Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Thus France wanted security, while Britain had security. France needed Britain, while Britain regarded France as a rival outside Europe (especially in the Near East) and the chief challenge to Britain’s customary balance-of-power policy in Europe. After 1919 the British, and even some Americans, spoke of “French hegemony” on the Continent of Europe. The first rule of British foreign policy for four centuries had been to oppose any hegemony on the Continent and to do so by seeking to strengthen the second strongest Power against the strongest; after 1919 Britain regarded Germany as the second strongest Power and France as the strongest, a quite mistaken view in the light of the population, industrial productivity, and general organizations of the two countries.

Because France lacked security, its chief concern in every issue was political; because Britain had security, its chief concern was economic. The political desires of France required that Germany should be weakened; the economic desires of Britain required that Germany should be strengthened in order to increase the prosperity of all Europe. While the chief political threat to France was Germany, the chief economic and social threat to Britain was Bolshevism. In any struggle with Bolshevist Russia, Britain tended to regard Germany as a potential ally, especially if it were prosperous and powerful. This was the primary concern of Lord D’Abernon, British ambassador in Berlin in the critical years 1920-1926. On the other hand, while France was completely opposed to the economic and social system of the Soviet Union and could not easily forget the immense French investments which had been lost in that country, it still tended to regard the Russians as potential allies against any revival of Germany (although France did not make an alliance with the Soviet Union until 1935).

Because of its insecurity France tended to regard the Treaty of Versailles as a permanent settlement, while Britain regarded it as a temporary arrangement subject to modification. Although dissatisfied with the treaty, France felt that it was the best it could hope to get, especially in view of the narrow margin by which Germany had decided to sign it, even when faced with a worldwide coalition. Britain, which had obtained all of her desires before the treaty was signed, had no reluctance to modify it, although it was only in 1935 (with the Anglo-German naval agreement) that it attempted to modify the colonial, naval, or merchant-marine clauses from which it had benefited. But in 1935 it had, for more than fifteen years, been seeking to modify the clauses from which France had benefited.

The French believed that peace in Europe was indivisible, while the British believed that it was divisible. That means that the French believed that the peace of eastern Europe was a primary concern of the states of western Europe and that the latter states could not allow Germany to move eastward because that would permit her to gain strength to strike back westward. The British believed that the peace of eastern Europe and that of western Europe were quite separate things and that it was their concern to maintain peace in the west but that any effort to extend this to eastern Europe would merely involve the West in “every little squabble” of these continually squabbling “backward” peoples and could, as happened in 1914, make a world war out of a local dispute. The Locarno Pacts of 1925 were the first concrete achievement of this British point of view, as we shall see. To the French argument that Germany would get stronger and thus more able to strike westward if allowed to grow eastward the British usually replied that the Germans were equally likely to become satisfied or get mired down in the great open spaces of the East.

France believed that Germany could be made to keep the peace by duress, while Britain believed that Germany could be persuaded to keep the peace by concessions. The French, especially the political Right in France, could see no difference between the Germans of the empire and the Germans of the Weimar Republic: “Scratch a German and you will find a Hun,” they said. The British, especially the political Left, regarded the Germans of the Weimar Republic as totally different from the Germans of the empire, purified by suffering and freed from the tyranny of the imperial autocracy; they were prepared to clasp these new Germans to their hearts and to make any concession to encourage them to proceed on the path of democracy and liberalism. When the British began to talk in this fashion, appealing to high principles of international cooperation and conciliation, the French tended to regard them as hypocrites, pointing out that the British appeal to principles did not appear until British interests had been satisfied and until these principles could be used as obstacles to the satisfaction of French interests. The British tended to reply to the French remarks about the dangers of English hypocrisy with a few remarks of their own about the dangers of French militarism. In this sad fashion, the core of the coalition which had beaten Germany dissolved in a confusion of misunderstandings and recriminations.

This contrast between the French and the British attitudes on foreign policy is an oversimplification of both. About 1935 there appeared a considerable change in both countries, and, long before that date, there were differences between different groups within each country.

In both Britain and France (before 1935) there was a difference of opinion in international politics which followed general political outlooks (and even class lines) rather closely. In Britain, persons who were of the Left tended to believe in revision of the Treaty of Versailles in favor of Germany, collective security, general disarmament, and friendship with the Soviet Union. In the same period, the Right were impatient with policies based on humanitarianism, idealism, or friendship for the Soviet Union, and wanted to pursue a policy of “national interest,” by which they meant emphasis on strengthening the empire, conducting an aggressive commercial policy against outsiders, and adopting relative isolationism in general policy with no European political commitments except west of the Rhine (where Britain’s interests were immediate). The groups of the Left were in office in Britain for only about two years in the twenty years 1919-1939 and then only as a minority government (1924, 1929-1931); the groups of the Right were in power for eighteen of these twenty years, usually with an absolute majority. However, during these twenty years the people of Britain were generally sympathetic to the point of view of the Left in foreign policy, although they generally voted in elections on the basis of domestic rather than foreign politics. This means that the people were in favor of revision of Versailles, of collective security, of international cooperation, and of disarmament.

Knowing this, the British governments of the Right began to follow a double policy: a public policy in which they spoke loudly in support of what we have called the foreign policy of the Left, and a secret policy in which they acted in support of what we have called the foreign policy of the Right. Thus the stated policy of the government and the policy of the British people were based on support of the League of Nations, of international cooperation, and of disarmament. Yet the real policy was quite different. Lord Curzon, who was foreign secretary for four years (1919-192 3) called the League of Nations “a good joke”; Britain rejected every effort of France and Czechoslovakia to strengthen the system of collective security; while openly supporting the Naval Disarmament Conference at Geneva (1927) and the World Disarmament Conference (1926-1935), Britain signed a secret agreement with France which blocked disarmament on land as well as on the sea (July 1928) and signed an agreement with Germany which released her from her naval disarmament (1935). After 1935 the contrast between the public policy and the secret policy became so sharp that the authorized biographer of Lord Halifax (foreign secretary in 1938-1940) coined the name “dyarchy” for it. Also, after 1935, the policies of both Right and Left were changed, the Left becoming antirevisionist as early as 1934, continuing to support disarmament until (in some cases) 1939, and strengthening its insistence on collective security, while the Right became more insistent on revisionism (by that time called “appeasement”) and opposition to the Soviet Union.