Lord Robert Cecil

At the end of an exceptionally long life, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood considered that it had been ‘without great achievement or disaster but yet pleasant to myself and tolerably agreeable to others’ (p. 272). It had been rather more than that. The third son of a prime minister, the third Marquess of Salisbury, Lord Robert was at first overshadowed by his apparently more talented brothers. Yet one observer rightly considered that ‘Robert has the future before him’ (p. 26). After a solid career in the law he entered politics late, as a Conservative free-trader, just after Joseph Chamberlain had attracted most of the party to the cause of tariff reform. A strong defender of the established Church, he was a parliamentary ruffian, a ditcher in the struggle over the powers of the House of Lords, prominent in the attack on Lloyd George over the Marconi scandal, and uncompromising on maintaining the Union. With the establishment of the first wartime coalition, he became number two at the Foreign Office, serving under Sir Edward Grey, a statesman whom he greatly admired. He took over the co-ordination of blockade policy, eventually serving also as the first Minister of Blockade. Many historians credit him with making the blockade effective. At the same time, he provided the impetus for the formulation in the Foreign Office of the plans for what would eventually become the League of Nations. Once the war ended, he resigned from the Lloyd George coalition over the disestablishment of the Church of Wales. Despite this, he was effectively placed in charge of the negotiations which created the League at the Paris Peace Conference

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