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‘What a troubled world it still is’: The Foreign Office after Locarno, January 1927 – June 1929
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2009
Extract
Success at Locarno massively enhanced Chamberlain's authority in the management of foreign affairs to the extent that it appeared he would remain unshakeably in control for the duration of Baldwin's second administration. Yet perhaps the greatest tragedy of this period in Chamberlain's career was that his most glorious triumph should have come near the beginning of his term in office rather than as a natural culmination and fitting climax at its end. Although Chamberlain had always acknowledged that Locarno was but a beginning and ‘there are still difficulties to be faced and still a long road to travel’. critics have argued that after the plaudits and glories of Locarno Chamberlain demonstrated too little appetite for the wider issues of collective security and arms limitation. Under the spell of his personal triumph perhaps he too easily allowed a note of complacency to creep into the conduct of foreign affairs. Apparently not sure what to do next, he is thus often depicted as ‘a spent force after his efforts at Locarno … satisfied with his semi-detached relationship with Europe, qualified only by a tendency to lean towards France and to grumble over German ingratitude and demands for further revision of the Versailles treaty’. Yet, while some of this criticism may be valid, it also needs to be seen in its proper context. Certainly, as Chamberlain later described it himself, Britain came to occupy a ‘semi-detached position’ in relation to Europe after Locarno. Yet even before it, he had always contended that the security of the eastern European states was not only a problem for the future, but also one that it was not for Britain to solve. While his apparent indifference to events east of the Rhine may have been demoralising in central Europe, therefore, British reluctance to take a lead in extending the Locarno system outside the sphere of vital national interest was the almost inevitable corollary of Chamberlain's policy motivation for pursuing a Rhineland Pact in the first place. The ‘spirit of Locarno’ was not to be a model for future British action but rather a beacon to guide others in assuming the initiative elsewhere.
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