2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 227was provided by Arnold who confessed in the wake of Perham’s inter-
vention in the discussion at Chatham House that her assumption of
moral superiority on the part of Britain caused him to gasp. He then
pointed to such stains on the British colonial record as the ‘colour bar’
in South Africa, the use of forced labour in certain African territories and
the seizure of land occupied by Kenyans on behalf of white settlers.^500
Arnold’s response to her speech illustrated another point made by
Perham, namely, that the misconception that Britain pretended to be a
pillar of colonial rectitude had been exploited in order to distract atten-
tion from the main issue: the interests of those people who were to be,
if those such as Noel-Buxton who were calling for Britain to make ‘sac-
rifices in the cause of peace’ and for justice for Germany had their way,
‘instruments of our appeasement.’^501
On November 19, 1937, Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax and the
Lord President of the Council, who was then in Germany in order to
visit a hunting exhibition, had an interview with Hitler in Berlin lasting
one hour and a half. This interview occurred against a background of
‘[c]onsiderable hope’ in Britain ‘that some tangible agreement might be
reached’ with Germany that would ‘allay suspicions’ between the two
countries and of ‘rumors that the grant of a free hand in the East might
take the Chancellor’s mind off the tropics.’^502 Two days after this inter-
view in a speech to a rally at Augsburg, Hitler declared to wild cheers
that on the ground of morality and the ground of vital necessity, the for-
mer German colonies would have to be returned. Before promising the
crowd that Germany would express its colonial demands more loudly
(^500) Nicholson, ‘The Colonial Problem,’ 45–46.
(^501) Ibid., 42; and Lord Noel-Buxton, letter to the editor, Times, November 2, 1937. See
also Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 114–15.
(^502) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 134. In respect to Lord Halifax’s
interview with Hitler, Neville Chamberlain told the House of Commons the following: ‘It
was never the expectation or the intention of His Majesty’s Government that those con-
versations should produce immediate results. They were conversations, and not negoti-
ations, and, therefore, in the course of them no proposals were made, no pledges were
given, no bargains were struck. What we had in mind as our object, and what we achieved,
was to establish a personal contact between a member of His Majesty’s Government and
the German Chancellor, and to arrive, if possible, at a clearer understanding on both sides
of the policy and outlook of the two Governments.’ 330 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th series),
December 21, 1937, 1804.