2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 231following: ‘Obviously in present circumstances nothing further can be
done in that direction.’^513
One of the effects of the Munich Agreement, (which according to Sir
John Simon the chancellor of the exchequer and before that secretary
of state for foreign affairs, was ‘reached under pressure of the alternative
of instant invasion’), was to harden opinion against the idea of colonial
concessions, although this did not stop some from expressing the hope
that the so-called ‘spirit of Munich’ could be extended further afield.^514
A poll conducted in October 1938 by the British Institute of Public
Opinion found that eighty-five per cent of Britons were opposed to the
restitution to Germany of any of its former colonies and that only fifteen
per cent were in support of such a policy, a nine point decrease in sup-
port since the previous year. Of the eight-five per cent opposed, eighty-
one per cent gave a positive response to the following question: ‘Would
you rather fight than hand them back?’^515 Opinion further hardened on
the receipt of news of the pogrom of November 10. The general public
sentiment was reflected in a speech on November 11 by Sir Archibald
Sinclair, the leader of the Liberal Party and someone who had earlier
expressed a willingness to consider the German claims in the context of a
general settlement. Sinclair stated that
we in Britain could not honourably hand over to a Government which
permitted and even instigated such vile outbursts of frenzied barbarism
against what it regarded as a subject and inferior race, any of those primi-
tive peoples in Africa who now enjoy the blessings of freedom and impar-
tial justice under British rule. There are several possible solutions of the
colonial problem, but that solution must now be ruled out.^516(^513) 333 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th series), March 16, 1938, 411.
(^514) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 117–19.
(^515) Ibid., 119. According to Wood, in 1937 a poll found that twenty-four per cent of
the British population were in favour of colonial restitution and seventy-six per cent were
opposed.
(^516) Archibald Sinclair, 1938, quoted ibid., 120. Archibald Sinclair, envisaged an economic
settlement in the colonial sphere with Germany, stating in March 1937 that the ‘“Ottawa
policy of selfish and exclusive economic Imperialism” must be abandoned if a constructive
policy of peace was to be pursued’ (ibid., 97).