 464.
(^346) Ibid., 465–66.
(^347) Ibid., 466.