2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 235It is also important to note that with the policy of collective security
effectively in a state of suspension in the wake of the collapse of the sanc-
tions against Italy, it seemed to some that peaceful change was the only
alternative to change of a war-like character. None of this, however, is
sufficient to explain the willingness of certain advocates of peaceful
change to consider the expedient of ‘placing African non-Aryans in Herr
Hitler’s care.’^529
Not all advocates of peaceful change were seduced by the seemingly
harmonious union of the words peaceful and change. In a lecture deliv-
ered at the Geneva Institute International Relations also in August 1937,
Davis stated that he had always considered peaceful change to be a ‘bad
phrase’: it gave an inaccurate impression of the situation it addressed.
However and for the very same reason, Davis thought that it was also a
‘brilliant’ phrase: the mesmerising word peaceful kept hidden from view
what was the real situation. Davis observed that the expression seemed to
imply the unobjectionable idea that the ‘readjustments between States,
can and should take place, as a matter of course peaceably and quietly.’
However, as Davis also observed, this apparent implication only served
to conceal a less palatable fact: what was really involved in peaceful
change was the giving of something of value to a dissatisfied people in
a position to threaten or use violence in exchange for something which
satisfied people valued: security or safety. Based on this analysis, Davis
concluded that the expression ‘Change with Security’ more accurately
described the situation that peaceful change sought to address.^530 The
same analysis lead Davis to reject the popular expression ‘have-not’ states
in favour of the expression ‘dissatisfied insurgents’.^531
Davis contended that his conceptualisation of the essential elements
of peaceful change, which he summed up as power and security, and
of the relations between these elements, was borne out by the fact that
peaceful change had emerged as a topic of lively and sustained discus-
sion only in the previous two or three years. On the surface, he stated,
this fact was curious since the grievances now being discussed under
the rubric of peaceful change had been in existence since the end of the
(^529) Ibid., 135.
(^530) Davis, ‘Peaceful Change: An Analysis of Some Current Proposals,’ 146.
(^531) Ibid., 149–51.