The League of Nations Union and Collective Security

In The Troublemakers,'A. J. P. Taylor found it 'significant that the phrase was never used until the middle of the nineteen-thirties.'1 However, Lord Robert Cecil, the leader of the League of Nations Union, was putting great emphasis on the phrase in 1933, and similar terms such as 'pooled security' or 'collective defense' had been used for years before that.2 The question that must be asked is whether there was indeed much significance in the use of these words. Did they really mean to the British public in the early 1930s what they were to mean five years later? Specifically, did Cecil, or other proponents of building collective security through the League of Nations, adequately explain that this policy might lead to war? Or was the British public left with the impression that collective security was a high-minded but rather abstract goal in foreign affairs which involved no great risk or expense for Britain? These questions troubled even the most steadfast supporters of the League. Harold Nicolson, for instance, told a story which cast doubt on the willingness of the British public to risk war in defense of the Covenant. During the 1935 General Elections he received a letter from a constituent asking for an assurance that Nicolson stood for the League and collective security and that he would 'oppose any entanglements in Europe'. Nicolson described how he read the letter aloud at various meetings and then observed the

Collective security · Covenant · Economic history · Foreign policy · League · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Military History and Strategy · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

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