194 J.-A. PEMBERTON
in his submission to Bourquin in March 1936, Lugard pointed out that
Freytagh-Loringhoven had asserted that the question of the restitu-
tion of German colonies was above all a question of right and honour.
Responding this assertion, Lugard stated the following: ‘As regards the
question of Right, the Allies did not admit the premises on which this
case is based. To the question of German Honour I would reply that
British Honour is no less involved in view of the pledges given’. Lugard
was prone to insist on this point. It had been a key theme of a lecture
he gave at Chatham House in December 1935. In November 1936, in
a speech entitled ‘Colonial Problems’ given at a meeting at the Royal
Empire Society, he declared to cheers that ‘to hand over on demand,
as though they were slaves or cattle, peoples to whom we have pledged
our protection is neither consistent with our national honour nor, in the
long run, would such a surrender make for peace.’^376 The fact that there
was in a German memorandum submitted to the conference in Paris in
1937 a rejoinder to Lugard’s dismissal of the claim that Germany needed
overseas territory in order to accommodate its surplus population on the
ground that the German state had adopted measures aimed at encourag-
ing population growth, suggests that Lugard’s views on the question of
colonial retrocession were seen as influential.^377
letter to the editor, Times, December 29, 1936; and L. S. Amery, letter to the editor,
Times, October 16, 1937. In condemning a policy of military exploitation Lugard stated
the following: ‘[I]t may be said that the British policy is to promote the evolution and
adaptation to civilised conditions, of Native institutions as opposed to Europeanization
and Assimilation.’ International Study Group: Note (in absentia) by Lord Lugard, March
13–14, 1936, AG 1-IICI-K-I-18.b, UA. See also Wood, Peaceful Change and the Colonial
Problem, 89, 94. Joseph Kenworthy, 10th Baron Strabolgi stated in response to a paper
Lugard gave at Chatham House in December 1935 that a ‘very sinister’ reason behind the
recent push for colonies which Lugard had not mentioned in his paper ‘was the desire for
military power by the use of coloured armies...A million men of high military value, cruel,
fierce and brave armed with modern weapons and under Blackshirt officers, might conquer
half of Africa and set the world alight in the process’. See Lugard, ‘The Basis of the Claim
for Colonies,’ 17.
(^376) International Study Group: Note (in absentia) by Lord Lugard, March 13–14, 1936,
AG 1-IICI-K-I-18.b, UA, and ‘Demands for Colonies: Lord Lugard on British Honour,’
Times, November 18, 1936.
(^377) Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 151. The German rejoinder to Lugard
appeared in Heinrich Rogge, Das Revisionsproblem: Theorie der Revision als Voraussetzung
einer internationalen wissenschaftlichen Aussprache über ‘Peaceful Change of Status quo’
(Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt Verlag, 1937).