'Our Most Dangerous Enemy': Great Britain Pre-Eminent in the 1930sAuthor(s): B. J. C. McKercherSource: The International History Review, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 751-783Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40106490 .Accessed: 25/01/2011 02:46

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'Our Most Dangerous Enemy5 :

Great Britain Pre-eminent in the 1930s

B.J.C. McKERCHER

Britain was the pre-eminent power in the world between the First and Second World Wars, especially in the 1930s. There were several reasons for this. First, because of her empire, she

was the only truly global power. British governments between the wars pursued an activist foreign policy designed to protect their country's interest world- wide; hence Great Britain's leading position in the League and imperial conferences, and her willingness to work with a variety of powers to maintain the global balance of power. Second, buttressed by the British navy with its widespread network of bases, British foreign policy was hardly to be challenged. Finally, British economic and finan- cial strength, though weakened by both the cost of fighting the First World War and the disruption to trade caused by the Great Depression, was still formidable. Indeed, contemporaries recognized her power, and her determination to pursue her traditional policy of allowing no single power to dominate the Continent. In 1938, for instance, when Adolf Hitler had embarked on a course designed to establish Germany's hege- mony, he received a lengthy answer by Joachim von Ribbentrop, his ambassador at London, to the 'fateful question' of how much change Great Britain would accept in the European balance before she opposed German ambitions. 'Henceforth -regardless of what tactical interludes of conciliation may be attempted with regard to us,' Ribbentrop con- cluded, 'every day that our political calculations are not actuated by the fundamental idea that England is our most dangerous enemy would be a gain for our enemies?1

I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as the Academic Research Programme of the Department of National Defence, Ottawa, for their financial assistance in the preparation of this essay.

1 Ribbentrop, 'Memorandum for the Ftthrer', 2 Jan. 1938, Documents on German Foreign Policy, igi8-iQ45i series D (London, 1949), i. 162-8. Emphasis in original.

The International History Review, xm, 4, November 1991, pp. 661-880 cn issn 0707-5332 © The International History Review

752 BJ.C. McKercher

None of this is to suggest that British pre-eminence was equated with British omnipotence in the 1930s. As the decade progressed, Great Britain faced threats to her interests from three aggressive powers in different regions of the globe. On the Continent, Hitler removed the shackles imposed on Germany by the treaty of Versailles and, espousing pan-Germanism, began a programme to revise the territorial settlement of eastern Europe and to make Germany the dominant European power.2 To the south, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini sought to establish an empire in the Balkans and North Africa - to make Italy 'the mistress of the Mediterranean'.3 Finally, in the Far East, especially after the beginning of the Sino- Japanese War in July 1937, the leaders of militaristic Japan saw an opportunity to replace the white colonial empires in east Asia with one dominated by them.4

As the foreign policies of these powers spelled danger to established British economic, imperial, and strategic interests, British leaders con- fronted these assaults on the global status of Great Britain, and the prospect of relative decline in areas crucial to the exercise of effective foreign policy. The first was economic strength. Where the British were wedded to fiscal orthodoxy and low tariffs, the three totalitarian states moved towards deficit financing and protection. In Germany under Hitler - the best example - massive government spending directed towards public works programmes and rearmament ended the depres- sion rather quickly.5 This meant relative economic decline for Great 2 Perhaps the best study of Hitler's foreign policy is G.L. Weinberg, The Foreign

Policy of Hitler's Germany (Chicago, 1970, 1980). But also see A. Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (rev. ed., Hannondsworth, 1962), pp. 312-71, 411-89; K. Hildebrand, Deutsche Aussenpolitik, 1933-1945: Kalkul oder Dogma? (3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1976); and P. Kluke, 'Nationalsozialistische Europaideologie', in P. Kluke, Aussenpolitik und Zeitgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1974), pp. 188-222.

3 D. Mack Smith, Mussolini's Roman Empire (London, 1976), Mussolini (New York, 1982), pp. 170-237; E. Robertson, Mussolini as Empire-Builder: Europe and Africa, 1932-6 (New York, 1977) ; and G. Zamboni, Mussolini's Expansions- politik auf dem Balkan (Hamburg, 1970) .

4 J.B. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy 1 930-1 938 (Princeton, 1966) ; W.M. Fletcher, III, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill, 1982) ; and The China Quagmire: Japan's Expansion on the Asian Continent, 1 933-1 941: Selected Translations from Taiheyo Senso e no Michi, Kaisen gaiko shi, ed. J. Morley (New York, 1983). 5 See B.A. Carroll, Design for Total War: Arms and Economics in the Third Reich (The Hague, 1968); and H.-E. Volkmann, 'Politik, Wirtschaft und Aufriistung unter dem Nationalsozialismus', in Hitler, Deutschland und die Mdchte: Ma- terielien zur Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, ed. M. Funke (Diisseldorf, 1 976), pp. 269-91. But cf. A.S. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1 939-1 945 (Berkeley, X977)> and RJ« Overy, Goering, cThe Man of Iron' (London, 1984) ; and then consider A.S. Milward, 'Preparing for Total War5 [which reviews Overy], Times Literary Supplement, 25 Jan. 1985, p. 82, and the debate between Overy and Milward in the 8 Feb., 22 Feb., and 8 March issues of the TLS.

Great Britain in the ig3os 753

Britain and, with that, declining military strength. No doubt exists that the British navy was the strongest in the world when the Second World War broke out in 1939. As well, the British had begun to rearm in a major way after 193 6-7.

6 But the heavy arms spending by the Germans, Italians, and Japanese on their air, sea, and land forces led to a relative British decline in the final years of peace.7 As Ribbentrop's warning to Hitler indicated, Great Britain could still hold her own diplomatically and militarily with these powers one at a time, but the chance of their combining to oppose her in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Far East held the potential for real trouble.

Therefore, viewed from the other side of 1939, the rise of the three aggressive powers did not mean the inevitable decline of Great Britain. As their predecessors had done for several centuries, British leaders in the 1930s used diplomacy to correct perceived imbalances detrimental to Great Britain. This was done in two ways. First, not all great powers sought to profit at British expense. This led to efforts to align with France which, bordering on both Germany and Italy, also had to contend with the aggressiveness of both. Although an Anglo-French accommodation proved to be difficult in the early 1930s - the result of disagreements about security and arms limitation polices - the German- provoked crises in Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 led to joint British and French efforts to maintain the European balance. Here the British followed established patterns in foreign policy. If their interests could be defended bloodlessly and without upsetting the balance, the British had few scruples about appeasing a rival.8 The apotheosis of appeasement in the 1930s was reached with the Anglo-French offer of the Sudetenland to Germany at the Munich conference in September 1938. Hitler said this would be his last territorial demand; the inde- pendence of the rump of Czechoslovakia was guaranteed ; and general European war was averted. However, when the threat to the balance of power appeared to be too great, the British stood firm. Hence, when the 6 See R.A.C. Parker, 'Economic Rearmament and Foreign Policy: The United

Kingdom before 1939 - A Preliminary Study', Journal of Contemporary History, x (!975)j 637-47; G.C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 1932-1939 (Edinburgh, 1979) ; and R.P. Shay, British Rearmament in the Thirties: Politics and Profits (Princeton, 1977).

7 See the British assessment of this in Committee of Imperial Defence [hereafter CID] Paper No. 1366B, 'Comparison of the Strength of Great Britain with that of certain other nations as at January 1938, Report of the Chiefs of Staff Sub- Committee', 12 Nov. 1937, CAB[inet Records, Public Record Office] 4/26. Especially important are the tables on naval, air, and land forces, pp. 12, 15, 23.

8 P.M. Kennedy, 'The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865- 1939', British Journal of International Studies, ii (1976), 195-215; and P.W. Schroeder, 'Munich and the British Tradition', Historical Journal, xix (1976), 223-43.

754 B.J.C. McKercher

Germans annexed the rump of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the British, dragging the French along with them, set a limit beyond which they indicated they would not accept German expansion. The tangible expression of their resolution was the Anglo-French guarantee to Poland.9

The second method of correcting perceived imbalances involved working with powers which, though their internal policies were ana- thema to the British, had common foreign policy interests. Until the Abyssinian crisis of 1935-6 poisoned Anglo-Italian relations, a succession of British diplomats worked with Mussolini to maintain the great power equilibrium in Europe. From the negotiation of the Locarno treaty in 1925 to the conclusion of the Stresa front in April 1935, Great Britain and Italy found enough common ground to make co-operation easy.10 This helped ensure the stability of the Continent until the mid- 1930s when other means had to be found. In the same way, the British sought a basis for co-operation with the Japanese in the Far East. After the abrogation of the Anglo- Japanese alliance in 1921, relations between the two island empires remained promising,11 even after the crisis caused by the Japanese annexation of Manchuria in 193 1-2, the British en- deavoured for five years to work out an accommodation with Japan in China. They gave up on the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, when nationalist leaders in Tokyo decided to establish Japan's hegemony in east Asia and the western Pacific. Only then did the British search for another way to maintain their imperial interests in China and south-east Asia.

Still, despite her relative economic and military decline, Great Britain was not surpassed in the 1930s by any of her rivals; the threats posed by 9 S. Newman, The British Guarantee to Poland: A Study in the Continuity of

British Foreign Policy (London, 1976); W.R. Rock, 'The British Guarantee to Poland, March 1939: A Problem in Diplomatic Decision Making', South Atlantic Quarterly, lxv ( 1966), 229-40; and D.C. Watt, How War Came (London, 1989).

10 P.G. Edwards, 'Britain, Mussolini and the "Locarno-Geneva System" ', European Studies Review, x (1980), 1-16; A.L. Goldman, 'Sir Robert Vansittart's Search for Italian Cooperation against Hitler, 1 933-36', Journal of Contemporary History, ix (1974), 93-130; and R. Quartararo, 'Imperial Defence in the Mediterranean on the Eve of the Ethiopian Crisis (July-October 1935)', Historical Journal, xx (i977), 185-200. 11 Hosoya Chihiro, 'Britain and the United States in Japan's View of the Inter- national System, 1919-37', in Anglo-Japanese Alienation, 79/9-/952: Papers of the Anglo- Japanese Conference on the History of the Second World War, ed. I.H. Nish (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 3-26; B.J.C. McKercher, 'A Sane and Sensible Diplomacy: Austen Chamberlain, Japan, and the Naval Balance of Power in the Pacific Ocean, 1924-29', Canadian Journal of History, xxi (1986), 187-213; I.H. Nish, 'Japan in Britain's View of the International System, 1919-37', in Alienation, ed. Nish, pp. 27-56; and A. Trotter, 'Tentative Steps for an Anglo- Japanese Rapprochement in 1934', Modern Asian Studies, viii (1974), 59-83.

Great Britain in the iQ3os 755

Germany, Italy, and Japan were essentially regional. Admittedly, the German threat was the most important, for the possibility of German success on the Continent portended upheaval on Great Britain's door- step which might threaten the security of the home islands or, as Sir Warren Fisher, the germanophobe permanent under-secretary at the treasury, put it in 1934, the 'very heart' of Great Britain: 'With [American] policy we English are in no sense concerned; the United States have not almost at their front door a potential enemy which is gradually making herself into a first class menace; and therefore there is no question for the Americans of having to consider the risk of a simultaneous war in two widely separate areas, one of which includes their very heart.'12 But as British diplomats had done in the past when Great Britain found she could not stand alone, they sought to create a countervailing threat. Anglo-French collaboration in 1938-9 should be seen in this light.

In the 1930s, however, one power did have the potential to challenge Great Britain successfully for its global position. This was the United States. British global pre-eminence in the nineteenth century had rested on two pillars: economic and financial strength, and the navy's ability to keep open the sea routes to the empire and overseas markets. By 1 9 1 8, however, as a consequence of acting as paymaster for the allied coalition during the First World War, Great Britain had become a net debtor and the United States a net creditor. This was the reverse of the situation in 1 9 1 4, and was caused by the willingness of the Americans, through a number of large banking houses, to lend the British government sub- stantial sums of money to pay for the allied war effort.13 To add to British concern, US naval strength had also been decidedly increased during the four years of war. Because of the nature of the war for the United States-three years of neutrality, during which US maritime trade was affected adversely by the British blockade of the Central Powers, followed by more than a year of belligerency, when the US navy helped apply the blockade against them - US navalists had argued successfully for a significant increase in the size of the United States fleet.14 This

12 Fisher [permanent under-secretary, treasury] to Ghatfield [first sea lord], i July 1934, enclosed in Fisher to Baldwin [lord president of the council] and Chamber- lain [chancellor of the exchequer], 1 1 July 1934, Baldwin MSS [Cambridge Uni- versity Library], vol. 131.

13 See K.M. Burk, The Mobilization of Anglo-American Finance during World War F, in Mobilization for Total War, ed. N.F. Dreisziger (Waterloo, Ont., 1981 ) , pp. 23-42; and K.M. Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, igi4~igi8 (London, 1985) for an indication.

14 W.R. Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, igog-1922 (Austin, 1971 ) ; J. Daniels, The Wilson Era: Volume II: Years of War and After, igiy-ig23 (Chapel Hill, 1946), esp. pp. 65-156, 367-88; J.J. Safford, Wilsonian Maritime

756 BJ.C. McKercher

meant that in the post-war period, with the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow and the disappearance of other pre-1914 naval threats, for example Russia, the United States was seen as the main rival of the British navy. British unease increased when, after the war, Ameri- can navalists called for ca navy second to none'. Thus, as the post-war period began, the United States was no longer a regional power : assured of control over the western hemisphere by a willingness to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, she had expanding economic interests in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. In economic, financial, and naval terms, she possessed the potential to challenge Great Britain's global pre-eminence.

A body of historiography founded in the late 1 960s on economic deter- minism asserts that economic and financial gains made during the First World War, coupled with a large population and industrial capacity, had made the United States the leading power in the world before the Paris peace conference. In the words of the most recent of these works, the United States 'by 19 18 was indisputably the strongest Power in the world'.15 This view is disputable. In the past few years, a new school of international historians, wedded to the concepts of realpolitik, has been arguing that except for economic and financial strength -though even here for a long time Great Britain surpassed the United States- American power remained more potential than real. The issue hinges on one's definition of the term 'power' as it relates to foreign policy. As the economic determinists rightly emphasize, 'power' is something measur- able in the percentages and growth rates of quantifiable entities such as gross national product, volume of trade, and industrial capacity. Just as tangibly, however, power can be computed in the number of troops, aeroplanes, and ships available to support diplomatic initiatives, either by threatening or by going to war. Or it can be the strength of allied powers to be thrown into the balance or, less tangibly, the willingness and ability of leaders to use these resources, and the prestige of their state, to scare off potential opponents. When considering 'power' in inter-

Diplomacy (New Brunswick, N.J., 1978) ; and R.F. Trask, Captains and Cabinets: Anglo-American Naval Relations, igiy-igi8 (Columbia, Mo., 1973). 15 The quotation is from P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to sooo (New York, 1987), xix. Representative of the Economic determinist5 interpretation are F.G. Costig- liola, 'Anglo-American Financial Rivalry in the 1920s', Journal of Economic History, xxxvii (1977), 911-34; M.J. Hogan, Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, igi8-ig28 (Columbia, Mo., 1977); M.P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, igig-ig33 (Chapel Hill, 1979) ; and C.P. Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, igi6-ig23 (Pittsburg, Pa., 1969).

Great Britain in the ig3os 757

national politics, it is probably best to assume that it consists in each of these things and all of them.

Using this broad definition of power, the new school argues that the reality of British power was more important and more effective than was American potential.16 If the United States had used her wealth in the 1920s to build a navy approaching the size of the British navy; if she had involved herself in international politics through organizations such as the League, and used her economic might as the basis for political strength ; and if she had been prepared to use what force she did possess in areas of the globe where US interests were imperilled -as in China in 1927 ; then, argues the new school, the United States, given her wealth, population, industrial capacity, and skills would certainly have posed a serious threat to British pre-eminence. In fact, the United States did none of these things: she was reluctant to build £a navy second to none3 ; she refused to involve herself in crucial political issues in the 1920s, such as League efforts touching European security, which could have given her international clout; and she turned away from using what armed strength she did have to support her foreign policy and defend her interests outside the western hemisphere - unlike Great Britain at Shanghai in 1927. There is no question, as the economic determinists show, that the United States was wealthier than Great Britain by 1918. But as the realists add, her wealth was not translated into power.

Although in 1930 Great Britain had yet to be surpassed by the United States in the global power stakes, ten years later the shift was well under- way. By the summer of 1 940, Great Britain's Continental ally, France, had been knocked unexpectedly out of the war by German force of arms, and British pre-eminence was seen to be melting quickly away : on the defensive against two first-class powers, Germany and Italy in

16 This is increasingly known as 'the London school', as its proponents are either University of London graduates or members of the Institute of Historical Research. See J.R. Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919-1926 (London, 1989); D. French, The British Way of Warfare, i688sooo (London, 1990) ; and B.J.G. McKercher, 'Wealth, Power, and the New International Order: Britain and the American Challenge in the 1920s', Diplomatic History, xii (1988), 41 1-4 1. Although all of the contributors are not part of 'the London school', also see the articles in Anglo-American Relations in the 1920s: The Struggle for Supremacy, ed. B.J.G. McKercher (Edmonton, 1 99 1 ) . The general approach in all of this work is part of the so-called 'new international history' - see D.G. Watt, What About the People? Abstraction and Reality in History and the Social Sciences (London, 1983) -which owes much to the pioneering work of historians like J.-B. Duroselle and Watt. Cf. J.B. Duroselle, De Wilson a Roosevelt: Politique extSrieure des Etats-Unis, 1913-1945 (Paris, i960), and D.G. Watt, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain's Place, 1 900-1 975 (Cambridge, 1984).

758 B.J.C. McKercher

Europe, and facing the possibility that a third, Japan, would exploit the European crisis to make gains at her expense in the Far East, Lon- don's economic and financial resources were at the point of exhaustion. British armed strength was so stretched that, although the navy could prevent a cross-Channel invasion, there was no chance of winning a victory unilaterally over the Axis. As British leaders recognized the dire peril facing them, their willingness to take the offensive to shape events evaporated. The United States, conversely, was untouched by the war, admittedly because of strong isolationist sentiment in congress tied to uncertainty whether Great Britain could survive. However, the US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, did all he could during 1 940 to ensure that US interests were not endangered by the changes taking place in Europe and the Far East. His administration had eased the way for Anglo-French purchases of war materiel in the United States during the first nine months of the war, which continued after France fell. By November, after his election to an unprecedented third term, Roosevelt felt strong enough politically to aid Great Britain via the Lend-Lease bill and to restrain Japan in east Asia via economic sanc- tions. The United States also began to rearm in a major way, and by late 1 940 -early 1941, was ready, willing, and able to transform her potential power into real power on a global scale. At this point, and not before, the transition in the international position of Great Britain and the United States began.

The decade of the 1930s is therefore pivotal to the understanding of Great Britain's relationship with the United States in terms of global power. For all the books written about Anglo-American relations in this decade, only a few specialist studies examine the early 1930s; most concentrate on the post- 193 7 period.17 Two reasons can be given for this. First, since the thirty-year rule in Great Britain replaced the fifty- year rule, in 1968 -opening the British official archives from 191 7 to 1937 in one fell swoop - there has been continuing interest in the diplo- 17 J.R. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy: Anglo-American Naval Collaboration,

I937'i94i (Chapel Hill, 1977) ; M. Murfett, Fool-Proof Relations: The Search for Anglo-American Naval Cooperation during the Chamberlain Years, 1937- 1940 (Singapore, 1984); D. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-1941: A Study in Competitive Cooperation (London, 1982) ; and W.R. Rock, Chamberlain and Roosevelt: British Foreign Policy and the United States, 1 937-1 940 (Columbus, Ohio, 1988) are indicative. An example of a study which considers an Anglo-American question earlier in the 1930s is C. Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of I93I'I933 (London, 1972). For two insightful analyses of Anglo-American rela- tions from 1 918 to 1945, see C. Thorne, 'The Near and the Far: Aspects of Anglo-American Relations, 1919-1945', in C. Thorne, Border Crossings: Studies in International History (London, New York, 1988), pp. 59-85; and Watt, Succeeding John Bull, chs. 3, 4.

Great Britain in the igsos 759

matic history of the last years of peace. Second, 1937 is important to the political history of the two chief English-speaking powers : in January, Roosevelt began his second term as president and, four months later, Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Great Britain. A new phase in Anglo-American relations began, particularly as appeasement became the leitmotif of British foreign policy until the Prague crisis of March 1939. The compelling point about studies of the post- 1937 period is that they are essentially forward looking, their concern being to under- stand better the Anglo-American relationship as it emerged during the Second World War and extended into the cold war that followed. They seek to explain the ultimate US domination of the western half of the alliance formed to defeat the Axis and Japan, the pressures leading to the decolonization of the British Empire, and the concept of 'the special relationship'.

Although the answers given to a broad range of questions touching the Anglo-American relationship after 1937 are reasonably definitive, those for the 1930s as a whole are not. The 1930s, and, more especially the years after 1937, were not simply a prologue to critical events in Great Britain's subsequent relations with the United States. No one knew in January 1930 or October 1935 or even February 1939 that a general European war would break out in the autumn of 1939. Just as critical, no one had an inkling that such a war would lead to a restruc- turing of the international system in a way that would see Great Britain the junior of the United States. Neville Chamberlain did not know this; neither did Stanley Baldwin, Herbert Hoover, or Franklin Roosevelt, nor, one hastens to add, Adolf Hitler. Hence, whilst there is much to be learnt from treating events in these ten years as a precursor to monu- mental changes brought about by the war, it is also important historically to treat the 1930s as a separate and distinct slice of time. Such treatment provides answers to essential questions about Great Britain as the sole global power, and the relative strength of Great Britain and the United States. Given the increasingly difficult international milieu of the 1930s, what was the nature of the Anglo-American relationship? Flowing from this is the second question, fundamental to any 'realist' assertion about the relative strength of Great Britain : did the United States force her will on Great Britain over a major issue so as to make Great Britain adopt her policies to conform to US interests? Together, the answers to these questions explain the reality of power in the Anglo-American relationship of the 1930s, a reality that assured Great Britain's pre- eminence in the world until almost a year after the outbreak of the Second World War.

760 B.J.C. McKercher

An understanding of the Anglo-American relationship in the 1930s lies in an appreciation of two cardinal points: first, the principal issues dominating great power diplomacy in the 1920s extended into the 1930s; second, relations between Great Britain and the United States were on the whole better in these years than in the preceding ten. From the time the peacemakers sat down at Paris in January 19 19 until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the issue of international peace and security dominated great power diplomacy. Several unsuccessful efforts were made in the first half of the 1920s to maintain the territorial arrangements of the peace -the Anglo-American guarantee to France, the draft treaty of mutual assistance, and the Geneva protocol. Finally, in October 1925, the Locarno treaty was arranged: an Anglo-Italian guarantee of the Franco-German border, tied to arbitration treaties between Germany and its eastern neigh- bours.18 A system of European security emerged, which lasted until after Hitler's rise to power, when new efforts tied to the creation of defensive alliances were attempted. Concerning the Far East, the Washington conference of 192 1-2 resulted in two great power agreements to main- tain the post-war status quo}9 The Nine Power treaty collectively guaran- teed China's ostensible independence whilst the Four Power Treaty guaranteed the existing possessions of Great Britain, the United States, Japan, and France in the Pacific Ocean. Internal struggles by indi- genous warlords convulsed China in the decade after the Washington conference, but the so-called 'Washington system' protected the great powers' interests. Japan's annexation of Manchuria in 193 1-2 destroyed the 'system', and although other arrangements by the interested powers were attempted, the outbreak of the Sino- Japanese War in July 1937 made it apparent that a diplomatic solution to the security problem in this region was increasingly unlikely.

18 J. Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West, 1 925-1 gag (Princeton, 1972); S. Marks, 'Manage a Trois: The Negotiations for an Anglo-French- Belgian Alliance in 1922', International History Review, iv (1982), 524-52; W.A. McDougall, France's Rhineland Diplomacy, igi4-ig24: The Last Bid for a Balance of Power in Europe (Princeton, 1978) ; P.J. Noel-Baker, The Geneva Protocol (London, 1925); A. Orde, Great Britain and International Security, ig2O-ig26 (London, 1977); and L. Yates, The United States and French Security, igiy-ig2i: A Study in American Diplomatic History (New York, 1957).

19 T. Buckley, The United States and the Washington Conference, ig2i-ig22 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1970); M.G. Fry, Illusions of Security: North Atlantic Diplomacy, igi8-ig22 (Toronto, 1972) ; I.H. Nish, Alliance in Decline: A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations, igo8-ig23 (London, 1972); S.W. Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars: Volume I: The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism, igig-ig2g (London, 1968), pp. 300-31; and J.G. Vinson, The Drafting of the Four Power Treaty of the Washington Conference', Journal of Modern History, xxv (1953) ,40-7.

Great Britain in the igsos 761

A subset of these diplomatic manoeuvres involved disarmament or, as it became in the inter-war period, arms limitation.20 The search for security urged arms limitation, which was also the desire of govern- ments - 'the war to end all wars' had just been fought - and the public, who hoped both to reduce taxes and to shift more funds to other pro- grammes. At the Washington conference, the five principal naval powers - Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy - agreed to limit warships over 10,000 tons in a ratio of 5:5:3:1-75:1-75 respectively. It proved impossible to limit vessels under 10,000 tons because Great Britain and the United States were unwilling to com- promise over cruisers, the main weapon for attacking and defending sea-borne lines of communication. None the less, the desire to limit arms did not abate. Talks to limit warships under 10,000 tons took place at Geneva in the summer of 1927 amongst Great Britain, the United States, and Japan; without success. Finally, at the London naval con- ference of 1930, called to extend the ten-year life of the Washington treaty, lesser warships were limited; and the original treaty was extended for five years. However, the second London naval conference, December 1 935 -January 1936, was unable further to extend the Washington treaty because of Japan's unwillingness to continue in an inferior posi- tion. Meanwhile, other efforts were in train. In late 1925 a commission was established to prepare the way for a League-sponsored general dis- armament conference on air, land, and sea weapons. Its deliberations took six difficult years but, in February 1932, the World Disarmament conference convened. Fruitless negotiations lasted until early 1935, when the conference was adjourned, unable to reconcile the require- ments of land and sea powers. Hitler's decision to take Germany out of both the conference and the League in the autumn of 1933 provided a convenient excuse for failure in any case. Although bilateral arrange- ments were subsequently made - the 1935 Anglo-German naval agree- ment, for instance - effective arms limitation had yet to be achieved when the difficult period in European and Far Eastern great power politics began after 1937.

Finally, financial issues from the 1920s had yet to be resolved in the

20 G. Hall, Britain, America and Arms Control, 1921-1937 (London, 1987) ; B.J.C. McKercher, The Second Baldwin Government and the United States, 1924-1929: Attitudes and Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1984); R.G. O'Connor, Perilous Equi- librium: The US and the London Naval Conference of 1930 (Lawrence, Kans., 1962) ; S.E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II (Cambridge, Mass., 1974); and Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars, i. 498-516, ii. 21-88, 284-321. There is no adequate study of the World Disarmament conference.

762 BJ.C. McKercher

1930s.21 The treaty of Versailles compelled Germany to pay reparations, which bankrupted her and led to a French invasion of the Ruhr valley in 1923 to seize its industrial production in lieu of payments. Because this crisis threatened European security, an international committee of bankers headed by an American, Charles Dawes, devised a plan to put Germany back on her economic feet, and arrange a workable reparations schedule. The Dawes plan of 1924 gave Germany a fixed scale of annual payments and in return US loans, which injected life into the German, thus the European, economy. In 1929, a second inter- national committee chaired by another American, Owen Young, modi- fied the Dawes plan to reduce Germany's principal and her period of payment. At this moment, war debts intersected with reparations. After the war, the United States demanded from the British and other allies repayment of the money borrowed to finance their fighting. The British at first sought to tie war debts and reparations together, while the Americans sought to keep them apart, but a settlement was reached in 1923. Other powers followed suit, but by the summer of 1931 the Great Depression had undermined everyone's ability to pay, and upset the Young plan, by which German reparations helped fund the debt payments of France and other powers. In June 1931 the Hoover ad- ministration proposed a one-year moratorium on all debts, but when the moratorium ended in late 1932, Great Britain and several other powers defaulted on their payments, the Germans could not pay their reparations, and financial commitments dating from the war went into limbo.

Two developments were unique to the 1930s. The first was the Great Depression following the Wall Street crash of October 1929, which resulted in a tremendous dislocation of national economies and inter- national trade.22 Great Britain, for example, departed from the tradi- 21 D. Artaud, La question des dettes interalliees et la reconstruction de VEurope,

1917-1929 (Paris, 1978); R.A. Dayer, 'Anglo-American Monetary Policy and Rivalry in Europe and the Far East, 1919-1931', in Anglo-American Relations, ed. McKercher, pp. 158-86; M.L. Dockrill and J.D. Goold, Peace without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conferences, 1919-23 (London, 1981), pp. 45-56; C.-D. Krohn, Stabilisierung und okonomishe Inter essen: Die Finanzpolitik des Deutches Reiches, 1 923-1 927 (Diisseldorf, 1974); and M. Trachtenberg, Reparation in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923 (New York, 1980).

22 See E.W. Bennett, Germany and the Financial Crisis, 1931 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962) ; R.W.D. Boyce, British Capitalism at the Crossroads, 191 9-1 932: A Study in Politics, Economics, and International Relations (Cambridge, 1988) ; F. Capie, Depression and Protectionism: Britain between the Wars (London, 1983) ; S.V.O. Clarke, Exchange-Rate Stabilization in the mid- 1930s: Negotiating the Tripartite Agreement (Princeton, 1977) ; S. Howson, Sterling's Managed Float: The Opera- tions of the Exchange Equalization Account, 1 932-1 939 (Princeton, 1980) ; and C.P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1 929-1 939 (London, 1973).

Great Britain in the ig^os 763

tional free-trade policy to help negotiate imperial preference at the Ottawa conference of 1932. The second was the revisionist foreign policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan, which threatened to destabilize the international system. No power in the 1920s had had the strength to modify in a major way the post-war settlement created at Paris and Washington. This was not so in the 1930s, as Japan's actions in China after 1931 and Hitler's actions in central Europe showed. Moreover, the maintenance of stability in Europe - that is to say, the balance of power - increased in complexity with the re-emergence of Russia as a great power. By the latter half of the decade, when Joseph Stalin had succeeded in eliminating domestic opposition to his rule, he turned away from policies that had transformed Bolshevik Russia into an abattoir, and Russian isolation from great power politics came to an end.

There is much truth to the claim that the relations between Great Britain and the United States improved in the 1930s because they saw in the rise of the totalitarian powers a common danger both in Europe and in the Far East.23 More to the point, the issue dividing the two English-speaking powers in the 1920s had been resolved one way or another by the early 1930s. The quest for European security had largely been achieved in the 1920s with the Locarno treaty and the system of collective security it spawned between Great Britain and the Continental powers. 'I started with the idea that it was a great mistake to court the Americans as the League had been doing, and to give them to under- stand that we felt ourselves poor weaklings without their support,' Austen Chamberlain, the foreign secretary in 1927, opined. 'Experience has led me, as you can see, to go further and, on the whole, to think it is better for them and us that in their present stage of development they should not join the League.'24 These British sentiments did not change in the 1930s, even as the Locarno system broke down to be replaced by a system of alliances as the best means of ensuring collective security. Even pro-Americans like the British prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, recognized this to be so. After his retirement in 1935, MacDonald could reflect: 'I know very well [the Americans'] justifiable anxiety to keep out of European troubles, but nevertheless it puts us sometimes in a very awkward fix and leaves us to bear the brunt of those troubles.'25

23 For instance, H.C. Allen, Great Britain and the United States: A History of Anglo-American Relations, 1783-^52 (New York, 1969), pp. 724-80; and B.D. Rhodes, 'The Image of Britain in the United States, 1919-1929: A Contentious Relative and Rival', in Anglo-American Relations, ed. McKercher, p. 187.

24 Chamberlain to Spender [Christian Science Monitor], 10 Jan. 1927, Austen Chamberlain MSS, F[oreign] O[ffice Records, Public Record Office] 800/260.

25 MacDonald to Solis-Cohen [an American friend], 5 Sept. 1935, MacDonald MSS, PRO [Private MSS Collections, Public Record Office] 30/69/1445/2.

764 BJ.C. McKercher

It is therefore possible to say that the Anglo-American relationship was not strained by US isolationism. In both the 1920s and 1930s, at least after Locarno, the United States was ignored by British leaders as they strove for European security. They would have welcomed US sup- port had it been forthcoming; even Austen Chamberlain would have done so; but it was pointless to count on United States involvement in any European security system, tied to the League or any other body. With the majority of US congressional and public opinion opposed to them at home, Roosevelt and his diplomats' hands were tied abroad. Immediately after the Munich agreement, the US ambassador at Berlin, Hugh Wilson, endeavoured to explain why press reactions in Europe - 'a spontaneous outburst of joy, relief, and hope for the future' - differed from that in the United States- 'a rather reluctant approbation'. £If I apprise this correctly,' he remarked, 'this is due less to a finer sense of morality among the American people, it is due rather to two factors: that the British and French were weighing the case with their own skins in immediate jeopardy, and that the peoples of both of those lands have perhaps a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the problems of Europe than the American people, remote from Europe, can have.'26 The reality was that Great Britain's concern with the European balance of power meant that she could exert more influence than could the United States in Europe in the 1930s. Ribbentrop's warning to Hitler can be seen as a testament to this fact.

The naval question ceased to be divisive in Anglo-American relations because of the London naval conference, which met from January to April 1930. Although Anglo-American differences in the 1920s follow- ing the Washington conference had to do with cruiser limitation, they reached their nadir in the winter of 1928-9 when the British and French agreed to compromise on key elements of their disarmament policy : the British to accept the French formula for land forces, and the French to accept the British position on cruisers. This compromise was ill-received by both the Americans and the Germans, but US rejection was coupled with a call for American naval supremacy by the president, Calvin Coolidge, in November 1928.27 This bluster was later recanted, but not before the passage of a 'fifteen cruiser bill' by congress in February 1929, just before Herbert Hoover was inaugurated. With neither power 26 Wilson to Hull [US secretary of state], 3 Oct. 1938, Wilson Papers [Herbert

Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa], container 3. Wilson decided not to send this letter; rather, he put it with his diary; see minute, no date, Watt, on this letter.

27 Cf. D. Carlton, 'The Anglo-French Compromise on Arms Limitation, 1928', Journal of British Studies, viii (1969), 141-62; McKercher, Second Baldwin Government, pp. 142-7; and Roskill, Naval Policy, i. 545-9.

Great Britain in the ig3os 765

wanting a naval race because of the cost, and the British sensing that their navy's pre-eminence hung in the balance, between April and October 1929 the British and the Americans worked to eliminate their differences.28 The result was the naval treaty.

The breach between the British and the Americans over cruisers healed because the agreement hammered out at London provided each side with what it wanted at that moment; in reality, because of US isolationism during the Great Depression, over time the British were the clear winners. By the terms of the treaty, the British conceded complete Anglo-American parity in cruisers by 1936 but, because of their require- ments for imperial and trade defence, the British were accorded 50,000 extra tons of light cruisers, the Americans to make up the difference in construction of heavy cruisers. For reasons of economy, however, as well as public disinclination to support naval building programmes -the United States never built to London naval treaty levels. Comparison of the totals of cruisers built and building in 1930, the year of the first London naval conference, and 1936, the year the treaty ended, are telling. In 1930, total British cruiser tonnage amounted to 323,680, divided between seventeen heavy cruisers and thirty-six light ones; the American figures were 215,050 tons divided into fourteen and twelve respectively.29 By 1936, the British had thirteen heavy cruisers and forty-five light ones for a total tonnage of 41 1,550. The United States had just eighteen and nineteen, displacing a total of 304,450 tons.

The Americans realized the weakness of their position prior to the convening of the second London conference in 1935. One of the reasons for their success in 1930, they thought, was that the fifteen cruiser bill in 1 929, underpinned by their wealth, had shown their determination not to slip behind Great Britain and other naval powers. But no building programme had followed the 1930 conference; indeed, the vessels authorized in the 1929 bill were shelved because of the apparent success at London. In October 1933 Hugh Wilson, then a senior US arms negotiator at the World Disarmament conference, expressed his concern :

I have always felt that since the Washington Conference the American Delegation has been put in an impossible situation in its claim respecting 28 D. Carlton, MacDonald versus Henderson: The Foreign Policy of the Second

Labour Government (London, 1970), pp. 100-19; B.J.G. McKercher, Esme Howard: A Diplomatic Biography (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 337-49; O'Connor, Perilous Equilibrium, pp. 1-61 ; and Roskill, Naval Policy, ii. 21-53.

29 The figures for this and the rest of this paragraph are from Jane's Fighting Ships 1930, ed. O. Parkes (London, 1930), pp. 50-69, 469-74; and Jane's Fighting Ships 1936, ed. F.E. McMurtrie (London, 1936), pp. 40-56, 521-7. The tonnage for ship building is arrived at by averaging the tonnage built, to the nearest 100 tons upwards, and multiplying this by the number of vessels under construction.

766 J3./.C. McKercher

cruisers, compared with either Great Britain or Japan, when we had nothing but potential building strength to offer against their real ships. Bad as the situation was in 1930, we were able to get our way, make the others stop and wait for us because of our vast wealth. If we entered 1 935 without construction, the picture would be difference [sic]: we would not even have the wealth to count on, and I fear that unless we are built somewhere near the Treaty level, the Conference of 1935 will be a com- plete fiasco.30

US weakness was apparent to British leaders in the mid- 1930s as they endeavoured to find the best means of looking after Great Britain's interests. In preliminary discussions with the US negotiators in June 1934, the foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, observed with icy realism:

Our American friends may well be sincere in saying that they do not mind how big a navy we have ; their real concern is that the British needs should not encourage Japan to build a navy so big as to threaten America. It may be, therefore, that the only hope would be for a preliminary Anglo-Japanese negotiation which fixed the Japanese navy at a reasonable level and then to face the Americans with the prospect of losing this advantage if they do not find it possible to agree on the [higher] British level.31

The 1935 conference did end in fiasco for the Americans. Secure in their position in the Far East and unwilling to remain in a position inferior to the two English-speaking powers, the Japanese took a hard line, which finished the Washington system of naval limitation.32 In the ensuing round of construction, as the British and Japanese built up their strength at sea, the Americans began to slip back. By 1939, the British cruiser fleet numbered thirteen heavy and seventy light warships built or building; the Japanese had, respectively, twelve and twenty-six; the Americans nineteen and twenty-three.33 Although Great Britain now had other naval threats to consider, the Germans and Italians having undertaken significant construction, the British navy still had a superi- ority of two to one in cruisers over the United States.34 30 Wilson to Grew [US ambassador, Tokyo], 31 Oct. 1933, Wilson Papers, container

2. 31 Simon to Baldwin, 27 June 1 934, Baldwin MSS, vol. 131. 82 Hall, Arms Control, pp. 143-92; Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor, pp. 152-64; and

Roskill, Naval Policy, ii. 284-321. Cf. Asado Sadao, 'The Japanese Navy and the United States', in Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese- American Relations, 1931- 1 941, ed. D. Borg, Shumpei Okamoto, and D.K.A. Findlayson (New York, 1973), pp. 225-60; and M.W. Berg, 'Admiral William H. Standley and the Second London Naval Treaty, 1934-1936', Historian, xxxiii (1971), 215-36.

33 See Jane's Fighting Ships 1939, ed. F.E. McMurtrie (London, 1939), viii. 44-60, 318-28,490-8.

34 Hankey [secretary to the GID] memorandum on 'Imperial Defence Policy', No.

Great Britain in the ig3os 767

The financial turnabout in Anglo-American relations during the 1930s began with Great Britain's failure to pay her war debt in 1933. She had gone off the gold standard in late 1 93 1 , and now international confidence in her ability to withstand the depression began to erode.35 Domestically, meanwhile, pressures were mounting to mitigate the effects of unemployment and to increase trade. British leaders were aware of the troubles that default would bring: Lord Hailsham, the secretary of state for war and a senior member of the National govern- ment, put the matter plainly to the prime minister: Britain was owed more from loans raised on the London money market since 19 18 than it owed the United States in war debts. 'If, therefore, the result of our default were to induce our debtors to default to us,' he pointed out, 'the effect would be that we should be heavy losers in the balance.'36 The background to this dire event was the depression, which was undermin- ing the financial settlements reached in the 1920s- the various war-debt agreements, and the Dawes and Young plans. By the summer of 1931, not only did Great Britain and a number of powers confront the possibility of a default on their debt-funding with the United States, but the scheme for German reparations threatened to unravel. In recognition of the difficulties Great Britain and the European powers were in, Hoover made his novel suggestion of a one-year moratorium on all intergovern- mental debts effective 1 July 1 93 137 -payments came due in June and December each year. Despite temporary obstruction from the French, the Hoover moratorium went into effect, the payments to resume in December 1932. The assumption was that the worst of the depression would have passed by then.

1144B, June 1934, GAB 4/23 gives an indication. Although this paper, which summarizes fifteen others preceding it, points out difficulties in imperial defence, it is on the whole positive. Gf. CID Paper No. 1455B, 'Strategic Importance of the Pacific Islands', 23 July 1938, Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee, CAB 4/2; and CID Paper No. I542B, 'New Zealand: Conference on Pacific Questions', 31 March 1939, Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee, GAB 4/29. Cf. A.G. Bell, Sea Power and the Next War (New York, 1938), and H.W. Richmond, Sea Power in the Modern World (New York, 1934).

35 See D.H. Aldcroft, The Inter-war Economy: Britain, 1919-1939 (London, 1970), pp. 269-70, and The British Economy: Volume I: The Years of Turmoil, 1920- 195 1 (Brighton, 1986), pp. 44-60; R. Skidelsky, Politicians and the Slump: The Labour Government of 1929-1931 (London, 1967); and D. Williams, 'London and the 1931 Sterling Crisis', Economic History Review, xv (1962-3).

36 Hailsham to MacDonald, 17 Feb. 1933, MacDonald MSS, PRO 30/69/679. 37 R.A. Dayer, Finance and Empire: Sir Charles Addis, 1861-1945 (London, 1988),

pp. 222-30; H. Flesig, 'War-Related Debts and the Great Depression', American Economic Review, lxvi (1976), 52-8; and B.D. Rhodes, 'Herbert Hoover and the War Debts', Prologue, vi (1974), 130-44. Also of interest is H.G. Moulton and L. Paslovsky, War Debts and World Prosperity (Washington, 1932).

768 B.J.C. McKercher

Because of the economic crisis in Germany, a significant scaling down of German reparations and the cancellation of inter-European debts was agreed to at the Lausanne conference in the summer of 1932.88 Ratifica- tion of these agreements was made dependent on a subsequent renego- tiation of the various war-debt settlements with the United States. But such renegotiation proved impossible, given the economic crisis in the United States where, if politicians cancelled what was owed Americans, the political price would be high. Hence, though Roosevelt defeated Hoover in the November 1932 election, and his party, the Democrats, controlled congress, his administration had to demand payment of war debts. Great Britain made its December payment, the last to be made in full by any debtor state, and then in June and December 1933 made nominal payments of £2 million. The Roosevelt administration accepted this sleight of hand as an indication that the British were paying their debts, but congress rebelled. In April 1934, under the sponsorship of the isolationist senator, Hiram Johnson, legislation was passed that forbade the United States government and lending institutions to make loans to any state in default of its debts to the United States.39 The British would not pay; other powers would not pay; and the Lausanne agreements were never ratified. However, by that time the European situation had altered significantly owing to the advent of Hitler's regime in Germany. To all intents and purposes, the financial questions that had plagued the powers since the peace conference at Paris simply disappeared.

At the official level, although hard feelings existed in private,40 Anglo- American relations were relatively harmonious for the rest of the decade. In fact, several efforts were made to establish co-operation between Great Britain and the United States on economic and financial matters once it became clear that the war-debt issue was dead. The first was unsuccessful. In the twilight months of the Hoover administration, Great Britain and the United States had laid plans for a World Eco- nomic conference to meet at London in the summer of 1933. American leaders, for instance Hoover's secretary of state, Henry Stimson, and

38 Dayer, Addis, pp. 242-3 ; and D.E. Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France and Eastern Europe, 1930- *939 (Princeton, 1980), pp. 52-6. Gf. L.J. Reid, Britain and the War Debts (London, 1933). 89 J.G. Vinson, 'War Debts and Peace Legislation: The Johnson Act of 1934', Mid-America, 1 (1968), 206-22.

40 For indications on the American side, see Grew to Castle [Republican Party lumin- ary], 12 Dec. 1935, Castle Papers [Herbert Hoover Presidential Library], file 76; and C. Hull, Memoirs (New York, 1948), i. 525. On the British side, see Runci- man [president of the board of trade] minute for Baldwin on 'Telegram received from the President 20th October 1933', undated, in Baldwin MSS, vol. no; and K. Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London, 1946), p. 325.

Great Britain in the IQ30S 769

after March 1933, Stimson's successor, Cordell Hull, recognized the need for some sort of accommodation with the British.41 Similar sentiments were voiced in Great Britain, particularly by the chancellor of the ex- chequer, Neville Chamberlain.42 Hull's goal was to stimulate freer inter- national trade as a fillip to general economic recovery. Chamberlain, on the other hand, saw the collapse of the financial arrangements of the 1920s as an opportunity for a general reduction of tariffs, harmony of monetary policy, and more. The conference duly met at London in June 1933 but, in early July, the US delegation led by Hull received a message from Roosevelt, which overturned an Anglo-American agreement on the prevention of currency speculation.43 Roosevelt had decided to set the US economy on a firm footing before concentrating on international agreements ; his action brought the conference to a sudden end. Although British leaders like MacDonald felt betrayed by Roosevelt,44 the search for some sort of Anglo-American condominium over economic and fi- nancial issues continued. In 1934, Hull managed to get a reciprocal trade agreement passed by congress,45 permitting the president to reduce US tariffs up to fifty per cent on the imports of those powers that would lower their tariffs against US goods. This set in train a twisted diplomacy which, in November 1938, led to two trade agreements seeking to create freer trade amongst the three North Atlantic powers, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada.46 The impact of the agreements was mini- mized by the outbreak of the Second World War ten months later.

41 For example: *I pointed out also that unless we had a general British- American understanding before a conference [,] the conference would be likely to fail. Go- operation between these two nations was virtually absolutely necessary for the success of the conference as a whole'; in Stimson diary, 15 Jan. 1933, Stimson Papers [Sterling Library, Yale University], vol. 25. Also see Hull telegram (un- numbered) to Moley [Roosevelt adviser], 26 June 1933, Hull Papers [Library of Congress], container 34.

42 Chamberlain to Arthur Chamberlain [a cousin], 20 Feb. 1933, Neville Chamber- lain MSS [University of Birmingham Library], NC 7/1 1/26/9.

43 On Roosevelt's message, see J.W. Pratt, A History of United States Foreign Policy (3rd. ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972), pp. 325-6. Also see Hull draft telegram to Roosevelt, 2 July 1933, and Hull to Howe [Roosevelt adviser], 8 July 1933, both in Hull Papers, container 34.

44 MacDonald toLamont [American banker], 1 1 Aug. 1933, MacDonald MSS, PRO 30/69/1443.

45 W.R. Allen, 'Cordell Hull and the Defense of the Trade Agreements Program, 1934-19401, in Isolation and Security: Ideas and Interests in Twentieth-Century American Foreign Policy, ed. A. DeConde (Durham, N.C., 1957), PP- IO7"32.

46 Cf. I.M. Drummond and N. Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade: The United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, and the Trade Agreements of 1938 (Waterloo, Ont., 1989) ; R.N. Kottman, Reciprocity and the North Atlantic Triangle, 1932-1938 (Ithaca, 1968); and A.W. Schatz, The Anglo-American Trade Agreement and Cordell Hull's Search for Peace, 1936-1938', Journal of American History, lvii (1970), 85-103.

770 B.J.C. McKercher

In this way, the course of Anglo-American relations in the 1930s as it touched financial and ancillary questions can be seen to have been dominated by at first the debt reparations settlement, then the collapse of the 1920s system, and, finally, the effort - not always easy - to find an accommodation. The failure of the World Economic conference demonstrated Great Britain's disinclination to go out of her way to court the United States but, if pushed by self-interest, to find a basis for accommodation. Just as Roosevelt opted to rebuild the US economy after July 1933 before seeking international agreements, the British, too, turned inwards. The policies of Neville Chamberlain, first as chancellor of the exchequer, then as prime minister, followed the dictates of finan- cial orthodoxy,47 concentrating more on the stimulation of domestic consumption than on the improvement of international trade; perhaps reasonably, given that outside the empire high tariffs against British goods were the order of the day. Admittedly, Chamberlain's policies resulted in the steady but not spectacular improvement of the British economy by the eve of the war.48 In 1932, the worst year of the depres- sion for Great Britain, the British gross national product was US$ 13.1 billion, its trade total US$ 1 .58 billion, and its industrial production, using 1 924 as a base, 1 o 1 .9. By 1 939, these figures had risen, respectively, to US$ 23.6 billion, US$ 2.23 billion, and 144. 1. Corresponding figures for the United States in the same period were: in 1932, US$ 58 billion, US$ 1. 6 1 billion, and, using 1958 as a base, 46; and in 1939, US$ 90.5 billion, US$ 3.18 billion, and 69. Thus, by 1939, though Great Britain's economy was smaller than that of the United States, it was not necessarily weaker.

Given the less rancorous atmosphere of Anglo-American relations in the 1930s, was the United States able to force Britain along lines of policy chosen by US interests? Perhaps the best argument is the state of 47 See the works of Aldcroft cited in fn. 35; and H.W. Richardson, Economic

Recovery in Britain, 1 932-39 (London, 1967). 48 The statistics for the rest of this paragraph are based on the following : for Great

Britain, 'Miscellaneous Production Statistics 15. Indices of Industrial Production -the United Kingdom 1 801- 1938', 'Overseas Trade 3. Values at Current Prices of Overseas Trade - United Kingdom 1854-1956', and 'National Income and Expenditure 2. United Kingdom National Income- 1855- 1946. B. Prest's Esti- mates, 1915-46', in B.R. Mitchell and P. Deane, Abstracts of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 272, 284, 368; and for the United States, 'Gross National Product - Summary in Current and Constant (1958) Prices: 1929 to 1970', 'Indexes of Manufacturing Production: i860 to 1970', and 'Value of Exports and Imports: 1790- 1970', in United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, 1975), pp. 228, 667, 884. I have computed the British totals, which are given in sterling, in $US based on the 'Foreign Exchange Rates' in D. Butler and A. Sloman, British Political Facts, 1 900-1 975 (London, 1975), p. 310.

Great Britain in the ig3os 771

British and US foreign and arms policies at the World Disarmament conference and afterwards. As effective foreign policy depends upon the strength of the armed force behind it, and as the reality of global power in the 1930s meant protection of interests scattered around the world, the likely effect of arms limitation on diplomacy and strategy had to be faced squarely by both Great Britain and the United States. Although the motives within the British leadership varied - retrenchment or the horror of war, for example - the essential British aim at the conference was to persuade the major powers to limit their armed forces. Given the consultative nature of British government, this was the result of lengthy debate within the cabinet, discussions amongst the three main political parties, deliberations at the foreign office, treasury, and service ministries, and between the governments at London and in the Domin- ions.49 British leaders understood that reductions in, or even the complete elimination of, classes of weapons were not enough in themselves to ensure that war would not break out. Arms limitation could not be attempted in a vacuum; it had to march with diplomatic arrangements amongst the powers and the League. This understanding transcended party lines - especially within MacDonald's Labour government, which held power from June 1929 to August 1931, and the National govern- ment that succeeded it and controlled affairs in different guises until September 1939 - and it was shared by the civil service advisers in the foreign office, the treasury, and the three service ministries.

In preparing for the conference, and during the conference itself, the British were determined to preserve the various diplomatic arrangements to which they had been committed for more than a decade. This in- volved specific regional undertakings such as Locarno, as well as general ones such as the League covenant, the Kellogg-Briand pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, and the so-called 'Optional Clause', which compelled signatories to settle disputes through the arbi- tration of the Permanent Court of International Justice. The only difficulty for the British as the conference began was that Japan had just commenced her annexation of Manchuria, which threatened the

49 Except where noted, this and the next paragraph are based on GID Paper No. 996B, deduction and Limitation of Armaments', 2 Oct. 1930, CAB 4/19; GID Paper No. 1027B, 'Arbitration and Disarmament: Report of a Committee to the Imperial Conference, 1930', Oct. 1930, CAB 4/20; and CID Paper No. 1060B, 'The Disarmament Conference: The Three Party Resolutions', 16 Sept. 1931, CID Paper No. 1063B, 'The French Memorandum on Disarmament, Dated July !5j r93lJ> 24 Sept. 1 93 1, CID Paper No. IO78B, 'Reports of the Inter-Depart- mental Sub-Committee on Preparation for the Disarmament Conference', 18 Feb. 1932, CID Paper No. 1079B, 'Report of Cabinet Committee on Preparation for Disarmament Conference and Cabinet Conclusion Thereon', 18 Feb. 1932, all CAB 4/2 1.

772 BJ.C. McKercher

Washington Nine Power treaty. Even in this regard, however, the new National government through Sir John Simon, the foreign secretary, embarked on a diplomatic effort, through the League, to defuse the crisis and somehow reconcile the Chinese and Japanese.50

US preparations for the conference centred primarily on reaching an agreement that would allow them to reduce their armed forces, enforce retrenchment, and reduce taxation. This derived from Hoover who, given the power of a US president, did not have to seek parliamentary consensus, as did the prime minister of Great Britain. In the spring of 1 93 1, Hoover began to enforce cost-cutting measures on the United States armed services.51 On 6 and 7 June, he met with his service chiefs and the secretary of the navy to impress on them 'that the economic conditions required cooperation on the part of all branches of the Government toward enforcing economies'.52 In the months that fol- lowed, budget-paring became the sine qua non of US arms limitation policy, particularly for the navy, which consumed the lion's share of the spending. The process was bolstered by state department assessments that both Great Britain and Japan would have difficulty building to the levels permitted by the London naval treaty."3 Retrenchment then became the basis of US policy at the World Disarmament conference.

In pursuing retrenchment, the Americans saw no need to involve themselves in any of the existing diplomatic measures to ensure peace and security. As Hoover later emphasized: cMy ambition in our foreign policies was to lead the United States to full cooperation with world moral forces to preserve peace.'54 Given the isolationism of congress, and the dearth of first-class powers threatening United States security, Hoover's reliance on morality rather than power politics is understand- able. It meant, however, that in the same way that his predecessors in the 1920s had disclaimed any connection between war debts and repara- tions, Hoover took the view at the conference that no direct link existed between arms reduction and the preservation of international security.

50 See W.R. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, 191 9-1 939 (Oxford, 197 1 ), pp. 177-94; and Thome, Limits of Foreign Policy, pp. 134-52, 181-92, 202-72. 51 For example, Hoover to Jahncke [assistant secretary of the navy], 15 May 193 1, Herbert Hoover Presidential Papers [West Branch, Iowa], container 38. 52 Minutes of Naval Conference at Camp Rapidan 6 June 1931 [but it extended to 7 June]', ibid.

53 On effecting economies, see secretary of the navy to Hoover, 13 Oct. 1931, ibid. On state department analysis of British and Japanese naval strength, see Castle [assistant secretary of state] to Hoover, 10 Dec. 1931, enclosing Moffat [state department western European division] memorandum to Castle, 10 Dec. 1931, Hoover Presidential Papers, container 1 00 1 .

54 H. Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1 920-1 933 (New York, 1952), P- 33°-

Great Britain in the ig^os 773

As the conference began less than six months before the expiry of the moratorium on intergovernmental debts, Hoover thought any reduction in arms spending would provide funds to be spent more effectively on endeavours to get the international economy functioning again.

It is obvious that Great Britain and the United States approached the World Disarmament conference with diametrically opposing views about the purpose of arms limitation and the means to achieve effective security. As a draft treaty had been drawn up after six years of delibera- tion by a preparatory commission,55 the ostensible purpose of the dis- cussions was to fill in the blanks, deciding the quantity of weapons to be kept and the elimination of others. None the less, when the chief British and US delegates outlined their plans for arms limitation, the dichotomy between the two powers immediately became apparent. In his initial speech on 8 February, Simon laid out specific proposals for a range of air, land, and sea weapons. He also asserted: cWe take the view that the temptation to resort to armed conflict is obviously reduced if defence is strengthened at the expense of attack. And, since our common object is not to increase but to diminish the sum total of armaments and their expense, it follows that we must direct especial attention to such prohibitions or limitations as will weaken the attack and so remove temptation from aggression.556 The US position did not originally contain specific suggestions for limitation, but unwilling to be upstaged by the British, and after transatlantic telephone calls to get permission to tack on a list of suggested limitations, Hugh Gibson, the chief American delegate, laid out the American position.57 The nub of his remarks showed the United States ready to cut the armed forces and no more : 'The American Delegation has not attempted to formulate and submit any comprehensive plan for overcoming all of the obstacles that exist in the way of achieving a general limitation and reduction of armaments ... we do not believe the human mind is capable of so projecting itself into the future as to devise a plan which will adequately provide for all future developments and contingencies.'

Hence, although the British and Americans were at one in desiring to limit arms -a course universally espoused - they disagreed about how this should be arranged. Here was an echo of the ill-fated Coolidge

55 A copy can be found in Cmd. 3757. 56 Simon's speech is in League of Nations, Records of the Conference for the Reduc-

tion and Limitation of Armaments (Geneva, 1935), i. 57-9. 57 Ibid. On Gibson's permission to add specific proposals, see Memorandum of a

Transatlantic Telephone Conversation ... Monday, February 8, 1932, at 11:10 am', and 'Transatlantic Telephone Conversation ... 2:00, Disarmament' , both in Hoover Presidential Papers, container 1002.

774 B.J.C. McKercher

naval conference of 1927.58 Once again, as five years before, the British held that armed forces should be reduced all round to take away the ability of powers to launch aggressive actions, but themselves demanded sufficient forces to defend themselves and honour the security commit- ments they had made since the war. Thus, Great Britain had an absolute need for a minimum number of warships and other arms, while the Americans, with no commitments of any sort beyond the necessity to protect their routes to overseas markets and their imperial holdings in the western hemisphere and the western Pacific, had a relative need: they could accept significant reductions as long as other powers did the same. Hence the US emphasis on cutting arms spending to effect arms reductions; such reductions would enhance their security.

Differences between the British and the Americans were quickly over- taken at the conference by a vituperative debate stemming from French demands that cuts in armed forces be balanced by more effective means of collective security.'9 By June 1932, Hoover, sensing that the con- ference might fail, and worried about the present economic crisis and the imminent presidential-congressional elections in November, made a dramatic move. He advocated that all powers reduce their armed forces across the board by one-quarter to one-third.60 Naval arms were especially singled out for reduction. It was a bold initiative, but it met with resistance from Great Britain, France, and other powers because it made no strategic sense. In the British case, it threatened to undermine the doctrine of absolute need. Quite simply, whilst the United States enjoyed the luxury of political isolation from great power politics, whilst its security requirements were relative to those of other powers, and whilst it could seek moral leadership at the conference by advocating such a stunningly simple proposal, European powers had to gauge their level of arms to cover a range of national and international defence commitments. After consulting other delegations, Simon responded, a month later, with specific proposals supporting Hoover's ideas, but making smaller cuts.61 58 On the Coolidge conference, see D. Carlton, 'Great Britain and the Goolidge

Naval Conference of 1927', Political Science Quarterly, lxxxiii (1968), 573-98; Hall, Arms Control, 36-54; and Roskill, Naval Policy, i. 498-516. On the British 'doctrine of absolute need' versus the American 'doctrine of relative need' in 1927, see B.J.C. McKercher, The Second Baldwin Government and the United States, 1924-1929: Attitudes and Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 71-2.

59 J-W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Disarmament Deadlock (London, 1934), pp. 22-64. Hall, Arms Control, pp. 118-42 adds nothing new in his discussion of the con- ference.

60 'Message of President Hoover to the Disarmament Conference, June 1932', in J.W. Wheeler-Bennett, Documents on International Affairs, 1932 (London, 1933), PP- 169-71.

61 See ibid., pp. 178-83.

Great Britain in the iQ3os 775

The 1932 election campaign in the United States, Roosevelt's victory, and the transfer of power from one administration to the next, coincided with the default of the war-debt settlements, and delayed effective action by the conference. The ensuing political crisis in Germany, which led to Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, added an ele- ment of unease at Geneva. After this, the negotiations foundered. The Roosevelt administration participated but, though it sought some means of bringing about a practical expression of arms limitation,62 did not make a substantive proposal. The running was left to the other great powers, especially the Europeans, who now confronted the spectre of a Germany freed from reparations, and demanding her own armed forces. As no chance existed of German involvement in the conference, a final meeting occurred in the spring of 1935, but ended without result. With neutrality legislation foisted on Roosevelt after August 1935, the force of US diplomacy was weakened.63 Great Britain and the other powers could not hope for United States support.

Even before the World Disarmament conference ended, the British fell back on traditional methods of maintaining balances of power in those regions of the globe where they were endangered. In the Far East they sought accommodation with Japan. In May 1933, the Manchurian crisis had ended with Japan and China signing the Tangku treaty, and China acquiescing in the loss of her northern province and making other concessions to Japan. Although Japan had left the League because she was branded the aggressor, the British did not rule out an Anglo- Japanese rapprochement** Part of the British problem, so the argument went, was excessive emphasis since before the Washington conference on trying to work with the United States in the Far East. The cabinet's defence requirements committee put this argument forcefully in Febru- ary 1934: 'There is much to be said for the view that our subservience to

62 Instructive are Davis [chief American negotiator] to Roosevelt, 13 April 1933, Davis Papers [Library of Congress], container 51; 'Message of President Roose- velt to 54 Heads of State, 16 May 1933', in United States Department of State, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941 (Washington, 1943), pp. 1 80- 1 ; and Mayer [member, US delegation] to Moffat, 20 Jan. 1934, No. 36, Mayer Papers [Herbert Hoover Presidential Library], container 1.

63 For a broad view of isolationism, see W.S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 (Lincoln, 1983) ; M. Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1 935-1 941 (Ithaca, 1966) ; and Three Faces of Midwestern Isolationism: Gerald P. Nye, Robert E. Wood, John L. Lewis, ed. J.N. Schact (Iowa City, 1981). The debate on the impact of isolationism on Roosevelt's foreign policy is vituperative amongst US historians: cf. R. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York, 1979); and F.W. Marks, III, Wind over Sand: The Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt (Athens, Ga., 1988), especially pp. 1 3-1 19. For a British view, see Watt, Succeeding John Bull, pp. 77-83.

64 Simon memorandum, 16 March 1934, CP 80(34), CAB 24/248.

776 B.J.C. McKercher

the United States in past years has been one of the principal factors in the deterioration of our former good relations with Japan and, that, before the naval disarmament conference, 1935, we ought to reconsider our attitude.'65 This diplomacy found many supporters in the cabinet, including the ever cautious Chamberlain.66

Even after the chance for a diplomatic settlement with Japan vanished in mid- 1 93 7, the British sought other methods of shoring up their posi- tion in the Far East. No doubt existed that after the abortive second London naval conference, the Japanese held a commanding position in Taiwan, Korea, and eastern and northern China. Thus, the British endeavoured to establish a defensive perimeter at the edges of this region by the usual methods of imperial defence: building up defences at Singapore and, further south, by agreements with Australia and New Zealand.67 In essence, the British saw the possibility of curbing Japanese ambitions beyond Japan's immediate sphere of interest. Sir Robert Craigie, the ambassador at Tokyo, explained this to the foreign office as late as March 1939: 'The presence of [an] adequate fleet and air force, based at Singapore, would, by removing the chance of a rapid attack on the fortress, also remove one of the prizes of war and so en- hance in Japanese eyes, the advantages of neutrality.368 Although the Tientsin incident in May-June 1939 saw Craigie appeasing the Japanese on mainland China,69 Great Britain's position in those areas where her strength could be brought to bear, at some distance from Japan, seemed secure. Even after Japan launched her attack on the western powers in December 1941, Craigie argued that war had not been inevitable and that opportunities to deter the Japanese had been squandered;70 for his candour, he was rewarded by the prime minister, Winston Churchill, 65 'Report of the Defence Requirements Committee', 28 Feb. 1934, GP 64(34),

GAB 24/247. 66 Chamberlain memorandum on The Naval Conference and Our Relations with

Japan', late July or early Aug. 1 934, Chamberlain MSS, NC 8/ 1 9/ 1 . This was shown to Baldwin, Simon, and two other cabinet ministers but never circulated; instead, Chamberlain and Simon circulated a joint memorandum to the cabinet that contained its essential elements. See Chamberlain and Simon memo, 1 6 Oct. !934j GP 223(34), Documents on British Foreign Policy, series II, xii. 61-5.

67 See CID Paper No. 1463B, 'Strategic Importance of the Pacific Islands', July !938, GAB 4/28; as well as CID Papers Nos. 1455B and 1542B, in fn. 34. Cf. Roskill, Naval Policy, ii. 43 1-77, passim.

68 Craigie telegram (269) to FO, 23 March 1938, FO 371/23560/2885/456. 69 Murfett, Fool-Proof Relations, pp. 249-67; and Watt, How War Came, pp. 339-

60, especially pp. 355-60. Also see 'The Situation in the Far East: Note by the Secretary covering Report by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee', FP(36)96, 18 June 1939, CAB 27/627.

70 R. Craigie, Behind the Japanese Mask (London, 1946). Also see P. Lowe, 'The Dilemmas of an Ambassador: Sir Robert Craigie in Tokyo, 193 7-1 941', Pro- ceedings of the British Association for Japanese Studies, ii (1977), 34-56.

Great Britain in the 1930s 777

with enforced retirement. Still, at least until the crisis in Europe after March 1939 - and Tientsin derived from a Japanese desire to profit by the crisis - the British position in the Far East was secure. If Craigie is to be believed, it was secure even longer.

The course of British policy towards Germany and Italy, after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 led to estrangement between Great Britain and Italy and to Mussolini's alignment with Hitler by Sep- tember 1937, is one of the most intensely studied periods in modern history.71 It is also one of the most hotly debated. The function of appeasement, the culpability of Neville Chamberlain, the morality of the Munich agreement, and other issues revolve around the inevitability of the war itself and of Great Britain's participation. There is little doubt that after the failure of the World Disarmament conference, the British governments of the time - Baldwin's from June 1935 to May 1937 and Chamberlain's thereafter - fell back on the traditional ways of maintaining the balance of power on the Continent and in the Mediterranean. Put in its simplest terms, the British worked to align themselves with powers of like interests and, when necessary, to resolve issues with their potential enemies as need arose. British diplomats in the past, from Castlereagh to Palmerston to Grey, had used the same diplomatic devices with the same end in view.

As early as February 1934, the cabinet defence requirements com- mittee identified Hitler's Germany as Great Britain's 'ultimate potential enemy'.72 With this threat in Europe, plus the growing strength of Japan in east Asia, Warren Fisher's concern expressed to the first sea lord in July 1934 is easily appreciated.73 Great Britain's initial diplo- matic response to Nazi Germany was to draw closer to France and Italy, both of which were concerned with the potential threat posed by Hitler. Thus MacDonald and Simon, who made foreign policy until the advent of Baldwin's ministry in June 1935, tried to forge a diplomatic front to contain German ambitions in Europe. At a meeting at Stresa in April 1935, just as the World Disarmament conference gasped its last breath, an Anglo-Franco-Italian agreement was made. Although some diffi- culties had yet to be overcome, such as France's need to pacify her allies in the Little Entente, MacDonald commented 'I am satisfied5.74 Italian

71 For an indication, see British Foreign Policy, 1918-1943: A Guide to Research and Research Materials, ed. S. Aster (Wilmington, Del., 1984), pp. 213-18, 237-65; and the bibliography in Watt, How War Came.

72 This is CP 64(34), cited in fn. 65. 73 His ideas had not changed by the time of the Munich agreement; see Warren

Fisher to Chamberlain, 1 Oct. 1938, Warren Fisher MSS [British Library of Economic and Political Science, London], file 1.

74 This quote is from MacDonald diary, 13 April 1935, MacDonald MSS, PRO

778 B.J.C. McKercher

policy in east Africa after October 1935, however, brought the Stresa front crashing down ; British and French public opinion rejected Italy's claim to Ethiopia,75 and the ensuing Italian estrangement from Great Britain and France led Mussolini, who needed an ally, gradually to warm to Germany.

The British were distressed by these developments, and concerned about Italy and Germany's involvement in the Spanish civil war after July 1936. Such a war threatened the western Mediterranean balance of power, and the security of sea routes to Suez, and beyond Suez to India and the Far East.76 By 1936 Baldwin's government had begun to rearm to meet the threat posed by the two Fascist powers in Europe, as well as that of Japan.77 The focus was on the navy and air force: the army remained a weak sister, as both the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments, like their predecessors before 19 14, were looking to the French to meet a land threat on the Continent. At the same time they were attempting, as in the Far East, to establish a system of deterrence in Europe. Efforts were simultaneously under way to underpin British diplomacy by economic means. In early 1936 anyone could see that putting economic pressure on Germany, without going to war, would be difficult but, two years later, with work progressing on the British cruiser fleet, the committee of imperial defence was drawing up contraband lists in the event a blockade had to be enforced.78 It is also interesting that in the mid- 1930s several states, including Estonia, Latvia, Portugal,

30/69/1753; and see his report to the cabinet in Cabinet Conclusion 24(35), CAB 23/81. Also see the Goldman and Quartararo articles cited in fn. 10.

75 E.L. Pressiesen, Foreign Policy and British Public Opinion: The Hoare-Laval Pact of 1935', World Affairs Quarterly, xxix (1958), 256-77; J.C. Robertson, 'The Origins of British Opposition to Mussolini over Ethiopia', Journal of British Studies, ix (1969), 122-42, and 'The Hoare-Laval Plan', Journal of Con- temporary History, x (1975), 433-64; and D.P. Waley, British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War, 1935-1936 (London, 1976).

76 See CID Paper No. 1295B, 'Western Mediterranean: Situation Arising from the Spanish Civil War: Report by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee', 24 Aug. 1936, CAB 4/24; and Eden [foreign secretary] note on 'Italian Policy in the Spanish Civil War', FP(36)io, 19 Aug. 1936, with enclosure, CAB 27/626. Also see J. Edwards, The British Government and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Lon- don, 1979) ; A.R. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1 931-1938 (New York, 1986), pp. 220-357, passim; and R.H. Whealey, 'Foreign Intervention in the Spanish Civil War', in The Republic and the Civil War in Spain, ed. R. Carr (London, iQ7i).

77 See fn. 6. 78 Cf. CID Paper No. 1272B, 'Report by the Economic Pressure Sub-Committee in

the Exercise of Economic Pressure on Germany without there Being a State of War', 12 March 1936, CAB 4/25; and CID Paper No. 1459B, 'Contraband List: Memorandum by the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Trade Questions in Time of War', 22 July 1938, CAB 4/28.

Great Britain in the 1930s 779

and the Scandinavians, joined Great Britain's 'Sterling Area' because of the strength of the pound. This had some political and strategic benefits for British diplomacy later in the decade.79 By the late 1930s, therefore, Great Britain was moving to provide its diplomacy with armed and economic muscle.

Which raises the question, was appeasement an indication of British weakness in the face of aggression? Was it an effort to gain time? Was it a recognition that Germany, especially, had legitimate grievances stemming from the Paris peace settlement, which should be allayed? The 'Guilty Men' thesis, the revisionist, and other theories abound, in a minefield for historians, but it is probably safe to say that an under- standing of appeasement lies in the consideration of all of these ques- tions. Chamberlain and those who controlled foreign and defence policy certainly reckoned that Great Britain would be too weak to restrain Germany until her rearmament programme gathered momentum. Between the Munich and Prague crises, Chamberlain thought this was coming to pass.80 Moreover, as morally reprehensible as it might have been, the Munich agreement represented cold-blooded realpolitik in an endeavour to prevent a second great war within a generation. Besides, Hitler had impressed on Chamberlain that German revisionism had been satisfied, though Chamberlain did entertain some doubts.81 Not surprisingly, when the Prague crisis erupted six months after Munich, Chamberlain drew the line. Prior to this, he had not been keen on aligning too closely with France and other powers, wanting Great Britain to have the freest hand possible.82 Prague changed all this, with the result that Anglo-French collaboration began apace.83 Deterrence became the order of the day, as the guarantee to Poland, the reintro- duction of conscription, and the movement towards France showed. Although Chamberlain got a rude shock from the German occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia, and his own political position weakened at home, Great Britain's position did not weaken abroad. With the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, the line set in late 79 For instance, CID Paper No. 1474B, 'Situation in Portugal: Memorandum by

the British Military Mission: Report of the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee', 14 Oct. 1938, CAB 4/28.

80 Chamberlain to Hilda, his sister, 5 Feb. 1939, Chamberlain MSS, NC 18/1/ 1084. For criticism of Chamberlain's optimism, see W.K. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1 933-1 939 (Ithaca, 1985), pp. 217-18.

81 Chamberlain to Gwynne [newspaper editor], 7 Jan. 1939, Chamberlain MSS, NC 7/1 1/32/105.

82 Rock, Chamberlain and Roosevelt, p. 1 1 . 83 Cf. CID Paper No. 1527B, 'Staff Conversations with France and Belgium', 14

Feb. 1939, with annexes, and CID Paper No. 1546, 'Conversations with the French', 12 April 1939, both CAB 4/29; and see Committee on Foreign Policy Meetings 38 to 40, 27, 30, and 31 March 1939, CAB 27/624.

780 B.J.C. McKercher

March was crossed. Great Britain's declaration of war two days later showed her continued leadership in Europe and the world beyond.

In the period beginning with the World Disarmament conference in February 1932 and ending with the outbreak of war in September 1939, the United States was unable to force the British to tailor their foreign and arms policies to US interests. It was not for want of trying. In the first stage of the conference, the period prior to Hoover's leaving office, the divergence between the British and American positions over arms limitation was pronounced. As Henry Stimson said in early June 1932, on returning from a month at Geneva and when the conference seemed to bog down : 'The only naval power which bears upon these European land armaments is the British naval power in the Mediterranean which conflicts with the French ferriage problem to North Africa. No matter how much we might reduce our navy, Britain would never relinquish her superiority in the Mediterranean which is based on Malta and Gibraltar and protects her route to India.'84 It was a realistic appraisal of the United States' lack of leverage at the conference.85 If the Hoover administration had any hope of persuading the conference to accept the overwhelming need to retrench, it had to meet the legitimate stra- tegic concerns of the other great powers. It might not want to entangle the United States in security arrangements in Europe or elsewhere, but it had at least to do the opposite of what Gibson had said in his opening speech - it had to project its mind into the future. This did not happen. At the end of June Hoover proposed massive arms cuts by arbitrary figures of one-quarter to one-third. Not surprisingly - except, perhaps, to Hoover who looked to moral leadership - the proposal failed miser- ably. Great Britain's fundamental need had been ignored, thus any success the United States could hope to achieve lay with Roosevelt.

Roosevelt also wanted to achieve a measure of arms limitation, and one of his first acts after inauguration was to send a message to the fifty-four states meeting at Geneva.86 In it he argued that 'aggressive weapons should be abolished and a universal pact made, pledging non- aggression ; with this accomplished, security would be assured whilst the conference got down to the nuts and bolts of disarmament. His words were received favourably - except by the Germans -but were perceived as a beginning, not an end. Ferdinand Mayer, one of the US delegates, sought to impress this on the state department: 'If we continue to pull on our trousers and wear them, we will breathe life into this Conference

84 Stimson telegram (unnumbered) to the US delegation, Geneva, 4 June 1932, Stimson Papers [microfilm edition, Sterling Library, Yale University], reel 83.

85 Stimson diary, April 1932, Stimson Papers, vol. 20. 86 See Roosevelt's message as cited in fn. 62.

Great Britain in the ig3os 781

which it has never had before,' he wrote. 'If, on the other hand, we go only half the way and dilly-dally as we have done before, it will be equally disappointing and disheartening.387 But American trousers remained down, as specific proposals to give substance to Roosevelt's ideas failed to appear. The reason was simple: six weeks later, the president's torpedoing of the World Economic conference indicated a general US desire to turn inwards. Roosevelt did not ignore foreign policy issues after this, and he generally supported the concept of arms limitation,88 but he and his advisers took no new steps to bring Great Britain and the other great powers to an agreement. In reality, he could not. Not only were the British loath to limit their arms, especially the navy, without firm political agreements, but also Hitler was determined to rearm Germany. For the remaining life of the World Disarmament conference, the United States let the other powers seek a way around the impasse at Geneva.

Roosevelt and his advisers were worried about the course of British foreign policy after 1933. In November 1934, for instance, as British diplomats left no doubt that they were seeking a rapprochement with Japan, using the preliminary discussions for the second London naval conference to do so, the president expressed his strong desire to end the growing closeness in Anglo- Japanese relations:

Simon and a few other Tories must be constantly impressed with the simple fact that if Great Britain is even suspected of preferring to play with Japan to playing with us, I shall be compelled, in the interest of American security, to approach public sentiment in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in a definite effort to make these Dominions understand clearly that their future security is linked with us in the United States.89

But, ultimately, Roosevelt could do nothing. When the second London naval conference broke down, the British diverted public funds to the navy and, as the figures demonstrate, this led to a two-to-one advantage over the United States in cruisers by 1939. Moreover, although the opinions of Dominion leaders were not without weight at London, the course of intra-imperial relations after 1934 shows that British leaders during the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments formulated their foreign and arms policies with the United Kingdom's interests foremost

87 Mayer to Moffat, 20 May 1933, No. 10, Mayer Papers, container 1. 88 On his interest in foreign policy, see Marks, Wind over Sand, pp. 13-39; this

must be read with an eye to its strong anti-Roosevelt bias. For general Roosevelt administration support of arms limitation, see Davis to Roosevelt, 6 Nov. 1934, Davis Papers, container 5 1 .

89 Roosevelt to Davis, 9 Nov. 1 934, Davis Papers, container 5 1 .

782 B.J.C. McKercher

in mind.90 Canada and South Africa had broken with the concept of a single imperial foreign policy in the 1920s; Australia and New Zealand had a less independent bent. But in the final years of peace, especially after the 1937 imperial conference, the British were able to use their political, economic, and racial connections with the 'white5 Dominions to bolster their position in the Pacific by constructing a line of deterrence on the perimeter of the Japanese sphere of interest.91 Indeed, when Great Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, it is signi- ficant that the Dominions also declared war. The empire as a whole, the United Kingdom at its head, went into the struggle against Nazi Ger- many. Hence, Roosevelt's claim to make the Dominions see 'that their security is linked with ... the United States' remained unproven in this period. The inability of the United States to divert British foreign policy from the course determined for it at London touched all manner of issues in the late 1930s. Roosevelt disliked the Munich agreement, for example, and was critical of Chamberlain, but could do nothing, or would do nothing, to try to change British policy.92 Indeed, in many respects, it was incumbent on the United States to find a modus vivendi with Great Britain. The conclusion in 1938 of the trade agreements by Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, although fraught with difficulty and not necessarily indicative of warm relations between the two chief English-speaking powers, showed this. Neither side gave way to the other; rather, what emerged was a traditional compromise. Within the context of foreign and arms policy, however, the will to compromise was less pronounced. As the course of Anglo-American relations had shown since Hoover's presidency, the British were willing to accommodate the United States when they could; when it proved impossible, as over Hoover's June 1932 proposal, or US distaste for Anglo- Japanese closeness in 1934-5, they were prepared to go their own way to protect what they saw as Great Britain's interests. By 1939, British foreign policy was effective in Europe, the Mediterranean, and, within certain limits, the Far East. This was the reality of being a global power in the 1930s, and Great Britain, rather than the United States, had achieved it.

Jt JL M.

90 The best study of this question is R. Ovendale, 'Appeasement' and the English Speaking World: Britain, the United States, the Dominions, and the Policy of of Appeasement, 1 937-1 939 (Cardiff, 1975). 91 See the GID Papers, nos. 1455B, 1463B, and 1542!*, cited in fns. 34, 67. 92 Gf. Marks, Wind over Sand, pp. 144-7; A. Offner, American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1 933-1 938 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969) , pp. 267-72; and Rock, Chamberlain and Roosevelt, pp. 130-1.

Great Britain in the ig3os 783

It is impossible to find one instance in the 1930s when, over a major policy decision concerning Great Britain's protection of its external interests, the United States was able to persuade London to adopt a policy Washington thought best. This does not mean the British ignored the United States in their diplomatic calculations, especially touching foreign and arms policies. They did not.93 It is to say, however, that the United States did not have the 'power' -the combination of economic muscle, armed strength, and sustained will - to deflect the British. No doubt the United States had the potential in the 1930s to be a world power, because of her wealth. But wealth means nothing without some tangible expression of national strength, coupled with the will to employ it. As Hugh Wilson remarked in 1933, the United States had been bargaining its potential against the real ships of the British and Japanese. The barrenness of such a tactic emerged in 1935. But even after this, as both Great Britain and Japan pushed ahead with naval construction, the United States was reluctant to build warships. Wilson's critique can be applied to other US foreign policy initiatives, for whether they in- volved naval construction, the balance of power in Europe, the collec- tion of war debts, or whatever, US wealth did not lead to a decline in Great Britain's global power status. No doubt Great Britain faced great danger in 1939 in three regions of the globe. But she moved to meet these threats by a combination of rearmament and activist diplomacy. When the diplomacy of appeasement failed, a different approach in- volving close ties with France and increased co-operation with the empire was employed. How any of the other great powers, including the United States, would have been able to cope with such a situation is open to speculation. In terms of the reality of power and despite the claims of economic determinists, Great Britain was still pre-eminent in the world in September 1939.

Royal Military College of Canada

93 For instance, see Eden memorandum on the 'Strength of Great Britain and of certain other Nations as at January 1938', 26 Nov. 1937, CID Paper No. 1373^, GAB 4/27.