Story of International Relations

3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 335

in embracing peaceful change as an alternative to collective security and
with little heed as to whether or not the grievances in question were
just.^338 Against this background, the LNU put out a statement in early
1938 insisting that ‘collective security must precede the redress of griev-
ances,’ a statement which was welcomed by Wickham Steed precisely
because he considered ‘the whole revisionism argument...the most dam-
aging fallacy the League cause had to contend with.’^339 Gilbert Murray
gave vent to his feelings concerning the drift of British policy in a let-
ter to Edward Lyttelton in April 14, 1938, stating in relation to Neville
Chamberlain the following:

I am profoundly shocked at the way he absolutely ignores the moral ele-

ment in politics. Germany and Italy break their treaties and announce their

intention to make war whenever the like, and Chamberlain treats this as a

mere difference of policy, morally indifferent, and claims that we should

be equal friends with those who keep the law and those who break it; and

when we suggest that the nations which mean to abide by their covenants

should stand together and support one another diplomatically, he says that

is dividing Europe into two camps.^340

There were moves among the rank and file within the LNU following
the Munich Agreement (an agreement which lead to the resignation of
the Hodža government and that of Beneš), to have the LNU incorpo-
rate a policy of peaceful change in relation to Germany. The motivation
behind these moves concerned a felt-need to respond to the charge that
LNU members were ‘war-mongers who talked about resisting aggression
without providing the means to alter the status quo peacefully’ against
a background in which Neville Chamberlain’s efforts at Munich were
being widely applauded.^341 The LNU leadership, feeling the need to

(^338) Ibid., 155.
(^339) Ibid.
(^340) Madariaga, ‘Gilbert Murray and the League,’ 183.
(^341) Birn, ‘The League of Nations Union and Collective Security,’ 156. ‘M. Hodža’s
Government in Czechoslovakia resigned after accepting the terms proposed [by the
French and British governments], and was succeeded by a new one under General Sirovy,
which, however, declared itself bound by the decision of its predecessor....[E]xcept for the
Czechoslovak State, whose sacrifice was consummated by the resignation of her President,
Dr. Beneš, all the parties [to the Munich Agreement] had solid grounds for satisfaction.’
Gathorne-Hardy, A Short History of International Affairs 1919–1939, 472, 475.