Lord Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate About Treasury Interference in The

Lord Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate about Treasury Interference in theConduct of British Foreign Policy in the 1930sAuthor(s): Peter NevilleSource: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 623-633Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180776 .Accessed: 25/01/2011 02:32

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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ? 2001 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 36(4), 623-633. [0022-0094(200110)36:4;623-633;0 19404]

Peter Neville

Lord Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate about Treasury Interference in the Conduct of British Foreign Policy in the 1930s

On 13 June 1953, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Selwyn Lloyd, had to answer a parliamentary question to defend Foreign Office officials against 'grave imputations' of misconduct.1 These imputations related to the pre-war period and the real victim was Lord Vansittart, the former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, who had been accused by his former colleague, Sir Walford Selby, in his 1953 memoir, Diplomatic Twilight, of allowing an excessive degree of Treasury interference which had effectively 'neutered Foreign Office contributions to policy-making'.2 This broader accusation had been supplemented by a subsidiary one that had infuriated Vansittart so much that he had considered suing Selby. It was that Vansittart had favoured a 'military occupation of Austria by Germany'3 in March 1938.

The second accusation was patently absurd, as Vansittart told the historian Robert Blake in a letter on 1 May 1953. Vansittart wrote: 'In regard to Austria Selby is so ignorant that he has confused me with Nevile Henderson. Nevile Henderson was in favour of the Anschluss, and that is precisely why we were barely on speaking terms.'4

As a former minister in Vienna, Selby should have known better, although he was on safer ground in criticizing Vansittart for having been duped by the Sudeten German leader, Konrad Henlein, when he visited Britain on several occasions in 1937-38. Selby claimed in his memoirs that neither Eden nor Chamberlain had authorized the 'assurances and suggestions ... attributed by Henlein to Sir Robert Vansittart',s5 allegedly given during Henlein's visit between 10 and 15 October 1937. Recent historians have tended to agree that Vansittart was indeed taken in by Henlein, who was almost certainly being run from Berlin while giving the impression that he was an independent force

1 Hansard 24/6/53. 2 B. McKercher, 'Old Diplomacy and New' in M. Dockrill and B. McKercher (eds), Diplomacy and World Power. Studies in British Foreign Policy 1890-1950 (Cambridge 1996), 106. 3 Sir Walford Selby, Diplomatic Twilight (London 1953), 73. 4 Vansittart to Blake 1/5/53, Vansittart Papers II, Churchill College Cambridge, II/17. 5 Selby, op. cit., 73.


Peter Neville







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in the Czech Sudetenland.6 Vansittart's own Private Secretary, Gladwyn Jebb, was to write that 'It was not, I think, very difficult to take him in.'7

As far as the wider accusation is concerned, it is easy to dismiss Selby's charges as the product of professional pique and bitterness. In the 1920s, Walford Selby was a 'Young Turk' who served as Principal Private Secretary to successive prime ministers and had advised Austen Chamberlain during the negotiations at the time of the Treaty of Locarno. In 1931, Selby had written a lengthy memorandum about the balance of power in Europe and Anglo- German relations, seeing himself apparently as a 'new Eyre Crowe'.8 He expected to succeed Sir Ronald Lindsay as Permanent Under-Secretary when the latter retired in 1929. Instead, Vansittart secured the post, and Selby never obtained a major embassy. From 1933 to 1937 he was posted as Minister to Vienna, and finished his diplomatic career in Lisbon, something of a diplomatic backwater.

Selby focused his criticism on the role of Sir Warren Fisher, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Treasury who was charged with 'undue interference in matters of policy-making and senior appointments'.9 Selby began his

onslaught against Fisher and Vansittart (for failing to protect the Diplomatic Service from Treasury interference) in a letter to The Times on 28 August 1942, although he did not actually mention Fisher's name. But, for the informed reader, the inference was clear. He was joined in his attack by Lord Perth, a former ambassador to Rome, and Lord Salisbury, the upshot being a

'stormy debate in the Lords'10 in November 1942. The issue remained off the public agenda for some years thereafter, to be

reactivated in 1953 when Selby's memoir appeared. The book's harsh criticism of Vansittart then obliged the government to make the June 1953 statement which cleared Foreign Office officials of the charges. Selby was not the only critic, however. Lord Murray of Elibank also attacked Vansittart's handling of

foreign affairs, and the Marquess of Reading had to make another statement on behalf of the government in the Lords, which refuted both Selby and Elibank's charges. Selby, according to Vansittart's biographer, was motivated not just by personal bitterness but also by 'the swollen image he entertained of his own importance'.'1 He had also accused the Foreign Office of ignoring despatches which he had sent from Vienna warning of the nazi danger.

6 See, for example, John R. Ferris, 'Indulged in all too Little? Vansittart, Intelligence and

Appeasement', Diplomacy and Statecraft, 6, 1 (March 1995), 132. In his biography of Vansittart, Norman Rose admits that Henlein 'certainly deceived Van'. Vansittart. Study of a Diplomat

(London 1978), 223. 7 Lord Gladwyn Memoirs (London 1972), 132. 8 McKercher, op. cit., 106, footnote 112. 9 Rose, op. cit., 266. 10 Ibid., 267. 11 Ibid. Elibank's criticisms were contained in his book Reflections on some Aspects of British

Foreign Policy between the Wars (Edinburgh 1946). Rose points out that two other critics,

Ashton-Gwatkin and Wellesley (a Deputy Under-Secretary in Vansittart's time) were primarily concerned with securing the setting-up of an economic section in the Foreign Office.





































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Selby's wild accusations about Vansittart's role in the Anschluss discredited the major thrust behind his book, because he created an image of himself as an embittered, disappointed man. But was there any force behind his claim that Fisher and the Treasury exercised undue influence over the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service? In his own memoir, Vansittart remains silent on the issue,12 although in correspondence with Bridges (the former Cabinet Secretary), he had written that 'the Treasury and Warren Fisher were never a kind of octopus which paralysed our foreign policy'.13

There is, on the face of it, a case to answer. Anthony Eden, for example, on becoming Foreign Secretary in 1935, 'had to beat off the attempts of Sir Warren Fisher, the head of the Civil Service, to claim a veto over ambass- adorial appointments'.14 Fisher's offensive is well documented. In autumn 1936, Vansittart had visited Germany, and Fisher wrote to Neville Chamber- lain (an ally in the debates over defence and diplomacy in the 1930s) about his anxieties.

On 15 September Fisher wrote:

What is, of course, clear is (1) after Van's recent outing in Germany, and establishment of agreeable personal relations with Hitler and Co, the immediate removal of Van from the FO would be interpreted in Germany as disapproval by HMG of this personal improvement.

Fisher went on to say that Vansittart's German visit set back any proposed reform of the Foreign Office, although Fisher was convinced of the need for it. He purported to see

... in all this the hand of Alec Cadogan, who is likely to become Permanent Under-Secretary of State himself, and Anthony [Eden] - who is and always will be very light metal - has been party to the folly of providing us with the worst of every world.5

Fisher opposed the idea of Cadogan becoming Permanent Under-Secretary to the extent that he himself was prepared to 'work the government to put me there though this would mean a step down in rank for me and a loss of ?500 a year'.16 Here is evidence indeed of Warren Fisher meddling in senior Foreign Office appointments by writing to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Chamber- lain himself was 'undeniably well versed'17 in matters relating to foreign policy. He had taken a major role in the formulation of policy at Cabinet and also received confidential reports from important figures about the performance of the Foreign Office. The tandem of Fisher and Chamberlain was undoubtedly a formidable one, and Chamberlain shared Fisher's dissatisfaction with the

12 Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession (London 1958). 13 Vansittart to Bridges 1/5/53, Vansittart Papers, Churchill College Cambridge, 11/17. 14 D. Dutton, Anthony Eden. A Life and Reputation (London 1997), 58; see also A.R. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office (Aldershot 1986), 256. 15 Fisher to Chamberlain 15/9/36, Neville Chamberlain Papers, NC 7/11/3074. 16 Ibid. 17 Peters, op. cit., 256.

























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Foreign Office's performance, particularly in its conduct of relations with Germany and Italy.

In his memoirs, Lord Avon's Parliamentary Private Secretary, J.P.L. Thomas, wrote about a meeting he had with Sir Warren Fisher, which appears to underline the extent to which Fisher was trying to meddle in Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service affairs. The meeting took place only two weeks after Thomas had taken up his post in May 1937, and, according to his account, both Fisher and Horace Wilson, the Chief Industrial Adviser to the Govern- ment, who was also present at the meeting, said they were

... thoroughly dissatisfied with the Foreign Office and especially with Vansittart. They told me that Vansittart was an alarmist, that he hampered all attempts of the Government to make friendly contact with the dictator states and that his influence over Anthony Eden was

very great.'8

The two men claimed to have been responsible for the appointment of Thomas himself, so that he could help build a bridge between 10 Downing Street and the Foreign Office. This might help to limit the 'damage which had been done

by the Foreign Office and by Vansittart in particular'. Unsurprisingly, Thomas objected to being asked to act as a spy for Fisher and Wilson.19 Lord Avon's latest biographer makes no reference to this episode and, indeed, only makes one reference to Sir Warren Fisher.20 Can we, therefore, deduce that Selby's accusations about Fisher's interference in Foreign Office appointments are unwarranted? Even in the account referred to above Thomas goes on to note that the next day Horace Wilson spoke to him again to say that 'Sir Warren was rather impulsive', an apparent attempt to allay Thomas's anxieties about what had been said.

Taken at its face value, the Thomas account of what Fisher and Wilson said contains one very surprising feature. This is the suggestion that Vansittart's influence over Eden was 'very great',21 a suggestion which flies in the face of other available evidence about what Eden thought about Vansittart. In November 1936, Eden wrote of Vansittart that 'he is not balanced and is in such a continual state of nerves that he will end up making would-be

aggressors think the more of us as a potential victim'.22 And this view of 'Van', as he was commonly known by his colleagues, was shared by his successor as

18 Lord Avon, Facing the Dictators (London 1962), 447.

19 Ibid., 448. Horace Wilson was to become Neville Chamberlain's Chief Diplomatic Adviser,

while Vansittart was given a reduced role at the end of 1937 as Chief Diplomatic Adviser in the

Foreign Office. Thomas, together with Oliver Harvey, Eden's Private Secretary in the Foreign

Office, and Lord Cranbourne, the Under-Secretary of State, formed a tightly-knit group of

advisers on whom Eden was heavily reliant. 20 See note 14. Cf. Eden's other major biographers. David Carlton makes no reference to the

Thomas episode (C. Carlton, Anthony Eden (London 1981)) while Robert Rhodes James repro- duces Thomas's version of events in Anthony Eden (London 1986), 175.

21 Lord Avon, op. cit., 448. 22 Rhodes James, op. cit., 159.




very great.'8
















very great.'8
















very great.'8













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Permanent Under-Secretary, Alexander Cadogan. Others noticed Eden's dis- like of being associated with Vansittart's opinions, which were thought to be rabidly anti-German. Eden had indicated as early as February 1936 that he wished to be rid of Vansittart and he tried via Baldwin to get Vansittart to replace his brother-in-law, Sir Eric Phipps, as ambassador to France.23 Given that Eden's comments pre-dated the Thomas-Fisher meeting, it is surprising that Sir Warren Fisher could have imagined that Vansittart had great influence over him.

What seems to be beyond dispute is that Fisher 'had a powerful bias against the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service'.24 He was also as anti-American as Vansittart (certainly in his later years) was anti-German. Both men were powerful advocates of the causes they took up, and Fisher's interventions could indeed be interpreted, as Selby suggested in his book, as attempts to exercise undue influence in departments other than the Treasury. One analyst has pointed out that part of the problem was that Fisher 'often saw his role more as that of Head of the Civil Service than of the Treasury, and that his power lay more in relations with the inhabitants of 10 Downing Street than in his financial acumen'.25 But Fisher's inter-departmental meddling was not as significant or as effective as Selby suggested.

There are two strong grounds for saying this. First, Vansittart was able to set up a specialist economic section in the Foreign Office in February 1932, effectively trespassing on Fisher's own fiefdom in the Treasury. Second, Selby's criticism ignores the often fruitful co-operation between Vansittart and Fisher in the field of defence, and particularly on the Defence Requirements Committee which was set up in 1934. Yet here, too, Vansittart fought his corner.

The fact that the Foreign Office did not have a specialist economics section was in part its own fault. Commercial attaches were looked down on in the diplomatic service, and little attention was paid to their views.26 Vansittart saw the importance of having such a specialist section, and the Treasury, as might have been expected, 'fought a stubborn rearguard action to preserve its prerogatives'.27 But 'Van' was victorious in this struggle, a fact ignored by Selby in his book. Thereafter, Vansittart was a strong supporter of the new section, writing as early as 22 January 1933 that the work done by Ashton- Gwatkin (the new head of the economic section) and his colleagues, had been 'most useful during the past year.... Its utility is going to increase.'28 Far from

23 Peters, op. cit., 257. 24 C. Morrisey and M.A. Ramsey, 'Giving a Lead in the Right Direction', Sir Robert Vansittart and the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 6, 1 (March 1995), 42. 25 Ibid., 51; see also E. O'Halpin, Head of the Civil Service: A Study of Sir Warren Fisher (London 1989), 135. 26 Rose, op. cit., 99. 27 Ibid., 100. 28 Vansittart minute 22/1/33, FO 371/17138 W278/278/50.
















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retreating before the tentacles of the Treasury, therefore, the Foreign Office had actually secured a new section with a new role, and extra manpower.

Of more importance in the general context of foreign policy and defence policy management was the close co-operation between Vansittart and Fisher on the Defence Requirements Committee. The DRC was a special sub- committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, on which Vansittart sat with Fisher, Hankey29 and the Chiefs of Staff of the armed services. Both men saw the importance of a new rearmament programme, and agreed that there was a threat to Britain's interests from Germany and Japan, in that order. The minutes of the Third Session of the DRC stated that the Committee believed that Britain's defence resources 'were not sufficient to meet a menace from both Japan and Germany and . . . of the two, Germany was the greater menace'.30 This appeared to be a victory for Vansittart, whom historians have traditionally portrayed as 'Eurocentric', and obsessed with the German threat. According to Vansittart's biographer, this meant a policy of 'squaring up to Germany: accommodation with Japan. Fisher supported him entirely.'31

The thesis propounded here is that in exchange for Fisher's support on the DRC, Vansittart abandoned his pro-American stance (he had been head of the North American section in the Foreign Office), and supported a new policy of

trying to reach accommodation with Japan. In reality, this would merely be a reversion to the more traditional policy of friendship with Japan adopted in 1902 and abandoned in 1921 to allay US anxieties. But Vansittart supported this change reluctantly and would have 'preferred keeping both the Japanese and the Americans in play'.32

At the time, Vansittart wrote that 'we have been too tender, not to say sub-

servient, with the US for a long time past. It is we who have made all the advances and received nothing in return.'33

An alternative thesis is that Vansittart, far from being Eurocentric, by summer 1934 had developed a sophisticated global strategy which depended on Britain's ability to preserve a local balance of power in both Europe and the Far East. This strategy, it has been argued, was in actual contention with the

Treasury view that Britain should deal with the dual threat from Germany and

Japan by seeking a rapprochement with Tokyo.34 Part of this global strategy involved Vansittart and his supporters in the

Foreign Office emphasizing 'the flowering antagonism between Japan and

29 Hankey, who was the Cabinet Secretary at the time, was to observe that Fisher 'is rather

mad' as a result of 'some mysterious nerve disorder' which allegedly affected his judgment. See

B. Bond (ed.), Chief of Staff. The Diaries of Sir Harry Pownall (London 1972), 36.

30 Minutes of the Third Session of the Defence Requirements Committee 4/12/33. CAB 16/109,

PRO. 31 Rose, op. cit., 126. 32 Ibid. 33 Vansittart minute 5/2/34, FO 371/17593. 34 This thesis is propounded at length in S. Bourette-Knowles, 'The Global Micawber: Sir

Robert Vansittart, the Treasury and the Global Balance of Power 1933-35', Diplomacy and

Statecraft, 6, 1 (March 1995), 91-2.




















































628 628 628 628


Soviet Russia in the Far East'.35 Such an antagonism was to Britain's advan- tage, the Vansittartites argued, provided it did not lead to outright war, because it would rein in Japanese ambitions in the Far East. A war in which Japan was victorious might fatally weaken the USSR and so destroy it as a counter-balance to Germany in Europe. Open overtures to Tokyo might also, the same argument ran, encourage the Japanese, who had designs on Siberia, to attack the USSR.

This thesis is attractive, and seems to make more sense than the traditional one which sees Vansittart as a supporter of the Fisher-Chamberlain line that economic constraints must force Britain to seek accommodation with Japan (Chamberlain was to remain a strong supporter of such a policy). For it can be combined with other evidence that Vansittart, unlike his senior colleague at the Foreign Office, Orme Sargent, supported the USSR's collective security policy instigated by Stalin and Litvinov in 1934-35. This involved the USSR making defence pacts with France and Czechoslovakia in the hope of creating an anti-nazi bloc led by the USSR. When Aston Gwatkin and Laurence Collier (the head of the Foreign Office Northern Department) wrote a joint memorandum in January 1935 about the dangers of any possible Anglo-Japanese agreement in the form of a non-aggression pact, Vansittart minuted that it was 'an excellent and cogent paper'.36 Vansittart then both opposed any significant rapprochement with the Japanese, and, unlike some of his colleagues, supported the Soviet policy of collective security in Europe. More than this, the USSR, in his view, needed to be strong in the Far East to counteract the Japanese threat. However, war between Japan and the USSR was undesirable, for its outcome could be either a victorious resurgent Japan with all that meant for vulnerable British colonies in the Far East, or a Soviet victory which could also threaten British imperialism in Asia. Whether the USSR or Japan would be obliging enough to stay at peace was another matter.

The view taken by Vansittart of the Japanese problem was in line with that taken by the Foreign Office Far Eastern Department headed by Charles Orde. Orde believed that a pro-active policy towards Japan, as favoured by Chamberlain and Warren Fisher, would 'weaken Russia in the Far East . . . and might lead to further Japanese aggression in South-East Asia'.37 Orde, and the influential commercial attache in the Tokyo embassy, Sir George Sansom, also stressed an additional danger if the Foreign Office adopted the Fisher- Chamberlain line on Far Eastern policy. This was that an Anglo-Japanese pact would result in 'violent Chinese resentment against us'.38 Britain had important commercial and trading interests in China of long standing which

35 Ibid., 93. 36 Ashton-Gwatkin-Collier memo 7/1/35 in DBFP II XX, no. 215; see also Vansittart's minute undated; M. Carley, 'A Fearful Concatenation of Circumstances: The Anglo-Soviet Rapproche- ment 1934-6', offers a critique of Orme Sargent's attitude. See Contemporary European History, 5, I (1996). 37 Memorandum by Orde 4/9/34, DBFP, vol. VIII, no. 15. 38 Ibid.













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could be jeopardized by a pro-Japanese orientation, particularly after Japan's aggression in Manchuria in 1931 which had resulted in the effective loss of that province. Orde and Sansom were also quick to point out the dangers of an Anglo-Japanese pact for the relationship with Washington, and the potential diminution of the prestige of the League of Nations already weakened by flagrant Japanese defiance in 1931-32.

Vansittart was prepared to be more flexible in policy towards Japan than he was with regard to Germany. He fully recognized that 'we are in no condition to have trouble with Japan'39 because the situation in Europe after Hitler's accession to power in January 1933 was too delicate. Nevertheless, he would not go as far as Chamberlain and Fisher in seeking a non-aggression pact with the Japanese. Indeed, he became as irritated by Fisher's outpouring in memo- randums about the desirability of rapprochement with Tokyo as Fisher did with Orde, whom he described as 'a pedantic ass, admirably suited to join the eclectic brotherhood of Oxford or Cambridge'.40 Fisher was supported in Tokyo by the ambassador, Sir Robert Craigie, who 'stood apart, in virtual iso- lation, from the consensus of Foreign Office opinion'.41 Craigie was a personal friend of Fisher's and also shared Neville Chamberlain's distrust of the USA. But Halifax, who succeeded Eden as Foreign Secretary in February 1938, was inclined to accept the Far Eastern Department's analysis of the situation in the Far East, and the opinions of Craigie's opposite number in China, Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr,42 who sermonized about the immorality of Japanese behaviour and the virtues (hidden to others) of Chiang Kai-Shek. The situation in the British foreign policy-making elite was, therefore, heavily nuanced by 1937-38. On the one side, there was the Chamberlain/Fisher/Craigie axis with its preference for agreement; on the other, the Far Eastern Department with Clark-Kerr and a Vansittart reluctant to provoke the Japanese but also anxious to avoid giving an impression of weakness. Halifax manoeuvred between the two, a loyal acolyte of Chamberlain, at least until Munich (and probably thereafter), but by temperament more sympathetic to what Orde, Sansom and Clark-Kerr were saying.

What does emerge, however, is that on this issue as over the smaller one of the economic section, Vansittart fought his own corner, and was not sub- servient to Fisher, whose alleged influence on diplomatic appointments showed scant success. Warren Fisher may have tried to influence senior diplo-

39 Minute by Vansittart 28/7/35, FO 371/19287/F4811. 40 Bourette-Knowles, op. cit., 96; Fisher memorandum 21/1/35, T721/31.

41 Wm. Roger Louis, 'The Road to Singapore: British Imperialism in the Far East 1932-42' in

W. Mommsen and L. Kettenacker (eds), The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London 1983), 380. 42 Wm. Roger Louis, op. cit., 380; see also D. Gillies, Radical Diplomat. The Life of Archibald

Clark-Kerr, Lord Inverchapel 1882-1951 (London 1999), 99-100. Professor D. Cameron Watt

supports Craigie's diplomacy, and is critical of the Far Eastern Department and Sansom. See

'Chamberlain's Ambassadors' in Dockrill and McKercher (eds), Diplomacy and World Power, op.

cit., 163-9.










cit., 163-9.










cit., 163-9.










cit., 163-9.

630 630 630 630


matic and Foreign Office appointments, as Selby suggested, but there is little evidence that he had any real success (the mysterious Thomas episode may well have been a case of wishful thinking on the part of Fisher and Wilson).

The evidence that Fisher did try and exert influence is clear-cut. He, like Vansittart, was a powerful and sometimes domineering personality. That, however, is a long way from saying that he exercised any real control over Foreign Office appointments or negated the role of the Diplomatic Service, as Selby alleged.

We are left, then, inevitably with the case of the embittered career diplomat who saw an opportunity to revenge himself on his service superior. Even while he was a serving diplomat, Selby had crossed swords with Vansittart, who found his performance in the Vienna legation to be sub-standard.43 One particular episode demonstrates how the professional judgment of Selby came to be derided by Vansittart. This was when Selby telegraphed to the Foreign Office in 1934 his opinion that 'No one can quarrel with Germany desiring to tear up the whole peace settlement'. Vansittart was enraged and minuted on the Minister's despatch:

The whole peace settlement, Sir Walford Selby? Really? All you venture to protest about is that Germany should take our time and not hers about it! I have never read a more astound- ing composition by one of His Majesty's Representatives abroad.... And of course I repudi- ate it entirely.44

Selby redrafted the despatch after this counterblast, which was as fierce as anything Vansittart wrote about his bete noire, Nevile Henderson.4s But it is not difficult to imagine how Selby, an ambitious man whose high opinion of himself was not shared by the Foreign Office and who found his despatches savaged by 'Van', could have borne a grudge which emerged in print 20 years later.

It is clear from the record that Vansittart supported the Foreign Office line on Japan, realized how important the USSR was in the global jigsaw of the 1930s, and never became the cat's paw of Fisher and the Treasury as Sir Walford Selby alleged in his memoirs. Vansittart was notorious for being out of step with the foreign policy pursued by Neville Chamberlain, and by inference with Chamberlain's longstanding ally, Fisher. Even after he had been effectively sacked as Permanent Under-Secretary at the end of 1937, Vansittart may well have exercised as much influence via his intelligence sources as he ever did as service chief.46 It was doubly ironic, therefore, that he was accused

43 Rose, op. cit., 110. 44 FO 371/18358, R7108/37/3. Walford Selby's account of this rebuke can be found in his Diplomatic Twilight, op. cit., 40-1. 45 Sir Nevile Henderson was Minister to Belgrade, 1929-35, to Buenos Aires, 1935-7, and ambassador in Berlin, 1937-39. For examples of Vansittart's tirades against his diplomacy (which 'Van' deemed far too sympathetic to the nazis), see P. Neville, Appeasing Hitler: The Diplomacy of Sir Nevile Henderson 1937-9 (London 1999), 34-5. 46 A case cogently propounded in Ferris, 'Indulged in all too Little?', op. cit., 168.






















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by a disillusioned and embittered colleague of allowing the Chamberlain- Fisher axis too much influence in the running of the Foreign Office. Chamberlain, after all, was commonly known to be distrustful of the Foreign Office and all that it stood for. Hence his rejoicing when he finally secured Vansittart's removal as Permanent Under-Secretary.47 Chamberlain's own strategy of using intermediaries like his sister-in-law, Lady Chamberlain (to Mussolini) and Sir Walter Runciman (to Czechoslovakia) was the clearest proof of his distrust of both the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service. Any influence which officials or diplomats lost, as alleged by Selby, was the result of the way Chamberlain, and to a lesser extent Baldwin, bypassed the Foreign Office. This was a process which Vansittart might have deplored, but over which he had no control. Ultimately, it has been suggested, his triumph was in forcing the government to take seriously his intelligence sources, which warned of Hitler's aggressive duplicity. If so, it was a hollow triumph as Vansittart himself would have recognized. His own judgment on his career was that 'mine is a story of failure, but it throws light on my time which failed too' 48

The relationship between the Foreign Office and the Treasury existed, of course, in a wider context of British financial policy. Fisher, as has been seen, was not an opponent of rearmament (any more than was Chamberlain), but the Treasury in the 1930s was wedded to orthodoxies which affected government attitudes to expenditure on rearmament. As has been pointed out

recently, there were fewer differences between the Treasury and the doyen of British economists, John Maynard Keynes, than has been suggested (he was

just as concerned about inflationary pressures in 1937-38 as the Treasury was), but 'ultimately the most that could be said about the Treasury is that it was prepared to modify its traditional caution, in the face of mounting inter- national danger'.49

Within these constraints, Fisher battled with Vansittart about priorities. The

Treasury believed, like the Chiefs of Staff, that a nazi 'knock-out blow' could be repulsed; and that once this was dealt with the Germans would run out of

both raw materials and foreign exchange. The timescale for this, however, would be three years and during this period Britain itself would be dependent on imports of food and raw materials, which would have to be paid for by exports, gold and the liquidation of British overseas assets.

Chamberlain and the Treasury opposed the expansion of expenditure on the

army, precisely because a large-scale continental commitment would involve

the restoration of 1914-18 style economic controls and government inter-

47 Peters, op. cit., 306. 48 Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession, op. cit., 550. 49 S. Newton, Profits of Peace, The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (Oxford

1996), 72; for other important assessments of Treasury policy towards rearmament, see G. Peden,

'A Matter of Timing. The Economic Background to British Foreign Policy 1937-9', History 69

(1984), 16 and idem, 'Keynes, the Economics of Rearmament and Appeasement' in Mommsen

and Kettenacker (eds), The Fascist Challenge, op. cit., 148-9.














































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Neville: Treasury Interference in British Foreign Policy in the / 930s Neville: Treasury Interference in British Foreign Policy in the / 930s Neville: Treasury Interference in British Foreign Policy in the / 930s Neville: Treasury Interference in British Foreign Policy in the / 930s

vention. Vansittart disagreed. He believed that Britain's contribution to the defence of France and Belgium should be 'let us say at least 20 divisions', if French loyalty was to be assured.50 This major commitment, at a time when others wanted to limit Britain's continental commitments to at most four divisions, had obvious ramifications for British policy in the Far East. But whereas Vansittart's views were influenced by his desire to make a meaningful military commitment to France, Fisher (although well able to perceive the German threat from the air) was constrained by the view from the Treasury. He agreed with Vansittart about the need for aerial rearmament, but, given prevailing Treasury orthodoxies, could not accept Vansittart's desire for an enlarged army. Hence the machinations, of which Selby was aware, with regard to Foreign Office appointments which Vansittart was able and willing to repel.

Peter Neville lectures in history at the University of Westminster. He is the author

of Appeasing Hitler: The Diplomacy of Sir Nevile Henderson 1937-1939 (London 1999).










50 Vansittart minute, 30/1/39, FO 371/22922, C940/281/17. 50 Vansittart minute, 30/1/39, FO 371/22922, C940/281/17. 50 Vansittart minute, 30/1/39, FO 371/22922, C940/281/17. 50 Vansittart minute, 30/1/39, FO 371/22922, C940/281/17.

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Lord Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate About Treasury Interference in The

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