2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 215In addition to the strategic objections any attempt at retrocession
would face certain legal hurdles. It might be questioned, Nicholson
stated, whether the African territories under British mandate were
Britain’s to give: they might be said to belong, under the Article 119
of the Treaty of Versailles, to the Principal Allied and Associated Powers
or to the League of Nations by virtue of Article 22 of the covenant or
even to the populations of these territories themselves.^452 Addressing the
moral objections to retrocession, Nicholson, echoing Lugard, observed
that it would involve the ‘breaking of pledges and the disappointment of
serious hopes.’ While Nicholson stated that although he did not want to
sound ‘self-righteous’ or to suggest that German administration would
be ‘less humane than our own,’ he could not help but point out that
it would gravely disappoint many Africans to be transferred from British
trusteeship ‘to a country the main and avowed intention of which is
exploitation’ and which espoused a doctrine of ‘race superiority.’^453
Yet even assuming all these objections could be overcome, colonial
retrocession would not achieve the desired goal of satiating Germany
and thereby preventing a ‘Second German War,’ Nicholson maintained.
The idea that Britain could ‘pay the Danegeld’ merely with the return
of the colonies Germany held in 1913, he affirmed, was a ‘most pro-
found illusion’: the price that Britain would likely have to pay for peace
was going to be ‘infinitely heavier than that.’ Turning to the question of
what Germany really wanted, Nicholson declared that the German colo-
nial demands were ‘essentially a side-show’ to the planned main event,
adding that Britain should not allow itself to be distracted by this side-
show.^454 Nicholson then stated the following:
There are many people in Great Britain who...sincerely imagine that
Germany will be “grateful” for a “generous gesture” on our part. To the
Germans generosity means patronage; gratitude, humiliation. They do
not want us to be kind: they want us to be frightened....What Germany
wants is power. She knows very well that the return of her colonies (even
if that were feasible) would diminish rather than increase her power. I
regard Herr Hitler as a most consistent man. I believe that what he desires(^452) Ibid., 37.
(^453) Ibid., 36–7.
(^454) Ibid., 40–1.