232 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Two weeks later, in a speech at Harlow in Essex, Churchill, refer-
ring to the growing opposition to proposals for colonial appeasement,
applauded what he called this ‘very decisive rally against such sur-
render and betrayal of trust’.^517 Following the German invasion of
Czechoslovakia, the very decisive rally of which Churchill spoke became
unyielding resistance. By mid-March 1939, beyond the ranks of in those
conservatives whose anti-Soviet sentiments proved stronger than their
imperialist disposition and of the British Union of Fascists, there was
hardly any support remaining for a policy of colonial retrocession.^518 By
this time, the colonial racial policy of the Racial-Political Department
of the National Socialist Party was being hailed in Germany as follows:
‘This programme presents...the greatest contrast imaginable to that the-
ory of “equality of everything that bears a human face”. It demonstrates
the harm done by democratic colonial policy, as shown by the Dark
Continent’s history’.^519
collective security versus PeAceful cHAnge
In concluding this chapter, I would like to make some observations
concerning the increasingly polarised relationship between the poli-
cies of collective security and peaceful change with reference to remarks
made by Normal Angell and Davis in the context of the twelfth series
(^517) Ibid., 121–22.
(^518) Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem, 123.
(^519) H. Bechtholdt, 1939, quoted in Moresco, Colonial Questions and Peace, 61. Moresco
recorded the following: ‘Dr. H. Bechtholdt in the Voelkischer Beobachter of January 1939
quotes from the Kolonialfrage und Rassengedanke, published by the Racial-Political
Department of the National Socialist Party, nine-points of a colonial racial policy. The
notion underlying this policy is that the native population shall receive such benefits as
their racial character will allow them to enjoy. The principal benefits are: a full right to live
on their own land; a system of their own suited to their racial character; native schools in
which their own culture is taught and European educations materials excluded; positions of
trust for natives talented and “experienced in co-operation”; complete protection in their
life work; respect for their religious cults. On the other hand, the natives are considered
unfit by reason of their racial Substanz to take part in European religious or social life; to
be admitted to Europe in any capacity whatsoever; to become citizens of the Reich; higher
education is to be closed to them on principle; there are to be white judges to adminis-
ter “swift justice”’. Moresco noted that this statement of colonial policy contradicted the
principles outlined in earlier statements of National Socialist colonial policy particularly in
respect to ‘the place of Christianity in native policy’ (ibid.).