As Newman illuminates, on the one hand, the British visited Hitler just after he had violated the disarmament clauses of the Versailles treaty by announcing the existence of Luftwaffe on 9 March 1935. Furthermore, they soon signed with Germans the naval agreement, allowing the German Navy to reach approximately 35% of the British strength. Again, in contravention to the Treaty. On the other hand, they condemned German rearmament at Stresa together with France and Italy. They verbally supported Austrian independence, since the Anschluss would strengthen Germany so much that it could endanger British interests. They wanted France and Italy to formulate plans to preserve sovereign Austria, but they did nothing themselves.

Czechoslovakia had had always more than a standard relationship with Western powers (through which she was actually created). She counted especially on French support in the crucial moments of 1938 - she had a defense treaty with France since January 1924 (later backed up by the Soviet Union).
The League of Nations and the idea of collective security failed. The League was not able to respond to German infringes with the Versailles Treaty, it could not prevent nor stop the Japan intervention of Manchuria in 1931 or the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. It is disputable how much was the British policy a consequence of this downfall. Parker (1983) argues the very opposite - and that the pursuit of appeasement was the cause of the League’s failure. Clear, nevertheless, is that the League of Nations did do nothing against Japanese and Italian aggressions, particularly because the regions invaded were not in primary sphere of interest of any peace-seeking world power. It failed to stop Hitler marching into the Rhineland; it became clear that it is impotent to do anything.
The consequence of this failure was the continuance of the anarchical order of international relations, where states have to provide for their own security. Whether as a cause of League’s failure or not, the British response to the situation aimed at pursuing a policy, where the main powers, namely the Britain, Germany, France and Italy, would meet, discuss and settle any conflict peacefully, although for others if necessary. This “Policy of Four” did not include two other main players - future superpowers - the Soviet Union and the USA, partly because they were not the traditional European states, but mainly because of their isolationism.