The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (78 page)

The assay of Commonwealth fidelity or, one might say, biddableness came during the autumn of 1938. The issue was Hitler’s claim to the Sudetenland, that region of Czechoslovakia whose inhabitants were predominantly German. Chamberlain, harking back to his father’s time, likened the Sudeten Germans to the Transvaal’s Uitlanders, a people also stranded in a foreign land whose affinities were elsewhere.
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He reconciled himself to the eventual merging of Sudetenland with the Reich, which he agreed with Hitler during a personal meeting at Berchtesgaden in mid-September. What Chamberlain and a majority of the British public could not stomach was Hitler’s next demand, for an immediate military occupation of the disputed Czech territory. Suddenly, and much to Chamberlain’s distress, the question had changed to one of war or peace; would Britain and France resist a German invasion of Czechoslovakia?

British public opinion was divided and the dominions shrank from committing themselves. For the Australian government, ‘almost any alternative is preferable to involvement in a war with Germany in the event of the latter forcibly intervening in Czechoslovakia.’
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Anti-war sentiment was even more marked in Canada, where violent racial clashes were expected if the matter came to a parliamentary debate.
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Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister, therefore trod warily, privately admitting his sympathy for Britain, but publicly opposing a war over Czechoslovakia.
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The South African government, conscious that Afrikaner nationalist opinion was against a war, also signalled its unwillingness to fight for the Czechs.
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Ireland had already served notice of its neutrality. It was Chanak all over again, and yet, on the eve of his last-minute attempt to avert a war, Chamberlain spoke to the nation as if he headed a united empire: ‘However much we may sympathise with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British empire in a war simply on her account.’

The truth was that Britain had not convinced the dominions that the integrity of Czechoslovakia was worth fighting for. Chamberlain flew to Munich at the end of September full of uncertainty. If his talks with Hitler broke down and war followed, he could not rely upon a Canadian expeditionary force to materialise or Anzacs to rush to the defence of the Suez Canal. Furthermore, France was wobbling; most of the battlefleet was refitting; and Britain’s rearmament programme still had a long way to go. Czechoslovakia had to be left to its fate and Chamberlain went home with Hitler’s promise that all remaining Anglo-German differences would be amicably resolved. It was ‘peace in our time’ he announced, echoing Disraeli’s words in 1878 when he returned from the Congress of Berlin.

The choice of words was unintentionally apt, for Chamberlain, like Disraeli, was accused of following a course dictated by expediency rather than morality. The British public was undoubtedly relieved by the peaceful resolution of the crisis, even though it had been an exercise in buying time and was seen as such. Pragmatism had triumphed at Munich, as it had in 1877–8 when Disraeli had resisted the pressure of the high-minded, who had insisted that Britain had a moral duty to support those Balkan nationalists who were struggling for freedom, rather than to back Turkey. Sixty years after, there was a similar wave of protest from a coalition, embracing right and left and including Churchill, which saw the crisis in purely moral terms with Czechoslovakia as the hapless victim of injustice. Predictably, this group bitterly denounced Munich as a cowardly and cynical sell-out. But, Chamberlain’s supporters argued, Britain could not seriously contemplate entering a European war over a region where she had no interests when she was being threatened in areas where she had many, all of them vital. It was a view expressed by a young correspondent to the
Spectator,
who argued that ‘my generation … is not prepared to fight for the integrity of various territories in Central and Eastern Europe which contain big and discontented minorities.’ It would, he claimed, fight for India, the dominions, the colonies and France.
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Imperial security had been uppermost in Chamberlain’s mind when he had gone to Munich. ‘If only we could get on with Germany, I would not care a rap for Musso,’ he had once remarked.
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Ever since he had become prime minister and virtually taken over the direction of foreign policy, Chamberlain had endeavoured to reach an understanding with Mussolini that would preserve Britain’s strategic position in the Mediterranean. There was an urgency about Chamberlain’s overtures to Italy which owed much to the service chiefs’ unrealistic assessments of the strength and capabilities of its army and navy.
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The result was the ironically named ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ of 1938 by which Britain, and later Australia and Canada, recognised Italy’s occupation of Abyssinia, and Italy promised to accept the
status quo
in the Mediterranean.

These accords reflected Chamberlain’s utter failure to comprehend the nature of Italian fascism and the personality of its leader. Neither could tolerate the
status quo
in any form; fascism was about continual, often frenzied action and radically transforming the existing order of things. This perpetual political motion included imperial expansion and Mussolini constantly bragged about the new Roman empire which he would create. At the close of 1938, well-rehearsed fascist deputies, heartened by Hitler’s acquisition of the Sudetenland, demanded Corsica, Tunisia, and France’s colony of Djibouti at the foot of the Red Sea. Early in the new year, Mussolini threw down the gage to Britain in a belligerent speech to his ministers:

Italy is washed by the waters of the Mediterranean. Her links with the rest of the world are through the Suez Canal, an artificial channel which could easily be blocked, even by accident, and through the Straits of Gibraltar, commanded by the guns of Britain. Italy therefore has no free access to the oceans; she is actually a prisoner in the Mediterranean, and as her population grows and she becomes more powerful, the more she suffers in her prison. The bars of that prison are Corsica, Tunisia, Malta and Cyprus, and its guards are Gibraltar and Cyprus.
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At some date in the future Italy would break free from this gaol, an escape which would inevitably lead to war with Britain and France. In the meantime and in spite of official protests, Radio Bari broadcast anti-British propaganda to the Arabs and Egyptians, and the Italian consul in Kabul offered covert help to the tribesmen of the North-West Frontier.
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In private, Mussolini described Britain as a decrepit, weary nation which, in the fascist nature of things, would inevitably have to give way to a youthful and virile imperial power.

This judgement was also being reached in different parts of the empire, where British moral reputation and prestige had been tarnished by the Italian agreements and Munich. After Eden’s resignation as Foreign Secretary early in 1938 in protest against Chamberlain’s policies, the
Gold Coast Spectator
predicted that, ‘Eden may come back as a Premier of Great Britain, and early too; a terror to dictators, and a bulwark against attacks upon the traditional character of all Britons and the liberty of Britain.’ In November 1938, Sierra Leone nationalists declared that by acknowledging Italian sovereignty over Abyssinia, Britain had stepped down from ‘the pedestal of Justice and Equity’.
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For the rest of the world, Munich had been an object lesson in British impotence. In October 1938, the
Economist
gloomily noted a sudden increase in contempt for British power:

From Palestine it is reported that the new boldness and aggressiveness of the Arabs is due to their belief that they can negotiate with the British Empire as equals. In the Far East, the Japanese descent on Southern China, which, if it does not actually invade Hong Kong is designed to ruin its trade, is ascribed to Japanese confidence that the Western powers need not be seriously considered.
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Sir Alexander Cadogan was of similar mind; he feared that Japan’s assault on China and indifference towards British commercial interests there were a signal to the rest of Asia that Britain now counted for less and less in the world. Chamberlain may have staved off a war that Britain and a disunited Commonwealth were unready to fight, but the hidden price of appeasement had been high. Serious damage had been inflicted on Britain’s moral and political standing within the empire and throughout the world.

*   *   *

After Munich, Hitler continued to order the pace and course of events, and their direction was towards war. There was no ambiguity in the unending rant of a man who believed with all his heart that, ‘War is eternal and everywhere. There is no beginning and no peace treaty.’ He was Napoleon reborn, a megalomaniac who could never be trusted and was prepared to risk everything to get what he wanted. His nature and the compass of his ambitions were now fully understood by many members of the government and the great majority of the British public. There was, however, a band of appeasers silly enough to imagine that Hitler could still somehow be bought off. At the beginning of 1939, one of the more abject went so far as to argue that Germany’s old African colonies should be returned, a shameful stratagem which even Chamberlain had abandoned.
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It is of more than passing interest that he, and others who ought to have known better, ever contemplated the transfer of colonies which had enjoyed twenty years of humane British rule to a régime that was now a byword for brutality.

Chamberlain’s confidence in his policy refused to wilt in the face of reality. Much to his irritation, the Foreign Office was prepared to abandon wishful thinking about the dictators’ honesty. At the end of January 1939, it warned the Australian government that intelligence sources indicated that Hitler was now poised to undertake fresh ‘foreign adventures’ in eastern Europe, possibly with an eye to the occupation of the Ukraine. Alternatively, and this was a reminder to the Australians how much their fate was tied to Britain’s, he might overrun Holland and afterwards deliver the Dutch East Indies to Japan.
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At the same time, fears persisted that Hitler might suddenly order a pre-emptive aerial strike against Britain.

In the event, Czechoslovakia was Hitler’s next target. On 15 March his army occupied the rump of that country. The jackal followed the lion, and on 7 April Mussolini invaded Albania. Chamberlain was stunned; he had been hoodwinked and took the dictators’ actions as a personal affront. ‘Musso has behaved to me like a sneak and a cad,’ he complained to his sister.
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Reluctantly, after much agonising, and under intense parliamentary and public pressure, he reversed the course of British foreign policy. On the last day of March, he pledged Poland every support if Germany threatened its independence. If Britain went to war, it would be in response to Hitler’s aggression. Chamberlain was never a wholehearted convert to a policy which, in effect, dared Hitler to begin a war. He kept his blind faith in the possibility that further compromises might be contrived which would postpone a general European conflict until Britain was strong enough to deter Hitler. This was a forlorn hope from a statesman whose nostrums had manifestly failed and whose authority was consequently diminished. Having played the leading part in British diplomacy since May 1937, Chamberlain slipped into the sidelines during the late spring and summer of 1939 when Britain was busy seeking allies, most notably the Soviet Union.

Commonwealth solidarity was now vital, but the dominions remained nervous about following Britain into a European war. According to Smuts, there was ‘no enthusiasm’ for Poland in South Africa, even at the end of August when its invasion seemed imminent.
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Canada had refused to add its name to the Anglo-French guarantee of Polish integrity, although Mackenzie King promised he would recommend his parliament to declare war if Britain was directly attacked. A spiritualist, King did try to invoke occult powers in an effort to penetrate Hitler’s mind, but without success. He was luckier during a visit to London in 1942, when he made contact with Florence Nightingale (who advised him about his health), Anne Boleyn and Queen Victoria during a séance.
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Australia was in a quandary: her government had to choose between delivering a blank cheque to Britain to be cashed on a European battlefield or consolidating resources to deal with a peril closer to home, Japan. Conservatives favoured the former course. ‘Either we go forward,’ argued Sir Earle Page, leader of the Country Party, ‘with the rest of the Empire, secure and prosperous, because of the Empire’s strength or we are to turn aside upon some lonely road … never to be free from the menace of covetous peoples.’
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John Curtin, the Labour party leader, was unconvinced by this classic imperial argument. ‘Australia First!’ was his party’s slogan, which in practical terms meant devoting all the country’s wealth and manpower to defence, in particular the reinforcement of the RAAF.
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Behind this debate lay anxieties about British strategy in the Far East. The start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, and early Japanese successes, had driven Australia and New Zealand to rearm rapidly. Both dominions became more and more frantic in their demands for reassurances that Singapore would be relieved come what may. On the eve of his pledge to Poland, Chamberlain personally affirmed that, ‘in the event of war with Germany and Italy, should Japan join in against us it would still be His Majesty’s Government’s full intention to despatch a fleet to Singapore.’
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His message disturbed Australians and New Zealanders, for it failed to answer the question that mattered most to them; how many ships were to be sent? Chamberlain’s subsequent refusal to send a battlefleet to the Far East as a demonstration of power, on the grounds that its departure might tempt Mussolini to precipitate action in the Mediterranean, confirmed the unspoken fear that in the event of a war, European fronts would always have first call on Britain’s resources.
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With this in mind, the new Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, broadcast to his people at the end of April that when war came they would fight alongside Britain, but, as things then stood, ‘not on European battlefields, but defending our own shores’.