3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 339observes that Toynbee’s initial response to Chamberlain’s declaration in
the wake of the Munich Agreement of ‘peace for our time’ was equivo-
cal. He records that in a letter dated October 1, 1938, Toynbee wrote
the following: ‘[i]t is of course possible that Chamberlain’s policy is a
delusion...But I still have the feeling that [the Germans’] mischief mak-
ing power will turn out to have been much clipped.’^354
In a paper entitled ‘First Thoughts on September 1938 and After,’
Toynbee asserted that as a result of Munich the ‘principle of self-deter-
mination of nations has now at last been applied equally for the benefit
of all the nations that happened to be on the losing side in 1919-21.’^355
It should be clear that Toynbee and Carr shared much more in common
in regard to interwar policy than Carr’s characterisation of their respec-
tive positions would suggest: both advocated a policy of accommodation
with Germany, seeing this as a realistic alternative to war.^356 Taking into
account the fact that those who supported the League’s collective secu-
rity system and who thought that all the talk of peaceful change was a
dangerous distraction viewed themselves as the real realists, one might
suggest that the dichotomy which Carr set up between realism and uto-
pianism and the way in which he applied this dichotomy in his analysis
of interwar international relations, not only serves to obscure important
nuances in regard to interwar debates on international relations but also
conceals their real contours.
(^354) Toynbee, 1938, quoted in McNeill, Arnold Toynbee: Life, 173.
(^355) Toynbee, n.d., quoted in McNeill, Arnold Toynbee: Life, 173. McNeill notes that in
a paper entitled ‘After Munich’ and dated November 18, 1938, Toynbee expressed pes-
simism about the outcome of Munich. He records that Toynbee argued therein that the
‘principle of national self-determination in Europe was “bound to produce a Mitteleuropa
under German hegemony.”’ McNeill adds that Toynbee also claimed in this paper that ‘[f]
urther resistance to Germany...had become impossible’. Arnold J. Toynbee, 1938, quoted
in McNeill, Arnold Toynbee: Life, 174. McNeil records that these saw G. M. Gathorne-
Hardy ‘assigned the task of informing Toynbee that for now at least Chatham House
would not publish his paper, lest it become “a most dangerous encouragement to Hitler.”’
McNeill, Arnold Toynbee: Life, 174. For the censure of Toynbee’s paper see also Crozier,
‘Chatham House and Appeasement,’ 234–35.
(^356) Christopher Brewin observes that Carr and Toynbee had ‘much in common’ both
politically and intellectually. Christopher Brewin, ‘Arnold Toynbee and Chatham House,’
in Bosco and Navari, eds., Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945, 156.