334 J.-A. PEMBERTON
failed to achieve peace by the road of collective security, we should per-
haps start again by another road, that of peaceful change.’ Vigorously
disagreeing with this proposition, Salter declared that proposals for
changes to the status quo should only receive consideration in an envi-
ronment free from menaces of aggression. Otherwise, he pointed out,
encouragement would be given to the belief that claims far in excess
of what most would consider just and reasonable can succeed through
adopting a belligerent posture. Salter insisted that concessions should
follow ‘as the expression of justice and good-will’ in response to claims
that are just and moderate. However, he added, should changes be
made to the status quo in the face of threats or acts of aggression, those
changes will be and will appear to be nothing but ‘the expression of the
weakness and disunion of the supporters of the peace system.’^334
In his discussion of the British LNU and collective security, Birn
notes that there was ‘broad sympathy’ for revisionism among many
rank and file members of the LNU. He adds that the mid-1930s both
Conservative supporters of appeasement and pacifists were citing the fact
that the League had failed to ‘provide for peaceful boundary revisions
in their arguments against enforcing the Covenant.’ For example, Astor,
adopting a position that Birn insists was ‘typical,’ explained to Murray
in November 1937 ‘that he could support a system of collective security
only after the irrational Versailles settlement was revised.’^335
Birn points out that by the time the LNU had moved to embrace the
idea of a collective security mechanism and to support Churchill in his
‘Arms and the Covenant’ campaign, many of its Conservative members
had departed.^336 He adds that some pacifists not only transferred their
support to the appeasement lobby, but also attacked collective security
proponents at the LNU and elsewhere for supposedly aggravating inter-
national tensions and ‘causing the arms race.’^337
Demands for peaceful change in response to the grievances of cer-
tain states were viewed by the LNU leadership as part of multi-pronged
attack on League: pacifists and conservatives had made common cause
(^334) Salter, 1935, quoted in Toynbee, ‘Peaceful Change or War?,’ 50-1. See also Antola,
‘Theories of Peaceful Change: An Excursion to the Study of Change in International
Relations in the 1930s,’ 240.
(^335) Birn, ‘The League of Nations Union and Collective Security,’ 155–56.
(^336) Ibid., 143, 145.
(^337) Ibid., 143.