220 J.-A. PEMBERTON
colonies ever eventuate. He further stated that if international supervi-
sion was considered necessary even in the case of democratic states where
the exposure of poor administration and abuses was relatively easy, it was
all the more necessary in the case of a state such as Germany. Shiels then
recalled that Lytton had pointed out in an ‘admirable series of speeches’
on the subject at the Paris conference on peaceful change, that in
Germany there was ‘no free parliament, no free press, and no complaints
could be made against authority with safety.’^469
Shiels declared that in light of the nature of the current German state
and given the German government’s ‘racial theories,’ it would ‘surely be
a betrayal of the trust which Great Britain had undertaken even to con-
template handing back these native peoples’ without their full and will-
ing consent ‘and without very real safeguards.’^470 Beyond this, Shiels
was insistent that Britain should not consider any new arrangements
with Germany ‘except as part of a comprehensive and satisfactory set-
tlement.’^471 Shiels evidently did not believe that any of the conditions
he insisted must be met before Britain even considered addressing the
so-called colonial problem would ever be agreed to by the German gov-
ernment as he gave a strong indication that he did not think negotiations
with Germany on the colonial front would ever get very far. Indeed,
he stated that the only real colonial problem that Britain faced was that
‘[n]otwithstanding good intentions, and considerable successful efforts,
many British overseas peoples were under-nourished, unhealthy, and had
low standards of life.’^472 Noting that these peoples were already ‘restless
and critical,’ Shiels warned that it would ‘not be wise to alienate them
either by diplomatic injustice or neglect of their needs, as this would
weaken the physical and mental resources and the unity of the concord
of the British Commonwealth of peoples,’ this being the ‘greatest inter-
national factor in the preservation of democracy and world peace.’^473
Margery Perham, a research lecturer in colonial administration at St.
Hugh’s, Oxford, who had spent much time in different parts of Africa,
(^471) Ibid.
(^472) Ibid.
(^473) Ibid.
(^469) Ibid., 47–8.
(^470) Ibid., 48.