Q1 How do you know (Source A) Practice Questions: Inter-War Years

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From an article in a magazine published in Britain in 1925 by a society that campaigned for public support for the League of Nations.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Those who say that the League only talks should look at the work of its committees. Its Commission for Refugees has helped hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war to reach their homes again since 1920. Its Health Committee is working to halt epidemics such as malaria and typhus before they cross frontiers. The International Labour Organisation has persuaded governments to ban poisonous white lead from paint, and the Opium Board is attacking the illegal trade in drugs. Governments may quarrel in the Assembly; but at Geneva the everyday life of ordinary people is quietly being improved, year by year.

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From an article in a British newspaper, published in June 1919 as the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were being made public.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

The clauses that matter most are those dealing with the German army. An army of 100,000 men, raised from volunteers, with no tanks, no military aircraft and no submarines, is an army for keeping order at home and for nothing else. The great yards that built the High Seas Fleet will build no more dreadnoughts. With the Rhineland emptied of German troops, no general in Berlin can march his divisions into Belgium before breakfast. Germans will call these terms a humiliation. We call them the one solid guarantee that August 1914 will not come again.

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From an editorial in a French newspaper, published in January 1919 for French readers as the Paris Peace Conference opened.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

For four years the enemy held our northern provinces. Our mines are flooded, our factories stripped, our villages gone. Twice in fifty years German armies have crossed our frontier. Our Prime Minister is right to demand that this time Germany be made harmless. Her army must be cut down, her guns taken away, and the Rhine made a barrier behind which she cannot gather her strength. Let her pay, too, for every ruined house in Picardy. Fine words about a peace of justice are welcome, but only weakness on the German side will let France sleep.

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From an editorial in an Italian newspaper controlled by Mussolini's Fascist government, published at the end of July 1934, a few days after Austrian Nazis murdered the Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, during a failed attempt to seize power in Vienna.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

On 25 July Austrian Nazis forced their way into the Chancellery in Vienna and shot Chancellor Dollfuss, then left him to die. Their plot has failed, but no one should pretend it was the work of a few hotheads acting alone. For months the radio in Munich has urged Austrians to rise against their government, and Austrian Nazis have been trained and sheltered across the German frontier. Berlin now says it knew nothing. Italy is not deceived. Our divisions stand ready at the Brenner Pass, and they will stay there. Austria's independence is not Germany's to take.

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From a letter printed in a British newspaper in September 1928, written by a member of the League of Nations Union, a society that campaigned for disarmament and for a League able to enforce its decisions, after the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in Paris.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Fifteen governments have put their names to a paper in Paris promising to give up war as a way of settling their quarrels. Everyone is delighted. I am not. The pact says nothing whatever about what is to be done when a signature is broken: there is no court, no sanction, no force behind it — only a promise. Each government has been careful to keep its right to fight in self-defence, and every aggressor since the world began has claimed to be defending itself. Meanwhile the same governments go on voting money for battleships and bombers.