224 J.-A. PEMBERTON
would impel us to associate African opinion so far as possible in all these
international proceedings. In this matter of the part to be played by the
coloured races we have no choice but to combat in deed and word the
very different ideas apparently held in Italy and Germany. Only the other
day Herr Hitler, as reported, proclaimed the indefinite indulgence of the
white race’s ‘urge to rule’ as necessary to the basis of the European eco-
nomic structure, while he derided our policy of trusteeship as a ‘weak
conception’ and a ‘pacifist idea.’ Britain’s answer must be to pursue that
policy...even more openly and deliberately. It is the only policy which can
justify her to herself, to most of the world, and to her own subjects in
retaining present control of such large areas. And it is the only policy that
promises in the end to remove one of the causes of world-conflict by ena-
bling Africans to take charge of their own destiny.Perham did not pretend that any of the measures she proposed would
‘appease the most dissatisfied nations,’ however, aside from undermin-
ing the persuasiveness of their colonial propaganda, these nations were
not her concern.^488 Indeed, on April 29, 1936, she called for Britain to
take the lead in applying ‘full sanctions,’ presumably economic sanctions,
against one such dissatisfied nation, lamenting at the same time what
she described as French ‘hesitation to keep the Covenant’ and a more
general inclination to ‘sit back in a new kind of neutrality and watch the
aggressor exterminate its victim.’^489 Although accepting that the British
government must have had ‘grave reasons hitherto to hesitate’ to pursue
a ‘forward policy....independently of France,’ she argued like Toynbee,
whose letter to the Times of April 22 she described as an eloquent
expression of the profound feelings harboured by many about the fate of
Ethiopia, she insisted that ‘justice and security’ rendered this course nec-
essary.^490 Perham described the dangers that would loom on the horizon
if no action as taken as follows:
One [danger] is that the refusal to take risks in the clearest imaginable
issue of international right and wrong to-day may increase the risks of an
old-fashioned balance-of-power war to- morrow. Another is that the appar-
ent discrepancy between our words and actions at Geneva may cost us the(^488) Ibid. See also Margery Perham, letter to the editor, Times, April 29, 1936.
(^489) Margery Perham, letter to the editor, Times, April 29, 1936.
(^490) Ibid.