Story of International Relations

2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 211

The proposal put forward in the letter, which seems to have been
conceived of by its authors as a mid-way position between those who
refused to countenance any transfer of colonies or mandated territories
and those who accepted the German colonial demands without question,
was vulnerable to the criticism that despite what its authors said to the
contrary, ‘any transfer of natives to German control would involve their
“being sacrificed”’ and that their sacrifice would be precisely in order to
improve relations among European powers.^440 In any case, it is remarka-
ble that the letter’s authors thought that such an arrangement, as Lugard
stated in relation to Toynbee’s earlier proposal for ‘direct administra-
tion [of mandates] by a Committee of the League,’ would ‘satisfy the
amour propre of the claimants for colonies in their own right.’^441 What
is also remarkable is the fact that Murray gave the proposal his seal of
approval given that in a letter published in the Times on November 6 of
the previous year, he had expressed strong misgivings about the prospect
of granting concessions to Germany in light of its aggressive posture. In
the letter published in the Times on November 6, 1936, he stated the
following:

To a peaceful and law abiding Germany faithful to the principles of the

Covenant and the Kellogg Pact, I should like my country to make every

reasonable concession and, if anything, to err on the side of generosity.

To a Germany which militarizes its whole culture, glorifies war, preaches

the Vernichtung Frankreichs, and keeps Europe in a state of anxiety by its

threats of aggression, I do not see how its destined victims can be expected

to make any concessions which will make their subjugation easier.^442

It appears that Murray and the other signatories of the letter appear-
ing in the Times on October 7, 1937, envisaged the transfer of mandates
as part of a more general settlement with Germany. One can reasonably
presume that in their view, a general settlement with Germany should
be subject to the conditions specified in Murray’s letter of November 6,

(^440) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 101, 109n.
(^441) Lugard, ‘The Basis of the Claim for Colonies,’ 16.
(^442) Gilbert Murray, letter to the editor, Times, November 6, 1936. See also Wood,
Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 102.