2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 217lack of colonies’: without a lack of colonies Germany would have no
‘claim on the British Government, and no one in England to plead that
Germany was being unjustly deprived of her own.’^457
Nicholson’s analysis of the German colonial propaganda was endorsed
by those participating in the discussion of his paper who were famil-
iar with the territorial ambitions outlined in Mein Kampf. Sir Malcolm
Robertson, after having declared that ‘few understood the fundamental
importance of Hitler’s book,’ proceeded to read out certain passages in
order to demonstrate that the fundamental policy of Germany what that
of acquiring territory in Europe. ‘Was it possible to keep the peace by
handing Germany back her former colonies? The speaker doubted it.’^458
By contrast, Sydney Arnold, 1st Baron Arnold, a Labour parliamen-
tarian and pacifist, appeared to take the German colonial demands rather
seriously, stating in the course of the discussion of Nicholson’s paper that
the colonial question was the last of the Versailles injustices that needed
to be addressed. Perhaps in the hope of appeasing his audience, Arnold
stated he was not proposing that only British territory be transferred.
He then cited with evident approval a letter penned by Sir Claud Russell
which had been published in the Times of February 3. He noted that
in his letter, Russell had suggested that sections of Nigeria, the French
Cameroons, the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola should be ceded
to Germany in the interests of peace.^459 Arnold put forward the view
that ‘many natives would prefer to be under German rule’ rather than
be subject to the rule of powers such as Belgium or Portugal. He added
that it was ‘also true that in certain stages of the last War the natives
had fought better for the Germans than had some natives for the other
Powers.’^460
Arnold claimed that a transfer of colonial territory to Germany would
satisfy the German desire for ‘prestige’ and have an ‘enormous’ psycho-
logical effect. He declared that it would be a tragedy if war were allowed
to break out due to the refusal to transfer a ‘trifling amount of tropical
(^457) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 142.
(^458) Nicholson, ‘The Colonial Problem,’ 44–5.
(^459) Ibid., 46; and Sir. Claud Russell, letter to the editor, Times, February 3, 1937. See
also Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 106.
(^460) Nicholson, ‘The Colonial Problem,’ 46.