Welsh Journals

'APPEASEMENT' AND THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD. By Ritchie Ovendale. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1975. Pp. 353. £ 9.00. Dr. Ovendale is a careful scholar with an excellent subject: the influence of the British Dominions and the U.S.A. on British foreign policy after the Imperial Conference of 1937, with which he begins. It is a difficult topic. The foreign policies of the United States, Canada and South Africa were all highly enigmatic. For reasons of domestic politics, some of the most influential personages in each of those countries, Roosevelt, Smuts and Mackenzie King, preferred not to reveal their foreign policies or even tried not to have a foreign policy at all. Moreover, it is difficult both to gauge their influence on British policy and to work out how it was exercised. Roosevelt and Mackenzie King both wished to avoid com- mitting themselves: the American ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, had, therefore, no special knowledge of what was in Roosevelt's mind, while Mackenzie King once stated explicitly that consultation with the Canadian high commissioner in London was not to be 'regarded or represented as constituting consultation of Canada'. The South African government, on the other hand, had views which it expressed with energy: the South African high commissioner in London was the most articulate and fully instructed. But what was never clear until after war had begun was whether or not South Africa would remain neutral in a British war. On this critical point, Smuts avoided open challenge to Hertzog until September 1939. Both Mackenzie King and Hertzog strongly supported Munich-type appeasement, the former to avoid the embarrassment of having to decide for or against Canadian intervention, the latter to get Hitler satisfied in Europe in order to keep him away from Tanganyika and South-West Africa. Australia and New Zealand present a different picture. The Australian governments of Lyons and Menzies were ready, in the last resort, to follow the lead of London in European matters, despite opposition from the Australian Labour Party to involvement in the United Kingdom's conflicts. They and New Zealand expected serious British efforts to defend the far-eastern Empire against Japan. Australian governments approved the evolution of Chamberlain's policies towards Germany. New Zealand did not. Its governments criticised British policy more sharply than any other Dominion government. They consistently demanded support for collective security through the League. At the same time it was never in doubt that New Zealand would fight in any war involving the mother country. Dr. Ovendale convincingly demonstrates two important points. Firstly, it is wrong to think that Chamberlain was indifferent to the views of the United States. Secondly, that given the extreme difficulty of working out what those views were, a difficulty aggravated by the irrelevance of Cordell Hull and the ambiguity of Roosevelt, Chamberlain concluded that the important thing was to make British policy seem as high-minded as possible. On balance, the effect of the Dominions was to make it easier for Chamberlain to do what he wanted to do; United States influence is more complicated and Dr. Ovendale is unable to explore it in full.