Reconsidering peace and patriotism during the First World War 978-3-319-51301-0, 331951301X, 978-3-319-51300-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-x
Front Matter ....Pages 1-2
The International Peace Bureau and the Universal Peace Congresses, 1899–1914 (Enrica Costa Bona)....Pages 3-14
The Masonic International and the Peace Movement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Fulvio Conti)....Pages 15-30
Front Matter ....Pages 31-32
The Legacy of Léon Bourgeois: From the Solidarist Doctrine to the Emergence of International Arbitration (Caroline Tixier)....Pages 33-46
French International Lawyers in the Service of International Peace During the Early Twentieth Century: The Case of Nicolas Politis (1872–1942) (Marilena Papadaki)....Pages 47-60
G. E. Modigliani in the Zimmerwald Movement: ‘War Against War’ and the United States of Europe (Donatella Cherubini)....Pages 61-69
‘With Every Nerve in My Body I Stand for Peace’—Jane Ellen Harrison and the Heresy of War (Jean Mills)....Pages 71-89
Between Front Lines: The Militant Pacifist Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) and Her Total Peace Effort (Dagmar Wernitznig)....Pages 91-114
Front Matter ....Pages 115-116
Peace, a Tactical Approach: How Britain and Germany Abused the Promise of Peace during the First World War (Justin Quinn Olmstead)....Pages 117-125
A Future Too Awful to Contemplate: Lord Lansdowne, War Aims, and Peace Advocacy in England in 1917 (Keith Grieves)....Pages 127-147
Mutineers and Non-Mutineers in the French Army (May–June 1917) (Galit Haddad)....Pages 149-165
Back Matter ....Pages 167-170

Citation preview

Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War

Justin Quinn Olmstead Editor

Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War

Editor Justin Quinn Olmstead University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, Oklahoma, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-51300-3 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0

ISBN 978-3-319-51301-0 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948434 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Dove: © Image Source / Alamy Stock Photo Coin: © fStop Images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

PREFACE

Traditionally the First World War has been treated as a play with three acts. The first act focuses on the July Crisis of 1914 and on occasion the Balkan Wars that led to the crisis. The second act is the war, which is divided into multiple parts: the war at sea, trench warfare, Gallipoli, technological advances brought on by the war, and the war outside of Europe. The final act is the Treaty of Versailles. Occasionally this act would be expanded to include the ramifications of the treaty, but for the most part it stayed pretty well focused on Paris in 1919. Due to the popularity of the history of these acts in television and literature (both popular and scholarly), this is not a surprise. Yet the history of peace movements during the war is arguably equally important in understanding the First World War, why it lasted so long, and the harshness of its ending. This book is concerned with the attempts to achieve peace during the era of the First World War. Its goal is to contribute to the understanding of the war by focusing on the efforts of individuals to realize peace as an integral component of the historical experience of the First World War. It is focused on giving readers a view of what peace meant to the different people, societies, nationalities, and governments involved in the war. This book is unique in providing analysis of peace movements in the period from 1872 to 1918 from the point of view of Italian, Austrian, French, British, and American scholars. It is the first volume, written in English, to utilize a diverse group of historians to assess how different people viewed the meaning of peace during the First World War. With chapters that range in subject from Italian socialists and their campaign for peace, to women in Britain pushing for an end to the war, to French soldiers v

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attempting to end the fighting by refusing to fight, this volume provides a transnational view of the movement for peace during the First World War. As St Augustine noted in the fourth century, peace is something everyone wants. He also pointed out that peace has a different meaning for each individual or group. The idea of peace is central to the concepts of civilization, culture, and progress. War is also central to those concepts, as well as to the idea of peace. Precisely because peace and war are so closely related, it is essential to the discussion of peace that a study of those who worked to preserve or attain it be undertaken by evaluating the roles of a wide variety of actors. Peace, or even the idea of achieving it, was not limited to radicals, or to world leaders. Keith Grieves notes, in his chapter on Lord Lansdowne’s efforts towards ending the war, that despite their role in bringing about war, statesmen can find it harder to bring it to an end or to prevent it. Indeed, as I point out in my chapter, in many cases statesmen abused the hope of peace in an attempt to gain a grand victory rather than actively seeking to end the hostilities. Sometimes it takes those outside government to instigate change; that is, it may be the mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who make the difference. In some cases, as Galit Haddad points out concerning the French troop mutiny in 1917, apparently spontaneous acts could have been attempts to force an end to the war: the soldiers took it upon themselves to stop killing in order to stop the killing. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in June 1914 marked the beginning of the end of 43 years of peace between the European great powers. As these nations edged closer to war, there were individual citizens, as well as organizations, in each of these countries working to maintain the peace. With US President Woodrow Wilson, and Nicolas Politis, a Greek-born, naturalized French professor, in France, among others, attempting to stop the descent towards war, neutral nations were no exception. Politicians and diplomats used all the traditional methods of diplomacy in their efforts to maintain the order in Europe that had kept a general war between the powers from erupting for over four decades. Enrica Costa Bona, Donatella Cherubini, Fulvio Conti, Caroline Tixier, and Marilena Papadaki all make the case that the socialists in Europe who had been working for decades to prevent war—and who believed that, because they had played a part in successfully in keeping the Agadir Crisis (Morocco) from spiralling out of control in 1911, they could prevent this new Serbian crisis from descending into war—were not satisfied with simply ending the current war, but

PREFACE

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sought to continue their work in order to institute international laws to prevent future wars. Many believed that due to the development of ever more powerful weapons and technology, war would no longer occur: war was too dangerous. By 4 August 1914, it was too late. War had begun. And yet many people in each of the belligerent nations, as well as those who were neutral, worked to bring about peace. The memorializing and reflections that marked the centenary of the First World War made available many new books on individuals, battles, the Treaty of Versailles, and the war as a whole from which readers may choose. Realizing this, the authors involved in this project hope that by providing some insight about a few of the individuals who fought for peace, such as Rosika Schwimmer, Léon Bourgeois, and even the likes of Lord Lansdowne, readers will gain more appreciation of the lengths to which some went in their efforts to realize peace. These chapters explore different ways to present the history of peace. Complimentary, critical, analytical, and thoughtful, they do much to remind the reader that in the final analysis individuals are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the maintaining or bringing about of peace. For this reason, the study of peace from different angles, through different lenses, and from various national outlooks is a vital element in peace history. This book has grown out of an international conference held in Paris and is the combined effort of an international group of historians to critically investigate different approaches to peace during the First World War era. By bringing together such a diverse group of authors, this collection encompasses a wide range of ideas, providing the reader with a sense of the internationalism for which peace activists not only hoped, but for which they fought. As a result, all the authors involved in this book would like to thank, and are deeply indebted to, the organizers of the 2014 ‘Les défenseurs de la paix 1899–1917, Approches actuelles, nouveaux regards’ (Advocates of Peace, 1899–1917, Current approaches, new looks) conference, and in particular Remi Fabre, the Universität Paris-Est Crétail Val-de-Marne, the Universität Paris-Est Marne-la Vallée, and the Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris. Justin Quinn Olmstead

CONTENTS

Part I Introduction to Part I The International Peace Bureau and the Universal Peace Congresses, 1899–1914 Enrica Costa Bona The Masonic International and the Peace Movement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Fulvio Conti

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Part II Introduction to Part II The Legacy of Léon Bourgeois: From the Solidarist Doctrine to the Emergence of International Arbitration Caroline Tixier French International Lawyers in the Service of International Peace During the Early Twentieth Century: The Case of Nicolas Politis (1872–1942) Marilena Papadaki

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CONTENTS

G. E. Modigliani in the Zimmerwald Movement: ‘War Against War’ and the United States of Europe Donatella Cherubini

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‘With Every Nerve in My Body I Stand for Peace’—Jane Ellen Harrison and the Heresy of War Jean Mills

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Between Front Lines: The Militant Pacifist Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) and Her Total Peace Effort Dagmar Wernitznig

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Part III Introduction to Part III Peace, a Tactical Approach: How Britain and Germany Abused the Promise of Peace during the First World War Justin Quinn Olmstead

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A Future Too Awful to Contemplate: Lord Lansdowne, War Aims, and Peace Advocacy in England in 1917 Keith Grieves

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Mutineers and Non-Mutineers in the French Army (May–June 1917) Galit Haddad

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Index

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PART I

Introduction to Part I

War and peace have been central tenets of national dialogues since at least the division of Europe into nation-states. War is the obvious antithesis of peace. It is not, however, an inevitable corollary. The existence of peace movements is not predicated on the presence of war or the threat of war. Often directed at governments in times of war, the presence of peace movements is well known but all too often disregarded as part of ‘the big picture’ of history. Pacifist movements organizing in an attempt to influence governments and societies is relevant to the discussion and understanding of both war and peace. Pertinent to this debate is how these organizations endeavoured to have an impact internationally. Towards the end of the nineteenth century war seemed to be on the decline in Europe. An example of this drive to end war was the numerous Peace Congresses which began forming in 1891. Enrica Costa Bona discusses how the Peace Congresses in virtually all European nations worked to create an International Peace Bureau to coordinate their actions as a means of preventing future wars. She points out that these organizations were determined to use legal mechanisms to, in effect, outlaw war. The theme of each Peace Congress was the development of an international system of law opposed to war, and a supranational organization that could provide the necessary security to ensure justice for all nations. The Peace Congresses and the members that attended them understood that war was (and is) an expensive proposition. As such, many pacifists viewed the economic potential lost in war as harmful to the social stability of nations.

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The various Peace Congresses and the creation of the International Peace Bureau exemplified, for many individuals, the value of organizing to gain political power; unfortunately, it does not engage the problem of nationalism. Fulvio Conti expands on the idea of organizations working for peace across borders by examining Freemasonry’s impact on the peace movement. He also takes on the problem of patriotism and how it undercut the idea of universal brotherhood that international organizations like the Freemasons promoted. Allegiance to one’s nation before allegiance to pacifism, then, was an important factor an organization had to overcome if it was going to be even remotely effective. An understanding of how people and groups successfully handled this issue is fundamental to appreciating the development of international peace movements.

The International Peace Bureau and the Universal Peace Congresses, 1899–1914 Enrica Costa Bona The International Peace Bureau (IPB) was established at the Universal Peace Congress held in Rome in 1891 for the purpose of promoting the culture of peace in the various countries and of coordinating the activities of the numerous pacifist movements and associations. It is interesting to note that one of the main tasks undertaken by the IPB that grew out of a Universal Peace Congress was the regular organization of future congresses. It was reputed ‘un des instruments les plus précieux du pacifism’ and represented the pacifist movement at the international level.1 On the eve of the conference in The Hague in 1899, pacifist circles felt the need to arrange an action that would both testify to the strong solidarity uniting the various pacifist movements and personalities and develop a common programme to achieve and implement the objectives of pacifism in a more rapid and effective way. Attention focused on two main problems: ‘I. The organization of General Peace in a way to make it real and durable. II. The way to stop the progressive development of armaments and reduce current actual excessive armaments.’2 In the world envisaged by the pacifists, law would take the place of force. The IPB had always sought ‘The means to

E. Costa Bona (*) Department of Political Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_1

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prevent war, to establish an era without violence and to resolve by law the international differences of opinion’.3 In the opening article of Le Mouvement Pacifiste (May–September 1916), it had always shared the ideas and feelings of those for whom ‘The cause for peace gets mixed with the cause for rights, justice, and truth, and the respect of treaties. Because pacifism is that, nothing but that, and all that . . . ’.4 The pacifist movement was not confined only to the defence of peace but also tackled problems relating to human rights, minorities, education, international law, colonies, and so on. The Universal Peace Congresses were considered an ideal opportunity to establish peaceful ties among the various countries. In fact, the IPB was considered ‘influential in bringing the concern for peace to the attention of both public opinion and politicians’.5 The various speakers were all chosen from among the top echelon of personalities: ‘Independent of the official considerations, they dare to put the finger on the lesions of the political world, they elevated their voices against the abuses of the brutal forces; within international conflicts they reminded the heads of states of the principles of justice and honor.’6 The congresses were also intended to be occasions for dealing with and studying issues other than those strictly on the agenda of the official conferences, and as a spur to broaden the dissemination of ideas (on the legal field, armaments, minorities, and so on). One of the main themes discussed in all the Universal Peace Congresses was that of law; it could be said that legal questions were often the main interest of the pacifists. The Hague Conference in 1899 underlined this concern, which had already aroused lively interest in previous congresses, since it launched ideas and projects that needed to take institutional form in order to be applied profitably in the various states of the international community. The Paris Congress (1900) recognized that The Hague Conventions were, in fact, real elements essential to international law. The first step in achieving peace, as confirmed in the Glasgow Congress (1901), was to establish an international legal order, that is, to set up legal links among the nations: even if ‘The right of conquest did not exist, the people have the inalienable and imprescriptible right to freely dispose of themselves, the autonomy of the entire nation is inviolable’.7 In the various congresses, preference was given to the study of questions related to the creation of an international body of laws based on justice and peace, with particular attention paid to the ways in which it could be applied. The replacement of claims by legal channels was one of the main and recurrent themes, along with the establishment of arbitration

THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE BUREAU . . .

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tribunals, the persuasion of public opinion of the merits of the ideas of concord and conciliation, and the tireless demand for the formulation of a code of international law. The subject of mandatory arbitration was discussed in all the congresses: it was considered ‘A complete system of justice, susceptible of sanctions without it every being necessary to revert to war’;8 ‘arbitration would become the judicial norm in obligatory solution to resolve international conflict’.9 All the congresses (in particular, the one in Milan in 1906) requested that a permanent and binding arbitration treaty be resolved. At the Stockholm Congress (1912) the hope was expressed that the principle of mandatory arbitration proclaimed in the first conference in The Hague ‘Would be effectively formulated and regulated by the third’.10y Among the legal questions was also the matter of a supranational organization intended to guarantee peace. It was supposed to be ‘An international organization founded on the right, on the common interests of all people, on the sentiment of solidarity, the fraternity and universal tolerance’.11 The Lucerne Congress (1905) voted unanimously in favour of creating a ‘International Federation where the liberty and the right of sovereignty of one nation would be limited by the liberty and sovereignty rights of other nations’.12 The Appeal to the Nations in the Munich Congress (1907) was significant in that it affirmed that ‘Europe is ripe for the federation, in fact this federation already existed. Unfortunately, it did not exist in law.’13 Certainly the problem of the supranational organization was linked to that of disarmament and international justice. The London Congress (1908) declared that general disarmament would work only when an international organization was able to provide each state with ‘The guaranties of security and justice superior to those provided by armaments of land and sea’.14 Together with arbitration, mandatory ordinary law would also need to be established, which would require an effective international organization in order to function. Related to this problem, an international police body to ensure the enforcement of international law was also proposed in the Universal Peace Congresses.15 The fundamental themes running through all the IPB activities and all the congresses were the condemnation of war and the theme of disarmament. It is interesting to note that in the October/November 1916 issue of Le Mouvement Pacifiste, which was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the IPB, the question of the reduction of armaments was indicated first in the list of the ‘serious issues’ debated and discussed in the various congresses.16 Disarmament was seen as the

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consequence of fairness and law as well as ‘the implementation of pacific regime’.17 The Munich Congress (1907) recognized that the most effective way to achieve disarmament was ‘To develop the pacifist spirit within public opinion and above all organize mandatory international justice. Justice first and disarmament after.’18 It is apparent that the opinions of the participants on the problem of disarmament at the various congresses were not always clear-cut. Sometimes arms reduction was considered one of the best ways of ensuring peacekeeping; at other times, it was seen as the result rather than the means for achieving peace; at still other times, the congresses merely urged the facilitation of whatever moral, economic, and political means could help to arrest the arms race and reduce it decisively. Yet others then encouraged their various national parliaments to reduce their war budgets and decrease military service in order to bring about the total abolition of arms within a short period of time.19 In the Appeal to the Nations, the Milan Congress (1906) stated that ‘The reduction of war expenses is no longer a wish of humanitarians and idealists: it is an imperative social necessity’.20 All the congresses had always claimed that arms reduction was an urgent necessity up until The Hague Congress (1913), when it was observed that ‘For a few years now each of our reports about the event of that year indicate towards an increase in armament, and it was just to prevent this very “surenchère” or build-up that discussions were held on blocking the “excitement of armaments”’.21 In concluding on this point, it is important to stress the strong interest in the question of disarmament expressed in the preparatory documents for the Vienna Congress (1914) (which for obvious reasons did not take place) and published with great prominence (about 20 pages) in the 15 June 1914 issue of Le Mouvement Pacifiste, just on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War.22 The duty to communicate and disseminate the ideas of peace, justice, and freedom has always been a priority throughout the IPB’s history. The Universal Peace Congresses were the main means by which this was accomplished. This occurred simultaneously in two ways: firstly, the congresses themselves, simply by being held, disseminated the principles of pacifism; and secondly, they exhorted participants and the various peace associations to be channels for the dissemination of these concepts and the issues discussed and deliberated on in the congressional sessions among their governments, parliaments, public opinion, and educators.

THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE BUREAU . . .

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The main propaganda means to be used was the press. The various peace organizations were invited to exchange information intended for the press among themselves and to keep in constant contact with the main agencies and newspapers. A persistent propaganda campaign using all available means—books, pamphlets, magazines, and manifestos—was encouraged.23 References to propaganda addressed to the various peace associations can be found in the documents of all the congresses. Some emphasized the importance of developing teaching on international questions from primary school up to university level. Others requested each country to organize a national committee for pacifist propaganda aimed at journalists, the clergy, professors, and shopkeepers.24 Closely linked to the subject of propaganda is the question of a universal language that could be understood by the greatest number of people. An extra international language was proposed as a necessity, and there was much talk about it in many congresses (in particular at the Glasgow Congress in 1901).25 They even went so far as to vote at the Munich Congress (1907) that the associations for peace communicate in Esperanto, and the possibility of using it in future Universal Peace Congresses was proposed.26 The congresses also included economic reasons for their opposition to war: ‘that war destroys and prevents production’.27 The Boston Congress (1904) defined the thorough study of all economic and social movements intended to better rationalize the organization of production and exchange to achieve universal peace as the ‘duty of pacifists’.28 Among the documents of the Rouen Congress (1903) we read that ‘Today all these causes of conflict have lost their primitive importance. The commercial competition prevailed and just in order to develop and protect their economic interests the European nations are maintaining and increasing their armament, the maritime one much more than the army’. 29 One of the fundamental economic principles of the IPB that was expressed in almost all the Universal Peace Congress was that of free trade. Holding that protectionism was one of the main causes of discord among peoples, the Munich Congress (1902) declared that ‘complete liberty of marching is the most imperative of all needs’.30 The Glasgow Congress (1901) held that the need for free trade must be applied to the colonies as well since ‘there is no right for conquest’.31 The Universal Peace Congresses devoted special attention to social questions with a view to achieving a lasting peace through social stability

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in all the states. One of the themes most often analysed was that of the relationship between civilized countries and the colonies. The congresses often took up positions in favour of the populations of the colonized countries. At the Paris Congress (1900), for example, they criticized wars waged against ‘the inferior races and against the facts of injustice and violence of wich these races were often victims’.32 The Monaco Congress (1902) denounced the many violations by Europeans—including those involving extensive use of arms—of their commitments undertaken at the Berlin conferences of 1884 and 1885 and the Brussels conference of 1889. As far as the relations of the IPB with workers’ movements are concerned, the IPB has always sought collaboration and cooperation with the workers’ movement, both from the institutional point of view and from that of direct personal relations among representatives. The main points of contact were ‘the struggle for disarmament, international arbitration and anti-militarist education of the youth’.33 The congresses in general sought to link the workers’ associations with the pacifist movement and to direct a more incisive propaganda campaign and dissemination of ideas in this area.34 The Universal Peace Congresses furthermore engaged in the discussion of social problems that were much debated at the time. Only two cases shall be mentioned here as examples: the question of duelling and the question of the improper use of drugs. On religious questions, the Universal Peace Congresses were generally silent and did not address the problems, the exceptions being the Glasgow (1901) and Boston (1903) congresses. In the first, recalling that ‘the war and militarization are absolutely contrary to the essence of the teachings of Christ’,35 it was asserted that the Christian religion was to be exploited to attain peace, but not all were in agreement on that point since they felt they should remain neutral and not take the part of any one religion or non-religion.36 As has already been emphasized, the dissemination of the ideas and culture of peace at all levels was one of the goals that the IPB pursued most actively. Its ambition was, in fact, to have its messages reach rulers and politicians so that they would change laws and adapt them to the new forms of life in order to definitively eliminate all peril of war. The Universal Peace Congresses must be ascribed the merit of having always been attuned to daily life and having always endeavoured to address the questions under debate at the time in various environments, consistently approaching them from the point of view of peace-building or peacekeeping.

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The importance of the Universal Peace Congresses varied over the years, sometimes assuming greater and sometimes lesser prominence, but they always participated in the international debate and developed the culture of peace from the widespread, grass-roots level up to the summit. Each Universal Peace Congress had a specific section, appropriately enough called ‘Événements de l’année’ (The events of the year), reserved for discussion of international issues and events that were attracting special attention at the time due to the risks they represented to the equilibrium among states or—on the contrary—to the positive contribution they made to peace-building. According to Universal Peace Congress organizers, it was expedient to take up a position and not to remain silent in the face of happenings on the international scene. Therefore, the report of the IPB president on the year’s events (which generally opened the Universal Peace Congress sessions) was a prominent and important part of the very structure of each congress. Through a reading of these reports, one can follow the development of the history of international relations even down to the smallest detail. The discussions in this section of the Universal Peace Congresses were not limited to the great questions occupying chanceries or the first pages of newspapers, but concerned seemingly minor questions as well. The intention was to give these matters prominence since they were seen as useful opportunities for denouncing the dangers of war and disseminating the idea of the need for peace, international justice, and arbitration. In the Universal Peace Congresses much discussion was devoted to the problems of the Balkan countries, the war in South Africa, the events in Armenia, happenings in China, the Russo-Japanese war, the Russian Revolution, the Moroccan crises, the war in Libya (which was a particularly grievous wound for the international pacifist movement), relations among the great powers, and all the events that had led to the outbreak of the First World War. These were all earth-shattering problems of great importance in the history of international relations, but based on the documents analysed, the Universal Peace Congresses were equally interested in perhaps more localized and limited problems relating to, for example, Egypt, the Congo, Alaska, Finland and Russia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and other American countries.37 The news of the assassination attempt in Sarajevo obliged the members of the IPB Standing Committee to decide to cancel the 21st Universal Peace Congress, the preparations for which had already been completed

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down to the last details and which should have taken place in Vienna from 15 to 19 September 1914.38 The reaction among members of the IPB was great disappointment and strong apprehension.39 The Universal Peace Congresses contributed to the dissemination of the ideals of peace in political, social, legal, and economic life among the states of the international community up until the outbreak of the First World War. This war seemed to nullify and contradict what the IPB and the Universal Peace Congresses had been proclaiming and tenaciously seeking, that is, the abolition of war and the establishment of peace among states. The IPB was therefore obliged to refrain from all action (in particular, the organization and development of the Universal Peace Congresses) and was nearly reduced to silence, or to the formulation of generalities or even empty phrases.

NOTES 1. R. Moe, (1932) Le Prix Nobel de la Paix et l’Institut Nobel Novégien, Oslo, p. 111. 2. ‘L’organisation de la Paix Générale, de manière de la rendre réelle et durable, II L’arrêt dans le développement progressif des armements et la réduction des armements excessifs actuels’, E. Arnaud, (1899) L’Organisation de la Paix (Berne: Le Bureau International de la Paix), p. 9 (italic in the text). 3. ‘les moyens de supprimer la guerre, d’établir l’ère sans violence et de résoudre par le droit les différends internationaux’, Cf. Résolution XVIth Universal Peace Congress, Munich, (1907) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.20, 146. 4. ‘la cause de la paix se confond avec la cause du droit, de la justice, de la vérité et du respect des traités. Car le pacifisme est cela, rien que cela, mais tout cela . . . ’ (1916) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.5–10, 45. 5. Cf. F. W. Haberman (ed.) (1999), Nobel Lectures. Peace 1901–1925 (Singapore, New Jersey, London, Hong Kong: World Scientific), p. 226. 6. ‘Indépendants des égards officiels, ils osaient mettre le doigt sur les plaies du monde politique, ils élevaient leur voix contre les abus de la force brutale; dans les conflits internationaux ils rappelaient aux chefs d’état les principes de la justice et de l’honneur’, R. Moe, Le Prix Nobel . . . cit., p. 112. 7. ‘il n’existe pas de droit de conquête, les peuples ont le droit inaliénable et imprescriptible de disposer librement d’eux-mêmes, l’autonomie de toute nation est inviolable’, Appel aux Nations, Xth Universal Peace Congress, Glasgow (1901) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.19, 116.

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11

8. ‘un système complet de justice, susceptible de sanctions sans qu’il soit jamais nécessaire de recourir à la guerre’, Appel aux Nations, IXth Universal Peace Congress, Paris (1900) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.19, 107. 9. ‘l’arbitrage deviendra le mode juridique normal et obligatoire de solution des conflits internationaux’, Archives de la Société des Nations, League of Nations Archives (hereafter ASDN), International peace movement, International Peace Bureau, The archives of the International Peace Bureau, first period (1892–1914) (hereafter IPB), Congrès universel de la Paix (hereafter C), box (hereafter b) 84, file (hereafter f) 4, IPB, IXth Universal Peace Congress to the signatories powers to The Hague Conference, Berne 10 Novembre 1900; (1900) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.22, 124. 10. ‘soit effectivement formulé et réglé par la troisième’, ASDN, IPB, C, b108, f6, XVIIIth Universal Peace Congress resolutions, Stockholm 1910. 11. ‘une organisation internationale fondée sur le droit, sur l’intérêt commun de tous les peuples, sur le sentiment de la solidarité, de la fraternité et de la tolérance universelle’, IPB to the Peace Societies, Berne, January 1915; (1915) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.1–2, 3. 12. ‘Fédération Internationale’ where ‘la liberté et le droit de souveraineté d’une nation sont limités par la liberté et le droit de souveraineté des autres nations’, ASDN, IPB, C, b96, f14, Ducommun to the Signatories Powers to The Hague Conference and others, w.p., n.d.; ASDN, IPB, C, b96, f15, Ducommun to the Peace Societies, Berne, 20 November 1905. 13. ‘L’Europe est mûre pour la fédération. Cette fédération existe même déjà en fait. Par malheur elle n’existe pas en droit’, ASDN, IPB, C, b105, f2 Appel aux Nations XVIth Universal Peace Congress, Munich, 1907; (1907) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18–19, 139–140. 14. ‘des guaranties de sécurité et de justice supérieures à celles que lui procurent actuellement les armes de terre et de mer’, ASDN, IPB, C, b106, f9, resolution of London Congres. 15. (1913) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.8–9, 338. 16. (1916) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.11–12, 95. 17. ‘de l’organisation d’un régime pacifique’, E. Arnaud, L’organisation de la Paix, cit., p. 12. 18. ‘le développement de l’esprit pacifique dans l’opinion publique et sourtout d’organiser la justice internationale obligatoire. La justice d’abord; le désarmement après’, ASDN, IPB, C, b105, f29, resolution of Munich Congress, 1907. 19. ASDN, IPB, C, b84, f4 IPB, IXth Universal Peace Congress to the signatories powers to The Hague Conference, Berne 10 November 1900; (1900) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.22, 124. ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f2 resolution of Glasgow Congress; ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f2 summary of the resolutions Xth

12

E. COSTA BONA

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

Universal Peace Congress, Glasgow, p. 17; (1901) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.19, 116; (1902) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.7, 37; ASDN, IPB, C, b92, f1, resolution of Rouen Congress, pp. 5–6; ASDN, IPB, C, b92, f2 IPB to the Peace Societies, Berne, 25 January 1904; ASDN, IPB, C, b92, f2 IPB to the Peace Societies, Berne, 1st July 1904; (1903) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18–19, 106–107. ‘la diminution des dépenses de la guerre n’est donc plus un vœu d’humanitaires et d’idéalistes: c’est une impérieuse nécessité sociale’, Appel aux Nations XVth Universal Peace Congress, Milan, 1906 (1906) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18, 144. ‘Depuis quelques années chacun de nos rapports sur les événements de l’année signale une augmentation des armements. La surenchère continue’, ‘frénésie des armements’, A. Gobat (1913) Rapport sur les événements de l’année intéressant la guerre et la paix (Berne: Publications du Bureau International de la Paix), p. 21; ASDN, IPB, C, b112, f2 The Hague Congress resolutions 1 and 2 of the commission D; (1913) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.8–9, 334. (1914) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.6, 242–258. (1913) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.8–9, 348–351; ASDN, IPB, C, b92, f1 resolution of Rouen Congress, pp. 6–7; (1904) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.21, 162. Cf. ASDN, IPB, C, b103, f1 IPB to the Peace Societies, Berne, 7 February 1907. Resolutions of Milano Congress cf. ASDN, IPB, C, b103, f1 and (1906) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18, 142–143 and (1908) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.16–17, 127 and 130–132. ASDN, IPB, C, b96, f15 execution of the resolutions of Luzern Congress, IPB to the Peace Societies, Berne, 20 November 1905 and (1905) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18, 125–126; ASDN, IPB, C, b105, f4 résolution n.3 of Commission C, n.d.; (1907) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18–19, 138–139; (1902) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.7, 44; (1904) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.2, 25; (1906) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18,137–139 and annexe Correspondance bi-mensuelle 10 October 1906, 7–11; ASDN, IPB, C, b108, f6 resolutions of Munchen Congress: V Propagande pour l’école; (1907) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18–19, 135–137; (1907) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.20, 144; ASDN, IPB, C, b111, f3 resolutions of Geneva Congress, pp. 13–16; (1912) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.19–20, 321–322 and 329; (1906) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.18, 139. ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f2; cf. (1901) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.19, 120. During the Boston Congress 1904 there were discussions not only about « Langue auxiliaire universelle » but also about « alphabet universel »: ASDN, IPB, C, b95, f9, XIV Report of IPB, Execution of the resolutions of the

THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE BUREAU . . .

26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

13

Boston Congress, p. 3; (1904) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.21, 160; cf. also XIIth General Assembly (12 November. 1904) in annexe Correspondance bi-mensuelle 25 November 1904, 5. (1907) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.20, 145. ‘la guerre détruit et elle empêche de produire’, F. Passy, Rapport sur les conséquences économiques de la guerre (October. 1902), annexe Correspondance bi-mensuelle, 25 October 1903, 1. (1904) Correspondance bi-mensuelle Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.21, 162; cf. ASDN, IPB, C, b95, f8 resolutions adopted by the Boston Congress, p. 7. ‘Aujourd’hui, toutes ces causes de conflit ont perdu leur importance primitive. Elles ont dû ceder le pas aux rivalités commerciales, et c’est surtout en vue de développer et de protéger leurs intérêts économiques que les nations européennes maintiennent et augmentent leurs armements, les armements maritimes plus encore que l’armée’, ASDN, IPB, C, b90, f11 Les Aberrations des peuples civilisés dans la conquête violente des marchés coloniaux, pp. 1–3. ‘La liberté complète des marchés est le plus impérieux de tous les besoins’ (1902) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.7, 37 and 50; ASDN, IPB, C, b89, f14 proposition of the Commission B during the Monaco Congress 1902; cf. ASDN, IPB, C, b83, f6 propositions of the Commission C during the Paris Congress 1900 and ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f2 summary of the resolutions of Glasgow Congress, 1901, p. 29. ‘il n’existe pas de droit de conquête. Les peuples ont le droit inaliénable et imprescriptible de disposer librement d’eux-mêmes. L’autonomie de toute nation est inviolable’, ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f2 summary of the resolutions of Glasgow Congress, 1901, p. 29; (1901) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.15, 92; Appel aux nations of the Glasgow Congress (1901) Correspondance bimensuelle, n.19, 116. ‘les races inférieures et contre les faits d’injustice et de violence dont ces races sont souvent victimes’ (1900) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.19, 103. Cf. Appel aux nations of the Paris Congress (1900) Correspondance bi-mensuelle, n.19, 107. R. Santi (1991) 100 Years of Peace Making (Geneva: International Peace Bureau), p. 20. ASDN, IPB, C, b89, f19 IPB circular letter, Berne, 12 August 1902. ‘la guerre et le militarisme sont absolument contraires à l’essence de l’enseignement du Christ’, ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f6 IPB letter to newspapers editors, Berne, 19 November 1901. ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f2 summary of the resolutions of Glasgow Congress, 1901, pp. 12–13 and p. 24; ASDN, IPB, C, b95, f9 IPB circular letter to the Peace Societies, Berne, 30 November 1904. Cf. (1901) Correspondance bi-

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mensuelle, n.19, 119–120; cf. ASDN, IPB, C, b87, f6, IPB letter to newspapers editors, Berne, 19 November 1901. 37. For more information on this see, E. Costa Bona (2015) ‘Les évènements de l’année aux congrès universels de la Paix (1899–1914)’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, n.91, Décembre, 59–69. 38. (1914) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.5; (1914) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.6. 39. (1914) Le Mouvement Pacifiste, n.8/12, 364–365. V. Grossi (1994) Le pacifisme européen 1889–1914 (Bruxelles: Bruylant), p. 408. Enrica Costa Bona is a Professor in the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Pavia, Italy where she teaches History of International Relations and History of the Cold War. She graduated cum laude in Political Sciences. She is a member of the Commission of History of International Relations and the Association Internationale d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Europe. Her research interests include the history of twentieth-century international relations, international organizations, the Second World War, Eastern European history, and the Cold War.

The Masonic International and the Peace Movement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Fulvio Conti

MASONIC UNIVERSALISM

IN THE

AGE

OF

NATIONALISM

The period from 1870 to 1914 is generally known as ‘the Age of Empire’, to borrow the title of Eric J. Hobsbawm’s famous book.1 In fact, it was a period that saw European powers construct immense colonial empires in Asia and Africa, which corresponded with the growing imperialist tendencies in such great nations as the United States, Russia, and Japan. The rise of European nationalism, one of the precipitating factors for colonial expansionism, had in turn the effect of feeding patriotic sentiment among the colonized peoples. This then led to the strong nationalist movements that, in the twentieth century, gave birth to the struggle for freedom and independence in their respective countries.2 While nationalism met with its greatest success in this same period, quite different principles and organizations were also spreading. Indeed, the age of triumphant nationalism was also that of the emerging internationalism.3 The rise of the nation-state was accompanied by the advent

F. Conti (*) School of Political Science, University of Florence, Florence, Italy e-mail: fulvio.conti@unifi.it © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_2

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F. CONTI

of a plethora of associations, organizations, and institutions in various fields, which sought to promote the establishment of international networks. Ranging from politics to economics, science to art, and volunteering to sports, the final decades of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries saw the flourishing of international organizations that reflected the spirit of the time, the desire to create supranational connections in a world that had suddenly become smaller, a world in which the revolution in transportation and communication means made the flow of men and ideas much easier and faster.4 It was an internationalism permeated with a romantic sensibility, a faith in the principles of brotherhood and humanity, and the firm belief that scientific progress would create the material conditions that would give rise to the most diverse forms of international cooperation. In other words, it borrowed very little from the utopian tradition, convinced that the great transformations of the present period had created the objective conditions for the emergence of a peaceful world, characterized by the unstoppable development of interlinking supranational structures that eliminated the distances between men and brought continents closer together. In these years, to give just a few examples, the Second International (also called the Socialist International), the Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee were formed, in addition to the International Telegraphic Union, the Universal Postal Union, and the International Office for Public Hygiene. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, ten similar international organizations were founded each year. Freemasonry was no stranger to this movement. Formed at the beginning of the eighteenth century in England, it rapidly spread to all European countries and across the Atlantic.5 Moreover, in 1914, North America and Europe accounted for 92 per cent of the approximately 24,000 lodges and 95 per cent of the more than two million affiliates surveyed in the Annuaire de la Maçonnerie Universelle, with 64 per cent and 77 per cent in the United States and Canada, respectively, and 28 per cent and 18 per cent in Europe.6 Because of its international nature, the Masonic order was intent on pursuing universal brotherhood, opposing wars and ‘secular’ political conflicts. One of the main manifestations of this openness towards the ‘other’ is to be found in the Freemasons’ ability to admit foreigners as brothers: not only travellers, troops, students, and merchants from foreign countries found ample hospitality in the European lodges, but also political refugees, prisoners of war, and intellectuals suspected of heresy.7

THE MASONIC INTERNATIONAL . . .

17

During the nineteenth century, however, deep fault lines developed between continental European Freemasonry, especially in the Latin and Mediterranean countries, and Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry (English, Scandinavian, North American, and some of the German lodges). While the latter remained essentially true to the origins of its model (apolitical, with close attention to ritual and initiatory forms, charity, and philanthropy), the former experienced a growing politicization of the process that led to identification with the struggles for national independence, the spread of freedom and democracy, and the moral and material raising of the masses. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian Freemasonry was entirely characterized by a political orientation that was predominantly democratic, radical, and republican, with a large presence of socialist and even anarchist exponents in the lodges.8 The first consequence of these changes between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the formation of national Masonic Grand Lodges, all autonomous and sovereign, independent of each other, and often intent on seeking the protection of their respective states. The universalist and humanitarian yearning, however, continued to remain at the centre of the Masonic endeavour. Thus, at the time the congress that gave rise to the modern peace movement was convened in Geneva in 1867, there were numerous Masonic lodges represented that shared the plan. The congress ended with the founding of the Ligue internationale de la paix et de la liberté, which was the first organized structure for the peace movement’s democratic direction.9 It also saw the emergence of a new idea, that of a United States of Europe—that is, the belief that, in a Europe of finally free and independent nations, there could no longer be any reason for conflict and each new war would, in effect, be a civil war. Since that time, almost all the Masonic Grand Lodges in continental Europe, with Italy in the forefront, enthusiastically supported the pacifist idea, convinced that it constituted a distinctive element of their ideal universe, a kind of actualization of eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism, and should accordingly become one of their areas of involvement in the public sphere.10

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL MASONIC CONGRESSES Despite the internal inconsistency of combining patriotism and universalism, as well as the growing difficulty of defending its logic—especially in the years between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when

18

F. CONTI

challenged by the imperialist expansionism and nationalist impulses of the major European powers—the Masonic commitment in support of peace was uninterrupted, revolving around two main objectives: general disarmament and the establishment of an international arbitration body. Both goals, as well as the overall mobilization for peace, were conceived as being closely related to the systemic development of international Masonic relations. In other words, for European Freemasonry, the construction of a coordinating structure among the various allegiances constituted a sort of prerequisite to recovering its cosmopolitan origins, tearing down the barriers of nationalism, and acting as the architects for a peaceful and united world. It is no coincidence that, beginning in 1889, international Masonic congresses began to be held, which overlapped or alternated with those of the peace movement. Moreover, we often find members of the Freemasons playing major roles in international peace organizations.11 The first international Masonic congress took place in Paris in July 1889 during the Universal Exposition and the centenary celebrations of the French Revolution. It was here that Eduardo de Puga, great secretary of the National Grand Orient of Spain, proposed the creation of a ‘fédération maçonnique internationale’.12 The idea was picked up and re-launched the following year by the Grand Lodge Alpina of Switzerland, which would become one of the project’s main promoters. Naturally, the Swiss Freemasons were well aware of the obstacles they had to overcome. Not only would they have to help re-establish friendly relations between the French and German Freemasonic organizations, which had been broken off for political reasons after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War; they would also need to bridge the gap that had opened up over ideological and ritual issues between, on the one hand, the Grand Orients of France and Belgium (who declared themselves atheists, abandoning the worship of the Great Architect of the Universe), and, on the other, the United Grand Lodge of England and all the so-called ‘regular’ lodges that continued to be recognized in Anderson’s Constitutions. It must be remembered that, from 1890 to 1895, the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge Alpina of Switzerland was Élie Ducommun, journalist, businessman, editor of the periodical Les Etats-Unis d’Europe, and secretary of the Ligue internationale de la paix et de la liberté. Around the same time, Ducommun was working on a similar project regarding peace associations, which led to the formation of the Bureau international de la paix, founded in Rome in 1891 and headquartered in Berne. Ducommun devoted

THE MASONIC INTERNATIONAL . . .

19

the final years of his life, until his death in 1906, to this organization, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1902.13 The next international Masonic meeting was held in Antwerp in 1894,14 once again taking advantage of the fact that the Belgian town was hosting a Universal Exposition that year, which attracted many visitors.15 In Belgium, the link between Masonic militancy and the commitment to peace was also perceived as being indissoluble.16 Moreover, there was no shortage of prominent figures to serve as mediators between the two organizations. One of these was the socialist Henri La Fontaine, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913. He was the founder and secretary general of the Société Belge de l’arbitrage et de la paix, and later president of the Bureau international de la paix from 1907 until his death in 1943. Initiated into the Brussels Lodge Les Amis Philanthropes in 1882, he was its Worshipful Master from 1908 to 1909 and again from 1922 to 1924. A pioneer of feminism, in 1925 he joined the new international mixed Masonic order of Le Droit Humain, which also admitted women. Within it, he founded the Lodge La Paix in 1929.17 Another outstanding public figure was the Grand Master of Belgium’s Grand Orient, Auguste Houzeau de Lehaie, a Liberal MP. Since 1894, he had been a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s select committee that was charged with drafting the plan for a Permanent Court of Arbitration. Houzeau de Lehaie presented an early version of the plan to the Brussels International Conference in 1895. It was implemented definitively in The Hague in 1899.18

THE BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DES RELATIONS MAÇONNIQUES AND AN ATTEMPT AT FRANCO-GERMAN RAPPROCHEMENT After the Masonic conferences held to coincide with the Universal Exhibitions in The Hague (1896) and in Paris (1900) did not produce significant results, the 1902 conference in Geneva finally marked the birth of the Bureau international des relations maçonniques (BIRM). The Bureau joined together 20 mostly European lodges, establishing its headquarters in Neuchâtel.19 Although not included in the statutes, one of its aims was to ‘promote the development of pacifist ideas’.20 The question of peace and international arbitration was indeed among the most debated issues during the proceedings of the Geneva Congress. It was influenced positively by the great expectations raised at the 1899 Hague Conference

20

F. CONTI

and by the creation of the Permanent Court. It was no coincidence that the congress ended with a very important decision: The congress wishes that on 18 May, the anniversary of the opening of The Hague Conference, the Masonic lodges in each hemisphere, meeting in plenary session, celebrate the ideal of peace and justice between nations, one of the aims of Universal Freemasonry, and ask the Bureau international des relations maçonniques to transmit this wish to all organizations of Universal Freemasonry.21

With this decision, Freemasonry also chose, to a certain extent, to celebrate itself. In fact, some of its leading figures were among those who had played a prominent role at The Hague Conference. In addition to the Belgians Houzeau de Lehaie and Henri La Fontaine, who were mentioned earlier, there was Léon Bourgeois, a French Freemason. In addition to being a member of the Radical-Socialist Party, he had served as head of government in 1895–1896 and was then several times a minister, President of the Chamber from 1902 to 1904, and of the Senate from 1920 to 1923. He was France’s delegate to The Hague Conference as well as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration from 1903 on. Bourgeois was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920.22 The questions of arbitration and peace were also at the centre of the next international Masonic congress, which was held in Brussels in August 1904, with 23 Masonic organizations participating. During the congress proceedings, the French delegate Lucien Le Foyer was invited to speak on the causes of the ‘arms race’ that was affecting the whole of Europe. The data were striking, with ‘armed peace’ expenses accounting for about one-third of the budgets of major European powers. What was the main reason for this huge growth in military spending? As years go by, Europe is becoming increasingly conscious [of it]. The fear of a Franco-German war is not the only reason, but the main one, that maintains Europe in arms, and by inevitable contagion pushes the United States on the road to armament and leads to the arming of East against West.23 It was therefore necessary to make every effort to encourage a Franco-German rapprochement, and the Freemasons had to be on the front line. His proposal was immediately accepted and re-launched by the delegate from Frankfurt’s Grand Eclectic Lodge, Henri Kraft, at the time Worshipful Master of Strasbourg’s An

THE MASONIC INTERNATIONAL . . .

21

Erwins Dom Lodge. At his request, the congress indeed unanimously declared that the resumption of fraternal relations between French and German Freemasons constituted ‘the most urgent task of international Freemasonry’ and gave the Grand Lodge of Frankfurt the task of pioneering this initiative in other German lodges.24 The motion was not followed up, however, at least as formulated. Nevertheless, it served as a stimulus and encouragement at an individual level for those in France and Germany who had been attempting for several years to create the conditions for a rapprochement between the Masonic institutions of the two countries. In July 1907, an official meeting was finally held, taking place at the French–German border, at the Col de la Schlucht in the Vosges area. About 400 Freemasons from the two countries participated.25 This first meeting, which was widely reported in the French and German press, was followed by a second in Basel in July 1908 and a third in Baden-Baden in July 1909. Although initially scheduled for 1910, the fourth could take place in Paris only in July 1911. However, the date chosen was not among the most favourable. In fact, it coincided with the most tense days of the Agadir Crisis, which saw France and Germany again issue threats against each other. The Grand Orient of France was forced to distance itself from the event, marking the beginning of a new cooling phase in relations between the Masonic lodges of the two countries. After the Paris meeting in 1911, two more international Masonic meetings were held, but both occurred outside French and German borders. The first took place in Luxembourg in May 1912, the second in The Hague in August 1913. Among the 400 delegates from 14 countries present at The Hague, Alfred Hermann Fried is worthy of mention. A Freemason of Austrian origin but German by adoption, Fried had been one of the main architects of the peace movement in Germany, together with Baroness Bertha von Suttner. In 1911, Fried won the Nobel Peace Prize, thus lengthening the list of Freemasons receiving this prestigious award.26 The next congress, scheduled for 16 August 1914 in Frankfurt, obviously was never held. When the voices of European pacifists should have been heard, they were already being drowned out by the roar of cannon. Moreover, in the various countries at war, the Masonic lodges were at the forefront in defending the cause of the homeland, allowing the humanitarian principles of universalism to succumb to the sirens of nationalism.

22

F. CONTI

ESPERANTO, UNIVERSALA FRAMASONA LIGO, AND DROIT HUMAIN What had become of the Bureau international des relations maçonniques in the meantime? And what new players had appeared on the scene of Masonic Internationalism? A significant change occurred in 1905 during the first international Esperanto congress, held in Boulogne-sur-Mer. The congress was attended by many Freemasons who saw in Esperanto a neutral language capable of creating the conditions for dismantling the barriers dividing peoples and of giving rise to a close-knit international community open to dialogue. Moreover, Esperanto seemed to revive the utopia of the eighteenth-century ‘Universal Republic of Freemasons’.27 The Esperantists most involved in the peace movement included some Freemasons, such as the two Nobel laureates La Fontaine and Fried. The latter was the author of an important and well-known Esperanto manual published in 1903. It was not by chance that Esperanto Framasona was created precisely during the Esperanto congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer. This international Masonic organization could be joined on an individual basis, without any question of incompatibility in terms of ritual and independently from the orders and lodges of which one was a member. For some years, it lacked a settled structure and met only during the Esperanto congresses in Geneva (1906), Cambridge (1907), Dresden (1908), and Antwerp (1911). Finally, on the initiative of the Swiss Freemason Fritz Uhlmann during the 1913 conference in Bern, it was set up with new statutes and assumed the name, which it still retains today, of Universala Framasona Ligo. The office of president was entrusted to Sebastião de Magalhães Lima, Portuguese Republican Party senator, member of the Bureau international de la paix, and Grand Master of the Grande Oriente Lusitano Unito 1907–1928.28 Again in 1913, a lodge called Espéranto was founded within the Grand Lodge of France, which held its ritual proceedings in the language invented in 1887 by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof.29 Esperantism also met with some success in the Spanish Masonic lodges, especially those in the Canary and Balearic Islands, in significant coincidence, following the 1898 colonial collapse, with the development in Spain of a strong peace movement, of which Freemasonry was an integral part.30 In the years straddling the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, another important development with regard to the Masonic world and its commitment to internationalism and pacifism was the appearance of a new

THE MASONIC INTERNATIONAL . . .

23

organization, which represented a double break with the traditional models of Masonic militancy, hitherto conceived solely on a national basis and on the exclusion of women. It was the mixed international Masonic Order of Le Droit Humain, which had originally been founded under another name in France in 1893, on the initiative of the feminist militant Maria Deraismes and of Georges Martin. It also spread rapidly abroad, with the first lodge established outside French borders being the Zurich lodge, in 1895. On the eve of the First World War, there were 500 lodges, with 12,000–14,000 members. Of these, about 7,000–8,000 were in the United States, 1,500–2,000 in the United Kingdom and the British Empire, and a thousand in France divided into 21 lodges. For its first international conference, held in Paris in 1920, the order approved a constitution that included the possibility of lodges from the same country being brought together into a federation.31 Many pacifists and feminists joined Droit Humain lodges, which undoubtedly helped to revive Freemasonry’s cosmopolitan and humanitarian calling. As we have seen, one of these was Henri La Fontaine, also a member of the Ligue universelle des franc-maçons. More than others during those years, he symbolized this network of multiple memberships that linked the peace movement to groups fighting for democracy, secularism, and the emancipation of the working classes as well as for the extension of civil and political rights.32

DIFFICULTIES AND CRISES OF THE BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DES RELATIONS MAÇONNIQUES The primary tool conceived by the Freemasons to facilitate the construction of this network of international relations, namely the BIRM, had a very precarious existence, however, and ultimately proved to be incapable of achieving its purpose. Previously at the 1904 Brussels Conference, Secretary Quartier-la-Tente had presented a rather negative assessment of its first two years of existence, reporting the fact that only 18 Masonic institutions had joined the BIRM. In addition to the tense climate prevailing in international relations, and with old and new fractures opening up between the various countries, there were rivalries among Grand Lodges, opposing alliances, and endless controversies over the legitimacy of one or the other, as well as over who held the real power of legitimation. In particular, as was mentioned, the profoundly different conceptions of Masonic affiliation that characterized Anglo-Saxon, especially British and

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North American, lodges and those of Latin Europe created many problems. The former preferred to work among themselves, not dealing with politics and limiting external action to solidarist and philanthropic works. The latter, instead, were immersed in politics and their leaders were leading members of mostly leftist political parties and movements. Internationalism and pacifism were part of a larger programme that included a commitment to encourage the development of democracy, equality, and secularism. In 1905, there were 20 Masonic institutions participating in the BIRM. Herein follows a list in chronological order according to when they became members: (1) Grand Lodge Alpina of Switzerland; (2) Supreme Council of Switzerland; (3) Swiss Scottish Directorate; (4) Grand Orient of Spain; (5) Great Orient of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil); (6) Grand Lodge of Luxembourg; (7) Grand Orient of France; (8) Grand Orient of Paranà (Brazil); (9) Grand Lodge Zur Sonne, Bayreuth; (10) Grand Eclectic Lodge of Frankfurt; (11) Grand Lodge of France; (12) Catalan-Balearic Grand Lodge; (13) Free Association of Five Independent Lodges in Germany; (14) Grand Orient of the Netherlands; (15) Grand Orient of Belgium; (16) National Grand Lodge of Egypt; (17) Lusitanian United Grand Orient (Portugal); (18) Grand Lodge of Greece; (19) Symbolic Grand Lodge of Hungary; and (20) Grand Orient and Supreme Council of the Republic of Argentina.33 Strikingly absent from this list were the two largest and most prestigious Freemasonries in the international arena: the English and American organizations. In a report on the BIRM’s activities written in 1920, Quartier-la-Tente was forced to admit that ‘The English Freemasons had not partaken in this work and most of the Grand Lodges of the United States had not responded to the letters, brochures, annuals, and volumes that were addressed to them during the 18 years’.34 No wonder, then, that after the 1904 congress, BIRM did not meet again until 1910 and once again in Brussels, to take advantage of the concurrent Universal Exposition. This congress was attended by about 500 Freemasons and ended with the approval of the BIRM’s new statutes. It was the first congress in which a delegation from the Grand Orient of Italy officially took part. Moreover, Rome was chosen as the venue for the next meeting, which took place in 1911 during the ceremonies held to celebrate the ‘Jubilee of the Nation’, that is, the 50th anniversary of Italian independence and unification. This congress, however, had little to do with the aspirations and ideals that had

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characterized previous meetings. The issues of peace and arbitration were not included in the agenda, just as there was no explicit reference to the construction of what we might call the Masonic International. On the one hand, the congress helped Italian Freemasonry by highlighting its international prestige and the important role it held in the country’s public life. On the other hand, it offered both Italian and foreign delegates the opportunity to reaffirm, in the city of the pope, the anticlericalism that was the main element of Latin Freemasonry’s identity. Of the 23 Grand Lodges at the congress, 14 were European (four German Grand Lodges, Grand Orient of Belgium, Grand Lodge Alpina of Switzerland, Supreme Council of Luxembourg, Grand Orient of France, Grand Lodge of France, Lusitanian United Grand Orient, Spanish Grand Orient, Symbolic Grand Lodge of Hungary, Grand Orient of the Low Countries, and Grand Orient of Italy), seven were from the Americas (Grand Orient of Argentina, Grand Lodge of Chile, Grand Lodge of Mexico, Grand Lodge of Nebraska, Great Orient of Rio Grande do Sul, Grand Orient of Uruguay, and Grand Lodge of Puerto Rico), one from Africa (Grand Lodge of the Republic of Liberia), and Grand Orient of Turkey. From the point of view of attendance, the Rome Congress thus proved to have been quite successful. However, it should be pointed out once again that the idea of gathering all the Masonic families from around the world into a single coordinating body in the name of universalism and a supposed commonality of values and ideal references was nothing but a vain chimera.

CONCLUSIONS In 1911, the hope of constructing a peaceful world on the foundations of Masonic universalism was cast tragically adrift in the nationalistic current and the rapid descent into the bloodiest conflict ever known. Furthermore, Italian Freemasonry itself displayed the first sign of this difficulty of reconciling its cosmopolitan and humanitarian origins with a patriotism still considered unquestionably democratic, but which evidence shows could not be distinguished from the aggressive patriotism of nationalist groups. This was clearly seen in September 1911, just days after the closing of the BIRM congress, when Italy attacked Turkey and moved to conquer Libya. Italian Freemasonry uncompromisingly embraced the cause of war against Turkey as, three years later, it would be at the forefront in promoting the march to war at the side of the Entente powers.

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In the short span of three to four years, the Masonic International plan faded almost completely away, sharing the fate of the Socialist International. Even before the nationalistic resurgence of its members, Masonic Internationalism had been undermined by contradictions and internal divisions and by the inability of lodges with completely different concepts of Freemasonry to find common ground. In particular, it had to deal with the clear refusal of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry—the English section as well as a large part of the North American one—to accept the logic of involvement in political struggle, even if it served to promote humanitarian and universal values such as peace. On the other hand, it was the marked politicization of those lodges that had been more directly engaged in forming the BIRM that caused these divisions and disagreements, which then led to the crisis of Masonic Internationalism. Nevertheless, this should not stop us underscoring the important contributions made by many Freemasons to the development of the peace movement, many of whom were among its most important leaders. Some of them, as we have seen, were among the first recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. In each country, national and individual Masonic lodges provided strong and continuing support to the peace associations, some of which they directly promoted. In particular, this network of international relations guaranteed by the various Masonic institutions facilitated the spread of pacifist ideals, creating further opportunities for their supporters to meet and sometimes guaranteeing valuable organizational support. Moreover, for many Freemasons, what broke out in 1914 was a ‘just war’, a war of necessity to defend their respective countries from the aggression of the Central Powers and to safeguard the values of freedom and democracy. Intoxicated by the patriotic rhetoric of the war years, some of them—in Italy, for example—later embraced nationalist, even reactionary positions.35 Others, instead, reclaimed the humanitarian compassion and solidarity that had always characterized Freemasonry and were among the architects of the League of Nations, which was the most significant achievement of twentieth-century internationalism and pacifism.

NOTES 1. See E. J. Hobsbawm (1987), The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). 2. See B. Anderson (1991), Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso); E. J.

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3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

27

Hobsbawm (1990), Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); C. A. Bayly (2004), The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914. Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell). See G. Sluga (2013), Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsilvanya Press). See D. Headrick (1981), The Tools of Empire. Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press); Id. (1991), The Invisible Weapon. Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press). See M. C. Jacob (1991), Living the Enlightenment. Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press). See D. Mollès (2014), ‘Le Triangle Atlantique. Émergence et expansion de la sphère maçonnique internationale. Une analyse statistique (1717–1914)’, Nuevo mundo Mundos nuevos, 14: 1–26 (http://nuevomundo.revues.org/ 67498); Id. (2014–2015), ‘Le système-monde maçonnique à la veille de la Prèmiere Guerre mondiale: une analyse archéologique’, Revista de estudios historicós de la Masonería Latinoamericana y Caribeña, 6 (2): 15–32 (http://recursos-vols-v6-n2-rehmlac.vol6.n2-dmolles.pdf). See P.-Y. Beaurepaire (1998), L’Autre et le Frère. L’étranger et la francmaçonnerie au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Champion. See F. Conti (2005), Massoneria e radicalismo in Europa dall’età dei Lumi alla Grande Guerra, in M. Ridolfi (ed.), La democrazia radicale nell’Ottocento europeo. Forme della politica, modelli culturali, riforme sociali (Milano: Feltrinelli), pp. 33–56; J. Berger (2010), ‘Between Universal Values and National Ties: Western European Freemasonries Face the Challenge of “Europe”, 1850–1930’, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 1, 205–226. See S. E. Cooper (1991), Patriotic Pacifism. Waging War on War in Europe, 1815–1914 (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press). See F. Conti (2004), De Genève à la Piave. La franc-maçonnerie italienne et le pacifisme démocratique, 1867–1915, in M. Petricioli, A. Anteghini, D. Cherubini (eds.), Les Etats-Unis d’Europe. Un projet pacifiste (Bern: Peter Lang), pp. 213–240. See J. Gotovitch (1987), Franc-maçonnerie, guerre et paix, in Les internationales et le problème de la guerre au XXe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome), pp. 75–105; N. Lubelski-Bernard (1988), Freemasonry and Peace in Europe, 1867–1914, in C. Chatfield, P. Van de Dungen (eds.), Peace Mouvements and Political Cultures (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press), pp. 81–94. E. Quartier-la-Tente (1905), Le Bureau international des relations maçonniques. Son histoire, 1889–1905 (Berne: Impr. Büchler), p. 2.

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13. See G. Procacci (1989), Premi Nobel per la pace e guerre mondiali (Milano: Feltrinelli); I. Abrams (2001), The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates. An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–2001 (Nantucket, Mass.: Science History Publications/Usa). 14. See Conférence Maçonnique universelle d’Anvers du 21e au 24e jour du 5e mois 1894 [1894], (Bruxelles: P. Weissenbruch). 15. See A. C. T. Geppert (2010), Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in Fin-desiècle Europe (New York: Palgrave Mac Millan). 16. See N. Lubelski-Bernard (1977), Les mouvements et les idéologies pacifistes en Belgique, 1830–1914, Thèse de doctorat (Bruxelles, Université Libre de Bruxelles). 17. See M. Bruwier (1996), Henri La Fontaine, franc-maçon, ‘internationaliste’ et pacifiste, in A. Despy-Meyer, H. Hasquin (eds.), Libre pensée et pensée libre. Combats et débats (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles), pp. 87–100; H. Hasquin et al. (2002), Henri La Fontaine. Tracé(s) d’une vie. Un Prix Nobel de la Paix, 1854–1943 (Mons: Mundaneum); Henri La Fontaine, Prix Nobel de la Paix en 1913. Un Belge épris de justice (2012), (Bruxelles: Éditions Racine). 18. See S. M. Pizzetti, ‘The happy presage for the century’. La prima Conferenza di pace dell’Aja, 1899 (2008), in A. Canavero, G. Formigoni, G. Vecchio (eds.), Le sfide per la pace. Istituzioni e movimenti intellettuali e politici tra Otto e Novecento (Milano: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto), pp. 21–70. 19. See Congrès maçonnique international de 1902 à Genève. Grande Loge Suisse Alpina, Compte rendu des séances du Congrès, les 5, 6 et 7 septembre 1902 (1902), (Berne: Impr. Büchler & C°). 20. B. Perrelet [1913], Le Bureau international de relations maçonniques. Organisation, but, activité (Berne: Impr. Büchler & C°), p. 7. 21. ‘Le congrès émet le voeu que, dans tout l’univers, le 18 mai, anniversaire de l’ouverture de la conférence de La Haye, les ateliers maçonniques, dans chaque Orient, réunis en tenue plénière et collective, célèbrent l’ideal de Paix et de Justice entre les nations, un des buts de la francmaçonnerie universelle, et charge le bureau international de relations maçonniques de transmettre ce voeu à toutes les puissances de la maçonnerie universelle’, N. Lubelski-Bernard (1977), Les mouvements et les idéologies, cit., p. 776. 22. See M. Sorlot (2005), Léon Bourgeois. Un moraliste en politique (Paris: B. Leprince); A. Niesse, M. Vaisse, eds. (2006), Léon Bourgeois. Du solidarisme à la Société des Nations (Langres: D. Guéniot); S. Audier (2007), Léon Bourgeois. Fonder la solidarité (Paris: Michalon); A. Niesse (2009), ‘Léon Bourgeois (1851–1925), juriste et ange de la Paix’, Parlement[s]. Revue d’histoire politique, 11, 135–148.

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23. ‘Plus les années se succèdent,’ he stated, ‘plus l’Europe en prend nettement conscience. La crainte d’une guerre franco-allemande, telle est la raison non pas unique, mais capitale qui maintient l’Europe en armes, et qui par une contagion inévitable, pousse les Etats-Unis dans la voie des armements et arme l’Orient contre l’Occident’, Congrès maçonnique international 1904 à Bruxelles. Compte rendu des Séances du Congrès du Samedi 27 au Mardi 30 Août 1904 (1905), (Berne: Impr. Büchler & C°), 111. 24. Ibid., p. 114. 25. Historique des manifestations maçonniques internationales, 1907–1929 [1930], (Koblenz: Vereinsdruckerei Gmbh), p. 12. 26. See R. Chickering (1975), Imperial Germany and a World Without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press); W. Göhring (2006), Verdrängt und Vergessen— Friedensnobelpreisträger. Alfred Hermann Fried (Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau); B. Tuider (2010), Alfred Hermann Fried. Pazifist im Ersten Weltkrieg—Illusion und Vision (Saarbrücken: Vdm). 27. P.-Y. Beaurepaire (2002), L’Europe des francs-maçons, XVIIIe-XXIe siècles (Paris: Belin), p. 239. 28. See M. R. Lino Garnel (2004), A República de Sebastião de Magalhães Lima (Lisboa: Livros Horizonte); A. Ventura (2011), Magalhães Lima. Um idealista impenitente (Lisboa: Assemblea da República). 29. J. Lalouette, Espéranto, in E. Saunier, ed. (2000), Encyclopédie de la FrancMaçonnerie (Paris: Librairie Générale Française), p. 275. 30. See J. A. Ferrer Benimeli, M. de Paz Sanchez, Masonería y pacifismo en la España contemporánea (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza). 31. See Y. Hivert Messeca, Le Droit Humain, in E. Saunier, ed. (2000), Encyclopédie de la Franc-Maçonnerie, cit., pp. 223–226; A. Prat (2004), L’Ordre maçonnique le Droit Humain (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). 32. See Histoire de la Fédération belge du Droit Humain, vol. 1, Des origines à la guerre de 1940–1945 (1978), (Bruxelles: Editions du Droit Humain). 33. E. Quartier-la-Tente (1905), Le Bureau international des relations maçonniques, p. 38. 34. ‘La Maçonnerie anglaise n’[avait] pris aucune part à cette œuvre et la plupart des Grandes Loges des Etats-Unis n’[avaient] pas répondu aux lettres, brochures, annuaires et volumes qui leur [avaient] été adressés pendant 18 ans’, E. Quartier-la-Tente (1920), Le Bureau international des relations maçonniques pendant les 18 premières années de son existence. Son histoire, son but, ses difficultés, son activité, son avenir, 1902–1920 (Berne: Impr. Büchler), p. 50. 35. See F. Conti (2015), ‘From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian Freemasonry and the Great War’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 20 (5): 640–662.

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Fulvio Conti (1961) is Full Professor of Contemporary History at the School of Political Science, University of Florence, Italy. Previously he was Professor at Smith College and Middlebury College, and Visiting Professor in Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (2011), at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (2013), and at Sciences Po (2015). He is a researcher at the Centre de la Méditerranée moderne et contemporaine, which is based at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. He is co-editor of the journal of contemporary history Memoria e Ricerca, and member of the editorial committee of the journals Rassegna Storica Toscana, Annali di storia di Firenze, Storia locale, and Thanatological Studies. He is also scientific adviser to the Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Biographical Dictionary of Italians). He is a member of the scientific committee of various historical and academic societies. Along with Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, he is editor of the collection Franc-maçonneries.

PART II

Introduction to Part II

Because war causes economic, social, mental, and physical harm to individuals, it is natural for people to unite and utilize the law to preserve civil society. Caroline Tixier captures the idea of avoiding war through legal means as she examines the role of Léon Bourgeois in establishing an international system of arbitration. As a Freemason, Bourgeois struggled to maintain the idea of solidarity among all people as a way to create a set of laws that would institutionalize peace, while at the same time dealing with the issue of patriotism. Bourgeois’s approach was to focus on the social interdependence of individuals as a means of promoting the welfare of people above the well-being of the state. Marilena Papadaki focuses on the impact of the legal thought of Nicolas Politis on the idea of international peace. A contemporary as well as an admirer of Bourgeois, Politis attempted to establish a solid base from which nations could regulate war. As an international jurist, he presented legal ideas regarding the creation of a collective security system based on laws that countries could draw on, arguing, as Bourgeois did, for arbitration as a means of settling disputes and conflicts. The movements against war were not unique to any one European country, nor were they limited to those started before war broke out in August 1914. Additionally, they were not all focused on creating a legal framework acceptable to all nations. Donatella Cherubini’s examination of the Italian socialist Giuseppe Modigliani and his role in the Zimmerwald Conference is one example of this. Although active before Italy entered

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the war in 1915, Modigliani was determined to bring a swift end to it and hoped to create a confederation of European states to prevent future wars. The Zimmerwald Conference was a socialist gathering that pitted radical Russians against radical Italians as each group attempted to define the outcome of the conference on their terms. Radicalism was not reserved for men such as Lenin and Modigliani. As Jean Mills discusses in her essay on Jane Ellen Harrison, women played a prominent role in peace movements both before and during the war. Mills makes the argument that as a scholar and public intellectual read and respected by her contemporaries, Harrison’s work as a pacifist put her on a collision course with her colleagues and the government. Challenging conscription and arguing against the ‘good side of war’ is never popular with those in charge of prosecuting that war. Doing so as a woman in Edwardian Britain was even less well received. But Mills points out that Harrison’s beliefs outweighed the professional risk and public backlash she faced in doing so. Rosika Schwimmer is another woman who refused to sit idly by as Europe’s men died by the thousands. Dagmar Wernitznig examines Schwimmer’s peace advocacy and the criticism and scepticism she faced as a result of her unorthodox methods. As with other individuals and groups in this book, she faced long odds due to the patriotic and nationalistic fervour that took hold among the nations during the war. At a time when leadership roles in government were reserved for men, Schwimmer, like Harrison and so many other female activists, also faced criticism simply on the basis of her gender.

The Legacy of Léon Bourgeois: From the Solidarist Doctrine to the Emergence of International Arbitration Caroline Tixier

It seems obvious today that every initiative of an international meeting is supposed to cast in stone the culture of peace as an ‘Idea in action’. Yet modern conditions as well as the developments and the applications of this Idea were initially enshrined by the Hague Conferences. They took place successively in 1899 and in 1907, and both expressed the participating states’ wish to create a community favourable to the peaceful settlement of disputes under law.1 However, the opening of the first Hague Conference on 18 May 1899 was, in the words of Léon Bourgeois, characterized by a

The sources of this research are almost exclusively extracted from documents written in French. In this context, all quotations in this paper are translated from French to English by the author, who assumes full responsibility for this work. The author’s thanks are due to Gregory Bligh and Tanguy Pasquiet-Briand for their reading and feedback. C. Tixier (*) Institut Michel Villey for legal culture and philosophy of law, Paris Panthéon-Assas University, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_3

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feeling of ‘scepticism extended to mistrust. A complete failure would not have saddened many.’2 Indeed, on the initiative of Tsar Nicolas II, a project for an international conference on disarmament was submitted on 25 August 1898 by his minister of foreign affairs, count of Mouraviev, to his French counterpart Théophile Delclassé. For fear of a reconsideration of the French-Russian military agreement, given the crisis raised by the Dreyfus Affair, Théophile Delclassé’s first intention was ‘to remove the political scope of the Russian project, by redirecting it to academic discussions, pure legal analysis, and theoretical jurisprudence.’3 Nevertheless, the agreement of 9 August 1899, reached through an exchange of letters, finally strengthened the resolve of French foreign policy. In this regard, Théophile Delcassé explained in a letter to the French President of the Republic that this conference was actually a significant means to lead Russia to consider the Alsace-Lorraine issue, knowing that in return France would have to agree to take on responsibilities concerning Balkan issues.4 Aware of this historic opportunity, the Radical-Socialist politician and theorist of solidarism, Léon Bourgeois, asked his fellow radical, Théophile Delcassé, to appoint him as the French delegate to the international Conference of Peace. His candidature to participate in the French delegation, along with four others, was approved. In this context, Bourgeois was assisted by Paul Balluet d’Estournelles de Constant, representative of the Sarthe department and former ambassador (and founder and chairman of the French parliamentary group on international arbitration); Louis Renault, professor at the Paris Law faculty; Léonard Léon Mounier, brigadier general; and Jean-Jacques Théophile Péphau, rear-admiral. They were collectively appointed by Charles Dupuy’s government. Among the various instructions given by Théophile Delcassé, the French delegation was primarily charged with undertaking a study on arbitration, mediation, and good offices. By doing so, France would support Russia in its effort to develop conflict prevention.5 Often described as the ‘first international code of Peace’, the first Hague Conference did not allow for the establishment of peace de facto.6 Nevertheless, it did contribute to the transformation, organization, and implementation of international arbitration as requested by the French government from 1899. From this general movement a ‘breath of fresh air [ . . . ] on the chancelleries’ was noticeable regarding the gathering of 25 states in 1899 and the participation of 44 states in 1907 during the second conference.7 In the end, this process did not give birth to a formal convention admitting the principle of arbitration as

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compulsory, even though 32 states were eager to endorse its compulsory scope in 1907, albeit with some reservations. As a consequence and thanks to the proposal of the French delegation, only the optional form of arbitration was enabled. It made the procedural declaration of war or the completion of a reasoned ultimatum compulsory before the outbreak of armed conflict between two states.8 This chapter focuses on the specific role played by the French delegation—characterized by its readiness to compromise in order to prevent the ‘disastrous bravados of chauvinism’—in the development of an international arbitration system.9 Each member shared the same purpose given the ‘consciousness of a community of interests’: the institution of arbitration procedures between nations.10 As one of the founding fathers (with Ferdinand Buisson) of the French Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, Léon Bourgeois was the first among his party to advocate the idea of international solidarity as a policy principle.11 In spite of the disappearance of the left-wing bloc (le Bloc des Gauches) and the gathering of the French socialists into the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) in 1905, the members of the Radical Party considered themselves advocates of solidarity as a framework for the realization of interstate cooperation.12 For its part, the French right wing in its various forms—nationalistic, reactionary, monarchist, and even centrist—was very discreet during these diplomatic meetings, and in retrospect appeared to be opposed to the enshrinement of an international and supra-state conciliation that would be indifferent to certain vital national interests.13 This political context gave to the members and allies of the republican Radical and Radical-Socialist Party the opportunity to develop their conception of solidarity autonomously and outside France. More particularly, this idea involved the ‘initiative of the third-parties’ in order to settle international disputes.14 As the main actor of this development, Léon Bourgeois supported the idea of human solidarity as the cornerstone of the French Third Republic that was supposed to abolish the distinction between private law and public law. Through solidarism, the Radical-Socialists aimed at the enshrinement of peace, on the basis of a simultaneously prudential, positive, and legal approach. If we consider radicalism not only as a structured political party but mostly as a multifaceted body of doctrines, values, and convictions all linked to the republican ideal, it is thus possible to wonder if it really played a role in the effectiveness of international arbitral proceedings.15

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Firstly, I would like to underline the fact that solidarism, as conceptualized by Léon Bourgeois and received by Théophile Delcassé, played a significant role in the edification of institutions such as the international Peace Conference and became in retrospect the basis of a project that would be part of the evolution of multilateralism.16 Secondly, in addition to this transnational conception, Léon Bourgeois supported through solidarism a legal order of international arbitration whose roots are to be found in the inclusive compromise inherent in the Radical and RadicalSocialist doctrine itself. Thirdly and lastly, this legitimation of the idea of international arbitration, promoted both by French solidarists and by other countries participating in the Peace Conferences, significantly transformed mutual states’ relations and contributed to the appearance of a new Law of Nations.

THE FIGHT AGAINST HEGEMONIC WISHES AS A RESULT OF THE HAGUE CONFERENCES: THE INFLUENCE OF MULTILATERAL DIPLOMACY AS PROMOTED BY SOLIDARISM The goal of the solidarist project was to replace the diplomacy of force, its arrangements, and its bandwagoning system with the diplomacy of peace.17 In this process and in regard to peacekeeping as a priority, Léon Bourgeois distinguished two actors: ‘the governments and the peoples of Europe’.18 These two forces were held to act in opposite ways. On the one hand, as continuators of the Westphalian system,19 governments and their Cabinet policies would only ‘indefinitely increase the risk of a war that would be all the more tremendous that it would involve, in due course, all of the States’.20 On the other hand, the power of public opinion should command ‘the destiny of the World’.21 By drawing its principles from Ethics and Law, the power of public opinion introduces, according to Bourgeois, ‘something new in international policy’.22 Supported by the majority’s approval, peace must be an idea in action. In this sense, the solidarist idea considered as an ‘ideology of reconciliation’ builds a bridge between states through the appearance of a civil society that is supposed to be foreign to any conflict situation.23 According to solidarism, the recognition of an existing solidarity between nations shall be ultimately dictated by law. The recognition of these necessary relations of solidarity fosters the emergence, between the nations, of a ‘set of legal relationships that they also accept and that shape a genuine society between them’.24

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Besides the anticipation of an international civil society, Léon Bourgeois and the Radical-Socialists appropriated the Jacobin ideology of the right of peoples to self-determination in the way it was expressed through the principle of nationalities. Using the identification process of the word ‘people’ with the phrase ‘public opinion’, a process experimented with by the Enlightenment philosophers claimed as a reference, the Radical-Socialists tried to solemnly consecrate the expression of a collective wish formulated by the different nations. More specifically, in Léon Bourgeois’s solidarism, the obligation must result not from the coercive action of the state but from the existence of a contract freely consented to by the members of the community—a ‘quasi-contract’.25 This central notion, which already appeared in the civil Code (articles 1370–1371), is the basis of the legal aspect of solidarism since the notion of ‘social debt’ is meant to lead to a lawful sanction in the event of non-execution of the obligations created by the ‘quasicontract’.26 Inspired by Roman law—on which Bourgeois was a specialist— the theory of a social ‘quasi-contract’ is based on the idea that everyone incurs a debt matching the service rendered by all the members of the community. Given a reversal of the classical Rousseauist conception of the social contract, Léon Bourgeois managed to locate the contract not at the beginning but at the end of every human association. Indeed, the social ‘quasi-contract’ represents the recognition of a debt that the members of the social body have to fulfil for themselves, then for society, and finally for past and future generations. In the end, the political association is the organic receptacle of contractual obligations. Rejecting the embodiment of the state and inspired by the stoic idea of concentric circles, Léon Bourgeois and other Radical-Socialists amplified their solidarist project so that it could become a new theory of the obligations and sanctions previously consented to on the interstate scale in the context of a codification of international relations. Thus, the obligation that constrains every state to respect ‘the solidarity that unites the members of a society of civilized nations’ presupposes their reciprocal responsibilities. In the solidarist prospect and on behalf of an inductive approach, states are committed to one another.27 These philosophical and theoretical conceptions contributed to the recognition of a parliamentary and multilateral diplomacy with the support of the French association for the League of Nations, the majority of Radicals and Radical-Socialists, and, of course, Léon Bourgeois himself.

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COMPROMISE AS THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE RADICALSOCIALIST ACTION: THE SOURCE OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION The resolve to build a multilateral diplomacy questioned the implementation of available pacific means to prevent armed conflict. Moreover, it was obvious that states’ protests in order to preserve their vital interests could not be a matter for arbitration. Still, the arbitration operation itself was supposed to offer a pacific solution that could not be dissociated from the moderation that carried the mediation process. Thus, mediation becomes both the technique and the necessary process that allows the enshrinement of international justice. Set up during the 1899 Hague Conference but deprived of any modus procedendi, mediation understood as a semi-friendly settlement of disputes could assume a one-sided nature.28 Nevertheless, the purpose was to encourage litigating states to submit to the mediation process and to agree to other solutions offered by third states’ good offices. Thus, states accept ‘this mediation [in so far as] it does not obstruct their freedom. And mediators’ opinion only has value as an optional advice.’29 In this way, the commitment of a third force to offer itself as a mediator gradually entered into international custom.30 As the president of the Arbitration Commission of 1899, Léon Bourgeois put the problem in these words: ‘In the absence of the day-to-day work of diplomacy, which can provide the direct amicable agreement, we look for the conditions of the indirect amicable agreement through mediation.’31 In view of this, article 4 of the 1899 Convention for the pacific settlement of international disputes specifies: ‘The part of the mediator consists in reconciling the opposing claims and appeasing the feelings of resentment which may have arisen between the States at variance’. Indeed, mediation allows belligerent states to accept or refuse the mediator’s decisions. On the contrary, arbitration obligates belligerent states to implement the decisions of the arbiter who was initially chosen. Hence, the conception of mediation as an international law method of dispute settlement was of an essentially voluntary nature regarding both its justification and the stipulations of the 1899 Hague Conference. On the one hand, Léon Bourgeois conceived mediation as an extension of negotiation. As chairman of the Arbitration Commission, he wanted mediation to be the guiding principle of the 1899 Hague Conference’s sessions. On the other hand, Bourgeois expected mediation to form a first

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step to dispute settlement codification. More generally, Léon Bourgeois, Paul d’Estournelles de Constant, and Louis Renault associated the concept of compromise with a quest for common interests and conceived the concept of mediation as a practice enabling the balancing of international life in so far as it makes possible the state’s commitment to submit to a sentence.32 However, mediation must solely represent a prior phase allowing the fulfilment of the key purpose: arbitration. In Bourgeois’s mind, arbitration considered as a derivative form of mediation based on law is the sole instrument that can prevent or effectively resolve international disputes. If mediation was neglected before 1899, it became ideologically charged during the Hague Conference in order to inject binding force to international sentences. Because of individual interests’ accordance within international civil society based on natural interdependence in the solidarist view, arbitration became the sole technique that could legally implement the needed compromise in the case of a dispute. In spite of questions about whether arbitration should be compulsory or optional, it was decided at the beginning of the 1899 Hague Convention, under French influence, that the Arbitration Commission would not end its sessions until the ‘international duty of Powers’ was fulfilled, in the words of Paul d’Estournelles de Constant. Still, the Hague Conference was heatedly debated because of the distinctions that it made between binding force and executory force, and between nullity and review of the arbitral award. Above all, the spirit of the texts of 1899 and 1907 was fundamentally transactional. On Bourgeois’s initiative, article 83 of the 1907 Conference stipulates in this sense that: ‘The parties can reserve in the “Compromis” the right to demand the revision of the Award’. In order to preserve the international duty of powers of 1899, Paul d’Estournelles de Constant created a committee of international conciliation in December 1905 that was supposed to promote the concept of arbitration, thanks to 32 sections spread across the world and dedicated to the maintenance of peaceful international relations. In 1902, the French Radical Congress expressed its wish for the French government to ‘conclude permanent arbitration treaties with every nation willing to venture on a peaceful path; [the Congress] asks [the French government] to submit the disputes that could arise from our diplomatic relations to the permanent Hague Tribunal that has commenced its operations at this very moment, on the initiative of the United States and Mexico’.33 Four years later, French journalist Lucien le Foyer started to popularize Léon Bourgeois’s

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ideas beyond the Radical sphere and announced the creation of a potential ‘League of civilized Nations’.34 Furthermore, it must be mentioned that the Radical Party adopted the programme of Nancy in the same year as the second Hague Conference. Article 24 of this text defines arbitration regarding international relations as an ‘Entente cordiale between the peoples; extension of international arbitration practice to the situation of a serious dispute; peacekeeping in dignity’.35 The primary aim of the French delegation was to create a state of mind, to set a new moral atmosphere influenced by the ideological syncretism of solidarism and leading states to be ‘[ . . . ] united in a mutual confidence mind, all of them feeling their integrity and the free development of their personality by a contractual obligations network really protected’.36 Thus, the Radical-Socialist programme was the main intellectual provider of a permanent international community organization as desired by Léon Bourgeois. This programme really revealed a ‘consummate skill in order to reach points of agreement, even purely principle agreements, and to conceal disagreements in a cloaked rhetoric of optimism’.37 In fact, the programme of the Hague Conferences’ works was boldly and effectively influenced by the solidarist thesis of the compromise in action. Indeed, it was a constant practice of mediation allowing successively the real establishment of mediation and the standardization of arbitration.

‘THE GREAT CAUSE OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION’: THE EDIFICATION OF THE LAW OF NATIONS The expectations that were placed on the concept of arbitration,38 which was often perceived as an ‘innovation’,39 were completely fulfilled thanks to its technical improvement between the first Hague Convention of 1899 and 1907.40 Once accessions and ratifications to the first Convention were officialized, the efforts to build an international community gradually increased. Nevertheless, the 1899 conference had to give up the disarmament project on land and sea in the face of significant discord. According to Léon Bourgeois, this was actually a relative failure. Far from imposing a doctrinal pacifism, Léon Bourgeois and French representatives at the Hague Conference thought that ‘disarmament [was] not a preparation but rather a consequence’ of the existence of pre-existing law.41 On the basis of their prudential approach, their view was that disarmament should only represent the end of the peace effort.42 Certainly, such an analysis of

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disarmament tended to temporarily postpone the fulfilment of the ideal of peace into the future.But this is actually the core of the solidarist doctrine. Indeed, peace shall not be guaranteed by the sole limitation allowed by military actions. In this view, the ideal of peace is not abandoned: it is substantialized in the effort towards an empirical codification of international law. Mediation and investigation proceedings as well as the Permanent Court of Arbitration were made available to the state thanks to the ‘revolution’ brought about by the Hague Conferences.43 They especially became fundamental tools favourable to the recognition of the Law of Nations, which was to become a conventional law.44 In this way, Bourgeois and French delegates used a form of legal pragmatism that did not denature their peaceful project and its universalist vocation. Beyond the fact that ‘the international justice notion entered the field of practical reality’ as a result of the works of the Hague Conferences, the French Radical-Socialist Party considered that no principle could now rule this new legal order.45 For solidarists, and in particular for Léon Bourgeois, interstate relations only represent an enlargement of interpersonal relations. As a consequence, states’ sovereignty does not represent a supreme and indisputable power. Regarded as the basis of solidarist doctrine and as the very essence of the international community, interpersonal relations determine ‘public international law as the servant of private international law’.46 From this perspective, solidarists relegated the state to the role of an institutional organ designed to ensure that individual wishes are respected on the national level. They translated this ideology at the international level as requiring that the voices of ‘small’ international powers be equal to those of bigger states. For this reason they introduced arbitration as an intra-federative solution to disputes based on mutual recognition during the Hague Conferences. If, according to Serge Audier, ‘the requirement of benefits and risks mutualisation between the members of the association is based on the thesis that even the weakest must be considered as equally associated in rights and duties, being all fellow men’ on the domestic field, then smaller international powers came to enjoy the same status as major states on the external side thanks to the Hague Conferences.47 If the social ‘quasi-contract’ theory determines the existence of the political society on the national level, it must now govern interstate relations, states being obliged towards one another. As a practical consequence of this egalitarian conception of state status, the Balkan states ceased to oppose and finally adopted article 27 on arbitration in 1899, which was replicated by article 48 of the Second Hague Convention.

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It also detailed the functions of the International Bureau. As soon as arbitration would be requested, the claims were made public. Thanks to this process of institutionalization, arbitration progressively and customarily ceased to be optional. In many ways, the two Hague Conferences gradually sketched the outlines of the future project aiming at the creation of the League of Nations that the Radical and Radical-Socialist circles would conceptualize.48 Their influence on peace projects was decisive and shaped the establishment of multilateral diplomacy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Furthermore, they introduced the idea of an international law codification on the basis of an empirical and customary process allowing the transformation of interstate relations through the search for equal status and conventional practices.

NOTES 1. The methodical inventory of the Hague Conferences’ work was mainly commented on by A. Mérignhac, La Conférence internationale de la Paix: étude historique, exégétique et critique des travaux et des résolutions de la Conférence de la Haye de 1899, Paris: A. Rousseau, 1900 and by E. Lémonon, Seconde Conférence de la Paix, La Haye (juin-octobre 1907), Paris: F. Pichon et Durand-Auzias, 1908. 2. Confidential memo by Léon Bourgeois, in Ministères des Affaires Étrangères, Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, vol. XV, 25 mai 1899, p. 312. 3. M. Paléologue, Journal de l’Affaire Dreyfus (1814–1899). L’Affaire Dreyfus et le Quai d’Orsay, Paris: Plon, 1955, p. 129. 4. P. Renouvin, ‘Les relations franco-russes à la fin du XIXe siècle et au début du XXème siècle’, in Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, vol. I, n°1, Mai 1959, p. 132. 5. Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Commission de publication des documents relatifs aux origines de la guerre de 1914, Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1959, t. XV, 15 mai 1899, pp. 284–286. 6. E. Staal, Conférence internationale de la Paix, La Haye, 18 mai-29 juillet 1899, Procès-Verbaux, 1ère partie, séance de clôture du 29 juillet 1899, p. 212. 7. Speech delivered by L. Renault in Groupe parlementaire français pour l’arbitrage, La Deuxième Conférence de la Haye: Discours prononcés à la séance de rentrée du groupe de l’arbitrage, Paris: Delagrave, 1908, p. 42.

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8. This specific proposal was admitted and voted for unanimously during the 1907 Conference. 9. ‘Préface’ in Groupe parlementaire français pour l’arbitrage. 10. M. Chemiller-Gendreau, ‘Souveraineté et mondialisation’ in L’Humanité face à la mondialisation, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997, p. 76. 11. In this regard, Ferdinand Buisson created the popular university La solidarité, where he gave lectures under the title of a ‘History of ethics’ each Friday in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. On the international level, Buisson supported the right of peoples to self-determination and strongly objected to the oppression of minorities (the Poles, the Slavs, the Italians from Austria, and the post-war Armenians). In a letter addressed to Joseph Reinach, Buisson wrote: ‘I am very grateful, my dear sir, for your kind invitation: all my Fridays are regrettably dedicated to the popular university of the thirteenth borough of Paris where I keep teaching a History of ethics which, as you may imagine, is far from finished [ . . . ]’. (BN-Mss-NAF 24874 [641], undated letter with letterhead: ‘Ferdinand Buisson, professeur à l’Université de Paris, 166 Boulevard du Montparnasse’). 12. French Section for a Workers’ International (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière). 13. S. Berstein, ‘Le milieu genevois dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres’ in Les Internationales et le problème de la guerre au XXème siècle. Actes du colloque de Rome (22–24 novembre 1984), Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome, 1987, p. 322. 14. A. Marès, ‘Essai sur l’évolution de l’idée d’arbitrage international depuis les origines jusqu’au Protocole du 1er octobre 1924’, Thèse pour le doctorat politique, Université de Montpellier, Faculté de droit, Montpellier: Firmin et Montane, 1925, p. 11. 15. ‘Radicalism of the beginning of the century is also an ideology, a set of values and convictions that impress, to varying extents, the vision of the world and the political behaviour of men that claim it. It is trite to notice that these convictions are less dictated by an intellectual system than inspired by a range of traditions, of references to the history of the republican ideal and of the republican movement.’ G. Baal, ‘Le Parti radical de 1901 à 1914’, Thèse de doctorat d’Histoire, Université Paris I: thesis manuscript, 1991, p. 2. 16. The first Hague Conference was such a priority in Léon Bourgeois’s mind, in order to introduce law and justice in international relations and to focus fully on arbitration proceedings, that he declined the telegraphed proposal sent by Raymond Poincaré, commissioned by Émile Loubet to form a new government, asking Bourgeois to accept the foreign affairs ministerial portfolio. 17. L. Bourgeois, Pour la Société des Nations, 1er vol., Paris: Georges Crès, 1913, p. 13: ‘We can say that all the european diplomatic arrangements in

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18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

contemporary times were determined of influenced by the malaise of Europe: if we look at them closely, the Triple Alliance constitution, the French-Russian alliance, the Triple Entente did not have other source and their continuation did not have other cause.’ Ibid. Ibid., p. 14: ‘The Cabinet policy keeps looking for the guarantees of peace as in the days of the Treaties of Westphalia, of Utrecht and of Vienna. [ . . . ] The diplomacy that is inspired by this policy pretends to qualify itself as realistic and prevents from being based on the law principles.’ Ibid., p. 15. Speech delivered by L. Bourgeois in Groupe parlementaire (…), op. cit., p. 63. Ibid., p. 64. C. Rumillat, ‘Le Solidarisme au 19ème siècle. Recherche d’une politique positive’, Thèse pour le doctorat de science politique, Institut d’Études Politiques de Grenoble: thesis manuscript, 1986, p. 15. L. Bourgeois, op. cit., p. 273. To explicitly understand the quasi-contract notion, partly taken up by Léon Bourgeois, it is necessary to refer to C. Bouglé, ‘L’évolution du solidarisme’ in Revue politique et parlementaire, vol. XXXV, p. 486. L. Bourgeois, Congrès international de l’Éducation sociale. Rapports et comptes rendus, Paris: F. Alcan, 1901, p. 80. Preamble of the Convention on the pacific settlement of international disputes. Authors such as Saadia Touval and William I. Zartman specify that a mediator, whether he/she is the representative of a powerful international force, a medium international force, or even an international organization, would usually intervene to resolve the dispute only in order for his/her own interests to prevail. Marès, Essai sur l’évolution, p. 13. It must be noted that mediation had already been used in the context of the Paris Treaty in 1856. L. Bourgeois, Congrès international de l’Éducation sociale, p. 43. See O. Hoijer, La solution pacifique des litiges internationaux avant et depuis la Société des Nations, Paris: Éditions Spes, 1925, p. 202. Mentioned by A. Charpentier, Le Parti radical et radical-socialiste à travers ses Congrès (1910–1911), Paris: Éditions Giard et E. Brière, 1913, p. 410. S. Bertein, Histoire du parti radical, 1. La recherche de l’âge d’or, 1919–1926, Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques, 1980, p. 65. Ibid. J. Cabouat, La Société des Nations d’après M. Léon Bourgeois, Paris: Bureaux de la Revue politique et parlementaire, 1910, p. 4.

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37. C. Nicault, ’Léon Bourgeois, militant de la paix’, in A. Niesse and M. Vaïsse, Léon Bourgeois. Du solidarisme à la Société des Nations, Langres: Éditions Dominique Guéniot, 2006, p. 53. 38. Extracted from a speech delivered by Léon Bourgeois in Group parlementaire français pour l’arbitrage, p. 51. 39. C. Delton, ‘Le Devenir des relations internationales: Réflexion sur la philosophie de la paix des grandes organisations internationales’, Thèse pour le doctorat, Université de Paris XII-Val de Marne, Faculté de Philosophie: thesis manuscript, 2004, p. 246. 40. The first Hague Conference brought together 26 states (with a majority of 20 European states). During the second one, 44 states were represented (including 19 American states and 4 Asian states). See L. Cavaré, Droit international public positif, Paris: Éditions Pédone, 1961, p. 207. 41. See the report on the Second Peace Conference in Conférence de la Paix, Deuxième conference internationale de la paix (Ministère des affaires étrangères, documents diplomatiques), Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1908, p. 244. 42. Note, however, that the 1899 Conference only produced a petitio principis formulated in a ‘Declaration’ extracted from the unanimity of participants by Léon Bourgeois. 43. L. Bourgeois, Le Pacte de 1919 et la Société des Nations, Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier, p.1. 44. F. Lekeal, ’La guerre anticipée: normes juridiques et violences de guerre’ (table ronde) in La violence de guerre 1939–1945, Brussels:Éditions Complexe, 2002, p. 57. 45. Opening speech of Arbitration Commission’s works delivered by Léon Bourgeois in Pour la Société des Nations, op. cit., p. 43. 46. G. Scelle, Précis de droit des gens: principes et systématiques. Première partie: introduction, le milieu intersocial, Paris: Sirey, 1932, p. 19. 47. S. Audier, Léon Bourgeois. Fonder la solidarité, Paris: Éditions Michalon, 2007, p. 95. 48. See L. Bourgeois, L’œuvre de la Société des Nations, Paris: Payot, 1923, p. 442. Caroline Tixier is a PhD student in Political Sciences and an Assisting Professor at Paris Panthéon-Assas University, where she teaches Constitutional Law and History of Political Ideas. Her doctoral work (supported by a research allowance from the French National Assembly) focuses on the emergence of the concept of solidarism developed by Léon Bourgeois and on the influence of this concept on the creation of the League of Nations. Her work is supervised by Professor Philippe Raynaud. After studying Philosophy and Political Sciences (with a

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Master’s degree in International Relations, Security and National Defence), she wrote a dissertation on private military companies which was awarded two academic prizes. She organized with Mr Jean-Vincent Holeindre a series of conferences on the theme ‘War and Society’, hosted by the Institut de France and directed by Professor Jean Baechler.

French International Lawyers in the Service of International Peace During the Early Twentieth Century: The Case of Nicolas Politis (1872–1942) Marilena Papadaki ‘Gradually, the world’s legal life is organized: although still remaining an ideal, justice and peace finally cease to be a dream.’1 ‘The movement that forces people to unite in a law community primarily demands the maintenance of peace. For, it is through it and for it that any society establishes and develops itself. Peace is not only the exclusion of violence; it is a harmony of regulated and guaranteed relations. It has been rightly defined as “the period of the rule of law” (la durée du droit). It finds indeed a sustainable basis in justice.’2

These two statements, written in the early twentieth century by Nicolas Politis, a Greek-born, naturalized French professor, express not only his ardent confidence in the primacy of international law for the regulation of international relations but also his belief in the existence of a community of nations, of an international society, the evolution and progress of which are closely related to the stabilization of a peace regime. His thinking

M. Papadaki (*) K. Koufa Foundation for the Promotion of International and Human Rights Law, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_4

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reflected liberal principles, the idea of progress of the Enlightenment, as well as their logical corollary, the primacy of law, which could naturally be applied to the organization of international society in the same way it was applied to civil societies.3 During the interwar period, Nicolas Politis played a major role in the socio-political scene of his time, not only as a French academic and theorist of international law, but also as a Greek diplomat and politician. Additionally, he served as an expert and an international arbiter and lawyer. Along with Eduard Benès, he was rapporteur of the Geneva Protocol for the pacific settlement of international disputes, which was adopted by the fifth Assembly of the League of Nations in 1924, only to be abandoned a little while later after being rejected by Great Britain. The Protocol proclaimed aggressive war to be an international crime that had to be proscribed, proposed a system of obligatory settlement of international disputes through arbitration, and provided the League’s security system with collective military sanctions against the Aggressor State.4 For Nicolas Politis, peace was a social product resulting from a set of institutions: the existence of a body of laws; the operation of a system of justice; the gathering of individual forces in order to ensure law enforcement and respect for judicial decisions. Therefore, to resolve the problem of preserving peace, international life had to be organized according to laws (via the codification of international law), judges, and sanctions. The concept of total ‘juridification’ in favour of international peace, which Politis advocated during the interwar period, was the result of the historical evolution of the international law doctrine that had its origins in the late nineteenth century.5 This evolution was marked by the first steps of French international lawyers to participate in an international ‘public debate’.6 At the end of the nineteenth century Politis was a member of a group of French internationalists gathered around Louis Renault who were driven by a desire to create a genuine science of International Law, detached from the exegetical school that had up until that moment dominated French law. Renault approached international law as the professional technique of those who looked after international affairs. Drawing on the economic and sociological arguments of the Third Republic’s education reform movement, he hoped, on the one hand, to construct solid bases for the new discipline of international law and, on the other, to justify the profession and role of international law professors.

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At that time pacifists supported the effort of the French internationalists to establish the scientific nature of the law, promote legal culture in international relations, and present international law as the best way to regulate interstate relations. The movement Peace through law, which started in 1887, was connected to the systematization of old diplomatic procedures for the pacific settlement of international conflicts as well as the creation and implementation of new juridical procedures and institutions, such as juridical arbitrage.7 In France, it is not always easy to distinguish between pacifists and international lawyers because they both used legal language. Although an internationalist could have a pacifist attitude, internationalists differ from ardent pacifists in that they pursue their objective (world peace) through more direct approaches in an effort to change mentalities and attitudes. Nevertheless, international lawyers, such as Politis, considered war an institution ‘that is unfortunately unlikely to perish yet’ (n’est pas malheureusement près de disparaitre).8 They believed it was necessary to re-approach the phenomenon of the use of violence in international relations, and they proposed solutions and developed legal theories in an effort to avoid any unnecessary use of force.9 The relation and the reciprocal influences between the pacific movement on the one hand, and international lawyers on the other, were analysed recently in the Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. At some point, this relation contributed to the expansion of the idea that the scientific expertise of international lawyers could be an effective tool in the pacification of the world. This view was reinforced by the fact that diplomatic issues had become much more complicated during that period. In the early twentieth century, the idea that international lawyers were the only ones capable of resolving the most divisive issues of international politics was widespread among the international associations of law.10 Under the motto Justitia and Pace, a scholarly community began to develop around the Institute of International Law. They proclaimed themselves the legal conscience of the civilized world, regardless of national affiliation.11 The idea of a ‘government of jurists’, already recognized as the best way to regulate human relations, was easily imposed on the international order, mostly because the organization of international relations demanded that the sovereign state be diminished.12 The ability of humans to control their destiny and to influence international relations through law was thus extended to more vital interests of the sovereign state, such as war.13

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The Institute of International Law became truly influential because of the role played by its members in the composition of the texts and resolutions of the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, called by Tsar Nicolas II in order ‘to seek the most effective way of ensuring the benefits of a real and durable peace to all peoples’. Until that time international conferences generally had taken two forms: those that organized peace after a war, and those that organized war after a period of peace. International law did not penetrate these great congresses; it served only as an auxiliary to official diplomacy. As noted by Professor Albert Geouffre De Lapradelle and Politis in 1909: ‘[During] the Hague Conferences, for the first time, the effort of codification undertaken concerned the totality of States’ and people’s life: both during war and peace periods.’14 According to Robert Kolb, ‘the Conventions of The Hague mark the first step towards the repression of the subjective law of war, a small but decisive step towards the development of the law of limitation of the use of force in international relations’.15 Jurists had a prominent place in the conferences that were thus considered an ‘intense nest of the legal activity of the world’.16 For the first time, lawyers appeared in large numbers next to diplomats, military figures, and politicians in order to ‘civilize war and prepare peace’. 17 The Institute of International Law owed its success to the fact that many of its members were not only great scholars and distinguished jurists, but also served in various posts (politicians, consultants, etc.) that allowed them to exercise considerable influence on the conclusion of international agreements. Thanks to them, the Institute’s decisions could penetrate into government councils and diplomatic meetings.18 Contrary to the widespread idea that lawyers of the public space in France during the nineteenth century were isolated, Politis contributed to the public debate regarding pacifism through articles he published in journals that did not specialize in law.19 Based on liberal ideas that public opinion could influence political decisions and prevent wars, he presented the work accomplished by the Institute in the Revue de la Paix.20 He wished that ‘the public notices the reforms [the Institute] has undertaken and that it will exercise pressure on governments [to take them into consideration]’. According to Politis, the ‘“Friends of Peace” have a direct influence on the masses’. It was therefore ‘their responsibility to follow the work of the Institute and to propagate its results’.21 Although Louis Renault shared the 1907 Nobel Peace Prize with the Italian Ernest Moneta for the role he played during the two Peace Conferences of The Hague, it is interesting that he often wished to

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distinguish his actions as separate from the pacifist movement. For example, he believed that the premature codification of international law was dangerous and he was against compulsory arbitration or arms control, ideas which were considered of utmost importance by the peace movement. According to him, such procedures needed to be approached carefully and should derive from the organization of international relations on the basis of law.22 At that moment, Nicolas Politis aligned himself with the ideas of his teacher, Renault. On 10 April 1901, as a member of the Sociological Society of Paris, he participated in a discussion that followed a communication from Lucien Le Foyer on the peace movement.23 During this discussion, the members of the Society developed various arguments: that war should not be considered a crime in all cases, nor should it be considered contrary to the idea of association. Nor should it be accused of being dissociative of the vital elements of society or of being the most important source of social disorder. Some saw the federation movement as the best guarantor of peace while others called into question the existence of profitable wars, or legitimate wars initiated for the defence of the rights of nations. Politis adopted a moderate tone regarding the potential role of international law in the pacification of the world: [Some] say peace will be realized through the law while [some others say] that international law rather tends to hinder the peace of nations. Allow me to say that international law neither deserves this unlimited confidence nor this capital accusation. We seem to forget that law is a set of rules governing the life of nations and that these laws cannot vary according to individuals. They primarily reflect the state of civilization the nations have reached. They show us that modern states have a great interest in living in peace. The international conflicts tend to become both larger and rarer. No doubt perpetual peace still seems like a distant ideal, but it is certain that the states have already taken the route that will lead them there. [ . . . ] We cannot but all agree on the necessity of the evolution towards peace and towards the abolition of war. However, some moderations should be recommended to the pacifists. I am the first to admire the zeal and loyalty to their goal [peace] that Mr. Frédéric Passy and his many friends show in France. But let me question the ways they use to achieve the abolition of war. My concerns in this regard have begun a long time ago after reading the organs of Peace societies, in particular those of ‘Peace through Law’ society. They were confirmed tonight by the fiery argument of Foyer. We were shown the

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many horrors of war so as to explain this odious institution to us [ . . . ] there is a tendency to say that the enormous disturbance caused by war occurs only in order to conquer some inch of territory. This is putting it in a too obnoxious perspective and it is not true. The war between civilized states is never done under the conditions that were described. The conquest of a territory is only the pretext or the immediate consequence of the struggle, while the real purpose of it is the establishment of commercial and political supremacy of a state on all or part of a continent [ . . . ] Thus, the war has a character both more important and more serious. It appears as the manifestation of the struggle for existence which characterizes the common law of any animal society.24

Politis also strongly criticized the pacifist argument that the possibility of an international war made to some extent excusable the possibility of a civil war because the latter was less serious: ‘in order to condemn an international war, we are threatened with a civil war that would be the consequence of the declaration of the first.’ This reasoning appeared to him as dangerous, likely to capture the imagination of ordinary people and provoke hatred and class struggle within a country. Politis was very sceptical of peace groups that tended to discredit war as an institution in their desire to reach their goal—the establishment of peace—as soon as possible. However, he sympathized with those that simply tried to improve the state of things through the progressive practice of arbitration.25 Politis, fascinated by the concept of arbitration, decided to study its history in order ‘to better understand the past and help people better appreciate the value of this institution’. In 1905 he began working with his friend De Lapradelle on a publication entitled Recueil of International Arbitration. An active member of the Institute of International Law, Politis believed in the importance of studying international jurisprudence and in the role that international lawyers had to play in the construction of a rational diplomatic system among European states, one based on law and legality: ‘in my academic career’, he wrote in an autobiographical note, ‘I have always been inspired by the need to update, enrich, enforce international law in order to establish legal order and peace in the world and more especially in Europe’.26 In that spirit, Politis published a series of books and articles that focused on conflicts in progress between states, conferences, and conventions, especially in the Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée and in the Revue Générale

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de Droit International Public, the French version of the Belgian magazine of Rollin Jacquemyns, founded by Louis Renault and directed by Antoine Pillet and Paul Fauchille. According to Politis, the nature and character of international disputes vary.27 In 1910, he already made the distinction between the terms disputes (litiges) and conflicts. The first term applied to differences of a legal nature, while the second applied to more serious differences that might lead to war. The Hague Conferences had advocated use of the methods of mediation and political arbitration for the pacific settlement of conflicts. They also proposed new methods such as the ‘commissions of inquiry’. Finally, they introduced the idea of the creation of a regular jurisdiction by creating a Permanent Court of Arbitration.28 Politis, who had closely followed the second Hague Conference, observed a tendency towards substituting the diplomacy of law—with its recourse to direct agreements, third-party brokered reconciliation, and use of the legal instrument of arbitration—for the diplomacy of force, which promoted the realist policy of alliances and the balance of power as the guarantor of peace.29 At that time, the ‘father’ of the Geneva Protocol of 1924 for the settlement of international disputes supported arbitration as the most effective and equitable diplomatic process to settle disputes of a legal nature and as a necessity for the organization of international society. However, following Renault, he claimed that it could only inspire confidence in governments and people when accomplished within the framework of the legal domain and not within that of politics or diplomacy, which cannot protect states from falling victim to political considerations. Nonetheless, he admitted that the boundaries between political and legal conflicts were not always clear, and that only by becoming obligatory could arbitration one day become a strong instrument for conflict resolution.30 Regarding the other peaceful methods of solving disputes proposed by The Hague Conferences, mediation and commissions of inquiry, Politis believed that mediation should follow the example of arbitration and gradually pass from sovereigns to judges. Similarly, he contended that commissions of inquiry are useful only to extend diplomatic efforts and pave the way for arbitration. They must gradually be entrusted to a more technical and impartial body, such as a court.31 Furthermore, Politis supported the idea of the German jurist Carl Ludwig von Bar (or De Bar) for the creation of a permanent academy of arbiters and mediators composed of members appointed by states: these would be the

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‘Sages des nations’ (wise men of nations), worthy to be eventually the ‘Conservateurs de la paix’ (conservators of peace).32 Concerning the newly created Permanent Court of Arbitration, Politis accused it of being inclined to political rather than legal considerations.33 He demanded the creation of a Permanent Court of Justice, such as that proposed by the United States, truly independent of political considerations. Politis also proposed giving individuals direct recourse to international arbitration tribunals.34 Nevertheless, opening up an international court to individuals as well as imposing any legal instrument for the pacific settlement of disputes always depends on the goodwill of the disputing governments. Making arbitration obligatory was closely tied to the more general question of obedience to international law, or the reconciliation of state sovereignty with necessary submission to legality. The response to this question was revealed to Politis in 1901, the year Léon Duguit’s Traité de Droit Constitutionnel was published. The emergence of socialist ideas and collective radical liberalism on the political scene profoundly affected the legal science of the time. Émile Durkheim’s notion of human solidarity, which was introduced into legal science by Duguit, had already opened up a path to the synthesis between liberty and justice that France had been seeking during the republican period and which distinguished it (in terms of the role of the state and its relationship to society) from the political models of its two great neighbours: the authoritarianism of the German Empire and the liberalism of the United Kingdom.35 Popularized in 1896 by Léon Bourgeois, the notion of human solidarity was central to the preoccupations of the French political and scholarly elites and became a key instrument in Politis’s legal theory. Profoundly influenced by the ideas of Duguit, Politis developed his doctrine after the First World War, in Les nouvelles tendances du droit international (1927) and his course at The Hague Academy on Le problème des Limitations de la Souveraineté et la Théorie de l’Abus des Droits dans les Rapports Internationaux (1925). In his last analysis, he supported the idea that the most important issue to be tackled at all levels was that of the harmonious synthesis of order and liberty. In a civil society, the individual needed to be put in his true place in such a way that the pre-eminence of the general interest would be respected without being threatened by state despotism. While the latter should be accorded all necessary authority, it should not be allowed to infringe upon the personal liberties of citizens. At the international level, the community of states required leadership, just like any other society.

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States must accept limitations on their independence, restrictions on their sovereignty, and submission to the law. International law must no longer be founded on the supposed creative will of states. For Politis, the true subjects of international law (and, indeed, all law) were diverse groups of individuals related by ties of solidarity. The individual thus plays an essential role in international relations: If, between members of different national groups, there is a bond of solidarity strong enough, it will create moral and economic bonds that will be transformed into international legal rules the moment when the sentiment of justice and the solidarity of the individuals of those groups would be seriously compromised not being sanctioned by a material force of obligation.36

The reduction of the idea of states to that of social groups such as they are encountered in the framework of a given society (e.g., workers) led to the same reflections that occupied the French intellectuals of the Third Republic. Politis’s theory responded to strong demands for reform that would facilitate the integration of the various groups or collective societies while preventing one group from dominating the others. On the international scene, the idea of reconciliating individual liberty with social justice was expressed in various projects of collective security created within the framework of the League of Nations (LON) in order to prevent one national group from dominating another through warfare. Politis defined international solidarity as the profound source of international law since 1908, although he was still hesitant about its true nature.37 The central ideas of his doctrine (increasing integration, economic interdependence) were based on the idea of federation as a way to establish peace and security between regions of common interest. This idea became central to Politis’s thought during the interwar period and was related to the creation of a form of a European union. Nevertheless, the federative idea in his thinking can be traced back to 1898, as analysed in his long study on La guerre gréco-turque du point de vue du droit international regarding a federation of Balkan states under the control of the Ottoman Empire.38 This book, for a long time unknown to students of international law, is of particular interest especially because it demonstrates Politis’s early attachment to extra-legal considerations and arguments such as the notion of the ‘legitimacy’ of war.

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In 1907, Politis admitted that ‘in order to become obligatory, arbitration requires further development of international solidarity, which will lead to a greater desire for peace, stability and confidence in the interstate relations’.39 The concept of the belligerents’ solidarity made its appearance in another book by Politis and Paul Fauchille, the Manuel de la Croix Rouge à l’usage des militaires de terre et de mer et des sociétés de secours aux blessés (1910), which was then regarded as an important contribution to the so called “international hospitalier law” (today: international humanitarian law). After the authors, the notion of belligerents’ solidarity entailed a sanction of international law, as it is considered the best guaranty of respect for the law.40 International solidarity implies the existence of an international community presented for the first time as having common interests. In 1898, Politis wrote in his book on the Greek–Turkish war of 1897: ‘If war is a barbaric institution, a social scourge, bringing with it death and destruction, it has at least this advantage, to clarify the situation and interests of the members of the international community’.41 It was this international community that needed to be organized under the rule of law. At the end of the nineteenth century, the idea that the maintenance of peace was of general interest to all nations, and not just to those involved in a conflict, appeared for the first time.42 This idea was introduced on the one hand as the moral duty of third parties to offer their mediation, requested by the Russian government in 1899, but on the other as the need to clarify the rules and practices of neutral states after the Russian–Japanese war of 1904. ‘The States’, writes Politis in 1910, ‘shall be, according to their potential, the official guardians of international peace.’43 ‘When a conflict constitutes a threat to peace, it ceases to be the exclusive concern of the parties involved, to become a concern of all, in particular of those that are more likely to be involved in the war.’44 It is therefore ‘important for all States to try to resolve the conflict’.45 Approaching war as a social evil introduced a new period in which classical international law, which tended to be private, coordinating relations between independent subjects—in other words, the sovereign states—cedes its place to a new type of international law, a ‘communautaire’ (communal) one, in the sense of a law expressing the collective interest of all states.46 Through his actions within the framework of the LON, in particular the conference for the limitation of armaments, Politis continued to try to soften the impatient voices of pacifists who demanded radical reforms: ‘I was accused of pessimism. I was accused to be more of a jurist than of a

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believer: faith and ideals—I was told—can be as important as the legal formulas, for only texts are not to bring peace, it is the spirit of the people that will’, he wrote in 1928.47 This line of thought, developed by Nicolas Politis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, helps put in new terms the question of international lawyers’ intellectual engagement while serving the cause of peace before the First World War. At the same time it illuminates the origin of the doctrines and ideas developed by lawyers engaged in the context of new international institutions for the creation of a collective security system that reached its peak during the interwar period. The abuse of the clause ‘as the circumstances allow’ in the conventions adopted at the two Hague Conferences shows that there were international lawyers at the end of the nineteenth century who acted as moderate reformers who did not believe that we could improve the fate of peoples by force or by reversing the social order. Through publications, they sought to make themselves useful by mobilizing their academic expertise to inform the public and guide the actions of statesmen. However, it was during the interwar period that a dynamic return of lawyers to the public sphere allowed them to be considered not as simple technical assistants of politicians, but as main actors creating reformist ideologies. In the absence of a super-state which holds a monopoly on the use of force, the international lawyers of the interwar period undertook the task of imposing the authority of law in international relations. At the same time, they tried to present themselves as the only guarantors of social peace in the international scene.

NOTES 1. Albert Geouffre de Lapradelle, Nicolas, Politis, “La deuxième conférence de la Paix. Origine. Convocation. Organisation”, RGDIP, 1909, p. 385. 2. Nicolas, Politis, “L’avenir de la médiation”, 17 RGDIP, Paris, 1910, p. 136. 3. Martti, Koskenniemi, ‘Entre utopie et apologie’, of the same author, La politique du droit international, Collection Doctrine(s), Paris: Éditions Pedone, 2007, p. 52. 4. LON, C.606.M.211.1924.IX. 5. Robert Kolb, Antonio Truyol y Serra, Doctrines sur le fondement du droit des gens, Paris: Pedone, 2007, p. 95. 6. Pascal, Ory, Jean-François Sirinelli, Les intellectuels en France. De l’Affaire Dreyfus à nos jours, Paris: Armand Colin, 2002, p. 15. 7. Pierre-Marie, Dupuy, Droit International public, 8ed., Paris: Dalloz, 2006, p. 565.

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8. Nicolas, Politis, La guerre gréco-turque au point de vue du droit international: contribution à la question d’Orient, Paris: A. Pedone, 1989, preface. 9. Warren, Kuehl, Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists, USA: Greenwood Press, 1983, preface. 10. Guillaume, Sacriste, Antonio, Vauchez, “Les ‘bons offices’ du droit international: la construction d’une autorité non politique dans le concert diplomatique des années 1920”, Critique internationale, v. 25, 2005, pp. 110–113. 11. Nicolas, Politis, “L’Institut du droit International”, Revue de la Paix, n° 12, December 1908, Paris, pp. 280–281. 12. Pierre, Manent, Cours familier de philosophie politique, Paris: Galimard, 2001, p. 285. 13. Robert, Kolb, “Le droit relatif au maintien de la paix internationale: évolution historique valeurs fondatrices et tendances actuelles”, Cours et travaux de l’Institut des Hautes études Internationales de Paris, Paris: A. Pedone, 2005, p. 6. 14. Albert Geouffre, De Lapradelle, Nicolas, Politis, “La deuxième conférence de la Paix. Origine. Convocation. Organisation”, RGDIP, 1909, p. 388. 15. Robert, Kolb, Ius contra bellum, Le droit international relatif au maintien de la paix, Bâle: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 2009, p. 33. 16. Albert Geouffre, De Lapradelle, Nicolas, Politis, “La deuxième conférence de la Paix”, op. cit., p. 388. 17. Ibid., p. 437. 18. During periods of crisis it is not unusual for governments to use prominent academic experts to deal with problems that usually do not have a proper solution (Nissan, Oren, ‘Statecraft and the Academic Intellectual’, in Intellectuals in politics, Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1984, p. 10). After Gaudemet, the period between 1870 and 1914 can be defined as a ‘Jurists’ Republic’ (‘La République des juristes’). During that period, many jurists thought that governing was a legal issue that could be entrusted to legal experts (Gaudemet, Yves-Henri, Les juristes et la vie politique de la IIIe République, Paris: PUF, 1970, p. 20). 19. Marc Millet, “Les professeurs de droit citoyens. Entre ordre juridique et espace public, contribution à l’étude des interactions entre les débats et les engagements des juristes français (1914–1995)”, PhD thesis on Political Science, under the direction de Hugues Portelli, Université Paris 2, tome II, 2000, p. 573. 20. Organ of the Société pour l’Arbitrage entre nations, this journal was founded in 1867 by the Comité de Paris and the Société Française des Amis de la Paix. Its goal was to defend and spread the idea of international justice and arbitration (The American Advocate of Peace and Arbitration, vol. 51, no. 2, April and May 1889, p. 51, et Revue de la Paix, December 1908, ‘notre programme’). 21. On the 1st of January 1907, according to the List of organs of the pacific movement published by the Permanent International Bureau of

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22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

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Peace of Berne, there existed 39 international societies and 145 national societies of peace on 26 different countries. (Albert Geouffre, DeLapradelle, Politis, “La deuxième conférence de la Paix.”, op. cit., p. 397. League of Nations (LON) archives, Personal archives of N. Politis (APNP), 214/28, Note on Louis Renault by Politis. Revue internationale de Sociologie, 1897, vol. 5, p. 335. “Le mouvement pacifiste” speeches by Tarde, Vauthier, Worms, Limousin, Coste, Rappin, Politis, de Krauz, Monin and Vauthier, Bochard, Revue international de sociologie, 10 April 1901, vol. 9, 1901, pp. 380–382. Also see Jacques, Novicow, “Sociologues et pacifiques”, Revue international de sociologie, vol. 9, 1901, pp. 802–818. Ibid. APNP, 208/3, Mes mémoires. Diego Uribe, Vargas, “La paz es una tregua”, Mél. Boutros-Ghali, vol. II, Brussels: Bruyant, 1998, p. 766. Nicolas, Politis, “L’avenir de la médiation”, op. cit., pp. 140–141. Ibid., at 136–137. Ibid., at 140–141. Nicolas, Politis, “Les Commissions internationales d’enquête”, RGDIP, Paris, 1912, p. 171. Nicolas, Politis, “L’avenir de la médiation”, op. cit., pp. 159–163. Nicolas, Politis, “The work of The Hague Court”, Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, no. 6, November 1911, p. 9. Nicolas, Politis “La Déclaration de Londres de 1909 sur divers points de droit maritime”, Journal du droit international privé et de la jurisprudence comparée, tome 36, 1909, p. 898. Marie-Claude, Blais, La solidarité, Histoire d’une idée, Paris: Gallimard, 2007, pp. 317–318. Nicolas, Politis, “L’influence de la doctrine de Léon Duguit sur le développement du droit internationale”, Archives de Philosophie du droit et de la Sociologie juridique, nos 1–2, 1932, p. 71. For Leon Duguit’s doctrine see Fabrice, Mellery, “Léon Duguit: L’état détrôné”, Nader, Hakim, Fabrice, Mellery, Méthodes du droit: Le renouveau de la doctrine française, Études réunis, Paris: Dalloz, 2009, pp. 215–262. Nicolas, Politis, “Le droit international privé en Grèce”, Journal de Cluny, 1908, pp. 5, 22–36. Umut Özsu, “Politis and the Limits of Legal Form”, EJIL, vol. 23 (2012/ 1), pp. 243–253. Analyses et comptes-rendus, “Les sanctions de l’arbitrage international par M. Politis”, Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique en France et à l’Étranger, vol. XXV no. 2, April-May-June 1907.

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40. Paul, Fauchille, Nicolas Politis, Manuel de la Croix-Rouge. À l’usage des militaires de terre et de mer et des sociétés de secours aux blessés, 1908, Paris: Société française d’imprimerie et de librairie, p. 155. 41. Nicolas, Politis, La guerre gréco-turque, op. cit., p. 166. 42. Robert, Kolb, Ius contra bellum, pp. 6–7. 43. Nicolas Politis, “L’avenir de la médiation . . . ”, pp. 152–153. 44. Nicolas, Politis, “Les Commissions internationales d’enquête”, p. 166. 45. Nicolas, Politis, “L’avenir de la médiation”, pp. 138–139. 46. Robert, Kolb, Ius contra bellum, op. cit., pp. 6–7. 47. Nicolas, Politis, “Le problème de la paix et la Société des Nations”, in Année Politique française et étrangère, no. 10, April 1928, Paris: Librairie Universitaire J. Gamber, 1928, p. 14. Marilena Papadaki is a PhD candidate in History and Civilizations at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Onassis Public Benefit Foundation scholarship). Her PhD subject is the biography of Nicolas Politis (1872–1942). The thesis has been defended on 14 October 2016 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Her publications include ‘The “Government Intellectuals”: Nicolas Politis—An Intellectual Portrait’, European Journal of International Law (EJIL), vol. 23(2012/1), pp. 221–231; ‘Nicolas Politis, une approche biographique’, Monde(s), no. 7, May 2015, pp. 45–64; and ‘The emergence of international responsibility in the aftermath of the First World War’, World War I Centenary (in Greek), Colloquium of K. Koufa Foundation for the promotion of international and human rights law, May 2015, Thessaloniki, pp. 72–85.

G. E. Modigliani in the Zimmerwald Movement: ‘War Against War’ and the United States of Europe Donatella Cherubini Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani, the elder brother of the famous artist Amedeo,1 is an example of a politician who tried to prevent the First World War and subsequently proposed solutions for a new international order.2 During and after the war he was among the ranks of anti-revolutionary European socialists,3 and he was strongly committed to continuing the Second International after its collapse in the face of war.4 Modigliani’s political activity is therefore well known in socialist historiography. However, he also played a significant role among the pioneers of pacifism and Europeanism, making a personal contribution to the socialist formula ‘between the League of Nations and the United States of Europe’. Modigliani was born in 1872 into the Jewish bourgeoisie of Livorno. He absorbed positivist culture at the Faculty of Law in Pisa, and embraced socialism with an evolutionary approach. Recognizing the importance of economics for society, he rejected any revolutionary solution to the class

D. Cherubini (*) Department of Political and International Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_5

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struggle and promoted gradual (reformist) action within the socialist economic organization. His first political and union experience in Livorno enabled Modigliani to predict the degeneration of Italian politics under accelerated capitalist development.5 Meanwhile, he opposed the leadership of Benito Mussolini and the revolutionary left in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1913, he regarded Parliament as a bulwark against the anti-democratic sentiment that was widespread before (and after) the war. By this time Modigliani had become a leader and guide of the Italian reformist socialists: until the early 1920s he maintained a harsh personal dispute with left-wing and later maximalist leader Giacinto Menotti Serrati, while on the other hand he denounced the former socialist Benito Mussolini and all interventionists, whose stirrings and claims foreshadowed the violence and intolerance of fascism in the post-war period. Within the neutralist Italian Socialist Party, Modigliani was distinguished by his intransigent pacifism.6 In his view, it was not only the Central Empires (Germany and Austria) who were responsible for the conflict, but also the entire European industrial class on the basis of its colonialist, protectionist, and imperialist aspirations.7 He therefore refused to take sides: those who hoped that France and Great Britain would defeat Germany were deluding themselves. Through neutrality and in concert with other neutral countries,8 Italy could find its own ‘logical historical function of hastening, preparing and facilitating the end of the conflict’ before it spread beyond the boundaries of Europe. When Italy entered the war in May 1915, the Socialist Party lost all opportunity to speak to the masses: Parliament was closed, the press was censored, and political meetings were forbidden. When they did pass the censorship, texts were branded with internationalism, as were Modigliani himself and Oddino Morgari, both determined to give birth—through an extraordinary international Conference—to an energetic movement that would hasten European peace and uphold the liberty of all peoples.9 This was the prelude to the Swiss Zimmerwald Conference, the last attempt by European socialists to arouse the Socialist International,10 and to ‘summon the proletariat to common action for peace’.11 Secretly organized by Morgari and the Swiss Robert Grimm on 5–8 September 1915, the Conference was attended by 40 delegates from several countries, including German and French minorities.12 Zimmerwald

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was a decisive step for Modigliani. Not only did he play a prominent role in the Italian delegation, and not only had he become a leader at the international level; Zimmerwald majority stances embodied the principles that inspired his pacifism and guided his life-long anti-war commitment. Divided between the left gathered around Vladimir Lenin and the majority right, the Conference split on the agenda presented by the Russian party. Lenin proposed transforming the imperialist war into a civil war against the bourgeoisie: ‘the struggle against imperialism must also be a revolutionary struggle against capitalism’.13 Essentially, he recalled the conclusions of the Stuttgart Socialist International Conference held in 1907; however, apart from a few single delegates, only the Russian Socialist Party maintained a rigorously Marxist stance.14 Later, Leon Trotsky regarded this front as the embryo of the Third International: ‘In that little Swiss village Lenin laid the first stone of the Communist International.’15 The Italian delegation was entirely hostile to Lenin’s thesis.16 Although Giacinto Menotti Serrati and Angelica Balabanoff adopted a less unconditional stance, Modigliani personified assertive opposition to Russian revolutionary doctrinarism, which he did not consider at all necessary for general European peace: the Zimmerwald Conference was being held in the interest of peace, and peace should be its primary aim. Modigliani’s position on pacifism was coherent and original, primarily in his opposition to Lenin. His gradualist socialist stance was strongly against an immediate international class war. In any case, he aimed for the intervention of the masses in the struggle for peace; since socialist leaders were the ‘spokesmen’ of the masses, their duty was to stop the fratricidal massacre: The Conference must not become an instrument for one tendency or another, but must try to inaugurate a struggle of the proletariat for peace, a struggle which can be joined by anyone embracing socialist premises and principles [ . . . ] struggling in every country for a prompt end to the war. The Conference is not supposed to underline what divides the parties and groups joining such action, but rather what unifies them. For this aim we don’t need an agenda. We need an immediate appeal to the European proletariat, a battle cry calling the working class to strong action, to resumption of the class struggle.17

Modigliani led the majority at the Zimmerwald Conference, which confirmed the imperialist nature of the war, distinguished between class struggle

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and class war, and called for peace without annexations and without any war indemnity.18 It was thus Modigliani himself who drafted the final Manifesto, along with Trotsky and Christian Rakowsky (Lenin signed it too, finally accepting the majority declaration). The struggle for peace was then inaugurated, echoing Marx’s appeal for a union of workers of the entire world: Peace is not possible without also condemning the idea of violating the rights and liberties of peoples [ . . . ] Socialists of belligerent countries have the duty to carry on this struggle with passion and energy; socialists of neutral countries have the duty to effectively sustain their brothers in the struggle against bloody barbarity [ . . . ] Workers of the world, unite!19

From then on Lenin was harshly critical of the Zimmerwald majority and especially the Italian socialists, since they did not break with the socialist chauvinists of the Second International, or they asked only for peace without any political or revolutionary directive.20 (‘In a series of public lectures he emphasized once again that it was only by breaking irrevocably with the legacy of the Second International that revolutionary socialism could continue to advance.’21) For his part, and long afterwards, Modigliani continued to regard the Manifesto of Zimmerwald as his Manifesto. Modigliani was furthermore beginning to aim for European federation (or rather confederation): it would serve as a guarantee of disarmament and hence of peace, and could pave the way to the advent of socialism, even if it was originally bound to the interests of the bourgeoisie and governments. The United States of Europe thus became one of Modigliani’s priority goals, a benchmark in his subsequent political activity. From this point of view he aligned himself with major exponents of Europeanism, which evolved between the two world wars. He demonstrated his Europeanism early, presenting a significant agenda with Claudio Treves at a session of the Italian Parliament of 16 April 1916.22 After the war, they invited the government to work towards the gradual preparation of a confederative organization of European states respectful of national autonomy. Meanwhile, Lenin and his closest collaborators continued attacking the effort to construct a socialist ‘peace program’ and the hope of achieving democratic peace without [revolution] [ . . . ] The limits of the

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approach appeared precisely at the point where work for peace within the structures of the pre-war movement once again became possible. Should Zimmerwald commit itself to constructing an alternative to a ‘bankrupt’ movement, or accept the legitimacy of the Second International and work toward its revival?23

Lenin was hoping for a new type of International that would meet the demands of the age of imperialism. ‘In many ways Zimmerwald was Lenin’s triumph, the moment at which his challenge to the failed International and the invocation of a radical alternative took a political form.’ On the other side, ‘when Modigliani [ . . . ] described the results of Zimmerwald to the PSI’s Bologna section on 27 November, they were greeted in a unanimous motion “as a vote for the new International”. It was Lenin’s conception that a Third International would emerge, that set him apart [ . . . ].’24 The polarization between left and right was becoming more and more acute when the Zimmerwald Movement met again. The Second Zimmerwaldian Conference was set up by the Berne International Secretariat on 24–30 April 1916 in the village of Kiental, at the foot of Blümlisalp. Its aims were ‘to confirm the principles underlined by the first Conference; to illustrate means for their practical diffusion; to establish the stance of the socialist proletariat towards peace problems; to give a watchword to all delegates regarding the operation of the International Socialist Bureau’.25 Lenin and the left did not believe war could end solely because about 40 delegates met to launch appeals to the proletariat, or because they voted against their own governments, deluding themselves that they could influence international diplomacy. It was rather more useful to figure out if the war could help bring about an upheaval in favour of the proletariat: to make one’s own revolution in the context of the war. Very few delegates sustained Lenin’s proposal, least of all Modigliani: imposing revolution and violence from the outside, rather than allowing them to germinate spontaneously in response to conditions, was a true folly in his view. Later, when the Bolshevik revolution made many Italian socialists regret not following Lenin, Modigliani continued to repeat that in Italy, the objective conditions for revolution did not exist. He underlined this point again in 1922, when Zinoviev, in Moscow, charged Italians with remaining inactive in the face of the advancement of fascism, not fighting blood with blood and arms with arms.

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In other words: The European socialist left criticized the Zimmerwald Movement, underlining the lack of any methodical guidelines for political action that could put an end to the war and tackle the aftermath. The issues that led to the fracture of European socialism revolved around the previous failure of the Second International and the weakness of the Zimmerwald ransom, together with the shattering effect of the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent emergence of the Third International. At the Kiental Conference, the Russian party remained in the minority, although it enlarged its front and opened new breaches in other national delegations. The Italian delegates were the same as at Zimmerwald but they were now internally divided: notably, the future maximalist Serrati and Anglica Balabanoff represented the centre of the new conference, by now certain ‘to live in an epoch of deep social unrest, requiring new means of struggle’.26 The fracture of the Italian delegation is fundamental for understanding Modigliani’s stance during and after the war. After denying the validity of the Russian thesis, he claimed that it was ‘arbitrary to reject the progressive function of the bourgeoisie’. On the contrary, capitalist development itself would lead European states to develop close economic ties and interests, which would lead, in the interest of everyone’s survival, to a common point of view and a situation of stable, long-lasting peace. That is to say: the United States of Europe would come into being.27 This situation was not expected to germinate in war itself; rather, the capitalist classes of every European nation would inevitably move towards it. Modigliani thus confirmed ‘the need to request immediate armistice’ and his watchwords were ‘war against war’. He maintained that the revolution could not be imposed by violence before suitable conditions had developed in European countries. He again drafted the final Manifesto, which again exhorted the proletariat to demand peace. By now Modigliani was definitely one of Lenin’s greatest ‘enemies’: ‘one who conducts the politics of the bourgeoisie under the flag of socialism’, an example of ‘impenitent reformist lawyers and deputes’.28 For Lenin and his comrades and supporters, the Zimmerwald Movement was definitely a failure; Modigliani always considered the Zimmerwald Movement to be a point of reference against any war, and always criticized Bolshevik revolutionary inflexibility. It is well known that this conflict/disagreement between Lenin and reformist/pacifist socialists was later analysed in detail and debated; it is enough to mention that certain historians have indicated the substantial lack of incisiveness

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of Zimmerwald appeals to the proletariat and their misplaced confidence in the progressive function of the bourgeoisie.29 The Zimmerwald Movement failed to attain concrete success, despite a new meeting in Stockholm in 1917 and further initiatives in 1918.30 After all, Modigliani’s stance remained defeated from the 1920s to the 1940s until the outbreak of the Second World War. But what he proposed was a significant attempt to overcome old and new problems of coexistence between states and nationalities, as well as an anticipation of the integration of Europe in the second post-war period.31 Modigliani predicted further risks to peace in Europe and denounced the violent stance of Bolshevism [ . . . ]. He opposed the two most popular figures of the war period: Lenin in the Zimmerwald Movement, and US President Woodrow Wilson and his supranational creature, the League of Nations. Later, while exiled from fascist Italy, he participated in the renewed Socialist International (Labour Socialist International), denouncing the incapacity of the League of Nations with regard to peace treaties that nourished nationalism, conflicts between countries, and therefore fascism [ . . . ]. Only ten years later, his conviction that all wars are imperialist was dramatically reinforced: when Hitler came to power, Modigliani attempted to block fascism at an international level, and in the face of the Second World War he staunchly invoked the Zimmerwald Manifesto.

NOTES 1. D. Cherubini, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani. Un riformista nell’Italia liberale, Milano 1990. See J. Modigliani, Modigliani, senza leggenda, Florence 1958; C. Parisot, Modigliani, Paris 2005; M. Secrets, Modigliani. A life, New York 2011. 2. D. Cherubini, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani from the paix quelconque to the Europeanisation of the League of Nations, in Pour la Paix en Europe. Institutions et société civile dans l’entre-deux-guerres—For Peace in Europe. Institutions and Civil Society between the World Wars, M. Petricioli, D. Cherubini (éds), Bruxelles 2007. Several parts of this essay—summarizing Modigliani’s political activity beyond the Zimmerwald Movement—are reproduced here in italics; the reader is referred to the essay for the references, except for some classical or more recent texts relevant to the Zimmerwald Movement.

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3. As well as Filippo Turati, Claudio Treves, Britain’s Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson, the Belgian Emile Vandervelde, and the Austrians Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler. 4. Ernst Nobs Papers, Letters from Giuseppe E. Modigliani 1928–1931, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (IISH), ARCH01018. 5. State protectionism, militarist requirements of heavy industry, anti-liberal and nationalist tendencies led to the colonial war for the conquest of Libya in 1911 and finally to intervention in World War I. Modigliani quickly denounced the curbs on Italian development. 6. The Italian Socialist Party managed to remain united: the formula of ‘neither adhering nor sabotaging’ combined condemnation of the war with the desire for commitment to immediate peace that would ensure the recovery of Italy, Italian socialism and socialist internationalism. Nevertheless, there were many internal differences, and Modigliani’s position became increasingly more original. 7. Discorsi parlamentari di Giuseppe E. Modigliani, published by resolution of the Chamber of Deputies, Vol. I. 8. On the League of neutral countries, see C. Malandrino, Gobetti, Treves e la SdN, in Alle origini dell’europeismo in Piemonte. La crisi del primo dopoguerra, la cultura politica piemontese e il problema dell’unità europea, Torino 1993. 9. Avanti!, 19 June 1915. 10. This was a fairly tormented process, complicated by the diverging positions of socialists belonging to the Entente countries on one hand and the Austrians and Germans on the other, and by opposition between those who saw the war as an opportunity to favour the proletarian revolution and those who remained faithful to the pacifist stance. 11. Avanti!, 25 May 1915. 12. After a few meetings, not only in Switzerland, the Zimmerwald Conference was attended by about 40 delegates: official delegates of Polish, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian parties, ‘personal participation of the Swiss party’, the entire Russian Central Committee, and the French and German minorities. See Y. Collart, Le parti socialiste Suisse et l’Internationale: 1914–1915: de l’union nationale a Zimmerwald. Genève 1969; Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung. See also Zimmerwald movement Collection, IISS, ARCH01775. 13. See Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung. 14. See L. Rapone, La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre. Dall’organizzazione della pace alla resistenza al fascismo, Carocci 1999. 15. L. Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography, New York 1930; J. Humbert-Droz, L’origine de l’Internationale communiste de Zimmerwald à Moscou, Neuchâtel 1968; R. Craig Nation, War on war: Lenin, the

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16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

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Zimmerwald Left, and the origins of communist internationalism, Durham 1989. A. Balabanoff, Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung 1914–1919, Leipzig 1928. Avanti!, 19 September 1915. See for example: A. Rosmer, Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, tome I, De l’Union sacrée à Zimmerwald, Paris 1936; Le mouvement ouvrier pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, tome II, De Zimmerwald à la Révolution Russe, Paris 1959. Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung. H. König, Lenin Und Der Italienische Sozialismus 1915–1921, Tübingen 1967. R. Craig Nation, War on war: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left. Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, 15 April 1915. R. Craig Nation, War on war: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left. Ibid. Avanti!, 7 May 1916. A. Balabanoff, Die Zimmerwalder Bewegung. D. Cherubini, L’altro Modigliani, in Giuseppe Emanuele, l’altro Modigliani. Pace, Europa e Libertà, Rome 1997. H. König, Lenin Und Der Italienische Sozialismus. See the above quoted bibliography. See Zimmerwald movement Collection. D. Cherubini, Pacifist and pro-European Italian socialism between the two World Wars. G.E. Modigliani’s proposals and requests in the international context, in Pela Paz! For Peace! Pour la Paix! (1849–1939), I. Valente. M. M. Tavares Ribeiro, M. F. Rollo, I. M. Freitas Valente, Alice Cuhna (eds), Brussels 2014.

Donatella Cherubini is Professor of Contemporary History and the History of Journalism at the Department of Political and International Sciences, University of Siena, Italy. She teaches several graduate classes, collaborates with public institutions on issues related to communication, directs undergraduate and graduate training in journalism, and coordinates many student/teacher grants and mobility actions inside the Erasmus European University exchange programme. She has published widely on Italian socialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Italian and international journalism; political, electoral, and social history of Tuscany; Italian universities from the mid-nineteenth century to fascism; and the university and journalism during the process of Italian unification. She is currently working on a book on the European dimension and intellectual contributions of a Siennese family through Great Britain, Germany, and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She continues to research and publish on European pacifism.

‘With Every Nerve in My Body I Stand for Peace’—Jane Ellen Harrison and the Heresy of War Jean Mills This chapter follows a theoretical trajectory, over the course of three works and culminating in a fourth essay at the outbreak of war in 1914, by the twentieth-century Cambridge classicist and public intellectual Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928), to argue that Harrison viewed theology, that is, religion as ‘a doctrine, a body of supposed truths,’1 as detrimental to peace, and that her challenges to religious dogma paired with her pacifist positions fuelled opposition and resistance to her ideas. In the essays ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions’ (1909), ‘Heresy and Humanity’ (1909), ‘Unanism and Conversion’ (1912), and, ultimately, ‘Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism’ (1915a), each later collected in Alpha and Omega (1915a), Harrison outlined her position that ‘[c]reeds, doctrines, theology, and the like, are only a part, and at first the least important part, of religion’,2 and that ‘it is by thinking of religion in the light of evolution, not as a réalité faite, but as a process’ that we are able to experience peaceful interaction and ‘a spirit of real patience and tolerance’3 for one another. An advocate of, and in many ways a crafter of,

J. Mills (*) Department of English, John Jay College, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_6

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the newly created fields of psychology, anthropology, and archaeology, Jane Harrison looked to these disciplines to examine the relationship between the social origins of religion and pacifism, in particular her response to the First World War. The essays under discussion here put her in conversation with leading pacifists and anti-war activists such as Bertrand Russell, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Clive Bell, and her beloved and respected close friend and classicist colleague Gilbert Murray, a key figure in the creation of the League of Nations. Her essay ‘War and the Reaction’, for example, which became ‘Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism’ and was a model and important source for Virginia Woolf’s more well-known pacifist polemic Three Guineas,4 and her other essays on the individual in relation to the family group and to the state, add dimension to a discourse on peace, peace-making, and peace-building that has recently sought to historically construct both aesthetic and active resistance to war, as well as to act as a counter to the mythologizing of war experience.5 Harrison’s work also represents her engagement with and support of the No Conscription Fellowship and the Union of Democratic Control, led by ‘Goldie’ Dickinson, both of which she backed at great professional risk, incurring the public wrath of her male, prowar colleagues at Cambridge; her vehement disagreement with Gilbert Murray, who supported the war; and her public support, again, at great professional risk, of Bertrand Russell. Harrison’s personal atheism, as well as her international reputation as a professional woman scholar who challenged the deeply conservative field of the Classics by shifting its focus away from the klea andron of the individuated, male Olympians towards an investigation of ancient Greek ritual, mostly dominated and managed by women, contributed to the hostile response to her pacifism founded on her theory that ‘a heroic society is almost a contradiction in terms’.6 Egotism and heroism, according to Harrison, must give way to an individualism that emerges from, but remains in contact with, the social group. The social group, at the same time, must remain vital by reflecting a common social purpose in fostering the growth of individualism, rather than the punitive, restrictive tyranny of what she called ‘the herd’,7 too often promulgated by ‘an oligarchy of old men’.8 It is a formulary she recognized in ancient Greek ritual practice, but which she deployed in these essays in analysing and investigating the root causes of violence and war.

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DARWIN,

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‘GOOD SOLDIER’, AND THE ‘EVERYMAN’ WAR: A TRAJECTORY OF PEACE

THE OF

In a paper she was commissioned to write for the centenary celebration of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1909, ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions’, Harrison, who was recovering from an illness, wrote to Gilbert Murray, while working on the essay, that, ‘I have piles of things to say & no power to say it, & it is dull, dull’ (JEH to GM, 4 November 1908).9 She would later take into consideration some of his recommendations for revision, writing that she had ‘put in all yr Great Thoughts & modified the greatness of some of my own’ (JEH to GM, 29 December 1908), but essentially, the essay presents many of Harrison’s nascent thoughts on the development of religious beliefs and practices, which later became foundational to one of her three major works, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1912). Harrison’s biographer, Annabel Robinson, agrees with Harrison’s assessment, writing that ‘[t]he Darwin article is the dullest thing she ever published’,10 while critic Martha C. Carpentier calls the essay ‘seminal’.11 I found it to be innovative and instructive as it initiates an aspect to her pacifism, based on a spectrum of feminist principles of cooperation and collaboration, which she brings forward not only in her groundbreaking studies of ancient Greek ritual, but in her expansive vision for human interaction. She continues to articulate many of these ideas in ‘Heresy and Humanity’, ‘Unanism and Conversion’, and ‘Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism’, contributing to a growing and diverse peace movement among her Bloomsbury social circle in the early decades of the twentieth century. Her work also places her in conversation with women’s involvement in and voices for peace during and after the cessation of the Great War. As Sandi E. Cooper points out, ‘when the war ended, the women who had labored [ . . . ] against the cascades of patriotism were among the first to realize that the Treaty of Versailles was the foundation stone for a new war—and they said so’.12 I also read Harrison’s essays as important to a broader philosophy and praxis of ‘positive peace’ in what became formalized after the Second World War as the discipline of Peace Studies.13 Echoing Hume, who noted, ‘popular theology has a positive appetite for absurdity’,14 Harrison, in framing her discussion, observes religion’s resistance to critical examination and points to the assumed existence of God, which rests on dogma, and that the ‘duty of man towards this revelation was

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to accept its doctrines and obey its precepts’15 without questioning its authority. But Hume, she argues, ‘confused religion with dogmatic theology’,16 and it isn’t until Darwin, whom Harrison calls both ‘intellectual king’ and ‘child’ of his generation, who was mocked aboard the Beagle for citing the Bible as moral absolute authority, that the revelations of the sacred books and then contemporary arguments for ‘intelligent design’ crumble at the feet of scientific research. Darwin demonstrated, according to Harrison, that ‘the suffering so manifest in Nature is seen to be compatible rather with Natural Selection than with the goodness and omnipotence of God’.17 Taking into account the Judaeo-Christian ‘true’ religion of revelation, ‘a teleological scheme complete and unalterable’,18 as well as the creeds of sceptics and agnostics, Harrison observes that both orthodox and sceptic alike ‘focussed on the truth or falsity of certain propositions’19 rather than the idea that religion grows gradually out of human consciousness, or, in line with Darwin’s process of Natural Selection, that ‘religion might be a necessary step in the evolution of human thought’.20 Her plea to re-evaluate our relationship to religious doctrine was in service to a higher ideal of social reorganization and international peace at a time when many in her Cambridge and Bloomsbury circle, such as Bertrand Russell in ‘The Free Man’s Worship’ (Independent Review, 1:3, December 1903), for example, or Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson in Religion: A Criticism and a Forecast (1905), were also seeking to assert an ethics and morality, as well as a spirituality, without the fetters of a punitive religious doctrine. Harrison’s essay places her within the context of a wider milieu of nonconformist Christianity critical of the orthodox Church, as well as a Quakerism devoted to public duty, social responsibility, and peace,21 in its plea for the importance of spirituality and ‘the emotional impulse’.22 As Grace Brockington writes in her study of the British Peace Movement from 1900 to 1918, ‘the ostensible repudiation of Christian doctrine among Apostolic circles did not lead to a withering of religious emotion but to the urgent demand for some new focus of devotion’.23 But Harrison’s atheism, as well as her feminism, set her apart, asking that we expand the possibilities of spiritual unity by insisting that we recognize religion as ‘a passionately social’24 process crucial to peace and political reform, not as a set of given, unassailable rules passed down from any religion. She wrote to Murray on 22 August 1917 complaining of the treatment of Conscientious Objectors and commending Murray on writing that ‘a man can have a conscience without belonging to a sect’.25 She felt that the public was more tolerant of Quakers because they hailed from an established religion,

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‘because the Quakers are accepted and respectable, but the poor lonely thinkers they’ll simply ‘larn him not to be a prig’—that awful herd’.26 As the leading figure of a group of Cambridge-educated male geniuses,27 known as Cambridge Ritualists or Cambridge Classical Anthropologists, Harrison focused her scholarly research on ritual, or religious practice, of the ancient Greeks, rather than theology and religious belief. She was also instrumental in our rethinking of Greek mythology as representative examples of religious practice rather than as a collection of interesting stories about the adventures and antics of the heroic Greek gods. She writes: Religion always contains two factors. First, a theoretical factor, what a man thinks about the unseen—his theology, or, if we prefer so to call it, his mythology. Second, what he does in relation to this unseen—his ritual. These factors rarely if ever occur in complete separation; they are blended in very varying proportions. Religion, we have seen, was in the last century regarded mainly in its theoretical aspect as a doctrine. Greek religion, for example, meant to most educated persons Greek mythology. Yet even a cursory examination shows that neither Greek nor Roman had any creed or dogma, any hard-and-fast formulation of belief. In the Greek Mysteries only we find what we would call a Confiteor; and this is not a confession of faith, but an avowal of rites performed. When the religion of primitive peoples came to be examined, it was speedily seen that, though vague beliefs necessarily abound, definite creeds are practically non-existent. Ritual is dominant and imperative.28

In outlining the emphasis a culture places on belief versus practice, Harrison was suggesting that how we think about the arrival and development of religion is useful in how we navigate our interactions with one another moving forward. Refusing to regard analogies between primitive cultures and contemporary Christian ones as ‘degradations’ or examples of ‘the heathen’ who ‘had somehow wil[sic]fully “lost the light”’,29 Harrison embraced and encouraged the insights to be gained from the new research being done in these areas. In terms of methodology, she blended archaeological and anthropological scholarship with the new fields of psychology and sociology, a practice for which she was often criticized. But she insisted on finding resonances in the social fabric of ancient Greek, proto-Olympian religious practice, not to advocate a return to pagan religious worship (she was not a part of the Neo-Pagan group of Bloomsbury pacifists),30 but to seek alternatives to hero worship and/or the hero worship of an anthropomorphic God, as well as alternatives to the

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misogyny and social injustices wrought by the violence and war of Britain’s patriarchal imperial project. Her work was deemed worthless, not only because she was a woman working in a predominantly male field, but also for its focus on pagan cults and practices rather than on the idealized, rationalized Golden Age of ancient Greece. She furthermore wed her insights on ritual with contemporary treatises on the subconscious, group pathology, and emotional intelligence done by Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Carl Jung, each of whose work she helped bring into the public sphere, asking her audiences that in our social dealings we take into consideration ‘facts about the formation and flux of personality’,31 rather than blindly accepting what she called the ‘thy will be done’ of religion without the ‘my will be done’ of magic.32 Harrison’s view of religion in the essay as arising out of an anthropological process rather than sprung from and predicated upon the assumption of an unassailable, mystical ‘truth’ is extended in a speech, ‘Heresy and Humanity’, given in the same year to the newly formed ‘Heretics Society’ of Cambridge University, to investigate and criticize group-think or ‘herd-suggestion’33 and its impact both on policy at the university and on the larger international stage of global politics. In her inaugural keynote address on 7 December 1909, Harrison pointed to the trope of ‘the good soldier’ to illustrate the antithesis of what it means to be a heretic. She told her young audience of undergraduates and intellectuals, specifically convened to question and challenge the religious doctrines and practices required at the university, that: The good soldier is not a heretic; he does not, and may not, reflect and make personal choice. To him the order of his commanding officer voicing the herd is sacrosanct. Be it contrary to reason, be it contrary to humanity, it must still be obeyed. War has many horrors. To me not the least is this—that it must turn a thinking human being into an at least temporary automaton; it bids a man forego his human heritage of heresy.34

In connecting her views on war with the pressure to conform and adhere to religious dogma, and to illustrate the depth of their interrelationship, she uses the analogy that if you deny the law of gravity you may be called a fool, but you probably won’t be browbeaten, ostracized, or shunned. ‘But’, she cautioned, ‘if I doubt the existence of a God, or even, in the days of my childhood, if I doubted the doctrine of eternal damnation— well, I become a “moral leper”.’35 Here, Harrison is remembering her

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own evangelical upbringing by her fundamentalist stepmother, Gemimi Harrison (née Meredith). Harrison’s own mother had died, having developed puerperal fever after giving birth to her. An aunt stepped in to care for her and her two sisters until her father, whom she adored, married their former governess. Gemimi, in her new role as stepmother, strictly enforced religious rules and doctrine, while her father grew increasingly reclusive and reticent. Of these difficult days, the intellectually gifted young girl with a genius for languages would write years later in her memoir Reminiscences of a Student’s Life (1925) that ‘family life has never attracted me. At its best it seems to me rather narrow and selfish; at its worst, a private hell.’36 She was content to live much of her life in a college, dreaming of a time when she might be able to create and fund a community of women thinkers. She rejected marriage, writing that, ‘In man it was always the friend, not the husband, that I wanted’.37 Like Virginia Woolf, she sought intellectual discourse and inquiry rather than what she regarded as the stifling restrictions of a marriage and family. She predicts that ‘as civilization advances, family life will become, if not extinct, at least much modified and curtailed’.38 While she found communal life appealing, she also cautioned against the tendency of social groups to dictate behaviour. Citing William James’s work on group dynamics, Harrison notes that the ‘young science of sociology’ shows us that ‘Religious views [ . . . ] and many other views on matters social and political—in fact, all traditional views—are held with such tenacity, such almost ferocity, because they belong to the class of views induced, not by individual experience, still less by reason, but by collective, or, as it is sometimes called, “herd,” suggestion’.39 Harrison reminds us, echoing her thesis in ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions’, that ‘This used to be called “faith”’.40 The herd is ‘non-reasonable, pre-reasonable’, ‘not cruel but curious and interesting, even heroic’41 as they insist on the demands of homogeneity, and she cautions her audience against the seductive nature of this kind of insistent, collective pressure to conform. A resistance to conformity was the reason for forming the Heretics Society in the first place. The organization was co-founded by C. K. Ogden, himself considered something of an eccentric outsider; he was a linguistic psychologist, remembered mostly as the editor of the influential Cambridge Magazine and his work Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930), which he developed as a strategy for teaching English as a second language,

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but which was also deployed after the Second World War as a strategy for peace-building, especially in China. The Heretics Society, comprised of a group of undergraduates and intellectuals, was the first university-wide association fostering intellectual debate to invite and include women.42 Formed in response to ‘Prove All Things’, a paper delivered by Emmanuel College’s Dr W. Chawner to the Religious Discussion Society that favoured agnosticism over traditional Christian views, the society convened in order to challenge the authoritarian policies of the university, especially those related to religious practice and the doctrines of the Anglican Church. Their invitation to Jane Harrison as inaugural speaker was in keeping with her reputation as one of the most controversial scholars at Cambridge at the time. Her unorthodox teaching style and strategies, infusing the centuries-old text-based practices of Cambridge’s classical curriculum with examples of archival and archaeological field research; her recent publication Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), which boldly put forward anthropological and archaeological approaches over the finer points of translation; and her ongoing, bitterly fought struggle to allow women at Cambridge to receive degrees, made her the perfect candidate to speak to the group on the nuances and implications of heresy. By all accounts Harrison was an inspiring educator and public speaker, with an ‘ability to enthrall students in the topic’ and introduce them to ‘the sense of physical interaction with the past’,43 and her pedagogy was also very much aligned with Newnham College’s philosophy ‘to allow their students intellectual freedom beyond the constraints of traditional Cambridge educational routes’.44 But as Shanyn Fiske reminds us, her ‘unabashed contrariness, combined with her dogged advocacy of unconventional theories, made Harrison a pariah in some scholarly circles and an idol in others’.45 My own study of Harrison focuses on her work, her mentorship of Virginia Woolf, and her role and function as a public intellectual, taking into account her position and status as a woman and the ways in which gender affected her politics as well as her professional reputation after her death. Harrison’s atheism and pacifism, under consideration here, also affected the reception of her work. Her positions on peace and religion were perhaps seen as even too radical for the radical Heretics Society, whose honorary members drew from the leading pacifists and anti-war activists in Britain at the time and whose laws implied ‘rejection of all appeal to Authority’.46 Harrison’s Ritualist

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colleague, classicist F. M. Cornford, was a member, as were Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Bertrand Russell, the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw, the pioneering psychiatrist and ethnologist W. H. Rivers—who would, five years later, be instrumental in the treatment of shell-shocked soldiers at Craiglockhart Hospital—and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Harrison’s rejection of laws which treat ‘individuals as masses’, coupled with her bid for social re-creation that ‘Only in a civilized anarchy, we some of us feel, can the individual come to his full right and function’, were remarks which she had to qualify with a footnote in which she admitted that, no doubt, many in her audience of fellow heretics did not share her ‘personal view’.47 Her essay reveals a revolutionary zeal increasingly apparent in her desire to re-imagine a violent, unjust world, but also points to a perceived need to self-censor at times, even in a sympathetic forum. Harrison began her lecture by setting it in the killing fields of The Elms, Smithfield, the meat market and site of public execution of heretics and traitors in London, to emphasize ‘the ardours of those who were burnt at the stake for love of an idea’.48 Competent in 11 living languages and five dead ones, Harrison frequently reached for the linguistic origins of words in order to convey an arc of meaning or point to the contexts of and intersections between history and language. In delving into the origins of the Greek hairesis, she notes that it is ‘an eager, living’ word, and she discovers that ‘there is this reaching out to grasp, this studious, zealous pursuit—always something personal, even passionate’49 that is based on free personal choice. The word has changed over time, shifting from a negative connotation, requiring execution to now gesture towards ‘a human obligation’.50 On the one hand, the essay was a plea to re-word regulations, ease restrictions, and allow women full access to university;51 but, on the other hand, she expands its scope to contextualize these immediate concerns within broader theories on political reform and social interaction. Herds, whether universities, religious institutions, or armies, club together, fostering a double standard comprised of contradictions, ‘a strange blend of the emotions and imaginings of many men’.52 While all things are possible with God, science, on the other hand, ‘classifies, draws ever clearer distinctions; herd-suggestion is always in a haze. Herd-suggestion is all for tradition, authority; science has for its very essence the exercise of free thought.’53 However, it also comes with a price—loneliness. Science, and the heretic who exercises free choice, cannot exist without the spiritual and emotional truth that the group offers; ‘he needs humanity’ to assuage the aching

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loneliness of individualism. The essay positions her and her audience at a moment of transition and transformation, when ‘we have broken with the old, [but] we have not quite adjusted ourselves to the new’.54 She outlines the social and cultural anxiety of living in a new social structure dependent more on ‘organic as opposed to mechanical unity’ with ‘[i]ts best result [ . . . ] not material wealth, but the closer, more vital sympathy and interdependence of man with and on his fellow-man’.55 Her dream is of a society where individuality is not crushed by the herd, but instead emerges through cooperation and diversity. In its place, trends and fads arise, movements and associations grow and fade away, and, according to Harrison, ‘each association implies a dissociation, and by this frequency of association and dissociation we get rid of the permanent homogeneous class, that insistent incubus of progress. Each person belongs to many temporary associations; and at the cross-roads, as it were, his individuality emerges.’56 She instructs that ‘We are humane so far as we are conscious or sensitive to individual life’.57 Her ultimate objective is to revise our relationship to groups, to find ways to ‘live together’ and to look inward in order to find ‘our law’.58 As she did in ‘Darwinism’, she sees earlier restrictions as a necessary step in the development of religious and social practice: at first ‘differ at your peril’; next ‘religious sanctions [ . . . ] to tame the tiger-cat, egotism’, but these were unsatisfactory and not capable of bringing about reform. ‘Our new altruism’, she notes in ‘Heresy’, ‘involves a steady and even ardent recognition of the individual life, in its infinite variety, with its infinite interactions’,59 regarding others not ‘in classes and masses’ but as differentiated.60 It is a world we have yet to create, because ‘as the union grows closer and more intricate the chances of mutual hurt are greater, and the sensitiveness must grow keener. Others are safe from and with us only when their pain is our pain, their joy ours; and that is not yet.’61 In ‘Heresy’, Harrison continues to present a world view where we are constantly negotiating egotism and herd-instinct in a bid for a state based on individualism in the midst of cooperation, interdependence, and mutual sympathy. These sentiments are escalated and ring at a higher register in another essay, ‘Unanism and Conversion’, which also began as a lecture before the Heretics Society on 25 November 1912, calling for a ‘conversion’ not to evangelical ecstasy, but to ‘unanism’ or ‘oneness in spirit’, which is ‘the bond of peace’.62 Unanism is founded upon a premise of love of Everyman and the Christian principle to simply ‘love one another’. She continues to

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align her views with a shedding of religious doctrine, for ‘[w]e must drop theology if we would keep religion’.63 But she is also sceptical of creating yet another restrictive dogma in unanism, a philosophy of art and life practised by three French poets under discussion in the essay,64 which had characteristics similar to Walt Whitman’s insistence on brotherhood. Unanism, in Harrison’s analysis, becomes an investigation into the perils of hierarchies, unfair competition, and jealousies. Invoking work by Bergson, Émile Durkheim, and Gilbert Murray, Harrison admits that ‘Unanism, being of man only, has a certain aridity, like the classical humanism of the Greeks’,65 and she considers how women, whose challenge it often is to acquire egotism or a sense of self, are sometimes excluded by the universalizing of the male subject’s experience; but she, in a characteristic signature of her scholarship, encourages her audience to look, to stay open, to think about the potential of conversion minus the pressure to conform to a set of punitive rules and regulations. Raised evangelical, in, according to Harrison, a terrible legacy of extremism, she extracts an aspect, ‘a kernel of truth’, from the fundamentalist practice of conversion, because it represents ‘in however exasperated and monstrous form, a real experience—a real living, possible emotion that any of us may any time go through’,66 in order to urge us to undergo ‘a psychological experience’.67 In any conversion, she outlines the stages of grief. First, you experience depression, next elation, then outside help to convert you, because ‘[y]ou cannot convert yourself. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity”.68 Comparing conversion to initiation rites of primitive cultures, Harrison informs us that as in conversion, the individual loses himself in initiation rites if he/she is to be reborn into the group, the tribe and the social group. In Christianity, the soul is congregationalized. One is converted away from the self to a sea of other people’s emotion in a religious rapture. In Harrison’s essay, one is striving to achieve conversion not to God, but ‘to one’s fellow man’.69 She cautions, however, against a unanism based on ‘feeling rather than thinking’,70 but understands how intellectualism has come to be distrusted, when ‘[a] bygone generation believed in Reason as a motive power, and as a motive power Reason was, of course, a dismal failure’, and that now the challenge is to ‘stop writing about humanity; be a man, be humane’.71 The essay stands as a continuation of her plea for shedding religious doctrine in service to pacifist objectives, as she sees this transformation slowly happening ‘in Peace Societies, in Socialism, even in Strikes, in each and every form of human Co-operation’,72 and

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it’s a shift away from egotism toward individuals in collaboration with one another.

‘WITH EVERY NERVE IN MY BODY I STAND FOR PEACE’: EPILOGUE ON THE WAR The trajectory of thinking about peace and social interaction became even more urgent for Harrison in her essay ‘War and the Reaction’, published as ‘Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism’, and marked the fact that Harrison never revised her absolute pacifist position. With the outbreak of war during the summer of 1914, she was shocked and devastated by the speed with which her colleagues and her country embraced the war. She refuted and challenged Gilbert Murray’s assumption that ‘war has its good side’73 and was astounded that her friends—male, intellectual elites—were now focused on war. Rupert Brooke described many of Harrison’s colleagues, who had now turned soldiers: ‘it’s astonishing to see how the intellectuals have taken on new jobs [ . . . ] Cornford is no longer the best Greek scholar in Cambridge, he is now Sergeant Instructor of Musketry [ . . . ] Gilbert Murray and Walter Raleigh rise at 6 a.m. every day to line hedgerows in the dark and “advance in rushes” across the Oxford meadows.’74 In ‘Epilogue’, Harrison grapples with how it came to pass that ‘the don has turned soldier, and proudly, if a little shamefacedly, parades the uniform which, ten years ago, would have been to him anathema’.75 She wrote ‘Epilogue’ out of her disbelief and ‘sheer red-hot rage’ at the absurdity and monumental stupidity of war. Murray, who wrote ‘Herd Instinct and War’, thought Harrison’s essay was ‘foolishness’.76 Harrison, who agreed with Murray on the boredom and uselessness of the herd, preferred the politics outlined instead in Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson’s ‘The War and the Way Out’. In preparing her essay, she wrote of Dickinson’s essay: It seems to me so right. Just what you want said. I think he is one of the sanest and closest thinkers, and a peace lover wants a sane leader to educate the great body of peace opinion or the war-fever will grow and grow.77

She supported Dickinson’s Union of Democratic Control and the No Conscription Fellowship, which was viewed as ‘the most active, and in the government’s eyes the most dangerous, of the peace societies’78

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despite hostility from another pro-war colleague, William Ridgeway, with whom she often sparred publicly over her scholarship as well as her politics. Ridgeway was a vocal opponent of the Union of Democratic Control, which demanded ‘parliamentary control over foreign policy’ and formed ‘an international council to ensure open diplomacy, and a fair peace settlement’.79 He was against women’s suffrage, and against women’s admission into university. As Arlen notes, ‘Ridgeway’s animosity toward Harrison had political grounds as well: he had little tolerance for women in the academy, and he despised pacifists.’80 Harrison also supported Bertrand Russell, comparing him to Murray’s compromising of his principles, writing that ‘Murray seemed sure that the war was a righteous one and one that could not be avoided. But I see that B.R. [Bertrand Russell] thinks otherwise: I respect any one who expresses a view so unpopular.’81 Even with the attack on Scarborough, in her native Yorkshire, Harrison continued to fantasize about an army of martyrs marching to the borders in the cause of peace. Harrison writes, ‘In the depths of my fanatical heart I dream of a day when our army will go out, not to war, but, if need be, to martyrdom, and when that army will consist of every man and woman in England.’82 Patriotism, which in ‘Heresy and Humanity’ is an example of collective herd-instinct that is repressive of individuality, in ‘Epilogue’ is wedded to a plea demanding that we must seek ‘unity out of multiplicity’ and become ‘world citizens’.83 She feared a patriotism in which ‘[y]ou feel strongly because you feel alike; you are reinforced by the other homogeneous units; you sing the same song and wave the same flag’.84 In ‘Epilogue’, she picks up this thread in remarking that while it is acceptable and inevitable to feel a love of country, a patriotism that is based on sich imponiren, imposing one’s will upon another, leads to a patriotism based on aggression, violence, and war. In her memoir, years later, she reminds us that ‘I hate Empire; it stands to me for all that is tedious and pernicious in thought; within it are always and necessarily the seeds of war’.85 Harrison struggled to come to grips with ‘this ancient animosity’, and ‘Epilogue on the War’ built on a pacifism begun in her earlier essays, as she continued to insist on peace based on principles of cooperation and collaboration, rather than a society obsessed with nationalism, militarism, and xenophobia. Harrison was read and respected by, and internationally well known to, her contemporaries; her pacifism, however, was greeted with hostility in her own time, and her theories, many of which grew out of her work in

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archaeology and anthropology and in re-imagining the social and religious life of the ancient Greeks, remain undervalued, especially in modernist literary and historical critical discourses, which continue to foreground the hero’s journey, which was essentially a war story. Despite Virginia Woolf’s homage to Harrison’s scholarly contributions and example, the great ‘J—H—’ in A Room of One’s Own (1929), Harrison’s pacifism experienced both a cultural and a political marginalization after her death in 1928 and a gradual erasure over time, which became more striking with the depreciation of the British peace movement by the mid-1930s. While her work on re-interpreting Greek myths and as a feminist role model for Virginia Woolf has been reclaimed by scholars working in the late 1990s and more recently in 2014, Harrison’s pacifism as outlined in her essays and as part of the formation of the discipline of Peace Studies broadens our understanding of the public voices for peace and resistance to the Great War.

NOTES 1. Harrison, Jane. ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915. New York: AMS, 1973, p. 144. [Hereafter, ‘Darwinism’]. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., p. 177. 4. See ‘Reading Transpersonally II—Women Building Peace’ in J. Mills, Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison and the Spirit of Modernist Classicism (Ohio State University Press, 2014): 134–152. 5. See also Jonathan Atkin’s A War of Individuals: Bloomsbury Attitudes to the Great War (2002); Jay Winter’s Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the 20th Century (2006); and Grace Brockington’s Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain, 1900–1918 (2010). 6. Harrison, Jane. Ancient Art and Ritual. London: Williams, 1913. New York: Greenwood, 1969, p. 162. 7. Harrison, Jane. ‘Heresy and Humanity.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915. New York: AMS, 1973, p. 32. [Hereinafter, ‘Heresy’]. 8. Ibid., p. 29. 9. The bulk of Harrison’s papers are made up of correspondence between herself and Gilbert Murray and are housed in Newnham College Archives, Newnham College, Cambridge. 10. Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 208.

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11. Carpentier, Martha C. Ritual, Myth, and the Modernist Text. Vol. 12, Library of Anthropology Series. Amsterdam, NL: Gordon and Breach, 1998, p. 10. 12. Cooper, Sandi E. ‘Peace as a Human Right: The Invasion of Women into the World of High International Politics,’ Journal of Women’s History 14.2 (Summer 2002): 9–25, p. 21. 13. ‘Positive peace’ and ‘negative peace’ are terms created to establish a vocabulary for discussing peace as a discipline and in an effort to establish pedagogical norms and goals for peace research, and are attributed to Johan Galtung and John Burton, founders of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959. ‘Negative peace’ refers to the absence of violence, while ‘positive peace’ refers to the conditions necessary for building and sustaining peace, such as peace-building, mediation, and conflict resolution. 14. Qtd. in ‘Darwinism,’ p. 145. 15. ‘Darwinism,’ p. 145. 16. Ibid., p. 147. 17. Ibid., p. 148. 18. Ibid., p. 144. 19. Ibid., p. 147. 20. Ibid. 21. For a recent discussion of Quaker thought in the Bloomsbury peace movement, see Ashley Foster, ‘Writing in the White Light of Truth: History, Ethics, and Community in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts.’ Woolf Studies Annual 22 (2016): 22. Ibid., p. 178. 23. Brockington, Grace. Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain, 1900–1918. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, p. 41. 24. Harrison, Jane. ‘Unanism and Conversion.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915. New York: AMS, 1973, p. 22. [Hereinafter, ‘Unanism’]. 25. Qtd. in Stewart, Jessie G. Jane Ellen Harrison: A Portrait in Letters. London: Merlin Press, 1959, p. 167. 26. Ibid., p. 167. 27. Harrison was the intellectual leader of the Cambridge Ritualists, which included Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University; Francis M. Cornford, who became Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy; and Arthur Bernard Cook, Reader, then Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge. See also Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School: J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists. New York: Routledge, 2002. 28. ‘Darwinism,’ pp. 151–152.

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29. ‘Darwinism,’ p. 146. 30. The ‘Neo-Pagans’ were a group of undergraduate students and young dons who celebrated youth and looked to Rupert Brooke as their leader; for a discussion of the ‘Neo-Pagans,’ see Grace Brockington, 35–37, who describes them as both a ‘formally constituted group’ and ‘simply a coterie of friends who never claimed a group identity’ (36). 31. ‘Darwinism,’ p. 177. 32. ‘Darwinism,’ p. 174. 33. ‘Heresy,’ p. 31. 34. ‘Heresy,’ p. 29. 35. ‘Heresy,’ p. 30. 36. Harrison, Jane. Reminiscences of a Student’s Life. London: Hogarth Press, 1925, p. 88. [Hereafter, Reminiscences]. 37. Ibid. 38. Reminiscences, p. 89. 39. ‘Heresy,’ p. 31. 40. Ibid. 41. ‘Heresy,’ p. 32. 42. Fiske, Shanyn. ‘Hellenism and Heresy.’ Heretical Hellenism: Women Writers, Ancient Greece, and the Victorian Popular Imagination. Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 2008, p. 2. 43. Thornton, Amara. ‘The Allure of Archaeology: Agnes Conway and Jane Harrison at Newnham College, 1903–1907.’ Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 21(1) May 2011: 37–56, p. 42. 44. Ibid., p. 44. 45. Fiske, p. 2. 46. Qtd. in Brockington, Grace. Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain, 1900–1918. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, p. 37. 47. ‘Heresy,’ p. 40. 48. ‘Heresy,’ p. 27. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., p. 28. 51. Women were not given full membership at the university until 1948; Harrison was devastated by the fact that by the time she retired from Newnham College in 1922, her efforts on behalf of women’s inclusion had fallen short. She left Newnham disillusioned and disheartened, but turned her focus to the study of Russian, taking classes in Paris throughout the early 1920s. 52. ‘Heresy,’ p. 31. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., pp. 35–36.

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55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79.

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Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 40. Harrison extends her thesis to include parents and their children, and her views speak to future disciplines of child psychology. In her revision of society: ‘Parents no longer treat their children as [ . . . ] a subject-class to be manipulated for their pleasure, but as human beings, with views, outlooks, lives of their own. Children, it may even be hoped, will learn in time to treat their parents not merely as parents—i.e. as persons privileged to pay and to protect and at need to efface themselves—but as individual human beings, with their own passions and absorptions’ (‘Heresy’ 40); it is a position echoed somewhat by Sandi E. Cooper in 2002’s ‘Peace as a Human Right’, writing, ‘the message remained largely the same: Peace needs to be organized, economic justice needs to be insured, governments need to insure the well-being of the least fortunate citizens, men and women must share the management of households because the socialization of children is the smallest pebble in the continuum toward world peace’ (21). ‘Heresy,’ p. 41. Harrison, Jane. ‘Unanism and Conversion.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915. New York: AMS, 1973, p. 44. [Hereafter, ‘Unanism’]. ‘Unanism,’ p. 62. The three French poets are Jules Romains, Rene Arcos, and Charles Vildrac, whom Harrison uses to expand her discussion of spiritual unity. ‘Unanism,’ p. 54. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 61. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., p. 76. Ibid. Ibid., p. 71. Qtd. in Stewart, p. 150. Ibid., p. 148. Harrison, Jane. ‘Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915. New York: AMS, 1973, p. 221. [Hereafter, ‘Epilogue’]. Qtd. in Stewart, p. 151. Ibid. Brockington, p. 16. Ibid.

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80. Arlen, Shelley. ‘For Love of an Idea: Jane Ellen Harrison, Heretic and Humanist’ Women’s History Review 5.2 (1996): 165–190, p. 178. 81. Qtd. in Stewart, p. 147. 82. ‘Epilogue,’ p. 222. 83. Ibid., p. 169. 84. ‘Heresy,’ p. 30. 85. Reminiscences, p. 11.

REFERENCES Arlen, Shelley. ‘For Love of an Idea: Jane Ellen Harrison, Heretic and Humanist.’ Women’s History Review 5.2 (1996): 165–190. Atkin, Jonathan. A War of Individuals: Bloomsbury Attitudes to the Great War. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester UP, 2002. Brockington, Grace. Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain, 1900–1918. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Carpentier, Martha C. Ritual, Myth, and the Modernist Text. Vol. 12, Library of Anthropology Series. Amsterdam, NL: Gordon and Breach, 1998. Cooper, Sandi E. ‘Peace as a Human Right: The Invasion of Women into the World of High International Politics.’ Journal of Women’s History 14.2 (Summer 2002): 9–25. Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes. Religion: A Criticism and a Forecast. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905. Fiske, Shanyn. Heretical Hellenism: Women Writers, Ancient Greece, and the Victorian Popular Imagination. Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 2008. Harrison, Jane Ellen. Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1912. London: Merlin, 1963. New ed., pub. with Epilogomena to the Study of Greek Religion. Harrison, Jane Ellen. Ancient Art and Ritual. London: Williams, 1913. New York: Greenwood, 1969. Harrison, Jane Ellen. ‘Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915a. New York: AMS, 1973, 221–259. Harrison, Jane Ellen. ‘Heresy and Humanity.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915b. New York: AMS, 1973, 27–41. Harrison, Jane Ellen. ‘The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religions.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915c. New York: AMS, 1973, 143– 178. Harrison, Jane Ellen. ‘Unanism and Conversion.’ Alpha and Omega. London: Sidgwick, 1915d. New York: AMS, 1973, 42–79. Harrison, Jane Ellen. Reminiscences of a Student’s Life. London: Hogarth Press, 1925.

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Mills, Jean. Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison and the Spirit of Modernist Classicism. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. Ogden, C.K. Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar. London: Paul Trebor, 1930. Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Stewart, Jessie G. Jane Ellen Harrison: A Portrait from Letters. London: Merlin Press, 1959. Thornton, Amara. ‘The Allure of Archaeology: Agnes Conway and Jane Harrison at Newnham College, 1903–1907.’ Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 21.1 (May 2011): 37–56. Winter, Jay. Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the 20th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2006. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. Ed., with introduction and annotations, Susan Gubar. New York: Harvest/Harcourt, 2005. Jean Mills is Associate Professor of Twentieth-Century British Literature at John Jay College, specializing in Woolf Studies, women’s literature of the 1920s and 1930s, Modernism, feminist theory, and Peace Studies. She is a feminist critic and theorist who has published work on issues of pacifism and Modernist responses to war and violence. Her book Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, and the Spirit of Modernist Classicism (2014) investigates Harrison’s re-interpretations of Greek myths as a counter to the hero’s journey, essentially a war story, and the intersections of Harrison’s significant body of work with Virginia Woolf.

Between Front Lines: The Militant Pacifist Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) and Her Total Peace Effort Dagmar Wernitznig This chapter contextualizes Rosika Schwimmer’s heterodox pacifism during the First World War. Schwimmer’s mediation activism serves as both a para-narrative and a pacifist plotline alongside militarist events of the Great War as well as a meta-text for idiosyncrasies and ideological paradigm shifts amidst feminist, suffragist, and pacifist reform groups. Born in 1877 in Budapest and brought up in a secular Jewish household of agnostics and freethinkers with prominent pacifist relatives, such as her uncle Leopold Katscher, a close collaborator of Bertha von Suttner, the young Schwimmer became one of the most active first-wave feminists in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1900 onwards. Mentored by the Dutch suffragist Aletta Jacobs, the first female physician of the Netherlands, and Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (henceforth IWSA) and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (henceforth NAWSA), Schwimmer professionalized and internationalized Hungarian women’s movements and the suffrage cause. Her international suffragist rank culminated in 1913 with her appointment as press secretary for the IWSA and their journal Jus Suffragii by

D. Wernitznig (*) Independent scholar, Villach, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_7

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Catt in London. While the decidedly non-militant, non-socialist Schwimmer—guaranteeing a constitutional, not suffragette, and hence non-violent pursuit of the franchise—was helpful to Catt before the First World War, this relationship underwent a drastic change with the onset of the war. Schwimmer’s formerly advantageous non-militancy now expressed itself in a very ardent version of pacifism, and her formerly ‘exotic’ and intriguing status amongst (predominantly Anglo-American) IWSA members was altered to ‘enemy alien’. When she utilized Catt’s invitation in the autumn of 1914 to tour the United States to give talks on woman suffrage for peace agitation and pacifist speeches, an irredeemable schism was introduced between former mentor and protégée. Schwimmer’s uncompromising pacifism during the First World War and her initiation of many plans for mediation and armistice terminated her international feminist career to a large extent. After a brief stint as first unofficial female diplomat of modern times, sent to Bern by Count Mihály Károlyi in 1918, she suffered from political persecution under Miklos Horthy and subsequently emigrated to the United States, where she was denied citizenship on grounds of her extreme pacifism. In 1948, Schwimmer died stateless in New York after unsuccessfully attempting to establish a so-called World Center for Women’s Archives with feminist historian Mary Ritter Beard in the same city.1 As an international feminist-suffragist and pacifist, Schwimmer did not simply witness turmoil and upheaval but frequently stood at its epicentre, traversing front lines more than just metaphorically. One of the few agitators to decipher the catastrophic potential of a militarist domino effect at the earliest moment in 1914, her actions were significant for initiating war resistance and peace rallies on both sides of the Atlantic, mostly by appropriating very unorthodox strategies and alternative ideologies for her contemporary observers. Hence, this quite atypical conduct and uncompromising realization of pacifism did not simply position Schwimmer in opposition to militarists and patriots, but also marginalized her amongst most of her feminist, suffragist, and pacifist peers. Waging peace on war, Schwimmer went and worked against every convention. Her explicitly ‘masculine’ practice of pacifism illuminates another yet obscured feature, undermining her reputation and contributing to her downfall. By practising a very politically public form of pacifism, contacting several authorities from many nations, as well as by acting as an informal envoy, she trespassed on exclusively masculine realms of diplomacy and realpolitik. Male and female pacifists were not

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considered an independent and equally forceful entity next to militarism, and women diplomats were still a futuristic species. Although Schwimmer’s concept of women delegations to European statesmen (forcefully initiated by her at the Hague Congress of women in the spring of 1915), understandably, did not achieve any success, it nevertheless questioned the status quo of male-controlled domains, silently accepted by both feminists and pacifists, and turned her into a subversive element for both groups.2 Perceiving and employing pacifism as emancipated and equal to militarism was something unheard of and did not win her sympathies with either side, patriots or pacifists. Schwimmer’s conscious breaking of taboos, such as meddling with masculine prerogatives or disrupting universal conformities such as the implicit Burgfrieden consensus, finally and irretrievably brought about her ostracism. Shedding new light on Schwimmer’s peace agitation during the war equally illustrates the hidden complexities of the modernist movements in which she participated. Her notoriety then becomes a foil for aporias of these movements (for example, socially homogeneous yet ideologically heterogeneous; mostly nationally peripheral despite strong international liaisons; reform oriented but appropriating conformist perimeters). Interestingly, Schwimmer both embodied certain dichotomies and successfully crossed the borderlines of these networks.

SETTING

THE

SCENE: SCHWIMMER’S PACIFIST PRELUDE IN LONDON

At the time of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Schwimmer was at the peak of her career. She worked for the IWSA headquarters as international and corresponding secretary in London. According to Sutherland Denlinger, staff writer for the New York WorldTelegram, for instance, she was amongst a handful of people who recognized the hazardous atmosphere in the early summer of 1914: ‘The seers who predicted the First World War were a small and amazingly variegated lot—a few army officers, English, French and German; the astounding Rosika Schwimmer; a philosopher; the crystal-gazing H. G. Wells.’3 Schwimmer, incidentally, requested an audience with David Lloyd George to raise these concerns. Subsequently, during a breakfast meeting with him on 9 July 1914, she pointed out that Austria felt severely insulted

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and—if declaring war on Serbia—could trigger a military chain reaction of war declarations all over Europe. It seems quite ironic that years later, when writing his War Memoirs, David Lloyd George referred to Schwimmer, whose name had quite symbolically slipped his memory, as the only source predicting the Great War.4 At the beginning of August, the IWSA office in London was already facing turmoil because of Schwimmer’s insistent peace activism, and her split from this organization as an employee happened as rapidly as it had come about a year earlier. After some consideration, she agreed to act on the recommendation of the London IWSA committee to offer her services to the NAWSA. This arrangement was gladly welcomed by Catt, and Schwimmer left for the United States on 25 August. Schwimmer’s hasty departure for American shores was not simply advantageous and beneficial to her mediation plans, but it also served the interests of suffragist parties on both sides of the Atlantic: the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (henceforth NUWSS) and their leader Millicent Garrett Fawcett, for whom Schwimmer’s disturbingly outspoken pacifism had become an inconvenience, had successfully gotten rid of her by shipping her to the United States. Across the Atlantic, NAWSA, not yet confronted with the war directly, looked forward to greeting her as a convincing orator for the woman suffrage cause. Catt, finally, had her way in luring Schwimmer to New York in order to use her language talent in front of immigrant audiences. Furthermore, Schwimmer’s plan for a so-called Neutral Conference for Mediation, which she had been contemplating since August 1914, was based on US President Woodrow Wilson convening it, so it seemed appropriate for her to leave for the United States. Accordingly, she contacted as many prominent people as possible to endorse her journey. It was at this moment, in the summer of 1914, that Schwimmer started to attract negative attention amongst former mentors and co-workers. All but a handful of addressees declined politely but decidedly to support her peace mission to Wilson and the American public. Most were eager to stress that she should by no means mention their names in connection with her peace efforts. For instance, the United Suffragists refused her a mandate in their name, since ‘there was a strong feeling’ among them ‘against our co-operation’.5 Elinor Fell, acting honorary secretary of the Civil Union for the Right Understanding of International Interests, reminded Schwimmer that her organization did not desire ‘to be associated with anything which approaches a “stop-the-war-peace-at-any-price”

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movement’.6 Fell of the Civil Union was a particularly interesting case to demonstrate how Schwimmer’s peace activism became a ploy for many people. Fell, who was interested in fighting the growing anti-German sentiment, endorsed her travels to the United States for exactly those reasons, while at the same time protesting that she had no ‘sympathy with the idea of mediation upon any terms’.7 The summer of 1914 was also the formative time when Schwimmer’s name acquired its notoriety, so common in the years to come. In a piece on 31 August 1914, the Daily Express ascribed to her last name ‘a Teutonic sound’, classifying her as a ‘socialist sympathising with the enemy’.8 According to Schwimmer, the trickiest part was ‘selling’ her conference idea to the traditional peace organizations: ‘The hardest task was to discuss the matter with the representatives of conventional pacifist organizations. A general lying down, like the grass on a gale-swept open field. As I called on one peace office after the other I was nauseated by their immediate surrender.’9 The most prominent pacifist contacted by her was Andrew Carnegie, to whom Schwimmer had been introduced at the 1913 opening of the so-called Peace Palace at The Hague, which she, emblematically, covered as the youngest and one of only two female journalists, critically commenting: ‘Characteristic of all official Peace [sic] celebrations, the real pacifists were placed in back rows, the front held by army, navy and diplomatic officials.’10 Attending this ceremony, Schwimmer openly voiced her concern about the excessive attention to mere theory without practical consequences in contemporary pacifism.11 In her subsequent writings on peace, she frequently used this monumental building as a metaphor for sterile and impractical pacifism. Most portrayals of Schwimmer depict her as gradually becoming vilified during the war because of her uncompromising and controversial pacifism. Nevertheless, already in August 1914 she found herself alienated amongst these diversely stratified feminists and suffragists in London and across Europe. Amongst the handful of like-minded and pro-peace women activists was Sylvia Pankhurst, founder of the East London Suffragettes, for example. Schwimmer had contacted a wide range of public figures beyond first-wave feminism, ranging from politics to arts and literature, but failed to elicit even remote support for her mediation plans. Keir Hardie, for instance, replied quite bluntly: ‘I may warn you that you will find the socalled peace people the most helpless and inefficient crowd on the face of the earth. If you are going to see President Wilson, Bryan and others that may be of some use, but otherwise you will be wasting your time.’12

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SCHWIMMER’S PACIFIST MOBILIZATION

IN THE

UNITED STATES

Once in the United States, Schwimmer immediately set out to reach Woodrow Wilson. Thanks to Carrie Chapman Catt’s networking, she actually managed to get an interview with the President fairly quickly and met him on 18 September 1914. As Catt was conveniently called away on the day of this interview, Senator Charles Thomas of Colorado introduced Schwimmer to the American commander in chief. Schwimmer exploited this conversation with President Wilson throughout her career and published details of it whenever the opportunity arose. Immediately after her talk with him, she gave an unauthorized press interview with the New York Times, optimistically praising the President’s commitment to peace and boldly predicting his pacifist action.13 This move off-protocol terminated Schwimmer’s relations with the White House before they had even been properly established. Wilson refused to see her again—a first hint at her later status as an unreliable peace propagandist. Although Schwimmer deliberately misused her audience with Wilson in the press to portray him as ready for mediation, privately she was much more sceptical about the President’s willingness to act as a negotiator for peace. For example, she confessed to the Finnish feminist Annie Furuhjelm: ‘whether he is going to do something in the proposed line I don’t know.’14 Due to the scandalous outcome of Schwimmer’s audacious press interview, Catt distanced herself from her move and the petition less than a month after Schwimmer’s visit to the White House.15 In October 1914, Schwimmer bravely contacted President Wilson again for some damage control. In this letter, her pacifism already went further than in the interview and depicted an outlook of potential peace negotiations, which would, however, be doomed to failure if diplomats were to draw new European borders: ‘If diplomats think that they will be able to create peace by changing borders of countries and giving over parts of one country to the other, according to the results of war, they are terribly shortsighted and fatally mistaken.’16 Although she had failed to spur the President to action, Schwimmer set out on a lecture tour through the United States to reach the general public with her pacifist message. Her lecturing schedule was packed. With Catt’s logistic support, she embarked on a three-month voyage across the American East Coast and Midwest. All in all, Schwimmer gave speeches in over 40 cities. According to her own records, she addressed more than 200,000 people and spoke an average of three to six times per day.17

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Incidentally, many of her talks coincided with crucial local referenda about the female franchise in these states. With her peace crusade to the United States, Schwimmer found herself rather involuntarily at the crossroads of American woman suffrage, and her arrival and polyglot eloquence in the United States were an asset for Catt to react to and use to counteract the recent foundation of the Congressional Union (henceforth CU) by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns in 1913. The CU, signifying a split and thus weakness in American suffrage ranks, was a thorn in NAWSA’s side. Catt for her part carefully selected US geographic hotspots for Schwimmer’s talks, which coincided with upcoming referenda about electoral reforms, and instructed her guest to use her talks wisely and effectively: ‘The most that I hope for it is that you will create such an appetite for Schwimmer among Germans, Austrians and Hungarians that you will get invitations to speak at their regular gatherings.’18 The feminist matrix in Schwimmer’s life and her long-term failure as a pacifist are usually explained as being due to her autocracy and her enemy alien nationality. A closer look at feminist-suffragist circles on both continents, nonetheless, shows that her personality and her Central Powers citizenship were not the major reasons for her gradual alienation from former peers. Her mediation initiative happened within a complex and usually contradictory web of suffrage and women’s campaigns, which up to 1914 mostly prioritized peace metaphorically and rhetorically at best. Schwimmer’s defiant merger of peace talks and the so-called woman question and, moreover, her devotion to stopping the war at all cost—even at the expense of the franchise campaign—was not embraced by her superiors, first and foremost the transnational IWSA leader Catt. At heart, Catt, similar to other women leaders such as Fawcett, was a suffragist and anti-war, but not automatically and unconditionally pro-peace. Most suffrage activists understood that their reaction to the war would indirectly reflect on domestic policies—in their case, ballot reforms. A talented strategist and thus chosen president of both the NAWSA and the IWSA, Catt, as well as her personal and professional rival, Alice Paul of the CU, refrained from commenting on the war or involving their organizations directly in mediation efforts. At a particularly crucial moment in US interior politics, with presidential elections and potential breakthroughs in federal suffrage laws on the horizon, both played for time. Unluckily for Schwimmer, her pacifist visit to the United States dovetailed with this electoral period and prospective suffrage amendments. Thus Catt still expected her to deliver lectures on

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woman suffrage, reminding her to design the length of her speech and her approach to the topic accordingly: ‘You must, as we say, “cut your bait according to your fish.” [ . . . ] No speech is to be longer than fifteen minutes, so you will not have time to settle all the affairs of the world.’19 Schwimmer, however, defied Catt, forging her lecture tour as a peace mission. In order to appease Catt, she nevertheless shrewdly managed to synergize the war and women’s emancipation in all of her speeches, while building up her final plea for mediation: ‘Before the war a girl tried to get a place running an elevator and was told they could not entrust the lives of people to a mere woman. Now all elevators in Budapest are run by girls. We get professions and new rights without asking for them.’20

SCHWIMMER

AND

US PACIFISM: BEYOND

THE

CANON

Interestingly, the outbreak of the First World War was the final impulse for ‘new’ American pacifisms to gain momentum. While the years leading up to 1914 had already witnessed an increasing dissatisfaction with traditional peace groups amongst those Americans excluded from them, the actual war was now a realistic reason to put their ideas into action. Just as the First World War was an awkward watershed for many established peace groups, it galvanized the formation of new ones.21 It is one of the few lasting accomplishments in Schwimmer’s life to have played a significant and determining part in these formative processes. One of the most prominent new groups, searching for a more empirical approach to peace and thereby offering Schwimmer the opportunity to get her foot in the American door, was the Chicago Peace Society. The Chicago Peace Society, established in 1910, was untypical in its novel outlook on peace, as well as its geographic location. All traditional peace groups were situated on the American East Coast, symbolic for their elitist, metropolitan set-up, consisting of lawyers, government officials, and industrialists. Chicago, located in the American Midwest, now became the gravitational centre for ‘atypical’, formerly marginalized pacifists such as Louis Lochner of the Emergency Peace Federation or the Hull House leader Jane Addams and, upon her arrival in the United States, Schwimmer became something of a pacifist pundit for them.22 Addams, again, was too colourless and reserved for Schwimmer’s taste, and she occasionally slipped hints of disappointment with Addams’s attitude and conduct into her correspondence whenever she considered it safe enough to do so. In a confidential letter to Catt, for example, she referred

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to ‘Miss A’ as ‘[o]ne of the most discouraging things I have met right now’.23 Regardless of her strong antipathy to Addams, however, Schwimmer, like all other women activists, understood that the Hull House hostess, with her flawless reputation, was the most favourable choice for presiding over the scheduled women’s meeting in Washington in January 1915 to set up the Woman’s Peace Party and, subsequently, for chairing the women’s congress at The Hague in the spring of 1915. Moreover, coming from a tradition of social reform rather than feministsuffragist activism allowed Addams to be openly pacifist in 1914, while Catt and her antagonist Alice Paul both were much more cautious. With regard to Schwimmer’s pacifist work in the United States, several parameters pertaining to this American heyday of organizational pacifism are important. Relating her activism to existing peace initiatives and locating her within American pacifism shows her limited compatibility with this peace network from a long-term perspective.24 Although many organizations and individuals defied clear-cut classifications and any terminology can only be reductionist and overlapping, there were, roughly speaking, three nuances among American pacifists: legalists, world federationists/federalists, and generalists. What all these groups had in common was the transfer of pacifism from a national to an international stage and the interpretation of pacifism as a transnational topic. The turn of the century saw a shift amongst American pacifists from previous interests in interior affairs or so-called domesticists—first and foremost during the Civil War, which weakened the peace movement, still in its infant state, significantly—to a more international outlook and implementation of pacifism. In fact, all three groups—legalists, federalists, and generalists—shared the perception of arbitration and peace as a global, collaborative effort. This collaborative effort, however, was mostly missing when it came to teasing out common denominators amongst themselves. As the term already suggests, legalists particularly emphasized an international court and code of law to ensure peaceful conflict resolution. Prominent legalists, for instance, were Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, and George Kirchwey, a professor at its law faculty. Arguing along similar lines, federalists combined these global plans for pacifist legislation with the implementation of a global peace federation or umbrella organization, responsible, for example, for an international executive force and weapons control—in short, a prototype of the later League of Nations. Hamilton Holt, editor of The Independent, a liberal

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journal published weekly in Boston, was a representative of this pacifist school of thought. The last group, the so-called generalists, of which Louis Lochner was a member, accentuated America’s responsibility as a positive role model for peace practice worldwide. Then there were pacifist ‘renegades’ who defied clear-cut classifications, refused to join any official society, and developed strands of personal pacifism. The most famous case was President Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan. Resigning from his position in Wilson’s Cabinet over disputes about reactions to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, Bryan was known for his ‘peculiar’ pacifism and his strong aversion to established peace groups. Ironically, this erratic scope of American pacifism worked as an entrée for Schwimmer, who was flexible enough to meander between these diverse yet interfacing groups. Categorically rejecting any form of physical violence, even for self-defensive purposes, her most natural affiliations lay with US agitators who counted as absolute pacifists: William Hull, teaching history at Swarthmore College, Hamilton Holt, and Louis Lochner, already active during his student days in the so-called Cosmopolitan Club, a society to promote international friendship. Peace for these individuals, first and foremost, involved a personal conviction, either for religious or ethical reasons, and only then became a political, socio-economic, and international issue. Contemplating and drafting plans for a global peace union long before the outbreak of the war, Schwimmer also had no problem accepting a federation of nations, equipped with an international peace police, as suggested by many prominent American pacifists. Her interwar concept for world government and citizenship, which went far beyond the most drastic expectations of federalists, nonetheless also evinces her extremist, dissenting, and populist form of pacifism, which resulted in her gradual alienation from all other peace activists. At the same time, she strongly disliked pacifists who, paradoxically, would have naturally mirrored her pacifist unconventionality most closely, such as William Jennings Bryan, to whom she attributed an overzealous sense of ‘pathos’.25 In due course of time, Schwimmer’s irritability, self-chosen marginality, and, above all, fickleness in not strictly subscribing to one pacifist group also turned her into a welcome target for members of these contesting groups. Her methodologically eclectic activism, expressed by her preference for liaising with people rather than ‘isms’, for wielding miscellaneous strategies, and for spontaneously sourcing diverse channels, provided an ideal foil for inter-group rivalries, personal enmities, and attacks.

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Quite selective in character, most peace societies also were openly discriminatory towards those who did not live up to their expectations. Traditionalist pacifist groups made minimal attempts to appeal to or accept ‘other’ individuals, and female citizens, blue-collar workers, immigrants, or rural residents, for instance, did not commonly feature amidst their crowds. Accordingly, pacifist practice and programmes also reflected these non-egalitarian perceptions.26 Pacifist education was to be spread via a top-to-bottom approach, with ‘common folks’, supposedly lacking the mental capacities for comprehending the complexities of pacifism, spoonfed with ideas and ideals of peace. Even more modernist pacifists such as Louis Lochner, himself not perfectly fitting the mould as a German, second-generation immigrant, still held such patronizing views. Conversely, Jane Addams and William Jennings Bryan, both shying away from official peace organizations, refrained from such hierarchic indoctrination. Schwimmer managed to win the sympathies of and inspire persons who, like Addams, were disappointed with old-generation activists.27 Unlike traditional pacifists, Schwimmer was approachable, offering an applicable, ‘grass-roots’ model of peace activism via rallies, lobbying, and petitions, although she also adhered to the rather elitist conviction ‘that the oppressed can’t free themselves by their own efforts alone and that the independent and freer elements with a developed sense of justice are the ones able to do most’.28 This polemical, not to say sometimes demagogical, style, successful in facilitating instant mainstream support, undermined her credibility amongst official sources and discredited her with traditional pacifists. Schwimmer’s actual pacifist dilemma can be traced back to the fact that she partly shared the mentality of established pacifists, while they did not share her proactive approach to stopping the present war at all costs. They, again, would have had the financial and infrastructural means necessary to rally for peace, which the newly emerging peace groups, more receptive to Schwimmer’s mediation plans and sometimes even prompted by her peace lectures all over the United States, lacked. This situation was further convoluted in that her pacifism was particularly invigorating for left and socialist communities with whom she did not want to be associated.29 Her categorical rejection of these communities, which would have been the only ones to offer her a permanent stronghold for her radical pacifism, tragically hindered a potentially fruitful and durable cooperation. In her aversion to anarchism, communism, and socialism, Schwimmer, fatally, was closer in

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temperament to the conservative forces that attacked and slandered her in post-war times. Many portrayals of her bossy and egocentric personality can be traced back to precisely these idiosyncrasies. In turn, these missing commonalties with both groups contributed to and reinforced her eccentricity and verbal aggression. Moreover, Schwimmer’s lasting success as a pacifist newcomer in the United States was also hampered by her explicit merger of pacifism with feminism, which stigmatized her as suspicious amongst traditionalists and masculine-centred, left groups, and ostracized her amongst feminists-suffragists who saw the patriotic war effort as a chance to win the vote.30 As women’s suitability for citizenship was always measured against their supposed inability to defend their country physically, a proactive and patriotic war effort was the only way of engaging in and sympathizing with military action. The First World War, again, provided civilians with a certain exploitable and material value and propagandistic visibility, both as patriotic helpers for the total war effort and as victims of the war, for instance, the so-called rape of Belgium as a noble framework for recruitment mechanisms. This modern theatre of war, with deus ex machina tanks and chemical weapons, also gave women the opportunity to appear on the stage in new roles with old connotations by operating in previously inaccessible social niches. Consequently, the home front emerged as the equivalent of the domestic sphere and further depoliticized female citizens, rolling bandages and knitting socks for soldiers. Simultaneously, indirect or non-combatant and especially non-political contributions by women to this industrialized warfare rendered an inclusion in the electorate more likely. As disenfranchised citizens might display a lack of loyalty, profitable mobilization and effective implementation of civilians on the home front necessitated their passive political integration from a longterm perspective in order to stabilize the social fabric. More generally, civil rights, such as suffrage, always inextricably hinged on a measurable value and service for the nation, as evidenced, for instance, by the enfranchisement of women on geographical frontiers and borderlands or for national emancipation and strength (as in the cases of Wyoming, New Zealand, Australia, and Finland) and the debates about whether to enfranchise wives as procreators or female property holders as taxpayers. The demand for suffrage by women leaders, such as Fawcett and Catt, as well as considerations by statesmen about what type of female citizen to enfranchise, were also based on the assumption of an electoral inclusion of women as mere political

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adjutants, not as sovereign political agitators like Schwimmer. The First World War endowed women with a commercial and profitable quality as unquestioning and industrious supporters, not opponents, of the total war effort. Most importantly, the total war effort offered all types of feminists a chance to demonstrate their loyalty and patriotism by not just proverbially joining forces: difference feminists could pursue caretaking tasks as relief workers; equality feminists could take up masculine professions such as ticket conductor; yet none endeavoured to practise diplomacy or statecraft like Schwimmer.31 Furthermore, the infrastructure and networks of national women’s movements signing up for the war effort—under leaders such as Fawcett or Gertrud Bäumer, chairing the German Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Council of Women’s Associations), for instance—aided governments in canvassing and enlisting women en masse and much more efficiently for service on the home front. Schwimmer, objecting to the war effort on any scale whilst desiring an emancipated place in political arenas such as war cabinets, disrupted this compromise between feminists and officials over sustaining the social status quo.

EPILOGUE: SCHWIMMER’S HAND

IN

PACIFIST POKER GAMES

Due to Woodrow Wilson’s democratic principle of receiving any pacifist without differentiation, the White House, at times, turned into a beehive. From July to November 1915 alone, several peace activists consulted the President and his closest staff: on 21 July, Jane Addams was permitted to meet with him, and on 6 August she spoke to Bryan’s successor, Robert Lansing, together with Lillian Wald, running the housing project Henry Street Settlement in New York, and the Democratic journalist Oswald Garrison Villard. On 18 August, Emily Greene Balch, fired from her professorship in economics at Wellesley College due to her pacifist principles, saw the American commander in chief. Louis Lochner and David Starr Jordan, first president of Stanford University, were Wilson’s guests on 12 November. On 21 November, Schwimmer, accompanied by Addams, Balch, and Wald, managed to meet Wilson’s advisor Edward M. House (better known as Colonel House), and five days later, President Wilson received her for the last time with automobile tycoon Henry Ford and Ethel Snowden, the wife of British MP Philip Snowden.32 The two years and eight months of US neutrality granted American pacifists and European pacifists on US soil some leeway to address

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pro-peace issues slightly more freely and develop several mediation models. The unpreventable result was a variegated and seldom interconnected assemblage of pacifist ideas and formulas. This blatant disunity also became the pacifists’ major weakness and, while many peace schemes overlapped, their activists generally failed to speak with one voice. Whereas traditional pacifists and peace groups were merely ideologically diverse, yet socially homogeneous, these new pacifists, mainly moved to peace action by the outbreak of the war, now displayed both ideological and social heterogeneity. The pacifist spectrum in the United States had palpably widened, including traditional and new pacifists, socialist and bourgeois pacifists, moderate, radical, religious, and secular pacifists. With some mostly concentrating on post-war scenarios or non-resistance policies, some contextualizing pacifism religiously, and others mainly engaging in relief work, consensus was difficult, if not impossible, to find. Naturally, this splintered set-up weakened the pacifists’ general credibility and their approach to official politics. Additionally, the war damaged and diminished the pre-existing, ‘old-school’ peace movements and changed the face of pacifism after the war, just as it generally changed the face of warfare with the introduction of new military equipment, such as tanks and chemical armoury. As the war intensified, most former believers in a peaceful solution became disheartened, and Schwimmer’s striving for peace at any cost drove even the most steadfast proponents of mediation away. In her extreme peace efforts, she increasingly tended to oscillate between groups and organizations, according to who was least aggravated by her character and conduct. Despite otherwise being a forceful agitator, she was forced to react more and more to changed circumstances. Schwimmer faced the quandary that ‘old-time’ pacifists in America still were not useful for her plans, while new pacifist groups, which she had partly helped to ignite with her first US tour, now developed their agendas on their own accounts, beyond her influence. Adding to her malaise, many of those developments involved a distinctly left or socialist outlook. She compensated for this disadvantage by trying to mould left-leaning groups to her interests, which contributed to her autocratic image. Schwimmer’s apparent failure in realizing her peace efforts during the war then appears in a slightly new context: she wanted to intertwine two movements, feminism and pacifism, previously operating in separate domains, while (trans)national suffrage campaigns increasingly subscribed to the war effort and most pacifists focused on peace after the ceasefire.

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Furthermore, she attempted to appropriate channels and techniques for her mediation plans, such as diplomatic missions and governmental audiences, which were still reserved for male negotiators and explicitly denied to female citizens as officially non-political persons. Lastly, the few synergies she could have created in her ardent stop-the-war-at-any-cost rallying were with a microscopic enclave of either militant-socialist or religiouslymotivated feminists and pacifists. Her advocacy of peace politics, however, was inherently incompatible with such individuals and organizations. As the minuscule resistance to the Great War came predominantly from these circles, Schwimmer remained an outsider on all fronts, with her peace agitation maligned by pro-war patriots and unaccepted by the few anti-war activists. After the war, her exclusion continued and became fortified. She was the ideal scapegoat for anti-radicalism accusations and harassment, yet found no common ground with the opposing anti-reactionary sides of the political spectrum in Europe or the United States. ‘I am looked upon as a criminal [ . . . ] and outward we are all friends. But if our boat should be torpedoed you may be sure that I will not fight for the best places in the rescuing boats.’33 Employing this appropriate combat metaphor, Rosika Schwimmer confessed as such to her sponsor Lola Maverick Lloyd already one year into the war. As an alien among many communities (nonreligious female amongst conventionally male and spiritual, state-tolerated pacifists; Jewish and non-Anglo-American amongst international feminists; too radical for constitutional and ‘middle-class’ suffragists, yet too ‘middleclass’ and non-militant for left-wing activists), Schwimmer always wandered at the peripheries, which may explain her desire to be the centre of attention within groups, but also, more importantly, the continuous neglect of her name and legacy in these groups and in scholarship. Rosika Schwimmer was a pioneer on many frontiers and, like so many pioneers, her value was not acknowledged during her lifetime, or, indeed, afterwards. For instance, although defamed and discredited, she aimed to deconstruct gender anachronisms and sex discrimination, still persisting in conjunction with armed conflicts to this day. By questioning agreed regulations or codes and unwritten, silently accepted consensus, she, whether willingly or not, drew attention to the discrepancies and underscored the weaknesses of the feminist-pacifist groups that had sprung forth from and thus were overwhelmingly conformist to and symptomatic of a particular zeitgeist or milieu. Couching political demands in non-confrontational rhetoric or camouflaging them behind a veneer of docility, as so many other women reformers

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did, was certainly not Schwimmer’s forte. By displaying a public, hence an ‘unwomanly’, conduct and by disagreeing with others politically, she frequently appeared as ‘despotic’ and ‘overbearing’. Labelling her as emotional rather than political was obviously convenient for her adversaries, but it also influenced succeeding academic and extra-academic perceptions of her personality. Portrayals of her as tyrannical result from the bafflement of contemporaries and authors over how to ‘classify’ her, as she was one of the few female activists to exercise masculine roles and attitudes in a decidedly public-political manner. Her non-divisive approach to gender and politics made her cross the Rubicon in the eyes of many. Unpacking the intricacies of Rosika Schwimmer’s rise and fall hence also epitomizes the disparities and potentially missing intersections between the public and the political in the short twentieth century.

NOTES 1. Short biographical assessments can be found by M. D. Dubin (1971) ‘Schwimmer, Rosika’ in E. T. James, J. Wilson James, and P. S. Boyer (eds.) Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 5 vols. (Cambridge), iii, pp. 246–249; E. Wynner (1973) ‘Schwimmer, Rosika’ in J. A. Garraty (ed.) Dictionary of American Biography: Supplement, 10 vols. (New York), iv, pp. 724–728; R. Rauther (1984) ‘Rosika Schwimmer: Stationen auf dem Lebensweg einer Pazifistin’, Feministische Studien, III(1), pp. 63–75; G. Hardy (1993) American Women Civil Rights Activists (Jefferson), pp. 338–341; S. Zimmermann and B. Major (2006) ‘Schwimmer, Róza’ in F. de Haan, K. Daskalova, and A. Loutfi (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries (Budapest), pp. 484–489. Schwimmer’s pre-1914 life and work are discussed by S. Zimmermann (1999) Die bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Budapest) and D. Wernitznig (2016a) ‘Illyrismus, Internationalismus, Interaktion, Interferenz: Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) und der südslawische Raum (ca. 1900 bis 1914)’ in I. Korotin and V. Tutavac (eds.) ‘Wir wollen der Gerechtigkeit und Menschenliebe dienen . . . ’: Frauenbildung und Emanzipation in der Habsburgermonarchie––der südslawische Raum und seine Wechselwirkung mit Wien, Prag und Budapest (Vienna), pp. 334– 356. See further Wernitznig (2016b) ‘Living Peace, Thinking Equality: Rosika Schwimmer’s (1877–1948) War on War’ in B. Bianchi and G. Ludbrook (eds.) Living War. Thinking Peace (1914–1921): Women’s

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Experiences, Feminist Thought and International Relations (Newcastle upon Tyne), pp. 123–238. Schwimmer’s activism during the Great War is partly covered by A. Wiltsher (1985) Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (London), and her ambassadorial endeavours in Switzerland by P. Pastor (1974) ‘The Diplomatic Fiasco of the Modern World’s First Woman Ambassador: Róza Bédy-Schwimmer’, East European Quarterly, VIII(3), pp. 273–282; and T. Glant (1998) Through the Prism of the Habsburg Monarchy: Hungary in American Diplomacy and Public Opinion during World War I (Boulder), pp. 57–60; and (2002) ‘Against All Odds: Vira B. Whitehouse and Rosika Schwimmer in Switzerland, 1918‘, American Studies International, XL(1), pp. 34–51. For Schwimmer’s US exile and naturalization case, see R. B. Flowers and N. M. Lahutsky (1990) ‘The Naturalization of Rosika Schwimmer’, Journal of Church and State, XXXII(2), pp. 343–366; B. S. Wenger (1990) ‘Radical Politics in a Reactionary Age: The Unmaking of Rosika Schwimmer, 1914–1930’, Journal of Women’s History, II(2), pp. 66–99; R. B. Flowers (2003) To Defend the Constitution: Religion, Conscientious Objection, Naturalization, and the Supreme Court (Lanham), esp. ch. 3; M. H. McFadden (2011) ‘Borders, Boundaries, and the Necessity of Reflexivity: International Women Activists, Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948), and the Shadow Narrative’, Women’s History Review, XX(4), pp. 533–542. See D. Wernitznig (2015) ‘‘It is a strange thing not to belong to any country, as is my case now’—Fascism, Refugees, Statelessness, and Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948)’, DEP: Deportate, esuli, profughe, XXVII, pp. 102–108; (2016) ‘Memory Is Power: Rosa Manus, Rosika Schwimmer, and the Struggle about Establishing an International Women’s Archive’, in F. de Haan and M. Everard (eds.) Rosa Manus (1881–1942): The International Life and Legacy of a Jewish Dutch Feminist (Leiden), pp. 207–239; (2017) ‘Out of her time? Rosika Schwimmer’s (1877–1948) Transnational Activism after the First World War’, Women’s History Review, XXVI(2), pp. 262–279; (2017) ‘Suffrage and Nationalism in Comparative Perspective: Britain, Hungary, Finland and the transnational experience of Rosika Schwimmer’ (lead authors J. V. Gottlieb and J. Szapor, with T. Lintunen and D. Wernitznig), in I. Sharp and M. Stibbe (eds.) Women Activists between War and Peace: Europe, 1918–1923 (London), pp. 29–75, for Schwimmer’s post-1918 political activism and projects. 2. For details about the so-called International Congress of Women at The Hague, see J. Addams, E. Greene Balch, and A. Hamilton (1915) Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results

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3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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(New York) and L. B. Costin (1982) ‘Feminism, Pacifism, Internationalism and the 1915 International Congress of Women’, Women’s Studies International Forum, V(3–4), pp. 301–315. Discernibly, The Hague was chosen for its tradition of peace conferences: in 1899, Tsar Nicolas II initiated the so-called First Hague Conference, and the Second followed in 1907. About the pre-1915 Hague conferences, see, for instance, J. Dülffer (1981) Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen 1899 und 1907 in der internationalen Politik (Berlin). Interestingly, these peace congresses rather concerned themselves with jus in bello, less with jus ad bellum, hence evoking a certain futility regarding war prevention. Denlinger, ‘If War Comes’, New York World-Telegram, 25 March 1935, Rosika Schwimmer Papers (henceforth RSP). Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, MF Reel 100:55. Lloyd George (1938) War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 2 vols. (London), i, p. 50. United Suffragists to Schwimmer, 21 August 1914, RSP, Box 41. Fell to Schwimmer, 18 August 1914, RSP, Box 41. Fell to Schwimmer, 14 September 1914, RSP, Box 43. ‘Our German Friends’, Daily Express, 31 August 1914, RSP, Box 42. Schwimmer’s unpublished manuscript, ‘Woman’s Age of Innocence’, 1924, p. 106, RSP, Box 476. Schwimmer, ‘Twenty-Five Years Peace Palace (August 28, 1913)’, n.d., p. 2, RSP, Box 502. (1914) Bulletin Officiel du XXme Congrés Universel de la Paix, Tenu à La Haye, du 18 Août au 23 Août 1913, (Bern), pp. 66–68, and p. 22 n. 347, RSP, Box 481. Hardie to Schwimmer, 24 August 1914, RSP, Box 42. For US journalism at the beginning of the war generally, see P. P. O’Brian (2013) ‘The American Press, Public, and the Reaction to the Outbreak of the First World War’, Diplomatic History, XXXVII(3), pp. 446–475. Schwimmer to Furuhjelm, 27 September 1914, RSP, Box 45. Catt to President Wilson, n.d. (but possibly October 1914), RSP, Box 45. Schwimmer only managed to get hold of a copy of that letter in 1921. Schwimmer to Wilson, 1 October 1914, RSP, Box 45. Schwimmer to the Dutch feminist Frederika Wilhelmina (Mien) van Wulfften Palthe-Broese van Groenou, 16 December 1914, RSP, Box 50. Catt to Schwimmer, 25 November 1914, RSP, Box 48. Ibid. Schwimmer’s lecture at Wodwarth & Lothrops, Washington DC, 15 December 1914, RSP, Box 50.

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21. C. R. Marchand, for instance, delineates the developmental curve of peace groups from small, impoverished peace societies with little political influence in the 1890s to relatively affluent and respectable groups by 1912 and their subsequent downfall in (1972) The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898–1918 (Princeton). 22. Addams understood the need for ‘grass-roots’ pacifism during the First World War, for she worryingly noticed her Chicago Hull House immigrant neighbourhood (stemming from multiple European nationalities) splitting into Triple Alliance and Triple Entente residents as well. See Addams (1922) Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York), p. 3. Further, her (1907) Newer Ideals of Peace (New York), pre-dating William James’s ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’ by three years, is an early quest for alternative peace practices, later displayed by Schwimmer. 23. Schwimmer to Catt, 16 December 1914, RSP, Box 50. Catt for her part secretly tended to call Addams ‘slippery Jane’. 24. Titles on American pacifism are prolific: M. E. Curti (1929) The American Peace Crusade, 1815–1860 (Durham) and (1959) Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636–1936 (Boston); P. Brock (1968) Pacifism in the United States, from the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton); C. Chatfield (1971) For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941 (Knoxville) and with R. Kleidman (1992) The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism (New York); D. S. Patterson (1976) Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1887–1914 (Bloomington); C. DeBenedetti (1980) The Peace Reform in American History (Bloomington); C. F. Howlett and R. Lieberman (2008) A History of the American Peace Movement: From Colonial Times to the Present (Lewiston). 25. Schwimmer, ‘A Page of Wilsoniana’, n.d., p. 2, RSP, Box 44. 26. For elements of elitism in the almost exclusively (upper-) middle class, well-educated strata that formed peace societies, see D. S. Patterson (1973) ‘An Interpretation of the American Peace Movement, 1898– 1914’, in C. Chatfield (ed.) Peace Movements in America (New York), pp. 20–38, and M. A. Lutzker (1996) ‘The American Peace Movement: Themes and Contradictions, 1895–1917’, in H. L. Dyck and P. Brock (eds.) The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective (Toronto), pp. 320– 340, esp. p. 321. 27. For US pacifist dissent from 1914 onwards see, for instance, B. J. Steinson (1982) American Women’s Activism in World War I (New York) and F. H. Early (1997) A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse). 28. Schwimmer to the German feminist Lida Gustava Heymann, 22 February 1938, RSP, Box 502.

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29. For US socialist reactions to the war, see K. Kennedy (1995) ‘Declaring War on War: Gender and the American Socialist Attack on Militarism, 1914–1918’, Journal of Women’s History, VII(2), pp. 27–51. 30. See, for example, K. Jensen (2008) Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (Urbana). 31. Equality feminists did not favour any distinction based on gender, unlike their counterparts, difference or maternalist feminists, who considered women as inherently different to men, due to their biological function of childbearing. Contemporary feminist theory has critiqued this very rigid distinction and questioned its overall validity and especially the retrospect applicability of this dualist concept. For further elaborations on equality versus difference ideologies, see L. Alcoff (1988) ‘Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory’, Signs, XIII(3), pp. 405–436; J. W. Scott (1988) ‘Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses for Post-Structuralist Theory for Feminism’, Feminist Studies, XIV(1), pp. 33–50; N. F. Cott (1989) ‘What’s in a Name? The Limits of “Social Feminism;” or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women’s History’, The Journal of American History, LXXVI(3), pp. 809–829; K. Arnup, A. Lévesque, and R. Roach Pierson (eds.) with the assistance of M. Brennan (1990) Delivering Motherhood: Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries (London); G. Bock and S. James (eds.) (1992) Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Female Subjectivity (London). 32. This last meeting was in preparation for the notorious Ford Peace Ship expedition, financed by the car magnate and sailing to Europe in December 1915 in order to conceptualize and generate mediation. A discussion of this cruise would go beyond the scope of this chapter. For very biased accounts, see B. Hershey (1967) The Odyssey of Henry Ford and the Great Peace Ship (New York) and B. S. Kraft (1978) The Peace Ship: Henry Ford’s Pacifist Adventure in the First World War (New York). 33. Schwimmer to the Texas heiress and social activist Lola Maverick Lloyd, 20 August 1915, RSP, Box 61.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Printed primary sources Addams, J. (1907) Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan). Addams, J. (1922) Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York: Macmillan). Addams, J., Balch, E. G., and Hamilton, A. (1915) Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results (New York: Macmillan).

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Denlinger, S. (1935) ‘If War Comes’, N. Y. World-Telegram (25 March 1935). George, D. L. (1938) War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 2 vols. (London: Odhams Press). International Peace Bureau (1914) Bulletin Officiel du XXme Congrés Universel de la Paix, Tenu à La Haye, du 18 Août au 23 Août 1913 (Bern: Le Bureau international de la paix).

Printed secondary works Alcoff, L. (1988) ‘Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory’, Signs, 13/3, 405–436. Arnup, K., Lévesque, A., and Pierson, R. R. (eds), (with Brennan, M.) (1990) Delivering Motherhood: Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Routledge). Bock, B., and James, S. (eds.) (1992) Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Female Subjectivity (London: Routledge). Brock, P. (1968) Pacifism in the United States, from the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Chatfield, C. (1971) For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press). Chatfield, C. (with Kleidman, R.) (1992) The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism (New York: Twayne Publishers). Costin, L. B. (1982) ‘Feminism, Pacifism, Internationalism and the 1915 International Congress of Women’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 5/3–4, 301–315. Cott, N. F. (1989) ‘What’s in a Name? The Limits of “Social Feminism;” or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women’s History’, The Journal of American History, 76/3, 809–829. Curti, M. E. (1929) The American Peace Crusade, 1815–1860 (Durham: Duke University Press). Curti, M. E. (1959) Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636–1936 (Boston: J. S. Canner). DeBenedetti, C. (1980) The Peace Reform in American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Dubin, M. D. (1971) ‘Schwimmer, Rosika’, in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer (eds.), Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), iii. Dülffer, J. (1981) Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen 1899 und 1907 in der internationalen Politik (Berlin: Ullstein). Early, F. H. (1997) A World without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press).

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Flowers, R. B. (2003) To Defend the Constitution: Religion, Conscientious Objection, Naturalization, and the Supreme Court (Lanham: Scarecrow Press). Flowers, R. B, and Lahutsky, N. M. (1990) ‘The Naturalization of Rosika Schwimmer’, Journal of Church and State, 32/2, 343–366. Glant, T. (1998) Through the Prism of the Habsburg Monarchy: Hungary in American Diplomacy and Public Opinion during World War I (Boulder: Social Science Monographs). Glant, T. (2002) ‘Against all Odds: Vira B. Whitehouse and Rosika Schwimmer in Switzerland, 1918’, American Studies International, 40/1, 34–51. Hardy, G. J. (1993) American Women Civil Rights Activists: Biobibliographies of 68 Leaders, 1825–1992 (Jefferson: McFarland). Hershey, B. (1967) The Odyssey of Henry Ford and the Great Peace Ship (New York: Taplinger Publishing). Howlett, C. F., and Lieberman, R. (2008) A History of the American Peace Movement: From Colonial Times to the Present (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press). Jensen, K. (2008) Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press). Kennedy, K. (1995) ‘Declaring War on War: Gender and the American Socialist Attack on Militarism, 1914–1918’, Journal of Women’s History, 7/2, 27–51. Kraft, B. S. (1978) The Peace Ship: Henry Ford’s Pacifist Adventure in the First World War (New York: Macmillan). Lutzker, M. A. (1996) ‘The American Peace Movement: Themes and Contradictions, 1895–1917’, in Harvey L. Dyck and Peter Brock (eds.), The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Marchand, C. R. (1972) The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898– 1918 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). McFadden, M. (2011) ‘Borders, Boundaries, and the Necessity of Reflexivity: International Women Activists, Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948), and the Shadow Narrative’, Women’s History Review, 20/4, 533–542. O’Brian, P. P. (2013) ‘The American Press, Public, and the Reaction to the Outbreak of the First World War’, Diplomatic History, 37/3, 446–475. Pastor, P. (1974) ‘The Diplomatic Fiasco of the Modern World’s First Woman Ambassador, Róza Bédy-Schwimmer’, East European Quarterly, 8/3, 273– 282. Patterson, D. S. (1973) ‘An Interpretation of the American Peace Movement, 1898–1914’, in Charles Chatfield (ed.), Peace Movements in America (New York: Schocken Books). Patterson, D. S. (1976) Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1887–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Rauther, R. (1984) ‘Rosika Schwimmer: Stationen auf dem Lebensweg einer Pazifistin’, Feministische Studien, 3/1, 63–75.

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Scott, J. W. (1988) ‘Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses for Post-Structuralist Theory for Feminism’, Feminist Studies, 14/1, 33–50. Steinson, B. J. (1982) American Women’s Activism in World War I (New York: Garland). Wenger, B. S. (1990) ‘Radical Politics in a Reactionary Age: The Unmaking of Rosika Schwimmer’, Journal of Women’s History, 2/2, 66–99. Wernitznig, D. (2015) ‘“It is a strange thing not to belong to any country, as is my case now.”—Fascism, Refugees, Statelessness, and Rosika Schwimmer (1877– 1948)’, DEP: Deportate, esuli, profughe, 27, 102–108. Wernitznig, D. (2016a) ‘Illyrismus, Internationalismus, Interaktion, Interferenz: Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948) und der südslawische Raum (ca. 1900 bis 1914)’, in I. Korotin and V. Tutavac (eds.), ‘Wir wollen der Gerechtigkeit und Menschenliebe dienen . . . ’: Frauenbildung und Emanzipation in der Habsburgermonarchie—der südslawische Raum und seine Wechselwirkung mit Wien, Prag und Budapest (Vienna: Praesens). Wernitznig, D. (2016b) ‘Living Peace, Thinking Equality: Rosika Schwimmer’s (1877–1948) War on War’, in B. Bianchi and G. Ludbrook (eds.), Living War. Thinking Peace (1914–1921): Women’s Experiences, Feminist Thought and International Relations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Wernitznig, D. (2016c) ‘Memory Is Power: Rosa Manus, Rosika Schwimmer, and the Struggle about Establishing an International Women’s Archive’, in F. De Haan and M. Everard (eds.), Rosa Manus (1881–1942): The International Life and Legacy of a Jewish Dutch Feminist (Leiden: Brill). Wernitznig, D. (2017a) ‘Out of her time? Rosika Schwimmer’s (1877–1948) Transnational Activism after the First World War’, Women’s History Review, 26/2, 262–279. Wernitznig, D. (2017b) ‘Suffrage and Nationalism in Comparative Perspective: Britain, Hungary, Finland and the Transnational Experience of Rosika Schwimmer’ (Julie V. Gottlieb and Judith Szapor, with Tiina Lintunen) in Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Women Activists between War and Peace: Europe, 1918–1923 (London: Bloomsbury Academic). Wiltsher, A. (1985) Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (London: Pandora). Wynner, E. (1973) ‘Schwimmer, Rosika’, in John A. Garraty (ed.), Dictionary of American Biography: Supplement, 10 vols. (New York: Scribner). Zimmermann, S. (1999) Die bessere Hälfte?: Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Budapest: Napvilág). Zimmermann, S., and Major, B. (2006) ‘Schwimmer, Róza’, in Francisca De Haan, Krassimira Daskalova, and Anna Loutfi (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries (Budapest: Central European University Press).

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Dagmar Wernitznig holds a PhD in American Studies and has just graduated with a doctorate in history from the University of Oxford, UK, where she used to be a fellow at the Rothermere American Institute. She worked as a university lecturer in American, culture, post-colonial, and gender studies in Austria for several years. Her DPhil thesis deals with the life and activism of feminist, suffragist, and pacifist Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948), and she is currently preparing Schwimmer’s biography as well as Schwimmer’s unpublished writings for a commemorative edition.

PART III

Introduction to Part III

The relationships among individuals, peace organizations, and governments should be of interest to anyone with a desire to learn more about peace. Although it is an integral cog in the machinery of peace, politics is often viewed as an obstacle to the peace process. The same can be said for the military and the soldiers doing the actual fighting. Indeed, to this point in the book the role of governments, the military, and national leaders has been seen as one of obstruction. But these entities, these constructs of societal leadership are not some abstract idea; they are people. That they do not always agree about war, what its aims should be, or how to end it must be considered in any discussion of peace. As such, this section begins with an interesting approach by Justin Quinn Olmstead to the different peace proposals offered by British and German leaders. Noting that most post-war histories view the peace proposals as dishonest and a ‘wanton prolongation of the war’, Olmstead takes the view that they represent tactical decisions by belligerent leaders. By attempting to position their own country as the one that most desired an end to the war, leaders hoped to influence US President Woodrow Wilson and American policy. Keith Grieves maintains the focus on political leaders and their impact as he considers Lord Lansdowne’s role in the peace process in 1917. Not unlike civilian activists, Lansdowne worried that the attritional war was tearing apart Britain’s social fabric and that it would have a lasting impact on the country. Lansdowne understood that the strain war had placed on

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the societies of all participants could plant the seeds for a more devastating war in the future. His letter was an attempt to use the power of the press to pressure the Lloyd George government to consider the price of victory, not the need for victory. By encouraging the government to focus on their liberal roots and to begin peace talks, Lansdowne gained the support of other liberals who had stood by quietly in the face of patriotic pressure to support the war at all costs. He also won the support of pacifist organizations for moving public thought from the concept of a ‘knock-out’ blow to one of negotiated peace. Noting that peace is most important to those who are doing the fighting and dying, Galit Haddad adds an essential analysis of how soldiers figured in the peace movement. Examining the 1917 mutiny among French soldiers, Haddad discards the usual rehashing of the mutineers and instead analyzes those soldiers who did not join the mutiny. Despite the desire for peace shared by a broad sector of French soldiers, many did not take part in the mutiny but were nevertheless affected by it. Why some soldiers mutinied is just as important as why many did not. How nonmutineers judged their comrades is crucial to understanding the anti-war feeling among troops in the field.

Peace, a Tactical Approach: How Britain and Germany Abused the Promise of Peace during the First World War Justin Quinn Olmstead US President Woodrow Wilson established American neutrality on 18 August 1914, extending an offer to the belligerent nations either to help bring an immediate end to the conflict or to mediate a cessation of hostilities ‘at any other time that might be thought more suitable’.1 In speech after speech Wilson proclaimed that ‘America must be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world’ and that the United States must ‘provide the world with a beacon of light’.2 It was as a result of Wilson’s repeated peace overtures, I contend, that talk of peace during the years 1914–1916 became a means to an end, not the end in itself. In their attempts to position themselves to win the war, and understanding the importance Wilson placed on mediating an end to the war, the belligerents did not hesitate to use the promise of peace to give their troops the time needed to win decisively. Influencing the United States to remain neutral was as important to Germany as American belligerency was to Britain, and as it turned out, the tactical use of peace was

J.Q. Olmstead (*) University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_8

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extremely effective in influencing Wilson and his advisors. To the belligerents, talk of peace was a means of waging war. The British based their response to American peace initiatives on the diplomacy of delay, conciliation, and vagueness. It was the distinct desire of the Foreign Office to keep peace plans at bay long enough for the United States to lose patience with Germany and enter the war. Grey’s fear of Germany led to his desire, shared by most of Britain’s leaders, to ‘above all . . . defeat Germany’.3 With that intent, Grey could not sincerely entertain the possibility of peace until Germany no longer posed a threat to British interests. The peace overtures that came out of the German Foreign Office were much like Britain’s: vague, conciliatory, and based on delaying tactics as a means of stalling US entry into the war in the belief that German military prowess could force a peace entirely on Germany’s terms. Karl Birnbaum writes that ‘the principal object of Germany’s policy towards the United States was to prevent America from joining the Entente . . . ’.4 That being the case, German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg would entertain the possibility of peace if it were sufficient to keep them out of the war. Despite the hardships imposed by the British blockade and fighting a multi-front war, Germany’s leaders held fast to the belief that the German army could still emerge victorious. It is the contention of this chapter that by policy design, both Britain and Germany held out the hope of peace as a means to draw out negotiations with the United States in order to ensure a favourable military decision that would force the other to sue for peace on the victor’s terms. An analysis of two specific instances will provide clarification and insight into the belligerents’ use of peace as a diplomatic strategy in support of this position. The first example is the peace initiative between the United States and Great Britain, the House–Grey Memorandum. The second is the German peace initiative of 12 December 1916.

THE HOUSE–GREY MEMORANDUM Beginning with the House–Grey Memorandum: The Allied camp made no bones about its desire to destroy Germany. In a letter to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, American Ambassador to France William Sharp notes that the Allies believed they had the men and ammunition needed to drive Germany back across the Rhine and force them to ‘yield or give better terms’.5

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Therefore, from British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey’s perspective, American intervention was only necessary to the extent that the military claimed it was. Because the US provided a significant portion of the war materiel used by Britain, the maintenance of American sympathy was of equal importance to the overall desire to bring the war to a successful conclusion. Grey’s seeming desire to have peace, and a lasting peace at that, coupled with Wilson’s well-known desire for peace, in this case actually prolonged the war, because the British were able to continue to drag out the need for American mediation based on events at the front and the perceived intransigence of France and Russia. Several factors need to be recognized to understand the basis for the House–Grey agreement. To begin with, during Colonel Edward M. House’s, advisor to the president, discussions with British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Cecil Spring Rice immediately following the outbreak of the war, the Ambassador had made it clear to the Colonel that Britain needed a guarantee of peace before they could make any decisions regarding mediation.6 Then, in 1915, House and Grey discussed the foundations for a post-war League for the Preservation of Peace.7 By January 1915, Grey had sounded out the Wilson administration about the possibility of America joining an agreement to preserve future peace, only to have House express reluctance.8 Eight months later, on 22 September 1915, Grey again asked if the United States was prepared to bind itself to a league of nations.9 Grey was throwing a gauntlet down at House’s feet. How far was the President of the United States really willing to go to eliminate navalism and militarism? How far was the President ready to go to bring an end to this war, to bring about a league of nations? Grey had implied that Britain was willing to make massive changes to its centuries-old axiom about having the strongest navy in the world (a problem faced by Americans since the early 1800s), but clearly required the United States to break its lifelong national policy of not becoming entangled in European military affairs. With Wilson’s support, House responded on 17 October 1915. Much of the historical discussion surrounding what became known as the House– Grey Memorandum focuses on the President’s insertion of the word ‘probably’ into House’s original letter in the sentence, ‘If the Central Powers were still obdurate, it would [probably] be necessary for us to join the Allies and force the issue . . . ’. The importance given to ‘probably’ by historians is fair in that the word changes the entire meaning of the sentence, thus giving rise to the idea that while Wilson supported the

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general theory that House was working on, he was still, at heart, committed to remaining neutral. Instead of the document reading ‘the United States would enter the war against Germany in the event it refused to negotiate’, it now stated that it was possible that the United States would enter the war against Germany. To the diplomacy in use at the time, the importance of the insertion of ‘probably’ is much less relevant because it did not change Grey’s position. Grey told House that without knowing precisely where the United States stood he could not, in good faith, council him to return to Europe and begin peace negotiations.10 The emphasis here should be placed on the fact that even with Wilson’s caveat of ‘probably’, Grey had obtained from the United States approval for the Allies to attempt to destroy Germany militarily and if they failed, to invite American assistance in the process. According to the agreement, American support would only come at the Allies’ request. From the American point of view, things were set. Peace was possible, and on request of the Allies, the United States would request peace terms from the belligerents. If Germany refused negotiations, the possibility of American entry into the war against the Central Powers was likely. If by chance Germany agreed to take part in a peace conference, there would be no need for America to join the war, Wilson would become the man who ended the slaughter on the fields of Europe, and all would be well. Grey’s understanding of the situation is laid bare in a letter to British Ambassador to France Lord Bertie, shortly after the House–Grey Memorandum was created. In this letter, Grey notes that as long as the Allies believed they could achieve a military victory without US military assistance, there was no harm in the American proposal, but if the war were to begin to develop into a stalemate, then American support would be required to gain a favourable peace.11 From Grey’s point of view, then, the United States was falling into line where he could be assured that they would not break relations with Britain over the blockade. It seemed that the acquiescence of the United States to Britain’s desired destruction of Germany was on course.

THE GERMAN PEACE OFFER

OF

1916

Moving on to Germany’s tactical use of peace: Despite anti-German feelings among many members of the Wilson administration, Chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg, Ambassador to the United States Johann Heinrich

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Count von Bernstorff, and the German Foreign Office were continually able to use the idea of peace to defuse American angst. Germany’s initial calls for peace negotiations, in September 1914, led President Wilson and Colonel House to believe there was at least a chance they could end the war before being drawn into belligerency. Despite precipitating Wilson’s peace initiative, Bethmann’s December 1916 peace proposal should still be considered a success in that it bought Germany time to end the war on its own terms. Bethmann’s peace proposal is often seen as an attempt to deter the military leaders about the necessity of unrestricted submarine warfare.12 Indeed, in the months preceding the peace offer Germany’s military leaders had been pressing for greater freedom for the submarines in order for the war to be winnable for the army.13 On 4 March 1916, after hearing the arguments for and against unleashing the submarines, the Kaiser agreed that unrestricted submarine warfare was not a viable option at that time.14 He did, however, issue instructions to Bethmann to begin laying the diplomatic groundwork in neutral countries, particularly in the United States.15 If Bethmann agreed with the assessment that Germany’s position was becoming more precarious by the day, and most historians agree that he did, then it is easy to understand why he would give up his attempts to keep the United States out of the war and look towards the possibility of peace, presented as an opportunity to occupy America’s interest while the military forced a decision in the war.16 It is with this in mind that Bethmann’s diplomatic initiatives toward the United States in 1916 inadvertently took the same lines as House’s agreement with Grey. If the peace terms were met, great; if not, Germany would hope to create an environment that would make it difficult for the United States to break neutrality, by appearing to have wanted peace only for the British to shun the opportunity to end the destruction.17 Following a more traditional view of First World War history, Z. A. B. Zeman writes that Bethmann was working with the hope of peace being near to stave off unrestricted submarine warfare.18 Viewed through the lens of a continuous battle between the civilian and military forces in Germany, this is a valid conclusion. But considering the German discussions with the United States as part of a larger diplomatic and military strategy—to clear the way for this type of submarine warfare, meaning that the United States would remain neutral because Wilson would have assumed that Germany had made a sincere attempt at peace only to have it rejected—it becomes apparent that the German Foreign Office was

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working to placate the United States as the German military worked to bring an end to the war on German terms. Bethmann’s peace proposal of 12 December 1916 has often been deemed a diplomatic blunder because it upstaged President Wilson’s plan, delivered on 26 December 1916, demanding an end to hostilities and that all belligerents come to the peace table. It is, however, important to note that it followed a clear pattern of using peace to maintain American neutrality and, according to Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase, Germany’s peace offer was a ‘highly opportunistic diplomatic move initiated to either secure peace . . . or to create a politically favorable situation for the return to unconditional submarine warfare’.19 It was because Bethmann had been charged with clearing a path for the unrestricted use of submarines that Germany made an appeal for peace. In the days following the German peace offer, the Entente unsurprisingly rejected the offer, and Wilson presented a proposal of his own. This new offer was, in essence, rejected by all sides, but it is Germany’s response that is often misunderstood. All Allied governments had rejected both the German peace initiative and the American effort. From Germany’s point of view, the United States had to recognize the fact that Germany had made an attempt at peace and that the Allies had shown their true intentions to destroy Germany, leaving Germany with no other choice but to utilize unrestricted submarine warfare.20 Indeed Wilson, ‘immensely encouraged—and spurred to action’ by the German proposal, still feared that the Allied powers would rebuff Germany’s peace proposal and thereby put a strain on US—British relations.21 Under Secretary Arthur Zimmerman’s response to Wilson’s proposal clearly stated Germany’s willingness to meet with the Allied powers to discuss the cessation of hostilities, going so far as to point out that Germany had already offered peace and therefore was serious about bringing about an end to the war.22 Bethmann was looking not only to make peace but to create an opportunity for the force of arms to produce conditions beneficial to a Germandictated peace. Therefore, it is necessary to understand that Germany placed restrictions on how a peace conference could come about, because Germany’s leadership still believed that if the United States remained neutral they could win the war. The idea that the maintenance of American neutrality ended with the decision to utilize unrestricted submarine warfare is an overly simplistic view of First World War history. Indeed, Ambassador Bernstorff continued to work to maintain American

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neutrality up to and after the point that he was sent home and diplomatic ties were broken. The infamous Zimmerman letter to Mexico was another attempt at maintaining US neutrality, as is indicated by the line in the letter stating that Germany would work to keep America neutral.

CONCLUSION The evidence presented demonstrates that Britain and Germany were both attempting to use the idea of peace as a means of directing U.S. policy to gain the time needed to win the war through military means. Grey had established that Britain could not make peace with Germany while Germany still posed a threat to her interests. In Germany, Bethmann had been tasked with keeping America out of the war long enough for the military to finally win a decisive victory. Britain and Germany were willing to speak with the United States about peace when they were in a position to dictate an end to the war. Peace would not be discussed by Britain if it had recently suffered a military setback, nor would Germany discuss peace if it felt the situation at the front placed it in a weaker position. Peace was only an option to either country if it were perceived to be in a position of strength and could dictate the terms. By the same principle, if the belligerent nations had peace terms dictated to them, peace was no longer considered an option. Peace, it turned out, was merely another weapon of war.

NOTES 1. On 4 and 5 August 1914 the United States extended this offer to all the belligerent governments; Secretary of State to the Ambassador in AustriaHungary, 4 August 1914, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1914. Supplement: the World War (Washington, 1928), http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1914Supp, p. 42. 2. President’s speech, 10 May 1915, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 33, pp. 147–149, Princeton University; Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, eds., The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. II (New York, 1925), President’s speech, 22 January 1917, pp. 407–414. 3. John Charmley, ‘Splendid Isolation to Finest Hour: Britain as a Global Power, 1900–1950’, in The Foreign Office and British Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, ed. Gaynor Johnson (London and New York, 2005), p. 135; V. H. Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 1914–1918 (London, 1971), pp. 2–3.

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4. Karl Birnbaum, Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare: A Study of Imperial Germany’s Policy Towards the United States, April 18, 1916–January 9, 1917 (Stockholm, 1958), p. 26. 5. The Ambassador in France (Sharp) to the Secretary of State, 29 December 1916, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1916, Supplement: the World War (Washington, 1928), http://digital.library. wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1914Supp, p. 126. 6. Spring Rice to House, 12 September 1914, Edward Mandell House Papers, vol. I, p. 158, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. 7. Grey to Spring Rice, 2 January 1915, FO 800/85, The National Archives of the UK (Hereafter referred to as TNA). 8. Joyce Grigsby Williams, Colonel House and Sir Edward Grey: A Study in Anglo-American Diplomacy (Lanham, 1984), p. 62; Grey to Spring Rice, 2 January 1915, FO 800/85, TNA. 9. Grey to House, 22 September 1915, the Papers of Edward M. House, Yale University Library. 10. Grey to House, 11 November 1915, Edward M. House Papers, Yale University Library. 11. Grey to Bertie, 5 March 1916, FO 800/181, TNA. 12. Z. A. B. Zeman, The Gentlemen Negotiators: A Diplomatic History of World War I (New York, 1971), p. 114. 13. Some of this discussion revolved around the fear that the Germany army could not survive another winter. 14. 10 March 1916, Zimmermann to Bethmann Hollweg, Recording/Chronicle, Theobald v. Bethmann Hollweg, Nachlass 1549, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. 15. Ibid.; Walter Görlitz, The Kaiser and His Court: The Diaries, Note Books, and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet 1914–1918 (New York, 1959), pp. 141–142. 16. Karl E. Birnbaum, Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare: A Study of Imperial Germany’s Policy Towards the United States, April 18, 1916–January 9, 1917 (Stockholm, 1958), p. 141; Konrad H. Jarusch, The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, 1973), p. 300; Isabel V. Hull, The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888–1918 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 283. 17. Birnbaum, Peace Moves, pp. 102, 125, 169. 18. Z. A. B. Zeman, The Gentlemen Negotiators: A Diplomatic History of World War I (New York, 1971), pp. 114–115. 19. Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase, ‘The United States and Germany in the World Arena, 1900–1917’, in Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany and the United States in the Era of World War I, 1900–1924, ed. Hans-Jürgen Schröder (Providence, 1993), p. 57.

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20. 16 January 1917, Foreign Office to Bernstorff, IA Mexico, Nr. 16 secr., R 16.919–1, Bd. 1, Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt. 21. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era: 1910–1917 (New York, 1954), p. 260; Sterling J. Kernek, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society: Distractions of Peace During War: The Lloyd George Government’s Reactions to Woodrow Wilson, December, 1916– November, 1918 (Philadelphia, 1975), p. 14. 22. The Ambassador in Germany (Gerard) to the Secretary of State, 26 December 1916, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1916, Supplement: the World War (Washington, 1928), http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS. FRUS1914Supp, pp. 117–118. Justin Quinn Olmstead is Assistant Professor of History and Director of History Education at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma. He presents at national and international conferences on the First World War and has acted as content consultant for several books on the subject. He is on the executive committee of the Midwest World History Association, and is Treasurer for the British Scholar Society/Britain and the World. His book Acquiring America: The Diplomatic Battle for the United States, 1914–1917 is under review. His current research is on the impact of Lloyds of London on British policy during the First World War. He received his PhD from the University of Sheffield, England and is a member of the Royal Historical Society.

A Future Too Awful to Contemplate: Lord Lansdowne, War Aims, and Peace Advocacy in England in 1917 Keith Grieves On 29 November 1917 the Daily Telegraph published a letter from Lord Lansdowne under the heading ‘Co-ordination of Allies War Aims’. The Times had refused to print it the day before and, thereafter, always described it as the ‘Peace Letter’. Shortly before its publication, Lord Lansdowne summarized his perspective in a memorandum for his longstanding political colleague A. J. Balfour: ‘We must all realise that the war has lasted too long, and that in the interests of civilisation and humanity no pains should be spared to bring it to an end’.1 Lansdowne wanted to know what victory would look like beyond the expectation that the Central Powers should be defeated in all theatres of war. If Allied peace aims could be coordinated, might moderate opinion in Germany be conciliated? Lansdowne suggested that the Allied war aims should not include Germany’s destruction as a Great Power, nor the imposition of a government which the people had not chosen. Territorial claims in central and south-eastern Europe could be adjusted by ‘discussion and negotiation’.2 Lord Lansdowne’s Letter placed more emphasis on security through international arbitration than on reparation, excepting arrangements for

K. Grieves (*) School of Education, Kingston University, Kingston, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_9

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Belgium. The Letter proposed a negotiated peace between the warring nations to avert the creation of diplomatic and economic conditions which might cause a more dreadful war in the future. Most of all, the ruination of the civilized world might yet be avoided: But those who look forward with horror to the prolongation of the war, who believe that its wanton prolongation would be a crime, differing only in degree from that of the criminals who provoked it, may be excused if they too scan the horizon anxiously in the hope of discovering their indications that the outlook may not after all be so hopeless as is supposed.3

Although the Allied powers could not lose the war, another winter would be catastrophic. The military and social context of Lansdowne’s Letter can be overlooked amid the political drama of its publication. Although the genealogy of the document pre-dates the fourth year of war, it was an artefact of November 1917 and illuminated the military and political outlook at the end of the Third Battle of Ypres. Outside the parliamentary precincts, individual private reflections on the Letter inhabited a circumspect new ‘no man’s land’ between adherence to the ‘knock-out blow’ and war resistance activism. In 1917 an alternative discourse of negotiated peace emerged even among supporters of the declaration of war, who had assisted voluntary recruitment campaigns and were not necessarily pacifist-minded. New advocates of peace scanned the horizon in the company of Lord Lansdowne to search for limits to the mobilization of manpower and material resources. Their questioning of the social and economic consequences of attritional war was challenged by Stephen McKenna in a memoir of his father: ‘Lansdowne did not challenge the will to victory, but he was uneasy about the price’.4 The effect of the Letter’s publication on high politics has obscured both its significance as the expression of ‘a deep-seated feeling of war weariness’ and as a rallying point for public and private doubts about the affordability of all-out war late in 1917.5 This chapter suggests that the less hopeful prognosis for Allied military victory crystallized moderate peace advocacy.6 Its origins lay in a collective aspiration to constrain the conduct of a war whose enlargement in scale, duration, and intensity far exceeded the continental commitment of 1915. Sympathetic responses to Lansdowne’s Letter were intensely mindful of the dominant presumption that all sacrifices must

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lead to victory ‘For Honour and liberty’, where ‘Might in the Right Cause shall prevail’, as emblazoned on contemporary chinaware. An appraisal of the aspirations of moderate peaceable opinion late in 1917 follows an evaluation of the socio-military context of the Letter’s publication. Lord Lansdowne had extensive landholdings in England, Scotland, and Ireland and first held a government post in 1869. In1880 he resigned from the Liberal Government in opposition to Irish land reform legislation. Imperial proconsul roles followed, as Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India, and in Unionist governments after 1895 he was Secretary of State for War and Foreign Secretary. David Cannadine has summarized, ‘Both by ancestry and by attainment, he belonged to one of the great governing families of the realm’.7 Andrew Adonis notes that the Entente Cordiale was his ‘greatest act as foreign secretary’, whereby Britain formally renewed its interest in the European balance of power, and Splendid Isolation unravelled in diplomatic talks with Japan, France, and Russia.8 On 2 August 1914 the meeting of Unionist leaders at Lansdowne House contributed to the political consensus for the declaration of war and made possible the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force later that month. His role as President of the Wiltshire Territorial Force Association reflected the expectation that landed proprietors would mobilize their tenantry for national defence, but the limitations of voluntary recruitment soon became apparent. The supply requirements of soldiers under training in the county was far larger than during the imperial emergency of 1900, and to manage the balance of military enlistment and industrial production required national organization. Early in the war Lansdowne agreed with the neighbouring landowner and senior Unionist politician, Walter Long, ‘that we must not bleed the villages too severely’.9 Soon after the outbreak of war, Lansdowne’s principal home, Bowood, became a military hospital, his wife presided over the Officers Families Fund, and both their sons returned to their regiments for active service.10 His second son, Major Lord Charles Mercer Nairne, was killed at Zillebeke on 30 October 1914 while serving as a staff officer of the 6th Cavalry Brigade. On 11 December 1914 Margot Asquith, wife of the Prime Minister, arrived in Belgium to stay with the King and Queen. She motored to Ypres, where ‘No hospital full of wounded ever gave me such an insight into war as that damp crowded quiet churchyard’.11 She put a cross on the grave of Lord Lansdowne’s son and remembered their

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meeting, a few weeks before, at a dinner party when he was Equerry to King George V. She noted more generally, ‘The Ypres cemetery will haunt me till I die’.12 As Minister without Portfolio in Asquith’s Coalition Government from May 1915 until 5 December 1916, Lansdowne was joint Leader, with Lord Crewe, of the House of Lords. During the reconstruction of the government in May 1915 his commitment to compulsion and state direction was fully evident in a series of Unionist meetings at his town house in Berkeley Square.13 On 28 September 1916, Lloyd George reiterated his insistence on the ‘decisive’ defeat of Prussian militarism by declaring, ‘There is neither clock nor calendar in the British Army to-day’ in an interview with Roy Howard, an American correspondent.14 Comparison was drawn with the defeat of Napoleon after almost 20 years of war. But time was a more vital factor for Lansdowne, and high casualty levels his dominant theme: ‘We are slowly but surely killing off the best of the male population of these islands’.15 In his Cabinet memorandum of 13 November 1916, Lansdowne plainly asked, ‘Let our naval, military and economic advisers tell us frankly whether they are satisfied that the knock-out blow can and will be delivered’. Lord Newton, Lansdowne’s biographer, suggested that this memorandum and the Letter of 29 November 1917 were ‘practically identical’.16 However, nearly 12 months after leaving the Cabinet, Lansdowne’s quest for a ‘general stock-taking’ of Allied resources was accompanied by a much fuller expression of war weariness, including the question, ‘Can we look forward with confidence to the coming winter?’.17 In November 1916 Lloyd George had welcomed Cabinet discussion of resourcing military strategy for 1917 at Asquith’s invitation. But in November 1917 the War Cabinet had no wish to encourage Lansdowne’s draft parliamentary questions. Indeed, by 4 December 1917, a Cabinet paper existed to evidence contact between Lord Lansdowne and A. J. Balfour. It purposefully revealed the latter’s advice: ‘I do not know this is a very suitable time for discussing peace matters. I rather think not’.18 Late in 1917 Lansdowne was still aloof and stoical, but no longer uncommunicative. His anguished private warning was transposed into a public appeal for time to pause and reflect on the coordination of war aims before inter-Allied diplomatic and strategic planning for 1918 was undertaken.19 He had clarified the stark urgency in a private memorandum to Balfour on 16 November 1917: ‘And all the time the country is losing the flower of its population. We may be able to replace ships and guns, but we cannot replace the men who have lost life or

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limb during the past three years’.20 Ultimately, Lansdowne hoped to ‘convince moderate public opinion in Germany and Austria that all the moderation is not on their side’.21 Lansdowne was not alone in publicly identifying the discrepancy between expectations of triumphant Allied victory and diminishing signs of a ‘conquered and prostrate enemy’.22 The ‘wanton prolongation’ of war had resonance for Lloyd George as Prime Minister, who had condemned ‘useless victories’ earlier in the month. At the Inter-Allied War Council in Paris on 12 November he stated, ‘We have won great victories. When I look at the appalling casualty lists I sometimes wish it had not been necessary to win so many’.23 The speech prompted John St Loe Strachey, editor of the Spectator, to reassure General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding British armies in France and Flanders, about ‘war policy based on casualties being an unforgiveable sin’.24 One day before the Lansdowne Letter was published, Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War, confirmed that the average British monthly ‘wastage rate’ in all theatres of war in 1917 was 74,600 men. The shortfall of recruits necessitated an immediate demand for 250,000 category ‘A’ men, followed by 50,000 men per month up to June 1918, if the British armies in France and Flanders were to be maintained at their existing levels.25 Incrementally, the War Cabinet started to challenge the full replacement of casualty levels on the Western Front late in 1917. The allocation of recruits for the army and labour supply for industrial and agricultural production became more precisely determined by Allied military and naval priorities, which demanded the declaration of British war aims on 5 January 1918 at the insistence of the trade union movement. The full process was detailed in a comprehensive review by Auckland Geddes, Minister of National Service, in June 1918, whose summary of 1917 underlined ‘The heavy casualties which accrued and the impossibility of training the divisions fully after each infusion of new drafts, the effect of what was in common belief the unfruitful pouring out of life, upon the moral of the people and upon the willingness on men to serve clogged for many months the war effort of the nation’.26 But Lloyd George warned in a speech on 14 December 1917 that there could be no ‘halfway house’ between victory and defeat.27 Consequently, unfolding events in November 1917 were neither propitious for advocating a negotiated peace nor securely foundational for the ‘knock-out blow’ in 1918. In his War Memoirs Lloyd George respectfully charted the sentiment for which Lansdowne had become spokesman: ‘The desire for peace was spreading amongst men and women who, although they were convinced

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of the righteousness of the War, felt that the time had come for putting an end to its horrors in the name of humanity, if it could be done on terms that were honourable and safe’.28 Lloyd George admired Lansdowne’s courage, patriotism, and sense of public duty, if less so those of the Liberal ex-ministers who supported his Letter.29 Lloyd George thought it was a ‘plea for immediate peace’ and criticized its ‘singularly ill-timed’ publication.30 At the time, Lloyd George was committed to territorial claims which might bring reparation for war destruction and damage in Allied countries.31 C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, witnessed Lloyd George’s privately stated views and cautiously supported the Lansdowne Letter for its advocacy of a war aims statement. On 16 December 1917 he asked Lloyd George what might constitute victory: ‘He said we should have victory when we were manifestly dominant. I said that was only to say the same thing in different words’.32 Scott was perturbed that ‘victory’ was a rhetorical device in Lloyd George’s speeches as well as in the official despatches from the battlefield. In the days that followed Lloyd George moved towards a statement of war aims and acknowledged his ‘pacifist temper’.33 In combination, worsening Allied military prospects on the Italian and Western fronts, the Lansdowne Letter, the Bolshevik government’s publication of secret peace treaties, and the labour movement’s opposition to the ‘combing out’ of skilled workers for military service demanded a statement on war aims.34 In this broader context, Andrew Bonar Law informed Conservatives at a party conference on 30 November 1917, ‘I disagree absolutely not only with the arguments, but with the whole tone of the letter. I think it is nothing less than a national misfortune that it should have been published, now of all times’.35 Lansdowne quickly learned that he had been ‘officially excommunicated’ from the Conservative Party.36 On 1 December a government statement confirmed that the letter had no official sanction.37Mr Punch’s History of the Great War sorrowfully concluded, ‘His unfortunate intervention, playing into the hands of Pacificists and Pro-Boches, is all the more to be deplored in a public servant who has crowned a long, disinterested and distinguished career by an act of grievous disservice to his country’.38 But in a study of divided Britain in wartime, Adam Hochschild does not accord special notice to the immediate effects of the Lansdowne Letter.39 Nor was it discussed in Christopher Andrew’s Secret Service.40 Brigadier-General John Charteris, Chief of Intelligence at British GHQ, was forthright in his generalizing summary of the military situation from

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the German perspective on 28 December 1917: ‘Germany has probably taken note of the reception which Lord Lansdowne’s Letter received in the Press in England. Generally, this was favourable throughout the provinces, and unfavourable in London’.41 The situation was more nuanced than Charteris allowed. For example, Liberal newspapers in Yorkshire sympathized with Lansdowne’s demand for a war aims statement, but did not support the call for a negotiated peace.42 Editorials in the The Times and the Daily Mail quickly condemned the ‘Peace Letter’. The Northcliffe press searched for damaging insights from Lansdowne’s political life and depicted a ‘white flagger’ with extensive estates in town and country. On 5 March 1918, H. A. Gwynne told Lady Bathurst, proprietor of the Morning Post, that Lansdowne’s Letter ‘has done infinite harm to the English cause—still, as you say, I think it is somewhat the result of senile decay rather than any lack of patriotism’.43 A cartoon entitled ‘Cold Feet’ in the 15 December 1917 issue of the journal The Passing Show depicted an elderly coroneted figure in frock coat and wing-collar waving a white flag. He was being observed by a disgruntled John Bull, but cheered by Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden, a Liberal MP, and the Daily News.44 For the cartoonist, this moment bore comparison with Lansdowne’s opposition to constitutional reform in 1911, such was his association with ‘diehard’ opinion. Lansdowne won support from individual war resisters, such as Bertrand Russell. But Lansdownites and pacifists were not interchangeable categories of anti-war opposition late in 1917. The Lansdowne Letter was not a moment of Dissent in the radical tradition, nor was he one of A. J. P. Taylor’s quintessential ‘trouble-makers’.45 Reassuringly for Lansdowne, his post bag suggested that the Letter was privately valued by men and women who were direct witnesses to the nature and cost of war. His daughter, the Duchess of Devonshire, was informed on 10 December, ‘I am surprised—I wonder if I really am?—at the number of letters written to me by officers at the front to say that they welcome the letter’.46 She did not agree with the letter, nor did his heir, Lord Kerry, whose letter to The Times distanced him from his father.47 The letters home of the Rev. Julian Bickersteth, chaplain of 1/12th London Regiment 56th Division, usually depicted scenes at casualty clearing stations close to the front line without reference to the conduct of the war. Following the Battle of Cambrai, which he declared to be a costly failure, he recounted the death of a ‘cultivated and extremely well read’ company commander and officiated at a burial service for two doctors. In this context

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he asked, ‘When will this senseless murder end? Is there nobody sufficiently Christian to back up Lord Lansdowne’s Peace Initiative? I have at present only just had the chance of glancing at his letter, but from what I saw it seems to be a wonderfully clear and statesmanlike effort to bring us back again to the right judgement’.48 As a witness to a never-ending war, Bickersteth was encouraged by the clarity of the Peace Initiative and hoped that it would find wide appeal at home. Church bells rang following the attack at Cambrai, but the hope for a decisive victory on the Western Front was dashed by withdrawal from forward positions in Bourlon Wood on 30 November. Julian Bickersteth concluded with unusual excitement, ‘Lord Lansdowne’s Letter is meeting with a great deal of support and favourable comment from officers out here. He will be the leader of a new party soon, if he isn’t careful, a Peace Party with a growing following’.49 At GHQ C. E. Montague was a conducting officer for press visitors to the Western Front. Initially, he presumed from hearsay that Lansdowne’s Letter was a ‘Pacifist tract’. He expected to condemn any signs of ‘Pacifist intellectualism’ because they were often censorious, full of ‘human lamentation’, and unhelpful to the lions led by asses, whom he had observed at the Battle of Cambrai.50 Montague was a leader writer at the Manchester Guardian until he enlisted in August 1914, dyeing his white hair to disguise his age, and he greatly admired Lansdowne’s public intervention. He felt that a statement of war aims might stiffen the resolve of soldiers to endure conditions in the trenches and secure a victory which could be meaningful to them: ‘On reading the letter I am surprised to find it a good declaration of war aims, likely to be approved by soldiers here, and useful towards victory. Our press seems to be in a queer state—talking hysterically in fear of being thought unpatriotic if it does anything else. It looks like the temper of defeat, but the plain soldier may still pull us through’.51 In the fourth year of war, private correspondence from the Western Front suggested that individual, and independent, attitudes to war aims were being more freely expressed. David Englander identified this significant shift from the institutional presumption that ‘Politics and military service were in theory incompatible’ in his study of Third Army censor records.52 In January 1918 the normally cautious diarist Capt. J. C. Dunn provided a commentary on peace feelers, food shortages, and Lansdowne’s Letter, which was garnished with an abiding suspicion of Lloyd George.53 If not protests in the public sphere, these voices of concern broadened the notion of anti-war sentiment to include the uniformed newspaper reader who accepted the imperative of maintaining

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discipline and morale, but recognized from personal experience the signs of deteriorating Allied military prospects and hoped the evidence would be noted at home.54 Lansdowne’s unexpected and unembellished depiction of the human and material costs of war brought hope that specific peace terms would come to inform discussion of prospects for Allied military victory. At home, Siegfried Sassoon knew well the pacifist influences of Bloomsbury and Garsington. His letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell on 4 December 1917 briefly noted, ‘The Lansdowne affair has given us all a feeling of hope, hasn’t it?’.55 He wrote while on leave at Weirleigh, where his mother disapproved of any peace protest and served wine from the Empire as a patriotic gesture. On return to regimental duties, Sassoon’s diary entry on 19 December concluded, ‘I have done all I can to protest against the war and the way it is prolonged’.56 His preoccupation became how to face the ‘horrors of the front’ once more, having contemplated at ‘Dottyville’, otherwise known as Craiglockhart War Hospital, so many of the issues that found expression in Lansdowne’s Letter. In Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920, published in 1945, Sassoon conceded, ‘I must add that in the light of subsequent events it is difficult to believe that a Peace negotiated in 1917 would have been permanent’.57 These soldiers’ voices raised the question, later re-described by the cultural historian Samuel Hynes, ‘What had the cause become?’.58 In particular, should it be fought to the exhaustion of all combatant nations?.59 The Letter was banned from republication, despite being widely reprinted in national and provincial newspapers, including the Morning Post on 30 November 1917. The relevant Defence of the Realm Regulation 27C was debated in the House of Commons on 12 December 1917, when Philip Snowden criticized the anomalous restriction on reprinting it in pamphlet form.60 Cannadine suggested that the Lansdowne Letter was an ‘appeal for moderation’ by a Whig whose social world had disintegrated.61 He was neither part of the government nor of the opposition. Lord Crawford had served as a Private in France in 1915–1916, on surgical orderly duties, and saw Lansdowne in the House of Lords ‘sitting in isolation below the gangway’.62 After spending time travelling with Lansdowne, on 23 February 1919, Lord Crawford suggested that his passion for governing remained intact: ‘Lord L[ansdowne] seems very well—still infected with the ideas of the Lansdowne Letter, and still as Whiggish as ever’.63 Crawford understood Whiggism to mean the close investigation of all public policy issues, relentlessly and courteously, with the presumption that the patrician

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prescription would apply. Similarly, in a letter to the liberal journal Saturday Review, Mrs Florence Gay of Haslemere admired Lansdowne’s intervention as a counterpoint to Winston Churchill’s ‘wild guarantees of victory’ as Minister of Munitions. In particular, she thought that Lansdowne’s deliberative survey of the war’s cost might reconstruct the ‘terrible chess-board, indeed, on which two ignorant players make the bewildering moves of perpetual check’.64 Lansdowne’s commentary on war policy did not encompass the politics of high command or qualities of military leadership. He was not briefed by politicians whose portfolios reflected the enlarging state mobilization and direction of national resources after December 1916. Near to the close of Asquith’s premiership, General Sir William Robertson had complained to Lansdowne that the nation had yet to be organized for war.65 Twelve months later, the Lansdowne Letter enthused a readership which remembered the liberal polity of 1914, free trade and the navalist principles of limited liability, which was prepared to withstand the ‘storm of contumely’.66 To his bewilderment, Lansdowne had been ‘taken up by the radicals’.67 In the House of Lords, ex-ministers and senior Liberals with territorial influence challenged the war’s prolongation without support from Asquith, whose pronouncements on war aims remained closer to those of Lloyd George.68 From August 1917 onwards, apprehension about the nation’s financial and military ruin was evident among some Asquithian peers. Lord Beauchamp, who chaired the Lansdowne committee in February 1918, wrote to Lord Farrer on 23 September 1917, ‘The prospect of another year’s war with its loss of life & treasure is awful to contemplate. But you agree on this I know’.69 He specified the failure to ‘break through’, the prospect of a separate peace for Russia, and the need to avoid another winter’s war. In the previous month F. W. Hirst, editor of the liberal weekly journal Common Sense, contacted Lord Farrer with an unspecified proposal: ‘I want to persuade you to do something privately to end the war. L[loyd] G[eorge] says now that it will be a draw. But it goes on and on’.70 Hirst’s autobiography recounted joy in local patriotisms and an interest in horticulture, which were combined in his description of an artificial hill that unemployed men had created during the Crimean War at his childhood home.71 In the Surrey hills Lord Farrer feared that the nation was rushing towards ruin by early November. He thought that the morale of German armies on the Western Front was stronger than it had been a year earlier. On the Letter’s publication Farrer wrote an appreciative note to Lansdowne

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and was in regular contact with Hirst, who coordinated support among sympathetic parliamentarians.72 Political appreciation of the Letter culminated in the non-party Address of Thanks to Lord Lansdowne which Lord Loreburn presented on 31 January 1918. Loreburn admired John Bright and Richard Cobden, and thanked Lansdowne for his leadership in the cause of peace.73 Lord Buckmaster, Lord Chancellor in Asquith’s Coalition Government, also supported Lansdowne’s Letter. He was horrified by the casualty levels but his son, a company commander on the Western Front in 1915, was ‘deeply ashamed’ of his father’s stance: ‘to those who had fought, the very suggestion of peace without victory, if it did not smack of treason, at least savoured of treachery’.74 After the Second World War the son conceded that his father ‘may well have been right’.75 Lord Buckmaster often discussed politics and fishing with Hirst during pastoral walks along the banks of the River Itchen, which gave a tangible context to their defence of old liberal England. Liberal peers concerned about the effects of all-out war on a civil society enduring sacrifice and shortages gravitated towards Lansdowne to secure some ideological reassurance of an older England of free trade, liberty, and international conciliation. In a speech concerning the League of Nations on 26 February 1918, Lord Farrer intermingled international diplomacy and local preservationist impulses. He reiterated the need for limits to all-out war, emphasized the relevance of Lord Lansdowne’s appeal for a negotiated peace, and expressed his fear that Flanders might not be held if German forces attacked on the Western Front. In April 1918 he presided over the annual meeting of the Surrey Archaeological Society and used the opportunity to reflect on ‘Patriotism in Things of Beauty’. Farrer asked if it would be possible to keep ‘interesting things for their nation and their soldiers when they returned’, or would there be general spoilation in the cause of liberty?76 He cited the ‘many special spots of great beauty’ in Surrey at risk from timber extraction. The issue brought before the Surrey Archaeological Society was the necessary role of county opinion as a counterpoint in defence of ‘public advantage’ to the overwhelming power of the state. In particular, patriotic social action, at an intermediate level, might set limits on the mobilization of resources and ensure that the land for which men went to war was not entirely destroyed in the process of defeating Prussian militarism. In an increasingly rationed environment, he ‘rejoiced’ that free associations, such as historical and antiquarian societies, might ensure that ‘taste and history’ was not rationed by the War Cabinet, as if it were

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reducible to official allocation, such as food, paper, and boot leather. After the Great War Buckmaster, Farrer, and Crawford were influential members of the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, where the idea of fighting for the freedom of the land and the right to preserve and access meadows, fields, and woodlands ranked alongside maintaining the freedom of the seas. The publication of Lansdowne’s Letter enabled liberals, if not Liberalism, to construct and voice a patriotism that challenged the paramountcy of the ‘knock-out blow’. They knew their localities and depicted a national life where the maintenance of social fabric, quest for normalcy, and possibility of dissent mattered in 1917–1918.77 Notions of liberty, place-related patriotism, and the quest for an enduring peace, for which the church bells might truly peal, intermingled among those Lansdownites who sought to forestall a ruinous future at home and overseas. This vantage point was shared by Arthur Mee, whose King’s England Series of county volumes was published in the years 1936–1939. Every ‘great and visitable place’ in this New Domesday Book was described with the motoring excursionist in mind. In each volume historical continuities and defenders of peace abound, unlike in many interwar topographical guides, which remained the product of Victorian antiquarianism. As a Dissenter, topographer, and encyclopaedist, Mee surveyed the effects of the Great War on towns and villages. Memorials in each locality were scrutinized with the emphatic message that the war changed everything. Wiltshire was published in 1939, and at Calne parish church, two miles from Bowood, the calamitous possibility of another war infused the scene: ‘It should be possible to secure posterity against a repetition of such an outrage’.78 Near the parish chest in the north transept, a wooden cross, with traces of shell fire, hung near the memorial window to Major Lord Mercer Nairne. A pen portrait of ‘The Man Who Tried to Stop the War’ ensued in the place-related gazeteer, and Mee’s liberal-minded patriotic elegy honoured the ‘startling letter of 1917’.79 Further, in the introductory volume to the series, Enchanted Land, the searcher of peace at Bowood was commended: ‘So he passed out of public life, to be forgotten—until the day shall come when the world will believe that Lord Lansdowne was more right than wrong’.80 Alongside the quest for ‘thankful villages’ where there were no fallen to commemorate, Mee found signs of the Great War which conveyed the coming of peace, such as memorial gardens and recreation grounds in tranquil locations with beautiful views.

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In his essay on the remobilization of British and French war efforts in 1917–1918, John Horne summarized, ‘The consensus on continuing the war until outright victory had been achieved could no longer be taken for granted’.81 He also clarified that feelings regarding the scale of military casualties in a war of attrition were encoded towards consideration of a negotiated peace.82 Lord Lansdowne was acutely aware of the passage of time in a long war and recalled that military strategists had believed that sufficient conditions for victory existed in the second and third years of war. His Cabinet memorandum of 16 November 1916 proposed that if victory remained elusive in the following year, war aims should facilitate the possibility of a negotiated peace. The magnitude of British casualty levels on the Western Front in 1917 impelled reconsideration of projections for ‘wastage’ in 1918, so that drafts sent to the Western Front were not ‘Cambrai-sed’.83 Hope and pessimism coexisted as the meaning of sacrifice, and the ‘stiffening’ of resolve, became still more debated after the Third Battle of Ypres. In 1917 peace advocates demanded strategic reassessment of mobilized Allied resources, often with a backward gaze to 1914. Robbins concluded in a study of the peace movement, ‘Lansdowne wanted peace to conserve the old order; radicals and Socialists wanted peace in order to change it’.84 In 1920 Lansdowne was among the parliamentarians to vigorously oppose the Imperial War Graves Commission’s scheme for uniform, equitable, and comradely-sited headstones and national commemorative iconography in the new military cemeteries in France and Flanders. He hoped that relatives of the fallen might retain the right to design, site, and fund private monuments. In this respect he could not contemplate state control over the deceased soldier, nor corporate commemorative decisions for the ‘Absent Dead’ in foreign fields. In Plot 1 Row E1 in the Ypres Town Cemetery, the headstone of Major Lord Mercer Nairne has the short inscription provided by his father. It emphasizes the cause for which the supreme sacrifice was made, perhaps informed by St Paul’s teaching of the resurrection (I Corinthians 15:58): Not in Vain Not Unhonoured Not Forgotten They gave up their lives.85

Lansdowne’s Letter never denied the necessity of winning the war, but sought to recapture liberal principles which might be applied to shorten it,

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should democratic conditions arise in Germany. Signatories to the Address of Thanks to Lord Lansdowne included Liberal peers whose support for the war effort under Asquith’s premiership had remained fixed on free trade, the survival of civil society, and freedom of individual expression. Separately from pacifist traditions and organizations, support for the Lansdowne Letter exemplified the broadening of peaceable thinking in England in 1917, which was defined by demands for a ‘general stocktaking’ and a war aims statement. There were limits to peace advocacy in close proximity to the institutions of total war. Conversely, the conscription of exempted men for military service after the Third Battle of Ypres was circumscribed by the subordination of British high command’s prerogatives to the Inter-Allied War Council. In the search for limits to allout war, a hopeful, diffuse, and politically peripheral re-examination of the war’s purpose found an unexpected focus in the Lansdowne Letter. Liberal-minded opinion encountered a resource for hope and wondered if personal liberty, national freedoms, and international conciliation might be gained, if only the ‘wanton prolongation’ of war would cease.

NOTES 1. Lord Lansdowne (1934) ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, The Nineteenth Century and After, CXV, March 1934, p. 374; The Daily Telegraph ‘Coordination of Allies War Aims. Letter from Lord Lansdowne’, 29 November 2017. 2. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 382. 3. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 380. 4. S. McKenna (1948) Reginald McKenna. A Memoir (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode), p. 273. 5. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 374. 6. M. Macmillan (2011) ‘Howling Down Lord Lansdowne’ The National Interest, 1 May 2011, p. 81. 7. D. Cannadine (1992) The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Pan Macmillan), p. 77. 8. A. Adonis (2009) ‘Fitzmaurice, Henry Charles Keith Petty, fifth Marquess of Lansdowne 1845–1927’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/arti cle/35500 (accessed 7 November 2013); A. J. P. Taylor (1993) The Trouble Makers. Dissent Over Foreign Policy 1792–1939 (London: Pimlico), p. 110. 9. British Library (BL) Long mss. Add. Ms. 62403 Lord Lansdowne to W. Long, 28 January 1915.

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10. Lord Newton (1929) Lord Lansdowne: A Biography (London: Macmillan), p. 442. 11. M. Brock and E. Brock (eds.) (2016) Margot Asquith’s Great War Diaries. The View from Downing Street (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 59. 12. Brock and Brock Margot Asquith’s Great War Diaries, p. 59. 13. BL Long Ms. Add. Ms. 62403 A. Bonar Law to W. Long, 14 May 1915; Newton Lord Lansdowne, p. 448. 14. D. Lloyd George (1936) War Memoirs (London: Odhams), 2 vols. Vol. 1, p. 510; D. Newton (2002) ‘The Lansdowne “Peace Letter” of 1917 and the Prospect of Peace by Negotiation with Germany’ Australian Journal of Politics and History 48(1), 28. 15. The National Archives (TNA) CAB 37/159/32 ‘Terms on which a peace might be considered’, Lord Lansdowne, 13 November 1916; P. Fraser (1973) Lord Esher. A Political Biography (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon), p. 340. 16. Newton Lord Lansdowne, p. 463. 17. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 374. 18. TNA CAB 24/34/81 GT 2881, ‘War aims. Correspondence relating to Lord Lansdowne’s proposal re discussion in House of Lords and letter to Daily Telegraph, between Mr Balfour, Lord Hardinge and Lord Lansdowne’, 4 December 1917, including A. J. Balfour to Lord Lansdowne, 22 November 1917; J. Grigg (2002) Lloyd George. War Leader (London: Allen Lane), pp. 328–330. 19. E. N. Anderson (1930) Review, ‘Lord Lansdowne. A Biography’ The Journal of Modern History 2(3), 492. 20. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 374. 21. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 376. 22. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 374. 23. D. Lloyd George (1918) The Great Crusade. Extracts from Speeches Delivered During the War (London: Hodder and Stoughton), p. 155; House of Lords Records Office (HLRO) Lloyd George mss. F/234 enclosure to written draft of Paris speech, undated and unsigned. 24. HLRO Strachey mss. S/8/1/4 J. St Loe Strachey to D. Haig, 6 December 1917; K. Grieves (1988) The Politics of Manpower, 1914–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 162; TNA WO 158/54 Cambrai Enquiry file No.2, Note by D. Haig, 23 December 1917. 25. Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (LHCMA) Robertson mss. I/11/ 12/1 ‘Summary of the Recruiting Position’, Lord Derby, 28 November 1917. 26. Bodleian Library Milner mss. dep. 145, GT4872, ‘The Man-Power Situation’ A. C. Geddes, 17 June 1918; HLRO Lloyd George mss. F/44/3/40 F. Maurice to J. T. Davies, 18 December 1917. 27. Grigg Lloyd George, p. 333.

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28. Lloyd George War Memoirs Vol. 2, p. 1491. 29. Lloyd George War Memoirs Vol. 2, pp. 1205–1206. 30. T. Wilson (ed.) (1970) The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott 1911–1928 (London: Collins), p. 318, 11–12 December 1917. 31. Lord Riddell (1933) War Diary 1914–1918 (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson), p. 298. 32. Wilson The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott, p. 319, 16–19 December 1917. 33. Wilson The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott, p. 324, 28 December 1917. 34. C. J. Wrigley (1976) David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement (Brighton: The Harvester Press), p. 222; I. F. W. Beckett (2014) The Making of the First World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 204; P. Yearwood (1989) ‘“On the Safe and Right Lines”: The Lloyd George Government and the Origins of the League of Nations, 1916–1918’ The Historical Journal 32(1), 145; K. Robbins (1976) The Abolition of War. The ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain 1914–1919 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), p. 153. 35. Grigg Lloyd George, p. 332; M. Bentley (1977) The Liberal Mind (London: Cambridge University Press), p. 61; Wilson The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, p. 318. 36. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 370. 37. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 380; Newton ‘The Lansdowne “Peace Letter” of 1917 and the Prospect of Peace by Negotiation with Germany’, p. 32. 38. Graves, C.L. Mr Punch’s History of the Great War (2007) (London: Nonsuch Publications), p. 193. 39. A. Hochschild (2011) To End All Wars. How the First World War Divided Britain (London: Macmillan), p. 303. 40. C. Andrew (1986) Secret Service. The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Hodder and Stoughton). 41. J. Charteris (1931) At GHQ (London: Cassell), App. B, ‘Note on the Situation from a German Point of View at the End of 1917’, J. Charteris, 28 December 1917, p. 333; Grigg Lloyd George, p. 331. 42. G. L. Bernstein (1989) ‘Yorkshire Liberalism During the First World War’ The Historical Journal 32(1), 122. 43. K. Wilson (ed.) (1988) The Rasp of War. The Letters of H.A. Gwynne to the Countess Bathurst 1914–1918 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson), p. 253, 5 March 1918. 44. R. Douglas (1995) The Great War. The Cartoonists’ Vision (London: Routledge), p. 100. 45. Taylor The Trouble Makers, p. 21. 46. Newton Lord Lansdowne, p. 472. 47. Grigg Lloyd George, p. 331.

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48. J. Bickersteth (1995) The Bickersteth Diaries 1914–1918 (London: Leo Cooper), p. 220. 49. Bickersteth The Bickersteth Diaries, p. 221. 50. O. Elton (1929) C.E. Montague. A Memoir (London: Chatto and Windus), p. 196. 51. Elton C.E. Montague, pp. 192–193. 52. D. Englander ‘Discipline and Morale in the British Army’ in J. Horne (1997) State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 138. 53. J. C. Dunn (1987) The War the Infantry Knew (London: Sphere Books), pp. 435–436, 21 January 2018. 54. S. Hynes (1990) A War Imagined. The First World War and English Culture (London: The Bodley Head), p. 171. 55. M. Egremont (2006) Siegfried Sassoon. A Biography (London: Macmillan), p. 176. 56. R. Hart-Davis (ed.) (1983) Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915–1918 (London: Faber and Faber), p. 197. 57. S. Sassoon (1982) Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1929 (London: Faber and Faber), p. 57. 58. Hynes A War Imagined, p. 172. 59. Macmillan ‘Howling Down Lord Lansdowne’, p. 80. 60. T. Rose (1995) Aspects of Political Censorship 1914–1918 (Hull: University of Hull Press), p. 60. 61. Cannadine The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 78. 62. J. Vincent (ed.) (1984) The Crawford Papers (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 381, 1 December 1917. 63. Vincent The Crawford Papers, pp. 400–401, 23 February 1919. 64. The Saturday Review Mrs Florence Gay, 12 December 1917 Letter, p. 505. 65. LHCMA Robertson mss. I/21/47 W. Robertson to Lansdowne, 1 December 1916; D. R. Woodward (ed.) (1989) The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of Imperial General Staff December 1915–February 1918 (London: The Bodley Head), p. 119; G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (eds.) (2006) Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson), pp. 258–259; R. Blake (ed.) (1952) The Political Papers of Douglas Haig 1914–1919 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoods), p. 182. 66. Lansdowne ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’, p. 370. 67. Taylor The Trouble Makers, p. 150. 68. J. Turner (1992) British Politics and the Great War. Coalition and Conflict 1915–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 251. 69. Surrey History Centre (SHC) Farrer mss. 2572/1/74 Lord Beauchamp to Lord Farrer, 23 September 1917.

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70. SHC Farrer mss. 2572/1/74 F. Hirst to Lord Farrer, 27 August 1917. 71. F. W. Hirst (1947) In the Golden Days (London: Frederick Muller), p. 18. 72. BL Lansdowne mss. LANS (5) 85/10 F. Hirst to Lansdowne 1 December 1917, Ponsonby to Lansdowne 12 December 1917, Lord Buckmaster to Lansdowne 12 December 1917. 73. Newton Lord Lansdowne, p. 473; Robbins The Abolition of War, p. 151. 74. Viscount Buckmaster (1969) Roundabout. The Autobiography of Viscount Buckmaster (London: H. F. and G. Witherby), p. 170. 75. Buckmaster Roundabout, p. 170. 76. SHC Surrey Advertiser, 27 April 1918. 77. J. H. Grainger (1986) Patriotisms Britain: 1900–1939 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 313. 78. A. Mee (1939) Wiltshire: Cradle of Our Civilisation (London: Hodder and Stoughton), p. 81. 79. Mee Wiltshire, p. 81. 80. A. Mee (1936) Enchanted Land (London: Hodder and Stoughton), p. 153. 81. J. Horne ‘Remobilizing for “Total War”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’ in J. Horne (1997) State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge University Press), p. 195. 82. Horne ‘Remobilizing for “Total War”’, p. 207. 83. BL Northcliffe mss. Add. Ms. Lord Northcliffe to Sir Philip Sassoon, 13 December 1917. 84. Robbins The Abolition of War, p. 84. 85. Commonwealth War Graves Commission, (2016) Major Lord Charles Mercer Nairne, Graves Report Registration Form and Complete Report of Headstone Inscription for which Special layouts are provided, undated http://www.cwgc. org/find-war-dead/casualty/446286/MERCER-NAIRNE,%20Lord% 20CHARLES%20GEORGE%20FRANCIS (accessed 10 May 2016); D. Reynolds (2014) The Long Shadow. The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon and Schuster), p. 183; P. Longworth (2003) The Unending Vigil. The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Barnsley: Leo Cooper), pp. 44–45.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Farrer mss. (Surrey History Centre Woking) Lansdowne mss. (British Library London) Lloyd George mss. (House of Lords Record Office London) Long mss. (British Library London) Milner mss. (Bodleian Library Oxford) Northcliffe mss. (British Library London)

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Robertson mss. (Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Kings College London) Strachey mss. (House of Lords Record Office London) Adonis, A. ‘Fitzmaurice, Henry Charles Keith Petty—Fifth Marquess of Lansdowne 1845–1927’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online 2009) (Oxford: Oxford University Press) http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/35500 (accessed 7 November 2013). Anderson, E. N. (1930) ‘Review of “Lord Lansdowne. A Biography”’ The Journal of Modern History 2 (3), 492–495. Andrew, C. (1986 edn.) Secret Service. The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Hodder and Stoughton). Beckett, I. F. W. (2014 edn.) The Making of the First World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Bentley, M. (1977) The Liberal Mind (London: Cambridge University Press). Bernstein, G. L. (1989) ‘Yorkshire Liberalism During the First World War’ The Historical Journal 32 (1), 107–129. Bickersteth, J. (1995) The Bickersteth Diaries 1914–1918 (London: Leo Cooper). Blake, R. (ed.) (1952) The Political Papers of Douglas Haig 1914–1919 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode). Brock, M., and Brock, E. (eds.) (2016 edn.) Margot Asquith’s Great War Diaries. The View from Downing Street (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Buckmaster, V. (1969) Roundabout. The Autobiography of Viscount Buckmaster (London: H. F. and G. Witherby). Cannadine, D. (1992 edn.) The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London: Pan Macmillan). Charteris, J. (1931) At GHQ (London: Cassell). Commonwealth War Graves Commission (2016) Major Lord Charles Mercer Nairne, Graves Report Registration Form and Complete Report of Headstone Inscription for which Special layouts are provided, undated http://www. cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/446286/MERCER-NAIRNE,%20Lord% 20CHARLES%20GEORGE%20FRANCIS (accessed 10 May 2016). Douglas, R. (1995) The Great War. The Cartoonists’ Vision (London: Routledge). Dunn, J. C. (1987 edn.) The War the Infantry Knew (London: Sphere Books). Egremont, M. (2006 edn.) Siegfried Sassoon. A Biography (London: Macmillan). Elton, O. (1929) C.E. Montague. A Memoir (London: Chatto and Windus). Englander, D. (1997) ‘Discipline and Morale in the British Army’; in J. Horne (ed.) State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 125–143. Fraser, P. (1973) Lord Esher. A Political Biography (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon). Grainger, J. H. (1986) Patriotisms Britain: 1900–1939 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

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Grieves, K. (1988) The Politics of Manpower, 1914–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Grigg, J. (2002) Lloyd George. War Leader (London: Allen Lane). Hart-Davis, R. (ed.) (1983) Siegfried Sassoon. Diaries 1915–1918 (London: Faber and Faber). Hirst, F. W. (1947) In the Golden Days (London: Frederick Muller). Hochschild, A. (2011) To End All Wars. How the First World War Divided Britain (London: Macmillan). Horne, J. (1997) ‘Remobilizing for “Total War”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’; in J. Horne (ed.) State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 195–211. Hynes, S. (1990) A War Imagined. The First World War and English Culture (London: The Bodley Head). Lansdowne, Lord. (1934) ‘The “Peace Letter” of 1917’ The Nineteenth Century and After CXV, March 1934, 370–384. Lloyd George, D. (1918) The Great Crusade. Extracts from Speeches Delivered During the War (London: Hodder and Stoughton). Lloyd George, D. (1936) War Memoirs 2 vols (London: Odhams). Longworth, P. (2003 edn.) The Unending Vigil. The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Barnsley: Leo Cooper). Macmillan, M. (2011) ‘Howling Down Lord Lansdowne’ The National Interest, 1 May 2011, 77–85. McKenna, S. (1948) Reginald McKenna. A Memoir (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode). Mee, A. (1936) Enchanted Land (London: Hodder and Stoughton). Mee, A. (1939) Wiltshire: Cradle of Our Civilisation (London: Hodder and Stoughton). Graves, C.L. Mr Punch’s History of the Great War (2007 edn.) (London: Nonsuch Publications). Newton, D. (2002) ‘The Lansdowne “Peace Letter” of 1917 and the Prospect of Peace by Negotiation with Germany’ Australian Journal of Politics and History 48 (1), 2002, 16–39. Newton, Lord. (1929) Lord Lansdowne. A Biography (London: Macmillan). Reynolds, D. (2014 edn.) The Long Shadow. The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon and Schuster). Riddell, Lord. (1933) War Diary 1914–1918 (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson). Robbins, K. (1976) The Abolition of War. The ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain 1914–1919 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press). Rose, T. (1995) Aspects of Political Censorship 1914–1918 (Hull: University of Hull Press). Sassoon, S. (1982 edn.) Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (London: Faber and Faber).

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The Saturday Review Mrs. Florence Gay, Letter 22 December 1917, p. 505. Sheffield, G., and Bourne, J. (eds.) (2006 edn) Douglas Haig. War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson). Surrey Advertiser. 27 April 1918 (Surrey History Centre, Woking) Taylor, A. J. P. (1993 edn.) The Trouble Makers. Dissent Over Foreign Policy 1792–1939 (London: Pimlico). Turner, J. (1992) British Politics and the Great War. Coalition and Conflict 1915–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press). Vincent, J. (ed.) (1984) The Crawford Papers (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Wilson, K. (ed.) (1988) The Rasp of War. The Letters of H.A. Gwynne to the Countess Bathurst 1914–1918 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson). Wilson, T (ed.) (1970) The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott 1911–1928 (London: Collins). Woodward, D. R. (ed.) (1989) The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of Imperial General Staff December 1915–February 1918 (London: The Bodley Head). Wrigley, C. J. (1976) David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement (Brighton: The Harvester Press). Yearwood, P. (1989) ‘“On the Safe and Right Lines”: The Lloyd George Government and the Origins of the League of Nations, 1916–1918’ The Historical Journal 32 (1), 131–155. Keith Grieves is a Professor at Kingston University, UK. His research interests include military, social, and cultural aspects of British society in the era of the First World War. In recent years he has focused on the impact of war on rural communities in south-east England. In 2011–2012 he held a fellowship at the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, for a project on Open Spaces in England after the Great War: reafforestation, recreation, and remembrance. He is also working on a history of rural settlements in the Surrey Greensand hills in war and peace, 1800–1950.

Mutineers and Non-Mutineers in the French Army (May–June 1917) Galit Haddad At the end of April 1916, after the disastrous defeat of the French at Chemin des Dames—in an offensive led by General Robert Nivelle—many units of the French army refused to return to the front line. Within a period of eight months more than half of the French units (68 divisions of the 110 that made up the French army), on almost every front line, experienced acts of disobedience. For the first time since the outbreak of the war, the French army faced an exceptionally grave crisis of collective disobedience. These acts, which mainly expressed a desire to end the war and a refusal to return to the front lines, were accompanied by slogans such as ‘immediate armistice’, ‘down with the war’, ‘long live the peace’, and ‘we are on strike’. The military authorities saw in the mutinies the influence of a pacifist or socialist movement. The revolutionary symbols that accompanied the refusals to fight, such as the red flag and the song of the Socialist International, only strengthened this theory. In reality, as the historiography has shown, the rebellions were not inspired by any pacifist ideology. It was the failure of the Nivelle offensive that triggered the revolts. The deep motivations behind combatant refusal were in place long before spring 1917. The living conditions in

G. Haddad (*) École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0_10

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trenches—the mud, the cold, the lack of food, the lack of leave—and the accumulating loss of human life provoked a progressive breakdown of morale, fragile since the end of 1916. It reached its lowest point between April and June 1917. General Philippe Pétain, who replaced Nivelle, resorted to severe disciplinary measures. The Council of War declared 554 death sentences and executed approximately 40–50 soldiers. However, the protest movement had already begun to decline. The effectiveness of the disciplinary measures, while useful, was enhanced by the fact that the military authorities had finally started to recognize the importance of improving the soldiers’ day-to-day lives and the necessity of finding new methods of combat. Since the end of the war, the issue of the mutineers had troubled the French national memory. Lionel Jospin, the socialist Prime Minister at the time of the 80th anniversary of the First World War’s armistice, caused a controversy when he suggested that the executed mutineers should be entirely reintegrated in the national memory and considered just like the other victims of the war. Then-President Jacques Chirac vehemently criticized the Prime Minister’s statement, emphasizing that this kind of discourse could be understood as rehabilitation of the mutineers. This political contretemps might seem insignificant, but it demonstrates with acuteness the cicatrices of that episode in the French collective memory. The mutinies rose to the forefront of historiographical research in 1967, with the publication of Guy Pedroncini’s Les mutineries de 1917.1 Pedroncini was the first historian to consult the archives of the military justice courts/system and to attest that the mutinies of French soldiers were not the outcome of pacifist motivations but rather the consequence of profound exhaustion, discouragement, and a severe lack of confidence in their commanders. The second significant piece of research on the issue appeared about 30 years later when the American historian Leonard Smith published Between Mutiny and Obedience. The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during World War I.2 Smith suggested that a negotiated relationship constituted the basis of the interaction between French soldiers-citizens and their commanders. He explained that the military authority did not function unilaterally, but rather existed within a complex system of consent by negotiation.3 For a long time, French historiographers ignored the issue of the rebellions of 1917 until the development of a renewed interest in them, with a focus on the executed soldiers.4 Those

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recent studies propose another angle, exploring the combatant experience and analysing the rebellions as a social movement of refusal.5

REFUSAL

OF

‘THOSE WHO REFUSE’ . . .

In the past, historians who studied the French soldiers’ mutinies of 1917 failed to examine the mutineers in the context of their regimental community. The actions of some members of a unit affected the entire group: the mutineers, the passive spectators, and those who did not agree. Looking at the bigger picture is important when the concern is not about the individual act of desertion but about a collective action that sends powerful reverberations through the insurgent regiments. Military reports include quotations from soldiers who were not mutineers. Some soldiers wrote about the incidents after having witnessed the acts of their comrades in the regiment. Some attempted to interpret the causes of the insurrection by analysing the motives that had made their companions in arms refuse to obey orders. The aim of this chapter is to tackle the mutinies not by examining the positions of the ‘insurgents’ or the reactions of the military authorities, but to study the military crisis from a different angle—the point of view of the other soldiers of the regiment; the ‘non-mutineers’, as it were. We analyse the reactions of these soldiers in the insurgent regiment, the witnesses to their units’ disobedience. How did they judge the rebellion of their comrades? The answer to this question is critical to any re-evaluation of the disorderliness crisis among the French infantry in the year 1917. The crisis that the mutiny brought about highlights a moment when history ‘turns its attention to the shortness of time, the individual, the event’.6 Before bursting into the open, the discourse of protest had been kept ‘strictly private’, appearing only in letters. However, when the protest mutated into an openly manifested ‘collective enterprise’, the identities of the disobedient soldiers became known to all in their unit. In 1917, such a collective act of protest was manifested for the first time in the French infantry, also producing a collective discourse of rebellion. In order to better comprehend the way the rest of the soldiers perceived the disobedience, we will focus on one particular case, that of a single regiment: the 129th infantry regiment (IR) of the 5th infantry division (ID), called Mangin division.7 By concentrating on one limited episode in the history of a regiment, it is possible to understand a regimental protest in a restricted combat environment, which grew out of the shared experience

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of the members of the unit. This shared experience included combat itself, of course, but also the common military experience of exercise and training, as well as exchanges between soldiers. In socio-psychological terms, a soldier’s identity is constructed in relation to his regiment, which thus creates a solidarity group, or what the French army called l’esprit de corps. This refers to the members’ sense of identification with their unit. According to Morris Janowitz and Roger W. Little, one of the factors that produces unison in a group of soldiers is the sense of belonging to a combat collectivity.8 This condition is a sine qua non for the maintenance of unity within the group, particularly in moments of anguish and stress. The experience in the trenches was one the combatants of the Great War shared, although each wove it into his own story, a story connected with the circumstances within his particular regiment. The soldiers’ regimental discourse stems from this common experience, thus uniting the members of the same unit. In fact, the idea of having a mission in common constitutes the chief pillar of combat solidarity, even its raison d’être. As Roy Richard Grinker and John P. Speigel emphasized: ‘The men seem to be fighting more for someone than against somebody.’9 In our context, the soldiers’ capacity to ‘hold on’ (tenir) is also conditioned by their relationships with the other members of the regiment, and more, by the fact that whole groups shared certain values and objectives. Being involved in the same battles and suffering the same hardships produces a homogeneous combatant discourse. In this respect, the mutinies represented a phenomenon that concerned the entire regimental collectivity—those rising in revolt as well as those who remained spectators.

THE WAR EXPERIENCE AND THE REPUTATION OF TYHE 129TH IR The incidents among the 129th IR took place on 28–30 May 1917, but even though the crisis lasted only three days, it constituted an important ‘brief moment’ in the history of the regiment. Indeed, an impressive quantity of military sources was produced in its wake.10 The 129th IR enjoyed a particular reputation in the eyes of the military authorities as well as of the soldiers themselves. It was garrisoned in Le Havre, and on 8 and 9 August 1914, it consisted of 55 officers and 3,350 men (Normans from la Seine Inférieure and Parisians).11 It took part in the most important battles in 1914 and 1915: Charleroi, Guise and the Marne, then the Artois. In 1916, the regiment was in the Eparges sector

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where it lost many of its men, and it took part in the battle of Douaumont, the only significant offensive of the 5th ID but also the most dreadful of the whole war. Moreover, it was the 129th IR that suffered the heaviest casualties, its soldiers becoming the incarnation of the military device tenir.12 In the context of 1916, tenir—as described by Second Lieutenant Robert Desaubliaux, who fought in this regiment and was severely wounded at Verdun—meant to stay where you are and, if necessary, ‘to die where you stand, while giving up your life as dearly as possible’.13 The military victories at Verdun, and in particular the recapturing of Douaumont, enhanced the reputation of the 129th IR still further and turned it into a ‘model regiment’. The Battle of Verdun solidified its heroic image, not only in the eyes of the military authorities but also in the eyes of its members. Guy Pedroncini has identified the five ‘moments’ in which the acts of disobedience in the French infantry occurred: the first wave came between the offensive of 16 April and Pétain’s assuming command on 15 May 1917; the second fell out in the latter half of May, which is also the phase in which the mutinies of the 129th IR took place. Then there were the phases between 1 and 6 June and from 7 to 30 June respectively; the last phase of the crisis started on 1 July and stretched into January 1918, but from then on, the incidents became less frequent.14 Thus, the case of the 129th IR is to be placed right in the middle of the most agitated period of the crisis of the mutinies in 1917.15 Can we say, then, that the protest that developed within this regiment was different from that of other regiments situated in different combat zones?

THREE-DAY DISSIDENCE As a matter of fact, the 129th IR was far from raising any suspicion on the part of the authorities, which explains their astonishment when the incidents broke out. They occurred during the last three days of the second half of May, during the phase when the refusals of obedience were at their peak (from 25 May to 10 June 1917, 80 incidents were reported, considerably more than during the phase subsequent to the frustration of the Nivelle offensive). The problems of indiscipline started in the course of the evening of 28 May, when some men belonging to the 1st battalion took part in a demonstration. On the following day—29 May—reports reveal that members of the regiment organized, ignoring the orders coming

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from the commander of the regiment (Lieutenant Colonel Genet) and the commander of the division (Martinet). Then there was an outburst of incidents among the men of the 2nd and 3rd battalions. On 30 May, the agitations grew even stronger when another regiment of the 5th ID, the 36th, joined the revolt: The men of the 36th and the 129th are ordered to leave for the Roye region. The Ist B. refuses to embark. On the road cries of ‘Down of War!’. Flysheets are thrown to excite the other regiments to join the movement. In the encampment of the 370th IR soldiers have thrown leaflets: Long Live the Peace—5th ID on strike. Immediate Armistice.16

In the reports of the military authorities the proclamations of the mutineering soldiers were reproduced, at least partly, in the form of short quotes: We have had enough of the war, we want peace, we do not want to go back to the trenches. Our wives and children are starving to death in the Home front; In the Home front, we still see the same shirkers [...] The shirkers and war profiteers revel too much in the Home front. Strangers take our works and there will be nothing for us when the war is ended; It’s the Russians’ fault, letting the ‘boche’ divisions come upon us, and we got stuck on April 16; We don’t get enough leave. We want the parliamentarians and the Houses to think of us and our families, to take measures in order to sign the peace. We don’t have enough food. We want the Government to know all this and, Colonel, it is your obligation to put it in your report. For us it is the most evident way to know that the Government will hear of.17

THE CASE

OF THE

12TH IR: A PARTICULAR CASE?

It is clear that the 129th IR was part of a division that enjoyed a strong reputation. It had not been directly implicated in the military collapse of April 1917 and also had the unusual advantage of privileged material

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conditions. Nonetheless, a comparison of the protest discourse in the 129th IR with that of units located in different combat zones reveals that the arguments were identical. In other words, although every mutinying regiment had its own particular experience, the rebellious discourse turned out to be homogeneous across all the undisciplined regiments (including identical revolutionary vocabulary and devices, and the same provoking gestures, such as singing the Internationale and raising the red flag). We must remember that in the 5th ID, the mutinies started toward the end of May 1917, a date that was rather distant from the defeat on the Chemin des Dames. The disappointment at the defeat was manifest, but it had diminished over the course of the weeks that passed since the offensive. Thus, it could not constitute a direct motive for the unrest, especially as the April offensive had taken place in a different combat zone than that of the 5th ID. In reality, having been at rest for a couple of months, the division was not, at that point, posted to a zone of active combat, so there was no apparent reason for a rebellion of such gravity. More surprising still, the 5th ID had received significant favours, such as rest, theatre performances, considerable supplements of food, and encouragement to form sports teams, football in particular. Consequently, it ought to have been in the best shape possible, both physically and mentally.18 How can we understand a case of mutiny in a regiment that had enjoyed material benefits and leisure, and which, moreover, was located in a quiet zone? How are we to understand the homogeneity of discourse even though the military contexts were so different? We can propose at least two possible answers to the latter question. The first one, which concerns the short term, explains the similarity of the protests through a kind of discursive contagion in the military sphere after the fiasco of 16 April 1917. The second answer, which requires a glance backward, suggests that there was a slow evolution that started toward the end of 1916. This stems from the observation that the leitmotif of the mutineers’ protest differed little from that which appeared in the winter of 1916. In other words, it can be said that the background for the dissent existed even before the April 1917 offensive—that it was, in a way, in gestation. In this view, the failure of the Nivelle offensive gave it a concrete and collective expression but did not originate it. The mutineers’ discourse, then, would not have been an outcome of this period but should be viewed in a discursive continuum; the crystallization of the protest would be, in fact, independent of the April deception.

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Far from being incompatible, we can see these two interpretations as complementary. It is quite possible to think that the discourse rejecting the war had been in gestation since 1916 but that it did not crystallize until after the Chemin des Dames, extending at this stage and reaching other regiments, all this without any direct linkage to the tangible conditions in the different zones of the front.

REGIMENTAL PROTEST FACING REGIMENTAL CONSENT The mutiny crisis concerned the entire regimental collective. After all, both mutineers and non-dissenting soldiers wrote home. Thus, not all the letters quoted by the military reports contained ‘revolutionary vocabulary’, as not all the correspondents were mutineers. There were also soldiers who wrote about the incidents after having witnessed the acts of their comrades in the regiment. Some of them attempted to interpret the causes of the insurrection by analysing the motives that had made their brothers-in-arms refuse to obey orders. In their letters, numerous soldiers severely criticized their comrades’ transgressions. One of the censorship reports underlined that ‘the controlled correspondence does certainly not express much of a combative spirit but, on the other hand, it does not state any antimilitarism either’. The military authorities also mention that ‘there is a considerable number of letters regretting what has happened in the 129th Regiment’.19 Many of the writers even attempted to detach themselves from those whom they viewed as ‘traitors’ to their unit: It has not been an easy journey but you may be assured that I haven’t at all been in danger, because we haven’t even been in combat, which I would have preferred. Well, I’ll tell you later, today I can say that it makes me sick to belong to this regiment.20

Another soldier wrote to his wife: ‘haven’t had any news from you for 10 days with all the nonsense that’s been going on at the regiment . . . ’.21 Many soldiers considered these acts harmful to the reputation of the unit to which they had been proud to belong: Everything is topsy-turvy. Our reputation is gone; the 129th has dishonored itself, now we have to pay for it. I think you ought to know what has happened at the regiment, it’s the same as in the whole of France, we’re

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sick and tired of having ourselves massacred and achieving nothing, but with patience we will perhaps see the end.22 Our regiment is passing a nasty period. Some most regrettable facts have occurred, which fill me with indignation. Who would have said such a thing about a regiment that has taken Neuville St-Vaast and Douaumont, the shame after the glory, unscathed perhaps but at the price of dishonor. I only write cards now for our mail is most certainly strictly controlled.23 I can assure you, I’ve been at the 129th since the beginning of the war, but following what happened at the 129th a week ago, I’m ashamed of carrying the number 129th because my regiment that has always behaved well it’s a disgrace for our Normandy but what can you say the harm is done! 24

In a special report, a quote from one letter attracts particular attention, since it contains the name of a ‘leader’—which is exceptional—but the most striking thing about it is the position taken regarding the rebels: A few agitators,—(our Dehais, national (?) tailor among other things) have sown by their insidious scheming the bad seed at the 129th and the 36th, and a certain agitation has occurred with the successful result that they have been eliminated from the regiment.25

Alongside those who argue in terms of regimental honour, there are others who insist upon patriotic duty:26 ‘In spite of all I shall continue, as I have done in the past, to do my duty valiantly and try to give to you, brave French, a fortunate gift: VICTORY.’ Other arguments also expressing the importance of the sense of duty proclaim: Don’t let yourselves be discouraged by the blusterers who are making a lot of noise in Paris. Our country is sacred and shall come out of it unharmed. Courage and hope. Grant us yet another credit of confidence.27

Reading these letters written by soldiers who chose to remain outside the mutiny makes one realize that these three days studded with incidents at the 129th IR produced a fracture that shook the unity of the group. The fact is that rebelling within the army requires those involved to take a stand that separates them from the unit as a whole; it is an extreme form of a military split, what sociologists describe as the social disintegration of a group. In a military unit, this action is likely to provoke a breakdown of

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unity.28 These letters, which reflect a conflict between cohesion and dissidence, reveal a clear breach of regimental solidarity. On the other hand, the ‘disciplined’ combatants construct an image with the aim of distinguishing themselves from the counter-model of the ‘rebellious combatant’ and of conserving a reputation associated with the glorious image of the regiment of which they are part. By stigmatizing a repulsive model, they intend to restore the group’s heroic representation and that of the individual who wishes to go on doing his duty in its midst. Besides the discourse produced on regimental values, there is a broad range of letters of denunciation whose origins are not ideological or patriotic but due to the frustration caused by collective punishments (annulments of leave, suspension of post distribution, etc.). In those cases, the collective sanctions were the reason for further reproaches directed at the mutineers, which shows that the soldiers preferred to maintain conformity, not always for reasons of duty or patriotism, but rather to conserve their military rights. Therefore, the collective sanctions infuriated the ‘good soldiers’. One of them wrote to his uncle and aunt: ‘It is 8 days since we got any letters: they are suspended as a 1st punishment. . . . ’29 In the same vein, another soldier admits to his wife: ‘I feel terribly down, it’s 8 days since we had any letters. . . . ’30 Sometimes a veritable exacerbation of the hostility can be noticed: ‘Our leaves are at least 60 days late. They haven’t said anything yet, but we expect it. We have to take the blame for a couple of bad eggs and we all have to suffer. . . . ’’31 In fact—on this point, historians unanimously agree—the mutinies were triggered by the refusal to participate in a particular manner of conducting the war, together with material demands. However, the regimental protest against the mutinies also sprang from material sanctions. Indeed, what appears to be the greatest inconvenience in the eyes of the soldiers during the days following the crisis was the collective dimension of the punishment imposed on all because of a few rebels: In my previous letters I told you about some regrettable incidents. At this moment everybody is paying—the innocent as well as the guilty. . . . 32 I’m bored to death, especially with no news from home, and all this for extremely grave reasons I can’t explain to you; unfortunately we all have to suffer the consequences, even those who are innocent. . . . 33 When one gets news one plucks up courage, well what can you say; we can’t do anything about it and unfortunately we all have to pay for the foolishness

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committed at the regiment and I did foresee all that! Which is the reason I would not want to participate in the demonstration which took place and in spite of it all I’m suffering the consequences . . . in any case I could go to the front, it will be nothing for me! it won’t be the first time and I still have the same courage.34

Another letter illustrates this desire to distinguish oneself from the mutineers. The writer has difficulty in telling his parents about the incidents that have taken place in his regiment. Well aware of the patriotic convictions of his family, he takes pains to make clear, at the very beginning of his letter, that he is not involved in acts judged as shameful: Dear parents, You may be astonished that I haven’t written to you for some time. I can excuse myself by letting you know that I have been prevented by a major incident which could scarcely be foreseen. I am very doubtful whether I should say what has happened for it is so serious that it could affect your feelings in a painful manner. Let me tell you at once that I am in no way whatsoever involved, thank God [ . . . ]. Even though I am one of the most timid and demoralized soldiers of the regiment, I found the matter a bit too thick and I’m happy to have refused point-blank to listen to such pernicious advice.35

A great number of letters express the impossibility of communicating news for fear of being censored. Conscious of their unit’s being from now on ‘suspect’, the soldiers have begun to censor themselves. One declares to his father: ‘I cannot give you any news of the matter that has taken place since we do not have the right to do so, at this moment things are very severe.’36 Another explains to his cousin: ‘Something strange has happened at our regiment. I cannot give you any news of the matter, for things are so severe that I dare not expose myself. . . . ’37 The Destiny of the Glorious 129th Regiment of Infantry The outcome of the death sentences in the 129th IR was relatively severe: four executed. In a document headlined ‘Death sentences passed in order to put down troubles and followed by military executions’,38 it is mentioned that they were unanimously declared guilty of abandoning their

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posts in the presence of the enemy and equally unanimously sentenced to death with military degradation.39 As regards the executions, it is difficult to find any trace of the reactions of their comrades at the regiment. However, we possess an excerpt from a letter, which was quoted in a report of 2 July 1917; it comments on the executions in the following terms: Today they shot 4 men from my regiment, one of whom I knew very well. And I was nearly chosen to go and kill them and it would have given me a lot of pain to do this painful duty especially because I knew them and when you are chosen you can’t refuse, otherwise we would be and there is another regiment where they will kill 17 men for the same reason for not wanting to march. At present when we are scared they will be quick to send us to the front.40

This soldier does not express any blame as to the companions in arms who were part of the platoon, nor any regret on behalf of those sentenced, but only his fear of being designated to carry out the execution. The implicit dimension of this letter is not innocent: its writer gives us to understand that refusing this kind of task could easily lead to the same destiny, again for disobedience. The soldier is making an explicit reference to the army practice of ‘setting an example’ (pour l’exemple). The purpose of the executions was not only to punish the ‘leaders’, but also, and perhaps primarily, to dissuade the others from following suit. The glorious reputation that had long been associated with the 129th IR is mentioned in a report from General Guillaumot, who was in command of the 2nd Army. After enumerating the sanctions against the rebellious regiment, he sketches its illustrious past. Moreover, he justifies the sanctions as being the consequence not of a transgression of military order, but of a fundamental impeachment of the values involving the consent to war: The 129th had a glorious past. This past has been ruined by the regiment allowing itself to get caught up in agitations whose origins can only be found in the enemy’s wrongdoer. Cowardice is likewise to be suspected, for the regiment failed in its duty at the very moment when, after an exceptionally long rest, its turn had come to relieve exhausted comrades. Its flag will be withdrawn and deposited at the HQ of the II Army and will only be given back after the regiment has made amends for its fault.41

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Besides the concrete sanctions against the members of the regiment, the army took symbolic measures as well, such as withdrawing the flag, an action that insulted the pride of the regimental group.42 This ritual of repression aimed to show everybody that the regiment had been dishonoured. Conversely, at long last, the army gave rewards, also symbolic: on 8 July 1918, it awarded the 129th IR the aglet in the colours of the ribbon of the Victoria Cross. The emergence of ‘another’ soldiers’ protest, which was simultaneously the outcome of military insurrection and a direct reaction against it, reveals that the phenomenon created by the indiscipline of 1917 is even more complex than is generally recognized; it transcends an all too simple opposition between ‘mutineers’ and ‘military justice’ since it concerns a much wider soldiery group. The protest by the mutineering soldiers concerns, in fact, all the soldiers, actors as well as spectators. Provoking a military crisis, it also stirred up an interior crisis in the combatant community. The unrest led to a breach in its midst. Such a conflict is not free from consequences in so far as it is liable to undermine the fundaments of solidarity and confidence among soldiers. The example of the 129th IR shows that the actions of the mutineers were not received with unanimous agreement within the regiments—far from it. The soldiers who ‘remained on duty’ but who nevertheless shared the same experience of combat looked severely upon the transgression of military codes committed by their comrades. In spite of the painful warfare experience they had had to endure themselves and which they had described in their letters, they ‘consented’ to carry on in combat and regarded their insurgent comrades as harmful to the regimental esprit de corps. Certain letters blaming the undisciplined soldiers repeatedly express the idea that nothing justifies the dereliction of one’s duty; it is true, however, that others provide insight into the weight of pressure they felt: preferring to continue to ‘hold on’ (tenir) rather than being exposed to collective sanctions and risking the loss of their few military rights as soldiers. The internal crisis in the regiment, which was provoked by acts of rebellion, revealed that despite the lassitude, the discouragement, the poor material conditions, and the fury expressed toward their commanders, the strength of the combatants’ solidarity and their patriotic sentiment remained intact. The strong unity of the group prevented the catastrophic scenario of a collapse of the army. The camaraderie among the French soldiers and their

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commitment to the goals of the war preserved military cohesion. Unity and camaraderie, in fact, were precisely the absent factors that led to the quick fall of the Russian army in 1917 and the breakdown of the Prussian forces during the last fighting episodes of the war in 1918. Both armies suffered from disobedience agitations which, given the lack of solidarity among the soldiers, led to their erosion. Most French soldiers would consider any refusal to fulfil their duty as an act that would put the homeland at substantial risk and would constitute an abandonment of the idea of victory, thus making such refusal unacceptable. They saw their fight as an act of protection from and resistance against the enemy: they fought for their families, their households, and most importantly, they fought for the fatherland. Were French soldiers ready to assume responsibility for the defeat of their country? Was it conceivable for them to abandon their brothers in arms, leaving them to continue in combat alone? These questions might be posed in a different manner, but in truth, the act of posing them hints at the answer.

NOTES 1. Guy Pedroncini, Les mutineries de 1917, Paris, PUF, 1967 [1990]. 2. Smith, Leonard V., Between Mutiny and Obedience, The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994. 3. Leonard Smith, ‘Refus, mutineries et répressions’, dans: Stéphane AudoinRouzeau et Jean-Jacques Becker (dir.), Encyclopédie de la Première Guerre mondiale, Paris, Bayard, 1994. 4. Nicolas Offenstadt, Les fusillés de la Grande Guerre et la mémoire collective (1914–1999), Paris, Ed. Odile Jacob, 1999. Voir également: André Bach, Fusillés pour l’exemple, Paris, coll. Tallandier, 2003. 5. Denis Roland, La grève des tranchées: les mutineries de 1917, Paris, Imago, 2005 and mainly André Loez, 14–18. Les refus de guerre, une histoire des mutins, Paris, ‘folio-histoire’ Gallimard, 2010. 6. Jean-Noël Jeanneney, ‘Les archives des commissions de contrôle postal aux armées (1916–1918)’, Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine, janviermars 1968, p. 222. 7. To understand the evolution of the protest among French combatants beyond the context of 1917 and throughout the entire conflict, we refer to Galit Haddad, Ceux qui protestaient. 1914–1999, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2012.

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8. Morris Janowitz and Roger W. Little, Sociology and the Military Establishment, Beverly Hills/London, Saga publications (3rd ed.), 1974. 9. Grinker and John P. Speigel, quoted in Janowitz and Little, op. cit., p. 93. Their work deals with group solidarity in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. 10. Archives of the Defense Historical Service (SHD), 16 N 1393. In the boxes 19 N 305 and 6 N 146, there are dossiers entirely concerned with the 129th IR, while complementary documents on the executions are to be found in box 16 N 298. 11. A street in Le Havre was given the name of Le 129th Régiment d’Infanterie. 12. Leonard V. Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience. Op. cit, pp. 129–132. 13. Our translation. Robert Desaubliaux, La ruée. Étapes d’un combattant, la Meuse, l’Yser, l’Artois, La Somme, Verdun, Bloud & Gay, Paris, 1920, pp. 232–233. 14. A statistical specification showing total breaches of discipline completes the information: from 29 April to 25 May 1917: ten incidents from 25 May to 10 June: 80 incidents from 2 to 24 July: five incidents in August: three incidents in September: one incident From 26 May onwards the breaches of discipline grew in numbers and especially in gravity, reaching their peak on 1, 2, 3, and 5 June. They remained at a level close to this minimum until 10 June, after which they diminished up to 2 July, arriving at a level where the high command allowed themselves to look to the future with some confidence. From a geographical point of view, the estimated 161 cases were distributed as follows: 125 in the region of the April offensive, 36 in different places of the zone of armies. Among these 36 cases, 12 occurred in units having recently left the region of the Aisne and the Monts de Champagne after the offensive. (Ministère de la guerre, État-major—service. historique, Les armées françaises dans la Grande Guerre, Tome V, 1 Novembre 1916–1 Novembre 1917, 2nd volume, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, p. 193.) 15. It should be noted that the agitations caused by indiscipline within the 2nd Army were not among the most frequent. The most seriously affected army was the 5th (38 grave cases); then come the 6th and the 10th armies; only after them comes the 2nd Army. Outside these four great units, the number of agitations remained very slight. 16. SHD 6 N 146, 129th ID, 5th Division, indiscipline and disorder acts.

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17. SHD, Series 19 N box 305. Report from Lieutenant Colonel Genet, commanding the 129th IR, on the incidents of 28 and 29 May 1917. 18. Guy Pedroncini, op. cit, p. 123. 19. The italics are ours. Report on the control of the correspondence in sector 71 (stated: 945 letters controlled), 6–9 June 1917. 20. SHD 16 N 1393. 4 June 1917. 21. SHD 19 N 305. Excerpts from letters 6–9 June 1917. 22. SHD16 N 1393. 23. SHD 19 N 305. Report of 5 June 1917. 24. Ibid., Report of 7 June 1917. 25. Special report from the Commission for postal control of the 4th Army Corps, control of 10 June 1917. 26. About the notion of “duty” see: Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, “L’enfer, c’est la boue !”, 14–18 Mourir pour la patrie, Paris, Le Seuil, 1992, p. 147. The same author: Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, Men at. War 1914–1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War, Providence, Berg, 1992. 27. SHD 16 N 1393, 5 June 1917. 28. Janowitz & Little, op. cit., p. 110. 29. Excerpts from letters, 6–9 June 1917. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. 1st June 1917, ibid. 36. SHD 19 N 305. Report of 6–9 June 1917. 37. Ibid. 38. 6 N box 146. 39. The execution took place on 28 June 1917. The ‘leaders’ were courtmartialled and sentenced: 4 to death; 4 to hard labour; 14 to public labour. Also, 41 found guilty received disciplinary punishments and a certain number of soldiers were designated for a distant colony. 40. SHD 16 N 1393. 41. SHD 19 N box 305. Staff, 3rd department at the Q.C.A., 29 June 1917. 42. The regiment was moved from the Soissonnais towards the Roye region, and exactly one month after the incidents, on 29 June 1917, the 1st battalion of the 129th IR was dissolved. Its forces were dispersed among several colonial regiments. Forming two battalions, it was engaged in combat until 2 September 1917, when a battalion from the dissolved 247th IR formed the new 1st battalion of the 129th IR.

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Galit Haddad is an Associated Researcher at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where she also teaches. She is a member of the International Research Center of the Péronne Historical Museum of the Great War (La Somme, France). Her research specializations include war refusal in the French Army (1914–1918), combatant experience, pacifist movements in France (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), and pacifism and feminism in France. She is the author of 1914–1919: Ceux qui protestaient.

INDEX

A Addams, Jane, 98, 99, 101, 103, 107n2, 109n22 Allied military prospects in France and Italy, 132, 135 Alsace-Lorraine, 34 Anthropology, 72, 84 Arbitration Commission, 38, 39 Archaeology, 72, 84, 85n27, 86n43 Armistice, 66, 92, 150, 154 Artois, 152 Asquith, H.H., 130, 136, 137, 140 Asquith, Margot, 129, 130, 136, 137, 140

B Balch, Emily Greene, 103, 107n2 Balfour, Arthur J, 127, 130 Balkans, 9, 34, 41, 55 Beard, Mary Ritter, 92 Beauchamp, Lord, 136 Belgium, 18, 19, 24, 25, 102, 128, 129 Benès, Eduard, 48 Bernstorff, Johann von, 121, 122 Bertie, Lord, 120 Bethman Hollweg, Theobald von, 118, 120–122, 124n16 Bickersteth, Rev Julian, 133, 134

Bonar Law, Andrew, 132 Boston Congress, 7, 12n25 Bourgeois, Léon, 20, 28n22, 31, 33–45, 54, 104 British Military Casualties (1917), 139 British War Aims Statement, 123n3, 131 Bryan, William Jennings, 95, 100, 101, 103 Buckmaster, Lord, 137, 138

C Carnegie, Andrew, 95 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 91, 92, 94, 96–99, 102 Charleroi, 152 Chemin des Dames, 149, 155, 156 Chicago Peace Society, 98 Congressional Union (CU), 97

D d’Estournelles de Constant, Paul Balluet, 34, 39 Daily Telegraph, The, 127 De Lapradelle, Albert Geouffre, 50, 52, 57n1, 58n14

© The Author(s) 2017 J.Q. Olmstead (ed.), Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism during the First World War, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51301-0

167

168

INDEX

Delcassé, Théophile, 34, 36 Desaubliaux, Robert, 153 Devonshire, Duchess of (daughter), 133 Disobedience, 149, 151, 153, 160, 162 Dissidence, 153–154, 157–158 Douaumont, 153, 157

E Emergency Peace Federation, 98 Entente Cordiale, 40, 129 Esperanto, 7, 22–23 European Union, 55

F Fawcett, Millicent, 94, 97, 102, 103 Feminism, 19, 74, 95, 102, 104, 106n1, 107n2, 110n31 Ferdinand, Franz, 35, 43n11, 93 5 January 1918, 131 France, 18, 20–25, 29n31, 34, 35, 43n13, 49, 50, 51, 54, 62, 118–120, 124n5, 129, 131, 135, 139, 144n81, 156, 164n26 Freemasonry, 2, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27n8, 27n11 French Internationalists, 48, 49 French Radical, 35, 39, 41 Fried, Alfred Hermann, 21, 22, 29n26

G Gender, 32, 78, 105, 106, 110n31 Geneva Protocol, 48, 53 George V, King, 130 George, David Lloyd, 93, 94, 116, 130–132, 134, 136, 141n14, 141n23, 142n34

Glasgow Congress, 4, 7, 11n19, 13n30, 13n31, 13n36 Grey, Edward, 118–120, 121, 124n9 Guise, 152 H Hague Conference, 4, 11n9, 11n12, 11n19, 19, 20, 33, 34, 36–37, 38–42, 42n1, 43n16, 45n40, 53, 57, 107–108n2 Hague, The, 3–6, 11n9, 11n12, 11n19, 12n21, 19–21, 33, 34, 36–45, 50, 53, 54, 57, 93, 95, 99, 107–108n2 Harrison, Jane Ellen, 32, 71–88 House, Edward M., 103, 119 Hull House, 98, 99, 109n22

I Imperial War Graves Commission, 139 International Arbitration, 8, 18, 19, 33–45, 52, 54, 127 International Peace Bureau (IPB), 1–14 International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), 91–94, 97 Italian Socialism, 68n6, 69n31 J Jacobs, Aletta, 91 Japan, 15, 129 Jospin, Lionel, 150 Jus Suffragii, 91 K Károlyi, Mihály Count, 92 Kerry, Lord (son), 133 Kiental Conference, 66

INDEX

L La Fontaine, Henri, 19, 20, 22, 23, 28n17 Labour Socialist International, 67 Lansdowne, Lord, 115, 127–144 Lansdownites, 133, 138 Lansing, Robert, 103, 118 Law, Andrew Bonar, 132 Le Foyer, Lucien, 20, 39, 51 League of Nations, 11n9, 26, 37, 42, 48, 55, 59n22, 61, 67n2, 72, 99, 119, 137, 142n34 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 32, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68n15 Liberal peers, 137, 140 Lochner, Louis, 98, 100, 101, 103 London Congress, 5 Long, Walter, 129, 140n9 Loreburn, Lord, 137 Lucerne Congress, 5 Lusitania, 24, 25, 100

M Mangin division, 151 Marne, 45n39, 152 Masonic International, 15–29 Mediation, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44n30, 53, 56, 85n13, 91, 92, 94–98, 101, 104, 105, 110n32, 119 Mee, Arthur, 138 Mercer Nairne, Lord Charles (son), 129, 138, 139, 144n85 Milan Congress, 6 Militarism, 83, 93, 110n29, 119, 130, 137 Modigliani, Giuseppe Emanuele, 31–32, 61–69 Monaco Congress, 8, 13n30 Montague, C.E., 134 Morgari, Oddino, 62

169

Multilateral diplomacy, 36–37, 38, 42 Munich Congress, 5, 6, 7, 11n18 Mutineers, 116, 149–161 Mutiny, 116, 150, 151, 155–157

N National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 91, 94, 97 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), 94 Nationalism, 2, 15–17, 18, 21, 26n2, 83, 106–107n1 Negotiated Peace, 115–116, 128, 131, 133, 137, 139 Nicolas II, Tsar, 34, 50, 107n2 Nivelle, Robert, 149, 150, 153, 155 Northcliffe, Lord, 133

O Ottoman Empire (Turkey), 55

P Pacifism, 2–4, 6, 22, 24, 26, 27n10, 40, 50, 61, 62, 63, 72, 73, 78, 83, 84, 91–96, 98–104, 109n22, 109n24 Paris Congress, 4, 8, 13n30, 13n32 Paul, Alice, 97, 99 Peace Movement, 1, 2, 11n9, 15–29, 32, 51, 73, 74, 84, 84n5, 85n21, 99, 104, 109n21, 109n24, 109n26, 116, 139, 142n34 Peace Studies, 73, 84 Peace through law, 49, 51 Pedroncini, Guy, 150, 153, 162n1

170

INDEX

Permanent Court of Arbitration, 19, 20, 41, 53, 54 Pétain, Philippe, 150, 153 Politis, Nicolas, 31, 47–60 R Radical-Socialist Party, 20, 35, 41 Red Cross, 16 Religion, 8, 71–78, 81, 84n1 Renault, Louis, 34, 39, 48, 50, 51, 53 Rouen Congress, 7, 12n23 Russell, Bertrand, 72, 74, 79, 83, 133 Russia, 9, 15, 34, 43n17, 56, 63, 66, 68n12, 86n51, 119, 129, 130, 136, 154, 162

S Sassoon, Siegfried, 135 Schwimmer, Rosika, 32, 91–110 Second International, 16, 61, 64–66 Serrati, Giacinto Menotti, 62, 63, 66 Smith, Leonard, 30, 150, 162n2, 162n3 Socialism, 61, 64, 66, 68n6, 81, 101 Italian socialists (PSI), 31, 62, 64, 68n6 Solidarism, 34–37, 40 Solidarists, 24, 33, 36–37, 39, 40, 41 Spring Rice, Cecil, 119 Stockholm Congress, 5 Suffragette (s), 92, 95 Suffragist (s), 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 99, 102, 105 Suttner, Bertha von, 21, 91

T Tenir, 152, 153, 161 The Times, 127, 133 Trotsky, Leon, 63, 64, 68n15

U United Kingdom (Great Britain), 23, 48, 54, 62, 118 United States of Europe, 17, 61–69 United States, 15–17, 20, 23, 24, 39, 54, 61–69, 92, 94–99, 101, 102, 104, 105, 109n24, 117–125 Universal Peace Congress, 3–12 Universalism, 15–17, 21, 25, 29n35

V Verdun, 153 Vienna Congress, 6

W ‘Wanton prolongation’ of War, 115, 128, 131, 140 War Weariness, 128, 130 Whiggism, 135 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 124n16 Wilson, Woodrow, 94–96, 100, 103, 115, 117–123, 125n21 Woman’s Peace Party, 99 Women’s History, 110n31 Women’s Studies, 107–108n2 Woolf, Virginia, 72, 77, 78, 84, 85n21

Y Ypres, 128–130, 139, 140

Z Zimmerman, Arthur, 106n1, 122, 123, 124n14 Zimmerwald Conference, 31, 32, 62, 63, 68n12 Zimmerwald Movement, 61–69