478 J.-A. PEMBERTON
This belief was based on a hard-boiled assessment of the power political
situation in light of the Japanese advance into Manchuria and German
demands for equality of status.
Second, it should be clear that the advocates of peaceful change fell
into two distinct and opposed camps. On the one hand, there were those
who were willing to give ground on the question of changes to the sta-
tus quo but only in a context in which the states demanding change
renounced violence and in which mutual aid was guaranteed. On the
other hand, there were those who were willing to countenance the idea
of treaty revision or other changes to the status quo as an alternative to
preparations for collective defence in the face of the threat of war-like
change and irrespective of the legitimacy of the demands for change
being made.
A sharp cleavage arose between those who conceived of peace-
ful change as supplement to the collective security system and those
who saw it as an alternative to that system and the fact of this cleavage
shows that Fox was wrong to represent the policies of collective secu-
rity and peaceful change as part of the one and same internationalist
package. Indeed, it should be noted that some of those mouthing the
words peaceful change in the 1930s were not especially international-
ist in their outlook but were simply individuals who wanted to avoid a
clash with Germany and who believed, rather naively, that the tiger could
be tamed. The third point to make in responding to Fox’s characterisa-
tion of the interwar situation, is that the concern about how to protect
national interests in a context in which international institutions seemed
ill-equipped for the task, was precisely the driving force behind the advo-
cacy of collective security in the interwar period, a point which explains
why those advocating in favour of the organisation of collective security
simultaneously supported or came to support British rearmament and
multi-lateral security measures.
Manning addressed the cleavage between those who advocated first
and foremost in favour of collective security and certain of the advocates
of peaceful change in a 1942 essay entitled ‘The “Failure” of the League
of Nations’. He commenced this essay in noting that according to one
of Roosevelt’s envoys, namely, Benjamin Sumner Welles, the League
had failed because of its inelasticity in regard to peaceful adjustments
of the status quo. Manning then proceeded to attempt to demolish this
line of argument, clearly viewing the question of peaceful change, at
least in relation to such unruly states as Japan and Italy, as a complete