A Spectator's Notebook
THE PARALLEL, between Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal company and Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland is, as Sir Robert Boothby said in a letter to The Times, almost exact. Lord Templewood in his autobiography says that the sort of question that was asked in 1936 was : 'What justifica- could there be for a European war to uphold an out-of-date clause of the Versailles Treaty, and why should not the Germans have full sovereign rights in some of the most Ger- man territory in the Reich?' Lord Simon in his autobiography wrote that 'there was a large body of opinion which found some relief from reflecting that after all, Germany was at worst only exercising sovereign rights within her own boundaries.' In the first volume of his History of the Second World War Sir Winston Churchill points out that Hitler had taken 'advan- tage of the friendly evacuation by the Allies of the Rhineland several years before it was due.' No doubt then as now there were barrack-room international lawyers like Dr. Summerskill to deny that any 'transgression' had been committed. The difference between now and 1936, it seems to me, is that Britain and France are no longer strong enough to be able to go it alone. Another and less depressing difference is, of course, that in 1936, unlike in 1956, most people did not understand the real significance of Hitler's action.
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