1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 27had made and which had much currency at the time, Salter warned that
‘[t]o make gifts—whether of one’s own possessions or those others—
under pressure, and to a country full of aggression, would whet rather
than satisfy the aggressor’s appetite and stimulate that of others’.^89
Referring to the Ethiopian crisis, Salter stated that if the British gov-
ernment had defected a week ago from the policy it had espoused for
the last three months, the proper thing to do was to resume that pol-
icy and ‘to press it to its conclusion’. Salter contended that it was only
after this had been achieved, that the approach advocated by Toynbee
could be considered. He added that he thought Toynbee attached too
much importance to the supposed sense inferiority of Germany, Italy and
Japan.^90
Salter conceded that Japan had not been always treated as an equal
in the past, as exemplified by the rejection of its proposed racial equality
clause at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and that a more ‘under-
standing attitude’ towards Germany might have ‘prevented the devel-
opment of dangerous forces there.’ However, Salter maintained that in
the face of the ‘menacing arrogance’ that these states now displayed, the
‘first goal of policy must be restraint.’ Salter stated that restraint must
also be the first goal of policy towards Italy the arrogance of which, he
observed, caused it to believe that fear and weakness among the support-
ers of peace would allow it to exact ‘claims exceeding all the bounds of
justice and moderation’. Referring to the ‘illegal and unjustifiable war’
Italy had so brazenly launched and which was still in progress, Salter
declared that what had happened in the past week was a ‘tragic blun-
der, a betrayal of the League and a humiliation—a triple disaster without
precedent in recent history’.^91
A meeting in berlin
Against the background of growing European tensions, Toynbee con-
tinued his campaign concerning changes to the administration of the
colonial regime, insisting that it was ‘up to Great Britain to take action’
because Britain was the leading colonial power and action on its part
(^89) Salter, 1935, quoted in Toynbee, ‘Peaceful Change or War? The Next Stage in the
International Crisis,’ 51.
(^90) Ibid.
(^91) Ibid., 51.