Lord Robert Cecil

Politician and Internationalist

Gaynor Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317103417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Lawyer, politician, diplomat and leading architect of the League of Nations; Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, was one of Britain's most significant statesmen of the twentieth century. His views on international diplomacy cover the most important aspects of British, European and American foreign policy concerns of the century, including the origins and consequences of the two world wars, the disarmament movement, the origins and early course of the Cold War and the first steps towards European integration. His experience of the First World War and the huge loss of life it entailed provoked Cecil to spend his life championing the ethos behind and work of the League of Nations: a role for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. Yet despite his prominence in the international peace movement, Cecil has never been the focus of an academic biography. Cecil has perhaps been judged unfairly due to his association with the League of Nations, which has since been generally regarded as a failure. However, recent academic research has highlighted the contribution of the League to the creation of many of the institutions and precepts that have, since the Second World War, become accepted parts of the international system, not least the United Nations. In particular, Cecil and his work on arms control lay the basis for understanding this new area of international activity, which would bear fruit during the Cold War and after. Through an evaluation of Cecil's political career, the book also assesses his reputation as an idealist and the extent to which he had a coherent philosophy of international relations. This book suggests that in reality Cecil was a Realpolitiker pragmatist whose attitudes evolved during two key periods: the interwar period and the Cold War. It also proposes that where a coherent philosophy was in evidence, it owed as much to the moral and political code of the Cecil family as to his own experiences in politics. Cecil's social and familial world is therefore considered alongside his more public life.

Chapter 1
Inheritance

Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil emerged into the world on 14 September 1864, at 11 Duchess Street, Portland Place, London, the third son of Lord Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the future third Marquess of Salisbury and three-times Conservative Prime Minister, and his wife Georgina. His parents had married in 1857 amidst some controversy, it being believed that in marrying the daughter of the middle-class Sir Edward Alderson, Lord Cecil had married beneath him.1 Despite this inauspicious start, theirs was a happy union that produced eight children. When Bob, as he was to be known by his friends and family throughout his life, was born, he joined Maud,2 Gwendolen,3 James4 and William5 in the nursery, and was closely followed by two other brothers, Edward6 and Hugh.7 A third sister, Fanny, was born in 1866, but died a year later. This tight-knit group of siblings, together with his wife, provided Cecil with his emotional, moral and intellectual compass throughout his life. They were at once insular and clannish and yet gregarious in the expression of their opinions. Their political pedigree meant that they expected to be influential, taking it for granted, as many of their class did, that their role in life would be to shape opinion rather than to follow it. That said, Cecil’s formative years reveal him to be a classic middle child, believing himself to be unremarkable in his achievements and accomplishments in comparison with his siblings. However, rather than persuading Cecil to whither away into obscurity, this sense of relative mediocrity fired an independence of mind and singularity of purpose in him that ultimately outlasted and eclipsed the apparently brighter stars of his brothers. From his mother Cecil inherited a strong sense of social responsibility and an even temper, and from his father a ruthlessly logical mind. His academic careers at Eton and later at Oxford were marked more by his maverick attitudes towards social and intellectual conformity than by academic achievement. A consummate debater, a career in the law seemed to be the natural outlet for a man who spent much of the first four decades of his life resisting family pressure to enter politics. Despite taking silk, Cecil grew increasingly disenchanted with his work as a barrister. In particular, he believed that his family connections to the world of politics meant that those prosecuting the major cases of the day were reluctant to engage his services in case such a step had political consequences. In this there was probably some justification, an impression reinforced by the marriage in 1883 of Cecil’s sister, Maud, to the son of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne. Cecil’s legal career also has a bearing on the evolution of his ideas about international affairs. The mantra of tolerant, egalitarian liberalism that he used to promote the League of Nations was largely absent from his accounts of his travels to Japan in 1905. He found encounters with other cultures distasteful and unsettling. He also developed a dislike of long-distance international travel that was to remain with him for the remainder of his life.

A year after Cecil’s birth, his father became Viscount Cranborne, the courtesy title accorded to the heir of the Marquess of Salisbury, after the death of his childless elder brother, James, in June 1865. Although his profound disability had led many to assume that James Cecil would not live to adulthood, his sudden death came as a shock to his brother, who had anticipated spending the rest of his life pursuing political office without the responsibility of running the family estates. The death also brought about a partial reconciliation of the rift that had existed between Cecil’s father and the second Marquess caused by the controversy surrounding his marriage. As it was, in 1865, the Cecils returned to live at the family seat, Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, for the first time since their marriage eight years earlier. Therefore, although born in a relatively humble abode in London, it was to be this magnificent Jacobean mansion in Hertfordshire, with all of its associations with Tudor power brokering, that Bob Cecil was to regard as home. This connection was reinforced more permanently three years later when Cecil’s father succeeded to the title of Marquess of Salisbury.

The family heritage associated with Hatfield had a direct impact on the Cecil children. Close in age, they enjoyed a generally harmonious relationship that was to last throughout their lives. This closeness was also forged by their educational experiences and by their home life. The boys’ early education was far removed from that traditionally associated with the Victorian aristocracy. They did not attend prep school but were educated at home until the age of 13, whereupon they were dispatched to Eton. During these formative years, all of the Cecil siblings were exposed to a ‘bracing’ programme of intellectual development that required them from an early age to hold their own in discussions about politics and religion.8 They were spoken to and treated as adults by their parents, who encouraged them to speak their minds and taught them the oratorical and writing skills necessary to do this.9 The imprint of this style of parenting varied considerably from child to child, but its most profound legacy – present in all of the siblings – was a lasting reverence for the Conservative principles expounded by their father and a deep devotion to High Anglicanism. They were also to develop a collective reputation for being intellectual and political mavericks, whose independence of mind made them formidable company – loose cannons that could influence politics either to brilliant or to disastrous effect. They were able to bring their presence to bear through force of numbers – four of the five Cecil brothers entered either politics or the Church at a time when their father’s career was at its height. Of these four, one was later to become a bishop and two Cabinet Ministers. This gave the impression of the rebirth of the Cecil dynasty at the heart of political power in Britain for the first time since the seventeenth century.

In none of the Cecil siblings was this independence of mind and adherence to personal conviction more apparent than in the subject of this study. Furthermore, this was something of which Cecil himself was acutely aware. While his siblings had a brother or sister to whom they were naturally close, he did not. ‘I was not in any way isolated, but I had no special confidant, and that perhaps increased my natural aggressiveness.’10 Cecil’s relationship with his parents was close and remained good into adulthood. The Salisburys’ unconventional attitude towards their children’s education was supplemented by a liberal approach to discipline, although Cecil later noted that ‘anything like direct disobedience was unthinkable’ and that ‘a glance from my mother was enough to put an end to any bad behaviour’.11 Indeed, Lady Salisbury played a larger role in the day-to-day care and upbringing of her children than was usual for someone of her social station. In particular, it was she who undertook their religious education. Unlike her husband, who believed that the values of the Christian life were to be lived and not questioned, Lady Salisbury encouraged her children to adopt a pragmatic attitude to their faith that left greater scope for question and debate. Cecil and his siblings were taught to engage with the Bible on their own terms – a practice which he in particular found liberating.12 Despite this, Cecil was clear that it was his father who had provided the intellectual and moral agenda that underpinned his formative years. ‘He had,’ Cecil wrote, ‘an almost fanatical belief in personal liberty’ and felt an ‘extreme repugnance’ for any type of discipline.13 On those occasions when childish freedom of action was curtailed, Salisbury was always at pains to explain why, and he gave his children the opportunity to argue their case.

Cecil and his siblings were also encou...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Inheritance
• 2 Entering the Fray, 1903–14
• 3 Changing Focus, 1914–19?
• 4 The Origins of the League of Nations, 1916–18
• 5 Paris Peace Conference, 1919
• 6 Disarmament and First Challenges to League Authority, 1919–24
• 7 The European Security Debate and the League Council Crisis, 1924–26
• 8 Land and Air Disarmament Negotiations, 1925–27
• 9 Naval Disarmament and the Geneva Naval Conference, 1925–27
• 10 International Disarmament and Crisis in the Far East, 1928–34
• 11 The Peace Ballot and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, 1934–39
• 12 The Second World War, the United Nations and the Cold War, 1939–58
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Covenant of the League of Nations (Including Amendments adopted to December, 1924)
• Bibliography
• Index