Story of International Relations

1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 19

itself had ‘the faintest idea’ about how to proceed in this matter.^62 Kuhn
then pointed out that

[b]ecause of the Statute of Westminster, there was no way that this coun-

try could compel Canada to share her nickel or South Africa her gold,

or Australia her wool. In the case of the crown colonies, with their vast

resources of tin, rubber and other commodities, there are other obsta-

cles. Japanese goods, for example, were recently shut out from Malaya and

other British colonial markets, yet the Japanese could hardly buy raw mate-

rials freely from these colonies without selling their manufactured goods in

return.^63

Kuhn’s observation that Hoare’s speech signalled that the British gov-
ernment now recognised the need to make some attempt at pacifying the
colonial have-nots was open to question. Fergus Chalmers Wright was
a Briton who had become an official in Paris of IIIC at the beginning
of 1931. He worked there for much of the 1930s albeit with a ‘cou-
ple of interludes,’ the first of which saw this graduate in economics from
London University ‘seconded to the...National Economic Council
of China as foreign person assistant to’ the Chinese finance minister,
namely, T. V. Soong (Song Ziwen), a post which Soong held from late
October 1928 to early November 1933.^64
Chalmers Wright would later compile a substantial survey on behalf
of the IIIC and the organisation for which it served as a secretariat: ISC.
The survey Chalmers Wright compiled, which went under the heading
of Population and Peace: A Survey on International Opinion on Claims
for Relief from Population Pressure and which appeared in 1939, was
commissioned by the IIIC against the background of the ISC’s dis-
cussion of the demands for outlets for the putative surplus populations
of colonial have-not states at its annual sessions dating from 1934 to

1937. Chalmers Wright, who by virtue of his position as chief of the

(^62) Ibid.
(^63) Ibid.
(^64) Chalmers-Wright, Fergus Camille Yeatman (Oral History), Imperial War Museum
(production company), Laurie Milner (recorder), Chalmers-Wright, Fergus Camille
Yeatman (interviewee/speaker), no. 1, 1984–1985, Imperial War Museum, Sound Archive,
Catalogue no. 8188. For the dates bookending T. V. Soong’s period as finance minister,
see ‘Foreign News: Chiang’s Cabinet,’ Time, October 29, 1928, and ‘CHINA: Soong
Out,’ Time, November 6, 1933.