Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

714 DER FUEHREReffective right and power to choose our own path in accordance with thewishes and resolves of the nation in any emergency that may arise onthe Continent of Europe. For this purpose we must be safe from undueforeign pressure. These are not the times when we can afford to confidethe safety of our country to the passions or the panic of any foreignnation, which might be facing some grim and desperate crisis. We mustbe independent and free; we must preserve our full latitude and choice.We have never lived at anybody's mercy... We have never entrusted thehome defense of thiscountry to any foreign power, never asked for any help from anyone....We ought not to be dependent upon the French air force for the safety ofour island home. The fact that we cannot defend ourselves and that ourfriends across the Channel have additional power makes an implicationand a whole series of implications which very nearly approach theestablishment of the condition of British dependence on overseasprotection.'With these words Churchill, who was certainly a friend of France,said almost the same thing that a less good friend, Lord Lothian, formersecretary to Lloyd George and co-author of the Treaty of Versailles,expressed in a letter to the Times written at the beginning of May: 'Theproposal that we should try to stabilize Europe by joining a defensivecoalition against Germany, as in 1904, involves the liability to warwhenever a European power is forced or blunders into war.' Instead,Lord Lothian warned Europe — and in fact he meant France: 'Europeitself should gradually find its own way to an internal equilibrium and alimitation of armaments by political appeasement. . . .' One of the mostportentous slogans of the period was coined here. But England, Lothianinsisted, must not interfere in this appeasement: 'We shall not assist thatprocess [of appeasement] by taking sides. Indeed, by doing so weshould be likely to delay it. ...'Did this presage a triumph for Hitler? Were England and Francedrifting apart while Germany and Italy slowly came close together?Would France, which had partially lost her Polish ally, one day beabandoned by England as well?The Doumergue cabinet had given up Daladier's plan to attempt aseparate understanding with Germany. Germany's rearmament