Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, , known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923, was a British lawyer, politician and diplomat. He was one of the architects of the League of Nations and a defender of it, whose service to the organisation saw him awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937.
Early life and legal career
Cecil was born at Cavendish Square, London, the sixth child and third son of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, three times prime minister, and Georgina, daughter of Sir Edward Hall Alderson. He was the brother of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury, Lord William Cecil, Lord Edward Cecil and Lord Quickswood and the cousin of Arthur Balfour, with whom he had common grandparents: James Brownlow William Gascoyne-Cecil and Frances Mary Gascoyne, the only daughter and heiress of Bamber Gascoyne of Childwall, Liverpool, Lancashire, member of Parliament for Liverpool. Cecil was educated at home until he was thirteen and then spent four years at Eton College. He claimed in his autobiography to have enjoyed his home education most. He studied law at University College, Oxford, where he became a well-known debater. His first job was as private secretary to his father, when commencing in office as prime minister from 1886 to 1888. In 1887, he was called to the bar by the Inner Temple. He was fond of saying that his marriage to Lady Eleanor Lambton, daughter of George Lambton, 2nd Earl of Durham on 22 January 1889, was the cleverest thing he had ever done.From 1887 to 1906, Cecil practised civil law, including work in Chancery and parliamentary practice. On 15 June 1899, he was appointed a Queen's Counsel. After the outbreak of the Second Boer War, he enrolled as a recruit in the Inns of Court Rifles in February 1900, but he never saw active service. He also collaborated in writing a book, entitled Principles of Commercial Law. In 1910 he was appointed a member of the General Council of the Bar, and a Bencher of the Inner Temple. He was already a Justice of the Peace when he was raised the following year as Chairman of the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions.
Unionist free trader
Cecil was a convinced believer in free trade, opposing Joseph Chamberlain's agitation for Tariff Reform, denouncing it as "a rather sordid attempt to ally Imperialism with State assistance for the rich". In February 1905, he compiled for party leader Arthur Balfour a memorandum on 'The Attack on Unionist Free Trade Seats' in which he quoted a letter to The Times by a member of the Tariff Reform League that stated it would oppose free trade candidates, whether Unionist or Liberal. Cecil argued that he had identified at least 25 seats in which such attacks had taken place. At the 1906 general election, Cecil was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament representing Marylebone East.In January 1908, Cecil wrote to fellow Unionist free trader Arthur Elliot: "To me, the greatest necessity of all is to preserve, if possible, a foothold for Free Trade within the Unionist party. For, if not, I and others who think like me, will be driven to imperil either free trade or other causes such as religious education, the House of Lords, and even the Union, which seem to us of equal importance". In March 1910 Cecil and his brother Lord Hugh, unsuccessfully appealed to Chamberlain that he should postpone advocating food taxes at the next election in order to concentrate on opposing Irish Home Rule.
He did not contest the Marylebone seat in either general election in 1910 as a result of the tariff reform controversy. Instead he unsuccessfully contested Blackburn in the January election and Wisbech in the December election. In 1911, he won a by-election in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, as an Independent Conservative and served as its MP until 1923.
Minister during First World War
During World War I, Cecil worked for the Red Cross. He was made Vicar-General to the Archbishop of York on account of his deep religious convictions and commitment to pacifism. Following the formation of the 1915 coalition government, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on 30 May 1915; on 16 June he was sworn of the Privy Council, and was promoted to Assistant Secretary in 1918–19. He served in this post until 10 January 1919, additionally serving in the cabinet as Minister of Blockade between 23 February 1916 and 18 July 1918. He was responsible for devising procedures to bring economic and commercial pressure against the enemy forcing them to choose between feeding their occupying military forces or their civilian population. After the war, in 1919, he was made an Honorary Fellow, and granted his MA of University College, Oxford, as well as an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law, apt for a university chancellor which he by then was.Formation of League of Nations
In September 1916, he wrote and circulated a Memorandum on Proposals for Diminishing the Occasion of Future Wars in the Cabinet. Cecil noted the suffering and destruction of the war, along with the threat to European civilisation and the likelihood of postwar disputes. He urged an alternative to war as a means of settling international disputes and claimed that neither the destruction of German militarism nor a postwar settlement based on self-determination would guarantee peace. Cecil rejected compulsory arbitration but claimed a regular conference system would be unobjectionable. Peaceful procedures for settling disputes should be compulsory before there was any outbreak of fighting. Sanctions, including blockade, would be necessary to force countries to submit to peaceful procedures. If overwhelming naval and financial power could be combined in a peace system, "no modern State could ultimately resist its pressure". He hoped that America might be willing to "join in organized economic action to preserve peace". He later said that it was the "first document from which sprang British official advocacy of the League of Nations".In May 1917 Cecil circulated his Proposals for Maintenance of Future Peace in which the signatories would agree to keep the postwar territorial settlement for five years, followed by a conference to consider and, if necessary, to implement necessary or desirable territorial changes. Countries would also agree to submit their international disputes to a conference and they would be forbidden to act until the conference had made a decision. However, states would be allowed to act unilaterally if, after three months, the conference had failed to make a decision. All decisions made by conferences would be enforced by all the signatories, "if necessary by force of arms". If a country resorted to war without submitting the dispute to a conference, the other countries would combine to enforce a commercial and financial blockade. Cecil had originally included proposals for disarmament but these were deleted from the final draft after a diplomat, Sir Eyre Crowe, submitted them to a "devastating critique" that persuaded Cecil they were impractical.
In November 1917, Cecil requested from Balfour the creation of a committee to consider the proposals for a League of Nations. Balfour granted it and in January 1918, a committee, chaired by Lord Phillimore, was established. In May 1918, with the Cabinet's permission, Cecil forwarded the Phillimore Report to the American President Woodrow Wilson and his advisor Colonel House.
In October 1918, Cecil circulated a paper on League proposals to the Cabinet after their request for advice. He argued that "no very elaborate machinery" would be required as the proposals rejected any form of international government, but the League would be limited to a treaty binding the signatories never to go to war until a conference had been called. If a country went to war unilaterally, the signatories would use all the power at their command, economic and military, to defeat the aggressor. Cecil viewed the three months' delay before countries resorted to war as the principal role of the League as that would give public opinion time to exert its peaceful influence. The Cabinet received the paper "respectfully rather than cordially" and made no decision upon it. Cecil used the paper as the basis for a speech on the subject of the League delivered at his inauguration as Chancellor of the University of Birmingham on 12 November. On 22 November Cecil resigned from the government due to his opposition to Welsh disestablishment. He wrote to Gilbert Murray afterwards, saying that he hoped to do more for the establishment of a League of Nations outside the government than within it.
In late November 1918, Cecil was appointed the head of the League of Nations section of the Foreign Office. A. E. Zimmern had written a memorandum elaborating the functions of the League and Cecil selected it as a base to work from. He ordered that a summary of the actual organisation involved in implementing its proposals be written. On 14 December, he was presented with the Brief Conspectus of League of Nations Organization, which would later be called the Cecil Plan at the Paris Peace Conference. The Plan included regular conferences between the signatories, which would be "the pivot of the League" and that they would have to be unanimous. Annual conferences of prime ministers and foreign secretaries would be complemented by quadrennial meetings between the signatories. A great power could summon a conference, with all members being able to do so if there was a danger of war. The great powers would control the League, with the smaller powers exercising little considerable influence. On 17 December, Cecil submitted the Cecil Plan to the Cabinet. The Cabinet discussed the idea of the League on 24 December, with Cecil being the leading pro-League speaker.
The Paris Peace Conference included a League of Nations Commission, which was responsible for creating a scheme for a League, including the drafting of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Cecil viewed Wilson's draft for the League and in his diary, he wrote that it was "a very bad document, badly expressed, badly arranged, and very incomplete". On 27 January Cecil and American legal expert David Hunter Miller spent four hours revising Wilson's proposals in what became known as the Cecil-Miller draft. It included granting more powers in the League to the great powers, granting the Dominions their own seats, a revision of Wilson's arbitration proposals and the inclusion of a permanent international court. In further negotiations, Cecil was successful in retaining important parts of the British draft. When Wilson tried to amend it, House warned him against alienating Cecil, as he "was the only man connected with the British Government who really had the League of Nations at heart". Cecil was disappointed in Lloyd George's lack of enthusiasm for the League and repeatedly threatened resignation because of some of Lloyd George's tactics.
Cecil was greatly concerned at Republican opposition to the League and sought to concede some of Wilson's demands to secure American acceptance of the League. That included protecting the Monroe Doctrine in the Covenant. On 21 April, the British Empire delegation met Cecil, who assured them that Dominion criticism of the draft Covenant had been considered and that the new draft avoided "the impression that a super State was being created". The Canadians objected that while the risk of Canada being invaded was unlikely, the risks to France or the Balkans were much more likely but had not been taken into consideration. Furthermore, the League loaded Canada with more liabilities than it had by being a member of the Empire. Cecil argued that the Council of the League would determine when that obligation would be fulfilled and that its requirement for decisions to be unanimous allowed a Canadian delegate to object, which would cause the end of the matter. George Egerton, in his history of the creation of the League, claimed that Cecil "more than anyone else, deserved credit for the successful outcome of the second phase of the work of the League of Nations Commission".
After the Treaty of Versailles was first presented to Germany, Cecil argued strongly that it should be made less harsh on Germany and that Germany should be allowed to join the League. Cecil left Paris on 9 June, his hopes of a revision of the treaty disappointed.