188 J.-A. PEMBERTON
insisted, would mean that policy would simply be shaped according to
the ‘special interests’ involved.^353 In this context, Wright might have use-
fully added that Berber himself had appealed to general considerations in
insisting that the German colonial claim concerned above all a ‘question
of right, of legal justice.’^354
Yet Wright appeared more interested in exploring a subsidiary argu-
ment that on his interpretation had been strongly implied although a not
openly advanced by Berber: that the problem of the return of German
colonies was essentially a political problem and required a political solu-
tion if, in the words of Berber, the ‘danger of war’ were to be avoided.^355
Wright acknowledged that Berber had not directly stated that the rea-
son for returning colonies to Germany was that ‘otherwise Germany
would make war,’ diplomatically insisting that he did not want to sug-
gest this.^356 Nonetheless, Wright obviously felt that what Berber had
said about the colonial question came with a warning. He thus stated the
following:
It is to be hoped that we shall get peace as a by-product of justice, but if
we are going to make changes to the status quo only because otherwise
somebody threatens to make war if we do not, we are likely to be con-
fronted by more serious demands in the future. We cannot buy peace as
an immediate political proposition at the price of injustice; our discussions
must not proceed on the basis of what we have to do to buy off Powers
that are threatening war, but on what is necessary for justice.^357The conference was generally sceptical of the demographic case for ter-
ritorial expansion, especially given that the German, Italian and Japanese
groups represented at the conference had submitted little if any docu-
mentary evidence on the subject, despite the fact that the chief exponents
of this case over the previous decade were German, Italian and Japanese
government officials and propagandists. Further to this, it was a matter of
note at the conference that the claimants themselves had retreated from
(^353) International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw
Materials, Colonies, 476–77.
(^354) Ibid., 479.
(^355) Ibid., 465.
(^356) Ibid., 477.
(^357) Ibid.