2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 201He did not doubt that transferring colonies or mandates to Germany
would result in the ruthless exploitation and subjugation of the popula-
tions concerned. Having noted that the process of ending imperial domi-
nation was underway ‘in varying degrees in practically all colonies,’ Shiels
advised that the proposals for the transfer of colonies were out of line
with this modern tendency.^397
The conclusion reached by the vast majority of delegates at the con-
ference, was that territorial adjustments, whether in Africa or in Europe,
should be ruled out as a form of peaceful change. To the extent that the
grievances giving rise to demands for territorial adjustments were gen-
uine, it was thought that there were best addressed by the removals of
‘obstacles to economic intercourse’: by diminishing, as David Mitrany
had argued at the 1935 session of the ISC, the significance of borders
rather than altering them.^398 Yet, it was also suggested that economic
cooperation of this nature should be linked to collective security guaran-
tees, and it should be noted that the general view at the conference was
that the LON should be strengthened even though it was well under-
stood by those present that it had entered a state of eclipse.^399
As with the opening meeting, the closing meeting of the confer-
ence was held in public at the amphithéâtre Richilieu, albeit this time
under the chairmanship of Herriot. In a somewhat dispirited closing
address, Herriot asked whether or not the root of the conflict between
France and Germany concerned a clash between two sharply different
conceptions: ‘one, the French conception, which holds that we have
inherited from Roman law a static conception demanding that truth
shall be proclaimed with absolute clarity and, according to some views,
with finality; the other, the German conception, which manifests itself,
for example in Hegelianism, in that doctrine of incessant transforma-
tion, of perpetual evolution’. In short, Herriot wondered whether the
(^397) Ibid., 451.
(^398) Staley, ‘What Price Self-Sufficiency?’ 5. See also Bourquin, ed., ‘Prevention of War:
Discussion,’ Collective Security, 265.
(^399) Ibid. Economic cooperation linked to collective security guarantees was the essence of
the plan of April 1936 of the French foreign minister, Pierre-Étienne Flandin. It projected
‘the utilization of a common reserve of raw materials and the opening up of a territory
of expansion destined to absorb the surplus European population’. International Studies
Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw Materials, Colonies, 448.