212 NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN: MAN OF PEACE

and Germany was comparatively unarmed. The dual
course of rearmament and discussion of grievances
found individual sponsors in this country, quorum
minima pars fui. Unfortunately however such a
course did not commend itself to the powers that be,
nor—so far as can be ascertained—to the majority
of the nation. That course was not adopted and the
opportunity was not seized. The clouded story of
the next few years was lived in the shadow of that
failure.

Though realism was not greatly in evidence
amongst those who contributed to the formation
of British foreign policy in 1933, there were not
lacking in the Continent of Europe statesmen who
were able to grasp the true meaning of the situation
created by the rise of the new Germany. One of
two courses had to be pursued: either the Nazi
Government of Germany must be suppressed, or
the other states in Europe must speedily resolve to
work in harmonious co-operation with it. Action
following both these two lines was proposed by two
great European statesmen of the day. Marshal
Pilsudski, then Dictator of Poland, inclined to the
former policy, and made proposals to France for an
invasion of Germany, while she was yet powerless
to resist it. France, however, refused her co-opera-
tion. The reason for such refusal lay partly in the
distaste of her own Government, reflecting in turn a
disinclination of the French people as a whole, to
such extreme action. But a strong subsidiary reason
was the disapproval with which it was felt that such
an open employment of the methods of power politics
would meet in Great Britain. This proposal therefore
came to nothing, and its frustration was to have
important results in the European politics of the
future.

The sponsor of the alternative line of policy was