336 J.-A. PEMBERTON
reunite the deeply fractured peace movement against the background
of the Munich Agreement, ultimately bowed to this pressure. Thus,
in December, it issued a policy statement which called for ‘effective
machinery...for the ventilation of grievances and the removal of injus-
tices’ in order that ‘all conditions likely to impair the good understand-
ing between nations should be remedied before they become acute and
result in war.’^342
The policy statement issued by the LNU in December underlined the
economic causes of international tensions and also called for interna-
tional congresses to address grievances in relation to ‘territorial arrange-
ments in Europe and elsewhere, including the Colonial problem’ with
a view to forestalling ‘future disturbances’.^343 These concessions to the
cause of peaceful change, however, did not entail the abandonment of
the LNU’s primary commitment to collective security and certainly did
not signify endorsement of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, a pol-
icy to which figures such as Murray were vehemently opposed.^344
The LNU’s executive committee strongly condemned the Munich
Agreement. Birn records that the committee rejected the agreement on
the ground that it was a case of ‘seeking peace by surrender to force’ and
that in the view of the committee, the agreement was not only ‘disas-
trous to British interests and fatal to British honour’ but would ‘in the
end lead to war’^345 The German government, according to a resolution
of the executive committee on September 22, was determined to achieve
(^342) General Council of the LNU, 1938, quoted in Birn, ‘The League of Nations Union
and Collective Security,’ 157.
(^343) Birn, ‘The League of Nations Union and Collective Security,’ 156–57.
(^344) Ibid., 146, 154. The General Council of the LNU in June 1938 called on the execu-
tive committee to consider a motion calling on the Government ‘to enter into negotiations
with the German Government with a view to a general settlement of all grievances, and
especially the colonial question, to the satisfaction of all concerned.’ General Council of the
LNU, 1938, quoted ibid., 156.
(^345) LNU Executive Committee, 1938, quoted in Birn, ‘The League of Nations Union
and Collective Security,’ 154. Birn notes that in 1938 the LNU ‘kept up a steady broadside
against the Government’ with the LNU’s monthly journal Headway listing various ‘prom-
ises Hitler had broken in the past’ and predicting he ‘would run true to form in the future.’
He adds that Churchill ‘used the pages of Headway to attack the Munich agreements and
plead for support for the League and the Union’ and that from October 1938 the journal
became a ‘“focus” of opposition to Chamberlain’s policies’ (ibid.).