themselves to continued restrictions on the exercise of their sovereignty. The gulf which separated the two nations was a wide one, and with the onset of the economic depression at the end of the 1920s and the lurch towards political extremism in Germany and elsewhere, the prospects for the 'appeasement' of Europe rapidly receded.
Conclusion 'The fact is that war and rumour of war, quarrels and friction, in any corner of the world spells loss and hann to British commercial and financial interests. It is for the sake of these interests that we pour oil on troubled waters. . .. Without our trade and finance we sink to the level of a third class Power. Locarno and the unemployed have an intimate connexion.' Foreign Office Memorandum, 10 April, 1926
Well before the removal of Chamberlain from office in the spring of 1929 and Stresemann' s death in the following October it was plain to see that Locarno diplomacy had serious shortcomings. The notion of Loc arno , nevertheless, continued to fascinate Europe' s statesmen. In the mid-1930s an 'eastern Locarno' was advocated as a means of maintaining the status quo in east-central Europe, and as late as May 1953 Sir Winston Churchill, then in his final term as Prime Minister, called in Parliament for a new Locarno in order to reconcile the security of Russia with the freedom and safety of western Europe. 'I have', he declared, 'a feeling that the master thought which animated Locamo might well play its part between Germany and Russia in the minds of those whose prime ambition is to consolidate the peace of Europe as the key to the peace of mankind.' It might even be possible to see in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and the subsequent review conferences a re-enactment of the 'spirit of Locarno'. But save insofar as Helsinki implied acceptance of the new territorial status quo in Europe, the terms devised there bore little resemblance to those drafted half-a-century before. The Treaty of Mutual Guarantee and the associated accords were prepared to meet problems peculiar to Europe in the 1920s. The guarantees which they included were ambiguous in their formulation and, given the exigencies of modern warfare, were likely to be difficult to fulfil. But they met the psychological needs of the moment, and had their signatories been spared the onset of the depression they might have provided the basis for a lasting peace in Europe.
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