Helen McCarthy. The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c. 1918–45. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Pp. 282. $100 (cloth).

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-275
Author(s):  
Daniel Gorman
Keyword(s):  
League Of Nations ◽  
British People

The Peace Ballot and the Public

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
British People

In 1934-35 more than 11 ½ million adults in Great Britain completed the famous “Peace Ballot” (the official title was A National Declaration on the League of Nations and Armaments) designed to test, and indeed to demonstrate, popular support for the League and “the collective peace system.” The massive response exceeded all expectations and greatly impressed observers. It was, said the New Statesman, “the most remarkable popular referendum ever initiated and carried through by private enterprise.”But what did the Ballot demonstrate? Did it return a “plain and decisive” answer as Lord Cecil of Chelwood, President of the League of Nations Union and Chairman of the National Referendum Committee, claimed?Supporters of the Ballot had no doubt about the national verdict. Britons, said Cecil, had shown “overwhelming approval” of the collective system. They were, according to Winston Churchill, “willing, and indeed resolved, to go to war in a righteous cause,” provided that all action was taken under the auspices of the League. The British people were ready to fulfill their obligations under the Covenant, Philip Noel-Baker later wrote. The country was prepared to stop Mussolini by armed force if that should be required.

Is Political Activity under a Different Law from that of Personal Ethics?

Philosophy ◽  
1938 ◽  
Vol 13 (49) ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Hilda D. Oakeley
Keyword(s):  
League Of Nations ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Personal Ethics ◽  
British People

In the course of his discussion of the work of the Disarmament Commission, in his book on the League of Nations, Sir Alfred Zimmern asks why the British people were so active in sponsoring disarmament. The question arises because, as he points out, the project must evoke proposals in regard to security which they were in no mood to consider. “The explanation,” he proceeds, “no doubt is that the eventuality, however obvious it may seem in retrospect, was overlooked in the enthusiasm for what had become for a certain type of British opinion a moral crusade, rather than a realistic

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