The British Peace Movement 1870-1914 (Oxford Historical Monographs)

OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS EDITORS R. R. DAVIES

R. J. W. EVANS

J. HARRIS

H. M MAYR-HARTING

J. ROBERTSON

R. SERVICE P. A. SLACK

The British Peace Movement –

PAUL LAITY

CLARENDON PRESS . OXFORD

1 Great Clarendon Street. Oxford   Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Paul Laity 2001 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laity, Paul. The British peace movement, 1870–1914/Paul Laity. p. cm—(Oxford historical monographs) Originally presented as the author’s thesis (doctoral). Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Peace movements—Great Britain—History. I. Title. II. Series. JZ5584.G3 L 35 2001 327.172094109034—dc21 2001036056 ISBN 0–19–924835–4 Typeset in Ehrhardt by J&L Composition Ltd, Filey, North Yorkshire Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn

For my Parents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THIS BOOK should have been finished years ago: the D.Phil. thesis on which it is based was examined in 1995—I have been a very slow worker since then. Many debts, however long ago incurred, are still outstanding. Thanks, first, to my supervisor, Jane Garnett, for her excellent advice, and for her patience, support, and generosity, which extended well beyond the bounds of duty. Thanks, too, to Martin Ceadel, who co-supervised the thesis once I had finally decided what it was to be about: his knowledge of the British peace movement’s history is unrivalled, and his ideas have in many ways shaped this book (though I can’t be sure he’ll agree with everything in it). I am grateful to the staff of the libraries and archives in which I worked; to Mr Clive Dunnico for allowing me to consult the Peace Society papers and to Mrs Wallace for looking after me while I did so; to Mr Peter Deed for allowing me to examine the remaining papers of the International Arbitration League; and to Anne Kjelling, who kindly arranged for me to borrow the Norwegian Nobel Institute’s set of the Arbitrator. Thanks are also due to Ewen Green who has acted as my subeditor for the book; to Anthony Howe, for commenting on a version of the manuscript; to Jeremy Harding; to Anne Gelling and all at OUP; and to Robert Gomme for conversations about G. H. Perris. I also owe much to Andrew Thompson, who has helped me out a great deal over the years: he, too, commented on a version of the manuscript. Thanks, for different reasons, to Saul, and, especially, to Anna, who has put up with me for a long time now. The book is dedicated to my parents, with love and gratitude.

CONTENTS A B B R E V I AT I O N S

INTRODUCTION

viii 

1. –: THE PEACE SOCIETY, THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL, AND THE REFORM LEAGUE



2. –: THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, THE WPA, AND ARBITRATION



3. –: THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE EASTERN QUESTION  4. –: THE IAPA, EGYPT, AND THE IAL



5. –: THE UNIVERSAL PEACE CONGRESSES, THE ARMS RACE, AND THE CONCERT OF EUROPE  6. –: THE HAGUE CONFERENCES AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR



7. –: THE PRE-WAR PEACE MOVEMENT



8. THE REACTION OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT TO EUROPEAN WAR



BIBLIOGRAPHY



INDEX



ABBREVIATIONS ACC

Associated Council of Churches for Fostering Friendly

AGFS

Anglo-German Friendship Society

Arb.

Arbitrator

Relations between the British and German Peoples

ARCLN Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations BF

British Friend

BFAA

British and Foreign Arbitration Association

BL

British Library

CEPL

Church of England Peace League

EQA

Eastern Question Association

FoR

Fellowship of Reconciliation

FPC

Friends’ Peace Committee

HP

Herald of Peace

IAL

International Arbitration League

IAPA

International Arbitration and Peace Association

IAPC

Increased Armaments Protest Committee

ILP

Independent Labour Party

ILPL

Ligue internationale de la paix et de la liberté

IPU

Inter-Parliamentary Union

IWMA

International Working Men’s Association

LB

Peace Society Letter Book

LLAAM League of Liberals against Aggression and Militarism LRL

Labour Representation League

LUB

League of Universal Brotherhood

MB

Peace Society Minute Book

NPC

National Peace Council

NR

National Reformer

NSL

National Service League

PCC

Peace Congress Committee

PRO

Public Record Office

Abbreviations

PSA

Pleasant Sunday Afternoon

RPS

Rationalist Peace Society

SAAC

South Africa Conciliation Committee

SDF

Social Democratic Federation

SFRF

Society of Friends of Russian Freedom

SPD

Social Democratic Party (Germany)

TIC

Transvaal Independence Committee

TUC

Trades Union Congress

UDC

Union of Democratic Control

UPC

Universal Peace Congress

WAWSA War against War in South Africa WLPA

Wisbech Local Peace Association

WPA

Workmen’s Peace Association

WPC

Workmen’s Peace Committee

ix

Introduction The idea that political change could bring about an end to war first emerged in Britain with the Enlightenment. A small number of liberals who demanded that the state stop interfering in people’s lives, and radicals who vilified corrupt, aristocratic élites, turned their attention to international affairs. They denied that war was inevitable and blamed it on reactionary government: increase the influence of the people, they argued, and wars would stop. This view was summed up, unforgettably, by Thomas Paine: ‘Man is not the enemy of Man,’ he wrote, ‘but through the medium of a false system of government.’ From the last decades of the eighteenth century, the dominant approach to international relations—formidable armed forces and a balance of power—was challenged by an alternative ideology of permanent peace. The belief that war could be abolished survived Trafalgar and Waterloo and took a firmer hold in Britain during the nineteenth century than in any Continental European power. This happened for a number of reasons. First, the English Channel afforded enough security to encourage the assumption that permanent peace could take the place of a constant watchfulness against invasion. Second, the influence of free-trade liberalism in Britain inspired the argument that war was becoming increasingly anachronistic as commercial and other international links grew stronger. Third, the country’s economic power made plausible the view that the international status quo was a satisfactory basis for lasting peace. Finally, the absence of major domestic upheavals in Britain suggested that all political disputes could be peacefully resolved. Although the belief that war could be abolished was held only by a minority, it became a permanent feature of British political debate by the midnineteenth century and remained influential within progressive politics well into the twentieth. The activists who campaigned for its acceptance comprised the peace movement. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, a Liberal MP from  to , liked to poke fun at the time-honoured principle of national defence—‘if you want peace, prepare for war.’ This was, he declared, the same as saying ‘if you wish for cleanliness, live in a coal-hole’ or, ‘if you want sobriety, live in a public house.’ In making this remark (and he made it often), Lawson was



Introduction

expressing the central proposition of the peace movement: that the best way to maintain peace was actively to pursue it—to stay friendly with other nations, to develop ways of resolving conflicts and to limit arms spending. Preparing for war, the peace movement argued, would eventually lead to war, with all its horrors and injustices: in the meantime, it produced merely an armed truce between more-or-less militarist nations. Campaigners such as Lawson understood that the abolition of war was an arduous task, but they were optimistic that an international community was already in the process of formation, based on an essential harmony of interests between peoples. The peace movement insisted— often in the face of a Victorian public for whom war was a source of excitement rather than fear—that military conflict was an unheroic, immoral, and unnecessary means of settling disputes. The movement sought a just peace, not merely an absence of war. To those who said that justice was sometimes more important than peace, it replied that peace and justice could be reconciled. Although the peace movement doesn’t feature in most accounts of Victorian and Edwardian politics, it should—for two reasons. First, questions of war and peace often impinged on national political debate, notably during the Franco-Prussian War (), the Bulgarian Agitation (–), the war in Egypt (), the South African War (–), and the escalating arms race with Germany in the years before . Peace agitations were always controversial; they were especially so at these times. Second, except where it limited itself exclusively to Christian arguments, the peace movement expressed views which were at the heart of the country’s three major progressive political ideologies—liberalism, radicalism, and socialism. All three incorporated the idea that their own favoured reforms (free trade, the removal of élites, the end of capitalism) would eventually lead to international harmony. Although these progressive ideologies fed into the British party system in a complex way—not least when it came to issues of foreign and defence policy—their fundamental opposition to war ensured that representatives from the Liberal Party (especially its Radical wing) and from the labour movement were drawn to peace activism. Peace was also, of course, a religious question. A tiny minority of Christians had for centuries taken a personal, absolutist stand against war which invoked the peaceful origins of Christianity. They had a special place in the peace movement. A larger number were inspired by their religion at least to entertain the possibility of permanent peace, and to argue that the abolition of war was a Christian duty. Nonconformist

Introduction



Protestantism, in particular, was well-represented in the peace movement. This was because it had a tradition of criticizing the state on moral grounds, which easily adapted itself to expressing opposition to orthodox foreign policies. The idea of abolishing war, then, had a broader compass than is often assumed, and had a place in many different political and religious traditions. The peace movement’s institutional structure, too, is little understood. There were essentially two types of peace campaigning. The first was non-specialized and took place under the auspices either of organizations for which peace was one aspect of a wider political or religious commitment (such as a political party or a church), or a single-issue association for which peace was a by-product of its principal goal (such as a free-trade society). The leader of the Independent Labour Party, Keir Hardie, for example, said in  that peace should be regarded as ‘part of a larger body of progressive thought’, which ‘for him’ meant the socialism of the ILP. The second type of campaigning was conducted by specialized peace associations. These worked under the assumption that the abolition of war was too important an issue to be left to political parties or churches, which were usually preoccupied with domestic affairs. The approach of these societies, in other words, was that international peace was the overriding issue in politics and that domestic reform was a means to this end. Many activists were represented in both camps. Henry Richard, the longstanding secretary of the Peace Society, for instance, was also a Liberal MP who argued for peace along with other progressive policies. The peace movement’s institutional composition was varied, therefore. Consider its presence at the Universal Peace Congress held in London in . The Congress was attended by delegates not only from many different specialized peace societies, but from numerous bodies which didn’t focus solely on peace—Liberal and Radical associations, the ILP, the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee, the National Free Church Council, dozens of quarterly and monthly meetings of the Society of Friends, the Cobden Club, temperance societies, the Union of Ethical Societies, and so on. This book is the first detailed account of the late Victorian and Edwardian peace movement. It has two principal aims. The first is to examine the outlook and activities of the most important peace associations which operated from  to . I focus on these societies—the core of the peace movement. Different peace associations emerged in order to represent a particular ideology, or strategy, or social group. Like other pressure groups, they



Introduction

organized meetings, distributed literature, recruited members, published journals and sent resolutions to government. When foreign and defence issues were out of the public mind, it was up to the specialized associations and a few dedicated allies to keep the peace movement alive. When, on the other hand, a question of war or foreign policy sparked off a major controversy within British politics and the peace movement expanded, the associations did their best to co-ordinate and unify this activism (and to take some of the credit for it). They kept formally clear of any political party, but paid much attention to the progress of their cause in Westminster and monitored the size of the Parliamentary ‘peace party’— the informal term for those MPs who could be relied on to support peace policies. The associations responded enthusiastically to signs that the higher echelons of the Liberal Party (or the ILP) were adopting their ideas. Just as often, however, they had occasion to berate Liberal governments for failing to adopt peace policies, and to disparage erstwhile supporters who had, it was thought, put party or patriotism before principle. The peace societies operated internationally, too. They developed ties with similar groups in Europe and the United States, and took part in international gatherings of activists, most notably the series of Universal Peace Congresses held between  and . Peace, unlike the causes of most other pressure groups, was inherently international. Hodgson Pratt, a dominant figure in the Victorian peace movement, knew this very well: ‘to convert the English masses to peace and arbitration and to leave other nations as ready for war as ever’, he said, ‘is but a small step towards the ultimate result.’ Victorian and Edwardian peace associations have received little attention from scholars, and have featured only in histories of international campaigns: for instance, A. C. F. Beales’s History of Peace (); Irwin Abrams’s unpublished thesis ‘A History of European Peace Societies, –’ (); W. H. Van der Linden’s The International Peace Movement – (); and Sandi Cooper’s Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, – (). The surprising absence of a more substantial study can largely be attributed to the fact that, until recently, the archive of the Peace Society, the most influential body within the Victorian peace movement, has been inaccessible. Its minute books and letters provide access to the interior world of the movement: financial matters, friendships, policy disputes, personnel disasters. Because the Peace Society has remained in shadow, other groups, too, have largely been forgotten. These include the Workmen’s Peace Association, one of the largest political organizations led and supported by working men in

Introduction



the s; the International Peace and Arbitration Association, the remarkable origins of which are revealed in the Peace Society records; the Women’s Local Peace Association, formed by Quakers in ; and the National Peace Council, which organized national peace congresses from . The Peace Society had an influence on all these groups—with the opening of its archive, the peace movement becomes clearly visible for the first time. The second aim of this book is to explore the ideological configuration of the peace movement (including non-specialized campaigning— by Radical Liberals and the Labour Party, for instance). The peace societies in fact provide an ideal starting-point for such an analysis because it was at their level that the ideas and dilemmas of the peace movement were most thoroughly discussed. To give an important example, the journals of the societies provide abundant evidence of the fact that there were two basic types of peace thinking: first, an absolutist opposition to all war; and second, a belief in permanent peace which incorporated support for wars of self-defence. This distinction is fundamental to an understanding of how the peace movement worked and of how it was perceived. Some peace associations were based on an opposition to all war (notably the Peace Society and the Friends’ Peace Committee); the remainder made clear their support for certain wars, while emphasizing that the abolition of war was the priority. The societies also debated in great detail the numerous other questions at the heart of British peace campaigning: the role of vested interests in the formulation of foreign policy, the problem of jingoism, the virtues of a strike against war, the European alliance system, compulsory military service, and whether to pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy or one of engagement in Europe. Non-specialized peace campaigning in Victorian and Edwardian Britain has received more attention than the specialized societies. This attention has tended to concentrate on the impact of the peace movement on government. Douglas Newton’s British Labour, European Socialism and the Struggle for Peace – (), for instance, discusses the peace thinking of the ILP, the Social Democratic Foundation and the trade unions, and relates British socialism to the debates of the Second International, thus providing a convincing explanation for the powerlessness of the British labour movement to influence events in August . A. J. A. Morris’s Radicalism against War – () details the response of Radicals to the defence and foreign policies of Asquith’s Liberal Governments. He explains the Radicals’ failure to prevent war in



Introduction

 in terms of the superficiality of their peace beliefs and the pull of party loyalty. Richard Price’s An Imperial War and the British Working Class () points to the weak, middle-class leadership of the ‘Pro-Boer’ campaign as an important reason why only a small number of workers actively opposed the South African War. The peace movement’s impact on official party or government policy is an area of analysis which this book doesn’t attempt to enter. I assume that the movement is of interest in its own right. What bears re-emphasis, however, is the remarkable strength within British political culture of the ‘idealist’ approach to international relations—that is, the assumption that the ultimate goal of international relations was to produce justice and permanent peace. ‘Idealism’ was espoused by Paine, Bentham, Cobden, and Bright. It was taken up by Gladstonian Liberals and even shaped Asquith’s justification for British involvement in the First World War. Plans for a League of Nations were also, of course, ‘idealist’. Anthony Howe discusses the durability of ‘idealism’ in Free Trade and Liberal England – (). As he points out, a Cobdenite opposition to the European alliance system and the balance of power was a fundamental aspect of liberal and radical opinion up to and after . The influence and longevity of ‘idealist’ views of international relations in Britain also provide the theme for A. J. P. Taylor’s The Troublemakers () and Michael Howard’s War and the Liberal Conscience (). Both largely ignore the peace associations. This book adds the particular experience of the peace movement to our understanding of Victorian and Edwardian ‘idealism’.   - ‘Idealism’ is the best-known label for the optimistic ideology of international relations—the alternative to orthodox ‘realism’. However, a close investigation of the peace movement reveals the need to refine these concepts. Martin Ceadel, who has done much to advance analysis of peace movements and the peace-or-war debate, has developed a more detailed classification. He splits ‘realism’ into two positions: ‘militarism’, the extreme view which welcomes war as the main agency of human progress; and ‘defencism’, the more moderate view which seeks security rather than aggrandizement and relies on an armed truce to prevent war. He separates ‘idealism’ into three viewpoints. ‘Crusading’ is the belief that aggressive war is legitimate to impose reforms—national self-determination, say, or democratic government—which when universal will, it is thought, ensure

Introduction



a just and peaceful international order. ‘Pacific-ism’ is the belief that such reforms can be effected without aggressive war, though they may have to be protected by the defensive use of military force. Finally, ‘pacifism’ rejects unconditionally the use of military force.1 Peace movements are made up of pacifists and pacific-ists: crusading, though a form of ‘idealism’, cannot legitimately be considered a peace-movement ideology because it endorses aggressive war. Ceadel’s typology is invaluable in pointing up the existence of, and providing labels for, ideological positions overlooked in the ‘realist’ v. ‘idealist’ framework. It is also important to recognize, however, that Victorian and Edwardian peace campaigners weren’t always conscious of the distinctions we can now impose. Some activists, for example, focused so closely on their belief that Britain’s island status gave it the choice to stay clear of any European war that they did not think through fully whether there might ever be a situation in which they would consider war to be just and necessary. Other British peace campaigners failed to realise that a crusade, however well-meaning, was a war of aggression, and different in nature from a war of self-defence (though in practice, of course, such definitions always become blurred). In recognition of this, I also consider the labels used at the time to describe different viewpoints. The need to distinguish between the analytical terms we now find helpful and the words used by contemporaries can be illustrated by comparing the terms ‘pacifism’ and ‘pacific-ism’ as employed in this book with their use before the First World War. From an analytical perspective, the distinction between pacifism and pacific-ism is crucial. The existence of a pacifist element, albeit a small one, distinguished the British peace movement from its wholly pacific-ist Continental counterparts—it explains the uneasiness felt by some British delegates attending international congresses of peace societies, and it also largely explains why Britain made more generous legal provision for conscientious objectors during the First World War than any other combatant state. Moreover, the fact that the majority of the British peace movement was pacific-ist, not pacifist, is essential to an explanation of why many of its members supported British involvement in war in . The difference between the two positions was too obvious not to be occasionally acknowledged. Pacifism was known as ‘non-resistance’ and 1 Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford, ); Martin Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations (Oxford, ), ch. .



Introduction

also as the ‘extreme’ or ‘abstract’ view of peace. Most of its adherents were Quakers (political, Utilitarian, and humanitarian-inspired pacifism didn’t emerge properly in Britain until the First World War). Indeed, ‘non-resistance’ was closely associated with the Society of Friends, the leading Christian body which opposed all war. Most peace activists, however, were pacific-ist. In peace journals, newspapers, and Parliament, they now and then made explicit their support for defensive wars and distanced themselves from the ‘extreme’ view. They also felt it necessary to deny ‘realist’ jibes that they stood for ‘peace at any price’. Despite this occasional acknowledgement of the existence of two different ideologies, the distinction between them was subordinated within the peace movement to the general aim of abolishing war. The rationale of the movement was, after all, a belief that military force could never be a just way to settle international disputes. Between  and , when the possibility of Britain becoming involved in a defensive war seemed remote, and little thought was given to the military enforcement of international agreements, the pacifist/pacific-ist distinction wasn’t thrown into sharp relief. Pacific-ists and pacifists united in arguing against every ‘small’ war in which Britain was involved. Moreover, even though pacificists supported the principle of defensive wars, they were aware that all wars tended to be justified as defensive, and so were reluctant to accept a universal ‘right of legitimate defence’. They emphasized the rule of ‘no war’, not the exceptions. Pacifists, meanwhile, knew it was futile to argue for the immediate disbandment of the army and navy: instead, they joined agitations for peace reforms and, as a result, did not always stand out as different from pacific-ists. The difference between the extreme and non-extreme peace ideologies was not clear enough, therefore, for pacificism to acquire a distinguishing label. The etymology of the term ‘pacifism’ is an indication of this. It was coined by the French at the turn of the century and was soon taken up by the British peace movement to refer broadly to the advocacy of peace policies.2 ‘Pacifism’ as a word first gained national recognition after  as a result of Norman Angell’s ‘New Pacifism’. Angell, author of the phenomenally successful peace polemic The Great Illusion, himself only rarely made it clear that his ‘pacifism’ incorporated support for defensive wars—his argument was that no economic benefit could be accrued through conquest. It wasn’t until the First World War that there was a 2 Concord (the journal of the International Arbitration and Peace Association) borrowed the French form ‘pacifiste’ in October , but in the following issue had anglicized it (Oct. , p. ; Nov. , p. ).

Introduction



sustained debate among the British peace societies as to whether ‘pacifism’ entailed a belief in the justice of certain wars. The term ‘pacificism’ entered the English language at the same time as ‘pacifism’ and had the same meaning: it was originally simply a variant of ‘pacifism’. Here, however, it identifies a group of theories about the reform of international relations (and is hyphenated to make it look less similar to ‘pacifism’). There are in principle as many pacific-ist theories as there are political philosophies envisaging universal peace. For example, some late Victorian and Edwardian peace activists argued that the abolition of war depended on women having a greater influence on public life. The most influential versions of pacific-ism, however, identified the causes of war as lying variously at the level of the international political system, the internal political structure of states and the global economic system. As already pointed out, they were expressions of liberalism, radicalism, and socialism. The version of pacific-ism emerging from liberalism reflected a belief that the basic interests of human beings were harmonious and that the role of states was to provide a structure of law. It emphasized the potential for international order without major domestic reform. The changes needed to realize peace were international: free trade; the development of arbitration and international law; the operation of an effective ‘Concert of Europe’; and (after ) the organization of a League of Nations. Liberal pacific-ism emerged fully in the s when Richard Cobden highlighted the peaceful effects of free trade. Initially, it involved minimizing the influence of governments. By the s, however, and certainly by the time of Gladstone’s Administration of –, liberal pacific-ism allowed for constructive political internationalism on the part of governments. Radical pacific-ism had a domestic rather than international focus. It drew on the populism of the British radical tradition, which targeted the selfishness of vested interests and the machinations of blinkered élites. Because monarchical and aristocratic governments could not be relied on to form a peaceful international community, the abolition of war depended on each nation, through domestic reform, making foreign policy fully representative of public opinion. This would lead to international harmony by allowing the natural peacefulness of ‘the people’ to be expressed. Radical pacific-ism held that while arms races and wars did not benefit the nation as a whole, they benefited sectional interests which exerted pressure on governments to act for them. These vested interests included the military, financiers, military manufacturers, and the press.



Introduction

Cobden was a prominent spokesman for radical as well as liberal pacificism. ‘The middle and industrious classes of England can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace’, he wrote. ‘The honours, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them; the battle plain is the harvest field of the aristocracy, watered with the blood of the people.’3 Socialism produced yet another version of pacific-ism. It blamed war on capitalism, and argued that a permanent, just peace could be achieved only when capitalism was universally replaced. As this was a long way off, socialist pacific-ism offered a short-term tactic to prevent war—a workers’ strike against mobilization. This tactic was discussed in the pamphlets of the First International in the s and s and was an important platform in the struggle of socialist peace activists to prevent World War One. In general, however, the British labour movement was reluctant to call for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism; its peace campaigners preferred to voice a radical, Cobdenite critique of war, with a particular emphasis on the benefits of peace to the working classes. As the example of Cobden suggests, most peace activists adopted a variety of pacific-ist critiques and advocated a combination of reforms. The Workmen’s Peace Association, for instance, founded in  by the heroically cantankerous carpenter William Randal Cremer, concentrated on the workers’ case for peace and occasionally blamed war on capitalism, but also targeted the full range of radical demons—aristocrats, ‘bondholders’, ‘crimson journalists’—and had as the centrepiece of its agenda the liberal pacific-ist reform of arbitration and the formation of a ‘High Court of Nations’. Again, the influential pacific-ist J. A. Hobson, discussing ‘The Ethics of Internationalism’ in , addressed the peace issue from both an international and a domestic perspective: he argued that peace would be furthered by free trade between nations, but also remarked that free-trade advocates failed to take into account the ‘power of certain classes within the nation’.4 The power of vested interests was, in turn, denied by Norman Angell, who voiced a more strictly liberal version of pacific-ism, based on the operation of international trade and finance. As these examples indicate, there was plenty of disagreement within the peace movement about the essential causes of war. A separate, but related, cause of ideological variety in the movement was the problem of how far Britain should involve itself in European affairs (a question which affected most foreign policy debates). Some peace activists Quoted in Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, . J. A. Hobson, ‘The Ethics of Internationalism’, International Journal of Ethics,  (), , . 3 4

Introduction



argued that non-interventionism—often called ‘Cobdenism’ by contemporaries—best promoted a just and peaceful international community; others argued for constructive engagement in European affairs—the ‘Gladstonian’ view. In other words, campaigners differed in their opinion as to how far Britain should go in persuading foreign governments to introduce peace-furthering reforms and adhere to some version of international law. A policy of non-intervention encouraged governments to keep their army and navy to the minimum size necessary for the defence of the homeland; on the other hand, progressives were always susceptible to the idea of Britain’s moral responsibility to act on behalf of oppressed peoples overseas. Activists also debated whether Britain should sign treaties with, or join in diplomatic activity alongside, undemocratic nations (Russia, Germany)—was this the basis for an effective ‘Concert of Europe’? Radical pacific-ism, in arguing that unrepresentative governments could not be relied on to follow peaceful policies, veered towards a strictly non-interventionist foreign policy—Cobden’s ‘no foreign politics’. A state should respect the complete independence of every other state, Cobden argued, so that each, by directing its attention to domestic reform, could eventually achieve representative government and thereby ensure permanent peace. Liberal pacific-ism, which increasingly recognized the need for intergovernmental co-operation, fostered a more interventionist position. It was to Gladstone that pacific-ists who favoured engagement looked for inspiration. He criticized Cobdenite non-interventionism as a ‘noble error’, asserted the ‘moral right of interference’, and emphasized that Britain’s comparative security conferred on it a special responsibility to impartially uphold and administer the ‘public law’ of Europe.5 ‘Gladstonian’ peace activists held that pressure exerted by the ‘Concert of Europe’ was a more effective means than a policy of ‘no foreign politics’ to guarantee national self-determination and other reforms on which a peaceful international society ultimately depended. Moral or diplomatic (not military) pressure, they argued, would be all that was required. In certain circumstances, however, this sense of Britain’s special mission pushed a section of the peace movement from engaged pacificism into the advocacy of altruistic aggression—the crusading form of ‘idealism’. Artisan radicals in the First International, for example, who were sympathetic to the plight of oppressed Poles, Hungarians, and 5

A. J. P. Taylor, The Troublemakers (London, ), .

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Introduction

Italians, often championed Mazzini, a well-known supporter of ‘one more war’ to create a peaceful Europe made up of secular republics. The Bulgarian atrocities of , too, produced a crusading reaction among a number of peace activists, as did the invasion of Belgium by Germany in . In response to these crises, crusaders argued that ‘peace’ was immoral, an excuse to do nothing in the face of unacceptable oppression and violence. They charged pacifists and pacific-ists with caring more for the absence of war than for liberty, and they rejected the claim that nonmilitary action was the best means of achieving justice: peace and justice, they said, could no longer be reconciled. The peace movement therefore faced two main types of opposition. First, it was always attacked by the orthodox, defencist majority, which favoured ‘preparing for war’ and an armed truce, and denied the possibility of permanent peace. These ‘realists’ dismissed peace campaigners as, at best, impractical dreamers and, at worst, a danger to national security. Second, the movement was occasionally attacked by ‘idealist’ crusaders, who supported an altruistic use of force to impose reforms or eradicate oppression as the only way eventually to achieve a just international order. The tension between the wish to avoid war and the desire to achieve justice is one of the central themes in the study of any peace movement. Was war ever necessary to bring about a peace worth having? This book takes a special interest in those occasions when peace campaigners felt they had to support certain conflicts. For instance, George Herbert Perris, one of the most literate and dedicated pacific-ists of the period, spent decades arguing for either non-intervention or peaceful engagement on the part of Britain in response to international crises. In , however— making a decision which caused him ‘agonizing pain’—he endorsed the idea of a British crusade to rescue Belgium. It should be underlined that the Victorian and Edwardian peace movement didn’t emphasize the fault line between pacifism and pacific-ism (or the occasional temptation felt by peace campaigners to call for a crusade). It preferred to argue that war should be abolished and that conflict between the major powers was fast becoming an anachronism. As a result, most historians considering the movement have assumed that it was simply against all war—they have failed to register the existence of a coherent, non-absolutist peace ideology (pacific-ism). I argue in the final chapter that this has led to an incomplete understanding of the reaction of peace activists to war in .

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–: The Peace Society, the First International, and the Reform League         Britain’s first peace movement, which emerged in response to the Napoleonic Wars, involved both pacifists and pacific-ists. The pacifists were mostly, but not only, Quakers; the pacific-ists were Painite radicals and ‘rational Christians’ who denied that the Government was engaged in a defensive struggle and called for British neutrality. In the year after the fighting finally stopped——the first British peace association was formed: the short-lived, pacific-ist Society for Abolishing War. A more successful attempt was made the same year when a group of Quakers and other Christian pacifists launched the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace. The Peace Society, as it was always known, was to be the most important British peace association for the next hundred years. The founders of the Society were explicit about their opposition to all, even defensive, wars. They knew that this was a very controversial standpoint, and so decided to offer membership to Christians who did not hold the extreme position.1 Places on the central committee (the decisionmaking executive) were, however, restricted to those with pacifist views. Most were Friends. Keeping Quakers at the heart of the association was a good insurance policy: not only were they likely to be generous benefactors but their pacifism was well-established. It was hoped that the Society would be able to attract a substantial number of adherents on the general basis of Christian opposition to war, and that its pacific-ist members would eventually embrace pacifism. The Society tried, therefore, to avoid being considered a mere adjunct of Quakerism and to appear as ecumenical as possible. It even voiced non-Christian arguments against war, such as those inspired by Utilitarianism. By , it had managed to attract , members, about half of whom were Quakers. Although most lived in the south of England, the Society achieved a 1 Fellowship House, Peace Society MSS, Minute Book (hereinafter MB)  Feb.;  Mar. .

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national spread by means of twenty-one auxiliary local committees: these were free to take up a non-absolutist position.2 At first the Society was apolitical, cautious, and respectful of the authorities; its object was to spread the message that Christian theology taught pacifism, and it behaved much like a missionary or religious tract society. During the s and s, however, it gradually rejected quietism and became more political. This was partly in response to pressure from provincial Dissenters associated with the Quaker Joseph Sturge. From the early s these Dissenters established themselves within a number of philanthropic movements, usually pressing for ‘moral radical’ absolutist policies (in relation to temperance, for example, as well as peace). Sturge was critical of the Peace Society’s lack of dynamism—its desire to be ‘tranquil and unobtrusive’ and its reluctance to take up pressure-group methods. A convinced pacifist, he was nevertheless eager to work with pacific-ists and to this end set up a number of independent provincial peace associations. Further challenges to the Society were presented by two other pacifist agitators—the American anti-slavery campaigner William Lloyd Garrison, who inspired several British peace associations in the s; and the American blacksmith Elihu Burritt, whose League of Universal Brotherhood, established in , preached a mystical Christian-humanism which had a wide appeal. The LUB attracted at least ten thousand adherents and became Britain’s—and the world’s—first mass peace association.3 Christian pacifism clearly had some popular appeal during the s. Pacific-ism, too, was more confidently asserted than ever before, thanks to growing economic prosperity and the absence of a major war. With the repeal of the Corn Laws in , pacific-ism entered the arena of popular politics. Its principal spokesman was Cobden, who first became involved with the peace movement in order to persuade it to agitate for free trade. He argued that commerce was the ‘grand panacea’, blamed war on cabinets and foreign offices, and called for a general policy of non-intervention: traditional aristocratic diplomacy should, he said, be superseded by the spontaneous pursuit of the common good by the peoples of Europe, inspired by British example. Non-interventionism appealed to radicals who wanted to limit state expenditure and who objected to a vigorous overseas policy as deflecting attention from their domestic political 2 Martin Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations (Oxford, ), , . 3 Ibid. chs. –; Alex Tyrrell, Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain (Bromley, ), .

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demands. The ‘Manchester School’ with its retrenchment-minded followers, sometimes called ‘Economists’, was to remain a dominant influence in the British peace movement. Burritt, too, was excited about the repeal of the Corn Laws. By throwing open its ports to all comers, Britain would, he said, send forth ‘the Commercial Harbinger of the Millennium’ to ‘fuse the nations into one peaceful and happy brotherhood’.4 The Peace Society began to realize that pacific-ism was an ideology in its own right, not just a step towards pacifism. Although it refused to abandon its ‘extreme’ position, it co-operated increasingly with Radicals in pressing for peace policies. This co-operation was made easier by the Society’s emphasis on international arbitration: a policy designed to deliver justice as well as peace, and which—because it could in theory be used to settle all disputes—did not point up the difference between pacifism and pacific-ism. The idea of international arbitration wasn’t new. Earlier plans for pacifying Europe drawn up by the Utilitarian thinkers Jeremy Bentham and James Mill had envisaged a high court of arbitration as an adjunct to a federal congress of nations. Such a project was deemed too ambitious and controversial by the Peace Society, which preferred to concentrate on the more modest proposal of bilateral arbitration treaties. Arbitration—a reform taken up by Cobden—became the principal basis on which the Society joined the political fray.5 The last important component of the mid-century peace movement— the term ‘peace movement’ first came into use in the s—was the moderate, moral-force wing of Chartism. This wing was itself split into two factions. One, secular and London-based, emphasized education; its principal spokesman was William Lovett. The other, Christian and provincial, stressed the importance of ‘moral radicalism’; its key representatives were Henry Vincent, Arthur O’Neill, and Robert Lowery. All four leaders of moral-force Chartism became peace activists. They voiced a distinctive message: it was workers who suffered most from the unemployment and taxation caused by war, and who, as the majority of soldiers, could prevent war by refusing to enlist. ‘You, the working millions,’ Lovett wrote in An Address to the Working Classes of France on the Subject of War (), ‘are mainly selected to be the tools and instruments of warfare . . . We address you, the working classes, because we believe that the interests of our class are identified throughout the world.’6 4 6

5 Ibid. . Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, –, –. Ibid. , –.

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The years from  to  were remarkably successful for the peace movement. Britain was economically pre-eminent and its public had begun to equate peace with prosperity. A convincing case could be made that free trade and arbitration were aligned with national interests. The appointment in  of the Revd Henry Richard as secretary of the Peace Society helped ensure that it retained a central place in the movement. Richard, the son of a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist preacher, was a Congregationalist minister and sometime contributor to the Nonconformist.7 He was a devout man who, according to his biographer, ‘held fast to the cardinal principle of the Peace Society’, but ‘never allowed it to be an obstacle to hearty co-operation’ with political progressives.8 Richard, together with Sturge and Burritt, organized the first international congress of peace activists, held in Brussels in September . Many of the British delegates—especially the Quakers, wearing their ‘great moral hats’—stood apart from their French, German, and Belgian colleagues and were distressed by Continental (especially Catholic) ways. In general, however, the congress reflected what Sturge’s biographer has called an ‘Anglo-Saxon Protestant businessman’s’ idea of internationalism, and was considered a great success by the British movement.9 The leaders of the British peace movement decided to create a coordinating body, the Peace Congress Committee, which was separate from the Peace Society and had a pacific-ist basis to enable Cobden to become involved. Other congresses followed in Paris and Frankfurt. In practice, the PCC was dominated by the Peace Society not least because Richard, who was emerging as an authoritative speaker and had become a good friend of Cobden, was its key administrator. Cobden, the Committee’s principal orator and figurehead, was increasingly aware that only the Society could sustain his peace campaign. In June  he introduced a Parliamentary motion in favour of arbitration treaties. The Society played an important part in the agitation got up to support the motion: over  meetings were held and petitions were signed by , people. Introducing the motion to Parliament, Cobden emphasized that arbitration treaties were practical and would facilitate a reduction of government spending. The motion was defeated by  votes to , but this was a decent showing, one which confirmed that peace policies were taken seriously. The Cobden–Richard 7 Miles Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism – (Oxford, ), ; Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, . 8 C. S. Miall, Henry Richard MP (London, ), p. vi. 9 Tyrrell, Joseph Sturge, .

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partnership continued successfully. Its high point was the London Peace Congress of July —timed to coincide with the opening of the Great Exhibition—which was attended by nearly a thousand delegates.10 The Peace Society now led, according to one historian, ‘one of the best supported reform movements in Britain’ (though the number of its subscribers was still only , or so, a figure which was to remain fairly constant throughout the century).11 It faced a challenge, however, from those progressives who wanted Britain to do more to help Continental peoples struggling against oppressive regimes to achieve self-government. A consensus between interventionists and non-interventionists was most often reached within the emerging ‘Reform Party’ on the principle that any assistance given by Britain to such peoples should be philanthropic and diplomatic rather than military. Radicals could therefore express their sympathy for Hungarians, Italians, and Poles while also calling for retrenchment. But the underlying tension between the aims of peace and of national self-determination was always likely to reach the surface. In  Mazzini and his London admirers—mostly artisan radicals, Unitarians, and freethinkers—formed the People’s International League, which condemned England’s ‘isolative national policy’, aimed ‘to stir the public mind in favour of Italian freedom’, and leaned towards crusading. Its generous motive meant that it managed to attract on to its council a number of peace activists, including the Chartist pacifists Thomas Cooper and Henry Vincent.12      The invasion scare which followed Napoleon III’s coup in  presented the British peace movement with a more serious challenge. It destroyed the consensus in the Reform Party and marginalized Cobden and others who continued to argue for arms retrenchment. Two years later, the peace movement disintegrated as a result of the Crimean War— the only major conflict fought by Britain between  and . Because the enemy, Russia, posed a threat not to the homeland but only to Britain’s imperial possessions, the Prime Minister, Palmerston, felt it necessary to employ a special tactic to help secure the support of progressives for the war. It was, he claimed, a moral struggle on behalf of liberty against an aggressive, 10 11

. 12

Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, , , . E. W. Sager, ‘The Social Origins of Victorian Pacifism’, Victorian Studies,  (), Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, ; Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, .

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reactionary Russia. The tactic worked: progressives who may otherwise have questioned a war of far-flung intervention supported a war on behalf of European freedom. At a real stretch, pacific-ists could claim consistency in supporting such a war on the grounds that Russia was a potentially hegemonic hostile power, and that the conflict was being fought to hold the line in Europe against such a power. Some radicals, however, went so far as to advocate a righteous British crusade to give freedom to Poland, Hungary, and Italy.13 The peace movement, flying high only a few years before, now crashed. It was vilified by defencists and crusaders alike. Yet the war had its opponents. John Bright, Cobden, Richard, Sturge, and others insisted that sending troops to the Crimea was detrimental to British interests, and ridiculed the idea that it was a war for liberty—it was, they said, fought alongside one despot (Napoleon III), to shore up another (the Sultan). They met with little success. Peace protesters were assailed in the press and at meetings, accused of being unpatriotic and of caring more for bread prices than freedom. The Peace Society decided to be cautious. It organized no public meetings and petitions and confined itself to tracts and lectures. Its journal expressed merely a general opposition to war, and reverted to describing peace as, at root, a personal and religious rather than a political issue. The heart of pacifism was, it pointed out, the belief that a profound change was required within individuals. The need for a vital, protesting peace association was met by the pacific-ist Stop-the-War League, launched in . This body grew out of a series of speeches delivered by the antislavery orator George Thompson and the republican journalist John Hamilton. They were joined by the Chartist Bronterre O’Brien; John Passmore Edwards, a Cobdenite activist of working-class origins who had lectured for the LUB; and Frederick W. Chesson, an Aborigines Protection Society campaigner and secretary of the Manchester Peace Congress Committee.14 Frank reporting in the press of the horrors of the battlefield and of the incompetence of the British military campaign reduced public enthusiasm for the war, but the peace movement was slow to recover. A general election was called in  after Cobden introduced a censure motion condemning the Governor of Hong Kong for the English bombardment of Canton. Palmerston played the patriotic card and won easily; the Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, ch. . W. H. Van der Linden, The International Peace Movement – (Amsterdam, ), –; Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, . 13 14

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

Parliamentary ‘peace party’ was decimated. Cobden and Bright lost their seats and Sturge was hissed at public meetings in Birmingham. The president of the Peace Society, Charles Hindley, set an inglorious precedent by not voting for Cobden’s motion in case he lost his seat. In the same year, Burritt pronounced the LUB ‘dead’, and in  the PCC was disbanded. This was the end of the millennial hopes of the late s. The only compensation was the partial success of Richard, Sturge, and Hindley in their visit to the Peace Conference in Paris, to urge the introduction of a system of arbitration. Although Protocol  of the Treaty of Paris expressed a wish only and was confined to the question of mediation, it encouraged the peace movement to think that advocacy of arbitration was its best chance of engaging in a dialogue with European governments.15 The peace movement struggled on. Between  and , the Morning Star—the newspaper off-shoot of the Stop-the-War League, backed by Sturge and Cobden and edited for a while by Richard and Hamilton—led a campaign against Palmerston.16 The Cobden–Chevalier Treaty of  was celebrated as a triumph for free trade and as heralding improved Anglo-French relations. Only the previous year, however, the peace movement had faced another invasion scare, in response to which Palmerston had increased defence expenditure and formed a new volunteer defence force. The Peace Society disparaged his alarmism but most progressives responded to the calls of ‘liberal England’ in danger. The British people, Richard complained, were ‘duped with terror and suspicion’.17 The early s continued to be a difficult period for the Peace Society. At its annual meeting in , one speaker admitted that it ‘was not quite so popular just at the present time’ and Burritt remarked on ‘a great falling-off in the nominal adherents’ to the cause. With the demise of Burritt’s LUB and of the PCC, the Society and its local auxiliaries (the strongest were in Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol) were the only significant British peace associations in existence. The Society continued to be run and financed largely by Quakers—Richard reminded the readers 15 Tyrrell, Joseph Sturge, –; A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organized Movements for International Peace (), . 16 Miall, Henry Richard MP, –; Miles Taylor, ‘The Old Radicalism and the New: David Urquhart and the Politics of Opposition, –’, in Eugenio F. Biagini and Alastair J. Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism (Cambridge, ), . 17 Herald of Peace (the journal of the Peace Society, hereinafter HP), July ,  (editorials can be attributed to Henry Richard, see Peace Society MSS, Letter Book (hereinafter LB), Richard to H. E. Gurney,  Jan. , copy).

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of its journal that the Society of Friends had always constituted ‘the backbone of the peace enterprise’—but the death of such important Quaker benefactors as J. T. Price, Samuel Gurney, and Joseph Sturge meant some lean years. Henry Richard was ‘distressed and discouraged’ to receive in  a letter from H. E. Gurney, Samuel Gurney’s son, threatening to withdraw his yearly donation because of the Society’s lack of vitality. Richard replied that it was ‘conscientiously and laboriously trying to do good’. ‘You must not forget dear sir,’ he continued, ‘that for the last seven or eight years . . . we have had to row incessantly against the tide.’ Gurney, in turn, pointed out that only a ‘few’ individuals contributed the bulk of the finances of the Society: couldn’t the burden be more widely shared? Although he suspended his subscription for three years, he remained one of the Society’s most important backers during the s; the others—all Quakers—included John Priestman; Edward Smith; George Thomas; and Charles Sturge, brother of Joseph.18 Dependence on the backing of wealthy Quakers reinforced the Peace Society’s caution regarding matters of political controversy. No longer a quietist sect, the Society of Friends was more a prosperous clan, integrated deeply into the nation’s establishment. The potentially sectarian implications of non-resistance were at odds with this ‘mingling with the world’—many Quakers lacked any strong personal commitment to pacifism and others had no taste for radicalism. Some continued to give money to the peace movement merely as a hereditary obligation. The Peace Society had to be careful not to alienate these benefactors by taking up controversial and overtly party-political positions, especially on disarmament and during times of war. Cobden understood very well the need to maintain Quaker backing, but he nevertheless warned Richard in  that if the Peace Society relied too much on its ‘harmlessness’, it would evaporate into nothing. Indeed, the Manchester Examiner and Times argued a few years later that although the principles of the Peace Society had survived a difficult period, ‘the organization by which they were disseminated’ was now ‘completely paralysed’.19 Despite its co-operation with pacific-ist Radicals, the Society suffered from being identified with ‘peace at any price’. Some members wondered if it could be revitalized by abandoning pacifism, or at least by sponsoring another separate pacific-ist association. They grasped that pacifism 18 HP, June , ; June , ; LB, Richard to H. E. Gurney,  Jan. , copy; reply n.d.; MB,  Dec. . 19 British Library (hereinafter BL) Add. MS ,, Cobden to Richard,  Apr. ; HP, Feb. , .

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had lost whatever popular appeal it had enjoyed during the s and early s. At a ‘conversazione’ of the ‘friends of peace’ in , one Nonconformist minister ‘thought the Peace Society was too much looked upon as a sect and that an effort should be made to embody those who wished for the maintenance of peace on some “wider” platform than an adherence to the abstract principle’.20 But Henry Richard had no intention of sacrificing the Society’s pacifism. He regularly set out the argument that ‘peace’ could be seen as both a ‘doctrine’ and a ‘policy’ and that the ‘peace party’ consisted of two sections, the religious and the political. The first held ‘deep, earnest, religious principles and convictions’ and regarded ‘war in all its manifestations as being opposed to the will of the Supreme Father’. Its aim was ‘to produce in the public opinion of Christendom an abhorrence of war on moral and Christian grounds’. The second—in effect, pacific-ist—section had a ‘philosophical, humanitarian, economical’ basis. It denounced ‘war as an outrage on reason, as a scourge on humanity, as pregnant with manifold evil influences on the social, commercial, and political well-being of nations’ and called for arbitration, non-intervention and free trade. The two different sections did not, Richard insisted, ‘find the smallest difficulty in combining and cooperating for the attainment of a common object’.21 The Society highlighted its connections with peace-minded Nonconformity (often Unitarians and Baptists), the Cobdenite ‘peace party’ in Parliament, and artisan radicalism. Its artisan representatives included the former Chartist Arthur O’Neill, now a Baptist pastor, who was a Society agent in the Midlands; William Stokes, another Baptist pastor, who was an agent for the Manchester area; Henry Vincent, who had become a popular peace lecturer; and W. H. Bonner, a Baptist minister from Bermondsey, who lectured to mechanics institutes and co-operative societies in London.22 As Britain became less infatuated with Palmerston, the peace movement’s fortunes began slowly to improve. (Cobden’s letters to Richard had always portrayed the Prime Minister as an ‘evil genius’, capable of making ‘the most audacious and barefaced bid for John Bull’s pugnacity’.23) The Liberal Party which came together in —an amalgam of Whigs, Peelites such as Gladstone, Cobdenites, and (outside Parliament) artisan radicals—did so on the basis of opposition to Palmerston, whose HP, July , –; see also Mar. , ; Mar. , . HP, Aug. , . See also HP, Mar. , –; Mar. , . For Stokes, see David Nicholls, ‘William Stokes –’, Manchester Region History Review,  (), –. 23 BL Add. MS ,, Cobden to Richard,  Dec. ;  Apr. ;  May . 20 21 22

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Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

foreign policy had by this time lost its association with the cause of European liberty, and was regarded as a clumsy and aggressive form of power politics. Most progressives now wanted a more considered policy of engagement in Europe. In  Palmerston threatened Bismarck with war over the Austro-Prussian invasion of Denmark and had his bluff called. It was a turning point. Gladstone, fresh from courting the working classes in the North, was the leader of the neutrality campaign in Parliament. He was supported by the Peace Society, which organized meetings in favour of non-intervention and was delighted that ‘the Palmerstonian principle of “meddle and muddle” ’ had broken down ‘ “so disgracefully” ’.24 When the Prime Minister died the following year, Cobdenites and Gladstonians saw an opportunity for Britain to turn its attention to retrenchment and reform. France had finally ceased to be a threat and no power seemed likely to dominate the Continent. A long period of diplomatic ‘splendid isolation’ began; the next armed British intervention in Europe was not to take place for another fifty years.25       Metropolitan artisan radicals, who were among the most vocal campaigners on questions of foreign policy during the s, took a strongly antiPalmerston line and were convinced ‘idealists’. They voiced a hostility to wars fought for empire and aggrandizement, and a Painite antagonism to standing armies, secret diplomacy, and war taxation, with a special emphasis, echoing Lovett, on the harm these policies caused to the working classes. The emergence of such artisan campaigning raised the possibility that the peace movement might regain its mid-century vitality. Indeed, sponsorship by the Peace Society of artisan anti-war activism was to prove the most important development in the movement during the s. For much of the s, however, a prominent section of artisan radicalism was Mazzinian rather than Cobdenite in its thinking and distanced itself from peace associations. The viewpoint of these artisans resembled that of the People’s International League of the late s. Non-interventionism, they claimed, was an insult to the popular patriots on the Continent—Kossuth, Mazzini, Garibaldi—who were struggling to Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, ; HP, Feb. , ; Sept. , –. Simon Maccoby, English Radicalism – (London, ), ; Anthony Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England – (Oxford, ), ; A. J. P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers (), . 24 25

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

achieve national self-government. The artisans campaigned on foreignpolicy issues alongside a group of sympathetic middle-class reformers; this combination of radicals was, initially at least, a thorn in the side of the recovering Peace Society. A prominent role was played within artisan radicalism by the leaders of the craft unions formed in the late s to fight for better conditions and fewer working hours. Three of the most important of these leaders were the shoemaker George Odger, the bricklayer George Howell, and William Randal Cremer of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. Each persuaded his trade association to broaden its aims and fight for political causes. In , Howell, Odger, and Cremer called a public meeting, chaired by the middle-class barrister and champion of workers’ causes, Edmond Beales, for the purpose of establishing a suffrage association. The committee formed was a precursor to the Trade Unionists’ Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association, launched in , which in turn developed in  into the Reform League (presided over by Beales) in which the craft-union leaders were centrally involved.26 In  artisan leaders from the London Trades’ Council (the coordinating body of the new craft unions) formed a Trades’ Garibaldian Demonstration Committee to prepare a working-class reception for the Italian hero. Cremer presided over the first meeting. Garibaldi was regarded as a ‘gallant soldier’, a republican hero and a ‘patriotic citizen’ who stood for the ‘elevation of the toiling masses’. The previous year, P. A. Taylor—a friend of Mazzini, Liberal MP, and prominent Unitarian—had formed the Garibaldian Italian Unity Committee. Both artisan and middle-class radicals embraced Garibaldi as an opponent of aristocracy, Catholicism, standing armies, and high taxes. At a meeting in October  held at the London Tavern, Samuel Morley, the wealthy Nottingham hosiery magnate, well-known Congregationalist, and future Liberal MP, commended Garibaldi’s recent statement on the evils of standing armies: ‘Just in proportion as there was a tendency to increase the military power in a nation, there was a danger to the people’s liberties.’ Garibaldi’s trip was cancelled, but he visited Britain in , at which time Odger and Cremer helped organize the Working Men’s Garibaldi Committee. Samuel Morley, P. A. Taylor, and Beales led the middle-class City Reception Committee. Both groups protested when government disapproval cut short Garibaldi’s stay. 26 A. D. Bell, ‘The Reform League from its Origins to the Reform Act of ’, D.Phil. thesis (Univ. of Oxford, ), fo. ; D. R. Moberg, ‘George Odger and the English Working-Class Movement –’, Ph.D. thesis (Univ. of London, ), fos. , .



Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

Henry Richard, meanwhile, realized that intense enthusiasm on the part of progressives for Continental nationalisms was potentially damaging to the peace movement (even though it was highly unlikely that Britain would ever send an army to support the Poles, or Italians, or Hungarians). He issued a lonely protest against the adulation of Garibaldi, who had embraced war as a means to secure national liberty and lasting peace. War, the Herald of Peace said, was ‘freedom’s worst enemy’.27 The American Civil War initially brought with it a hopeful sign of the reconsolidation of the British peace movement. In , following the stoppage of a British steamer, the Trent, by a Northern warship for the purpose of arresting two Southern Commissioners on board, progressives found themselves having to counter a sudden outbreak of antiAmerican feeling. They united in a successful campaign to prevent the British Government providing military help to the South. Cobden introduced two motions in Parliament and Nonconformist bodies sent a deputation to the Government in favour of non-intervention—the Peace Society enthusiastically joined this agitation. Soon, however, the war presented the Society with two problems: first, the possibility that the agitation would change from one in favour of non-intervention against the anti-slavery North to one calling for a crusade against the pro-slavery South; second, the fact that the overwhelming majority of British progressives—including many peace activists—believed in the justice of the North’s cause. The North, they said, was fighting a people’s war to protect liberal reforms. This was consistent with pacific-ism but held out little hope for pacifism, and the Peace Society was marginalized by its refusal to admit the justice even of a war against slavery. A rejuvenated peace movement, it was increasingly clear, would be dominated more than ever by pacific-ism. Cobden argued that the North was engaged in a legitimate war of self-defence. John Bright, another pacific-ist, was also a supporter: ‘There is no man,’ he said, ‘who is not absolutely a non-resistant in every sense, who can fairly challenge the conduct of the American Government in this war.’28 (Even leading pacifists in America such as William Lloyd Garrison supported the North’s campaign. ‘There are some friends’, the Herald of Peace reflected, ‘whose sympathy with the North in this unhappy 27 Bee-hive,  Nov. , ; Times,  Oct. , ; M. C. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics – (Cambridge, ), ; HP, May , –. 28 Lewis Apjohn, John Bright and the Party of Peace, Retrenchment and Reform (London, ), , .

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

American struggle has involved them in considerable bewilderment as respects their peace principles.’)29 Artisan radical leaders including Cremer, Odger, and Howell organized an influential pro-North meeting, held in St James’s Hall on  March  and chaired by John Bright. Also on the platform were the Positivist spokesmen Frederic Harrison, Richard Congreve, and E. S. Beesly; Dissenting Radical Liberals such as P. A. Taylor, Wilfrid Lawson, and James Stansfeld (another friend of Mazzini); and the Revd Christopher Newman Hall, a Congregationalist leader who had taken part in the midcentury peace congresses. For Cremer, the war being waged by the North was part of an international struggle for ‘labour and liberty’ which was ‘one all over the world’.30 George Howell argued that it was wrong to see all war as unholy: it was a ‘bounden duty to fight in defence of liberty and progress. (Cheers)’. Many speakers expressed their opposition to peaceat-any-price. Howard Evans, a young shop assistant who was later Cremer’s right-hand-man in the Workmen’s Peace Association, urged his father to allow him to join the North’s army, but was reminded that he had duties as an only son.31 In response to other international crises, moreover, a number of artisans and other progressives were belligerently interventionist. When Russia suppressed the Polish rebellion in , for example, radical sympathy for the Poles led to support for some kind of British intervention, which occasionally took the form of demands for a military crusade. The Birmingham Congregationalist minister R. W. Dale, a consistent advocate of the cause of oppressed European peoples, argued at one town meeting: ‘While we maintain a large army and a splendid fleet to protect our own shores, I trust that we shall never shrink from using both on behalf of justice and freedom whenever our national duty and our national honour require us to afford the good cause material as well as moral support.’ At a workers’ demonstration at St James’s Hall on  July  Cremer said that if all else failed, he supported a people’s crusade against Russia: ‘if an armed intervention should become necessary for effecting these objects, the sacrifices which such intervention might entail upon the English people would be cheerfully borne by them.’ Declaring himself 29 HP, Jan. , ; Mar. , ; LB, Richard to Mr Whipple, n.d., copy; HP, Feb. , . See also LB, Richard to Dr Beckwith,  Dec. , copy; Richard to Joseph Cooper, n.d., copy. 30 P. S. Foner, British Labor and the American Civil War (New York, ), ; Bee-Hive,  Mar. , . 31 Bee-Hive,  Mar. , ; Foner, British Labor, ; Howard Evans, Radical Fights of Forty Years (London []), .

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Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

representative of the working classes, Cremer ‘repudiated the doctrine that we were only justified in interfering on the ground of treaties . . . our right to interference was based on humanity, morality and public policy.’ George Odger, who spoke just before Cremer, made an explicit attack on the ‘peace party’—those ‘who think more of buying cheap and selling dear than they do of humanity’.32 The Peace Society, in turn, was scathing of hot-headed radicals who demanded (at least) the threat of a crusade to help Poland, even though several of the Society’s own adherents were among their number. The Herald of Peace caricatured the arguments of these ‘political busy-bodies’: ‘We don’t wish for war . . . We only want our government to write angry and arrogant despatches . . . It is only necessary that our own man in power should dictate, and bully, and threaten, and break off diplomatic relations, and do all those things which inevitably lead to war.’ The tradeunion enthusiasts for Poland were not ‘friends of the working classes’ but ‘sentimental fanatics’ with a ‘pretended zeal for nationality’. Nationality, for Henry Richard, was ‘a poor, low, selfish, unchristian idea . . . To encourage people everywhere, as is the fashion now, to struggle after a separate national existence, instead of trying to acquire freer political institutions under the governments actually ruling them, is to lure them into pursuit of a phantom at the expense of sacrificing a substantial and attainable good.’33 The artisan leaders had their own—labourist, Mazzinian, republican— idea of how to bring about a just peace in Europe. The St James’s Hall Polish meeting led to an exchange of addresses between British and French workers. The committee of ‘trades unionists and working men’ who drew up the British address included Cremer and Odger, the bookbinder C. Goddard, the carpenter John Eglinton, and the painter T. G. Facey. ‘Let there be a gathering together’, it said, of representatives from France, Italy, Germany, Poland, England, and all countries, where there exists a will to co-operate for the good of mankind. Let us have our congresses; let us discuss the great questions on which the peace of nations depends; let us bring our reason and moral right to bear with becoming dignity against the cajolery and brute force of the so-called rulers. 32 N. W. Summerton, ‘Dissenting Attitudes to Foreign Relations, Peace and War, –’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History,  (), –; Bee-Hive,  July , ; Finn, After Chartism, . 33 HP, Apr. , ; June , ; Aug. , ; Feb. , –. For Peace Society members expressing support for Poland, see J. F. Kutolowski, ‘Victorian Provincial Businessmen and Foreign Affairs: The Case of the Polish Insurrection –’, Northern History,  (London, ), .

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The ultimate aim was for ‘a grand fraternity of peoples’ to avoid ‘the miseries produced by war’. The address praised Mazzini and Garibaldi. It also included a passage on the causes of war, which highlighted ‘the craving desire of traders for gold, ministers for place, and despots for conquest’, as well as ‘the intrigues of secret diplomacy’.34 At a meeting in September  formally to effect the exchange of addresses on the Polish question, which was organized by Cremer and Odger and held in St Martin’s Hall, it was proposed to create an International Working Men’s Association. Cremer was appointed its first general secretary; Odger became president. Although the First International concerned itself with various issues, its English members were, from the beginning, particularly interested in questions of foreign policy. In fact, Marx later deprecated what he described to Engels as ‘the old Mazzini-ism of Odger, Howell, Cremer etc’. (Beales, their regular coactivist, was turned down for membership of the IWMA because of his bourgeois background.) The inaugural address again voiced a radical critique of war with a special emphasis on workers: ‘If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people’s blood and treasure?’ It concluded that workers had ‘the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power’.35 Peace was now being championed by the organized international working class. During a debate held by the IWMA general council in  on the Seven Weeks’ War between Prussia and Austria, one of the resolutions introduced by ‘Citizen Cremer’ stated that ‘all wars not waged on behalf of liberty and justice’ were ‘cruel and unjustifiable’ and recommended that ‘the peoples of Europe . . . abstain from taking any active part in the present unrighteous struggle’. It was in response to the Luxembourg Crisis, however, during which fears of war between France and Prussia were widespread, that the International first began to fulfil its 34 ‘To the Workmen of France from the Working-men of England’, Bishopsgate Institute; see also Bee-Hive,  Dec. , . 35 International Working Men’s Association, General Council of the First International –: Minutes (Moscow, n.d.), ; Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement: Years of the First International (London, ), ; E. W. Sager, ‘The Working-Class Peace Movement in Victorian Britain’, Histoire Sociale–Social History, / (), ; Van der Linden, International Peace Movement, ; Moberg, ‘George Odger’, fo. .

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Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

pacific potential. The French and Prussian councils of the IWMA organized an exchange of addresses which protested against force being used by their governments in the settlement of the dispute. Cremer seems to have been greatly impressed by this joint protest, and later claimed that it ‘largely influenced’ the governments in their decision not to go to war. The Peace Society began to consider the First International as a potential ally. Richard wrote to the British general council urging it to express sympathy ‘with the French and German working men’. He was perhaps encouraged by the fact that the IWMA occasionally suggested that peace was the means to a new social order, rather than vice versa. In , for example, it declared peace to be ‘the first requisite’.36 Cremer soon lost faith in the International, however. This was partly for ideological reasons. British artisans differed from many Continental socialists in abstaining from calls for revolution and wholesale condemnations of capitalism. They enjoyed a more advantageous economic and political position than their Continental cohorts, and sought integration into the Parliamentary system rather than the abolition of private property. No one had a deeper sense than Cremer of the exploitation of his class, but he soon became disillusioned with Marx’s influence over the IWMA: ‘after the first few years of its existence,’ he explained, ‘men who cared more for their “isms” than for the cause of real progress became its chief counsellors and directors; its original objects were altogether subordinated to the realization of their pet theories.’ What Cremer neglected to report in any detail was that he was ousted from the post of general secretary in , having been accused of claiming too many expenses for a foreign trip. He was, in general, unpopular with his comrades, and was well known for his bad temper, even within the disputatious world of craft-union politics. His own explanation for his dismissal was that the council had ‘concerted with a trio of well-known, ancient enemies of his’ in order to force him out. He was also criticized for devoting too much time to fund-raising and lecturing on behalf of the Reform League. The League no doubt seemed to Cremer a more efficient means both to self-advancement and the advancement of the British working class. Remaining an enthusiast for the idea of the International, and having acquired many Continental contacts, he left the general council in January .37 36 Commonwealth,  July , ; Arbitrator (the journal of the Workmen’s Peace Association, hereinafter Arb.), Sept. , ; Sager, ‘Working-Class Peace Movement’, . 37 Arb., Sept. , ; Collins and Abramsky, Karl Marx, –; First International –: Minutes, , ; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer (London, ), .

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

       The Reform League provided a new outlet for Cremer’s internationalism. Shortly after the Luxembourg Crisis, in June , its council issued an address—‘A Voice from the Reform League of England to the Peoples of Europe’—which employed many of the standard arguments of the secular peace movement: Brethren—it is time that we should come to a true fraternal understanding with regard to our mutual interests and common rights . . . Steam-power and the electric wire have swept away the barriers that geographical distance, popular prejudices, and dynastic ambitions or disputes, purposely fomenting international ignorance and antipathies, used to interpose between us. Our interest is one and the same; peace, concordance, and harmony . . . War is the mad and wicked game played by emperors and kings with the lives and wealth of the people . . . If you refuse to furnish the men and the means—if you refuse to sacrifice yourselves and immolate others—the bloody game will cease . . . Why should not law and arbitration decide disputes, if disputes arise, between people and people as well as between man and man? . . . Consider what a crushing burden would be removed from the shoulders of toil and industry if there were no longer huge armies to support . . . How taxation would be minimized, how much of suffering and misery would be banished from our earth . . . how trade and commerce, the sisters of peace and freedom, would spring forth.38

With its espousal of arbitration and its emphasis on trade and commerce, this statement indicated that the Reform League artisan leaders were beginning to move from Mazzinian adventurism towards a workers’ version of Cobdenism. The Peace Society realized that here was an ideal opportunity to win over the newly enfranchised urban artisan class to the anti-war cause. The Revd Bonner—who, as well as a Peace Society lecturer, was, from , a lecturer and financial agent for the Reform League with ‘the ear and confidence of working men’—was appointed to give a special series of talks. He began to address London Reform League branches, co-operating with such radical artisans as Benjamin Lucraft, the former-Chartist fancy chair maker; Thomas Mottershead, a silk-weaver and another prominent Chartist; and the tailor W. D. Stainsby (all three were also IWMA council members). ‘We regard the movement that is taking place among the working classes’, Henry Richard wrote, ‘as significant and gratifying 38 Bishopsgate Institute, Reform League MSS, council MB,  May ; Reynolds Newspaper,  June , .



Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

tokens of an awakening of reason and the conscience of the people on this question of war and peace.’39 The Luxembourg Crisis also generated new peace activity on the Continent. The most important influences on the Continental peace movement were free-trade economics, freemasonry, republicanism, and anti-clericalism. Largely because of the constant risk of invasion faced by Continental nations, it lacked a pacifist element, and preferred to avoid the question of disarmament. Two significant societies were founded in : Frederic Passy’s Ligue internationale et permanent de la paix, based in Paris, which voiced a version of liberal Cobdenism; and Charles Lemonnier’s Geneva-based Ligue internationale de la paix et de la liberté, which envisaged a European peace based on a federation of democratic republics and was sometimes linked with Mazzini’s crusading ‘one more war’ theory. Lemonnier’s ILPL appealed to Cremer and Odger, who still harboured republican sympathies. In September  the two artisan leaders arranged to be sent by the Reform League to the founding congress of the ILPL in Geneva. It became the most notorious peace congress of the nineteenth century. The Peace Society, too, wanted to organize a European congress, if possible to coincide with the Paris Great Exhibition in . A deputation visited France to make arrangements. It comprised Richard; Joseph Cooper, a Quaker; L. A. Chamerovzow of the Aborigines Protection Society; and Henry Pease, the first member of that prominent Quaker family to belong to the Peace Society’s executive (and its president from  to ). Despite gaining a personal audience with the Emperor Napoleon, it could not get authorization for a congress. Richard, meanwhile, distanced himself from Lemmonier’s gathering in Geneva. He wrote that the ILPL’s doctrine—‘without liberty, peace is not possible’— was the reverse of that of the Peace Society, and expressed his wish that the organizers of the Geneva Congress had ‘adopted a broader platform, admitting the co-operation of men of all political views’. (According to the official report, British attenders were few because the words ‘free democracy’ had appeared in the programme; J. S. Mill was cited as an adherent, but did not attend.) The Peace Society journal offered ‘one word of counsel’ when it was confirmed that Garibaldi had accepted the presidency of the congress: ‘the cause of peace cannot be advanced by weapons of war, however plausible may be the reasons assigned to having recourse to them.’ The Reform League delegates, Cremer and Odger, 39 HP, July , ; Apr. , ; MB,  Aug. ; HP, Nov. , ; MB,  Aug. ; HP, Jan. , ; June , .

‒



were asked by the Peace Society’s executive to give Lemonnier a parcel containing reports of the mid-century peace gatherings. Richard was later relieved to have withdrawn the Society from the congress, which attracted, he said, ‘all the wild, hair-brained spirits who seek shelter under the vague design of democracy . . . each with a grievance of his own to proclaim’, and had ‘repelled many men of grave and earnest character’.40 ‘Garibaldi at Geneva’, the Times correspondent reported, ‘might be made the subject of a good comedy.’ In his opening speech, the president of the peace congress called for the overthrow of the Papacy, if necessary by violence. Infuriated Catholics threatened to invade the hall. Garibaldi was undeterred. ‘We came here to prevent war,’ he said on the second day, ‘but there is something more terrible than war. There is a monster called the Papacy.’ Two thousand angry local citizens threatened to ‘throw the foreigners into the Rhone’ and covered the town with posters attacking Garibaldi. On the third day, a number of locals, armed with pikes, broke into the hall. The congress continued, but its proceedings were far from harmonious. According to The Times, ‘the assembly was like an orchestra in which every man was tuning his own instrument, attending to it alone, and making himself as deaf as possible to the jarring din around.’ Various schemes were proposed—a confederation of German republics; the overthrow of Louis Napoleon; the destruction of the Junkers, Bourbons, and Habsburgs; the establishment of an independent Poland to act as a buffer state between Europe and the Tsar. Garibaldi’s aide proclaimed the Mazzinian crusading ideology: ‘we have only to go through one more war, one more revolution, a final war, a decisive revolution, the war of the nations against their oppressors, after which we shall arrive at that universal peace which is the sole object of our efforts.’ The Reform League’s address to the congress was due to be read on the first day, but there was nobody available to translate it into French; the following day, Garibaldi, to whom it was submitted, mistakenly left it at his hotel. In his speech, Odger referred to the recent enfranchisement of artisans in Britain as a triumph of moral force ‘ridiculing battalions and cannons’. Cremer mentioned the Peace Society in his contribution, but only to remark that ‘its efforts had remained without any practical result until the moment when the Reform League had succeeded in putting the political power into the hands of the people.’41 40 Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, ; HP, May , ; June , ; Dec. , ; July , ; Sept. , –; Oct. , –; Nov. , –. 41 Times,  Sept. , ; Bee-Hive,  Sept. , ; Times,  Sept. , ; HP, Nov. , ; Times,  Sept. , ;  Sept. , ; Van der Linden, International Peace Movement, –.



Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

Cremer and Odger pledged to organize a branch of the ILPL in Britain. In December , a private meeting under the auspices of the Reform League was held to coincide with the visit of the German ILPL activist Amand Goegg. Among those present were Beales; his friend and long-term colleague in the Reform League, Colonel Dickson; Joseph Guedella, a young, rich merchant who supported workers’ causes; Karl Blind, a German émigré and friend of Mazzini; Charles Cassal, a French émigré and professor at University College London; and Victor Le Lubez, another French émigré, who was a member of the IWMA general council and who had attended the Geneva Congress. Beales gave a qualified defence of the Geneva gathering; Le Lubez insisted that it had been reported ‘most unfairly’ in the English press. A motion was introduced by the printer George Davis, and seconded by John Hales, an elastic-web weaver: ‘Surely the hour has arrived’, it stated, ‘when the peoples of Europe should be . . . enlightened enough to unite in determined protest against being made the brute instruments of horrible mutual slaughter.’ Goegg denied that the ILPL was antagonistic to existing peace societies. Beales was nominated president of the British branch, Guedella the honorary secretary; Cremer and Odger were council members. Its adherents included Samuel Morley, P. A. Taylor, the Chartist leader Ernest Jones, the historian Goldwin Smith, and Algernon Swinburne.42 Although Lemonnier linked peace to a broadly based programme of political and social reform, the British branch of the ILPL adopted a moderate approach, which embraced arbitration and avoided talk of republicanism and secularism. Despite the Geneva Congress, it was therefore tentatively welcomed by Richard, and seemed a further sign that arbitration and retrenchment could become the touchstones of a reinvigorated British peace movement. On the proposal of Odger, an ILPL committee was appointed to campaign for an arbitrated settlement of the Alabama dispute with the United States. This centred on demands made by the US for compensation for the damage inflicted on the Union Atlantic fleet during the Civil War by a British sloop, equipped—despite Britain’s neutrality—in London and Liverpool, and used by the Southern states. In March an ILPL deputation was sent to the American ambassador with an address, described as ‘excellent’ by the Herald of Peace. The special ILPL Alabama committee nominated a number of lecturers, among them Richard, Newman Hall, and the Cobdenite economist James Thorold Rogers. But despite the appointment of an agent—W. C. Worley, 42 Van der Linden, International Peace Movement, ; Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe – (New York, ), , .

‒



a printer and IWMA council member—and plans to attract , subscribers, the English ILPL soon petered out. The treasurer, W. F. C. Stepney, and George Howell continued to be listed in the League’s literature as corresponding members, but this meant little in practice.43 ’   In July , Richard approached Joseph Guedella in the hope of initiating joint action between the Peace Society and the Reform League in the run-up to the forthcoming general election. (Following the  Reform Act, the League had turned itself into an organization designed to secure the return of working-class candidates.) Richard was delighted to discover that the artisans were ‘not only inclined, but anxious to aid the Society in promoting peace views among the working men of this country’. Most artisan radicals subscribed, like Richard, to a Gladstonian programme of low taxes, retrenchment, and free trade. A meeting of the Society and League took place on  August. Those present from the Society’s executive included the international lawyer and political economist Leone Levi; George Dornbusch, a merchant; and Quakers such as Robert Alsop and William Tallack, secretary of the Howard Association. The Reform League was represented by Beales, Dickson, Guedella, Odger, Cremer, Mottershead, Stepney, John Weston, a hand-rail maker, and Charles Wade. Richard was already acquainted with ‘several’ of the workers present and later declared himself ‘deeply gratified to find how cordially their sympathies were in favour of peace’. The Peace Society furnished placards, bills, and tracts to be distributed by artisans. Working with the Reform League, with its  branches nationwide, meant that the Society had a much bigger impact on the election. For their part, artisan Parliamentary candidates— including Cremer and Odger—were grateful for any backing. Beales prepared a peace address to the newly enfranchised artisans, ‘A Word to the New Electors, especially Working Men’, which was another landmark expression of the labourist critique of war: ‘Is it not time to protest ourselves, and to call loudly and urgently upon . . . the sons of labour and industry in every other European country, to protest against the continuance of a system, the very mention of which ought to inspire the deepest horror?’44 43 HP, Jan. , ; Bishopsgate Institute, ‘International League of Peace and Liberty: English Branch’; HP, Apr. , ; Bee-Hive,  Feb. , ; Van der Linden, International Peace Movement, –. 44 MB,  July ;  Aug. ;  Oct. ; HP, Nov. , –.



Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

When the result of the election was announced, the Peace Society was optimistic that a Government led by Gladstone and dedicated to retrenchment and a moral foreign policy would signal a breakthrough for the peace movement. Neither Cremer nor Odger were successful in their quest for a Parliamentary seat, but a number of reliable Cobdenite Radicals were elected—including Lawson, Morley, John Bright in Birmingham, his brother Jacob Bright in Manchester, and T. B. Potter in Rochdale. In addition, Henry Richard’s victory in Merthyr Tydfil meant that for the first time the secretary of the Society held a seat at Westminster. ‘Never before’, the Herald of Peace said hopefully, had the public been ‘so widely and favourably interested’ in peace policies.45 An important reason for this growing interest was concern about the arms build-up in Europe following Bismarck’s military success over Austria. Even The Times made an issue of ‘crushing armaments’ and described Europe as ‘one vast magazine which an incendiary may fire’. The word ‘militaryism’ or ‘militarism’ entered English at this time to describe the maintenance even in peacetime of a large conscript army by Prussia and, subsequently, by France and Russia.46 The Herald of Peace noted in  that there was ‘a deeply-rooted and widely-spread discontent prevailing in all countries against the present system of “militarism”, to use an expressive French phrase.’ A check on armaments spending became a priority for the peace movement: the reductions in the size of the navy introduced by Gladstone’s first Government served further to identify the Liberal leader with peace policies. Richard, keen to exploit his new parliamentary status, embarked on a tour of the principal capitals of Europe—Paris, Brussels, The Hague, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Florence—in an attempt to persuade other legislatures to limit arms spending. Within two months of his return, motions in favour of disarmament had been introduced in eight European Parliaments. At a special committee meeting to report on Richard’s trip, Edmund Sturge, in the chair, was ‘astonished at its success’.47 As a result of the improved conditions for the peace movement from the late s, the Society began to expand more quickly within northern industrial areas. It was supported by a new generation of Dissenting manufacturers and became part of a network of Nonconformist-led ‘moral’ HP, Nov. , –; Dec. , –. HP, Aug. , ; Martin Ceadel, ‘Sir William Randal Cremer’, in Karl Holl and Anne C. Kjelling (eds.), The Nobel Prize and the Laureates (Frankfurt, ), . 47 HP, Feb. , ; John F. Beeler, British Naval Policy in the Gladstone–Disraeli Era – (Stanford, Calif., ), –; MB,  Aug. ; HP, Nov. , ; MB,  Nov. . 45 46

‒



pressure groups which shared financial backers and Parliamentary activists (the Liberation Society, for example, called for disestablishment; the United Kingdom Alliance for temperance). These organizations were ostensibly non-party-political but in practice embraced Gladstonian Liberalism. Despite its enlarged constituency, the Peace Society continued to be heavily influenced by Quakers—in , two out of the five vice-presidents and over a third of the executive were Friends. Nonetheless, the executive saw an opportunity for improving the Society’s financial position and decided in the summer of  to appoint a full-time financial agent, whose job it would be to press the needs of the Society on the ‘friends of peace around the country’ in a ‘direct and systematic matter’. ‘So much of the Society’s efficiency’, Richard wrote, depended on an adequate collection of funds.48 The agent appointed was Lewis Appleton, a Birmingham-based Quaker in his late twenties, about whom we will hear much more. The Alabama dispute was an important focus for the reinvigorated peace movement. In the spring of  the Peace Society took part in a deputation to Lord Stanley to urge a speedy settlement. The following year, at the Society’s annual meeting, Newman Hall said that although he could not endorse the abstract principle of the Society that war under any circumstances is unjustifiable, yet so far as actual war is concerned, or any wars that are likely to occur, practically he should be found as good a peace man as any of them . . . he felt that this was a most important crisis . . . War between England and America was something so dreadful that the thought of it should be enough to make good men mourn and send godly men to prayer.

Cremer attended this meeting and also referred to the Alabama controversy, in particular the support of working men for the North in the American Civil War. The practicability of arbitration, he asserted, was shown by the willingness of British workers to submit industrial disputes to arbitrators.49 Cremer was happy to form an alliance with the middle-class, Cobdenite peace movement. His involvement in the Reform League facilitated this: the League acclimatized artisan radicals to mainstream Liberal politics and—although it purported to be independent—received subsidies from wealthy Radical manufacturers such as Morley, Lawson, and Taylor. But Cremer’s League activities also made him an even more controversial 48 Sager, ‘Victorian Pacifism’, ; Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians (Oxford, ), –; Elizabeth Isichei, Victorian Quakers (Oxford, ), , ; HP, June , . 49 HP, April , –; June , –.



Peace Society, IWMA, Reform League

figure among his fellow artisans. After the  election, he was accused of receiving bribes to secure the withdrawal of working-class candidates who stood in the way of middle-class Liberals; rumours also circulated that he was embezzling some of the funds. He was accused of being a ‘professional agitator’ who could be ‘kept quiet’ with money. No one could doubt the strength of Cremer’s convictions, but he does seem to have done rather well out of the League: his purchase in  of a lease on a house in St Pancras ‘made him, for a man of small wants, virtually independent’. He could now devote even more time to internationalism, and soon confirmed his status as the chief spokesman of the new, organized, working-class peace movement.50 50 F. M. Leventhal, Respectable Radical: George Howell and the Victorian Working Class (London, ), –; Royden Harrison, Before the Socialists (London, ), , , ; Moberg, ‘George Odger’, fos. –; Evans, Sir Randal Cremer, , .



–: The Franco-Prussian War, the WPA, and Arbitration On  July  France declared war on Prussia. Rumours circulated that Napoleon III intended to invade Belgium, and the British peace movement found itself having to counter a ‘strong, warlike feeling’ against the traditional enemy. The Peace Society responded to the crisis in a characteristically cautious manner. Its committee decided on  July that the holding of a large public meeting to protest against the war would be ‘attended with much danger’. The risk was that ‘injudicious speakers’ would take over the meeting and call for war against France. It was agreed instead to circulate an address which emphasized the fragility of ‘armed peace’. This was inserted in more than a hundred newspapers.1 Artisan radicals, on the other hand, were eager to agitate for peace. On  July a public meeting of working men was held at the Arundel Hall, off the Strand, to oppose the idea of British intervention against France. The initiative seems to have been taken by Cremer, who sent a circular to his contacts from the Reform League and its two off-shoots— the Labour Representation League (a Liberal Party-sponsored organization) and the Land and Labour League (a more radical body which advocated republicanism and land nationalization, and had links with the British section of the International). This meeting appointed a ‘peace committee’ consisting of about fifty working men; Cremer was its secretary, Lucraft the treasurer, and John Galbraith, a compositor, the chairman. On  July, the committee met at Lincoln’s Inn. Benjamin Britten, a shoemaker and active Liberal, presided; the speakers included Odger, Lucraft, and Mottershead. Cremer reported that many clubs and organizations had pledged their support. It was resolved to establish formally a Workmen’s Peace Committee; Edmond Beales accepted the post of chairman.2 1 2

HP, July ; Aug. , , ; MB,  July . Times,  July , ; Bee-Hive,  Aug. , ; HP, Aug. , .



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

On  August the Committee held a public meeting at the Arundel Hall to announce its existence and to approve an address which was designed to be published as a leaflet. Like the earlier statements of the IWMA and the Reform League, the address combined a radical critique of war with a labourist internationalism: The interest of the working classes throughout the civilized world is one and the same. We have nothing to do with dynastic jealousies or rivalries, court intrigues, secret treaties, diplomatic squabbles, and balances of power . . . War, that great curse and scourge of mankind, is especially our deadliest foe, for we are ever its most numerous victims, whether as regards the interruption of employment from national distress, or our enrolment in military service.

An important element in the Committee’s position was a traditional radical—Painite—opposition to standing armies, which could be used for internal oppression as well as war: A standing army is with us a constant violation of our constitution and laws; and our American brethren have well shown us what can be done, when necessity compels, without such an unlawful force. They have shown us how self-defence and a righteous cause can improvise a nation of warriors, capable of feats of brilliant strategy and heroic daring, not to be surpassed by the most trained and veteran legions.

This message distanced the Committee from the ‘extreme’ peace position of opposition to defensive wars. Indeed, the address went on to say that the British people were ‘abundantly able to repel invasion, should any power be wicked or foolish enough to attempt it’. No doubt because of this, The Times recognized the WPC as ‘opposed to all wars save that of immediate self-defence’. But the Committee also claimed that arbitration was appropriate to settle all disputes, thus rendering even defensive war unnecessary: ‘What we claim and demand, what we would implore the peoples of Europe to do, without regard to courts, cabinets, or dynasties, is to insist upon arbitration as a substitute for war.’ Howard Evans, a key member of the Committee, attempted to win over those Radical newspapers which had criticized London’s working men for being ‘too busy with foreign politics’: merely from an English point of view this war is pregnant with consequences so disastrous to the working classes that the truck system sinks into utter insignificance when placed in comparison. A European war means to us privation, dear bread, loss of work—a war in which England shall be engaged means still greater evils. Therefore it is our duty to speak out.

‒



‘Englishmen’, he asserted, ‘have much to learn in regard to the irrationality and wickedness of war.’3 At a meeting of the Peace Society executive on  August, Richard reported that ‘a very good address of a pacific nature’ had been ‘prepared by Mr Beales and the members of the late Reform League’. It was decided to help finance its printing and distribution—over , copies were eventually sent out. Cremer later made clear his Committee’s indebtedness to the Society, ‘without whose aid’, he said ‘we could never have launched our peaceful bark’. By October the funds given to the WPC by the Society amounted to ‘upwards of £’, though money was also obtained from other sources. The Society also gave at least £ to help in the foreign distribution of an address printed by the IWMA which urged workers to stay out of a war between two military dynasties, and to unite to end all wars.4 In fact, the risk of British involvement in the Franco-Prussian War was minor: Gladstone had immediately declared neutrality. He knew, however, that this position would become untenable if Belgium was overrun. British Governments had long been convinced that an invasion of Britain or a blockade of the Channel were credible threats if a hostile power controlled key ports in the Low Countries and Northern France. Yet a large section of the population preferred to assume that Britain— with its island status and historically strong navy—could always choose isolationism if a war was being fought on the Continent. Knowing this, British Governments (Liberal ones in particular) were unwilling publicly to make the case for Britain involving itself in Continental politics, even at the risk of war, in order to maintain a balance of power and prevent the key northern ports falling into dangerous hands. Liberal Governments were, in other words, reluctant to advertise the possibility of a ‘forward defence’ of Britain—for going to war on the Continent to help an ally against aggression and to hold the line in Europe against a potentially hegemonic power.5 3 Times,  Aug. , ; Bishopsgate Institute, ‘Workmen’s Peace Committee to the Working Men of Great Britain and Ireland’; Times,  Jan. , ; Bee-Hive,  Aug. , ;  Aug. , . 4 MB,  Aug. ; HP, Sept. , ; June , ; Aug. , –; MB,  Oct. ; LB, Joseph Cooper (assistant to Henry Richard) to George Eccarius, IWMA,  Aug. , copy; E. W. Sager, ‘The Working-Class Peace Movement in Victorian England’, Histoire sociale—Social History,  (), . 5 Martin Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations – (Oxford, ), ; Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford, ), .



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

Gladstone was concerned enough at the close of July to propose to France and Prussia a treaty guaranteeing Belgium’s neutrality. The basis of this strategy was defensive—the need to prevent a potentially hostile power controlling the northern coast of Europe. But when justifying the treaty in the House of Commons, Gladstone did not emphasize national interest or assert the need for a forward defence of the homeland. Instead, he appealed to the moralism of progressives by raising the possibility of a British crusade to counter an invasion of Belgium: Britain would stand by the Belgians ‘on no selfish grounds’ but to protect ‘public right and public law in Europe’. Belgium should be safeguarded, he said, because it was an ‘example of good and stable government’. This tactic was effective, as it was to be in . P. A. Taylor declared himself a ‘Radical and an Economist’, but nevertheless supported the Prime Minister, partly on the pacific-ist grounds of forward defence—‘As to speaking of the defence of his country, where were you to draw the line of defence?’—but also hinting at the justice of a crusade to defend Belgium: Britain had ‘done well to stand by a smaller nation whose existence had been threatened’. ‘If people abroad were fighting for independence and freedom, they were fighting our battle too. If his Honourable Friends spoke for the “peace at any price” party, he would go beyond them, and say he was for peace at any price, even at the price of war.’6 Taylor was ridiculed by his fellow Radical, Peter Rylands, MP for Warrington, who asked if protection for Belgium also implied support for Schleswig-Holstein and the archduchies defeated by Italy. Jacob Bright, who also opposed the idea of ‘quixotic expeditions’, introduced a Commons motion against the treaty and rehearsed his opposition at peace-movement meetings. The question of Belgium, he said at a gathering in Finsbury Chapel, was one which ‘raised the question of intervention and non-intervention as a principle and a point of policy in this country’. If the principle of defending other countries against all comers were laid down, the ‘working men of this country had then better leave this country. He would not say he was in favour of “peace at any price”, but he was in favour of something very much like it: he was in favour of the country minding its own affairs, and not undertaking to go to war except in defence of its own vital interests.’7 This was pacific-ism speaking out against the dangers of crusading—once again ‘idealism’ had split into competing ideologies and strategies. At least in the short term, 6 Bee-Hive,  Aug. , ; Annual Register (London, ), ; H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone – (Oxford, ), –; Parl. Debates, rd ser. , – ( Aug. ). 7 A. J. P. Taylor, The Troublemakers (London, ), ; HP, June , .

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however, the new treaty didn’t matter: the war plans of Prussia, whose troops were advancing rapidly, did not involve Belgium. Prussia’s victory at Sedan, the fall of Emperor Napoleon III, and the declaration of the French Republic on  September  produced a rapid increase in sympathy for France among British progressives, in particular those in the republican movement and among the francophile Positivists and their artisan friends. E. S. Beesly, for instance, had ties to a number of artisan radicals: he had presided over the first meeting of the International and was close to Odger and Robert Applegarth, the secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. The Positivists’ approach to international relations was ‘idealist’ but they were critical of ‘peace at any price’ and of non-interventionist Cobdenism, preferring a foreign policy designed to encourage a European federation of democratic republics. Their pamphlet Positivist Considerations on the War argued for the justice of two types of war: those fought in selfdefence; and those wherein ‘a nation, by virtue of the duty attendant upon the possession of strength, interferes in favour of another nation unjustly attacked or over harshly treated’.8 With the declaration of the Republic, British Positivists and republicans began to wonder what could be done to protect the new French freedoms. At the next meeting of the WPC, held in the Arundel Hall on  September, Odger declared that the current of public feeling was flowing towards the French. Beales warned that the meeting should not take sides; there were, he said, German republicans as well as French. The main purpose of the meeting was to plan the launch—following a favourable response to the WPC’s circulated address—of a ‘Working Men’s National Peace Association, to advocate arbitration in place of war’, at a large gathering in St James’s Hall. The Peace Society was initially reluctant to sponsor this launch when ‘men’s minds’ were ‘strained to the utmost’, but after Beales had promised Richard that there would be no resolutions compromising either the Government or the principles of the Society, its committee agreed to provide financial help.9 The St James’s Hall meeting was arranged for the evening of  September. In the late afternoon of the same day, a pro-French meeting was held in Hyde Park, organized by Odger, Weston, Beesly, and Le 8 Richard Congreve, Positivist Considerations on the War (London, ), . See also Richard Congreve (ed.), Our Foreign Policy (London, ). 9 Bee-Hive,  Sept. , ; Times,  Sept. , ;  Sept. , ; LB, William Tallack to Edmond Beales,  Aug. , copy. The cost of the St James’s Hall meeting was about £, MB,  Oct. .

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Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

Lubez. Some ‘hundreds of working men’ were present. Odger read an ‘Address of the Workmen of England to the People of France’ congratulating the French people on the fall of the Empire. J. J. Merriman, a barrister who had been involved in the International, called for the British Government to recognize the Republic, to insist on an armistice and to propose a settlement of the war by impartial arbitration.10 A number of those present went on to the peace meeting in the evening; three thousand workmen crowded into the hall. Cremer, Mottershead, Galbraith, Stainsby, Britten, Odger, and Applegarth, among others, sat on the platform. With the exception of Beales, the chairman, and Beesly, all the speakers were working men. It soon became clear that the meeting was in danger of being taken over by enthusiasts for the new Republic. When mention was made of the removal of Napoleon there was, according to The Times, ‘immense excitement, the audience rising from their seats, waving their hats and umbrellas, and giving “Three Cheers for the Republic” ’. Beales had to remind the audience that the meeting had been called to protest ‘against war altogether (prolonged cheers) as the shame of Christendom and the direst curse and scourge of the human race’. Mottershead hailed the restoration of the French Republic—‘a republic always meant peace’—but underlined that ‘the working men of Germany were now as much opposed to a prolongation of the war as the French workmen.’11 Odger took a different line, discussing ‘the possibilities of interference from foreign governments if the Prussians should refuse to treat with the Republic’. Beesly and Applegarth moved that Britain ‘use all its efforts to prevent any territorial spoliation of France’. After a show of hands, Beales said ‘he could not state whether the numbers for or against the rider predominated, and for the sake of peace he would accept it.’ The phrase ‘all its efforts’ was vague, but implied the possibility of more than diplomatic intervention on the part of Britain (the Peace Society significantly decided not to mention this discussion in its report of the meeting). Cremer countered that ‘under no circumstances ought this country to allow itself to be dragged into a European war.’ His resolution was carried unanimously. Most important, the meeting also recognized the new Workmen’s Peace Association, of which Cremer was to become the fulltime secretary. In the first annual report of the WPA, this was taken as the moment of its foundation. Bee-Hive,  Sept. , ; Times,  Sept. , . HP, Oct. , ; Jan. , ; Times ,  Sept. , ; Bee-Hive,  Sept., ;  Sept. , ; WPA, Annual Report. 10 11

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

The day after this meeting, the International published a pro-France address, calling for recognition of the Republic and protesting against any dismemberment of France. Two days later the Labour Representation League, which had taken up an aggressively pro-French position, organized a meeting in the Arundel Hall of ‘working men friendly to the cause of liberty and peace’. Applegarth, Howell, and George Potter, the carpenter and journalist, were among the main speakers. Howell, who apparently considered going to France to fight for the Republic and who, in his diary, had described the peace meeting at St James’s Hall as ‘namby pamby stuff ’, introduced a resolution congratulating the French people on re-establishing a republic and called on the British Government to recognize it. A ‘long and somewhat turbulent discussion arose’, during which Galbraith of the WPA proposed an amendment to the effect that ‘under no circumstances could the meeting sanction the armed intervention of our Government in favour of either belligerent.’ When his amendment seemed likely to be carried, the International’s general council, which was meeting nearby, was alerted by telegraph and its members rushed to Arundel Hall to vote against Galbraith. Marx wrote to Engels that, prior to their arrival, ‘the Peace Society fellows, who had considerably “bought up” among the workers (e.g. Cremer) had assured themselves a majority, be it a small one.’ The amendment was defeated by seven votes.12 What Odger called a ‘monster’ meeting took place in Trafalgar Square on  September, with ten to twenty thousand people in attendance, in order to demand the recognition of the Republic by the British Government. On the same day, the republican leader Charles Bradlaugh organized a meeting in the Hall of Science, St Luke’s, to appoint a committee to agitate for peace negotiations. War, he said, caused crushing taxation and the stagnation of trade. Henry Richard attended the meeting at his invitation and, along with others including P. A. Taylor and Beesly, joined the negotiations committee, although he expressed doubts as to whether co-operation with Beesly would be fruitful: ‘I understand he is distinctly in favour of an armed intervention to promote peace, but we have no faith in making peace by war.’13 12 Sager, ‘Working-Class Peace Movement’, ; Bishopsgate Institute, George Howell MSS, diary; Bee-Hive,  Sept. , ; F. M. Leventhal, Respectable Radical: George Howell and the Victorian Working Class (London, ), , –; First International –: Minutes, ,  (n. ); Times,  Sept. , . 13 Bee-Hive,  Sept. , ;  Sept., ; National Reformer (hereafter NR),  Sept., –.



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

The demand for intervention finally became explicit. On  October, a general conference, held at the Bell Inn, Old Bailey, was convened by the committees of the Land and Labour League and the International Democratic Association (founded in  to promote a European federation of republics) to consider ‘the present situation of France under the “ultra-aggressive” policy of Prussia’. This meeting, presided over by Merriman, inaugurated an Anglo-French Intervention Committee, which urged an alliance with France if Germany continued its offensive. The Committee’s executive included Beesly, Merriman, Le Lubez, Weston, and Congreve. Two months later, the crusaders—among them Beesly, Harrison, Congreve, Odger, Howell, Applegarth, Potter, and William Allan, secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers— circulated a memorial which demanded the use of British troops if Prussia did not make ‘peace on reasonable terms not involving the seizure of French territory’. It claimed to have attracted forty thousand signatures in two days, but Gladstone refused to receive a deputation which was to present it.14 Odger’s shift from pacific-ism to crusading—described by The Times as an ‘extraordinary contradiction’—was greeted with disdain by Cremer, who dismissed the interventionist group as ‘Comtists who did not represent the interests of English working men’. He was later to reflect that ‘so serious were the differences which arose’ at this time ‘between many who had long co-operated together on most public questions . . . many old friendships were rudely shaken, others completely severed.’ Ideological disagreements were intensified by Cremer’s pugnacity, in particular the fact that he was engaged in various personal feuds with other artisan leaders—he was, for example, in the process of trying to remove Applegarth from his office as leader of the carpenters’ union. Potter and Allan were also long-established enemies of Cremer. Howell, too, described the WPA secretary in  as ‘that cantankerous little dog . . . doing all the mischief in his power as usual’. According to Beesly, Cremer was ‘one of the dirtiest scoundrels that the working class has turned up lately’.15 The WPA now faced a direct ‘idealist’ challenge to its attempt to convince London workers of the benefits of peace. Each of the two factions 14 Times,  Oct. , ; W. H. Van der Linden, The International Peace Movement – (Amsterdam, ), ; Bee-Hive,  Jan. , ; NR,  Jan. , –; HP, Feb. , . 15 Times,  Jan. , ; First International –: Minutes, –; Arb., Jan. , ; Howell MSS, Autobiography, vol. c, d; Royden Harrison, Before the Socialists: Studies in Labour and Politics 86–88 (London, ), , .

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attended the meetings of the other in order to put their case. At a procrusade meeting at the Hall of Science on  January, for example, Lucraft moved an amendment, seconded by Galbraith, which elicited from Bradlaugh the statement that ‘he had never advocated a declaration of war against Germany.’ The Peace Society recognized that Cremer’s association was performing a valuable service, and he was invited to attend a meeting of the Society’s executive to discuss how much money was needed to run the WPA. After much deliberation, the committee agreed on a figure ‘not exceeding £ for a period of a year, in the form of grants from time to time as required’. It was also decided that ‘without wishing in any way to fetter their entire freedom of action’, the WPA’s officers should furnish the Society with reports of how the money was spent. Cremer suffered ridicule at the hands of interventionist artisans for receiving this financial help from ‘the men of peace at any price’.16 The Peace Society had by this time taken a more public stance on the war. Its paid lecturers addressed gatherings ‘in the large towns of the kingdom’; speakers were also selected from Liberal associations and artisan radical clubs (a total of  meetings sponsored by the Society were held between June  and June ). On  January  a crowded public meeting at Lambeth Baths was addressed by Henry Richard, Newman Hall, and the Revd G. M. Murphy, another prominent Congregationalist sympathetic to workers’ causes who later became a member of the Peace Society executive. Magee Pratt, a saddle and harness maker from the WPA, railed against the ‘inconsistency of the republican and democratic party, who were clamouring for war. They first of all denounced the English Government as aristocratic, and then called on it to go to war in support of a French Republic.’ A resolution in favour of sending British troops to France was defeated by a large majority.17 In February  a ‘great meeting’ was held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, presided over by Hugh Mason, Radical MP and president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. Mason was ‘well known as a profound believer in the political gospel of Richard Cobden’; he later told how his own trading business had lost heavily as a result of the war. Henry Richard, along with several other speakers, denied that non-intervention was ‘a selfish doctrine’—‘no one proposed that we should withdraw from 16 NR,  Jan. , , ; Bee-Hive,  Jan. , ;  Jan. , ; MB,  Dec. ; NR,  Jan. , . For more details of the pro- and anti-intervention campaigns, see M. C. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics – (Cambridge, ), –. 17 HP, Apr. , ; June , ; Van der Linden, International Peace Movement, ; Times,  Jan. , ; HP, Feb. , .



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

intercourse with, or interest in, other nations. On the contrary, we are willing to help them in every way, by commerce, by industry, by social intercourse.’18  ’   The WPA council began to meet monthly at an office in Buckingham Street, which it shared with other Radical organizations. The council members were all artisans: Cremer, Lucraft, Galbraith, Mottershead, Pratt, Galbraith, M. Sinclair, Britten, Evans, John Osborne, a plasterer, William Osborne, J. Babbs, a print colourer, and the compositor P. Dean. Although the prominent craft-union leaders stayed away (dislike of Cremer was one likely cause), within a few years, two other influential workers’ spokesmen—F. W. Soutter, a journalist, and Daniel Guile, the ironfounders’ leader—had also joined the executive. The veteran Chartist William Lovett, who had campaigned as recently as  for a mechanism of international arbitration, became a member of the Association but pronounced himself too old to join the council.19 By mid-January, the Association had held twenty-five meetings around the country and had issued what the Peace Society described as an ‘excellent address’ opposing a British war against Russia (the Tsar had taken advantage of the Franco-Prussian conflict to return Russian warships to the Black Sea). It had also published a leaflet of fifteen ‘Questions for the Working Men of Great Britain to ask themselves before they Vote at Public Meetings in favour of a War Policy to Assist France’. Peace negotiations between France and Prussia in February allowed the WPA to concentrate on establishing a nationwide network of support; a deputation toured the provinces holding further meetings and establishing local committees. Any workman could join who supported the settlement of international disputes by arbitration and recognized the need for ‘a large, mutual and simultaneous reduction of all armed forces, with a view to their entire abolition’. It was a favourable time to appeal to artisans—their political confidence was still high following the Reform Act, and most were enthusiastic about the Gladstonian programme of peace and retrenchment. The WPA soon claimed to have ‘some thousands of members’, but it had no formal system of membership and published only the number of its ‘honorary agents’ in different towns around the Arb., May , ; HP, Feb. , –; HP, Dec. , ; Mar. , . HP, Jan. , ; Joel Wiener, William Lovett (Manchester, ), ; Bee-Hive,  Oct. , ; William Lovett, Life and Struggles (London, ), . 18 19

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country. These numbered  within a year,  by , and ‘upward of ’ by the end of the decade.20 The Association also claimed to be connected to nearly  radical and working-men’s clubs. The Marylebone Electoral Reform Association, for example, declared on affiliating that international arbitration had been one of its objects since its formation in . J. Lowe, the president of Hackney Working Men’s Club—the largest such club in London, with  members—was also a member of the WPA council. The Association rapidly gained support around the country ‘within the trade councils and larger unions’, especially ‘outside the large factories’ in the craft and agricultural unions. A meeting in London in , for instance, was attended by J. Corbett, secretary of the Oldham Trades Council, who said that he had come ‘to show that the men of the North thought our war expenses sufficiently high’; his resolution was seconded by William Owen of the Staffordshire Pottery Trades Committee.21 The Association also organized each year a large meeting for delegates attending the Trades Union Congress. This practice continued even after  when the everaggressive Cremer was expelled from the Congress hall—his departure accompanied by hisses—after he had accused Thomas Burt and Alexander MacDonald, the miners’ leaders and first working-class MPs, of being pawns of the Conservative Party.22 Henry Richard admitted that before the formation of the WPA the Peace Society had no access to ‘large and widely ramified trade organizations, nor any means of moving them in their collective capacity’; Cremer’s impact on the peace cause had been ‘immense’. As a result, the Society continued its subsidy, which gave the WPA a reasonably secure financial footing. In October , a deputation from the Association waited on Richard to ask for further support and was promised £ for the coming year. Richard wrote to Cremer: ‘I dare say that if the work goes on prosperously and our funds come in pretty freely the committee would not stop there.’ The Society again granted £ in  and similar sums in the following years, but Richard later insisted that he had always given the WPA ‘entire liberty of action’ and 20 MB,  Jan. ; WPA, Annual Report; Times,  Jan. , ; Bee-Hive,  Jan. , ; HP, Jan. , ; E. F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone (Cambridge, ), ; Arb., May , –; Feb. , ; May , ; HP, Feb. , . 21 Arb., Feb. , ; Nov. , ; Sager, ‘Working-Class Peace Movement’, –; BeeHive,  Mar. , ; Times,  Mar. , . 22 Arb., Feb. ; Leventhal, Respectable Radical, ; W. H. G. Armytage, A. J. Mundella – (London, ), .

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Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

had ‘abstained from any appearance of patronizing and controlling them altogether’.23 Cremer was happy to accept both the Peace Society subsidy and donations from wealthy Liberals, but he was fiercely protective of his achievement in setting up the WPA and of its artisan composition. It was, as the Peace Society was keen to affirm, ‘a genuine and bona fide working-class organization, originated, constituted and directed entirely by working men’. Beales, the Association’s president, was, of course, middle-class, but he was a special case—an old ally who was known to have been dismissed from his post of Revising Barrister because of his advocacy of workers’ rights. When Hodgson Pratt, a retired administrator in the Indian civil service with a private income, offered his services in  as the WPA’s international agent, the council could not decide whether it wanted another bourgeois influence. Pratt was born into a progressive Unitarian family (his father, Samuel Peace Pratt, was a friend of the social reformer Robert Owen) and had come under the influence of the Christian socialism of Kingsley and Maurice. He was best known for his involvement in the Workmen’s Club and Institute Union, a body resented by some artisans because of its middle-class leadership. But he ‘had travelled much upon the Continent and could correspond in several languages’ and his interest in the peace cause was well-established: he had attended the ILPL congress at Lausanne in  and written a lengthy report on it for the Bee-Hive. Lucraft, who was against recruiting Pratt, thought that working men could ‘manage their own affairs’. William Osborne, however, was ‘opposed to attacks that were constantly being made by some working men on gentlemen who frequently came forward with their influence, money and social position to do them good’.24 Pratt’s offer was eventually accepted. Although the WPA loudly proclaimed its independence, it did little to antagonize its Peace Society sponsors. Thanks to arbitration (a means, theoretically at least, of combining peace and justice), the Association could avoid the question of support for defensive wars. ‘We are not fantastic dreamers,’ announced the Association, ‘we are not utopian theorists . . . Do not be led away by the parrot cry that we are for peace at any price . . . we do not propose peace to the sacrifice of honour and justice. 23 HP, July , ; LB, Richard to Cremer,  Oct. , copy; MB,  Oct. ;  Nov. ;  Dec. ;  Jan. . 24 HP, June , ; BL Add. MS  f. b, Pratt to Robert Owen,  Jan. ; J. J. Dent, Hodgson Pratt: Reformer (Manchester, ); Times,  Jan. , ; Bee-Hive,  Oct. , .

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

We, too, love honour and justice.’ When the Workmen’s Club Journal qualified its support for the WPA on the grounds that it ignored ‘the necessity of our having some defence, some means of holding our own’, Cremer replied in the Association’s ‘little journal’—significantly titled the Arbitrator—that the journalist had ‘not comprehended what our policy really is’: ‘Our programme is arbitration as a substitute for war and mutual and simultaneous reduction of all armed forces with a view to their entire abolition. As to holding our own, our so-called defence has too often been used as a means of defiance, and instead of merely holding our own we have been thereby tempted to lay hold of what belonged to other people.’25 The WPA’s one significant change of policy brought it closer to the Peace Society: a repudiation of the demand for the replacement of the standing army with a citizen militia. When J. S. Mill chaired a large, WPA-organized meeting in St James’s Hall on  March , he took the opportunity to advocate a citizen army: ‘our army is vastly too large when it is not wanted, and vastly too small when it is wanted. (Cheers.) . . . we now know how effectually an armed nation can repel an invasion . . . our army should be our whole people, trained and disciplined.’ Cremer had always been sympathetic to this argument: he held that a standing army was a means of keeping the workers down. But the notion of a citizen army troubled the Peace Society—it was explicitly pacific-ist, it demanded a greater emphasis on militarism in British life and also introduced the question of conscientious objection for pacifists. The Herald of Peace commented that the speech had ‘given pain to some of the best friends of peace, who consider that it is not by such arguments that their holy cause will ever be really strengthened’. To make matters worse, the meeting had briefly been hijacked by a ‘comparatively small, exceedingly noisy’ group who hoisted red flags, and amid ‘great confusion’ held up placards supporting an English republic. At the annual general meeting of the WPA in January , it was decided that as ‘there were a large number of persons throughout the country’ who ‘strongly objected’ to the idea of replacing the army with a militia, ‘it would be advisable to defer that part of the programme until some future period.’26 A reduction in arms spending continued, however, to be a central platform of the WPA. Cremer’s association, following Cobden, associated war and high army and navy estimates with economic profligacy and class HP, July , ; Bee-Hive,  July , ; Arb., Feb. , ; Aug. , . HP, Apr. , ; May , ; Bee-Hive,  Mar. , ; Times,  Mar. , ; HP, Aug. , ; Times,  Jan. , . 25 26

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Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

privilege. ‘The present excessive war expenditure’, Howard Evans said, speaking at a WPA meeting in Cardiff, ‘is mainly attributable to the vast sums received from it by the upper classes.’ H. M. Hunt, secretary of the Bristol branch, urged the WPA to concentrate on ‘the immediate abolition of salaries, emoluments, and pensions received by the aristocracy from the military revenue’. Andrew Boa, president of the Glasgow United Trades’ Council and secretary of the WPA’s ‘Scottish Department’ said: ‘As working men, desiring less taxation [and] more wages . . . we are convinced we see the realization of this in the peace movement.’ ‘I have nothing in the world to protect except my share in the National Debt,’ an artisan in Hull argued, ‘and I don’t care if the French come and run away with that . . . Give us summat to fight for, and then we may.’27 In some places, the WPA revived Christian working-class peace thinking dormant since the days of Burritt. A meeting in Barton, for example, held in the local Primitive Methodist chapel, was chaired by a Mr Brooks, who said that it had been sixteen years since he signed Burritt’s peace pledge, and that ever since he had waited for England’s workmen to interest themselves in the peace question.28 Although some of the WPA’s council members were, like many metropolitan artisan radicals, outspoken secularists, or at least anti-clerical (Cremer was an anti-clerical agnostic, or ‘broad-minded Christian’), the combination of Christian and brotherhood language used at the Barton meeting was typical of the Association’s provincial campaigning.29 Joseph Arch, the agricultural labourers’ leader and Primitive Methodist lay preacher, who joined the WPA in , was typical in his belief that, ‘as a Christian nation’, Britain ‘ought to be the first to set an example’ in adopting peace policies.30 When the Association undertook a campaign to reach agricultural districts in  and , their meetings were often held at Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist Chapels. William Worden, the honorary agent for Dartmouth, aligned his peace convictions with other Nonconformist causes: ‘The working men of England were already a large army composed of different regiments, one marching against the deadly foe of intemperance, another against the superstitions of the present day, and a third against ecclesiastical tyranny, Arb., Mar. , ; July , ; June , –; July , . Arb., May , . 29 For Cremer’s self-description, see John Shepherd, ‘Labour and Parliament: The Lib–Labs as the First Working-Class MPs, –’, in E. F. Biagini and A. J. Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain – (Cambridge, ). 30 Arb., Nov. , ; Howard Evans, Radical Fights of Forty Years (London, ), . 27 28

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

and he trusted that the regiments would unite and do battle against the demon of war.’31  ’       In August , Henry Richard gave notice to the House of Commons of a motion in favour of international arbitration. Three months before, the Treaty of Washington had laid down a number of rules of international law which meant that the Alabama dispute could finally be settled. The Treaty was hailed as a significant advance by the peace associations. A. B. Hayward, secretary of the Liverpool Peace Society, said it was ‘destined to convince even military minds that war is a stupid anachronism . . . and belongs to a bygone age; it has made the doubting cry at last, Eureka! Eureka! and has sent up the flag of the Peace Society mast-high.’32 The Treaty of Washington stimulated interest in international law. (Chairs in the discipline were still few in number: in most learned quarters the view prevailed that international law was not really law at all, because it lacked a sanctioning power.) More specifically, the Treaty enlivened the campaign of peace activists and more optimistic international lawyers for a codification of international law and a permanent court to apply such a code. This was a more ambitious step than bilateral arbitration treaties. On the other hand, unlike the earlier peace plans of Bentham and James Mill, the idea was essentially judicial rather than political: it did not entail a pooling of sovereignty in a federal Europe. Arbitration had already become more popular with governments as a practical, cheap means of settling minor international disputes—trade disagreements, for example. The peace movement hoped that the regularization of international law in a code would make it clear that even the most serious disputes could be resolved in such a way. Peace activists had recently forged important links with international lawyers. At a meeting of the Social Science Association in  attended by Elihu Burritt, for instance, a paper given by David Dudley Field, ‘an American lawyer of great eminence’, was the inspiration to appoint a committee of jurists to elaborate a code of international law. And early in  a paper on ‘International Arbitration’ was read before the Social Science Association by the international lawyer Leone Levi, a member of the Peace Society executive. As a result a committee was set up to examine 31 32

Arb., Feb. , ; Dec. , ; Mar. , . HP, Dec. , .

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‘whether some general scheme of arbitration or conciliation cannot be usefully recommended for adoption’. In June , the WPA published plans for a High Court of Nations, the details of which included codification of international law and a stipulation that any nation which refused to obey the court’s decision would become ‘internationally outlawed’ and subject to diplomatic and economic—but not military—sanctions. (This position differed from that of the Peace Society, which frowned on even economic sanctions as simply another form of aggression.) Richard’s Parliamentary motion, too, put forward a court of arbitration rather than the bilateral treaties which Cobden had called for in . He decided to urge the British Government to initiate a ‘permanent system’ of international arbitration, and to press for an ‘improvement’ of international law, to extend it to matters beyond the laws of war and the relationship between belligerents and neutrals.33 The Franco-Prussian War also brought forth more general projects for the development of international law and a new type of political institution. ‘We hear from all quarters’, Richard wrote, ‘suggestions for some kind of international jurisdiction; coming now, not merely from the old peace party, but from distinguished men who have hitherto been quite outside our circle.’ In the spring of , for instance, John Seeley, the Cambridge professor of history, gave a lecture to friends of the Peace Society on ‘The Prevention of War’. To Richard’s alarm, he called for a United States of Europe with a supra-state legislature, an executive, a judiciary, and a federal army.34 The enforcement of international law was also adopted in a plan drawn up by Frederic Seebohm, a historian of Quaker parentage. ‘No!’ Richard responded, ‘we say that the final power of an international tribunal must be one of law—of law and of moral force alone.’ Seeley tried to persuade the Peace Society to abandon its pacifism: he failed to apprehend, according to Richard, that its opposition to all war was held as a ‘solemn religious belief ’.35 Military sanctions and an internationally organized military force were opposed on principle by pacifists, but were also considered unnecessary by almost all British pacific-ists 33 HP, June , ; July , –, ; Bee-Hive,  July , ; Goronwy Jones, Wales and the Quest for Peace (Cardiff, ), . See also LB, Richard to Hon. William Jay,  Dec. , copy. 34 HP, May , –; John Seeley, ‘United States of Europe: A Lecture Delivered before the Peace Society’, Macmillan’s Magazine,  (–), –. 35 HP, May, , –. Seebohm’s plan was set out in his book On International Reform (London, ); HP, Apr. , –. Seeley attended the meeting when the WPA discussed its plan for a High Court of Nations, and later sent a letter supporting the WPA to the Times. See Bee-Hive,  July , ; Times,  Nov. , .

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before the First World War. Federal schemes, too, were discussed only in the vaguest terms—most peace activists conceived of a peaceful community of distinct nationalities. Sanctions and federalism were rarely discussed in the journals of the peace associations. Richard’s Commons motion had to be put back several times, principally because of continuing problems with the Alabama arbitration: the US Government, as he explained, made ‘unexpected and very heavy claims’ for indirect damages, to which ‘general and decided objection’ was taken in Britain. Eventually, in the autumn of , these claims were all but withdrawn, and the tribunal at Geneva applying the Washington Treaty announced its award. Britain was instructed to pay a £ million liability and Gladstone, in the face of opposition from the Conservative Party, agreed to pay. The impulse peacefully to settle the Alabama dispute was due more to the existence of the unfortified Canadian frontier than to a sea change in thinking about international relations, but Britain’s acceptance of the award nevertheless signalled a departure from Palmerstonianism: for the first time, a power was prepared to limit its definition of ‘vital interests’ in order to facilitate an arbitration agreement. It was hardly surprising that the Herald of Peace described the settlement as an ‘experimentum crucis, as regarded the application of the principle of arbitration’.36 The campaign in support of Richard’s motion, sustained throughout the delays and difficulties, became the most important focus for British peace associations in the years following the Franco-Prussian War. The ‘great point’ said the Herald of Peace, was to ‘galvanize’ Parliament ‘by a stream of electricity from without’.37 Meetings were held in town halls, temperance halls, concert halls, and mechanics’ institutes. Local Radical groups and Liberal associations were often involved and redoubtable Parliamentary supporters of the peace movement such as Lawson, Jacob Bright, Peter Rylands, and Alfred Illingworth, MP for Bradford, made regular appearances. The Baptist and Congregational Unions autumn meetings adopted resolutions in favour of the motion, as did at least one regional Liberal Conference (in Wales, where support for the peace movement was unusually strong).38 The three regular Peace Society agents— William Stokes, Arthur O’Neill, and G. W. Conder—were supplemented 36 MB,  Feb. ; LB, Richard to Gladstone,  Feb. , copy; MB,  Apr. ; HP, May , ; Maureen Robson, ‘Liberals and “Vital Interests”: The Debate on International Arbitration, –’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research,  (), ; HP, Oct. , –. 37 HP, June , . 38 MB,  Oct. ; HP, Jan. , . See Jones, Wales and the Quest for Peace, passim.

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by nine others specially commissioned to canvass the country. The Society held an average of  meetings per month during , secured the insertion of , articles in newspapers, and had sent  local petitions to Westminster by the time the debate finally took place. It also organized special arbitration conferences in the major cities and in towns, such as Darlington, where there was a strong Quaker presence.39 A number of new auxiliary societies were formed. Richard’s motion also encouraged Ursula Bright, the wife of Jacob Bright, and E. M. King, a religious writer, to found in  the shortlived Women’s Peace Association. Based in Manchester, this was independent of the Peace Society, which had recently reiterated that it was not prepared to endorse women speaking in public on its behalf (a position which was conventional among philanthropic associations).40 Although the Society published tracts by women and allowed the formation of separate women’s auxiliaries, it had barred them from becoming delegates at the mid-century congresses and didn’t invite a woman to join its executive until . Partly as a result, much of women’s peace activity—which tended to emphasize the influence of mothers— took place outside the Society. In the s and early s, for example, Elihu Burritt had formed a number of female ‘Olive Leaf Societies’, which were more widespread and autonomous than the Peace Society’s auxiliaries, and have some claim to be considered the first women’s peace movement.41 One-off campaigns were also launched: for instance, the ‘Ladies Petition for Peace’ in , initiated by the moral campaigner Josephine Butler, which attracted , signatures.42 Perhaps encouraged by the presentation to the Commons in February  of a petition signed by , women in favour of arbitration, the Peace Society finally decided to establish a national women’s association, the ‘Ladies Auxiliary’.43 39 HP, Apr. , ; A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organized Movements for International Peace (London, ), ; MB,  Dec. ;  Feb. ;  Jan. ;  Feb. ; HP, Nov. , ; Times,  Dec. , . 40 MB,  Dec. ; Arb., Nov. , ; Mar. , . 41 Ceadel, Origins of War Prevention, –, . 42 Bee-Hive,  Nov. , . Butler, of course, campaigned for many years against prostitution catering to soldiers in army barracks. 43 The committee members of the ‘Ladies Auxiliary’ included Mrs Henry Richard, Mrs Cremer, Mrs Joseph Gurney, and Mrs Lucraft; its secretary was Mrs Southey; HP, Mar. , ; May , ; MB,  May . For women’s peace activism in general, see Jill Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism since  (London, ); R. R. Pierson (ed.), Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives (Beckenham, ).

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

The WPA, too, conducted an impressive campaign in support of Henry Richard’s arbitration motion. In October , Cremer began to communicate with the Association’s agents around the country to obtain the best halls. Meetings were organized at Colchester, Ipswich, Peterborough, Norwich, and Bury St Edmunds; deputations were sent to Liverpool, Birkenhead, and Chester. The public meeting held during the TUC in Nottingham in  was ‘crowded, enthusiastic and unanimous’. Cremer toured Scotland; the WPA’s hundred agents covered England. In ‘almost every case’ where a meeting was held, a local WPA committee was elected (though most had only a few members). In the eyes of Richard, Cremer’s Association ‘brought a power to bear . . . the value of which it would be difficult to overestimate’. The WPA gatherings often referred to British workers’ hostility to the South during the Civil War and to the connection between international and trades arbitration, both of which were ‘economically and morally beneficial’. The same compound of the moral and the material was used to link international arbitration with financial reform and ‘the commercial and economic advancement of the industrial classes’.44 The motion was eventually set for  June . Richard was able to claim when introducing it that there were few members of the House who had not had to submit petitions from their constituencies in its favour (over a million people signed in total, though this included block votes from various institutions). He emphasized that it would not be necessary for him ‘to put forward any of what are called extreme peace views’ and was careful to proclaim his patriotism: ‘There are people who charge us of the peace party with being careless of, or indifferent to, the honour of England. I repudiate and repel the imputation.’ He faced opposition from Gladstone, however, who, despite his endorsement of the Alabama settlement, always held that arbitration was unsuitable for most questions involving Britain’s interest and honour. The Prime Minister admonished Richard for having ‘considerably widened the scope’ of Cobden’s motion of , a development which was ‘not an improvement’. He admitted that support was growing for the principle of arbitration, but as yet it was ‘sectional opinion rather than national sentiment’: it ‘had not extensively found its way into the cabinets of statesmen, or into the popular mind of Europe’. He also referred to the fact that arbitration was a particularly Anglo-American enthusiasm: 44 HP, Nov. , ; Times,  Oct. , ; Arb., Feb. , ; Feb. , –; Feb. , ; Dec. , –; HP, Aug. , .

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Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

There was really an enormous difference in all those questions of international conflict between insular and Continental powers. It was probably owing to the great difficulties arising out of their close contact with their neighbours, all the historic associations connected with it, that it had been found much less practicable for the nations of the Continent to give effect to arbitration than for England and America to do so.

An initiative from Britain might be interpreted on the Continent as being self-interested, he argued. Notwithstanding this opposition and because the attendance in the House was small, the motion met with an unexpected success, being carried by ten votes (:)—a ‘ringing cheer’ greeted the Member for Merthyr. The jubilation of the Herald of Peace was tempered only by a touch of guilt for having brought about ‘a defeat of the Ministry of Mr Gladstone’.45 The Arbitrator devoted a special edition to the debate; Cremer expressed his belief that ‘the mantle of Mr Cobden’ had worthily fallen on the shoulders of Henry Richard. The Peace Society printed eight pages of favourable press reports—The Times admitted that Richard’s motion had given ‘some sort of official recognition’ to the Peace Society’s ‘desultory and erratic efforts’. It was a ‘triumph’ which defied the ‘ludicrously slender’ apparatus of the Society. Richard made the most of his celebrity, embarking in September on a second Continental tour, this time to promote analogous arbitration motions. When Professor Mancini introduced a resolution to the Italian Parliament similar to that introduced by Richard to the Commons, forty-nine British MPs signed an address in support—including A. J. Mundella, John Bright, Samuel Morley, George Dixon, Edward Baines, Henry Fawcett, Alfred Illingworth, and Peter Rylands—as well as Joseph Chamberlain, Mayor of Birmingham.46 It seemed that the policy of arbitration might enable the peace movement to gain many new converts. At the Society’s  annual meeting, Samuel Morley announced that it was the first time he had stood on a Peace Society platform, though he had been a member and had contributed to its funds. Richard had assured him, he said, ‘that there was nothing in his deep conviction that it was necessary for England to maintain an efficient navy, to prevent him from uniting in the great work of strengthening the public sentiment against war (Cheers)’. H. J. Wilson, the Sheffield smelter and Radical MP, similarly said, at a ‘crowded’ WPA public meeting, that he had not previously ‘taken part in the peace movement, because he could not 45 Jones, Wales and the Quest for Peace, ; HP, Aug. , –; C. S. Miall, Henry Richard MP: A Biography (London, ), ; HP, Aug. , –. 46 Jones, Wales and the Quest for Peace, ; Times,  Sept. , ; HP, Mar. , .

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

subscribe to the doctrine that war under any circumstances was wrong’. When, however, ‘the question was put to him whether or not international arbitration was preferable to war’ he agreed that arbitration ‘ought to command the sympathies of all intelligent, humane, Christian men’.47 A few of the Peace Society’s provincial auxiliaries continued to argue, however, that the Society could attract much more support if only the central committee became, in effect, pacific-ist rather than pacifist. The secretary of the Manchester auxiliary, William Pollard, for instance, although himself a Quaker, reaffirmed that his association ‘did not necessarily endorse’ all the Peace Society’s views. He suggested publishing a quarterly journal articulating a ‘broader and lower peace advocacy’ than the Herald of Peace, which was ‘considered by some of its Manchester readers to go a little too far in its assertion of peace principles’. In October  Richard had to respond to a proposal from the West of England Arbitration Association ‘to establish a general arbitration society distinct from the Peace Society’, complete with a headquarters in London and branches around the country. The new Yorkshire International Arbitration Association, too, underlined that it ‘did not recognize absolute peace principles’—it was ‘important to keep their object distinct from . . . “peace at any price” ’. George Leeman, the MP for York and chairman of this body, ‘admitted the truth of the principle that a nation ought to be armed in order to be safe’.48 Richard, as ever, withstood all pressure to relax the Society’s principles. He understood that, ‘in advocating the arbitration question’, it was not ‘always expedient to put forward what is called the extreme peace principle.’ ‘At the same time,’ he wrote, nothing, as we found by painful experience in times past, will stand the strain of trying events but a firm hold of the principle. Mr Cobden used always to say to me: ‘You know that as a public man I can’t take your high Christian ground in discussing these questions. But don’t you ever give that up—it is the strength and safety of your position.’

Richard asked those who did not hold the extreme position ‘not to assail any opinions of the Peace Society which they do not share’. There was, he added, ‘enough common ground we can occupy without treading on each other’s susceptibilities.’49 HP, June , ; Oct. , ; Arb., Feb. , . HP, Nov. , ; LB, Richard to Messrs. Sturge, Wedmore, and Hargreaves,  Oct. , copy; HP, Apr. , ; July , . 49 LB, Richard to Revd J. H. Pattison,  Apr. , copy; Richard to Revd Thomas,  Dec. , copy. 47 48



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

The peace movement, convinced that arbitration was its most plausible platform, delved further into the technicalities of treaties and tribunals, and sought to keep up with new developments in international law. Activists assumed that it was vital to demonstrate the availability of a practical means of resolving conflicts. The omens for arbitration were good. In  two bodies were set up in Brussels which formalized the project of improving international legislation: the Institute of International Law and the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations. The Institute restricted its members to scholars and public officials. Among the original eleven founders were David Dudley Field; Emile de Laveleye, the Belgian professor of political economy and author of the influential Des causes actuelles de guerre en Europe et de l’arbitrage; and other respected international lawyers such as Johann Kaspar Bluntschli (professor at Heidelberg) and James Lorimer (Edinburgh). It was an exclusively scientific body, which was careful to avoid any taint of utopianism and which kept its distance from the peace movement. The ARCLN, on the other hand, was largely inspired by peace activists. In  the Revd James B. Miles, secretary of the American Peace Society, travelled to Europe to promote the idea of a peacemovement-organized congress of publicists, jurists, statesmen, and philanthropists to elaborate an international code. Richard was hesitant—he preferred to proceed by means of ad hoc meetings between peace-minded deputies in the various European Parliaments. It would be impossible, he wrote to Frederic Passy, to persuade men of such ‘real distinction as jurists or politicians to undertake such a work as that at the invitation of private persons or societies like yours and ours’. Richard’s instinct was to ‘shrink from ridicule’.50 Miles, with the help of Dudley Field and Passy, managed, however, to arrange a meeting in Brussels of jurists, men of affairs, and peace activists. Among the former were Field, Travers Twiss, Bluntschli, and Montague Bernard (professor of international law at Oxford and one of the negotiators of the Washington Treaty). De Laveleye also attended, as did Miles, Passy, and Richard, who had been won over by the project and commented that ‘never in his life had he had the honour of meeting so many men of eminence at one time.’ The discussions reflected the 50 Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe – (New York, ), ; Beales, History of Peace, ; LB, Richard to Passy,  July , copy; LB, Richard to Passy,  Mar. , copy. See also MB,  Oct. ; LB, Richard to Burritt,  Oct. , copy; Richard to Revd J. B. Miles,  June , copy.

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

difference in outlook between peace activists and jurists. Passy and Richard wanted a pronouncement in favour of arbitration for all cases without exception; Bluntschli preferred the exclusion of cases involving ‘vital interests’. Montague Bernard believed the ‘idea of a complete codification of international law’ to be ‘at present . . . little better than a chimera’. The lawyers informed the peace activists that they could not hope to thrust a ready-made code on governments—codification would have to come by means of treaties among the states, and Bluntschli, himself the author of an international code, warned that this would be a gradual process.51 The ARCLN eventually proved a disappointment to the peace movement. The majority of new members were merchants, ship-owners, underwriters, delegates from chambers of commerce, and others interested merely in the reform of international business regulations. In  the Herald of Peace noted ruefully that the proceedings of the Association’s conference—at The Hague—were ‘likely to lead, at least on some points, to practical results . . . especially regarding bills of exchange and collisions at sea’. Having endured a long discussion about bills of exchange at the following year’s conference—‘interesting to commercial men, but not to the general public’—Richard played truant, going for a walk with his wife instead of attending another sitting. In , prompted by the objection taken at the Association’s conference in London to his paper on disarmament, he wrote a disgruntled letter to Travers Twiss: there ought to be a large number of persons who do not support our Society because we go ‘too far’ or are ‘impracticable’ or ‘utopian’ etc etc but who may be presumed to approve of your Association . . . My interest and that of those with whom I am especially associated has been of late considerably cooled toward your Association for it seems to have been turned aside a little from the objects which were mainly contemplated when it was first established. I don’t in the least object to questions of commercial and maritime law being discussed to any extent . . . But it seems to me there has been a disposition among some of our members to look askance upon and to shunt aside the other, and to me far more important, branch of the subject which I have tried to keep before the Association . . . you and I and those who know its history and were really its founders know that the discussion and promotion of such matters constitutes really the raison d’être of the organization.52 51 Times,  Oct. , ; HP, Nov. , –; Times  Oct. , ; Irwin Abrams, ‘A History of European Peace Societies –’, D.Phil. thesis (Harvard Univ., ), fos. –. 52 HP, Oct. , ; Henry Richard MS,  A, Henry Richard’s Diary, fo. ; LB, Henry Richard to Travers Twiss,  Aug. , copy.



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

Richard and Passy continued to attend, and tried to persuade the organization to be faithful to its original goals, but in vain. In  it dropped codification from its name and became the International Law Society. The high hopes of an international code (even if not of a permanent court) had long since faded.  ’    The defeat of the Liberal Government at the  general election was a surprising blow to the peace movement. The WPA’s annual report blamed the Conservatives’ success on a ‘political lassitude’ which seemed to have ‘stolen over men’s minds’. The Radical MP George Dixon, speaking at a meeting of the Midland Arbitration Union, admitted that the peace movement had found it ‘extremely difficult to catch the public ear’.53 Some activists pointed to the Conservative Party’s tactic of accusing Liberals of a lack of patriotism and a belief in ‘peace at any price’. W. Williams of the Swansea Plasterers’ Society, for example, said at a WPA conference: ‘At the late general election we suffered taunts that the craven policy of the Liberal Government on the Alabama had lost England the place we once occupied among the nations of the world.’54 The peace movement nonetheless continued to promote its policies—arbitration, retrenchment—and to oppose invasion scares and imperial aggrandizement, particularly the ongoing Ashanti War. Disraeli’s muscular imperialism and his attempt to assume Palmerston’s patriotic mantle by pursuing a vigorous foreign policy made it all the more necessary, the WPA declared, ‘for the working classes to speak out boldly their peaceful views’.55 Cremer reacted to domestic political disappointment by extending his ambitions overseas. He still felt drawn to the concept of a workers’ International and hoped that the WPA might contain ‘the nucleus of the future International Working Men’s Association’ (after all, eight members of the WPA executive had at one time been IWMA general council members). The WPA drew up an address ‘to the Working-Men of Europe’, which the Arbitrator called ‘the first systematic effort to enlist the sympathies, and concentrate the efforts, of the working men of various countries in favour of peace’: Arb., June , ; HP, July , ; HP, June , . Arb., Mar. , . For this sort of Tory accusation in the Commons see, e.g., Parl. Debates, rd ser. ,  ( Feb. ). 55 Arb., Mar. , . For meetings protesting against the Ashanti War, see HP, Oct. , ; Nov. , –; Arb., Apr. , ; July , –. 53 54

‒



Today Europe groans beneath the weight of her military and naval preparations . . . Where bayonets abound even universal suffrage can be stultified. So thorough, indeed, is the militaryism of today, that we can only supplant it by devising another method of settling disputes, and thus depriving its defenders of their plea for its existence . . . The grandest courage is the courage of patience . . . Our political and social emancipation in Britain has been slow, we admit, but it has been peaceful, and what we have won we have retained . . . Behind arbitration there is peace, and behind peace there is liberty.

Over ten thousand copies of this address were distributed during a conference organized by the WPA in Paris, which took place on – September . Given the political environment in post-Commune France, this was a controversial undertaking (too controversial to attract the Peace Society’s support). On his arrival with forty British trade unionists, Cremer discovered that ‘the large majority of the representative working men, whom we knew in Paris a few years ago’, had ‘been either shot or transported’.56 Other French leaders boycotted the conference, because they held to the Mazzinian ‘one-more-war’ theory which Cremer now opposed. Only a hundred Frenchmen, mostly moderate socialists, assembled to greet the British workers. It did not help that Joseph Arch’s speech referred to his host country more than once as the ‘French Empire’, but at least Cremer was loudly cheered for impressing on the French delegates their duty peacefully to spread the republican idea throughout the Continent. The conference was a minor success and the Peace Society, relieved at the moderate tone of the speeches, gave the WPA a donation to defray its expenses. Hodgson Pratt wrote a report in the Workmen’s Club Journal: The public and the press in England have shown marvellously little interest in an event which may very probably prove hereafter to be the commencement of a new era . . . We have said to Mr Richard more than once that but little was accomplished in converting the working class of England; that what was wanted was to arouse the workmen of France and Germany to a determination to refuse to serve against their brethren.57

Howard Evans and F. Lassassie, an émigré French hairdresser who had been an International council member, were assigned the duty of taking the WPA’s message to Europe. A Special Fund was organized and 56 Arb., Sept. , ; May , ; Aug. , –; June , ; Sept. , –; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer: His Life and Work (London, ), . 57 Arb., Sept. , –; Times,  Sept. , ; Arb., Oct. , .



Franco-Prussian War, WPA, Arbitration

donations were made by some of the Peace Society’s most generous Quaker benefactors—Jacob Bright, John Horniman, a tea magnate, and the manufacturer J. P. Thomasson; Pratt also contributed. Cremer, like Pratt, was confident that the working class held the key to permanent peace. He said in Paris—with characteristic pride, but with an equally typical absence of tact—that, until the formation of the WPA in , ‘the peace movement was a mere philanthropic and religious agitation, restricted to the shopkeeping and commercial classes.’58 58

MB,  July ;  Nov. ; Arb., Feb. , ; Jan. , ; HP, July , .



–: The Peace Movement and the Eastern Question The crisis in the Near East presented the British peace movement with its most severe test since the Crimean War. The Peace Society and the WPA found themselves campaigning against Disraeli’s pro-Turkish gunboat politics in , then countering the agitation among a section of progressives for a crusade against Turkey and, finally, in the spring of , opposing war with Russia. The latter protest has been cited by A. J. P. Taylor as one of the rare episodes when ‘Dissent’ may have prevented a determined British Government from going to war.1 It was the occasion of the WPA’s most significant political contribution. The Bulgarian atrocities—the repression by the Turkish Government in April and May  of a nationalist rising within its Empire—provoked moral outrage in Britain, especially among Nonconformists and working men. Disraeli’s refusal to sign the Berlin Memorandum (which called on Turkey to institute reforms in its Christian provinces), together with the despatch of a British fleet to Besika Bay at the mouth of the Dardanelles, seemed to be a clear endorsement of the atrocities, and was directly antagonistic to Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the parties to the Memorandum. The Prime Minister was pursuing Britain’s traditional pro-Turkish policy, but his blunt appeal to national interest, in particular his famous dismissal of the atrocities as ‘coffee-house babble’, alienated progressive opinion. The WPA issued an address setting out ‘Our Duty in the Eastern Crisis’: Savages who make war indiscriminately on women and children . . . ought not to receive . . . support from any civilized nation . . . Fortunately the House of Commons is now much more than formerly the reflex of the people’s will, and if the various constituencies make it clear to their Parliamentary representatives that The People Have Resolved on Strict Neutrality, they will not dare to sanction any armed interference in the struggle.

1

A. J. P. Taylor, The Troublemakers (), , .



Peace Movement and Eastern Question

The Peace Society similarly deemed contemptible the prospect of ‘defending such a vile despotism as Turkey by means of the blood and treasure of Christian England’.2 Meetings organized by the Peace Society became crowded as popular resistance to ‘upholding the Turk’ grew stronger. Arthur O’Neill, the Society’s Midlands agent, reported that as news of the atrocities spread wider, ‘lecturers often addressed a thousand people, even in a small town’. On the initiative of O’Neill and Lewis Appleton, a -strong national deputation, led by John Bright, waited on the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, on  July  to present a memorial against war, which had been drafted by Richard and signed by ‘upwards of  MPs and  gentlemen’. Richard was careful to explain that the deputation represented many bodies of opinion, not ‘solely . . . the peace party’.3 The WPA council met the following day, and having been reassured by Derby’s reply to the deputation, decided not to hold a large public meeting, resolving instead to issue an address asking workmen ‘to turn a deaf ear either to bondholders, alarmists, or interested persons, who fatten on war and rumours of war’ and to ‘use every legitimate influence with their Parliamentary representatives in favour of strict neutrality’.4 The antiTurk flames were fanned by Gladstone’s pamphlet on the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’. Progressives castigated Disraeli’s policy and demanded joint diplomatic action on behalf of the powers to advance Balkan selfdetermination. War would then be prevented and justice attained. Before long, however, there were calls for a British military crusade against Turkey. ‘We have a great army and a great fleet,’ J. J. Colman, the mustard manufacturer and Radical MP, said at a town’s meeting in his Norwich constituency, ‘and there are crises . . . when we may have to do something more with our army and our fleet than simply to maintain the material interest of this country.’ Armed intervention might be necessary to ‘bring peace and prosperity to our fellow-Christians’. At a meeting of the League in Aid of Christians in Turkey attended by Beales and P. A. Taylor, Henry Broadhurst, the stonemason turned politician, declared: ‘English people loved peace, but they would be ready to go to war to prevent such barbarities as those they had heard the Turks had practised.’ A. J. Mundella, Liberal MP for Sheffield, told the Commons that he ‘was not an advocate of war’, but he felt it ‘unworthy of England’ not to say to Turkey: ‘“Bring these things to an end or we will point our guns at your 2 3 4

Arb., July , –; HP, July , . HP, June , ; June , ; Aug. , , . MB,  Aug. ; Arb., July , –, .

‒



palaces.”’ Even John Bright said that Disraeli’s Government was in favour of peace with Turkey ‘at a price which some of us would scarcely wish to pay for it’. The Conservative MP Percy Wyndham noted the existence of a ‘war party’, some of the ‘most eminent adherents’ of which ‘by a strange coincidence’ were associated with the Peace Society.5 ‘Idealism’ had fractured once again. As during the Franco-Prussian War, the peace movement countered the crusaders—those who were ‘so influenced with resentment’, Richard said, that they were clamouring for ‘a war of vengeance’. He, too, spoke of ‘a small party in the Commons, sitting on the same side of the House as he did himself, that had been trying to impel the country and the Government, and especially the Liberal Party, into a policy of coercion in regard to Turkey’. Peace Society auxiliaries held meetings in an attempt to guide the morally-charged campaign in the direction of diplomatic pressure. In October, Arthur O’Neill reported that seven thousand people had attended the fifteen gatherings he had organized in the Midlands during the past weeks. But even the Peace Society succumbed to the virulent Turkophobia endemic within the Nonconformist-led agitation: the Herald of Peace, for example, reprinted a section of ‘A Handy Book on the Eastern Question’ by Sir George Campbell, Liberal MP for Kirkcaldy, which portrayed the ‘bureaucracy at Constantinople’ as peopled by eunuchs, prostitutes and ‘the basest and most greedy of speculators and jobbers’. ‘Bulgarian ladies’, in contrast, ‘were white, fair-haired Christians like ourselves, women of refinement, many of them, who, except for their dress, could not be distinguished from English and Scotch ladies. They were outraged, beheaded, slashed to pieces, literally in thousands.’6 There was some disagreement within the WPA council as to whether it should organize a large public meeting to counter the crusading threat. The majority, including Cremer, Lucraft, and Britten, feared that ‘with the present public excitement’ the meeting might be ‘used for other purposes than those contemplated’. Instead, the council decided to seek an audience with Lord Derby, which was granted for  September. The deputation, which was made up of middle-class peace activists such as Samuel Morley as well as artisans, presented a memorial: 5 N. W. Summerton, ‘Dissenting Attitudes to Foreign Relations, Peace and War –’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History,  (), ; Times,  July , ; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( Aug. ), , ; G. C. Thompson, Public Opinion and Lord Beaconsfield –,  vols. (London, ), i, ; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( Feb. ), , –. 6 HP, Oct. , ; June , –; Nov. , –; Oct. , ; Jan. , .



Peace Movement and Eastern Question

A few months ago many of our countrymen feared there was a danger of our once more interfering in the eastern struggle on behalf of Turkey. Subsequent events, however, have so completely changed the current of public opinion, that the tendency becomes every day greater of our being called upon actively to oppose her. Against, however, any armed intervention on either side we . . . have again and again protested.

Lord Derby intended to receive the WPA deputation along with a workers’ group led by George Potter, but the latter refused to co-operate.7 This may have been the result of old enmities, but may also have reflected Potter’s opposition to the WPA’s anti-crusade stance. There were other working-class protests against Disraeli’s policy. The London Committee on Eastern Affairs, for example, organized by Thomas Mottershead (who still had connections with Cremer’s association), was the first to contact Gladstone on the Eastern Question. It held a meeting in the Exeter Hall on  September , attended by five thousand people, at which Bradlaugh urged workers to oppose Disraeli in the spirit of the great days of the Hyde Park riots. The Mottershead committee held another meeting in October, which was ignored by the Arbitrator. So was a gathering of working-class organizations called by Howell which took place two days before and as the result of which Henry Broadhurst emerged as secretary of a Workmen’s Neutrality Committee. His ‘chief assistant’ was James Rowlands, a watch-case maker and wellknown political lecturer. The Arbitrator also ignored an ‘address to the working classes on war’ signed by Cremer’s old foe Robert Applegarth and other labour spokesmen. One of the most active union leaders was Joseph Arch, who had remained on good terms with the WPA. His opposition to war, he told audiences, dated from his being accosted as a young man by recruiting sergeants; he also claimed that his son had fought against his will in the Ashanti War. ‘Not many years ago,’ the Arbitrator remarked, ‘to have moved our agricultural labourers to petition the House of Commons against interference in Continental struggles, would have been regarded as a perfectly hopeless task, and yet within the last few months no section of the working classes has displayed so much anxiety to keep us out of the strife now raging in the East.’8 Arb., Sept. , ; ; Thompson, Public Opinion, i,  n. Daily News,  Sept. , –; A. P. Saab, Reluctant Icon: Gladstone, Bulgaria and the Working Classes – (Cambridge, Mass., ), ; Richard Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation (London, ), ; Henry Broadhurst, Henry Broadhurst, MP: The Story of His Life (London, ), ; HP, Jan. , ; Mar. , ; Arb., Aug. , . 7 8

‒



A ‘national conference’ was held on  December in St James’s Hall to coalesce the anti-Disraeli agitation in the form of an Eastern Question Association. It was, the Herald of Peace said, ‘the grandest public meeting of modern times’. Professors, merchants, barristers, trade unionists, labourers, ministers of religion, and MPs attended; Gladstone, J. J. Colman, Samuel Morley, F. W. Chesson, Joseph Arch, and William Morris were among the speakers.9 The conference’s numerous convenors included Cremer, Hodgson Pratt, and Richard, who also helped in its organization. It started badly for the peace movement when the Duke of Westminster, presiding in the morning, called for ‘the fleets and armies of England’ to ‘be sent to Constantinople, not to oppose Russia, but to coerce the Turk’; he received loud cheers. Richard used his speech to oppose a crusade: ‘I do not want to go to war against Turkey any more than for it. You know, I am dreadfully heterodox on the point of war. I do not believe in war, and especially in a war waged in the interest of philanthropy.’10 He was followed by Howell, who declared himself ‘so fond of peace’ that sometimes, he believed, ‘we had to fight for it. (Laughter.)’ But, he continued, ‘in the present instance . . . we had no need to fight. We ought to stand by the other European powers, and to insist that justice should be done to the Christian provinces of Turkey.’ Gladstone’s speech revealed the distance between his own position and Cobdenite ‘no foreign politics’: he was forthright about the need for constructive British engagement and did not rule out the need for coercion, though he hoped that threatening pressure on the part of the Concert of Europe would be successful, and that not a shot would have to be fired. ‘Foreign intervention of some kind, I am afraid, is an absolute necessity . . . the name of England is associated with the promotion and establishment of freedom. I am far from saying that we have taken out a commission of universal knight-errantry . . . but . . . our business is to acknowledge our obligation.’11 The WPA had contemplated holding a national conference of its own, but decided against it, in view of the ‘work now being very well done by others who are not so pronounced on the subject of peace as we are’. Instead, Cremer and Evans prepared a communication to be forwarded to the Association’s agents in all parts of the kingdom, encouraging them to be ready for a conference when the time was right. Fifty new 9 HP, Jan. , ; –. See also Eastern Question Association, Report of the Proceedings of the National Conference at St James’s Hall (London, ). 10 Annual Register (London, ), ; HP, Jan. , –; MB,  Nov. . 11 Times,  Dec. , ; EQA, Report, , .



Peace Movement and Eastern Question

district committees had been formed by February  and eighty-three meetings organized, ‘chiefly among the agricultural class’. The WPA’s impressive constituency of support was activated. A peace conference held under the auspices of the Leicester Trades Council, for example, was attended by  representatives of local craft unions and other workers’ societies, among them the Perseverance Co-operative Society, the Wesleyan Reform Society, the Operative Painters’ Society, the United Elastic Braid Hands, and the Cigar Makers’ Mutual Association.12 In February  the Arbitrator chastised Gladstone for now contemplating joint force against Turkey: It would be a matter of the deepest regret, if the leaders of the Liberal Party should make shipwreck of their cause by endeavouring to persuade their followers to become the war party. Such a course would still further divide their already weak forces, compel the friends of peace to repudiate their counsel and throw themselves into the arms of the Tories . . . come what may we must have no war.

The five resolutions Gladstone introduced to the Commons on  April called, in effect, for military intervention in the name of international ‘public law’. To Cremer’s relief, he eventually withdrew three of them, leaving only a statement that the Porte had lost all claim to the support of the powers. It would have been a shame, the Arbitrator said, if Gladstone, ‘by far the greatest and best Prime Minister we ever had’, had gone into one lobby and ‘Mr Bright, Mr Forster, Mr Richard, Sir Wilfrid Lawson’ into the other. But allegiance to Gladstone and his language of international moralism was exceptionally strong. It soon became evident that most WPA activists could not follow Cremer in his opposition to Gladstone’s original policy. At the annual meeting of the Association, a motion praising the former Prime Minister was ‘vigorously’ supported by Howard Evans, Britten, and—a new recruit—James Rowlands. Despite opposition from Cremer, Lucraft, and three others, it was backed by a large majority.13 Russia’s unilateral declaration of war against Turkey meant that the peace movement’s main concern was once again a British defence of the Porte. The WPA castigated British financiers and Turkish ‘bondholders’ who were encouraging Disraeli, the ‘mountebank Premier’, to go to war. This emphasis on finance represents a new development in radical pacific-ism—a challenge to the Cobdenite liberal pacific-ist argument that all international commerce improved the chances of peace. The 12 13

Arb., Dec. , ; Jan. , , ; Arb., Feb. , ; Apr. , –. Arb., Feb. , –; May , –.

‒



financial critique was also often anti-semitic. Take the following WPA statement: There can be no doubt that at the present moment the Jews are masters of the situation, they hold the purse strings of Europe: without their countenance and support very few nations can raise loans for warlike or any other purposes . . . Too many Israelites have already burnt their fingers with Turkish bonds, the hope of redeeming which has without doubt exercised a very potential influence in the support which they have accorded their debtors.

In May  the WPA, having been asked by the Peace Society to ‘be on the watch to exert influence’, circulated , copies of Shall We Go To War?, an address endorsed by  representative working men, which blamed war on more familiar radical demons—landowners, ‘the sordid section of the press’, and ‘military and naval officers’—as well as ‘mercenary capitalists’. Cremer appealed to sympathizers for extra funds to cover the cost of distribution.14 After holding out for longer than expected, the Turkish army suffered serious setbacks in December  and Russian forces began to advance towards Constantinople. ‘The danger of being called upon to interfere in the Eastern struggle increases with every defeat of the Turks’ Cremer and his associates noted; ‘we are carefully watching for symptoms of danger and are ready to sound the alarm.’ The situation became critical early in , when, in response to the collapse of Turkish military resistance and the occupation by Russia of Adrianople, Disraeli’s Government sought an emergency vote of credit from Parliament to make military preparations, and sent a British fleet to Constantinople. Even Lord Derby believed that Disraeli would go to war: ‘he believes thoroughly in “prestige” as all foreigners do, and would think it (quite sincerely) in the interests of the country to spend  millions on a war if the result was to make foreign states think more highly of us as a military power.’15 The Peace Society committee now issued an address in response to ‘the Present Crisis’ and called for public meetings, petitions to Parliament and memorials to the Queen. More than , petitions in favour of peace were signed—with an aggregate of over , signatures—and presented to the Commons during February and March. A memorial signed by , women was organized by the Ladies Auxiliary.16 Cremer asked the Peace Society committee whether his Association should gather its 14 Arb., Jan. , –; MB,  Apr. ;  May ; Arb., May , , , –, ; June , . 15 Arb., Dec. , ; Saab, Relucant Icon, ; Robert Blake, Disraeli (Oxford, ), . 16 HP, Jan. , ; Arb., Mar. , ; HP, June , .

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

agents together for a public meeting in Exeter Hall, but it was deemed ‘not desirable to incur the expense of such a meeting under existing circumstances’. Henry Richard joined a deputation to Hartington and Granville on  April, representing Liberal associations all over the country. The group was led by John Bright and included Samuel Morley, Jacob Bright, A. J. Mundella, and Joseph Chamberlain. Mundella, who was one of the most vigorous opponents of Disraeli’s policy, complained that, having been denounced by Conservatives a year before as an advocate ‘of a policy of war’, he was now once more attacked by them for believing in ‘peace at any price’.17 Richard and Cremer might well have criticized him from the other side—they would have preferred him to have stuck to a peaceful policy, rather than having been seduced by talk of a crusade. A variety of groups took a prominent role in this latest peace agitation. Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers’ Union sent an address to its sixty thousand members calling for neutrality; Arch warned Disraeli ‘that if he went to war he must not count on taking the agricultural labourers to be shot at for thirteen pence a day. They were determined that until they had obtained the franchise they would take no part in the wars of England.’ During January, thirty-one agricultural labourers’ meetings were held in Northamptonshire alone. Samuel Morley, who had worked with J. J. Merriman and the City Neutrality Committee until that body had become belligerently anti-Turk, formed his own Nonconformist Vigilance Committee. The Revd G. M. Murphy’s regular ‘Saturday night newspaper readings’ in Lambeth attracted an audience of several thousand at the height of the crisis, and a working-men’s committee led by Charles Bradlaugh held an outdoor demonstration in Hyde Park on  February which attracted the biggest crowd of all—estimates ranged from , to , people.18  The peace associations were also learning to cope with a new phenomenon—an orchestrated popular agitation calling for war. As early as November , speakers at a Peace Society meeting in Hope Hall had been interrupted by ‘rowdy cheers for Beaconsfield and by rounds of Kentish fire’. When the Quaker Samuel J. Capper spoke of Britain’s Saab, Reluctant Icon, , ; MB,  Feb. ; Times,  Jan. , . Saab, Reluctant Icon, –, ; Daily News,  Dec. , ; Pamela Horn, Joseph Arch (–): The Farm Workers’ Leader (Kineton, ), –. 17 18

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

refusal to be involved again as a belligerent in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire, there was ‘a great uproar by rowdies and “Orangemen”’. The police were called and some of the principal troublemakers were ejected. The most important organizer of the pro-war campaign on the streets was the incomparable Maltman Barry—friend of Marx, former IWMA council member, outspoken anti-Cobdenite, secretary of the Manhood Suffrage League, and Tory agent. At a large neutrality meeting at St James’s Hall, organized by the LRL and EQA in May , Barry introduced a pro-Government amendment. The Manhood Suffrage League went on to hold its own, small meeting in Hyde Park at which Russia’s illiberal record was roundly criticized and the Bulgarian atrocities blamed on Balkan agitators. Charles Wade of the WPA attended, and tried to move an amendment against the resolution, but was ‘hustled by roughs’. Eventually, thirty members of the Marylebone branch of the Labourers’ Union chased Barry’s group out of the Park. By the summer of , the Arbitrator claimed that agents were paying Londoners to sing music-hall songs as part of an organized pro-war campaign—‘We don’t want to fight, but by jingo when we do’, was being ‘sung nightly’. The novelty of the situation was such that G. J. Holyoake coined the term ‘jingoism’.19 During the winter of –, the key pro-war groups included the Turkish Defence Association and the Polish Society of the White Eagle. The Manhood Suffrage League had ceased to operate but Barry continued to be active through the National Society for the Resistance of Russian Aggression and the Protection of British Interests in the East, formed in August . He was involved in the fracas in Trafalgar Square on  December which ensued after Osborne, Galbraith, and Rowlands of the WPA arrived with a brass band, intending to hold a meeting ‘to protest against an unholy war’. They ‘found a large number of roughs and some hundreds of idle people awaiting them’. There was a fight to take possession of the table, the police intervened and several people were arrested. Barry stood on the pediment of Nelson’s Column waving the Turkish flag. He formed a procession of Government supporters, marched to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston Square and sent a series of resolutions to Disraeli, which denounced ‘the desperate and carefully planned attempt of Russian agents to break up the meeting’. That evening the WPA held a meeting in Cannon Street. Opposing an antiRussian amendment, Beales made it clear that it was from ‘no love of the 19 HP, Dec. , ; Stan Shipley, Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London (Oxford, []), , –; Daily News,  May , ; Arb., June , ; Arb., July , –; Hugh Cunningham, ‘Jingoism in –’, Victorian Studies,  (–), .

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

Russians that he protested against the continued rule of Turks over Christians, but with the same love of liberty which had urged him to advocate the claims of the Poles and Circassians in bygone times’.20 The peace-or-war debate was now being conducted on the streets. It became ‘next to impossible’, the Arbitrator said, ‘to hold a public meeting anywhere’. ‘Senseless youths’ were being raked together from the music halls, and ‘these noisy paid-for demonstrations’ were being mistaken for ‘genuine expressions of public opinion’. ‘Music Hall rowdies’ besieged a Peckham meeting hall on  February where a WPA meeting was due to be held. Their shouts—‘“Britons never shall be slaves”, “We don’t want to fight” etc’—drowned out the chairman. A crowd ‘red hot with excitement’ then stormed the platform and drove away its occupants; seats were broken and windows smashed. Two days later, there were similar events at a meeting in Paddington, chaired by the Revd John Clifford, president of the Baptist Union. The hall was quickly filled ‘to overflowing’; a ‘fugleman jumped up with “Three Cheers for Lord Beaconsfield”’ and ‘half the meeting rose and roared responsively’. Cremer moved that the influence of the British Government should be used on behalf of the subject races of Turkey. ‘For nearly half an hour’, the Arbitrator reported, ‘he did battle with the audience who alternately listened and howled, the latter largely prevailing.’21 It was thought advisable to abandon a meeting in Battersea the following day: ‘a yelling crowd who came evidently prepared for another night’s diversion found posted on the doors “No meeting tonight”’. The windows of Gladstone’s house were smashed by a jingo mob, thought to have been encouraged by the Tory high command. Under the heading ‘Tory Tactics’, the Arbitrator proclaimed: ‘At no period within our recollection have there been such systematic efforts made to stifle public opinion . . . agents are tempting working men with subsidies to get up meetings in support of Government policy, or to oppose those held in favour of neutrality.’ The WPA was anxious to make clear that the jingoes were not ‘artisans and mechanics’ but ‘swells and roughs’. Benjamin Britten told a Peace Society meeting: ‘the intelligent portion of the working classes, the skilled artisans, are generally in favour of peace, whereas the “jingo” pro-war party is recruited from the higher and lower orders of the population, especially from the uneducated and ignorant among the masses.’22 20 Arb., Jan. , ; Thompson, Public Opinion, ii, –; Saab, Reluctant Icon, ; 21 Times,  Dec. , . Arb., Feb. , –. 22 H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone – (Oxford, ), ; Arb., Mar. , ; HP, June , –.

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

 ’  ’   In April , the international crisis became even more acute when Russia imposed the Treaty of San Stefano on Turkey. Disraeli called out the reserves, Lord Derby resigned in protest, and the country was awash with rumours that war was just hours away. A Commons amendment opposing Disraeli’s latest action was introduced by Lawson, and spoken to by Richard, who described the pro-war lobby as inspired by ‘a blind, unreasoning hatred and fear of Russia’. It attracted sixty-four votes, including that of Gladstone. The Peace Society committee decided against holding public meetings ‘because they may be broken up by violence or tumult’. The WPA, on the other hand, felt the time had finally arrived to make its grand gesture—the summoning of its local agents for a large meeting in London. Cremer warned Richard that it would cost £ or £.23 It went ahead thanks to Arthur Albright, a wealthy Quaker chemical manufacturer from Birmingham, who was a former business partner of the Sturges and a lifelong friend of John Bright. He had been active locally in the peace campaign and now came to London with a view to encouraging a ‘special public effort at this crisis’. Richard recommended that Albright speak to the WPA. A later minute recorded that at first Albright ‘seemed disinclined to take this step as doubting the status and capacity of that body’. But ‘after an interview with the officers of the Association he expressed himself perfectly satisfied with what he had seen as evidencing its earnestness and ability’. He handed over a cheque for £,. On  April, Albright attended a meeting of the Peace Society’s general committee—its mechanism for consulting provincial sympathizers on special occasions—and told them that a conference of representative working men would take place in London the following day. Albright reassured the executive that the resolutions would be ‘in harmony with the principles of the Peace Society’.24 Giving its agents only four days’ notice, the WPA staged its ‘Workmen’s Anti-War and Arbitration Conference’ on  April in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street. ‘The gravity of the occasion must be our apology for the shortness of the notice,’ the convening circular stated: ‘the war-at-anyprice party are audacious and unscrupulous in the agencies which they 23 Saab, Reluctant Icon, ; Arb., Apr. , ; HP, May , ; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( Apr. ), , ; HP, May , ; Apr. , . 24 Arthur Albright, Notes of His Life (Birmingham, ); MB,  Apr. ;  Apr. .

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employ, and, utterly regardless of the distress among our order, are prepared to intensify it by a purposeless and wicked war. To checkmate their purpose, we earnestly entreat you to attend.’ The conference was presided over by Thomas Burt—who had presumably forgiven Cremer for his attack on him at the TUC—and was attended by  delegates of trades unions and other workmen’s bodies from England, Scotland, and Wales. It was, the Arbitrator said, ‘a red-letter day in the history of the Workmen’s Peace Association’, providing proof of ‘the strong anti-war spirit animating the working classes’. One speaker asserted, to great applause, that ‘if Lord Beaconsfield sent an army abroad, he would have to keep one at home to prevent a rising of the people.’ Daniel Guile declared: ‘if the Premier wants to fight let him go and fight (laughter); he has no right to call upon us to give him our flesh and blood to go and fight for the protection of the interests of Turkish bondholders and Jew lenders of money.’ Other speakers made it clear that their opposition to war was not absolute. Burt argued, for example, that in the situation of ‘a just and necessary war, working people would support the government to a man (Applause).’ He did not believe ‘that working people were imbued with what is said to be the “peace-at-any-price” policy’, but they were ‘bound at any rate before plunging into war, or being any parties to a war, to know that there is good reason for fighting (Hear, Hear; Cheers)’.25 Absolutist peace views had no popular appeal. The highest drama came when ‘Gladstone unexpectedly entered the room.’ At his appearance there was ‘vehement and long sustained cheering’. The Arbitrator said that he was ‘evidently astonished and deeply moved’ at his reception. His speech distinguished his viewpoint from that of the peace movement: I was not at all surprised to hear that in this meeting of representatives of working men, peace associations are represented. I quite admit that peace associations are not to be taken as representing working men generally, because such associations are very much disposed to recommend peace on all occasions, while a very large portion of the working classes do not go so far as that, though they always wish to know what occasion there is for war, and what considerations ought to guide them. (Applause).

But Gladstone also declared that war was ‘highly profitable to certain classes’ and confirmed that the large number of letters of abuse and criticism he had received were not from working men. He ‘resumed 25

G. J. Jones, Wales and the Quest for Peace (Cardiff, ), ; Arb., Apr. , –.

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

his seat amid a storm of applause which for some time promised no abatement’.26 The WPA could now be proud of its contribution to the anti-war effort. The Peace Society committee agreed that the conference had been ‘very successful’, but still shied away from organizing a large meeting of its own. It noted that the cause of peace and non-intervention was already well-represented by the WPA, EQA, and the ‘Declaration Against War’, organized by Ursula Bright, which had collected , signatures. The Society decided to hold a conference jointly with the EQA, and Richard drafted an invitation which ‘persons opposed to the prospect of war could generally accept’. A new committee was planned on a ‘broad’—i.e. pacific-ist—basis, which would be housed in a separate office to that of the Peace Society. The EQA twice declined the invitation, however, and the scheme was finally abandoned.27 Dissatisfied with inaction, Albright sent a letter proposing to convene another national peace conference in London on  June. He approached the Peace Society committee, hoping for its co-operation. At the Society’s annual meeting of members on  May, there was ‘much difference of opinion as to certain points of Albright’s proposals’. Many present were apparently concerned that a large London meeting would be too controversial, and the Society once again opted for caution: it was decided ‘to leave the matter to friends of peace in their individual capacity’. Later that day, the annual public meeting was enlivened by ‘a small party of jingoes’. J. W. Pease, the Quaker MP for South Durham and nephew of the president, chose this occasion to underline that the Society had ‘nothing to do with politics’.28 The WPA, in contrast, organized a second conference in Farringdon Hall on  May, attended by  members of Arch’s agricultural labourers’ union. Among those on the platform were Richard, Cremer, Lucraft, and Albright.29 Most of the balance of the £, given by Albright to the WPA for the first conference was used to organize both the second London meeting and several provincial conferences: in Birmingham on  May; in Liverpool and Glasgow the day after; and two more on  May— at Edinburgh and at Leeds, the latter involving delegates from twenty-five towns in Yorkshire and South Durham. The total income of the Albright Fund amounted to £,, a sum that included substantial donations 26 PS MSS, ‘Report of the Albright Anti-War Fund’; Arb., Apr. , –; HP, May , ; Daily News,  Apr. , . 27 HP, June , ; MB,  May;  Apr.;  Apr.;  May,  May . 28 29 MB,  May;  May ; HP, June , . Arb., May , .

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from Passmore Edwards, John Horniman, Andrew Dunn, treasurer of the Peace Society, and Samuel Morley, who, ‘with his usual munificence, contributed £’. After paying for the various conferences, £ of the Fund was left.30 This was especially welcome as the WPA’s grant from the Peace Society was reduced to £ in May , owing to the Society’s own ‘shortness of funds’. Albright wanted the money to be used to assist ‘the further development of a general movement for the promotion of the great principle of international arbitration’.31 No doubt recalling the suspicions surrounding Cremer’s handling of Reform League subsidies, Howard Evans later made a point of noting that there had been nothing ‘mercenary’ about the spending of Albright’s money.32 Although the Peace Society had not made a memorable impact on this peace campaign (except through its secretary), it was keen to reemphasize how far the recent agitation had extended into a section of opinion ‘not hitherto identified . . . with us’. The level of opposition to a war which would have been fought essentially to defend the route to India is indeed striking. But the episode also raised a number of problems for the peace movement. First, the calls for a crusade against Turkey split the ‘idealist’ camp and confirmed that progressives were as susceptible as ever to the idea of Britain’s moral responsibility to fight on behalf of oppressed peoples overseas. Second, it was likely that allegiance to Gladstone had been as instrumental in the opposition to war as the existence of deep peace convictions. Finally, it was once again made evident that some popular support for war existed, and this challenged radical notions of the natural peaceableness of ‘the people’. The peace associations dismissed these problems. In particular, they explained away jingoism as a Tory plot, and rejected the idea that Disraelian Conservatism could have any genuine appeal for the working classes. Overall, the associations considered the peace cause to have been boosted by the return of the Eastern Question. They could now look even more confidently to the Liberal Party, dominated once again by Gladstone, to pursue a foreign policy based on peace and morality rather than power. The last action taken by the Peace Society in response to the crisis was a ‘proposal to bring the subject of arbitration and disarmament’ before the Congress of Berlin, held in the summer of . A petition was drawn up, intended to bear the signatures of various European peace societies and the international law organizations, but when only two 30 Arb., May , ; June , ; Aug. , ; ‘Report of the Albright Anti-War 31 Fund’; Arb., May , passim. MB,  May;  May ; Arb., Apr. , . 32 Howard Evans, Radical Fights of Forty Years (London, ), –.

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Continental associations expressed any interest it was decided to confine it to English signatures. A deputation made up of Richard, Leone Levi, and Passy presented the memorial to the Congress, but it was dismissed with a technical objection. This highlighted a familiar dilemma for the peace movement. Such great-power congresses were applauded, on the one hand, as instances of inter-governmental co-operation. On the other hand, they showed how unlikely it was that governments—particularly non-democratic governments—would ever bring about permanent peace. The Peace Society described the Berlin Congress as ‘already a virtual Court of International Arbitration’ but was more clear-sighted in asking whether it was likely that governments would ‘ever move, of their own accord and by their own choice’, towards arms reduction and other peace policies. ‘Emphatically, no!’ the Herald of Peace answered. ‘It is not from above, but from beneath, that the current of a successful movement must come. The people must become impressed and energized into action.’ The WPA’s response was more straightforwardly critical. The Congress had made ‘a peace of military despots’ and there was ‘not a free or an enslaved Christian in the South East of Europe’ that did not ‘owe England a legacy of disappointment and ill-will’. ‘What have we gained?’ Cremer asked. Merely ‘the extension of the imperialist idea and the diminution of Parliamentary authority.’33    The lack of support for the Peace Society’s Congress of Berlin petition made obvious the comparative lack of vitality of the Continental peace movement. The British associations continued to be hopeful that this situation would improve, and were not always cognizant of the increased difficulties faced by peace movements in illiberal political cultures.34 In  Cremer had visited Berlin hoping to organize an Anglo-German conference of workmen—part of his scheme to fashion a new, ‘Lib–Lab’ International in the image of the WPA. His main ally in Germany was Max Hirsch, a trade-union progressive ‘hated’ by the socialist Social Democrats. When a meeting took place, complete with a police presence, it was taken over by members of the SPD, who thought it ‘a waste of time’ to consider the subject of peace ‘before the greater question, the social 33 HP, June , ; Aug. , ; MB,  June ;  June ;  July ; HP, Nov. , ; A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organized Movements for International Peace (London, ), ; Arb., July , . 34 See Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War (Princeton, ).

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

emancipation of the labourers’ was settled: until workers were ‘politically and socially free’ they had to ‘make war upon their tyrants’. The SPD representatives made ‘personal attacks’ on Hirsch and were, according to the Arbitrator, ‘impervious to reason and argument’. When a committee was proposed, consisting almost exclusively of SPD representatives, Cremer spoke out, as he later recounted: At this stage I thought it necessary to . . . interfere and . . . stated that we held the doctrine that freedom, political and social, is the inevitable result of peace, while war too often creates and multiplies tyrants, that peace precedes rather than grows out of liberty. In England we had carefully avoided identifying our movement with party politics . . . we had men entertaining diverse views on political and social questions cordially co-operating with us.

Cremer ‘respectfully declined to hand over’ his peace project to the SPD and so the majority left the meeting. He had no better luck in Dresden, Leipzig, Cologne, Frankfurt, or Strasbourg. In Dresden and Leipzig he found that ‘nearly all the workmen . . . appear to be Social Democrats.’ Cremer met with the SPD leaders Leibknecht and Bebel, but nothing came of it.35 Undaunted, the WPA planned a peace conference involving ‘delegates from workmen’s associations in the various countries of Europe’ to take place in Paris in , to coincide with the Industrial Exhibition.36 Permission was granted from the police, and a hundred men crossed the Channel. The conference met at the Theatre Chateau d’Eau, which was ‘filled from floor to ceiling’, due to the efforts of the WPA’s Parisian friends—in particular Auguste Desmoulins and Charles Limousin. But it was deprived of the publicity which would have been guaranteed by the attendance of Victor Hugo (a veteran of the Paris Peace Congress of  and the Geneva Congress of ) and the socialist Louis Blanc, both of whom had promised to come. Notwithstanding this disappointment, Lucraft declared it ‘one of the most glorious demonstrations he had ever witnessed, and the realization of an idea which he had cherished for twenty years, namely the union of workmen of all nations whose rulers constantly pitted them against each other’. Cremer left the meeting convinced that ‘the working men of Paris are in favour of peace’, but taken aback by the belligerent patriotism of French radicals. He was depressed that ‘an influential section of the Republican party’, associated with Gambetta, was opposed to ‘peaceful propaganda’ and favoured Mazzini’s proposal of ‘one more war’. Louis 35

Arb., July , –.

36

Arb., Aug. , .

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

Blanc wrote to Cremer: ‘There is today something more urgent than to preach perpetual peace, viz—to work everywhere for the triumph of the only system calculated to render it possible, that is the really republican system. War has causes we must attack first if we wish for its disappearing. The substitution of arbitration for war would be an excellent thing, but it will come only when peoples are cured of the malady of having masters.’ Cremer responded: the ‘masters’ which he says must be got rid of before peace can be secured, exist because the people, foolishly and in ignorance, supply them with the force without which they could not maintain their power. We propose to take away that force, by teaching people how to adjust disputes without its employment. That lesson the people are fast learning. A little more instruction and the ‘masters’ will disappear because the bayonets by which they are upheld will be wanting.

‘We do not ask that France should disarm while the other powers remain armed,’ Cremer reassured his French supporters, ‘we ask that it shall arm only for the defensive.’37 A letter from Hodgson Pratt honouring the secretary on the occasion of the WPA’s eighth anniversary emphasized Cremer’s success at having reached thousands of Frenchmen: ‘I have heard him termed one of the best organizers in London,’ Pratt wrote, ‘and he has achieved the same reputation in Paris. An old French friend of mine wrote to me that he was extremely surprised at the unexpected success of the workmen’s peace meeting in Paris, and that success was mainly due to Mr Cremer.’ The WPA had been successful ‘in spite of class prejudices on one hand’ and ‘indifference’ to the peace question on the other. The eternally optimistic Pratt was keen for the Peace Society, too, to develop overseas. In , for example, he facilitated the Society’s involvement—jointly with the Ligue internationale de la paix—in a Paris peace conference. Richard ascertained beforehand that the resolutions due to be submitted to the conference were ‘unobjectionable, with the exception of two conceding the justifiable nature of defensive war’.38 The Paris gathering, however, revealed clearly the difference in outlook between the Peace Society and Continental peace associations. A delegate from France objected to ‘Mr Richard’s quotation from Sir Robert Peel on the respecting of existing frontiers: this principle, he said, would be fatal to French hopes of regaining Alsace-Lorraine and also to the reconstitution of Poland.’ Doubts were also expressed regarding disarmament—a 37 38

Arb., Sept. , –; Oct. , . Arb., Dec. , ; MB,  June ;  Sept. ;  Oct. .

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

policy which had little appeal for Continental activists, whose nations could easily be invaded—and arbitration, which a section of the Continental peace movement saw as practicable only once a community of republics or liberal states was in existence. At a ‘stormy’ concluding sitting, an attack was made on the Vatican, holding it responsible for wars and national animosities. When plans emerged for a ‘Universal Federation of Peace Societies’, Richard opposed the scheme. He considered its programme to be ‘too vague as a ground of action’. He also noted that several of the societies lacked proper organization and pecuniary support—the expenses were ‘likely to fall very unequally upon different societies’. The Peace Society preferred ‘co-operation without formal organization’. In  Richard reiterated his opposition in a letter to Henri Bellaire, secretary of Passy’s organization: the Geneva League is, as you well know, M. Lemonnier and little else; the Universal Peace Union of Philadelphia is really Mr Love. Meanwhile, most of the English societies—for example the Liverpool Peace Society and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Arbitration Association—are really mere branches or auxiliaries of our Society and derive nearly their whole income from our funds. The Workmen’s Peace Association though an independent organization is in like manner dependent on us for by far the largest proportion of its resources. Thus you will see that the number of the societies who have a substantial and independent existence is very limited.39

Richard had a duty, of course, to ensure the Peace Society’s financial security. Yet its resistance to such initiatives frustrated European-minded activists like Pratt and left the Society open to the charge that it was inward-looking and merely an offshoot of Quakerism, with little interest in being genuinely political or international.   ‘’ The fervour of opposition to Disraeli’s policies in the East was carried over into the Liberal Party’s more general agitation against the Government’s foreign and imperial policies in  and . The peace associations were enthusiastically supportive of Gladstone, whose Midlothian Campaign was the centrepiece of this agitation. Disraeli’s ‘forward’ imperialism was criticized for producing higher taxes, a neglect of domestic reform, the erosion of constitutional liberties in favour of 39 Times,  Oct. , ;  Oct. , ; MB,  Jan. ;  Jan. ; LB, Richard to H. Bellaire, , copy.

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

‘personal government’, and deteriorating relations with other imperial powers.40 Pacific-ism was at the heart of the debate and the peace movement dared to hope that the significance of their ‘question of questions’ had at last been fully comprehended. The peace movement’s critique of imperial expansionism was wellestablished and had strategic, economic, and moral elements. First, expansion was guaranteed to damage diplomatic relations, to produce wars and to make Britain more vulnerable. Second, it was not economically beneficial to the people, only to aristocratic, military, and commercial élites. Finally, the process of colonization by force was morally repugnant.41 Peace activists spent little time discussing the problems of imperial administration; their primary concern was how expansion would harm domestic politics and produce war. The main solution to the problems of empire put forward by the peace movement was self-government for Britain’s possessions.42 Disraeli was hounded by progressives for his ‘spirited’ policy overseas—his esteem was already low, owing to a bout of economic depression. The Arbitrator underlined the distress and unemployment in the country, which threatened ‘tumult and riot’. Disraeli had ‘produced more misery in this country than all other living Englishmen put together’. Commerce was ‘paralysed’, the Peace Society said, ‘by the long continuance of a policy of diplomatic “fireworks” and of jealous political irritation . . . So long as British millions can be thus kept staring, with open mouths and clenched fists, at imaginary enemies far away . . . so long will their own greatest home interests suffer.’43 Protests focused on Afghanistan and South Africa. The Conservative Government, worried about Russian expansion into Afghanistan because of the perennial need to protect the route to India, pressed for the establishment of British paramountcy. Open conflict was provoked by the local Viceroy, Lord Lytton. The peace associations denied that Russia had any designs on British territory and described Britain’s action as a ‘war of 40 Annual Register (London, ), ; HP, Jan. , –. See also Lewis Apjohn, John Bright and the Party of Peace, Retrenchment and Reform (London, ), ; P. J. Durrans, ‘A Two-Edged Sword: The Liberal Attack on Disraelian Imperialism’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,  (–). 41 See Martin Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations – (Oxford, ), –. 42 See Bernard Porter, Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes to Colonialism in Africa – (London, ); Stephen Howe, Anti-Colonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire – (Oxford, ). 43 Richard Shannon, Gladstone: Heroic Minister – (London, ), : Arb., Nov. , ; Dec. , ; HP, Nov. , .

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

aggression’. They joined an agitation—including a specially formed Afghan Committee—the key elements of which were the left wing of the Liberal Party and the ‘left wing’ of Nonconformity. The Peace Society praised ‘the journals of the Society of Friends, the Baptists . . . many of the Congregationalists’, and the Unitarian periodicals, which had ‘taken a brave position’. Individual Unitarians came in for special commendation—the Revd R. L. Carpenter, the Revd William Henry Channing, and P. W. Clayden, leader writer for the Daily News and a National Liberal Federation activist.44 On the ‘other side’ were the Church of England, the Presbyterians, and the Wesleyans. The Peace Society co-operated with the Society of Friends in arranging a meeting in protest against the war, held on  October . It was notable principally for the presence of Maltman Barry, now associated with the Working Men’s Conservative Association, who seconded a pro-Government amendment. During the following month the Society held meetings in Birmingham, Plymouth, Stoke, Rochdale, and Bradford. A large rally was organized in Bristol, attended by Richard, Lewis Appleton, Thorold Rogers, and the Quaker chocolate manufacturer Joseph Storrs Fry. A group described by the Herald of Peace as ‘“jingo” rowdies’ disrupted the meeting, singing ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘McDermott’s war song’. Richard insisted that ‘to take and punish the Ameer of Afghanistan on account of their own fear of Russia was a poor, cowardly, unEnglish, unmanly, and contemptible thing to do.’45 The WPA council called a special meeting on  October which decided that the war had been ‘provoked by ourselves’ and was ‘unjust in principle’. Not only was it destined to ‘further augment the sufferings of the industrial and commercial classes’ but also to ‘defeat the very object the Government professes to have in view’. The Association convened a large protest meeting at the Westminster Palace Hotel.46 Over South Africa, Disraeli again suffered at the hands of a ‘prancing proconsul’. The High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, committed Britain to a war against the Zulus, which led to another military defeat: in February  news reached home of the massacre of British forces at Isandhlwana. The Herald of Peace declared the conflict to be ‘anything but a “little war” . . . five hundred of our own men and thirty officers 44 HP, Nov. , –; July , . For the Afghan Committee see John V. Crangle, ‘The Decline and Survival of British Anti-Imperialism (–)’, D.Phil. thesis (Univ. of South Carolina, ), fo. . 45 Arb., Nov. , ; HP, Dec. , ; HP, Dec. , Jan. ; MB,  Dec. ; 46 HP, Dec. , . Arb., Oct. , ; Nov. , –; Dec. , .

‒



perished in one day.’ It was, for the peace movement, a ‘purely aggressive war. No one pretends that the Zulus have invaded British territory, or that they have touched the life or property of a single British colonist.’ The WPA made the same point, but couched in non-absolutist terms: the Zulus ‘were simply doing what . . . is the duty of every good citizen, namely defending their country from foreign invasion’. They had ‘studiously refrained from crossing the frontier’ and had acted ‘solely on the defensive’.47 The Arbitrator detected a change in the public’s attitude to Disraeli— with the loss of British soldiers, he was ‘no longer idol of music hall audiences’. Excited reports were given of the Liberal demonstration held in the Pomona Gardens, Manchester, on  October , attended by up to , people, during which John Bright denounced the Government’s imperial policy as bringing to the people nothing but ‘the expenditure of blood and treasure, increased debt and taxes, and added risks of war in every quarter of the globe’. Gladstone’s speech at the meeting likened Britain to Gulliver among the Lilliputians, tied down by many overseas responsibilities, which the Tories were continually trying to increase. The WPA journal also cited the Liberal leader’s speech to the ‘Ladies of Midlothian’: I am not one of those who have even professed to believe that the state which our society has reached permits us to make a vow of universal peace, and to renounce upon all cases the alternative of war; but I am here to say that a long experience of life leads me, not towards any abstract doctrine upon the subject, but to a deeper and deeper conviction of the enormous mischief of war, even in the best and most favourable circumstances, and of the mischief—indescribable and irredeemable—of causeless and unnecessary war. (Cheers.)

Cremer’s Association considered this a ringing endorsement; it began to identify itself more formally with Gladstone’s political cause, appointing a political committee which was designed to help ‘expel’ the ‘present Government from office’. The Peace Society shied away from such an explicit political position but nevertheless voiced a forceful radical critique: imperialism was ‘a class question—a question of hungry placehunters and greedy speculators . . . Jingoistic imperialism is neither Conservative nor Liberal, neither national nor patriotic. It is the mere mongrel offspring of alien fantasies and selfish class interests.’48 HP, Mar. , ; Arb., Mar. , –. Arb., Jan. , ; Feb. , ; HP, March , ; Arb., Nov. , ; Crangle, ‘Decline and Survival of British Anti-Imperialism’, fo. ; Arb., Dec. , –; Dec. , ; Apr. , ; Mar. , ; HP, May , . 47 48

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

Radicals were becoming increasingly important within the Parliamentary Liberal Party—a development, on the whole, beneficial to the peace movement.49 With Gladstone in tub-thumping mode, pacificism was popular. But the Peace Society still had only limited appeal: it remained, in the words of the Sheffield Independent, ‘identified in the public mind with the idea of peace at any price’. This was made worse by the sensitivity of progressives to Conservative Party taunts that Liberals were neglectful of national security. In a debate on the Afghan question in the Commons, for example, Disraeli accused Liberals of being animated by ‘the principle of peace at any price’, which had ‘occasioned more wars than the most ruthless conquerors’. The Peace Society noted that all Liberals were ‘ludicrously sensitive’ on the matter: they ‘scarcely ever make a speech without ostentatiously proclaiming they don’t belong to the peace-at-any-price party’. Richard yet again reminded his readers: Whatever efforts have been made by the peace party in this country to promote arbitration, or a mutual reduction of armaments, or to enforce the principle of non-intervention, they have proceeded on these general grounds of reason, justice, humanity, and the interests of the nation and of mankind, which most men are prepared, in thought at least, to admit.

The phrase ‘peace at any price’, he said, had gathered around it a ‘large amount of stupid prejudice and unreasoning reproach’.50   :   The Peace Society faced another long-standing problem: money. Its recent efforts had proved a ‘serious drain’ on its financial resources, and the Special Fund set up after Henry Richard’s arbitration motion was now exhausted.51 The recession made things worse. In , the Society reduced payments to its auxiliaries; the WPA’s grant was reduced to £. Partly as a result, the income of Cremer’s association in –— £—was smaller than in any previous year of its existence. The printing of the Arbitrator was interrupted in the summer of  due to shortage of funds, and the WPA began to canvass benefactors who also 49 See T. W. Heyck, The Dimensions of British Radicalism: The Case of Ireland – 50 (Urbana, Ill., ), –, –. HP, July , ; Jan. , –. 51 The appeal had raised £, thanks to the munificence of Edward Pease, J. W. Pease, Samuel Morley, Thomas Thomasson, and Edward Backhouse, the Sunderland Quaker colliery owner and banker—each had given at least £.

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

supported the Peace Society. Richard had to advise Cremer of ‘the inconvenience of simultaneous appeals’.52 The Peace Society’s financial problems were in part due to its collector, Lewis Appleton, who was to make a considerable and unique impact on the peace movement. Appleton’s official relationship with the Peace Society began, as noted, in . His credentials were sound—he was given a testimonial, for instance, from Robert Charleton, a wealthy Bristol Quaker. As the new collector, he was paid £ a year plus  per cent commission on old subscriptions and  per cent on new subscriptions over £. In August  the Peace Society committee was told that Appleton had been ‘fairly successful in obtaining subscriptions’, having made sixty-six calls in London and accumulated thirty-six subscriptions, nearly all new. It pronounced itself gratified at this rate of success, ‘but suggested that the number of visits was rather small, compared with the time that he had been engaged’. Appleton almost immediately began to make a succession of bids for a higher salary and increased expenses.53 A second collector, Henry Catford, was appointed early in . Although he was less troublesome than Appleton, he was also less effective and his engagement was terminated at the end of the year: the committee could not deny that Appleton was ‘highly successful’ in collecting funds and was ‘very useful’ in this regard. When, in , Appleton asked for yet more money, it was decided to establish a special sub-committee to deal with ‘the whole question of his remuneration and expenses’. It soon became apparent, however, that he also wanted a higher profile. In , he applied to be a lecturer for the Society but was turned down. He also began to give lectures on the subject of ‘A Visit to the Battle-Fields of France’, which he later turned into a book. Despite the fact that the committee told him ‘not to address further meetings without their consent’, he carried on regardless. In  he became secretary of the Lancashire and Cheshire International Arbitration Association, though he resigned within months, as ‘his services were required in other parts of the country’.54 The administrative problems surrounding Appleton continued. In the autumn of , the sub-committee was dismayed at the news that his 52 HP, Sept. , insert; MB,  Aug. ;  July ; LB, Richard to William Pollard,  Jan. , copy; MB,  Feb.,  Apr. ; Arb., June , –. 53 MB,  May ;  Aug.. 54 MB,  Sept. ;  Dec. ;  July ;  Nov. ;  Mar. ;  Apr. ;  Dec. ;  Dec. ;  July ;  Sept. ;  Aug. ; HP, Oct. , ; MB,  Jan. ; Oct. ;  Aug. ; HP, May , ; HP, Dec. , ; June , ; MB,  Aug. ; HP, Nov. , .

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Peace Movement and Eastern Question

expenses—in addition to his salary and allowance for Sunday travelling— were ‘upwards of £’. The Society decided to appoint a special finance committee to deal with the difficulty. In – Appleton was found to be continuing his lectures, and the central committee threatened to fire him. It didn’t do much good. He began to issue circulars in the name of the Society without the committee’s approval. Then, at the height of the crisis over the Eastern Question, Appleton began, against the rules, to take his salary and expenses directly from the subscriptions he collected. The committee demanded an apology and a remittance of money, and again threatened him with the sack. Appleton asked for further improvements in his hours and pay and for permission to issue a local appeal to defray the expenses of meetings held to protest against the Afghan War. He also offered to organize a peace demonstration in Leeds, and to circulate a paper he had written on Conservative and Liberal Party finance— this was rejected by the committee on the grounds that it was ‘very much a party statement’.55 In November , Appleton announced that Passy’s French peace association had offered him the post of secretary (Henri Bellaire, who held the position, had died in the summer). Although he had ‘not at present definitely accepted the offer’, Appleton wanted to inform Richard of ‘the possibility of this change in his position’. His inability to speak French did not seem to be a barrier. Meanwhile, he used the Society’s money to issue an election circular without the committee’s permission, to which ‘strong objection’ was taken. Richard’s patience was running out. He wrote to Appleton, criticizing him for ‘writing pamphlets and making speeches at elections’ and involvement in ‘projects in connection with other bodies’. As a result of Appleton’s failure to do his ‘own proper work’, the Peace Society’s finances were ‘at a very trying and critical moment suffering seriously’. Appleton immediately sent a cheque (the money from several subscriptions), as well as a letter expressing grievance at Richard’s harsh tone. Richard replied: ‘It is no kindness to you to conceal from you the sentiments of those in whose service you are.’ In January , the finance committee pointed out once more the ‘extraordinary proportion of subscriptions absorbed by the cost of their collection under the present system’. It was decided, after fifteen years of aggravation, to terminate the Society’s arrangement with Appleton ‘with 55 MB,  Sept. ;  Oct. ;  Nov. ;  Nov. ;  Dec. ;  Feb. ;  Mar. ;  Oct. ;  Jan. ;  Dec. ;  Feb. ;  Dec. ;  Oct. .

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as little delay as possible’.56 In February the committee called a meeting to arrange for the collection of subscriptions after his departure. A rather desperate Appleton asked to be re-engaged: after an interview at which he was heard ‘at some length’, he tried to draw up acceptable terms, but the committee had finally had enough.57 His departure was the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the British peace movement. 56 MB,  Nov. ; IAPA Journal, July , ; MB,  Dec. ;  Oct. ; LB, Richard to Appleton,  Dec. , copy; MB,  Jan. . 57 MB,  Feb. ;  Mar. ;  Apr. ;  June ;  July .



–: The IAPA, Egypt, and the IAL ‘A struggle of right against might, truth against falsehood and for peace against war.’ Cremer, who described the  General Election in these terms, claimed that the WPA deserved ‘no small share of credit’ for the result. The Liberal victory was a cause for celebration within the peace movement: a ‘clerical and publican’s Parliament’ was giving way to ‘a people’s Parliament’ and there would be no more ‘diverting the attention of the people from home reforms by the old Tory dodge of wars and rumours of war’. ‘Notorious jingoes’, the Arbitrator said, had been replaced with ‘able and earnest advocates of peace’ such as Thorold Rogers, Hugh Mason, and J. P. Thomasson. The Herald of Peace added the names of Passmore Edwards, Alfred Illingworth, and W. S. Caine, and also mentioned the election of eleven Quaker MPs. The ‘peace party’ now comprised ‘at least  hearty advocates’.1 To capitalize on the new optimism surrounding Gladstone’s second Government, Henry Richard gave notice of a Parliamentary motion in favour of a reduction of armaments, and began a six-month lecture tour to drum up support. The Peace Society organized conferences at Swansea and Aberdare, and one at Liverpool which was attended by ‘several MPs and delegates from  towns in Lancashire and Cheshire’. The scale of the agitation did not match that in support of the arbitration motion in , partly because the number of meetings organized by the WPA was ‘contingent upon the financial position of the Association’—meetings were ‘useful but somewhat expensive’. Over a thousand petitions were nevertheless presented to Parliament, bearing a total of , names.2 The motion, introduced on  June, committed the Government ‘to enter into communication with other powers with a view to bring about a mutual and simultaneous reduction of European armaments’. It was designed to appeal not only to the recognized ‘peace party’, but to Radicals who believed that armament expenditure was unnecessarily Arb., Mar. , ; Apr. , ; HP, June , . MB,  Dec. ;  Jan. ; Arb., Feb. , ; June , ; July , ; A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organized Movements for International Peace (London, ), ; G. J. Jones, Wales and the Quest for Peace (Cardiff, ), . 1 2

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high. An amendment—proposed by Leonard Courtney, the journalist and Radical MP—to the effect that communication should take place ‘when the circumstances admit of it’ was accepted by Richard and by Gladstone. The Peace Society had no desire to embarrass a Government which seemed prepared to commit itself to peace policies.       Unwilling to sacrifice the good living he had made from peace activities, the refractory Lewis Appleton decided to set up a new society—as, it seems, he had threatened to do (Richard wrote privately that Appleton’s action was ‘partly I believe, as indeed he told us beforehand, in revenge for his dismissal and partly to create a place for himself ’). He organized a meeting at the Charing Cross Hotel on  August , at which a resolution was adopted to establish an association and after which a circular was issued to the ‘supporters of international arbitration’ in the hope of attracting adherents. The following month, a note appeared in the Arbitrator: Several enquiries have been addressed to us concerning a meeting which was held a few weeks ago at the Charing Cross Hotel with the object of forming an International Arbitration Society. The meeting, which was, we believe, a very small one, was convened by Mr Lewis Appleton, who was the collector of the ‘Peace Society’, but whose official connection with that body terminated some months ago. Mr Appleton now appears desirous of forming another society, but whether it is desirable or possible to do so time will determine. Neither the Peace Society nor our Association had anything to do with Mr Appleton’s venture, about which we knew nothing until we saw the announcement in the press.

Appleton found an ally in William Phillips, an old hand at forming societies for good causes—he had previously agitated for an equalization of poor rates, for the victims of the Lancashire cotton famine, and against compulsory church rates. It was in Phillips’s house that preliminary meetings took place; he became treasurer of the new society, Appleton was secretary.3 Also involved was Hodgson Pratt, the sometime international agent of the WPA, who had always held strong opinions about how to further the peace cause. The new International Arbitration and Peace Association, which set up offices at  Parliament Street, tapped the optimism surrounding the Liberal election victory and found a new constituency of support for peace policies—its circular attracted , adherents, including peers, 3 LB, Richard to Thomas Harvey,  Dec. , copy; IAPA, First Annual Report (London, ), ; Arb., Sept. , ; William Phillips, Sixty Years of Citizen Work and Play (London, ), –.



IAPA, Egypt, IAL

magistrates, Anglican ministers, and  MPs. The Earl of Shaftesbury agreed to become president (after Appleton had brazenly invited Richard and been turned down). Among the vice-presidents were John Bright, Lord Arthur Hobhouse, the businessman Sir John Lubbock (later Lord Avebury), and the much-travelled Philip Stanhope (later Baron Weardale), MP for Wednesbury. Appleton was energetic and successful in recruiting members. It soon became apparent, however, that he was using the contacts he had made as the Peace Society’s collector to secure finances for the new body—indeed, money was given to him under the mistaken assumption that he still represented the Society. Richard explained the situation, one of ‘constant misapprehension and embarrassment’, to Walter Wren, private tutor and Radical MP for Lambeth: About six months ago, the committee deemed it right that the connection of Mr Appleton with the Society should cease . . . Whereupon [he] determined to start a Society of his own . . . I tried to dissuade Mr Appleton, with whom I have been always on friendly terms, from this enterprise as having the appearance of setting up a rival society to the one with which he had been so long associated. We should have much preferred taking no notice of his venture. But . . . we were obliged to apprise our friends that the new movement was entirely without our cognizance and sanction. We found gentlemen giving their names and their money under an erroneous impression.

Richard later received a letter detailing the ‘injurious effect, in the North of England, of Lewis Appleton’s efforts to obtain subscribers and supporters for his new organization’.4 Wren had agreed to sit on the executive of Appleton’s association, and admitted to Richard that he thought that the Peace Society was ‘dying a natural death’. There were other worrying signs that the IAPA was drawing off support from the Society. Passmore Edwards removed his name from the list of Peace Society committee members in the autumn of  and became a vice-president of the IAPA. George Wilson MacCree, Baptist minister, temperance and anti-slavery activist, and former member of the Peace Society committee, joined the executive of Appleton’s body. Moreover, Mrs Southey, secretary of the Peace Society Ladies’ Auxiliary, sent to the newspapers a resolution expressing ‘cordial approval of the new society’. She eventually decided to separate her association from the Peace Society and to affiliate to the IAPA.5 4 IAPA, First Annual Report, ; LB, Richard to Wren,  Dec. , copy; MB,  Jan. . A list of names and subscriptions collected by Appleton was shown to the Society’s committee on  Nov. . 5 MB,  Nov. ;  May ; LB, Richard to Thomas Harvey,  Dec.  (copy).

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

Richard was furious. There was neither ‘necessity’ nor ‘room’, the Herald of Peace said, for ‘a second organization to carry on precisely the same work’ as the Peace Society. This wasn’t quite the case, however. Although—as its name suggested—the IAPA had in its sights the new interest in arbitration which the Peace Society had done much to generate, from the outset it differentiated itself from the Society in explicitly rejecting pacifism and declaring its support for certain types of war. William Phillips summed up his peace views in the motto ‘War if not defensive, indefensible’, and described American independence and Italian liberation as causes legitimately fought for. The initial IAPA circular, drafted by him, expressed the desire to capture that ‘large and influential section of public opinion in Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe’, which, while ‘unable to accept the abstract doctrine that all war is wrong, is favourable to an international movement with the object of uniting all friends of peace’. Appleton seems to have had no qualms about the IAPA’s belief in just war, despite his Quakerism. He wrote to the Friend that the new body aimed to attract ‘not a section of the nation, but the nation itself; not one creed, but all creeds; not one party, but both, a grand solidarity of the political, commercial, the social and the religious influence’. It was explained at the IAPA’s first annual meeting that the Association stood ‘with regard to the Peace Society much as the movement of the temperance societies does to the total abstainers’. More than one speaker discussed the restricted influence of the Peace Society because of its allegiance to the ‘abstract principle’. The brewer, barrister, and Liberal agitator George Fordham, for example, declared: ‘I feel sufficiently strongly in favour of peace, but I have never felt quite able to join the Peace Society.’6 The first report of the IAPA recognized the justice not only of defensive wars but, in certain situations, of crusades to end oppression overseas: ‘as in civil so in international affairs, there are occasions in which physical force, or its potential exercise, may be absolutely necessary against a recalcitrant state, such as Turkey, which had so long defied the moral and international law of nations.’ The Association’s rejection of ‘peace at any price’ was always subordinated, however, to positive policies designed to render all wars unnecessary: its principal objects were the framing of an international code, the establishment of a system of international arbitration and the constitution of a congress of diplomatists and jurists. 6 LB, Richard to Thomas Harvey,  Dec. , copy; HP, Oct. , ; Phillips, Sixty Years, –; IAPA Journal, June , ; British Friend, Oct. , ; IAPA, First Annual Report (London, ), , , .



IAPA, Egypt, IAL

Faced with an explicitly pacific-ist rival, Richard defended the Peace Society’s past record, and was keen to point out that ordinary members of the Society weren’t obliged to be non-resisters. He told one disaffected supporter: ‘I think you have allowed yourself to be influenced too much by one rather unmeaning phrase “peace at any price” which is hurled against us by the jingoes.’ When Richard advertised the Peace Society in the Arbitrator, he made it clear that it welcomed as members ‘all friends of peace, whether they accept the abstract view of Christian duty on the subject or not’. He reiterated that a new association promoting arbitration was superfluous—the Peace Society had championed the policy for decades. It was presumably to reinforce this point that the Herald of Peace changed its name, in , to the Herald of Peace and International Arbitration. Richard also dismissed the IAPA’s claim to be more internationally-minded than the Peace Society—he referred to the Society’s Continental contacts and the mid-century congresses.7 In fact, the IAPA did have a legitimate claim to be more international: unlike the Peace Society it saw itself as merely the British branch of a future European federation of peace associations: some of its early literature was headed the ‘International Peace and Arbitration Federation’. These European ambitions bear the hallmark of Hodgson Pratt, the chairman of the IAPA committee, whose peace views resembled those of Charles Lemonnier as much as those of Cobden or Sturge. The IAPA resembled Continental peace societies in a number of ways. First, it played down disarmament, which, according to its first annual report, had to be preceded by a successful system of arbitration. The Association’s founders saw a guarantee of peace ‘in having military and naval forces strong enough to hold our own, and compel foreign nations to do justice’, an idea which, unsurprisingly, was singled out for criticism by the Peace Society. Again like Continental societies, the IAPA was secular (or religiously neutral)—it was founded, in Richard’s words, ‘on the exclusion of the Christian principle from its constitution’. It was therefore a symbol of the increasing influence of secular pacific-ism on the British peace movement. The prominent freethinker G. J. Holyoake joined the Association’s executive committee in . Isaac Seligman, a Jewish merchant, was another member.8 Finally, the IAPA was Europeanminded in that its approach to peace was unashamedly political. Pratt had 7 HP, Mar. , ; June , ; LB, Richard to W. G. Snowdon Gard,  May , copy; Arb., Apr. , . 8 IAPA, First Annual Report, ; HP, Feb. , –; LB, Richard to Priscilla Peckover,  Dec. , copy.

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

ambitious plans for his proposed federation, the branches of which were to meet at an annual congress in a European capital and to contribute to an international journal. But Pratt also had a particular sense in which the federation could make a direct impact on the resolution of crises. He believed that the peace movement should address the ‘causes’ of war, by which he meant specific Continental problems and disagreements. The aim was to assemble a group of experts which would present governments with an impartial account of a dispute, such as that over AlsaceLorraine—‘a very select council’, which would ‘approach the question with as much sang froid’ as if it were discussing ‘a mathematical problem’.9 Its statement was designed to counteract the jingoistic ‘false impressions’ which always arose when national honour was at stake. This ‘council of conciliation’ or ‘special commission’ would replace the traditional channels of ‘secret diplomacy’, while also circumventing the problem that popular attitudes to foreign policy lacked expertise.10 From the very beginning, however, doubts were expressed within the IAPA whether this scheme didn’t overstep the sensible boundaries of peace agitation. Martin Wood—a friend of Pratt from India and a fellow activist in the Indian Reform Association, who became treasurer of the IAPA—argued at an early meeting that Pratt went ‘so far as to supersede diplomatists . . . this is a great task, requiring a great amount of skill and audacity which I do not at this moment feel equal to. (Hear, hear.)’ Pratt, however, remained convinced that disputes could be solved simply by ‘a widespread knowledge of the facts’.11 Pratt quickly became the driving force behind the IAPA. He had an infectious optimism and many Continental friends and contacts. In contrast to the unpopular Cremer, he was regarded as a ‘noble and beautiful character’ with ‘self-effacing modesty’.12 Despite ill-health, he was untiring in his efforts to establish the European sections of the proposed federation. As a first step, he spent six weeks in Paris in the autumn of . Most French politicians told him that peace societies were unpatriotic and that France’s priority was to recapture Alsace-Lorraine. Despite this, he set up a Parisian association, the Comité internationale de l’arbitrage et de la paix. 9 IAPA, First Annual Report, , ; Copenhagen Royal Library, Fredrik Bajer MSS, Pratt to Bajer,  Nov.  (Bajer was a Danish Parliamentarian and peace activist). 10 IAPA, First Annual Report, –. 11 Ibid. , . See also Bajer MSS, Pratt to Bajer,  Nov. . 12 J. J. Dent, Hodgson Pratt: Reformer (Manchester, ), ; B. T. Hall, Over Sixty Years: The Story of the Workmen’s Club and Institute Union (London, ), –.



IAPA, Egypt, IAL     

The immediate area of concern for the peace movement was how Gladstone would cope with the imperial legacy of ‘Beaconsfieldism’. In December , the Boers took up arms against the recent annexation of their territory. The following month, the Peace Society assembled ‘a large and influential deputation’ to present an address on the issue to the Colonial Minister, the Earl of Kimberley. Twenty MPs were present, including Lawson and Bradlaugh. Seven hundred memorials against war in the Transvaal were sent out by the Society. The Transvaal Independence Committee was formed independently of the peace associations on  January . Its members included Passmore Edwards, Karl Blind, William Morris, and Dr Gavin Brown Clark, the Scottish Radical who was its honorary secretary and principal spokesman. A hundred protest meetings were arranged by the TIC all over the country, as part of an agitation which became more controversial following the defeat of British soldiers at Majuba Hill in February. The WPA joined in the campaign: it forwarded a memorial to Gladstone ‘signed by some hundreds of representative working men’ which expressed regret that the Liberal Government was now implicated in imperialism. Cremer did his best to make excuses for Gladstone: ‘it was painful’, he said, having sat in the public gallery during a Commons debate initiated by Richard, ‘to see and hear the Minister struggling to oppose what the man must have approved.’ ‘For several months,’ Cremer later admitted, ‘it was a trying time for members of peace societies, who were forced into the painful position of sacrificing either party or principle, for, although as peace men we are independent of party politics, nearly all the members of our own and kindred bodies are Liberals, many of an advanced type.’13 After Gladstone had begun negotiations to end the war, it was easier to attract large crowds at peace meetings. For example, Lewis Appleton was active in a Birmingham-based Anti-Transvaal War Committee which held a gathering on  March , attended by five thousand people. Four days later, a ‘very large’ meeting was held in Liverpool, organized by the local Peace Society auxiliary. ‘If self-defence were right in war,’ Wilfrid Lawson told the audience, ‘then the Boers were right and we were wrong, for we were attacking them, and they were defending themselves.’ The evacuation of British troops re-established Cremer’s faith in Gladstone: it was, he said, a victory for the Radicals over the Whigs. The 13 MB,  Mar. ; Arthur Davey, The British Pro-Boers (Cape Town, ), –; Arb., Jan. , ; Feb. , –; Mar. , ; May , ; June , .

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

WPA organized meetings around the country—in Glasgow, Leicester, and Liverpool, for example—and Cremer claimed that the WPA memorial had ‘had some effect in bringing about peace’.14 The most prominent ‘Pro-Boer’, G. B. Clark, became, at the end of , vice-chairman of the IAPA’s committee, a post he held until . Years later he wrote an account of the origins of the Association, which revealed that it had merged, at the time of his joining its committee, with the recently defunct TIC.15 This merger was possibly crucial to the survival of the IAPA, which was finding it difficult to fulfil its early promise. Although a large number of MPs had agreed to become vice-presidents of the Association, its first annual meeting, held in December , failed to attract an influential audience. Moreover, its executive—an eclectic group of philanthropists and professionals—lacked political weight.16 Partly as a result of the merger with the TIC, the IAPA attracted more politically salient figures on to its committee, including G. W. E. Russell, MP; Karl Blind; Clark, who became an MP in ; and Herbert Burrows, a founding member of the Social Democratic Foundation. Before the TIC’s merger with the IAPA had been confirmed, Clark had been approached by Herbert Spencer, who was planning a new society. Spencer, whose political philosophy posited the transition from ‘militaristic’ societies to peaceful ‘industrial’ societies, had first mooted an organization opposing aggression and jingoism during the Afghan War in , at which time he recruited John Morley and Frederic Harrison. The idea was discussed again in  at meetings hosted by Lord Hobhouse. In May, Henry Richard received a letter from Spencer praising him for a speech on the conduct of British representatives abroad. If the Peace Society ‘took the ground not of non-resistance but of nonaggression,’ Spencer suggested, ‘it might enlist a much larger amount of sympathy and support’. But after several meetings involving Spencer, Harrison, Hobhouse, Morley, F. W. Chesson, Arthur Pease, Leone Levi, Davey, British Pro-Boers, ; Times,  Mar. , ;  Mar. , ; Arb., June , . Concord, Nov.–Dec. , ; Davey, British Pro-Boers, . 16 Among its members were George Fordham; George Howell (though he was never closely involved); two religious ministers, W. H. Channing and G. W. MacCree; the Quaker poet Miss Louisa Bigg; Walter Lean, an accountant with ties to the Peace Society; C. C. Macrae, a barrister and Indian Office counsel; Lewis Sergeant, journalist, secretary of the Greek Committee, and author of England’s Policy (), a book which predicted a new, democratic era of European relations; the electrical engineer C. F. Varley; and Sir Francis Walter de Winton, an army major—later Administrator General of the Congo—who was known on the Continent ‘in connection with many international philanthropic movements, especially in relation with societies for aid to the sick and wounded in war’; IAPA, First Annual Report, . 14 15



IAPA, Egypt, IAL

and others, the Peace Society rejected an amalgamation with Spencer’s proposed body.17 Although Spencer’s offer to expand the TIC was also turned down, he pursued the idea of a new association and organized, with the help of Richard and others, a large meeting in the Westminster Palace Hotel on  February  to inaugurate the Anti-Aggression League. Its success was another demonstration of the vitality of pacific-ism in the first period of Gladstone’s second Administration, though it was also an indication that the peace associations had failed to realize their potential. They were undismayed. ‘With the exception of the Eastern Question Association,’ the Arbitrator reported, ‘no movement has been ushered into existence under more favourable auspices . . . it is gratifying that so many eminent men—hitherto not identified with the peace movement—have given in their adhesion.’18 In his speech at the meeting John Morley suggested that the League might serve as ‘a centre of mutual communication for the various sections of the peace-loving community’. Its aims included arbitration and democratic control of foreign policy.19 Writing to the Manchester Examiner, Frederic Harrison described the League as consisting of a body of well-known politicians, both in and out of Parliament, who, without insisting on any doctrine of peace in the abstract, are pledged to impress on government and the public the necessity of a vigilant and permanent policy of equity towards all nations, of whatever rank or power, in accordance with the antiaggression principles which won the day in April . A policy such as this, it will be seen, covers a much wider ground than any of the existing societies which aim at limiting war.

It was, he said, an attempt to make permanent the efforts represented in ‘various temporary organizations, such as the Jamaica Committee, the Eastern Affairs Committee, and the Afghan Committee’ which argued for ‘peace, justice and non-intervention’.20 The omission of ‘peace’ from the League’s title was designed, no doubt, to avoid any taint of pacifism. The new League immediately faced a severe test: the riots and massacres in Alexandria on  and  June, in which fifty Europeans were 17 Herbert Spencer, Autobiography,  vols. (London, ), i, –; Martha S. Vogeler, Frederic Harrison: The Vocations of a Positivist (Oxford, ), ; MB,  May ;  July ;  Dec. ;  Jan. . See also David Wiltshire, The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer (Oxford, ), –; L. T. Hobhouse and J. L. Hammond, Memoir of Lord Hobhouse (London, ), –. 18 Arb., Mar. , ; May , ; Henry Richard MSS,  C, Spencer to Richard,  19 20 Feb. ; Arb., May , . Times,  Feb. , . Arb., May , .

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killed and much property destroyed, side-effects of the seizure of control of the Egyptian Government by the nationalist leader Colonel Ahmed Arabi. This action presented a threat to Anglo-French financial involvement in Egypt—principally on the part of ‘bondholders’—and raised questions about the security of Britain’s route to the East through the Suez Canal. All the peace associations pressed for non-intervention. On  June, the WPA convened a conference of ‘representative working men’ and MPs at the Westminster Palace Hotel. Thomas Burt, the WPA’s new president following the death of Beales in , occupied the chair. At the meeting, Wilfrid Lawson emphasized that his opposition ‘was not based on a peace-at-any-price policy but solely on the Blue Book’. The noninterventionists supported ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’—a cause ‘eminently patriotic’: ‘our policy should be to assist rather than resist the natural development of a people.’ The WPA called on the Government to limit its involvement to inviting all the powers to guarantee Egyptian neutrality.21 It co-ordinated a memorial to Gladstone, signed by  of its agents. As Arabi consolidated his position, however, Gladstone ordered the British fleet to take up a station off Alexandria and on  July to bombard Egyptian forts. Although there was a strategic case for British military action to protect the Suez Canal, the Prime Minister justified the bombardment in moral terms. Britain was acting on behalf of Europe, he said, to restore order against ‘military violence’. He felt himself ‘a labourer in the cause of peace’. He was probably sincere, but no doubt also realized that such an approach increased his chances of winning over progressives who were suspicious of imperial expansion. The Conservative Opposition was dismissive: Gladstone’s was ‘a mere cobweb argument, an attempt to make war on peace principles’. A case made on the grounds of ‘national interests’ would, they said, have been ‘a more satisfactory justification for the war’.22 Despite the flimsiness of Gladstone’s claim to be acting as the moral policeman of Europe, most progressives failed to register a protest against the bombardment. Many pronounced their suspicions of Arabi and their conviction that it was Britain’s duty to uphold freedom overseas. They supported the war as a kind of crusade. A group of Radicals protested, however. The day after the bombardment, John Bright resigned from the Cabinet (Gladstone could not understand his opposition—after all, he said, Bright was not an opponent Arb., June , –. Richard Shannon, Gladstone: Heroic Minister – (London, ), ; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( July ) , . 21 22

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of all wars). Richard, Illingworth, and Rylands also registered their opposition in the Commons. Lawson described the British action as an ‘international atrocity’ and ‘a cowardly, a cruel, a criminal act’. He ‘objected to the blood of a single English soldier being shed’ on behalf of bondholders. A financial critique of war was employed by the peace movement even more consistently than during the Eastern Crisis. Frederic Harrison’s celebrated article in the Pall Mall Gazette entitled ‘Money, Sir, Money!’ was quoted approvingly by the WPA. ‘The men who formerly made wars were generally monarchs and unscrupulous statesmen,’ Cremer asserted, ‘but our modern warmakers are financiers.’ He pointed a finger at ‘the pernicious influence wielded by stockjobbers and the whole tribe of shylocks’, and also criticized ‘army contractors, unprincipled speculators, and unscrupulous journalists’, as well as ‘our aristocratic Foreign Office officials’.23 The WPA petitioned Parliament and held another conference of working men. Lawson and Passmore Edwards attended; Lucraft was elected to preside. William Joiner, a turner, stated: ‘We have levelled to the ground a grand historical city and this in spite of promises, broken like pie crust, of a peace policy.’ The young journalist and historian J. L. Hammond was among those to propose the formation of an anti-imperial Egyptian Committee, the first meeting of which was held on  July  at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, about two hundred people attending. Lawson, who became the organizing chairman, was in the chair. G. B. Clark, James Rowlands, and Passmore Edwards were the other officials.24 The British Government initially thought that bombardment might remove the need to send troops into Egypt, but at the end of July it was decided to invade and restore order. The invasion was efficient and successful—Gladstone asked to have church bells rung and guns fired in the London parks to mark the triumph; his popularity in the country increased. It was, he said, ‘an upright war, a Christian war’ waged to maintain peace. When Richard sent him a letter of protest, he replied: ‘I am not conscious of any change in my own standard of action, or in that of my colleagues.’25 The combination of loyalty to party and the emotionally charged justification of British action persuaded most progressives to support invasion as well as bombardment. Henry Labouchere, the Radical MP for Northampton and co-owner of the Daily 23 Annual Register, , ; Arb., June , ; Sept. , ; July , ; Oct. , ; May , ; Oct. , ; July , ; Jan. , . See also HP, Sept. , . 24 Times,  July , ; Arb., July , –; Times,  July , . 25 H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone – (Oxford, ), ; Shannon, Gladstone, .

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News, who was later to attack savagely Britain’s policy in Egypt, spoke at this time in favour of intervention. Even the Quaker William Pollard, who made great efforts to persuade Friends to become involved in the peace movement, felt that ‘it was difficult to see how the Government could have done differently.’ Gladstone’s Egyptian policy was not, he wrote, the equivalent of the Zulu or Afghan Wars but was rather a ‘police action’. Quakers in general were, it seems, unwilling to embarrass the Prime Minister. In the Commons vote on war expenses on  July , none of the Quaker MPs opposed the Government. Neither did such established supporters of the peace movement as Courtney, Jacob Bright, Thorold Rogers, or Samuel Morley.26 A mere nine Liberals voted against, including Richard, Burt, Illingworth, and Lawson. At a WPA gathering, Lawson was scathing about the quietism of the Quaker MPs: ‘As to Quakers they were taught to sit quiet at their Quakers’ meetings, and when they were in the House of Commons they also carried out their principle, for they sat quite silent.’ A number of Nonconformist ministers who had taken part in peace activism—including Clifford and the Revd James Guinness Rogers, a Congregationalist—were also criticized for supporting the war. The Anti-Aggression League fell at the first hurdle, as John Bright had predicted it would. Most of its MPs dropped out because they were unwilling to criticize Gladstone. A bitter Frederic Harrison later described the League as having ‘melted away under the poisonous solvent of the party system’. He could hear, he wrote, ‘a hollow and ghostlike laugh of derision’ from Disraeli’s burial vault.27 An attempt was made to resuscitate the League: Spencer, Osborne, Congreve, Richard, Passmore Edwards, Lawson, Cremer, and Rowlands were among those who took part in a conference held at the Westminster Palace Hotel. Spencer wanted to combine the League and the Egyptian Committee into one body, but it came to nothing. A hypochondriac at the best of times, he decided his health had been ruined, and he retired from public life. The organization could never work, Cremer wrote, if it was merely ‘an Anti-Tory Aggression League’. In an article in the Fortnightly Review on ‘Working Men and War’, Thomas Burt conceded that ‘the great majority of the people’ had ‘supported the Government policy in 26 Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( July ) , ; Friend, Sept. , ; Nov. , –. 27 Arb., July , –; Sept. , ; Univ. of London Library, Herbert Spencer MSS, Bright to Spencer,  July ; Frederic Harrison, Autobiographic Memoirs,  vols. (London, ), ii, –; M. E. Chamberlain, ‘British Public Opinion and the Invasion of Egypt, ’, Trivium,  (), .

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Egypt’ but maintained that the support had been ‘neither unanimous nor enthusiastic’. The general acquiescence of Liberals was, he argued, based on two factors: first, ‘they did not know how far Arabi was accepted as the leader of a real national movement’; second, ‘they had great faith in Mr Gladstone and his colleagues.’ Burt remained adamant that working men, although not ‘absolute non-interventionists’ and not ‘utterly opposed to war in every case’, required ‘stronger and clearer reasons for armed intervention in the internal affairs of other countries than have sufficed in the past’.28 ‘At no period during the existence of the Association have events occurred which so severely strained the loyalty of our adherents to their principles’, Cremer reflected. Gladstone’s policy had caused the WPA’s members to ‘bow their heads in humiliation’. The IAPA was also troubled and decided to cancel a meeting from a desire not to embarrass Gladstone. Richard, too, wrote privately of the difficulty of opposition in this case: ‘To me personally the actual state of things has been the sorest trial of my long life as a man of peace. Not that we have not previously to oppose the foreign policy of a Liberal government, but not of a government with such a man at its head as Mr Gladstone, whom we had all so trusted and revered.’29 Although Richard condemned the Government in Parliament, the Peace Society acted cautiously in response to the crisis. It reverted to the argument that to attack the Government was to attack a political party, and hence to enter the world of partisan political conflict. The Society had often said that, being against all war, it did not need to condemn particular ones, since this was understood. But in the last decades of the century, this refusal began to cloak an unwillingness to protest because of its subscribers’ party loyalty and/or their support for British imperialism as a ‘civilizing mission’. Most damning of all, two of the Society’s vicepresidents supported the Government in the vote on  July and its new president J. W. Pease—who had succeeded his uncle Henry Pease in the post—abstained. J. W. Pease, a settled member of the establishment (he moved from his home town to a large country house), had no wish to embrace the political sectarianism which went with a conspicuous adherence to Cobdenite Radicalism or Christian pacifism. He was attacked in the pages of the Herald of Peace—by an anonymous ‘Baptist Minister’— 28 Vogeler, Frederic Harrison, ; Arb., Aug. , ; Thomas Burt, ‘Working Men and War’, Fortnightly Review,  (), –. 29 Arb., Mar. , ; Feb. , ; July , ; Feb. , ; IAPA Journal, June , ; LB, Henry Richard to Isaac B. Cooke,  July , copy.

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for his ‘sad departure from the original testimony’. Pollard reported in the Friend the view of one Quaker ‘of influence’ that ‘the movement carried on by the Peace Society was an utter failure, and that you may as well pour water down a sewer as spend money on efforts to promote peace.’30 The Society’s reputation had been tarnished. Richard responded that its lecturers and auxiliaries—including the WPA—had taken a strong line against the Government. He also framed, with some justice, a more general defence of the Peace Society—that it had, since , performed an influential role in portraying peace as a morally and economically beneficial condition: ‘it has helped to create something like a Christian conscience in the nation on the questions of peace and war. It has put the advocates of war on the defence; it has rendered it impossible that any war can now be waged by England, as a matter of course, without question or challenge.’31 But resorting to such an argument only made clear the damage that had been done to the Society by the Egyptian crisis. In fact, all the peace associations had taken a knock: they had embraced Gladstone as a leader who had, in the late s in particular, defined his party in opposition to aggressive overseas policies. The Liberal Party had seemed genuinely to stand for ‘idealism’; now it had become obvious that although the parties still differed rhetorically, in practice they weren’t so far apart. The peace associations remained a significant focus for antiexpansionist opinion. Attention shifted to the Sudan, where Egypt’s authority had been challenged by a religious uprising led by the Mahdi. In November  the British-controlled Egyptian army was ambushed and General Gordon sent to arrange an evacuation. When he got into difficulties, various policy options were debated, before Garnet Wolseley embarked on his ill-fated rescue mission. In April  the IAPA organized a two-day conference to discuss the situation, attended by Lawson, Campbell, and F. W. Buxton, MP. Its main effect, however, was to indicate the differences of opinion among Radicals on the question: a number of those present took up a broadly pro-Government position. Campbell, on the other hand, ‘had always strongly objected to going to Egypt’—Gordon ‘had to take his chance’. G. B. Clark moved a resolution that armed interference in the internal affairs of Egypt was ‘unnecessary, impolitic and unjust’. He was supported by Herbert Burrows and Karl Blind.32 30 31 32

MB,  June ; HP, Feb. , ; Friend, Sept. , . LB, Richard to Frederic Harrison,  Jan. , copy; HP, Nov. , . Matthew, Gladstone –, –; Arb., Mar. , ; Times,  Apr. , .

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After the fall of Khartoum, the WPA convened a public meeting at the Memorial Hall in February  to call for retirement from the Sudan. Burt ‘deplored’ the loss of General Gordon, ‘though the wisdom of the mission on which he was dispatched was another matter’. Charles Wade, despite being a member of the WPA, proposed an amendment in support of the Government. It was voted down. Samuel Storey, newspaper proprietor and MP for Sunderland, summed up the peace movement’s current difficulty: ‘When a Tory Government went to war what violent opponents of war all the Liberals were—(laughter)—but where was the peace party now?’33        Despite the war in Egypt, the IAPA continued to pursue its ambitious international goals by holding a congress of peace associations in Brussels in October . Over twelve thousand circulars were sent out; the Palace of the Bourse was well attended. The Times commented that ‘the great majority of men of high distinction shone by their absence’, but a number of prominent European agitators spoke, including de Laveleye and the liberal Catholic Père Hyacinthe (Charles Loyson). The congress gave an early warning that Pratt’s ideal of disputes settled by detailed, reasonable discussion would not be easily realized. The proceedings—all in French—were dominated by the controversial subject of AlsaceLorraine. Père Hyacinthe pledged that the French would have vengeance, and when Jean Dollfuss, an industrialist and member of the German Reichstag, called for a neutralization of the territories, he was accused by his compatriots of harbouring pro-French sympathies. The ‘practical business’ of the congress proceeded ‘rather slowly’, The Times noted, despite the fact that each speech was limited to five or ten minutes. Pratt’s order of proceedings had to be abandoned and a fourth sitting was necessary because of the lack of progress in voting resolutions. Not surprisingly, Richard thought himself justified in having kept the Peace Society away. He wrote to Passy: Hitherto I think the advocacy of the peace cause has been conducted with discretion and in such a way as to command respect if not approval. The great congresses we held in Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt and London, the meetings of our Society in London . . . have all been respectable gatherings because they have been conducted by prudent and serious men. But I am afraid from all I have heard that 33

Arb., Feb.–Mar. , –, .

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the congress at Brussels last year was not of that character. From the reports in the journals sent to me it appears to have been a fiasco.

Richard was worried that the congress had indirectly ‘brought discredit upon the Peace Society’ and had ‘done much harm’.34 Affairs at the IAPA’s offices in London were no more harmonious, largely because Appleton was proving as troublesome as ever. Although the Association had initially attracted a reasonable amount of subscriptions and donations—£, in the  months up to the end of , and about £, in both  and —it was soon, thanks to Appleton, heavily in debt. The IAPA Journal, first printed in , revealed that money had been given to Appleton ‘for his services as secretary, before the necessary income of the Society had been assured’. Pratt and Phillips had been slow to realize the danger. In  the Peace Society committee had decided that its treasurer should see ‘some of the leading members of Lewis Appleton’s new Association and inform them of the extreme irregularity of his management of funds’. There was now proof that Appleton had embezzled large amounts of Peace Society money—an incompetent thief, he had handed over receipts which betrayed the shortfall of funds. The Society ‘did not see any way out apart from the adoption of a grave and painful action’: presumably legal proceedings. This threat was sufficient to encourage Appleton to return the money. By February , the Peace Society had recovered £. from him, leaving a balance of £, ‘without reckoning any claims for interest’.35 Although Richard told Pratt the full story, Pratt seems to have taken no immediate steps to dismiss Appleton from the IAPA. Richard later wrote: Mr Pratt is an excellent man whom I greatly respect for his disinterested philanthropy. But I am afraid his judgement is not so sound as his intentions are good. He called upon me after the foundation of Appleton’s society to enquire respecting him. I told him frankly in confidence the state of the case and he told me that he would go at once to the committee of the new association and withdraw his name from it. But he did not keep his promise and I have never seen him since.

A year later, Richard made the matter even plainer: Appleton started this new organization avowedly in rivalry of ours and he is doing his best now by anonymous letters and paragraphs in Tory papers to damage the character of the Peace Society and my own . . . Mr Partridge who was formerly their secretary recently called upon me and gave me a deplorable and ludicrous 34 Times,  Oct. , ;  Oct. , ; IAPA, Second Annual Report, –; Times,  Oct. , ; LB, Richard to Passy,  July , copy; HP, June , ; July , . 35 IAPA Journal, July , ; MB,  Jan. ;  Feb. ;  Nov. ;  Jan. .

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account of the interior of their Society, how Appleton and some other official had been in violent personal conflict until it was almost necessary to call the police. Mr Partridge and another gentleman, I think Mr Geldart [the Revd E. M. Geldart, the Association’s ‘foreign secretary’] . . . had both resigned and withdrawn because they found it impossible to act with Appleton. The whole thing seems now in the hands of this person who unfortunately succeeds in ‘leading by the nose’ . . . that worthy but not very wise man Mr Hodgson Pratt.

Richard regretted that the IAPA had the support of some ‘respectable’ activists on the Continent such as de Laveleye. He also recounted how, despite having refused to take part in the Brussels congress, he had been cited in reports as having introduced a resolution. In explanation, Appleton said the name was a misprint for a ‘Mr Henry Richards’.36 Having already been reassigned to the post of ‘organizing and financial agent’, Appleton was asked to leave the IAPA in .37 William Phillips left in the same year when he was elected to the London School Board. Martin Wood became secretary. Appleton tried to undermine his old employers by publishing a circular which accused the IAPA of a conspiracy against the Liberal Party at the time of the Egyptian crisis. He was obliged to publish a complete refutation. It was implied throughout his circular, and stated explicitly by him in The Times, that he left the Association of his own accord, because he did not support its policy. The IAPA set the record straight: it was ‘wholly untrue that he voluntarily resigned his position’; the committee ‘was at no time made aware of any dissent on his part’; ‘Mr Appleton’s position was, from the beginning, that of a paid officer, at a very liberal remuneration.’ Moreover, ‘during the greater part of his connection with the Association’, Appleton’s ‘relations with them were a source of constant anxiety and embarrassment.’ The IAPA warned friends against supporting Appleton—true to form, he sent a self-serving letter to the IAPA’s subscribers and formed another peace association, the shadowy British and Foreign Arbitration Association, though his credentials were refused at peace congresses.38 The IAPA’s financial difficulties forced Pratt, late in , to suggest amalgamation with the Peace Society. Richard insisted that discussions could only take place if Appleton had nothing to do with the Association. 36 MB,  Apr. ; LB, Richard to Passy,  July , copy; LB, Richard to Passy,  Jan. , copy. 37 IAPA Journal, Aug. , ; Concord, Oct. , ; Nov. , ; May , . See also the BFAA’s annual reports. 38 IAPA Journal, June , –; Aug.–Sept. , ; July , . For the chequered history of the BFAA, see its annual reports (in , for example, it supported the South African War).

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One logistical difficulty was that a change could not be made without consulting the Society’s members, the majority of whom were Quakers who only came to London once a year to attend ‘their own, and our, meetings in May’. Other matters arose during the discussions. One Society committee member worried that the change would mean ‘being overweighted with men with whom expediency might preponderate over principle’. It was remarked that ‘some of the past action of the other body appears to have favoured military action in certain eventualities’, though ‘little was known of the actual principles and views of its executive, individually’. The specific question of defensive war led to a ‘somewhat lengthy conversation in the course of which the usual questions were asked as to what we should do in certain contingencies’. It was agreed that the IAPA representatives would endorse Rule  of the Peace Society—that war was inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity—but that they would put on it an interpretation ‘probably not that of the founders of the Peace Society’, i.e. not expressly advocating non-resistance. It was, the Society said, unlikely to become ‘a practical question’. In the end, the amalgamation was abandoned. J. W. Pease advised: ‘We must not, now, lower our standard; or we drift into an unknown sea . . . It is impossible to join those, or for those to join us, who believe in a duty of being armed to the teeth in the nineteenth century of the Christian era.’39 The IAPA managed to survive thanks to the generosity of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born American industrialist who displayed a deep interest in British politics and was a proponent of republicanism, disestablishment and, at least in Britain, workers’ rights. In , he had business dealings with Passmore Edwards (regarding the Echo), and it was probably Edwards, a regular attender of IAPA meetings, who informed him of the Association’s financial plight. Carnegie attended the annual meeting and immediately wiped out its deficit of £.40 The IAPA still struggled to establish itself, however, for a number of reasons. First, the novelty of the new society had worn off. Second, the Association, despite all its efforts, was still—simply because it was a peace association—identified with ‘peace at any price’. Third, questions of peace and war had, since Egypt, only rarely dominated political debate. Furthermore, Pratt’s eagerness closely to investigate Continental disputes continued to set him apart from most progressives. He still complained that Englishmen were ‘profoundly ignorant generally as to 39 LB, Richard to Pratt,  Dec. , copy; MB,  Jan. ; IAPA Journal, Aug. , ; MB,  Jan.  (Henry Richard’s Report);  Dec. ;  Feb. ;  Dec. ; 40 IAPA Journal, Nov. , . IAPA Journal, July , .

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foreign politics’, and that ‘thorough-going Radicals’ in particular were ‘too much inclined to shut their eyes to the present state of opinion on the Continent.’41 He ridiculed non-interventionists who thought that ‘England’s business’ was ‘to keep clear of all foreign complications whatever’ in order to avoid an ‘increased outlay on armaments’. Pratt put forward ‘another view’: There is something even worse than war, such as the existence of great despotic and irresponsible autocracies in Europe, or the permanent enthronement of injustice, and the disregard of the rights of weaker states. That is what the peace societies in France—more radical in other matters than we—say every day; and they denounce our English neutrality as a selfish isolation, which makes us ignore every sense of duty in making the ‘Concert of Europe’ real and beneficial to all alike.

He set out what he thought Britain’s attitude should be: We do fully recognize the international duty we owe to all other nations. We desire no selfish isolation, we recognize the paramount claims of right and justice in this world, and occasions may occur when the tyrant, the invader, must be resisted by force; but the proof of the necessity must be overwhelming and plain to all righteous men. We believe that the geographical and historical position of England gives her a very special and exceptional duty. She must . . . be ‘the friend of all, the ally of none’, as a general and almost universal rule. But she adopts this principle in order that she may be above suspicion when the moment comes for her to act as mediator and arbitrator in some great crisis, when the welfare of Europe at large, or when the highest interests of civilization and justice are at stake.’

The IAPA’s formula was: ‘peace to be durable must be founded on justice and liberty . . . on human rights’.42 Pratt was very unusual among British peace activists in asserting that island status and maritime superiority did not guarantee the option of isolationism. It was insufficiently understood, he believed, that a war in Europe could easily draw Britain in: the danger which threatens Europe is not adequately appreciated in England because our geographical position renders us ignorant or indifferent; but, on the other side of the Channel, the apprehension of a calamitous future for Europe is almost universal. It would alike be foolish and contemptible on the part of Englishmen to suppose that our nation can escape her due share of the results of such events. Alike then, on the ground of self-interest and of duty, the English people are under an obligation to join their Continental brethren in ‘war against war’.43 Bee-Hive,  Oct. , ; HP, Feb. , ; IAPA Journal, Aug. , . Concord, Feb. , –. The article was written by ‘X. Y. Z.’, taken here to be Pratt; 43 IAPA Journal, Aug.–Sept. , . Concord, June–July , . 41 42

‒



In other words, Pratt stood apart from British peace activists who, while perhaps sharing Gladstone’s belief in Britain’s duty to attend to European politics, continued to take refuge in the eternal possibility of staying clear of a Continental war. Although the IAPA Journal (renamed Concord in ) was intended to be an ‘open council . . . wherein men of all parties and nationalities may find, in juxtaposition, very opposite views’, the IAPA often took up specific solutions—in particular, the neutralization of Alsace-Lorraine and the creation of a league of Balkan states. (Pratt should be credited with some prescience for his consistent argument that the root of European instability was the conflict between Austria and Russia over the Balkans, made more complicated by the wrangle between Germany and France over Alsace-Lorraine.) The consequence of such specific preferences was more often loss of support than the edification of public opinion. Its policy of international control of Egypt, for example, which encouraged W. S. Blunt to join the executive for a few years, was generally divisive. And its position on Alsace-Lorraine provoked the resignation of George Buchanan, treasurer and liberal benefactor of the Association, as well as alienating German friends such as Blind in London and two German peace societies, and sparking off a row with the Peace Society.44 (Before the third annual meeting in , the Echo reported: ‘it is said that there is some possibility of certain seceders from the Association, dissatisfied with its policy, advocating its early dissolution.’) Pratt later admitted that the IAPA had ‘often lost friends . . . because it “meddled with politics” ’. Alsace-Lorraine was not discussed when the IAPA organized another international peace congress, at Berne in , because the German delegates had threatened to retire if such a discussion took place. Even so, only seventy people attended. Pratt did not give up his scheme of a federation of peace societies, however, and circulars were sent out for a meeting at Basle the following year, which was to frame the federation’s constitution. Not enough interest was shown, and Pratt realized that if he wanted a federation, he would have to found all the societies himself. ‘If I live I hope to form such a society in every great city in Europe’, he wrote. He eventually succeeded in setting up associations in Germany, Hungary, and Italy as well as Paris. ‘Perhaps no one’, Henry Richard said, ‘since the days of Joseph Sturge, has devoted more personal attention, labour and 44 IAPA Journal, Jan. , ; Concord, Sept.–Oct. , ; IAPA, Second Annual Report, ; Seventh Annual Report (London, ), ; Concord, Sept. , ; Concord, Aug. , ; Bajer MSS, Pratt to Bajer,  Feb. ; BL Add. MS , Barrington Simeon to Karl Blind,  Mar. .



IAPA, Egypt, IAL

money, to the arduous work of peace propagandism on the European Continent . . . Mr Pratt is almost a peace society in himself.’45 The income of the association in London remained exiguous—it employed no canvasser or collector of funds. A plan in  to amalgamate with, or rather be subsumed by, Cremer’s organization fell through, despite protracted negotiations. Later on that year, the IAPA was on the point of folding; it survived again only after twenty of its leading supporters assembled at a crisis meeting pledged more money.46 While the WPA could draw on a network of artisan radical contacts and the Peace Society could depend on the backing of Quakers, the IAPA looked to a small constituency of metropolitan progressives and humanitarians. In the short term, this made for financial insecurity. In the long term, however, it was to help the Association attract new supporters and become the most intellectually dynamic of British peace associations.     By  the ‘national council’ of the WPA comprised a thousand agents, most of whom were ‘officers of organized bodies, such as trades, friendly, religious, temperance and political societies’. Cremer had recently reminded his Peace Society benefactors that ‘in an emergency’ such as that over the Eastern Question, this council could be ‘made use of with great effect’. The outreach of the Association was indeed impressive: in ,  men voted in its internal elections and  attended its soiree, among whom were  delegates attending the TUC. It was consistently active, doing its best, for example, to combat the  naval scare, orchestrated by the idiosyncratic journalist and spokesman for the ‘Nonconformist Conscience’, W. T. Stead. The Arbitrator dismissed the scare as the ‘ravings of the Northumberland Street madcap’, and argued that more ironclads would be war-provoking not peace-preserving. The Association also continued its activity in Paris, co-operating with the French committee of the IAPA.47 In , however, the Peace Society was forced to cut the annual grant to its workmen’s auxiliary to a mere £. This was due mostly to its own 45 Arb., June , ; Hodgson Pratt, What is the Duty of Peace Societies and Congresses in regard to Pending International Questions? (London, ), , ; IAPA Journal, Aug. , , ; Sept.–Oct. , ; Bajer MSS, Pratt to Bajer,  Nov. ; HP, Jan. , ; Arb., Jan. , –. 46 Arb., Feb. , ; Mar.–Apr. , . Concord, Mar. , ; Aug. , . 47 HP, June , ; Arb., Sept. , ; Oct. , , ; Feb.–Mar. , , –; Apr. , –.

‒



‘depressing state and prospects’, but it is possible, too, that the Society was anxious about Cremer’s bitter condemnation of the Government’s imperial policy. In an attempt to widen support, Cremer had sent out letters to MPs and other potential supporters and had received several replies to the effect that, in the words of one Quaker, the WPA was ‘a mere catch for the Radical party’. In January , Richard told Cremer that the subsidy would be stopped altogether. Arthur Albright donated £ to help finance the WPA’s ‘Appeal to the New Electors’ in ; Samuel Morley gave £ and a legacy from the Sturge family was essential to its upkeep. But despite a generous donation from Richard Binns (a Quaker who had family ties to the Peace Society) and other small amounts from Lawson and J. P. Thomasson, the Association’s ‘funds were exhausted and . . . liabilities were accumulating with but little prospect of funds to discharge them.’ A £ deficit had ‘never before occurred’ in the history of the WPA.48 Just when the situation was becoming hopeless, Cremer was finally elected to the Commons, representing the Liberal Party for Haggerston in the East End. Thanks were due, he noted, to ‘the clubs and trade unions’ rather than the (middle-class) ‘temperance wing of the Party’. He became one of a group of twelve ‘Lib–Lab’ MPs in the Commons, eight of whom were members of the WPA: Cremer; Arch; Burt; J. C. Durant, a printer; Joseph Leicester, a glass-blower; and the miners William Abraham (‘Mabon’), John Wilson, and Charles Fenwick. Of the four other Lib–Lab MPs—George Howell, Henry Broadhurst, and the other miners, William Crawford and Ben Pickard—Broadhurst and Pickard were to have some involvement in Cremer’s organization at a later date. Arch, Leicester, and Wilson lost their seats in the  election, but James Rowlands won in East Finsbury. Other Lib–Lab notables—including F. W. Soutter, John Burns, T. R. Threlfall, a compositor, and the miner Sam Woods—were WPA activists, at least for a time.49 Cremer’s election meant that he could begin in earnest a campaign for an Anglo-American arbitration treaty, a long-established goal of the WPA, but also a potentially lucrative one, given that there was widespread public interest in transatlantic friendship. More specifically, such a treaty was supported by Carnegie, who had just cleared the debts of the IAPA. The same council meeting on  October  that considered the unhealthy finances of the WPA also discussed a plan drawn up by Cremer to bring an Anglo-American treaty ‘before the legislature of both 48 49

Arb., May , , ; Apr. , ; Jan. , ; Feb. , ; Nov. , . Arb., Dec. , ; June , .



IAPA, Egypt, IAL

countries’. Cremer set in motion an address to the President and Congress of the United States, with a view to getting it signed by as many MPs as possible. In January  the council discussed the general policy of the Association, concluding that efforts should be concentrated on the treaty. When, in the spring of , Carnegie again visited Britain, he was consulted by Cremer about the matter. Cremer arranged a meeting at Anderton’s Hotel, London, on  June, chaired by Burt, at which Carnegie met members of the WPA council, sympathetic Liberal MPs and other activists, including Hodgson Pratt. Cremer—by means of ‘personal canvass’—persuaded  British MPs to put their names to the Anglo-American arbitration address. This marked the beginning of his endeavours as ‘Peace Lobbyist of the World’: over the next twenty years he conducted numerous personal interviews with MPs in an attempt to win their support.50 In August  Cremer announced that a deputation, to be introduced to President Cleveland by Carnegie, would visit the US in October to present the address. The deputation included artisan representatives of the TUC, but also Sir Lyon Playfair and Lord Kinnaird, as well as Carnegie. It handed its petition to the President on  October . The trip, which featured a visit to Carnegie’s steel works and several grand receptions and banquets, was reported in great detail in the Arbitrator. Cremer emphasized that the deputation ‘experienced a splendid reception all through the States from all classes—except the Irish’ (this was a reference to demonstrations by Irish-Americans following the rejection of Home Rule—their opposition ruled out any statement by Cleveland regarding the treaty). A resolution urging the President to negotiate an arbitration treaty with any friendly country willing to do so was passed by the Senate in . That year’s annual meeting of the WPA was the first to be attended by ‘a real live lord, a very matter of fact, plain spoken, worthy gentleman’—Lord Kinnaird.51 This social ecumenicalism was in sharp contrast to Cremer’s previous determination to restrict his organization to workers. It signalled the transformation of the Workmen’s Peace Association into the International Arbitration League. The visit to America convinced Cremer that arbitration was the foundation for a broader-based society which could attract influential support. It was the financial committee which suggested that the WPA should 50 Arb., Nov. , ; Jan. , ; June , –; Arb., Aug. , ; War against War,  Jan. , . 51 Arb., Nov. –Feb. , ; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer: His Life and Work (London, ), ; Arb., Mar. , .

‒



change its name—International Arbitration League was adopted as a subtitle in , and became the full title two years later. The association had outgrown its original limits, the Arbitrator explained, and had begun to attract support from all classes: ‘the movement in favour of “treaties of arbitration” has now assumed such proportions that it has been deemed advisable to concentrate all our energies in that direction’; the previous name, being ‘exclusive’, had ‘led many friends . . . to misunderstand our objects’.52 The IAL moved to different offices, and Cremer began to recruit new supporters. By September , the League could boast  vice-presidents, including seven peers. It received £ in subscriptions and donations in the year ending , and this level of funding remained fairly constant until the turn of the century. It seems that the IAL did not ask Carnegie for money until , and then he only donated £ a year during the s (although he did foot half the bill when, in , Cremer lost a libel case, as a result of which he ran up debts of £, and broke down so badly he had to be hospitalized).53 The revival of Cremer’s organization was so successful that several members of the Peace Society suggested an amalgamation. The Arbitrator remarked, however, that ‘there are difficulties in the way which lie in the very constitution of the Peace Society, which condemns all war as anti-Christian, while we start on a broader basis and welcome the cooperation of all.’ Its increased distance from the Peace Society meant that the IAL’s pacific-ism was brought more explicitly to the fore. Fred Maddison, a compositor and journalist who joined the IAL in  and soon gave regular addresses on its behalf, was outspoken about his rejection of ‘peace at any price’. ‘There were times when war was a sacred duty’, he told an audience in West Ham. Challenged in the Commons as to whether he would support a war of national defence, Cremer, too, declared that he would, ‘when danger is proved to exist; but not before’.54 The IAL concentrated on Anglo-American arbitration but Cremer used his Parliamentary seat to promote other aspects of the peace cause. In a speech in , for example, he supported a motion introduced by Henry Richard in favour of Parliamentary control of foreign policy and prepared a circular signed by the workmen representatives in Parliament. Cremer was also a constant critic of imperial adventures. Referring to Britain’s annexation of Burma, for instance, he ‘utterly repudiated the Arb., June–July , . Carnegie MSS, Cremer to Carnegie,  Oct. ; Stead to Carnegie,  July ; Churchill College, Stead MSS, Carnegie to Stead,  July . 54 Arb., Nov. , ; Feb.–Mar. , ; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( Mar. ) , . 52 53



IAPA, Egypt, IAL

doctrine that this country is justified in invading and annexing other countries for the sake of extending British commerce’ and accepted that the Burmese were fighting a legitimate war of self-defence: ‘The people of Upper Burma were now only doing that which we had been taught was the sacred duty of all good citizens—namely to repel by every means in their power the invaders of their country.’ In , ninety-seven Liberals and Radicals supported his motion for immediate withdrawal from Egypt, a number boosted by the fact that the Conservative Party had returned to power.55 Although the IAL aimed to attract support from a broad constituency, the personnel of its council remained unchanged: it was still, at heart, a Lib–Lab artisan organization and its influence depended to a great extent on the vitality of artisan radicalism. But the distinctive social and political world of artisan radicals was beginning to disappear (as the absence of younger recruits to the League’s council indicated).56 It could no longer be taken for granted that the large majority of politically active workers were enthusiastically Gladstonian. First, the Liberal split over Home Rule in  divided artisans—Howard Evans, for example, became, at least temporarily, a Liberal Unionist. Second, a section of workers— often from the unskilled working class—supported Conservatism and imperial aggrandizement. Third, workers’ ties with the Liberal Party were threatened by the emergence of socialism, ‘new unionism’ and the campaign for an independent labour party, of which Cremer was a vocal critic. Liberals such as himself, he said in , had been ‘roundly and scandalously abused’ by socialists. The situation became even worse after the formation of the ILP in . In a fierce exchange in the Commons, Cremer accused its leader, Keir Hardie, who had criticized the Liberal Government, of being ‘a catspaw of the Tories’. At subsequent WPA meetings Cremer was heckled by socialists.57 Thomas Burt expressed more gently his ‘tolerance of, but opposition to’ the ‘ “Socialistic Labour Party” ’.58 Maddison, on the other hand, was well known for the belligerence of his ‘anti-socialist’ views, and was forced to resign his editorship of 55 Arb., Apr. , ; Sept. and Oct. , –; Feb. , –; Mar. , ; Sept.–Oct. , ; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( Aug. ) , –; A. J. P. Taylor, The Troublemakers 56 Arb., June–July , . (London, ), . 57 Howard Evans, Radical Fights of Forty Years (), –; Parl. Debates, rd ser. ( May ) , ; John Shepherd, ‘Labour and Parliament: The Lib–Labs as the First Working Class MPs, –’, in E. F. Biagini and A. J. Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism, ; Arb., Sept.–Nov. , . 58 Thomas Burt, An Autobiography with Supplementary Chapter by Aaron Watson (London, ), , .

‒



the Railway Review when he spoke out against a strike.59 The artisans who had founded the International in the s thus played no part in its second, more successful, incarnation in . They had no truck with the ‘overthrow of the capitalist system’.60 Cremer, a carpenter of the lowliest origins, had finally made it into Parliament, but found himself left behind when the European working class began in earnest to agitate for peace. 59 H. A. Clegg, Alan Fox, and A. F. Thompson, A History of British Trade Unions Since  (Oxford, ), . For challenges to artisan radicalism, see Martin Ceadel, ‘Sir William Randal Cremer’, in Karl Holl and Anne C. Kjelling (eds.), The Nobel Prize and the 60 Laureates (Frankfurt, ), . Arb., June–July , ; Feb.–Mar. , .



–: The Universal Peace Congresses, the Arms Race, and the Concert of Europe ‘Never . . . have the times seemed more portentous, both for good and evil.’1 In , the year this comment was made in the Arbitrator, Salisbury’s Conservative Government launched a new programme of military shipbuilding. France and Russia followed suit and Germany, too, announced a ten-year plan of construction. The powers had already begun to abandon free trade and engage in an intense competition for imperial territory—now an arms race was under way. In the same year, however, nearly seventy international congresses were held in Paris to celebrate the centenary of the Revolution, including the inaugurating congress of the Second International and the first in a series of Universal Peace Congresses. This gathering of peace societies was organized by Charles Lemonnier with the support of Passy and Pratt, and was itself arranged to coincide with an ‘Inter-Parliamentary Conference for International Arbitration’, initiated by Passy and Cremer. Peace activists were hopeful that such conferences would help to counteract the reactionary tendencies of the time and go some way towards binding together the peoples of Europe so strongly that war would become impossible.    The British peace movement which took part in the new Universal Peace Congresses was markedly different from that which organized the international meetings of the s and s. Although the Peace Society remained one of the world’s most important peace associations—easily the largest in Britain, with a steady  subscribers, agents who addressed over four hundred meetings a year, and over thirty auxiliaries—it had lost its mid-century predominance.2 The £,–, it now received each year in subscriptions and donations had fallen from an average of £, 1

Arb., May–June , .

2

HP, June , .

‒



in the early s. Funds were augmented by occasional legacies, such as that from John Horniman, who left the Society £, in , but these also served as a reminder of the advanced age of many of its supporters. Henry Richard—over decades the Society’s greatest asset—had retired as secretary in . The combination of the Appleton imbroglio and the Egyptian war had no doubt been trying, but his decision to retire was taken principally on grounds of age: he was  and had been secretary for  years. His successor was the Quaker William Jones, a committee member originally from Middlesborough, who had been working for the Society as a collector since , spoke French, German, and Italian, and also had links with working men. These ‘excellent qualifications’ overcame the one drawback to his becoming secretary—that, according to J. W. Pease, ‘it was not desirable to give to the Peace Society too much of the character of a Quaker society.’ Jones, in any case, left after three years (he emigrated to Australia to improve his health) and was succeeded by the Revd Evans Darby, who was, like Richard, a Congregationalist minister of Welsh origin. A regular speaker on peace platforms, Darby was also a Liberation Society official and a temperance activist. He had been recommended to the executive by such ‘weighty’ Quakers as the Wisbech philanthropist Priscilla Peckover, and described himself as having an ‘intense regard’ for the Society of Friends.3 Richard’s departure meant that the Society lost some of its Radical connections (in the past, more than one MP addressing its meetings had attributed their presence to his influence).4 Darby was, however, a dedicated and energetic pacifist, who ran the Society largely as Richard had done. No immediate shift in its core pacifist ideology accompanied his appointment, despite the fact that ‘several’ who sat on the central committee favoured a ‘clean and simple basis of membership’ so as not to deter pacific-ists. The Society of Friends continued to have a strong presence on the executive, key Quaker members of which included the chairman C. C. Morland, an umbrella manufacturer; Herbert Sefton-Jones, a patent agent; and William Tallack. One significant change was the attempt, which began in , to secure ‘eminent men’ as vice-presidents. Passmore Edwards, the Earl of Derby and B. F. Westcott, the sociallyconcerned Bishop of Durham, declined in the first months of the initiative; others, including the Marquis of Bristol, accepted. There was also, in , an unacknowledged relaxation of the criterion for executive 3 MB,  Dec. ;  May ;  Nov. ; W. E. Darby, Out of the Depths: A Temperance Tale (London, ); LB, Darby to D. Hill,  Jan. , copy. 4 See, e.g., A. M. Sullivan in , HP, June , .

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UPCs, Arms Race, Concert of Europe

membership: it was decided that a number of progressive religious leaders—Clifford; Oswald Dykes, a Presbyterian; the Congregationalist J. P. Gledstone; and Hugh Price Hughes, the Methodist leader—should be invited on to the committee, even though it was probably known that these men believed in the justice of some wars. None agreed to join the committee, but Clifford, Hughes, and Gledstone became vice-presidents.5 On taking up the secretaryship, Darby drew up a detailed programme of the ‘general work and organization’ of the Society. More attention was to be paid to local elections, religious anniversaries, schools, and the role of women in the peace cause. He threw himself in particular into an attempt to activate the churches (the Herald of Peace regularly berated religious ministers for their failure to preach pacifism). His efforts included the formation of a committee of British churches on arbitration in  and a campaign for ‘Peace Sunday’ to be recognized on the last Sunday before Christmas, in the cause of which he interviewed the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Manning. The high point of the campaign was reached in , when an invitation was sent out to every minister in charge of a congregation, , in all—, promised to participate.6 Darby was also secretary of the Arbitration Alliance of British Christians. This body originated in an appeal from American Presbyterians to all other churches to form a union for the promotion of arbitration and disarmament. The ‘American General Committee of the Churches for Petitioning the Governments of the World on behalf of International Arbitration’ asked Darby to be secretary of a British branch; in February  a committee was appointed, invitations sent out in an attempt to enlarge it, and a general council formed. The Society of Friends took the opportunity to convoke a conference of all the Protestant Churches in Britain to discuss the duties and responsibilities of Christians ‘in regard to the military system and the vast armaments of Europe’. This gathering offered support to Darby’s committee—now recognized as the Arbitration Alliance of British Christians—which was to promote the completion of the American petition, to secure resolutions in favour of disarmament and arbitration in the annual assemblies of church bodies and to arrange a deputation of the churches to wait on the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. Darby told the Peace Society committee that the increased involvement of the churches in the peace movement was ‘full of promise’ (it was at this time that Clifford and the other religious leaders were invited to join the Society’s executive). Rosebery, 5 6

MB,  Mar. ;  Sept.;  Oct.;  Nov. ;  July ;  Sept. . MB,  Dec. ; HP, Jan. , ; Jan. , .

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

however, declined to receive the deputation. Most of the work of the Arbitration Alliance was completed by Darby, who travelled to the Continent under its auspices in . The petition, eventually presented to Lord Salisbury in November , was signed by representatives of churches in Britain, the US, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Australia, but it received little publicity.7 Notwithstanding these efforts to win over the Christian community, the Peace Society continued to voice legal, economic, and humanitarian peace arguments. Darby, for example, became an expert on the history of international arbitration, and wrote an influential book on the subject, International Tribunals. Of thirty-five pamphlets distributed by the Society in , twenty-four were on general subjects and only three were directly concerned with the religious aspect of the peace question. Its propaganda remained broadly educative rather than specifically political, however, and the Society continued to be reluctant to broadcast controversial views and engage aggressively in debate about armaments and foreign policy. It was still obsessed with respectability, and other peace workers were at times scornful of its caution. ‘One great meeting held in London to denounce the military occupation of Egypt’, Hodgson Pratt asserted on one occasion, ‘would do more to secure peace, and secure confidence in British honesty, than a hundred little meetings for the enunciation of general principles however true or important.’ Not surprisingly, the Society also preferred liberal and radical critiques of war to the socialism of the Second International: ‘Attacks on capital’, the Herald of Peace held, ‘are not really helpful to the cause of labour, for capital and labour are mutually interdependent.’8 The Society’s relationship with its auxiliaries remained ‘one of much difficulty and delicacy’, due to their desire for greater independence, not least in the matter of raising money. The Manchester association was particularly restless, and remained so after the resignation of William Pollard on grounds of ill-health in . The Liverpool auxiliary was warned by the committee that auxiliaries were supposed to be ‘entirely dependent’ on the central body for funds. Other provincial peace workers were less irksome. A notable example is Priscilla Peckover, who 7 HP, Mar. , ; Aug. , ; Oct. , ; MB,  July ; D. W. Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics – (London, ), ; HP, Dec. , . 8 Irwin Abrams, ‘A History of European Peace Societies –’, D.Phil. thesis (Harvard Univ., ), fos. –; Concord, Nov. , ; HP, Aug. , .

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was to become a regular representative of pacifism at the Universal Peace Congresses. She was one of several important peace-movement benefactors from the wealthy Cambridgeshire banking family (including her brother, Alexander, the first Quaker peer). The Women’s Local Peace Association, the body she founded in , was partly the product of her anger at the Afghan and Zulu wars fought by Disraeli’s Government, but it seems the foundations had been laid at the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends in . At these gatherings, her own account maintains, she had discovered that the Quaker testimony ‘Are you faithful in bearing your Christian testimony against all war?’ was to be addressed to women as well as men. She was put in touch with Mrs Southey, who asked Peckover to join the Peace Society’s Ladies Auxiliary. Discovering that the auxiliary had only  members, Peckover was roused to embark on her own society. She adapted the technique from her temperance work of going from door to door securing peace pledges. The Women’s Local Peace Association became the Peace Union, the central association of twenty-six local non-resisting groups, affiliated to the Peace Society and run mostly by Quaker women.9 Peckover emphasized the importance of women to the peace cause, in particular their influence on children (as argued, for example, in her pamphlet, An Earnest Appeal to All Women, Everywhere). Peckover also founded, in , an independent local peace society, the Wisbech Local Peace Association. Although the Association has been cited as having , members by , a large number of these were ‘associate members’ i.e. all those involved in affiliated organizations, such as chapels, Sunday Schools, Primitive Methodist Colleges, and railway missions.10 The number of full members according to the  Report was , when the total membership was over ,. Peckover edited a quarterly journal, Peace and Goodwill, which expressed an optimistic Christian pacifism. It avoided political controversy and was trusting of the peace rhetoric of monarchs and governments. Wisbech meetings were conducted in the traditional style of Christian peace activism: they began with the singing of a hymn and a reading from the Bible, and would often end with the singing of verses from the ‘Peace Anthem’. 9 MB,  May ; Swarthmore College, WLPA MSS, ‘Our Jubilee’; Peace Union, Annual Report (). 10 For the figure of ,, see T. C. Kennedy, ‘Priscilla Hannah Peckover’, in Harold Josephson (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders (Westport, Conn., ), .

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 ’    The British representatives at the Universal Peace Congresses included members of a new peace association, the Friends’ Peace Committee. This emerged from the campaign for an Anglo-American arbitration treaty, but was also the result, more generally, of sustained pressure on the part of a number of Quakers to keep alive the Society of Friends’ peace testimony in the face of increasing ‘conformity to the world’. These Quakers faced three problems: first, a small section of the Society no longer held pacifist views and yet continued to be Quakers through birthright membership (disownment—the ejection from the Society of those who did not conform to Quaker views and practices—had virtually disappeared by the end of the century). Second, the absence of conscription and of a major threat to the British homeland had insulated Friends from the need to consider what it meant to be non-resisters. The correspondence columns of the Friend and the British Friend provide ample evidence of uncertainty on questions such as the distinction between the domestic use of force and force applied in different kinds of war; for some Quakers the lack of clarity on this issue had led to an erosion of their pacifism. Finally, Britain’s comparative security also lowered the level of peace activism among Quakers. Although by the end of the Victorian period the Society of Friends was still a pacifist body, only a small minority of its , members was active in the peace movement, either on behalf of the Society of Friends or under the auspices of peace associations. Attempts had often been made to remind the Yearly Meeting of the importance of the peace testimony to Quakerism. After a discussion on the question in , for example, William Pollard issued a pamphlet inciting his fellow members to increased efforts for peace. ‘The bearing of passive testimonies is one of our little weaknesses’, Pollard asserted: a few of us have been diligent in circulating peace tracts, and many have freely given their guineas to maintain the Peace Society. But beyond this little has been done towards propagating views so essential to the well-being of nations and the spread of real Christianity. I have sometimes heard it said . . . that ‘Henry Richard is the Peace Society’; and the inference has, at all events, been implied that we may relax our exertions . . . Some may be ready to say that my programme is too political, and that the Christian basis is not sufficiently brought into view. But the fact needs to be borne in mind that war . . . is a political evil, and the tendency to it must be met and overcome by right political influences.

In  the monthly Meeting for Sufferings—the executive of the Society of Friends—organized petitions and sent memorials protesting

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against a war with Russia. The Yearly Meeting issued ‘A Peace Appeal’, which reminded Quakers that for them peace was ‘a question of individual conviction and faithfulness’. Local Quaker meetings were also periodically active, and an informal ‘Friends’ Peace Society’ sometimes met at Yearly Meeting. But the Society’s poor record over Egypt—in particular its readiness, in the words of the Friend, ‘to palliate war because it was carried on by a Liberal rather than a Tory government’—accentuated fears that peace was becoming a lapsed principle.11 The campaign for an Anglo-American arbitration treaty in the s was less controversial and provided Quakers with an opportunity to regularize their peace activity. The Yearly Meeting in  ‘devoted much time to consideration of the peace question as affecting both Europe and America’. It was resolved to appoint a deputation to take counsel with American Friends ‘as to the practicability of bringing direct influence to bear on government at Washington’ to promote a treaty. At another sitting of the Meeting, George Gillett, a member of the influential banking family, led an ‘animated discussion on the state of Europe’. That autumn, American Friends decided to hold a conference on peace and arbitration alongside the major gathering to discuss Quaker doctrine in Richmond, Indiana. London Yearly Meeting’s representation at the conference included William Jones and Gillett. Jones wrote to Priscilla Peckover that the subject of peace ‘took great hold of the meeting as it had done of London Yearly Meeting . . . a “peace boom” has been created.’ On his return from Richmond, Gillett acted on the suggestion made there that each Yearly Meeting set up a central peace committee, with branches in various Quarterly Meetings. ‘However useful the Peace Society might be,’ he told Yearly Meeting in , ‘the Church must not leave it to do the work alone.’12 The Friends’ Peace Committee was a specialized body, confronting peace issues on a day-to-day basis and reporting to the Meeting for Sufferings. Gillett became its first clerk and immediately set to work ‘trying to influence the public opinion of Christians on the subject of peace’. This he did partly by editing Messiah’s Kingdom, the organ of the interdenominational Christian Union for Promoting International Concord, founded by Bishop Westcott in . After his death in , Gillett was succeeded as clerk of the FPC by T. P. Newman, the head of a printing firm and chairman of the Guildford 11 HP, Sept. , ; Sept. , –; Friend, June , ; HP, June , –. 12 HP, June , ; WLPA MSS, Jones to Peckover,  Sept. ; Friend, Nov. , ; Friend, June , .

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Liberal Association. Newman held the clerkship from  to  and even after that time was the Committee’s most important voice. It had around fifteen members: they tended to be respected Friends, often born in the s, who attended the London meetings, and who had a special interest in the peace question. F. W. Fox, for example, was a long-standing member of the Peace Society executive (he was also involved in the Aborigines Protection Society and the Anti-Slavery Society); he wrote pamphlets on international arbitration and drew up a plan for an international consultative court to adjudicate disputes within a ‘United States of Europe’. Joseph Gundry Alexander, a barrister and well-known antiopium campaigner, was a secretary of the International Law Association and regularly submitted papers on arbitration to its meetings. Ellen Robinson and Frances Thompson, two other key members, had founded the Liverpool and Birkenhead Women’s Peace and Arbitration Association in . Robinson also became secretary of Peckover’s Peace Union in , and fostered contacts between it and such bodies as Women’s Liberal associations, Labour Churches, Christian Brotherhoods and the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon movement. At the conference on war held during the Yearly Meeting in , she fended off objections to increased peace activity. One Quaker had said he wanted ‘Christianity in this matter, not politics’, to which she answered: ‘Was not the divorce of Christianity from politics the source of a terrible amount of evil in the world?’13 Another FPC member, Mary Lamley Cooke, was also assistant secretary of the Peace Union. She travelled around the country with Robinson addressing meetings advocating international arbitration, mutual disarmament, and the special role of women—again, particularly as mothers and teachers—in the peace cause. After Robinson retired in , Cooke took over the secretaryship of the Peace Union. From  she also edited the little pacifist journal War or Brotherhood? The FPC encouraged the Society of Friends to co-operate with pacific-ists in peace campaigns and countered the reluctance of some Quakers to enter into specific protests. In March , for example, Newman wanted the Society to declare against increased armaments spending. One argument raised in opposition was that it was ‘an equivocal position to protest against mere increased armaments. Our position is that for the country to rely on any naval force at all is an unchristian position, not that a strong one or a weak one affects the question.’ Newman, 13 DQB; J. E. C. Montmorency, Francis William Fox: A Biography (London, ); H. G. Alexander, Joseph Gundry Alexander (London, ); Friend, June , –.

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in response, made the case for temporary compromise and political action: ‘It is mischievous to think we cannot oppose an increase in the army etc, but must confine our opposition to the military idea in toto. We shall often find helpers on the immediate (if partial) question, who may not as yet go further.’14 Quakers’ enthusiasm for peace was nurtured in the s not only by the FPC, but also by those identified with the increasingly influential ‘Quaker Renaissance’. This was a movement led by Friends born in the s and s—such as Edward Grubb, teacher, editor of the British Friend and Liberal Party campaigner; and J. W. Graham, principal of a Quaker residence at Manchester University—which sought to shake up the complacent Society and reinstate its original and distinctive theological outlook based on the concept of Inward Light (the ‘indwelling spirit of Christ’ in each person).15 The Society of Friends had been swept up in the Evangelicalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a process which those involved in the Quaker Renaissance believed had helped the Society emerge from quietism but hindered it by introducing a Biblically-centred theology which made Quakers indistinguishable from other Nonconformists. The Inward Light theology was seen as welladapted to the demands of a changing social and intellectual environment; its advocates dismissed the nervousness of influential Evangelical Friends with regard to political issues. J. W. Graham’s first involvement in the peace movement was in  when he spoke to the Lancashire and Cheshire Peace Association. The following year he read a paper at the London Universal Peace Congress on the importance of new evolutionary ideas to the questions of empire and peace—he often called on Quakers to embrace secular as well as Christian peace arguments. Like Graham, Edward Grubb was concerned about the extent to which the Society of Friends had lost its vitality on the peace question, and was determined to make the peace testimony central to the identity of the Society, so that it could help in the political battle against imperialism and war. In an article in the Friend in  entitled ‘Where are we on the peace question?’, he asked: ‘What is there in the Quakerism of the latter end of the nineteenth century which will enable us to gauge the moral fibre of the young men of our Society, when there Friend,  Nov. , . See T. C. Kennedy, ‘The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern British Peace Movement, –’, Albion,  (); and his ‘The Ubiquitous Friend: Edward Grubb and the Modern British Peace Movement’, Peace Research,  (). See also James Dudley, The Life of Edward Grubb (London, ). 14 15

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

has been so little for a couple of centuries to test our allegiance to our peace principles, except for the occasional issue of mild protest to the government in power?’16     The ‘Inter-Parliamentary Conference’ which provided the stimulus for the congress of peace societies in  grew out of the plan of a group of French Parliamentarians led by Passy to follow Cremer’s example and campaign for an arbitration treaty between their country and the US. The IAL council discussed the French initiative on  June  and offered to help; Cremer visited Paris and on  August Passy and his group issued invitations for a meeting of French and British Parliamentarians on  October . This initial meeting was badly attended: only nine British MPs, including Cremer and Burt, were present, and only twentyfive French deputies. A joint committee of French and British Members was nonetheless formed to make plans for a larger gathering, which was to be held in June .17 In planning a congress of peace societies, Pratt and Passy felt that it should take place before this Inter-Parliamentary meeting, so that the latter could be, in effect, a chamber where the people submitted proposals to their representatives. (Pratt envisaged the Inter-Parliamentary gatherings as the forum he had long advocated—one in which experts would conduct an unbiased, rational discussion of specific international problems.) The congress of societies attracted  delegates, two-thirds of whom were French. The British representatives included Darby from the Peace Society, Thomas Snape from the Liverpool auxiliary, and Arthur Albright and Arthur O’Neill on behalf of the Birmingham branch. George Gillett of the FPC and several other Quakers were also present. British pacific-ism was represented by Cremer, Evans, and others from the WPA, and by Pratt from the IAPA. Although Continental peace activists such as Lemonnier had in the past expressed doubts about the efficacy of arbitration, it soon became clear that this policy was the main basis of co-operation between all the different international societies. Arbitration dominated the proceedings British Friend, Aug. , ; Friend,  Dec. , . Arb., June–July , ; Aug. , –; Oct. , ; Nov. , –; Mar.–Apr. , . For a general account of the Universal Peace Congresses, see Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe – (New York, ); and Verdiana Grossi, Le pacifisme Européen – (Brussels, ). 16 17

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of the congress. Darby urged that the French and British campaigns for treaties with the US should be intensified. It was also resolved to press for arbitration to be embodied in every future treaty as an obligatory and not an optional undertaking. The congress experienced some of the practical difficulties of previous international gatherings, however. British delegates, for example, complained about the Continental habit of several orators speaking at once, trying to drown one another out.18 The Inter-Parliamentary Conference which met shortly after proved larger than expected and had to move location at the last minute to the Continental Hotel, which could accommodate the ninety-six Parliamentarians who attended. The IAL defrayed the bulk of the expense and Cremer was the chief organizer, though Pratt stayed up all night with him translating the resolutions. The British MPs present included Burt, G. B. Clark, Lawson, Fenwick, Illingworth, Philip Stanhope, and F. A. Channing. Arbitration was again the main topic of debate. The Arbitrator bragged that the conference surpassed all expectations—its very existence was a significant mark of progress. The delegates committed themselves to little, however. Governments were to be persuaded to conclude arbitration treaties, but a rider was added that this did not imply a limit to any nation’s independence of action. A precedent was set for future Inter-Parliamentary meetings of avoiding the subject of disarmament as too controversial.19 A second Inter-Parliamentary Conference was held in London the following year, again a few days after a Universal Peace Congress. But Cremer, in his own eyes an established Parliamentary peace activist, had already become unhappy with the connection between the two gatherings. He was instrumental in reversing the order of the two conferences in , and in ensuring that afterwards they were held in different cities at different times. After that, the IAL was only rarely represented at the UPCs. When its representatives did attend—for example in Paris in —they concluded that it was ‘not of a practical character’ and gave a ‘humorous account’ of the proceedings. Cremer remained the principal organizer of the Inter-Parliamentary Conferences until , when a permanent secretariat was established (in  the movement changed its name to the Inter-Parliamentary Union). He was intensely proud of his role in the IPU’s formation, and extremely touchy about any suggestion that he was not the principal ‘father’ of the Union. Cremer later told 18 19

Abrams, ‘History of European Peace Societies’, fos. –, ; Arb., July–Aug. , . Arb., Dec. –Jan. , ; July–Aug. , .

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Carnegie he considered it ‘the germ of the United States of Europe’.20 The IPU was indeed an important forum for discussing plans for treaties and courts of arbitration.21 That the conferences flourished was partly because of the opportunities they presented for travel and high-living, however, and they didn’t live up to Pratt’s hopes. He later argued that the Parliamentarians had ignored the UPCs ‘to a foolish and mischievous extent’. ‘Our congresses would have had far more influence’, he wrote, ‘if the members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union had condescended to take part in our meetings . . . The absence of an entente serieuse between the two bodies has been a grave error.’22 He knew that without a link to parliaments, the Universal Peace Congresses were easily dismissed by press and politicians. The UPCs served at times merely to expose the ideological and institutional fissures within the international peace movement. The Peace Society, for example, remained suspicious of any schemes to create a coordinating international body. Among its reasons were an aversion to Lemmonier’s politically controversial, republican pacific-ism and an awareness of the lack of support for peace associations on the Continent. Perhaps the most important reason, however, was the secularism and anticlericalism of the Continental peace movement: religious issues were excluded from the first UPCs. Darby reacted with hostility to a resolution at the Rome Congress of  in favour of founding a central organizing bureau, which he envisaged would be a tool of Lemonnier’s ILPL and a step towards the federation of the European peace movement. He wrote in the Herald of Peace of ‘foreigners’ who were ‘little acquainted with the work of . . . British and American societies’. A federation would result, he argued, ‘in taking the management of the peace cause on the Continent out of the hands of Christian workers and to entrust it to avowed sceptics and agnostics’ with ‘advanced political views’.23 It was crucial, too, to protect Peace Society funding: My judgement has always been that there were societies enough in existence and that the wise course would be not to create more and so spend money needlessly on mere machinery, but to find a greater and less precarious support for those already in existence; and . . . knowing the difficulty of keeping up the income of our 20 Arb., Nov. , ; Library of Congress, Carnegie MSS, Cremer to Carnegie,  Dec. . 21 For the IPU, see Ralph Uhlig, Die Interparlamentarische Union – (Stuttgart, ); Yefime Zarjevski, The People Have the Floor: A History of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (Aldershot, ); James Douglas, Parliaments across Frontiers: A Short History of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (London, ). 22 23 Bajer MSS, Pratt to Bajer,  Aug. . HP, Mar. , .

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Society (as Mr Pratt, too, ought to know) I hold that I am better able to form a judgement than the newcomers who carried the resolutions at Rome . . . Already the friends of peace on the Continent have been dependent on English money. You cannot tell how many applications I had in Rome alone.24

In time Darby realized that the International Peace Bureau, founded in  to organize the UPCs, would not greatly affect the running of the Peace Society. After two years, the Society became involved in its work, and sent a cheque to make amends for its previous hostility, on the understanding that it was not surrendering its independence.25 Darby’s fears about centralization and secularization were related to the division between the Peace Society and IAPA as to the benefit of tackling specific political problems. For Darby, peace congresses were occasions for meeting colleagues from other nations and making an affirmative statement about the progress of peace and arbitration: ‘our work is to provide principles, not policies for governments . . . The attempt to furnish policies will . . . expose us to the charge of arrogant meddlesomeness.’ The Peace Society argued that the role of a peace congress was not to discuss or try to prevent specific wars, but to ‘bring about a change in public sentiment’. But Concord attacked the Society for its desire to ‘wait until Christ’s rule is established’. Following the Budapest UPC in , Pratt vented his frustration: The Congress could think of nothing better than to re-adopt resolutions affirming certain general principles, or to formulate the vaguest aspirations and rose-water remedies. The cardinal fault and fatal defect of these congresses, and of the societies which organize them, is that they have not the courage to consider, or even to mention in a whisper, the actual causes of the danger which threatens Europe. The Association represented by this journal alone has adopted a true policy in this respect; but no other society has followed our example.26

The IAPA often repeated its criticism of the anodyne content, and poor organization, of many of the congresses. The British peace contingent at the UPCs did not split along the line between pacifism and pacific-ism, however, despite the fact that Continental peace activists were eager to introduce discussions of the Bajer MSS, Darby to Bajer,  Jan. ; HP, Nov. , . For the IPB, see Werner Simon, ‘The International Peace Bureau, –: Clerk, Mediator or Guide?’, in Charles Chatfield and Peter Van den Dungen (eds.), Peace Movements and Political Cultures (Knoxville, Tenn., ). 26 A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organized Movements for International Peace (London, ), ; HP, May , ; Nov. , ; Mar. , ; Concord, Feb. , ; Oct. , . 24 25

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right of legitimate defence. The only non-resisters present at the congresses came from Britain and America, and the British representation often included a strong pacifist element—of the  British delegates who attended the London UPC in , for instance, over two thirds were connected to the Peace Society or the Society of Friends (including auxiliaries, local Quarterly Meetings etc.). When the subject of legitimate defence came up at UPCs, British pacifists naturally opposed Continental activists. Priscilla Peckover, writing to the Italian peace activist Captain Siccardi, explained: ‘The real difference is that you believe in violence as a means of opposing and disarming wrong and I do not, because it uses the very methods it condemns.’27 But British pacific-ists, too, refused to support legitimate-defence resolutions. This was partly to prevent a serious rupture within their national peace movement. It was also because the absence in Britain of either an acute fear of invasion or any conception of the necessity of a forward defence of the homeland encouraged British activists to regard government talk of ‘legitimate defence’ as a cover for excessive military spending. They preferred to emphasize that arbitration could be used to settle all disputes. The security enjoyed by Britain also meant that most of its peace activists stood apart from their Continental colleagues on the question of disarmament. The economic costs of the arms race were generally deplored at the UPCs, but Continental peace societies insisted that disarmament would have to wait for the general acceptance of arbitration. The British peace movement, on the other hand, felt that excessive armament spending was an evil which could not be ignored—it contributed to militarism and prevented peace by impeding democratic government. During the first decade of UPCs, it was British (and American) peace societies who most often provided the impetus for discussions on armaments, and British peace activists reacted with dismay to their foreign colleagues’ lack of enthusiasm. Hodgson Pratt—who railed against the strong influence on the British peace movement of ‘Economists’ and the ‘Manchester School’—was an exception: ‘it is because our Continental colleagues are unhappily members of communities concerned in a terrible antagonism’, he said, ‘that neither the International League of Peace and Liberty, nor the French Arbitration Society, has felt able to take any steps on behalf . . . of disarmament.’28 Although the UPCs were neither harmonious nor particularly influential, they were an important demonstration that the peace movement was 27 28

Wisbech Local Peace Association MSS, Peckover to Siccardi,  Mar. . Concord, May , .

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genuinely international. The gatherings were a key date in the campaigning calendar of the British peace associations. Activists travelled to a different city each year and met up with old friends from America and Europe; they enjoyed the pageantry, the hospitality, the tourism. The painter and cosmopolitan romantic Felix Moscheles, for example, who sat on the executive of both the Peace Society and the IAPA, expressed his optimism after having attended a UPC at The Hague: Some twenty graceful and high-born damsels served as pages to the true knights of the day . . . In their cream-white dresses, embroidered with little emblematic flags in compliment to all nations, and with coloured streamers flowing from their shoulders, they looked—well, they looked simply bewitching. And then the foolish world will still ask: ‘What is the use of Congresses?’ It does not see that international amenities are the very life blood of coming generations. Our banquets with their toasts, our excursions and receptions with their flags and vins d’honneur, all are busy preparing a better time.29

     The further escalation of the European arms race in the early s provoked widespread concern in Cabinet offices as well as at peace meetings. Rumours spread of a governmental conference to discuss a halt in arms increases, and the peace movement perceived a more general acceptance of the need to pursue its favoured policies. ‘The governments of Europe’, John Clifford asserted, ‘are awakening to the enormous and desolating burdens of the military system, and they see that the masses of the people are becoming more and more aware of the impoverishment and misery due to our large armaments. This is the time to act.’ The Contemporary Review, which published an article in favour of a general reduction in arms spending by the French philosopher and statesman Jules Simon, also carried an appeal from W. T. Stead for the war budgets of  to be a high-water mark until the end of the century.30 Stead’s declamation was treated with some suspicion by the peace associations—he was, to them, the man behind the naval scare of . But they were willing to accept good news from any source, and Stead offered the possibility of being able to sway sections of the public that were usually dismissive of the peace movement. His journalism was charged with a populist, moral self-righteousness—according to Alfred Milner, with whom he shared a deep faith in Rhodesian imperialism, Stead was ‘a 29 30

Concord, Aug.–Sept. , . HP, May , ; Merze Tate, The Disarmament Illusion (New York, ), –.

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compound of Don Quixote and Phineas T. Barnum’.31 He had agitated for improved British relations with Russia and America and against a war in the Near East. ‘It makes me fairly stare and gasp’, his brother wrote to him, ‘to think how many wars you have prevented.’ As early as  Stead had tried to persuade Liberals and Radicals to help him ‘win over the peace party, whose natural, but most unfortunate persistency in deprecating measures of coercion prevents the striking of the grandest stroke for peace’—this was a United States of Europe, with a tribunal and military sanctions. A decade later, he embarked on one of the tours of European parliaments and palaces which were to become his trademark, in order to ascertain the likelihood of a durable European peace.32 Stead attended the Arbitration Alliance’s Devonshire House conference in  and decided to set on foot a ‘National Memorial’ in favour of an international halt in armaments increases, designed to secure the ‘enthusiastic support of the representatives of labour, of religion and of the municipalities’. (This memorial was different to that of the Alliance, which covered both arbitration and armaments and was restricted to the churches.) The fact that an arms truce would freeze British naval superiority meant that Stead’s campaign was relatively uncontroversial at Westminster. Indeed, he sought out the approval of Lord Rosebery, the Liberal Prime Minister and leader of the distinctive imperialist wing of the party which had been emerging since the late s. The memorial would never have been put forward, Stead insisted, ‘unless on the most explicit understanding that it would strengthen the policy which Her Majesty’s Ministers were determined to adopt’.33 Stead’s particular brand of peace campaigning reflected his determination to maintain national military superiority at all costs. That it had any plausibility for progressives was due to the widespread assumption in Britain of the peaceful nature and ‘disinterestedness’ of the country’s maritime strength. Even Cobdenite Radicals subscribed to this view—it was a source of weakness in the peace movement. The navy was Britain’s principal means of defence; it also removed the need for a large standing army and for conscription, and so was generally seen as instrumental in preserving Britain as a liberal nation. It was celebrated as an instrument in the suppression of the slave-trade and in keeping the sea 31 Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain,  vols. (London, ), i, , . 32 Stead MSS, F. H. Stead to W. T. Stead,  Dec. ; L. G. Rylands, Correspondence and Speeches of Mr Peter Rylands MP,  vols. (Manchester, ), i, –; HP, Aug. , . 33 Stead MSS, Rosebery to Stead,  May ;  May ;  June .

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lanes open to international commerce. As a result, ‘idealists’ as well as ‘realists’ accepted that the British fleet had to be considerably larger than that of any other power. Many tended to assume that the rest of Europe accepted this, too. Even those who were more alive to the suspicion with which Britain’s naval strength was regarded on the Continent hoped that a freeze on armaments could be a starting-point. The peace associations therefore joined Stead, whose suggestion, Darby wrote, ‘should not be disregarded . . . by the friends of peace because, at first sight, it may appear to give a measure of sanction to militarism’. The associations also made clear, however, the difference between their view of naval defence and that of Stead. Peace activists called for a merely sufficient navy on the isolationist basis that the only justification for augmentation was a real threat of invasion, boycott, or blockade. A ‘small navy’—still stronger than that of Germany or France—was, the peace associations asserted, easily able to protect Britain’s legitimate commercial interests. They emphasized, too, that armaments policy was dependent on foreign and imperial policy. The naval scare of –, for example, which emphasized weaknesses in the Mediterranean fleet, was blamed on Britain’s continued presence in Egypt and other incidences of aggressive imperialism: if an expansionist policy was abandoned, retrenchment would become possible, Britain’s foreign relations would improve, and governments could spend their time and money on domestic reform. Stead could not accept these arguments, as was revealed when he attended the annual meeting of the IAPA in . After W. P. Byles had insisted that the navy could be reduced in size, Stead described him as one of those ‘who retard the progress of peace in this country’: the most mischievous of courses, if we desire to persuade our countrymen that the time is ripe for one short step towards our goal, is for Members of Parliament to tell them that a belief in a strong navy is rubbish and nonsense . . . If you think you are going to get John Bull to follow you there, then, Sir, you are very much mistaken in John Bull.

He was right—in a situation of international tension, increases in navy estimates were rarely unpopular with the British electorate. An uneasy alliance was nevertheless maintained between Stead and the peace associations, and his memorial was eventually presented in , bearing , signatures.34 34 HP, May , –; July , ; Aug. , ; Sept.–Oct. , –, –; Dec. , ; Concord, July , .

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       The campaign for an Anglo-American arbitration treaty—the IAL’s main concern for over a decade—also presented little threat to Britain’s national interests and continued to attract wide (if shallow) public support. In  Cremer put down a Commons resolution expressing support for a treaty; two years later he secured time to debate it. Although unable to mobilize the support which he had amassed behind Richard’s arbitration motion in , Cremer was now in a position to focus opinion at Westminster. The resolution passed without a division, with Carnegie watching from the public gallery. A second address to President Cleveland, signed by  British Parliamentarians, was presented by Cremer in person at the White House on  January , and five months later he organized an address to Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, signed by , trade unionists.35 The resurgence of a long-standing dispute between Britain and Venezuela (which had the protection of the Monroe Doctrine) suddenly made the treaty a more pressing issue. All the peace associations took action. The IAPA, for example, held a meeting at the studio of Felix Moscheles; the speakers included Leonard Courtney, the Fabian journalist William Clarke, and George Bernard Shaw. Pratt visited America in  having arranged an interview with President Cleveland, and was told by Julian Pauncefote, Britain’s Ambassador who was working towards a treaty, that his trip had been ‘very useful’. The peace movement was once more joined by W. T. Stead, in his role as apostle of Anglo-Saxon brotherhood. He formed an Anglo-American Arbitration Committee which held a much-reported meeting in the Queen’s Hall on  March. The hall was decked out in English and American flags, and the letters of sympathy were, according to Concord, ‘the most remarkable ever read at a public meeting’—they were sent by Gladstone, Balfour, Asquith, John Everett Millais, Holman Hunt, Herbert Spencer, and Admiral Vesey Hamilton among others. Cremer played a major part in the gathering; also on the platform were J. W. Pease, Darby, Burt, Clifford, and the secretary of the ILP, Tom Mann.36 35 Arb., Mar.–Apr. , ; Sept.–Oct.–Nov. , –. For accounts of Cremer’s petitions and visits to the US, see Abrams, ‘History of European Peace Societies’, fos. –; David Patterson, Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement – (Bloomington, Ind., ), –; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer: His Life and Work (London, ),  ff.,  ff.,  ff. 36 Concord, Mar. , ; Abrams, ‘History of European Peace Societies’, fo. ; Concord, Apr. , ; HP, Apr. , ; Arb., Feb.–Mar. , ; Friend,  Mar. , .

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‘The blessed word for the present year has been arbitration,’ Blackwood’s Magazine announced in , ‘this popular craze . . . will not be without incidental interest to the curious historian of the future.’ But the craze was not exactly as the peace movement would have wished it. The campaign for a treaty was accompanied by much talk of the moral superiority of the English-speaking nations. Stead’s pamphlet Always Arbitrate Before You Fight: An Appeal to English-Speaking Folk associated peace with ideas of race and imperial unity: ‘we want no foreigners to come between us, interfering in our family differences’; it was to be ‘Anglo-American union by way of arbitration’. Another leader of the movement, the Methodist minister Hugh Price Hughes saw a federated Anglo-Saxon race as a ‘vast peace society’, which would secure international concord by instilling the values of liberal self-government throughout the world. A treaty was championed even by those with orthodox defence views and more general discussions of arbitration sparked off by the dispute tended to emphasize the strict limitations of its applicability.37 It was hardly surprising that J. G. Alexander issued the following warning to London Yearly Meeting: He feared they would find a considerable amount of the strength of feeling that went in support of an arbitration treaty between this country and the United States came from men not at all pacific in their general views, not hearty supporters of the peace cause, but who had a strong feeling of the brotherhood of the two nations, and who had the ideal of England and America combining to impose peace on the rest of the world.

Alexander sought to remind the Meeting that the Quaker peace testimony went far deeper, based as it was on a conviction of the unlawfulness of all war. The peace associations were equally concerned: the Arbitrator, for example, attacked the Daily Chronicle for its ‘hysterical advocacy of an alliance between the two countries’. They nonetheless greeted with jubilation the signing of the Olney–Pauncefote Treaty on  January . As the Friend explained, ‘those who accept arbitration unreservedly have nothing to fear from a tentative and limited adoption in the first instance, if public opinion is not yet ripe for a fuller measure.’ According to Howard Evans, the IAL’s decision to pursue arbitration as its main policy had been vindicated: ‘in a small way they had been making history . . . life after all was worth living.’ This made even more disappointing the US 37 Blackwood’s Magazine,  (), . See also John Westlake, ‘International Arbitration’, International Journal of Ethics,  (), –.

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Senate’s subsequent rejection of the Treaty: the ‘Red Letter year of the League’s existence’ had been spoiled.38 . .         Gladstone’s last political act before his retirement in  was to advocate arms retrenchment in the face of opposition from Cabinet colleagues and another naval scare. After his retirement, the battle for control of the Liberal Party between Radicals and ‘Liberal Imperialists’ began in earnest. One manifestation of the Radical campaign was the founding in  of the Increased Armaments Protest Committee by the journalist George Herbert Perris. Perris—whose father, a Liverpool-based Unitarian minister, had spoken on Peace Society platforms—was a former editor of the Hull Express and was now assistant editor of the Speaker.39 At a meeting held in Essex Hall on  March  to protest against a further increase in naval armaments, Perris read out a letter of support he had received from Gladstone, to whom he had written to thank him for his final stand against arms expenditure. A committee was formed. The Quaker Robert Spence Watson, a Newcastle solicitor who was president of the National Liberal Federation (a body designed to make Radical opinion dominant in the Party), agreed to become chairman; Perris was the secretary; other members included Lawson, Byles, G. B. Clark, Clifford, Darby, William Clarke, and his fellow Fabian Sydney Olivier. The IAPC published Empire, Trade and Armaments, written by Perris, which asserted the need to counteract ‘the jingo, militarist and sham patriotic sentiment which at present exerts almost unrestrained influence on the public mind’. This pamphlet was a classic expression of Cobdenism, but also anticipated many of the arguments of Hobson’s Imperialism. Imperial expansion, Perris declared, was of no benefit to the mass of the population, for whom the domestic penalties included higher taxes, the diversion of capital abroad and the prevention of social reform. He denied that ‘trade followed the flag’, and argued instead that the great bulk of trade continued to be done with foreign nations, not the colonies.40 38 Friend,  June , ; Arb., July , ; Friend,  July , ; Arb., Feb.–Mar. , , ; Evans, Sir Randal Cremer, . 39 HP, Mar. , ; Peace Year-Book (London, ), . 40 Concord, Apr. , ; Increased Armaments Protest Committee, Empire, Trade and Armaments: An Exposure (London, ), preface; Part ; NPC MB,  Jan. .

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In , the IAPC tried to arrange a meeting of the secretaries of the peace associations to draw up a joint manifesto protesting against increases in the army and navy, but the project was dropped when Cremer refused to sign the address.41 The Committee was eventually subsumed within the IAPA, by which time Perris had emerged as a leading spokesman for Pratt’s association. In the late s Pratt, who had done so much to sustain the IAPA, was increasingly unwell and spent much of his time convalescing abroad. (He was in Britain for the last time during the South African War and died in .) Although his imprint on the IAPA was lasting, the character of the Association from the late s was shaped to an increasing extent by Perris, J. F. Green, and Moscheles. Moscheles, who had been present at the first annual meeting of the IAPA, took over as committee chairman in the late s when Pratt’s absences forced him to give up the post. (Moscheles became president of the IAPA in , and remained in that position until his death in , when he was lamented as the ‘Grand Old Man’ of the peace movement.) His early life was cosmopolitan and bohemian; he was the godson of Mendelssohn, ‘a friend of Rossini, a companion of Robert Browning, and a comrade of Mazzini’.42 Having studied to become a portrait painter in Paris and Antwerp, he eventually set up a studio in Chelsea which attracted a variety of artists and writers. His peace advocacy was essentially an apolitical humanitarianism; his wholesale attack on patriotism was unusual, as was his advocacy of Esperanto (he was president of the London Esperanto Club). Moscheles is notable, too, for the zeal with which he attempted to secure conversions to the peace movement (perhaps the most renowned of his recruits was the Austrian novelist Baroness Bertha von Suttner) and for his encouragement of co-operation between the peace societies, in the cause of which he initiated ‘Peace Day’, an annual meeting held at his studio. The Revd J. F. Green, curate of St Mary’s, Westminster, was appointed as secretary of the IAPA in . He abandoned the clerical profession soon afterwards and converted to secularism and socialism—he sat on the executive of the Fabian Society from  and became treasurer of the SDF.43 The Radical journalist H. W. Nevinson records in his diary bumping into ‘Green the Fabian’ who was on his way to visit Belfort Bax, the British Marxist theorist of imperialism. Perhaps because he was a good linguist, Green, representing the SDF, was secretary of the British 42 MB,  Nov. . HP, Aug.–Sept. , . See Nuffield College, Fabian Society MSS, biographical list; Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain – (London, ), . 41 43

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National Committee of the Second International from  to , though he left the SDF a few years later. He translated from French at international socialist meetings, and was described as ‘one of those men who, like GBS, are a delight to hear for their fluency, and the bell-like clearness of their voice’.44 He was only a minor figure in British socialism, but the smaller pond in which he was important, aside from the IAPA, was the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, and related groups such as the Russian Atrocities Protest Committee. The SFRF, which shared an office with the IAPA in the Outer Temple, was started in  when Spence Watson, Burt, and W. P. Byles, along with two Russian exiles, Sergey Mikhailovich Kravchinsky (Stepniak) and Prince Peter Kropotkin, issued a circular supporting the Progressivist Party in Russia and expressing the intention to publish information on Russian politics. Green was elected a member of the SFRF executive in December ; he took over editorial responsibilities for its journal, Free Russia, in December , and became secretary in . It is likely that this is the forum in which Green initially met Henry Hyndman, Herbert Burrows, and other socialists.45 The ILP activist S. G. Hobson—who became an IAPA committee member in —gives a portrait of Green, whose house was often the location of SFRF gatherings: Green was one of the most interesting of the minor personalities of the socialist movement of that time. He was bald as a billiard ball, clean-shaven . . . With a small private income, a large fund of good stories in four or five languages, a broad sense of humour with an equally broad grin, it was difficult to imagine he had once been a curate.

Hobson continues with a description of himself and Green helping their Russian friends to smuggle arms to Riga in a shipment of lard. Green also organized meetings in London to support Russian rebels and victims of Spanish tyranny, often in co-operation with the Scottish socialist Robert Cunninghame Graham.46 Green, after years of working with G. H. Perris, recalled that, despite being the older man, he had always looked up to Perris ‘rather as a 44 Bodleian Library, Nevinson MSS, diary,  Aug. ; National Museum of Labour History, MB of British Section of the International Socialist Congress; Labour Leader,  Nov. , . 45 Free Russia, Feb. , ; Jan. , ; Apr. , . See also Barry Hollingsworth, ‘The Society of Friends of Russian Freedom: English Liberals and Russian Socialists, –’, Oxford Slavonic Studies,  (). 46 S. G. Hobson, Pilgrim to the Left (London, ), –; F. J. Gould, Hyndman: Prophet of Socialism (London, ), , .

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younger brother does to an elder brother’.47 The two first met through the SFRF, and then the Increased Armaments Protest Committee, which Green joined—Perris’s connection with the IAPA is likely to have been facilitated by their friendship. Perris was as prominent in the cause of Russian democracy as Green and was a founder-member of the SFRF. Through his Russian friends, he became a member of the Garnett group in Bloomsbury, in which Moscheles, too, played a small part.48 (Having ceased to work for the Speaker, Perris made his living as a literary agent.) In the s he was a recognized member of the ‘progressive movement’ of journalists and intellectuals: his involvement in the Rainbow Circle and the Ethical Societies brought him into contact with that ‘small number of London progressives, whose imprint on the new intellectual and political movements of their times was so considerable’, and who ‘moved in overlapping and reinforcing circles’.49 These progressives were, in effect, a new generation of peace-movement leaders: William Clarke; the historian G. P. Gooch; J. M. Robertson, the ethicist writer; Ramsay MacDonald; and the theorists of ‘New Liberalism’, L. T. Hobhouse and J. A. Hobson. Robertson, Hobhouse, and Hobson were ‘old friends’ of Perris; he was also close to MacDonald.50 A lesser influence on the IAPA—but one which confirmed that the Association was open to advanced political ideas and, in particular, to socialism—was Dr Richard Marsden Pankhurst, vice-chairman of the executive from  to . Pankhurst, a Manchester Cobdenite, had been active in the Lancashire and Cheshire International Arbitration Association, a Peace Society auxiliary, in the s. He embraced republicanism and moved to the left, joining the Fabian Society on relocating to London in , and, back in Manchester in , standing as a Parliamentary candidate for the ILP. That Pankhurst’s wife, the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, also sat on the IAPA’s committee indicates another difference between Pratt’s body and the other major peace associations, which not only had no women executive members, but had little sympathy for women’s suffrage. In fact, Cremer was well known for the unusual intensity of his opposition to votes for women and was described by his biographer as ‘an Anti-Woman 47 ‘Addresses at the Memorial Service, Golders Green Crematorium,  Dec. ’, . I am grateful to Robert Gomme for giving me a copy of this pamphlet. 48 See B. C. Johnson (ed.), Olive and Stepniak: The Diary of Olive Garnett – (Birmingham, ), –, –, –. 49 Minutes of the Rainbow Circle –, ed. Michael Freeden (), . 50 Bodleian Library, Gilbert Murray MSS, Perris to Murray,  Sept. .

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Suffrage Society in himself ’ (he often berated what he saw as the susceptibility of women to the influence of the clergy and the military).51 Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, who also sat on the IAPA executive, represented, like Pankhurst, a different sort of women’s peace activism to that of Ellen Robinson or Priscilla Peckover. She regarded the range of women’s potential influence to be beyond motherhood and teaching, and argued against the notion that women were interested only in sentiment. The proper role of women, she said, was also to advocate peace on political, financial, and legal grounds. The IAPA had a separate women’s committee, set up in : the secretary was Anna Swanwick and other executive members included Mrs Leatham Bright, wife of John Bright’s second son, and Mrs Oscar Wilde. At one of its conferences, Mrs Stuart Downing explicitly denied that ‘a woman’s sphere is in the home.’ Women had, she said, a vital part to play in ‘the more difficult public questions’.52 ‘Small, but very much alive’, was Concord’s description of the IAPA following the  annual meeting attended by a couple of hundred people. The appointment of Perris as the journal’s editor at the end of  was something of a fresh start for the IAPA; during his two periods as editor (– and in ) the quality of the journal improved markedly. Thanks to Green, a new group of activists, including Burrows (a ‘friend and comrade’), William Clarke and the socialist artist Walter Crane had already shown an interest in the Association. Perris’s connections with ethicists and progressives led to the involvement of J. A. Hobson (a short-term member of the executive) and Hypatia Bonner.53 The approach of Perris and Green to the peace question was more domestically focused and typical of the British peace movement than that of Pratt. They conceived of disarmament, for example, as an important goal in itself—the IAPA’s new emphasis on this issue provoked the resignation in  of Timothy Holmes, the joint vice-chairman of the executive. Perris distanced himself from Pratt’s idea that peace societies might assist governments with the arbitration of disputes: it was ‘utterly impractical . . . if not positively ridiculous’. Like Pratt, however, he rejected what he called the ‘somewhat hard, practical spirit’ of Cobdenite non-interventionism and took up a more Gladstonian position, rehearsing HP, Dec. , ; Nov. , ; Nov. , ; Evans, Sir Randal Cremer, . Arb., May , ; Concord, May , . For Hypatia Bonner, the daughter of Charles Bradlaugh, see A. Bonner and C. B. Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner: The Story of her Life (London, ); and Peace Year Book (), . 53 Concord, July , ; Dec. , ; Mar. , . 51 52

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Britain’s responsibility to uphold ‘the public law of nations’.54 The IAPA looked to peaceful—moral and diplomatic—intervention to assist oppressed peoples, to encourage the growth of democracy in Europe and to oust illiberal, militarist governments. By these means, peace and justice could be reconciled.        ‒ The Turkish massacres of Armenians during the s presented a test case for the effectiveness of such non-military intervention. As in –, a section of progressive opinion, in which Nonconformist leaders were prominent, advocated a crusade against the Turks. J. A. Spender, editor of the Liberal Westminster Gazette, later recalled that ‘there was scarcely a pacifist in the Liberal Party who would not have made an exception in favour of a war with “Abdul the damned”.’55 P. W. Clayden, a veteran of the s agitation, formed, with G. W. E. Russell, a ginger group, the ‘Liberal Forwards’, to criticize the Conservative Government’s policy over Armenia and to call for a British crusade. The Liberal Forwards were not numerous—they were dubbed the ‘Armenian Cave in the Liberal Party’—but their belief in the need for military intervention was widely held. Demands for action were shaped by the idea of ‘England’s Mission’, which had always exerted a strong pull on progressives. ‘We are fighting for humanity,’ Russell wrote, ‘for the salvation of Armenia and for the fair fame of England . . . we have the right to know that Lord Salisbury is not bartering away, behind our backs, the hereditary glory of England as the champion of the oppressed throughout the world.’56 The IAPA pointed to a ‘change of sides’, as peace advocates were being ‘drawn by the strength of their moral indignation into demanding coercion and political action against Turkey’. The belligerence of Nonconformity was particularly disappointing to the peace associations in the light of the recent involvement of its leaders in armaments and arbitration campaigns. John Clifford urged that, if necessary, Britain should use force ‘to set matters right’. War was a curse, he said, but not the greatest curse: ‘this wholesale butchery and robbery, this ravishing of maidens . . . was worse than war.’ Hugh Price Hughes unreservedly demanded British G. H. Perris, ‘Imperial Profligates’, Ethical World,  Mar. , . J. A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman GCB,  vols. (London, ), i, . 56 P. W. Clayden, Armenia: The Case against Lord Salisbury (London, ); G. W. E. Russell, ‘Armenia and the Forward Movement’, Contemporary Review,  (), –. 54 55

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intervention against the ‘devilry’ of Turkey. The Quaker S. J. Capper— who was always explicit about his inability to accept non-resistance and was a member of the IAPA executive—made his feelings clear at the Budapest UPC in . The British Friend reported that he ‘came very near to a declaration of war on the Sultan by the friends of peace’. Capper had shaken ‘his vigorous aged fist’ and ‘called the Sultan a murderer’. The most striking statement, however, was that of Walter Hazell, MP for Leicester, Congregationalist and treasurer of the Peace Society, who announced at a pro-Armenian demonstration that he could not believe in peace at any price—the time was coming for the use of force.57 The peace associations expressed their disapproval of such warmongering, but—as the action of Capper and Hazell reveals—also found it difficult to reconcile peace with justice in relation to Armenia. The IAL admitted that ‘to many Englishmen, who naturally sympathize with oppressed minorities . . . the present situation is simply maddening.’ But it opposed ‘rash and ill-advised’ sympathizers with the Armenians (the Arbitrator later commented that ‘if the spirit of the departed Exeter Hall had been paramount, we should . . . have been landed in a huge European war.’)58 The minority Cobdenite position of strict non-intervention— voiced over Armenia by, for example, Labouchere—was rejected by the IAL and IAPA in favour of the majority progressive, ‘Gladstonian’ view that Britain had a moral obligation to play a role in preserving the wellbeing of the Christian minorities. The IAPA expressed regret that ‘none of the great military powers’ had ‘ventured, either singly or in consort with other states, to threaten to intervene by force unless the massacres were stopped’. If the European states were ‘heartily united’ in threatening the Sultan with stopping commercial and other intercourse, Concord argued, Turkey could not hold out. Speaking more generally of the ‘problem of vast importance’ presented by nations ‘oppressed or massacred beyond endurance’, the IAPA advocated ‘combined but pacific action by the whole or part of the community of nations against any peccant member’. The reason for inaction was great-power rivalry: the existing Concert had failed. Walter Hazell excepted, the Peace Society opposed armed intervention but did so with predictable restraint: its inactivity was noted in The Times. The Society considered a threat to use force—the policy suggested by the IAPA—to be equivalent to war itself. Spence Watson wrote in the 57 Concord, Oct. , ; M. R. Watts, ‘John Clifford and Radical Nonconformity –’, D.Phil. thesis (Univ. of Oxford, ), fo. ; BF, Oct. , –; Bebbington, Nonconformist Conscience, , . 58 Arb., Jan. , ; June–July , ; Feb. , ; June–July , .

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Herald of Peace that the Liberal Forward movement was likely to prove a ‘very backward movement’. Darby pointed to inflammatory action on the part of the Armenians as making the situation more difficult. The Quaker peace activist Edward Grubb later described as ‘acutely distressing’ the sight of ‘the Peace Society siding with the St James’ Gazette and all the forces of materialistic reaction, in quenching the one really generous popular movement of modern times’.59 Quakers such as Grubb and J. W. Graham were provoked by events in Armenia to discuss the hypothetical question of whether an international police force ran counter to Friends’ traditional peace position. Graham criticized Darby’s conviction that nothing could be done because of bad feeling between the powers, and described how the Armenian question had caused Quakers to have been ‘pulled up roughly’ in their ‘lazy thinking’ on war and peace. As Nonconformity was aggressively vocalizing its support for the Armenian Christians, Grubb and Graham doubted that opposition to a joint application of force could be reconciled with a belief in international justice: ‘Police action may be done by men in red as by men in blue for the maintenance of just arbitraments, and it is probably by uniting in police action against the criminal Sultan and other international malefactors that European wars will finally come to an end.’ Replying to critics, Graham made explicit the developmental nature of his ideas: To use the fleets of Europe to save Armenia is to use them as the police of civilization whatever they may have been built for. It is like turning a public-house into a coffee-tavern . . . The growth of the incidence of law and its gradual encroachment upon violence over continually larger areas, is the central fact in the growth of communities . . . In its earlier stages, before a stable administration of European law is organized, it is represented by the Concert of Europe, as the incipient instrument for the abolition of war.

Replies by the stalwart peace workers Frances Thompson and Ellen Robinson warned against lowering the standard of justice and righteousness which Quakers had so long upheld. Priscilla Peckover similarly asserted that war, ‘even when carried on in the cause of freedom . . . adds to the horrors it proposes to arrest’.60 In the end, the agonizing of Graham and Grubb further concentrated their minds as to the importance of Quaker pacifism. The tension within peace thinking between avoiding war and obtaining justice again showed itself when in  the powers combined to thwart an 59 Concord, May , ; HP, Oct. , ; Jan. , ; MB,  Dec. ; BF, Nov. , –. 60 BF, Apr. , –, ; May , ; Peace and Goodwill, July , .

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attempt by Crete, aided by the Greek army, to rebel against Turkish control. Greek and Cretan fighters were fired on, and Turkey defeated Greece in the following war. Progressives who had attacked the Conservative Government and the Concert of Europe for inactivity over Armenia were now even more venomous as Britain supported the regime responsible for the atrocities. Nonconformist leaders and the Liberal Forwards advocated intervention on the Greek side. A meeting in the Queen’s Hall on  March  attended by Newman Hall, John Clifford, F. A. Channing, and others declared the right of the Cretans to settle their form of government. When G. W. E. Russell moved a motion in favour of putting an end to the rule of the Sultan over non-Turkish peoples, there were ‘loud cheers, the whole audience rising and enthusiastically waving hats and handkerchiefs’. The term ‘Concert of Europe’ was greeted with hisses—when stripped of its diplomatic disguise, it was ‘nothing more than a gigantic trade-union of loan-mongers and stock-jobbers’. Clifford recognized that British support for Greece created a dilemma between peace and justice: ‘We are at the parting of the way, and whichever path we took seemed to be beset with the greatest perils . . . There was the risk of war, and war was dreaded by them. (A voice: ‘Not dreaded.’) Yes, dreaded in its awful results.’ But there was also another risk: ‘that this great English people should become the patron of tyranny and the foe of freedom’.61 The peace associations again argued against a crusade. Despite being ‘repeatedly pressed’, the IAL took no part in the agitation: ‘We . . . feared that the efforts of the well-intentioned people calling themselves “the Forwards” would lead to further disaster.’ Darby took the same view at the Peace Society’s annual meeting in : ‘With the avowed object of Greece invading Crete—to liberate her people from oppression— members of this Society will have profound sympathy, but cannot approve of her method.’ The Herald of Peace argued: ‘What is worse than war? . . . Despotism? But war itself is a destroyer of freedom . . . Cruelties? War is the aggregate of the worst cruelties.’ Accused of being pro-Turk by William Robertson Nicoll of the Nonconformist British Weekly, Darby explained the Society’s commitment to opposing all war. Nicoll asked his readers to take care that the Peace Society should no longer be permitted to use chapel buildings.62 61 Bebbington, Nonconformist Conscience, ; Times,  Mar. , ; see H. W. Nevinson’s memoir Changes and Chances (London, ), , for his advocacy of a British Legion to fight against the Turks. 62 Arb., Apr.–June , ; HP, Apr. , ; May , ; Bebbington, Nonconformist Conscience, ; British Weekly,  Apr. , , , .

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The IAPA’s unease about the effective operation of a Concert which included three ‘autocracies’ turned to outrage with the bombardment of Cretan Christians—a ‘brave people, struggling to be free’. Pratt and Perris rampaged against the Concert—‘that great royalist and militarist machine’—and argued that only a combination of democratic powers—the ‘Free Peoples of Europe’—could ‘withstand the world in arms and . . . compel the Turk to do their will’. The British submission to a Russian veto on coercion of the Sultan was, Perris argued, a betrayal of ‘the fearless England of old time’ and an abandonment of the Greek and Cretan ‘patriots’. In , Concord discussed the types of war that might be considered justified—an easy question, it said, only for those who accepted ‘in its integrity the “non-resistance” principle’: A nation which, without provocation, invaded the territory of another would be unanimously voted an enemy of ‘right and progress’; defence against such aggression, therefore, though it might constitute ‘war’, would seem to be justified, if not demanded. It is not easy, in the existing state of the world, to judge efforts to rescue sister peoples from an execrated and hopeless tyranny, like that of the Sultan of Turkey . . . Even among the ‘great powers’ we have to recognise that our struggle for the establishment of courts of international law, arbitration and conciliation is met by this preliminary difficulty: that law is the very negation of the autocratic principle which rules over the greater part of Europe today . . . That is why we must above all be democrats . . . that is why we must always work in and for the labour movement.

The article went on to declare that the real target of the IAPA was ‘not war but militarism’: The distinction is an important one. If we remembered it we should not have Oliver Cromwell thrown in our teeth; we should not feel any inconsistency in supporting the Cretan or Armenian rebel and the Russian revolutionist while denouncing the soldiery of England, France and Germany . . . Fighting may sometimes be justified or ‘demanded’. Militarism is utterly indefensible and beyond toleration and compromise.

Yet the IAPA remained optimistic that in almost every case justice could be achieved without fighting: ‘it is still the rule, not the exceptions, we should emphasize.’63

63 Concord, May , ; Jan. , ; May , ; G. H. Perris, The Eastern Crisis and British Policy in the Near East (London, ), , , , ; Concord, Apr. , ; May , .

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‘  ’ H. W. Massingham, Radical editor of the Daily Chronicle, attacked Rosebery’s response to the Near Eastern crisis. The Liberal leader had followed ‘the dogma of “British interests” as against the interests of humanity’. Massingham dreaded seeing ‘the Liberal-Radical party dragged back into a sham Palmerstonian revival’. When the leading Gladstonian John Morley led a strong moralistic offensive in the Commons against the Government’s recapture of Khartoum, it seemed clearer than ever that the Liberal Party was divided into two camps.64 The Arbitrator, reduced because of financial constraints to two or three issues a year, looked with trepidation at the conflict within the party, hoping that ‘all the friends of peace’ would do everything they could ‘to strengthen the hands of Harcourt and Morley in their fight against jingoism’; it was ‘quite time the Liberal cause was cleared of the never-big-enough-arms people’. For Cremer, who had lost his Haggerston seat in the  General Election, ‘the public conscience’ was ‘seared and blunted’. Writing in , he admitted to feeling increasingly gloomy about British politics: Chamberlain was in the Colonial Office and had been implicated in the Jameson Raid of  (Cecil Rhodes’s attempt to overthrow the Transvaal Republic); the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations in  had been an orgy of imperial and military display; and Britain had come close to war with France over Egypt at Fashoda.65 Perris, newly appointed as editor of Concord, declared that the ‘peace and arbitration societies’ had ‘reached a critical point in their development’: Chamberlainism has succeeded to Gladstonism; Birmingham has gradually supplanted Manchester as the seat of imperial inspiration . . . The noble internationalism of Cobden and Bright finds today a lessening circle of veteran representatives, while the harder side of the old political economy, reincarnate in the crude Darwinian explanation of the method of human progress, is firmly established . . . Coinciding with the commercial advances of Germany and the United States, and the unfriendliness of France, largely motivated by our obstinacy in regard to Egypt, the eclipse of old faiths and giant personalities has afforded a convenient opportunity to a swarm of adventurers, alarmists, expansionists . . . press and Parliament, shipbuilders, contractors, financial and commercial jobbers, 64 H. C. G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists: the Ideas and Politics of a Post-Gladstonian Elite (Oxford, ), ; Bernard Porter, Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes to Colonialism in Africa – (London, ), . 65 Arb., July , ; Dec. , . For opposition in Britain to the Jameson Raid, see Arthur Davey, The British Pro-Boers – (Cape Town, ), –.

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pickers-up of the unconsidered trifles of officialdom—the whole precious campfollowing of General Jingo’s army.

It was clear that issues of peace and war were once again becoming central to British politics. Perris went on to analyse the current position of the peace movement: Amid the general backwash, the peace societies have kept the old ideals alive, and have advanced considerably in the elaboration of plans of international arbitration and negotiation. It cannot be truly said that they have done much more . . . For some time, outside as well as within the movement, there has been manifested a need of a more definite and united plan of campaign.

One source of hope was that the ILP had since  devoted more of its time to protesting against imperialism and supporting internationalism. ‘If it be unhappily true today’, Perris wrote, ‘that to claim the name of Liberal does not necessarily mean to be a friend of peace, we have the compensating fact that the friends of peace are no longer found only in one camp.’ It was ‘the ideas of Gladstone and Cobden’ that mattered rather than ‘the party Gladstone and Cobden created’—the choice between imperial expansion and militarism, and ‘the cause of international peace’ had become ‘the question of all public questions in our day’.66 66

Concord, Jan. , –; Jan. , .



–: The Hague Conferences and the South African War         In  Tsar Nicholas II, partly for reasons of Russian national interest and partly from humanitarian impulse, invited the powers to a conference to discuss the worrying build-up of armaments and ‘the most effectual means of ensuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and durable peace’.1 The peace associations were stunned: it was ‘one of the most remarkable events of human history’. They reported excitedly the ‘besieging’ of their offices by press interviewers. Robert Spence Watson described the Rescript as the greatest event of his life. Cremer was more hopeful than ‘for years’. While a proposal from the Tsar of Russia challenged the IAPA’s emphasis on democracy as the foundation of international peace—particularly in the light of the Association’s close links with the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom—Perris eventually shrugged off his doubts: ‘a pearl is not the less a pearl’, he said, ‘because it lies in a dung heap.’2 The peace movement assumed that the growth of internationalism, combined with the fear of economic crises arising from what the Tsar referred to as the ‘crushing burden’ of armaments, had finally persuaded governments of the benefits of peace. (This was to some extent true: the Tsar had been influenced by the Russian-Polish railway magnate Jean de Bloch, whose book, La Guerre Future, predicted a prolonged war of attrition, fought from trenches, which would necessitate the mobilization of whole nations in the war effort and which could lead to national bankruptcies and revolutions.3) Ministers, Concord noted, were now using ‘the 1 For a discussion of the Tsar’s motives, see Sheila Kaplan, ‘Great Britain and The Hague Conference: An Episode in Internationalism’, Ph.D. thesis (City Univ. of New York, ), ch. . 2 Percy Corder, Life of Robert Spence Watson (London, ), –; Arb., Apr. , ; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer (London, ), ; G. H. Perris, ‘The Burden of Armaments’, British Workman,  (), . 3 Jean de Bloch, Is War Now Impossible? (London, ). See also Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War against War in Europe – (New York, ), –; and Paul Crook, Darwinism, War and History (Cambridge, ), –.

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words with which our prints and platforms have rung for many years past’. It was ‘Anno One of the New Era’: the Tsar’s ‘Flag of Truce’ raised ‘the whole peace movement at once to a new level’.4 A disparaging National Review remarked that ‘bishops, priests and deacons, Nonconformist ministers, labour leaders . . . Friends of Russian Freedom, and “earnest” people generally were beside themselves with joy.’ Concord published a long list of supporting resolutions passed by temperance societies, Liberal clubs and associations and, particularly numerous, women’s Liberal groups. A large public meeting took place at Exeter Hall on  October , convened by the Arbitration Alliance at the behest of the Friends’ Peace Committee. Provincial Quakers swiftly organized memorials and petitions, ‘studiously avoiding anything like prominence’. Despite the Parliamentary recess, Cremer employed his lobbying skills to collect the signatures of over a hundred MPs in support of a positive British approach to the forthcoming conference. The indefatigable W. T. Stead attempted to marshal this support into an agitation which would reach the same intensity as the Bulgarian atrocities campaign in .5 His first step was to embark on a personal pilgrimage around the cities of Europe to persuade governments to support the Tsar’s initiative. By the end of September, he had made plans to interview a number of European leaders, including the Tsar himself. Frosty receptions from most statesmen made for a generally disastrous tour, which was salvaged only by a positive meeting with Tsar Nicholas. Stead nevertheless envisaged a ‘Great Pilgrimage of Peace’ from San Francisco to St Petersburg. ‘I feel as if I were a herald angel’, he told the Daily News, ‘bearing glad tidings of peace and goodwill to the nations this Christmastide.’6 Stead’s influence led to a campaign on a much bigger scale than the British peace associations could have managed on their own. He presented his plan for a British ‘Peace Crusade’ in his monthly Review of Reviews and set up a large meeting at St James’s Hall, which was addressed by Hugh Price Hughes, John Clifford, and Cremer. An executive committee was constituted, offices were opened and copies of a broadsheet asking for volunteers distributed. It was hoped that a memorial would eventually bear a million signatures. Stead was determined to Concord, Sept. , ; HP, Oct. , ; Concord, Sept. , . Arnold White, ‘The Tsar’s Manifesto’, National Review,  (), –; Concord, Oct. , ; Dec. , ; Friend,  Apr. , ; Arb., Apr. , ; Bodleian Library, Bryce MSS, Stead to James Bryce,  Oct. . 6 F. H. Whyte, The Life of W. T. Stead,  vols. (London, ), ii, –; Arb., Dec. , . 4 5

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broaden the appeal of the Crusade beyond the ‘regular peace societies’ with their ‘feeble resolutions’. The Crusade committee included representatives of the churches, journalists, and political figures, including two ILP leaders, Ramsay MacDonald and S. G. Hobson. The secretaries were Stead and William Hill, a journalist on the Westminster Gazette; the vice-chairman was Corrie Grant, ‘a political lawyer with mild imperialistic proclivities’. Members of the peace associations played key organizational roles: Cremer was chairman of the Labour sub-committee, which was dominated by Lib–Labs (Howard Evans, ‘Mabon’, Woods, Rowlands, John Wilson, Broadhurst, Pickard, Maddison, and Fenwick among others), though it also included socialists such as J. F. Green, Burrows, Ben Cooper, and the journalist Will Crooks. (George Howell drafted its ‘Appeal to the Working Classes’, which was signed by  workers’ representatives and all the members of the ILP administrative council.) Darby handled relations with religious bodies; Perris was head of the press sub-committee; the IAPA took charge of foreign correspondence. Concord told its readers: ‘the narrow fear that the permanent machinery of the peace movement may be weakened by this large and sensational appeal’ should be forgotten by ‘those who know how hard a struggle the existing organizations have, and how much more work they could do if they were more adequately endowed’.7 Over  towns’ meetings were held in January and February . Among the various speakers were Clifford; Broadhurst; Guinness Rogers; Arthur Henderson, the ILP activist and Wesleyan preacher; Courtney; Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Bernard Shaw.8 Although many of the meetings were organized by local Quakers, it was far from a typical peacemovement campaign. The weekly journal, War against War: A Chronicle of the Peace Crusade, launched by Stead in January , declared that the agitation was different from ‘all previous’ peace efforts in having a single, ‘practical’ aim: ‘it raised no questions as to whether war was justifiable in the abstract.’ In effect, he believed that the Crusade would overcome the two main difficulties faced by the peace associations in attracting support. First, that issues of peace and war weren’t always pressing in Britain (Stead was sure they were in ). Second, that the associations, partly because they didn’t concentrate on establishing pacific-ism as a recognized ideology, were identified with ‘non-resistance’ and ‘peace at any price’. 7 Concord, Jan. , –; Manchester University, C. P. Scott MSS, Stead to Scott,  Jan. . 8 British Friend, June , ; Arb., Apr. , –; Concord, Mar. , .

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Stead made it clear that his proposal did not ask governments to reduce their armaments ‘by a solitary soldier or single torpedo-boat’: Hitherto the attempt to stop [war] has only been made by a handful of good people here and there, whose influence is minimized by the fact of their uncompromising and undiscriminating opposition to all war, to all soldiers and to all warships . . . This Crusade is launched and directed by men who have given ample proof for many years past of their pride in the Empire and their jealous care for the supremacy of the navy. It aims at nothing Utopian or idealistic. It has as its leader the EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, and it is commended to the support of the nation by the ablest and most experienced statesmen who have ever surrounded the throne of the QUEEN.

War against War emphasized the Realpolitik advantages to Britain of an arms truce, which ‘give a kind of consecration by international agreement to our existing naval supremacy’. Stead went so far as to suggest that Rosebery become president of the Crusade—a move which would have been, Perris said, ‘absolutely fatal’. Even so, the list of speakers included officials of the Navy League (formed in  by the Conservative backbencher Henry Cust to campaign for sustained British naval strength). The ‘Liberal Imperialist’ Sir Edward Grey spoke at a gathering in Newcastle, dutifully wearing the four-pointed star of the Crusade in his buttonhole, and used the occasion to denounce ‘visionary faddists’ who believed in peace at any price and who ‘shut their eyes to the necessities of England’. At some of the towns’ meetings there was talk of John Bull and Tommy Atkins as forces for peace, and, despite rulings against ‘political’ discussions, there were arguments about the Sudan and the ongoing dispute in the Transvaal. Many mayors and religious ministers presiding over the meetings magnified the difficulties facing the peace cause. ‘The agitation has extended very widely, but it has been generally of the most superficial kind’, Concord concluded.9 The general press reaction to the Rescript was ‘a hot fit of enthusiasm speedily succeeded by a chilling wave of criticism’.10 Many commentators dismissed the proposed conference—due to take place at The Hague in May —as impracticable. ‘It would be idle to deny that there is a feeling of suspicion and distrust’, the Arbitrator noted.11 The agitation was hindered by anti-French feeling whipped up over the Fashoda Crisis. 9 War against War,  Jan. , , ; Concord, Jan. , . War against War,  Feb. , ;  Mar. , ; Concord, Apr. , . 10 J. G. Rogers, ‘The Tsar’s Proposed Conference and Our Foreign Affairs’, Nineteenth Century,  (), . See also Sidney Low, ‘Should Europe Disarm?’, Nineteenth Century, 11  (). Arb., Dec. , .

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William Hill admitted to a new-found respect for the ‘stout-heartedness, patience and persistence of the earlier labourers’ for peace, particularly ‘old warriors’ like Cremer, Pratt, and Spence Watson, but also noted that ‘the mass had been mere spectators.’ A ‘Northern Helper’ described his experiences in Concord: We have worked against awful odds in this district . . . we have the local vested interest in war material, the shipping ring’s interest in freight booms . . . the local press has been . . . sarcastic . . . notices of meetings have been cut down . . . the National Conservative League have had a van perambulating with a lecturer and a lantern . . . and to cap it all the cinematograph has been picturing our navy to admiring thousands.

The Crusade had to face a hostile Conservative Party, a sceptical press, an atmosphere of jingoism, the popularity of the navy, and a general lack of interest in European affairs. The ‘great disappointment’ for the IAPA was the absence of any substantial campaign on the Continent. A categorical message of disapproval from St Petersburg called off Stead’s Pilgrimage of Peace of European peoples, but a deputation presented the British Crusade memorial to Balfour—its members included Courtney, Clifford, G. J. Holyoake, Cremer, Stead, Moscheles, Burrows, Maddison, and J. A. Bright, eldest son of John Bright and MP for Central Birmingham. The Crusade came to a rather bathetic end at the National Convention at St Martin’s Hall on  March. The three thousand people who braved the fog and snow, including many mayors in their official trappings, heard a dejected Stead remark that peace was considerably less popular than football.12 Once the Crusade was over, the peace journals ended their ‘careful abstinence’ from criticism of Stead’s campaign. Hypatia Bonner, for example, admitted her ‘deep and immovable distrust of Mr Stead’. War or Brotherhood?, edited by Mary Cooke, considered the difficulty of keeping ‘any wide and strong movement of popular feeling pure’. The IAPA mused over the ‘delightfully outrageous’ Stead—‘he has always puzzled us and puzzles us still. His rapid development as an advocate of our cause leaves him the partisan of Tsardom and Rhodes—two lines of political wickedness.’ Labouchere criticized the ‘peace party’ for its interest in a governmental conference when it should have been whipping up anti-imperialist feeling; the Irish Home Ruler Michael Davitt similarly 12 Concord, Apr. , –; Mar. , ; Irwin Abrams, ‘A History of European Peace Societies –’, D.Phil. thesis (Harvard Univ., ), fo. ; HP, May , ; War against War, Mar. , .

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denounced the Crusade as ‘organized hypocrisy’ which could boast ‘not a single sincere word of condemnation against war’.13 The peace associations nevertheless remained hopeful that the Hague Conference could achieve important results. They were delighted when, in March , the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir George Goschen, declared in the Commons that Britain would support any attempt made at The Hague to arrest military shipbuilding.14 It was easy for a ‘satisfied’ power such as Britain to preach peace, however, and the Government knew that the German representatives at the Conference would never agree to an arms truce; indeed there was no official response to Goschen’s offer from any of the European capitals. It was therefore clear before May that no progress would be made on arms limitation.15 The peace movement began to concentrate instead on what the Conference might achieve in the area of arbitration and mediation, and the peace journals lost themselves once more in the details of arbitral procedures—in particular, ways of overcoming the perennial problem of governmental reluctance to submit to arbitration disputes involving ‘vital interests’ and ‘national honour’. Although the peace associations had, over the past two decades, devoted much of their arbitration energies to an Anglo-American treaty, they had continued to press for an international court or tribunal. In , for example, the IAPA persuaded the Peace Society to join with it in an attempt to organize a conference of jurists to discuss the draft of a ‘Council and High Court of International Arbitration’, drawn up by Leone Levi.16 The conference eventually took place in July , on the occasion of the annual meeting in London of the ARCLN. Levi had, by that time, unhitched his projected tribunal from codification, hopes for which had faded since his scheme of . As earlier in the century plans for a tribunal had eventually left behind the concept of a federative congress of nations, so they now shed codification. With the Hague Conference on the horizon, the peace associations’ links with interna13 HP, Apr. , ; Concord, Apr. , ; War or Brotherhood?, Mar. , ; Concord, Apr. , ; War against War,  Feb. , ;  Jan. , ;  Jan. , . See also anon. [F. R. Statham—attribution: Wellesley Index], ‘The Peace Movement’, Westminster Review,  (), . 14 Leonard Courtney, ‘The Approaching Conference’, Quarterly Review,  (), . 15 The arms question was dismissed at The Hague with a vœu encouraging a future conference to consider it. 16 MS, Sept.  to May ; HP, Sept. , . See also the scheme for a permanent High Court of International Arbitration submitted by Edmund Hornby, a retired diplomat, HP, Jan. , .

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tional lawyers proved useful. The officials of the Crusade, ‘acting on advice from an influential quarter’, appointed a small committee to draw up a constitution for a tribunal; its members included Cremer, J. F. Green, F. W. Fox, and the international lawyer John Macdonell. In a heady moment for the peace associations, Lord Salisbury was reported to be impressed by the plan and the Foreign Office applied for extra copies.17 Stead and several members of the peace societies made the trip to The Hague. F. W. Fox led a special deputation of Quakers; J. G. Alexander, appointed by Yearly Meeting, was delighted to be given only one of two visitors’ passes; the other went to the Baroness von Suttner. The peace activists based themselves at the Hotel Central—where the von Suttners were staying—which flew a white flag in honour of its guests. Copies of Darby’s International Tribunals were given to the Conference delegates. Stead felt that his weeks at The Hague were ‘among the happiest and most successful’ in his life. He got around the hostility to the press on the part of the Conference organizers by interviewing delegates and writing a column in the local newspaper; Perris, who was also present, described this as ‘the simplest and most far-reaching’ of all Stead’s ‘propagandist efforts’. ‘I found Mr Stead extremely busy’, A. F. Harrison, the Manchester Guardian’s correspondent, told his editor, C. P. Scott: ‘He is everywhere at once, sees and interviews everybody. There are numerous peace females, members of the Friends, and other agitators rampaging about with inky hands who have met with scant appreciation and are of little importance to everybody but themselves.’ After a few days, British journalists were told to curtail their reports of the Conference because, in Stead’s words, ‘no one in London’ cared for anything but ‘news from the Transvaal and the latest scores of the test matches against the Australians’.18 The introduction by the British delegation of a plan for a permanent tribunal of arbitration rejuvenated a Conference preoccupied with the laws of war. ‘You could have heard a pin drop,’ Perris said, describing the moment when Julian Pauncefote, the chief British delegate, finished his speech proposing the tribunal: ‘members looked at one another for a moment in blank amazement, and not a few felt for the first time that they were face to face with serious business.’ Despite German opposition, the proposal was accepted. Pauncefote wrote to Salisbury that the Concord, Oct. , –; Arb., Apr. , ; July , –, . Friend,  May , ; Concord, July , ; C. P. Scott MSS, A. F. Harrison to C. P. Scott,  May ; Abrams, ‘History of European Peace Societies’, fo. . 17 18

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establishment of the court had ‘dispelled the gloomy predictions of failure’ surrounding the Conference, and had ‘greatly surpassed the expectations of its most enthusiastic supporters’.19 The tribunal was based on a plan drawn up by Edouard Descamps, an international law scholar from Louvain, which had been debated and endorsed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Descamps denied the need for an international government or a code; his was a moderate scheme which admitted the fundamental right of nations to go to war, and did not affect questions of sovereignty. It comprised, strictly speaking, a bureau rather than a tribunal: a College of Arbitrators, made up of members elected by different states, was to create a central office and wait for governments to call it into service. It was also completely optional in character— the opposition of the German delegation ruled out any suggestions of obligation even for trivial disputes. John Macdonell remarked: ‘We are as far as ever from an Amphictyonic Council or a senate of Europe.’ The ‘weakness of all schemes of international arbitration’, he said, ‘is that perfection of machinery counts for so little, the existence of good faith and goodwill for so much.’ But the peace associations were delighted: ‘now that a permanent court will be opened, arbitration will become general, and will thus reflect a complete reform in international diplomacy.’ They knew that ‘in permanence and impartiality, as well as in authority’ the tribunal needed strengthening. It nevertheless represented ‘the embryo of a World’s Law Court’, as the Conference itself was ‘the embryo of a World Parliament’. The Hague Convention was the culmination of over fifty years of campaigning for arbitration on the part of the peace movement, and presented activists with an obvious agenda: to ensure that the tribunal was used, and to press for an extension of the agreements and for other Hague Conferences. The nations had been led to ‘the stream of arbitration’, Stead told his fellow peace workers; ‘it depends upon us whether they shall be induced to drink.’20         Two months after the peace associations were predicting the practical replacement of war with arbitration, a mass meeting took place in 19 Concord, June , ; Public Record Office (hereinafter PRO), Foreign Office /, Pauncefote to Salisbury,  July . 20 HP, Aug. , ; Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism, ; John Macdonell, ‘The Conference and Arbitration’, Edinburgh Review, July , –, ; G. H. Perris, What Is the Peace Movement? (London, ), ; HP, Nov. , .

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Trafalgar Square to protest against British military intervention in the Transvaal. Among the speakers were Pratt, J. F. Green, Moscheles, and Cremer. But ‘it was not a meeting—it was a pandemonium.’ Concord dubbed it ‘The Battle of Trafalgar Square’. Fruit and sticks were thrown at the platform, and Moscheles, described by the Sun newspaper as ‘a simple-minded old artist and sympathy-blinded agitator’, was hit by a penknife. The peace associations had been monitoring the situation in South Africa since the Jameson Raid, which Concord had described as an ‘outrageous attempt to invade the Transvaal Republic’. They denied both that Britain had a legitimate claim to the suzerainty of the Transvaal and that the grievances of the unenfranchised British ‘outlanders’ were sufficient cause for military involvement. But despite the ‘Battle of Trafalgar Square’ there was little concerted agitation to prevent a war. A number of the executive members of the IAPA helped in founding the Transvaal Committee, which was set up in July  from the remnants of the Liberal Forwards by G. B. Clark, Thomas Burt, C. P. Scott, G. W. E. Russell, and H. J. Wilson. Moscheles was a member of the Committee; Pratt chaired at least one of its meetings. The most significant rally was that held in Manchester on  September, when John Morley memorably declared over and over that war would be wrong. The Colonial Office received  communications between  June and  October urging a peaceful resolution of the crisis:  were sent by peace associations;  by Friends’ Meetings,  by other Nonconformist bodies (including Pleasant Sunday Afternoon and Christian Endeavour groups),  by the labour movement (trades unions, ILP, SDF) and  by Liberal bodies (Liberal associations, women’s Liberal associations, and Reform clubs). The only significant joint effort was the ‘National Memorial’ against war, proposed by Philip Stanhope and organized by Stead, which attracted over fifty thousand signatures in a fortnight.21 This was indeed an impressive achievement, and was hailed by the IAPA as the largest protest ever lodged on the eve of a ‘war of aggression’. But it fell flat when the Transvaal Government, fearing invasion from British troops stationed in the Cape Colony, took the military initiative and issued an ultimatum. This enabled the British Government to claim it was fighting in self-defence. The South African War and the ‘extraordinary outburst’ of patriotic feeling which accompanied it presented the peace movement with its greatest challenge since the Crimean War.22 It reintroduced the peace 21 Arb., Oct. , ; Concord, Oct. , –; Feb. , ; Oct. , ; Aug. , . See Transvaal Committee, Report of Six Months Work (London, ); PRO, 22 Colonial Office, .; Concord, Nov. , . Concord, July , .

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associations to conditions of adversity, as Pro-Boer meetings were broken up across the country. The conflict was opposed by a vocal body of progressive opinion—including Liberals, Radicals, socialists, and Nonconformist ministers—who saw it as an exercise in misguided imperialism, likely to benefit only vested interests. The protest initially lacked punch, however. There was no effective press campaign against the war once it had started, and the Liberal Party—disunited and unwilling to oppose a conflict in which British troops were being killed—offered no lead. Peace activists looked back with nostalgia to the days of Gladstone. As Keir Hardie wrote to Pratt: ‘There has been no voice at Hawarden.’23 The peace associations had insufficient prestige and too few resources to lead the Pro-Boer campaign, but they played a significant part in it. The societies and their officials were connected in multiple ways to the groups established specifically in response to the war and to leading anti-war spokesmen.24 Perris, for example, was in charge of press affairs for the Stop-the-War Committee, set up by Stead in January . The IAPA arranged for peace addresses to be given by J. A. Hobson, author of The War in South Africa, who sat on the Association’s executive at the time of the war, and by J. M. Roberston, author of Wrecking the Empire.25 G. B. Clark retained a connection with the IAPA, and spoke at its annual meeting in , alongside John Percival, the peace-minded Bishop of Hereford; the Radical activist Kate Courtney; and F. A. Channing. Quaker peace activists, meanwhile, worked behind the scenes in various Pro-Boer groups, particularly the moderate South Africa Conciliation Committee—set up in November  with Leonard Courtney as president—which had a number of local branches.26 The League of Liberals Against Aggression and Militarism, formed in February  to steer the Liberal Party on an anti-expansionist course, included Maddison and (for a time) Perris on its committee, along with J. L. Hammond; J. A. Hobson; the Cobdenite economist F. W. Hirst; and H. N. Brailsford, a journalist and writer and a member of the SFRF Richard Price, An Imperial War and the British Working Class (London, ), –. For an anatomy of the ‘Pro-Boer’ movement, see Arthur Davey, The British Pro-Boers – (Cape Town, ); Stephen Koss, The Pro-Boers (Chicago, ); and Price, An Imperial War. 25 War against War in South Africa (hereafter WAWSA),  Jan. , ; Concord, Feb. , . 26 H. H. Hewison, Hedge of Wild Almonds: South Africa, the ‘Pro-Boers’ and the Quaker Consciences (London, ), ; Richard Rempel, ‘British Quakers and the South African War’, Quaker History,  (). 23 24

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executive.27 A number of activists from the peace associations—J. F. Green, William Clarke (who wrote for Concord), S. G. Hobson, and Walter Crane—were involved in the Fabian Society split on the war.28 The Glasgow UPC in  became a platform of opposition to the conflict: its vice-presidents included Burt; C. P. Scott; Sir John Brunner, the ‘chemical croesus’ and MP for Northwich; Clifford; Rudolph C. Lehmann, a wealthy barrister and journalist; and the historian Gilbert Murray. Other important Pro-Boer voices, such as those of Frederic Harrison and Keir Hardie, attended ‘Peace Day’ meetings hosted by Moscheles, which involved many members of the peace associations. Harrison, returning from a gathering in Moscheles’s studio, commented: ‘this war makes all good people kin.’29 All the peace associations could join together in opposition to the conflict because, as a ‘war of agression’ fought far from the British homeland, it did not cast into relief the difference between pacifism and pacific-ism. As so often in peace agitations, however, there was at least an implicit differentiation between the two ideologies. By asserting the right of the Boers to defend themselves, many Pro-Boers expressed their rejection of the absolutist peace view. Cremer, for example, argued: In the national school in which it was my privilege to receive the little education I got in my youth, we were taught that if a foreign power invaded our shores it was the duty of every man and, if you like, every woman, to take up arms and defend the country against the invader and that it was our solemn duty as good patriots to defend our land to the last man. That is exactly what the Boers are doing today.

Pro-Boers depicted the Transvaal—rather imaginatively—as a progressive, democratic society of independent rural freeholders. ‘Try to imagine’, Keir Hardie wrote, ‘what the free yeomen of England were like two hundred years ago and you have some idea of Boer life.’ F. A. Channing eulogized: ‘When all the men and all the women of these little peoples stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight for freedom to the last drop of their blood, that means real loyalty to ideals, true democratic brotherhood.’30 Pro-Boer pacific-ists argued, in effect, that the Transvaal and its 27 Glasgow University, A. M. Scott MSS, LLAAM MB; Thomas Shaw, Letters to Isabel (London, ), –; see the Times,  Feb. , ;  Aug. , , for the claim that the LLAAM prepared  meetings at the local level. 28 For the Fabian Society, see A. M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and British Politics – (Cambridge, ). 29 M. S. Vogeler, Frederic Harrison: The Vocations of a Positivist (Oxford, ), . 30 Parl. Debates, th ser. ( Dec. ), , –; K. O. Morgan, Keir Hardie (London, ), .

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ally the Orange Free State were liberal countries whose defence was a progressive cause; the expansionist British Empire was an illiberal aggressor. Although it did not set pacifist against pacific-ist, the conflict, and its initial popularity in Britain, did offer a formidable challenge to the peace movement’s basic premise that ‘the people’ were peaceful and that democratic government was antithetical to militarism. A bewildered G. W. E. Russell, chairman of the Transvaal Committee, looked back to a time when he was ‘confident that democracy meant “peace” ’. J. A. Hobson’s book, The Psychology of Jingoism, identified the phenomenon of the warmongering ‘mob’. And John Morley later noted that the war ‘exhibited English democracy in so unexpected a light’ that it was not surprising a rash of books had been published on such subjects as ‘Christianity and Patriotism, Machiavellianism and morality, the psychology of jingoism’.31 As the peace movement’s faith in Enlightenment rationalism had survived the jingoism of the s, however, it now also survived the South African War. The key goal remained the introduction of a political system which would give voice to the genuine peaceableness of the people. J. A. Hobson’s The War in South Africa provided an antidote to his own concerns about the jingoistic ‘mass-mind’, in the form of a direct nexus between the Rand capitalists and English newspapers. The question was how to negate those vested interests which influenced government decisions and instilled irrationalism in the people. The peace movement argued that the conflict was the fault of greedy financiers (the financial version of the radical critique was again central to its arguments); and the war’s popularity could be explained by the absence of unbiased press reports and of full information about Chamberlain’s South African policy. In –, Cremer had blamed jingoism on Tory agents; in  he blamed a ‘kept press’. In any case, most of ‘the people’, peace activists maintained, didn’t support the war. The IAL, for example, insisted that jingo mobs at meetings contained very few ‘mechanics, artisans, and bona fide labourers’; the ‘demons’ were ‘young men of the masher type who crowd music halls’.32 Although the war presented the peace associations with a number of important practical questions, therefore—how could they become more influential? what was the best way of opposing the war? how could the ‘peace party’ forged by the war be sustained?—the movement’s basic ideological assumptions remained unchanged. 31 [G. W. E. Russell], An Onlooker’s Note-Book (London, ), –; John Morley, 32 Miscellanies, th ser. (London, ), –. Arb., Oct. , –.

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. .  The opposition of Stead to the war stemmed not only from his recent peace activity, but from his intense dislike of Chamberlain, and his belief that the war endangered his hero Cecil Rhodes’s ideal of Empire.33 Yet he also opposed the South Africa Conciliation Committee. ‘There are many persons’, he wrote, ‘who, while convinced that the war is unjust, are not logical enough, or bold enough, to say definitely that it ought to be stopped.’ His more belligerent Stop-the-War Committee had more branches and was more active than any other group—it distributed over three million pamphlets during  at meetings held all over the country, often organized with the help of local branches of the SDF. ‘There is never more need to oppose an unjust war than when it is in progress’, Stead argued in his weekly paper, War Against War in South Africa. He was again critical of the peace associations. In the first issue of his new paper, he reassured his readers that the agitation would not require its supporters to be committed to any idea of ‘peace in the abstract’, and announced that there were no plans to form a new body: I say this in order to disarm the jealousy of existing organizations, some of which have done little or nothing to help in the work of stopping the war, but who would be immediately up in arms if it were suggested that the present moment might result in the formation of an Associated Friends of Peace on a wider basis than their own.34

‘What proof is there that even the organizations formed for the promotion of peace are joining hands in this matter?’ he demanded. Stead’s peace advocacy remained unconventional. War against War, for example, repeatedly conveyed the message that sending troops to South Africa would expose Britain to an invasion by the French; it advocated an experimental mobilization of the Volunteer Force to cope with this threat. Stead nevertheless had grandiose plans to revamp the peace movement and announced the founding of the ‘New International’ (later the ‘International Union’). A dinner was held during the Paris InterParliamentary Conference in  to discuss the proposal; among those invited were Pratt, Cremer, Clayden, Byles, and Lawson. ‘We should not in any way interfere with or ignore the efforts of the existing associations which make for peace,’ said Stead, ‘but should endeavour to bind them all together . . . the existing peace societies are earnest, but they themselves 33 See J. O. Baylen, ‘W. T. Stead and the Boer War: The Irony of Idealism’, Canadian Historical Review,  (). 34 WAWSA,  Jan. , ; Price, An Imperial War, ; WAWSA,  Nov. , –.

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deplore their impotence. They have neither funds, nor international organization, nor influence.’ G. B. Clark acknowledged that there was a need for ‘something much more aggressive than any peace society had ever been—something which would take up and deal with questions in a vigorous way’. He would not ‘lift his finger to bring another peace society into the world . . . year by year peace societies of the old type were becoming more and more impecunious and less and less listened to.’ Clark had in mind the poor record of the Peace Society over Egypt in  and reminded those present that its president had again refused to say a word against an ongoing war. Despite attracting the interest of influential peace thinkers such as J. M. Robertson, J. A. Hobson, and H. W. Massingham, however, the International Union fizzled out after a few years.35    As the criticism of G. B. Clark suggests, the Peace Society lost credibility within the peace movement because of its record on the South African War. H. J. Wilson admitted to its annual meeting some years later: ‘I have been, since the time of the Boer War, somewhat estranged from the Peace Society, because it did not appear to me to take up at that time the determined and resolute attitude that it ought . . . some were not faithful to their principles.’ The most public sign of weakness was the action of the Quaker president J. W. Pease, who voted for war credits in the Commons on the grounds that it would be damaging to the Liberal Party to do otherwise. He was joined by five other MPs with connections to the Peace Society: three other Peases, Walter Hazell, and F. J. Horniman. Just as embarrassing was the selection of Thomas Snape, president of the Society’s Liverpool auxiliary, as Liberal Parliamentary candidate for Liskeard after Leonard Courtney had failed to secure re-selection because of his Pro-Boer views. Snape was an imperialist who now declared to Peace Society members that he ‘had not felt himself urged to take part’ in such peace meetings as had been held. The Herald of Peace reported Snape’s ‘unexpected secession to the war party’, but he continued to be part of the Society’s activities, and chaired the  annual meeting. In addition, the Revd J. P. Gledstone resigned as a vice-president because the pro-war Hugh Price Hughes had been allowed to retain his membership of the Society. Darby’s announcement to the committee in  that ‘some subscriptions . . . had been withdrawn for reasons (on both sides) 35 WAWSA,  Dec. , ;  Jan. , ;  Mar. , ;  Mar. , –;  Aug. , , –; Whyte, Life of W. T. Stead, ii, .

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arising out of the war’ seems to suggest that the Society lost some support because any connection with peace at this time was regarded as unpatriotic and some because it did not oppose the conflict vehemently enough.36 The Society was unwilling to make a specific protest against the war. It argued, as it had done over Egypt in , that to attack the Government was to attack a political party, and that being against all war, it did not need to condemn particular ones. As over Egypt, this was also a cover for its dislike of controversy as well as for the imperial enthusiasms of some of its members: there were special reasons why the Peace Society refused to approach the war ‘as a purely political matter’. Despite a sense, in August , of impending war in the Transvaal, the executive decided it was ‘not clear that any useful action could be taken at the present moment’. (The Transvaal Committee was already active.) Once war had been declared, the Herald of Peace pondered the duty of the peace movement, concluding: ‘The need of the hour is, for us, not so much to point out the mistakes and crimes on either or both sides, as to enquire what our own duty is. Is there anything we can do? Sadly, for the present, we must confess there is not.’ The journal later argued that ‘the question of the justice, or otherwise’ of the war’s ‘political aspects’ was ‘not so clear as absolutely to admit of no division of opinion’—presumably a reference to the Boers’ ultimatum. During the war, the Society retreated into its ‘missionary’ role of the quiet transmission of the Christian peace message. Despite this, Darby was indignant when the Echo suggested that a vigorous new peace society was needed.37 No public meetings were organized by the Society: it was better to ‘abstain altogether from what could only exasperate public feeling, than to persist in an attempt to get a hearing when nobody would listen’. Darby defined the position of the Society against the campaign of the Stop-theWar Committee, and disparaged the attempts of peace societies to bring about the end of the war: ‘The temptation to “do something” . . . leads to mischief. Misdirected zeal is not only weakness, it may easily become harmful, and there has been a great deal attempted, and is still current, in the name of peace which has had nothing pacific about it but the motive.’ ‘ “War Against War” is yet war’, Darby declared: peace societies were as much committed to the methods of peace as to its objects. He made clear 36 HP, May–June , ; Nuffield College, Gainford MSS, Box , J. A. Pease to J. W. Pease,  July ; HP, June , ; MB,  Sept. ; HP, Oct. , –; MB, ,  Dec. . 37 HP, Mar. , ; May , ; MB,  Aug. ; HP, Nov. , ; Dec. , ; May , .

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his own non-resisting beliefs, asserting that he yielded ‘to no man in the strength of his convictions, not only on war in general, but on this particular war’. He described the outlook as ‘unspeakably dark’. But he opposed the idea of peace societies taking on work ‘which will make them simply annexes of one or other political organizations or social movements’.38 The contrast between this idea of peace and that entertained by other elements of the Pro-Boer movement was spectacularly illustrated at the Glasgow UPC. During one sitting of the Congress, Stead declared: We don’t want namby-pamby resolutions affirming things . . . It is necessary that when nations go against the sentiment of the civilized world, there should be an explosion of pacific sentiment. (Hear, hear.) I see precious little explosion here; and if a peace congress will not explode, how do you think the general public will do so?

He suggested a resolution that any state refusing to adopt arbitration when it was offered by an opponent should become ‘excommunicate of humanity’. Darby, speaking after Stead, encouraged the Congress rather to ‘keep quiet and act with dignity’: We are met in this Congress not to explode or make war on certain things upon which there are strong differences of opinion. I have no right to force you to submit to my views. This proposition simply makes us ridiculous before the nations. ‘Excommunicate of humanity.’ What nonsense! (Laughter and ‘hear, hear.’) . . . While I feel as strongly as he does, I have felt it my duty to say this.

But Stead was not alone in his criticism of an approach to the peace question which shied away from political controversy. Hodgson Pratt attended the Peace Society’s annual meeting in  and (once again) reproached its committee for refusing to address the question of an ongoing war or dispute. He later argued that the refusal by a section of the peace movement to take up a ‘political’ attitude weakened the whole body—the public was confused by ‘apparent inconsistency and half-heartedness’.39     The day after Cremer was involved in the ‘Battle of Trafalgar Square’ in September , the IAL council passed a resolution that war with the Transvaal would ‘involve this country in enormous expenditure, make the name of England odious throughout Europe, and almost inevitably cause a prolonged racial war in South Africa’. Cremer argued that Chamberlain 38 39

HP, Feb. , ; June , ; Mar. , ; July , . Concord, Sept.–Oct. , ; HP, June , ; Concord, Aug. , –.

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had not only ‘bungled’ the diplomacy leading up to the war, but had also ‘turned his back on every principle he professed to hold during the first fifty years of his life’. A scheme for a national conference opposed to the war—comparable to those Cremer had organized in —had to be abandoned, however, due to a shortage of funds.40 Cremer defiantly opposed the conflict and had no qualms about attracting unfavourable publicity. The League distributed half a million copies of a pamphlet, signed by ‘a number of Labour leaders’, which set forth ‘the real objects of the war’: Away then with the delusion that this war is waged in order to open up new territory to British colonists. The capitalists, who bought up or hired the press both in South Africa and England to clamour for war, are largely Jews and foreigners. The cry which they raised about the outlanders’ grievances, the arming of the Boers, a Dutch conspiracy etc. were mere pretexts to deceive you.

‘Gold speculators’ and ‘newspaper proprietors’ were out to make large profits; the war was being waged for the ‘Jew millionaires’ to obtain cheap ‘nigger labour’.41 The League lost some of its adherents. The Arbitrator noted ‘the alienation of old comrades over the war’; John Lubbock, for example, resigned his vice-presidency. What was described as ‘the defection of weak-kneed supporters’ left the IAL ‘financially crippled’, and so ‘unable to undertake an anti-war campaign on a large scale’. The annual meeting was poorly attended because, it was claimed, ‘friends were fearful that jingoes would storm the building’; three hundred were ‘courageous enough to attend’. Although the IAL did manage to gather onto its council almost the full complement of Lib–Lab MPs—Arch, Broadhurst, Fenwick, Maddison, Pickard, Will Steadman, John Wilson, and Burt—and should be recognized as an important conduit of Lib–Lab reservations about the war, the Lib–Labs were not the most outspoken Pro-Boers. Maddison, for example, abstained on an amendment in the Commons which opposed sending a ,-strong reserve force to South Africa. Writing in the Arbitrator, he was nonetheless appalled at the ‘jingo crowd’ and, while characteristically careful to state that he would not oppose the use of force under all circumstances, reiterated that the best and most economic way of solving disputes was ‘by reason, not the sword’.42 Arb., Dec. , ; Oct. , ; July , ; Jan. , ; Oct. , . Arb., Oct. , ; Jan. , , and insert; Apr. , ; Oct. , . Arb., Dec. , ; June , ; July , ; Apr. , ; Oct. , ; Parl. Debates, th ser. ( Oct. ), , –; Arb., Apr. , . 40 41 42

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Despite the virulence of his opposition, Cremer won back his Haggerston seat in the ‘Khaki’ election of , and during the autumn session of Parliament was one of only eight MPs to vote against the allocation of £ million for the continuance of the war. He criticized the ‘shilly-shallying’ of the Liberal Opposition and regretted the passing of the Gladstonian era. The IAL report in  contrasted the success of the anti-war agitation in – with the current campaign: A great part of the press then opposed a war policy, now, with very few exceptions, every newspaper supports it. Then most of our dissenting pulpits favoured peace, now most of them are either silent or in favour of war . . . Then the Liberal Party was united in its opposition to jingoism, now the House of Commons is gorged with company promoters, guinea-pig directors and unscrupulous financiers. Since  another generation has sprung up, saturated with militarism. Taught military drill in elementary schools, formed into Boys’ Brigades . . . and completing their education in music-halls, where, from their previous training they readily bawled the doggerel verses, and swallowed the patriotic bunkum which in these establishments is nightly employed to kindle and inflame the passions of the audience. If to these is added the fact that all over the country the craze for sport, betting, and gambling has almost destroyed the healthy political life of the nation, the rapid growth of jingoism will be easily understood.43

This was the testimony of a disillusioned Lib–Lab veteran, confronted with the erosion of the internationalist, republican culture which had characterized London artisan politics in the s and s.    Although some Quakers joined Pro-Boer organizations, their main priority during the war was to revitalize the peace testimony within their own Society. During  the Society of Friends failed to issue an impressive corporate declaration of opposition to the war, a silence which betrayed the existence within it of pro-war feeling. John Bellows, a well-known Quaker publisher, wrote a pamphlet, The Truth about the Transvaal War and the Truth about War, which argued that no blame could be attached to the British Government for the war and drew a sophisticated distinction between the justice of war in the abstract and the justice of particular wars. He criticized peace tracts as pleas ‘for the right of Paul Kruger to go to war with Great Britain’. Influential ‘Evangelical’ Quakers, many of whom supported the war, argued that the Society should avoid political 43 Concord, Apr. , –; Parl. Debates, th ser. ( Dec. ), ,  ff.; Arb., Oct. , –; Apr. , .

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partisanship, and not mix religion with politics except through wellestablished philanthropic channels. It was a period of debate about the position of the peace testimony in the Quaker faith, which overlapped with the theological conflict between ‘Evangelicalism’ and the ‘Quaker Renaissance’. Broadly speaking, those espousing the liberal theology of the Quaker Renaissance (pro-Inward Light) took up a position critical of the war; those espousing an ‘Evangelical’ theology (pro-atonement, pro-Biblical texts) tended to support the Government.44 The FPC tried to get the Society to take action. In July  the Committee recommended that Meeting for Sufferings address the churches, urging them to advocate arbitration of the Transvaal dispute. No action was taken. After fighting had broken out, the FPC recommended a memorial to the Prime Minister urging him to take ‘the first favourable opportunity for proposing generous terms of peace to the South African Republic’. The Meeting for Sufferings again decided that the time was inopportune. War or Brotherhood? called for an immediate and specific protest against the war. When this was not forthcoming, Reynolds News portrayed the Society of Friends as ‘no longer to be regarded as a strenuous and united peace organization’.45 Eager to strengthen Quaker peace convictions, the British Friend, edited by Grubb, argued: It is worse than useless for us in a crisis like this to issue pious platitudes about the evil of ‘all war’, when by our words and votes we are maintaining the policy and influences which have led to it and will lead to worse . . . we must be willing, as John Bright in –, to face the real issues that are present, and unmask the sophistries that make greed appear to be philanthropy.

Grubb continued his attempts to persuade those Friends who supported imperialism as providentially ordered, or inevitable, or as a civilizing process, that ‘of necessity an imperialistic policy means militarism.’ It was beyond his comprehension how Quakers could ‘support imperialism, either here or abroad’ and still ‘profess to maintain the “testimony against war” ’.46 The passivity of the Peace Society angered Grubb, and, as the  Yearly Meeting approached, the British Friend declared that ‘the time has come for the Society of Friends to cry aloud and spare not in its 44 Price, An Imperial War, ; British Friend, Nov. , supplement; Hewison, Hedge of Wild Almonds, . 45 FPC MSS, MB,  July ;  Nov. ; War or Brotherhood?, Nov. , ; Elizabeth Isichei, Victorian Quakers (Oxford, ), . 46 BF, Mar. , –; Mar. , .

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denunciation of the war and Government policy.’ Discussing the pros and cons of opposing wars in progress, War or Brotherhood? similarly set its face against quietism: ‘We regard the setting forth of the Christian ideal, individual, social and political, as a thing beyond all price . . . there is destructive as well as constructive work to be done in the performance of this task.’ A letter published in the Friend praised those such as Ellen Robinson who had put themselves at risk in bearing witness to the peace testimony. Five months into the war Robinson had addressed a Stop-theWar meeting in Exeter Hall which was stormed by a jingo mob and eventually stopped because of fighting on the stairs. A number of stewards were knocked out. In the mêlée, the young Quaker Roger Clark (the grandson of John Bright) ‘performed yeoman service’ protecting elderly protesters such as Wilfrid Lawson, and only Cremer’s ‘vigorous representations at Bow Street’ succeeded in bringing the police ‘to a sense of duty in the matter’. Robinson also addressed a women’s demonstration against the war in the summer of  (next to her on the platform were Kate Courtney and Emily Hobhouse, who was about to leave for South Africa, from where she sent back the first details of the ‘methods of barbarism’ used by Britain in fighting the war).47 Even Priscilla Peckover, a model of Quaker respectability, gave £, to the Stop-the-War Committee.48 At the  Yearly Meeting Grubb began to make progress. He asserted that Friends had treated their protest against war too traditionally and not as springing from the fundamental principles of true Quakerism: ‘If we all believed in the . . . brotherhood of man, rather than in isolated texts of scripture, we should be more effective.’ Three things, he felt, had to be stressed: that their aim was spiritual, not temporal; that the divine personality was in each human being (and war ‘trampled on this’); and that Friends had to be willing to make sacrifices. His speech was received positively. An approach to the Government was decided on and a committee appointed to prepare a document restating the testimony on war. The British Friend thought that the Meeting would be remembered for ‘clearing up the Society’s position on the great question of war and peace’, though no specific declaration of opposition to the current conflict was framed.49 47 Friends played a crucial organizing role in Hobhouse’s speaking tour of Britain, during which she exposed these methods. 48 Rempel, ‘Quakers and the South African War’, ; War or Brotherhood?, Mar. , –; Hewison, Hedge of Wild Almonds, ; WAWSA,  Mar. , , –; Arb., Jan. , –; WAWSA,  July , ; C. P. Scott MSS, Stead to Scott,  Jan. . 49 BF, June , .

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The remainder of the war afforded greater scope for the Society to present a united front on South Africa. (H. W. Nevinson noted in a diary entry for June  that it was easy to tell public opinion was ‘swinging round, because you could now go to a Pro-Boer meeting with your best trousers on’.50) Convinced that their Society had a special and distinctive part to play in the peace movement, Quaker peace activists were keen to put their house in order.51 In  the Yearly Meeting dispatched a special Peace Deputation to visit every Monthly Meeting in Britain to confirm and strengthen the peace testimony. In this way, according to one commentator, the South African War ‘for all the bitterness it engendered, proved to be the crucible that hardened and strengthened the quality of the Quaker witness for peace’.52 A new generation of Quakers became convinced that the testimony of Friends was right in all cases: that all war, undertaken in whatever circumstances, was contrary to the spirit of Christianity. They were determined to increase Quaker efforts for peace; family links to the Peace Society were no longer enough.       After the outbreak of fighting, the IAPA was adamant that ‘the whole truth as to the origin of the war must be declared’, in particular Rhodes’s ‘conspiracy to get hold of the Rand mines’. It was hardly surprising, Pratt asserted, that the Boers did not wait to be attacked before rising up in selfdefence: ‘We are the authors of the war.’ (This reasoning involved, in effect, a notion of pre-emptive defence: the first use of force but not the first intention to use it.) But, despite the willingness of Concord to take up a clear anti-Government stance, and the involvement of Perris in the Stop-the-War Committee, the approach of the IAPA was essentially that of the SACC: rational, moderate, aiming to ‘watch South African affairs with a view to issuing accurate intelligence’, and to advocate a policy which would re-establish goodwill between the British and Dutch races in South Africa. Indeed, Moscheles wrote in Concord: ‘our task is conciliation.’ The IAPA experienced no falling off of subscriptions and ‘practically no division of opinion within the Association on the subject of the war’ (though its Buxton branch severed ties with the central committee Nevinson MSS, Diary,  June . Hewison, Hedge of Wild Almonds, ; War or Brotherhood?, July , ; James Dudley, The Life of Edward Grubb (), –. 52 T. C. Kennedy, ‘The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Peace Movement –’, Albion,  (), –. 50 51

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because of the latter’s ‘strong line’).53 Throughout the war, its executive passed resolutions and sent protests. Perris’s peace convictions were stronger than ever. Writing during the war about rumours of conscription and the fact that many voluntary recruits were driven into the army by poverty and unemployment, he announced that he would always refuse to serve in a conscript army, and argued that mass refusal to fight was the ultimate means of war prevention. Two years before the war, his interest in Russia had led him to undertake a study of Tolstoy, whom he travelled to interview. He was strongly affected by the Russian writer—‘the greatest intellectual force of our age’—and seems to have come close to embracing pacifism. In  he defended Tolstoy and ‘moral resistance’ against an attack by Pratt. ‘Partisans of peace’ should listen to Tolstoy, Perris asserted: ‘it seems to me certain that sooner or later the peace societies even in England will have to join issue with soldiering root and branch, and to appeal to the people, as Tolstoy has done, to refuse to participate in military service, whatever the penalties may be.’ Years later he looked back on the moment of his conversion to Tolstoyan thought: ‘Thou shalt not kill! It was for me no inherited dogma but a heart seizure, a conviction that every day’s observation and reflection appeared to confirm afresh.’ Although his thinking was ambiguous, Perris was to continue to make pacifist-sounding statements: in , for example, he declared himself ‘for moral, as opposed to physical resistance’.54 His focus during the South African War, however, was the ‘feeble’ state of the peace associations and the need to rid British politics of imperialism and militarism. The IAPA constantly discussed the prospects of the British ‘peace party’ and saw the potential for a ‘regularization’ of the ‘haphazard growth’ of the peace movement. Following the launch of the SACC, he remarked: ‘for the first time in our history we have three strong organizations, in addition to the permanent societies, working for peace.’ He had high hopes for a new ‘peace party’: , signatures appended to the National Memorial prove that we have in this country a large body of adherents ready to be enrolled. There is, then, undoubtedly a peace party, and the pressing duty of the day is to organize it. To the best of our ability we strive to do so; but what can an Association expect to achieve which has but an average income of four or five hundred pounds—a sum which 53 Concord, Nov. , ; Mar. , ; Oct. , ; Mar. , ; Jan. , ; July , . 54 Concord, Jan. , ; Dec. , ; May , ; Nov.–Dec. , ; Sept. , . See also Bodleian, Gilbert Murray MSS, Perris to Murray,  Nov. .

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must suffice for all the purposes of propaganda, including the publication of this monthly organ?

Perris looked to the labour movement as well as to Liberalism for recruits to his envisaged ‘peace party’. He had been involved before the war in attempts to form a ‘Democratic League Against Imperial Expansion and Militarism’ and preferred such a project to the League of Liberals Against Aggression and Militarism, because the traditional party definition of the latter left out ‘some of those distinguished men who have done the best and bravest work in the present crisis’. The coming together, in February , of the ILP and the other socialist groups with the trade unions in the Labour Representation Committee confirmed the arrival of a new, potentially peace-minded, force in British politics. (J. F. Green was already involved in the ILP, as well as the SDF, and introduced a resolution at its  annual conference.)55 Perris argued that an anti-expansionist movement did not want to cut itself off from those working classes looking for ‘a new alignment of progressive opinion’. Pursuing this theme, he struck an optimistic note in his predictions for the ‘Khaki election’: The return of invertebrates and time-servers will not strengthen any Liberalism that we need care for. The old party of peace, retrenchment and reform has no longer any right to that name; but happily the elements of a yet greater party are appearing . . . we find almost every element of democratic opinion on our side. The socialist and Labour candidates are, with hardly a single exception, pledged to the fullest degree against every manifestation of the spirit of war and imperialism . . . In other words the corpus of a peace party is being born before our very eyes.

Perris considered the ‘most important question of the near future’ to be whether the ‘middle-class peace workers’ of a ‘Liberal culture tradition’ would be able to find common ground with the ‘Labour-socialist leaders’. The suggestion of James Anson Farrer, a Radical barrister and writer, that the IAPA should espouse a single-issue Parliamentary ‘peace party’ on the model of the Irish Home Rulers was (predictably) rejected by those politicians asked by Concord to comment. H. J. Wilson pointed out that peace was not sharply defined enough to become a ‘test question’ at every election. John Burns similarly considered that a sectional campaign for peace would ‘kill a general progressive movement’. Indeed, in  the chairman of the LLAAM, R. C. Lehmann, told its secretary that ‘since the end of the war, the objects of the League are too narrow to secure its 55

Concord, June , ; Feb. , ; Mar. , ; May , .

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successful existence.’56 Peace was not a single issue comparable to Home Rule and, in general, progressives did not consider it to be the overriding question in British politics. Most preferred to engage sporadically in the war-or-peace debate, within existing party structures. -   ‒ Public sympathy for the war declined as British troops failed to secure a rapid victory and Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal Party leader, launched an assault on the ‘methods of barbarism’. Moreover, the news that indentured Chinese labourers were being shipped in to South Africa to work the goldmines gave credence to the Pro-Boer argument that the Salisbury Government had lied about its reasons for fighting the war. The peace associations may not have been a sharp focus of agitation against the conflict, but they could take comfort from the fact that, by its conclusion, pacific-ist assumptions had become even more entrenched within the progressive community. Britain’s costly, problematic campaign in South Africa had produced an outpouring of pacific-ist literature, of which Hobson’s Imperialism is the best-known example. ‘Secure popular government, in substance and in form,’ Hobson concluded, ‘and you secure internationalism: retain class government, and you retain military imperialism and international conflicts.’57 Despite, or to some extent because of, such a major imperial war, Cobdenite and Gladstonian ideas of international cooperation remained deeply embedded within British politics. Although issues of militarism and imperialism soon ceased to be the defining questions in British politics, there were several signs of progress for the peace cause. In , for example, Liberal politicians unleashed a barrage of criticism against increased naval estimates, prompting Evans Darby to report the ‘accelerated pace of the peace movement’. Peace activists also took heart from the victory in  of free trade over Chamberlain’s proposals for tariff reform, which were dubbed by G. H. Perris—at this time secretary of the Cobden Club as well as editor of Concord—the ‘Protectionist Peril’.58 Arbitration, too, seemed—at least in limited form—to be more widely accepted than ever. Within a few years of the war, Britain (increasingly 56 Concord, Mar. , ; Oct. , ; June , ; Oct. , ; Aug. , –; LLAAM MB,  Nov. . 57 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, rd edn (London, ), . 58 Concord, Apr. , ; Arb., Oct. , ; HP, Dec. , ; G. H. Perris, The Protectionist Peril (London, ).

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aware of its isolation in Europe) had signed arbitration treaties with France, Portugal, and Italy. Sir Thomas Barclay, a retired president of the Chamber of Commerce in Paris, was one of the leading advocates of an Anglo-French treaty. In  he arranged for the visit of  British tradesmen to the Paris Exhibition and organized another meeting in Paris the following year, which generated much interest in the press (the IAPA worried that Barclay’s businessmen were taken seriously, while peace associations were dismissed as being run by ‘cranks and sentimentalists’). The strengthening of ties between France and Britain—given expression by the visit of King Edward, the ‘Peacemaker’, to France, and of President Loubet to Britain—resulted in the signing of an arbitration treaty by Lord Lansdowne and Paul Cambon in October . The treaty, as was customary, excluded questions of honour and national interest. Although Concord judged it ‘tentative and halting’ in this respect, the IAPA welcomed the fact that it provided for arbitration by the Hague tribunal. In yet another version of a much-adapted phrase, the IAL proclaimed: ‘We are all arbitrationists now!’ The resolution in  of the Dogger Bank dispute between Britain and Russia—which arose when the Russian Baltic fleet fired on British fishing trawlers—was also greeted with fanfare, particularly as it proved the practical success of the Hague Convention, if not the tribunal.59 Britain was now friendly with both of its traditional enemies. The peace associations celebrated the cementing of improved Anglo-French relations in the Entente Cordiale of . Because the articles of the agreement which dealt with reciprocal military commitments were left out of the published version, there seemed nothing sinister in the Entente. Cremer underlined his own activities in promoting Anglo-French friendship. These included the organization in November  of a deputation to the Bourse de Travail in Paris to present an address to the workers of France, signed by  working men, and the IAL’s reception, in turn, of a French delegation. At the end of , Cremer also arranged a visit to France of two hundred Parliamentarians led by Lord Avebury (who had presumably been forgiven for his apostasy during the Boer War), and was startled to be kissed on both cheeks by the Mayor of Paris. In addition, a group of ‘workers for the cause of peace and international brotherhood’—including Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald, and Clifford, as well as representatives of the peace societies—had presented an address to President Loubet.60 59 Thomas Barclay, Thirty Years: Anglo-French Reminiscences (London, ), ; Concord, July , –; Oct. ; Arb., Feb. , ; Nov. , . 60 Arb., Feb. , –; Review of Reviews, Dec. , ; Arb., July , .

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The peace movement believed the Entente to be the first step towards a general system of strong, peaceful international ties—its activists were isolationist only in regard to ‘entangling alliances’. ‘The friends of peace and arbitration’, Concord declared, ‘are far from desiring isolation “splendid” or “dull”. They insist on the desirability of drawing closer the bonds with other nations.’ A delighted Perris saw the Entente as another step towards international democracy, and looked forward to a democratic League of Peace. ‘Ten years ago Concord was a voice crying in the wilderness,’ he wrote, ‘five years ago we were being pelted as Pro-Boers. Time has justified our forecasts, our criticisms, our principles, and has brought us converts not singly but by battalions.’ Other peace activists dwelt on the pro-peace statements made by royalty and statesmen: at the Boston UPC, for example, Thomas Snape of the Peace Society contrasted the old days of the peace movement with contemporary times ‘when peace advocates are regarded as practical men, when kings listen and presidents receive them’.61 The Entente’s anti-German implications did not strike the peace associations until the Tangier Crisis of , which began when the German army landed in Morocco. Even then, peace activists gave little credence to revelations in French newspapers that Britain had offered military assistance to France in the event of war. When the extent of the damage to Anglo-German relations was obvious, however, the Friends’ Peace Committee acted. At Yearly Meeting in May , T. P. Newman suggested that the Society of Friends circulate an address ‘To the Lovers of Peace in Germany’. The address highlighted the racial connection between the two nations—‘both branches of the Teutonic stock’—and German cultural achievements, as well as expressing the faith that ‘there is nothing in the competitions of commerce which needs interfere with esteem and mutual friendship between individuals and nations.’62 At the Lucerne UPC in September , the British delegates—on the initiative of J. F. Green—invited those from Germany to a cup of tea and ‘friendly discussion of the irritation between the two countries’. (The British contingent included Green, Perris, G. B. Clark, T. P. Newman, Darby, Peckover, Ellen Robinson, J. G. Alexander, F. W. Fox, Mary Cooke, and Moscheles.) It was decided that an address should be issued in the two countries, signed by ‘numbers of leading men in this country of both political parties, Churchmen and Nonconformists, aristocrats, and labour representatives’. The newly formed Anglo-German Conciliation (later Friendship) Committee, the joint secretaries of which were Fox 61 62

Concord, Nov. , ; Dec. , ; May , ; Oct.–Nov. , . Concord, June , ; Arb., Feb. , .

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and Perris, organized a meeting at Caxton Hall, which, according to Concord, was ‘one of the most encouraging and weighty’ ever held under the auspices of the peace movement—though The Times dismissed it as attended by ‘a number of well-intentioned people’. Avebury, the chairman of the meeting, described as a ‘delusion’ the idea that the Entente was a threat to Germany. Reference was made in the peace journals to exchange visits of local government officials, businessmen and newspaper editors.63 Anglo-German relations had suddenly become the most important peace issue. The landslide election victory of a Liberal Government in  reassured the peace movement that Britain would help to prevent war in Europe. There was now a potentially strong Parliamentary peace faction: not only an influential Radical element in the Liberal Party but thirty Labour members. Speaking at the annual meeting of the IAPA, G. P. Gooch said there were more ‘friends of peace’ in the Commons than at any previous time. A significant section of the press—the Daily News, Manchester Guardian, Morning Leader, Daily Chronicle and others—was vocal in its support of peace policies. Perris was ebullient: ‘Broader, deeper, and ever more powerful, the movement for the better organization of the world sweeps on.’ He wondered how the IAPA and its ‘little constituency of convinced and seasoned’ activists would ‘face this new situation’. Like most peace campaigners, he was confident that the new Government would ease the increasing international tension occasioned by a new programme of German naval expansion. Perris began a series of articles on ‘How to Effect a Limitation of Armaments’, in which he set out a plan for a five-year truce, and became involved in a committee to study the question of arms reduction, on which sat J. A. Hobson, Hobhouse, and several MPs including J. M. Roberston.64 Faith in the new Administration seemed to be justified when, in May , Henry Vivian, Lib–Lab MP for Birkenhead, proposed a Commons resolution calling for the issue of arms limitation to be placed on the agenda of the second Hague Conference—due to take place the following year—and it was agreed to without a division. Furthermore, in a much-vaunted speech to the London Inter-Parliamentary Conference, held in July , the new Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman pledged that Britain would take her place ‘at the head of a League of Peace’. 63 Friend,  June , ;  June , ;  Sept. , –; Concord, Sept.–Oct. , ; Friend,  Nov. , ; Concord, Dec. , . 64 Concord, June–July , ; Aug. , ; Report of the  London Universal Peace Congress (London, ), .

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Hague Conferences, South African War

When the draft programme of the Hague Conference was published, however, it omitted the question of an arms agreement. CampbellBannerman, safe in the knowledge that the other powers would remain opposed, took the initiative and called for the Conference to discuss arms limitation. In fulfilment of pre-election promises, and winning the approval of Radicals, the Government announced reductions of £.m in the naval estimates, with future reductions conditional on an agreement at The Hague. In March  the Prime Minister wrote an article for the Nation, the new Radical weekly edited by Massingham, which underlined the philanthropic and peaceful disinterest of British sea-power. Other powers had rejected a reduction in armaments because Britain’s ‘preponderant naval position’ would ‘remain unimpaired’, but this negative reaction was, he argued, inappropriate. Britain’s support of ‘those two dominant principles—the independence of nationalities and the freedom of trade’ meant that even ‘if our fleets be invulnerable, they carry with them no menace.’ Concord described the article as CampbellBannerman’s ‘best and bravest act of a good and brave career’. Perris admitted that ‘there is a . . . show of force in the foreign scoff that we are trying to stereotype our own supremacy on the high seas’, and the Peace Society reported that the response of Continental journals to the Nation article was ‘adverse, bitterly hostile, cynical’. But overall, as during the s, the peace movement subscribed to liberal tenets about maritime strength and paid insufficient attention to how Britain was perceived on the Continent. The Arbitrator maintained that ‘the Liberal Party in this country has such clean hands that no serious politician in Europe will suspect us of any sinister intentions.’ The nail in the coffin for hopes of an armaments agreement came in April  when Prince von Bülow announced in the Reichstag, to laughter and cheers, that Germany declined to discuss the question of armaments at The Hague. Perris wrote in Concord that the Conference was ‘robbed in advance of much of its interest and importance’.65 A group of peace activists again travelled to The Hague, however. Stead, who had tried in the months before the Conference to organize another ‘peace pilgrimage’, published a report of the proceedings, as he had in . H. W. Nevinson later portrayed him ‘bouncing with vitality, running over with human kindness towards emperors, kings, peoples, and a bevy of girls alike; exuberant for peace, and in the end calling for as many battleships as we could possibly build’. According to Nevinson 65

Concord, Mar. , –; HP, Apr. , ; Arb., Mar. , .

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

there was an ‘atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy’ at the Conference, which was created by ‘jealous diplomatists and cautious lawyers’.66 Perris complained that cliques of the leading delegates met in big hotels to set the agenda. Cremer, who stayed at home, criticized the ‘little army of fussy people’—peace activists who were ‘self-constituted amateur diplomatists’. The chief stumbling block to an arms agreement was perceived by the peace movement to be the British refusal to abolish the right to capture commercial vessels during wartime. Abolition had been a Radical cry since the mid-nineteenth century, a means of limiting the British navy to the minimum size necessary for defence, and, in turn, of discouraging other powers from building ships on the assumption that the British navy was designed to blockade them and starve their people by means of the destruction of trade.67 Germany expressed strong opposition to Britain’s stance at The Hague against immunity from capture. Peace activists hoped that the  Conference might at least, like its predecessor, make progress on arbitration. But these hopes were dashed when the German delegation again expressed opposition to the obligatory submission of any sort of dispute, however trivial. After weeks of wrangling, agreement was limited to a restructuring of the tribunal of  and a vœu recognizing the theoretical virtues of obligatory settlement. Despite the proliferation of bilateral treaties, arbitration now lost some of its allure as a peace policy, and there was little sign of the excitement of the early s when codification seemed a real possibility. Arbitration began to be recognized as an instrument of diplomacy rather than of pacification and, as international relations deteriorated, seemed to beg rather than answer the question of how to prevent war. ‘The question of arbitration’, Perris wrote after returning from The Hague, ‘is in a very complex tangle . . . We have grown so used to demanding obligatory arbitration and a permanent court that we may have been deceived into welcoming the name and losing the substance.’ He ridiculed any attempt ‘to construct a castle of cards out of the abstract principles of international law’, and asserted that an emphasis on the niceties of arbitration would never attract the working classes to the peace cause.68 Peace activists became more aware that an effective tribunal required a solid basis of European co-operation. 66 H. W. Nevinson, Fire of Life (London, ), ; H. W. Nevinson, Peace and War in the Balance (London, ). 67 Concord, May , ; June–July , –; Arb., July , . For the midnineteenth-century campaign for immunity, see Bernard Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy (London, ). 68 Concord, Aug. , –; Concord, Aug.–Sept. , .

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Hague Conferences, South African War

The main obstacle to this co-operation was Germany’s ‘nervous sense of isolation’. Although the peace movement worried about ‘secret diplomacy’ and a Europe organized into rival alliances, it regularly pointed out that there was, according to the Government, no British commitment to another power which might antagonize Germany: Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary was consistent in his denials of a British obligation overseas. There were, moreover, no signs of a dramatic increase in the size of the army which the existence of such an obligation would seem logically to demand. The peace associations remained convinced that the growing international crisis could easily be defused: provided with the example of peace policies implemented in Britain, the progressive political forces in Germany would triumph over the militarist élite and the German people would be happy to take their place within a peaceful Europe.69 The most serious revolt over foreign relations suffered by the new Liberal Government did not—at first—focus on ‘entangling alliances’ but on Britain’s implied endorsement of Tsarism by its signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement of . The IAPA joined socialists and socialistic Radicals such as H. W. Nevinson and H. N. Brailsford in taking a strong line against the Agreement. Perris and Green were, of course, central figures in the SFRF, and the previous year Perris had been secretary of the Dumas Memorial Committee. The Anglo-Russian rapprochement was, he argued, a setback to Russian democratization: it would shore up the ‘vile Muscovite despotism’ by boosting Russia’s prestige and financial credit. The Agreement’s division of Persia into three spheres— one Russian and one British with a neutral zone in between—amounted to ‘capitalist exploitation’.70 An understanding with reactionary Russia could never be, for the IAPA, a wholly reliable instrument for peace. The question was once again how Britain could best encourage a peace which incorporated liberty and justice. In an earlier exchange with the Russian sociologist and peace activist Jacques Novicow, Perris had insisted on the relevance of the internal politics of other powers to Britain’s foreign policy. Britain and France, which stood ‘together proudly in support of the ideas of liberty and democracy’, would, he argued, be wrong to sign an entente with the regime in Russia, ‘whose people are kept in servitude by a corrupt and cruel oligarchy’. Novicow countered that ‘internal policy must not be confounded with international Concord, May , –. Concord, Sept.–Oct. , ; Howard Weinroth, ‘The British Radicals and the Balance of Power, –’, Historical Journal,  (), . 69 70

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

policy.’ Perris could not accept this. He agreed that no opportunity should be lost to bind Britain and Russia in general co-operation, but insisted that ‘the connection of despotism and warfare is the very logic of history . . . Internal and international policy, liberty and peace are inextricably entwined.’71 The IAPA had always described militarism as its chief enemy. Not all peace activists felt the same about the Agreement. The IAL, for example, judged that it should ‘by balance of advantage . . . be judged a powerful factor in the peace of the world’. Courtney, Hirst, and Lord Loreburn also adopted the Cobdenite premise that non-intervention in internal politics was the best way to promote liberty, and set up a Russian Committee less unbending in its advocacy of a democratically oriented foreign policy than the SFRF. The Peace Society, too, declared: ‘Those of us who remember the exceedingly bitter feeling that used to prevail between this country and Russia will accept with great thankfulness this “better way” of mutual understanding.’72 Such disparate responses to the Agreement demonstrated yet again that underneath the surface of a peace movement working to introduce a new international order there were all kinds of ideological disparity—not only the two tendencies of pacifism and pacific-ism, but various pacific-ist interpretations of how Britain could best further the aims of democracy, justice, and lasting peace. Concord, July–Aug. , –. Weinroth, ‘British Radicals’, ; F. M. Leventhal, The Last Dissenter: H. N. Brailsford and his World (Oxford, ), ; HP, Aug.–Oct. , ; see also Friend,  Jan. , . 71 72



–: The Pre-War Peace Movement As the international crisis intensified, issues of peace and war were pushed to the front of British politics and peace activists, or ‘pacifists’ as they were increasingly known, grew in number. In an article entitled ‘Pacifism’, E. S. Beesly, the veteran of many agitations on foreign policy, noted that ‘future historians’ summing up the year  would be ‘likely to agree that it was chiefly remarkable for the rapid growth of a widespread and determined movement against war’: It has been wholly unlike anything that has been seen before. There have never been wanting people to denounce the folly and cruelty of war. There have been societies for the promotion of peace and arbitration. The Hague Conference has not now met for the first time. But never before has the great question overshadowed all others. Never has public attention been so steadily fixed on it. Never has it been the daily topic of the press.1

During the pre-war years, the peace movement passed, as the Herald of Peace commented, ‘into a new and more powerful phase’.2 Indeed, it is the assessment of one historian that ‘proportionate to the population and given the difficulties of communication, the range and intensity of peace . . . activity in the decade before the First World War was relatively greater than at any other period in British history.’3 The existing peace associations welcomed this increase in activity and, by means of a series of National Peace Congresses and the recently founded National Peace Council, achieved some success in marshalling it into a united campaign. Tension between the powers, in particular the deterioration of relations with Germany, made ‘peace’ an immediate and tangible concern; as a result, peace activists were not so easily dismissed as utopian dreamers. Of course, much organized activism remained outside the influence of the associations, which were small, short of funds 2 Positivist Review,  (), –. HP, Jan. , . Nigel Young, ‘Tradition and Innovation in the British Peace Movement’, in Richard Taylor and Nigel Young, Campaigns for Peace: British Peace Movements in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, ), . 1 3

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and still sometimes identified with an absolutist opposition to war. A number of MPs’ committees, for example, were established to influence the Liberal Government on such matters as arms retrenchment and democratic control of foreign policy; and the National Liberal Federation was often preoccupied with the peace issue.4 In addition, the peaceminded sections of the labour movement—in particular the ILP—kept their distance from most of the agitations of the peace societies; they considered workers’ co-operation and the Second International to be the only effective means of achieving permanent peace. Brailsford, for instance, argued that ‘men and women divided on other issues, and acting in concert only to hold meetings and listen to lectures against war’ would ‘rarely be formidable to any government’: the peace societies had ‘created a favourable intellectual atmosphere’ but it ‘remained for socialism to create the party of peace’.5 Finally, there was Norman Angellism—the campaign surrounding the extraordinary success of Angell’s book, The Great Illusion. This agitation was in itself a response to the limited impact of the existing associations and distanced itself from traditional strategies of peace propaganda. Some of Angell’s adherents aimed merely to prevent war with Germany and did not share the peace movement’s vision of permanent and universal peace. Substantial numbers of such ‘fellow travellers’ became associated with the peace movement at this time: the campaign for improved Anglo-German relations was, after all, relatively uncontroversial in British politics, so long as it avoided the issue of a reduction in armaments. Britain was a ‘satisfied’ power, anxious to preserve peace and the status quo. Moreover, while the need to protect the shores of the homeland from invasion was unquestioned, the idea of a forward defence of the nation, to avoid an aggressive power controlling northern Europe, was not often discussed by political commentators. ‘Idealists’ therefore shared with those ‘realists’ who preferred Britain to concentrate on its Empire a desire to see the nation free from dangerous European obligations. And Edward Grey repeatedly promised—in the face of rumours of a commitment to France—that Britain maintained a ‘free hand’. Peace associations, like everybody else, used ‘pacifism’ to refer simply to a consistent advocacy of peace. Because the peace movement, eager for 4 For the campaigns of these committees, see A. J. A. Morris, Radicalism against War –: the Advocacy of Peace and Retrenchment (London, ); S. E. Koss, Sir John Brunner: Radical Plutocrat – (Cambridge, ); R. A. Jones, Arthur Ponsonby (London, ); K. G. Robbins, ‘Public Opinion, the Press and Pressure Groups’, in F. H. Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey (Cambridge, ). 5 H. N. Brailsford, The War of Steel and Gold (London, ), .

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Pre-War Peace Movement

recruits to the cause, did not always recognize ‘fellow travellers’ for what they were, ‘pacifism’ often denoted the views not only of pacifists and pacific-ists but fellow-travelling defencists advocating friendship with Germany. Everybody in British politics claimed to be doing their utmost to promote peace, and, partly as a result, ‘pacifism’ tended not to attract the negative connotations of ‘peace at any price’. Even Lord Esher, an outspoken navalist and a key figure in the recently established Committee for Imperial Defence, described himself as ‘a pacifist statesman’.6     The IAPA, aware of its own exiguousness, had always looked to a federation of peace bodies. Writing in  of the limitations of the existing peace movement, Perris underlined the influence of individuals and institutions not officially connected to the peace societies. He gave as examples Clifford and Percival, and bodies ‘like the TUC, Women’s Liberal Federation, the chief socialist bodies and the Cobden Club’, which had formally adopted international peace as one of their aims. This ‘neighbouring territory’ should, Perris considered, be drawn as far as possible into the organized movement.7 To a considerable extent this hope was realized in the National Peace Council and its congresses, though it took a number of years. The NPC was not put onto a formal footing until after its organization of the London Universal Peace Congress in , but a joint body of peace activists arranged annual national congresses from . The initial impetus for these had come from the Friends’ Peace Committee. Following the Rouen UPC in , Ellen Robinson, Mary Cooke, T. P. Newman, and J. G. Alexander proclaimed ‘the desirability of more closely uniting those interested in the promotion of peace in the United Kingdom, with the object of a national growth of the peace movement; and of enabling united public action to be taken in time of need’. This Quaker initiative, welcomed by the IAPA, reflected Friends’ belief in their special duty to stimulate peace campaigns and to influence the nature of the peace movement. It was felt that Quakers should be ‘abundantly represented’ at the congresses and should ‘control the proceedings somewhat, by the weight of their influence and according to their ancient testimony’.8 Non-resisters were conscious that they were the only peace advocates guaranteed to oppose war whatever the circumstances and 6 7 8

Viscount Esher, Modern War and Peace (Cambridge, ), . Concord, Mar. , . FPC MSS, MB,  Oct. ;  Dec. ; Friend,  June , .

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

regarded themselves as the core of the peace movement. They were, in J. W. Graham’s phrase, ‘the steel point . . . at the end of the softer metal of the general peace party’.9 Not all the peace societies were as enthusiastic about a joint peace body. Following the organization of the first national congress, at Manchester in , Evans Darby vehemently rejected the suggestion that it should lead to a permanent federation of peace societies. Worried about the possible eclipse of (and the redirection of funds away from) the Peace Society, Darby argued that centralization was a device for putting the few into a position of authority, and that action by a central governing body could not represent effectively the ‘great cause of peace, which is essentially and au fond a moral propaganda’. The new initiative was also a sign of the degree to which the Peace Society had lost its ascendancy within the peace movement—in the past, the Society had subsidized and overseen much of organized peace activism in Britain. Eventually, however, Darby agreed to a specially constituted permanent body. Cremer’s association was similarly reluctant. Its council called an emergency meeting in  to consider a letter from the IAPA which asked for co-operation in organizing the second National Peace Congress and which posited a future federation of peace societies. The IAL decided to remain aloof.10 At the fourth National Peace Congress, held at Scarborough in , a resolution was passed which urged the NPC to co-opt other organizations into the movement—the National Conference of Unitarian Churches, the National PSA Council, the Boys’ and Girls’ Life Brigades and the Humanitarian League all affiliated. As part of this ‘forward movement scheme’, the honorary secretaries of the Council, J. F. Green and Mary Cooke, resigned to make way for a paid permanent secretary. The person chosen was G. H. Perris’s brother Harry Shaw Perris, a former Unitarian minister who had lectured on ‘Militarism in England’ and written for Concord.11 Moves began to set up an office for the Council. An appeal was launched to raise £, Carnegie undertaking to subscribe £ provided the other £ was found. Despite the fact that the ‘few wealthy individuals’ approached to finance the scheme were ‘not on the subscription list of the Peace Society’, Darby resigned his position on the newly constituted NPC as a result of these developments, though the Peace 9 Manchester University Library, J. W Graham MSS, Box , Graham to Richard 10 Graham,  Feb. . HP, June , ; July , . 11 H. S. Perris had been secretary of the Tribune Rendezvous, the political meeting-place situated at the offices of the Radical newspaper; the paper’s demise had left him unemployed. G. H. Perris was at this time the Tribune’s foreign news editor.

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Pre-War Peace Movement

Society committee agreed to remain represented.12 In a similarly convoluted manner, the IAL affiliated, then withdrew, on the grounds that the NPC was ‘simply a new peace propagandist organization’, then in  changed its mind again, after which Fred Maddison became an NPC regular. The greatest achievement of the NPC was the organization of the London Universal Peace Congress in . This gathering featured all the various political, religious, legal, and ethical groups within the British peace movement, as well as those from overseas, and was too important to be ignored by the Liberal Government, which used it to announce to the world Britain’s desire for peace. Lord Courtney was president of the Congress; Darby and Green the secretaries; Clifford was secretary of the local demonstrations committee; Perris chairman of the press committee. The vice-presidents included thirty-two MPs. About forty peace societies around the country (most of them Peace Society auxiliaries) and the same number of Quaker meetings were represented at the Congress. The organizing committee included members not only from the FPC, IAPA, and Peace Society, but from the Liverpool and Birkenhead Women’s Peace and Arbitration Association, the Manchester District Peace and Arbitration League, the Peace Union, and the Hampstead Peace Society. Before the Congress opened, two thousand workers representing twentyone trade and labour organizations attended a Labour peace demonstration in Trafalgar Square, addressed by Ramsay MacDonald; banners enjoined ‘Workers of the world, unite’ and ‘No conscription’. John Ward argued that ‘the greatest peace movement was the gradual development of the industrial consciousness of the people of this country and the world generally.’ The official beginning of the Congress was marked by the reception of a deputation of peace delegates at Buckingham Palace. Lord Courtney handed the King and Queen a ‘charming replica, in gold and enamel, of the Congress badge’, depicting an olive branch springing from a crown. At a garden party that afternoon five hundred guests were inappropriately entertained by the band of the Royal Marine Artillery. The highpoint of what Perris called a ‘great festival of peace’ was the public meeting held in the Queen’s Hall, the scene of hostility against peace advocates during the South African War. In a speech described by Bertha von Suttner as ‘brilliant’, Lloyd George referred to his Old Age Pensions Bill under consideration by the Lords, and those who believed ‘we ought to save a little of the pension money for old people in order to 12 Concord, Aug.–Sept. , ; MB,  Nov. ; British Library of Political and Economic Science, NPC MSS, MB,  Sept. .

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provide more money for armaments. (Cries of “Shame”.)’ John Clifford spoke of the peace movement’s astonishing popularity. Will Thorne, a representative from the TUC, told the Germans present that British workers had ‘no quarrel with the wage-earners of Germany . . . the wageearners of all countries have no quarrel with their companions; the only quarrel we have got is with the landlord and exploiting classes in all parts of the civilized world.’13 As a finale to the gatherings, the delegates were invited to attend a Government banquet at the Hotel Cecil, addressed by Asquith, the Prime Minister. A Times leader noted that the proceedings began with the reading of a letter from Balfour and ended with a speech from Asquith, the content of both of which ‘must have caused disappointment to some of the more extreme pacifists’ because they insisted ‘on the need for adequate measures of self-defence’. The paper also referred to Courtney as ‘by no means among the fanatics on peace-at-any-price’. The Liberalsupporting Daily News suggested that the peace movement had finally decided to engage in real politics: It has been said with some truth that an abstract peace movement means nothing at all, because it can command no more than formal allegiance, that the desire for justice is at once a more deep-seated and a worthier passion than the desire for peace, and that it is only in the rough-and-tumble of politics that real service can be done to the only sort of peace that is worth having. We are not sure that peace societies might not with advantage come oftener into the dusty forum than they do; they sometimes seem to wait too long in an impregnable moral citadel.

The Peace Society remarked that it was ‘worth holding the Congress to evoke the three declarations in favour of peace from the British Sovereign and his two chief ministers’. A number of peace activists, however, were sceptical about ‘platitudes of peace uttered by emperors and kings’ and the Labour Leader expressed concern about the peace movement’s new ‘infection of respectability’. H. W. Nevinson, himself an advocate of international rapprochement, wrote in his diary after attending the Congress that ‘the audience cared nothing for the debate but much for the luncheon.’14 H. S. Perris resigned as secretary of the National Peace Council in . His replacement was Carl Heath, who had close links to the Humanitarian League and to the Penal Reform League and who was Report of the  Peace Congress, –, . Times,  Aug. , ; Daily News,  July , ; HP, Sept. , ; Concord, Dec. , –; Labour Leader,  July , ;  July , ; Nevinson MSS, diary,  July . 13 14

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Pre-War Peace Movement

secretary of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. He was, according to his autobiography, ‘Europeanized and bilingual’ at an early age thanks to his family’s move to France. He also had ties with the Russian émigrés Stepniak, Soskice, and Volkhovsky who made up the core of the SFRF. Possibly through Volkhovsky, Heath was offered a post teaching the children of Sydney Olivier, and in this way became an adjunct to the intellectual circle whose members included Edward Pease, J. A. Hobson, and Edward and Constance Garnett: he tutored several of their children. It was Hobson who suggested to Heath that he should apply for the secretaryship of the NPC and he wrote to the president, Courtney, on Heath’s behalf. Heath was interviewed by T. P. Newman and was asked ‘a number of pointed questions, one of them being whether I believed in the doctrine of the Trinity. I did not at the time understand the bearing, but later discovered that this point troubled a very dear old Quaker woman, Priscilla Peckover, the first secretary having been a member of a family of keen Unitarians.’ Knowing nothing of the ‘inner workings of the peace movement’, he was helped by Newman, a man with ‘a veritable passion for world peace’ who ‘came up every morning early from Haslemere to his business, but regularly spent the first half hour with me discussing what we should do’. Although Heath’s opposition to war was grounded in humanitarian individualism, he seems not to have thought through at this time whether he was a pacifist or a pacific-ist.15 The reach of the first few national congresses had rarely extended much further than the peace societies and Quakers. At Bristol in , for example, the ‘large number’ of delegates had been Friends. The Birmingham congress of the following year had been most notable for the hospitality of the Cadbury family at Bournville; and at the Scarborough congress all the speeches had been made either by members of the peace societies or by Quakers. The official recognition given to the London UPC, however, helped to raise the profile of the national congresses, which in some years succeeded in giving an impressive demonstration of the breadth of peace sentiment in Britain. The  Cardiff gathering, for instance, was attended by  people representing  different organizations: the peace societies were represented by  delegates; Labour, trade union and Co-operative groups by ; ILP groups by ; Liberal associations by ; women’s Liberal associations by ; Friends’ meetings by ; Free Church councils by ; other religious bodies by ; 15 Friends House, Temp. MS  (R. A. Smith MSS), Box /, typescript Heath autobiography; Rationalist Peace Quarterly, July , .

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

PSAs and Brotherhoods by ; individual churches and chapels by ; teachers by ; and temperance associations by . In the years before the outbreak of war, the annual gatherings were addressed by many Radicals known for their outspoken criticism of foreign and armaments policies. Although the NPC failed to secure the formal affiliation of the General Federation of Trade Unions and the ILP, the congresses were also occasionally addressed by labour leaders and socialists.16 During the Cardiff Congress a new constitution was passed for the NPC which stated that it was to have a dual role: to be the mouthpiece of the ‘peace party’ and to muster ‘unorganized peace opinion’ in Britain. The number of institutions which came under the umbrella of the NPC increased from twenty-five in  to forty-four by the outbreak of war in . Various economic, ethical, political, literary, and human rights organizations sent a delegate to Council meetings: these included the Anti-Slavery Society, the Aborigines Protection Society, the Cobden Club and the National Reform Union. As well as organizing the national congresses, the NPC met monthly and sent resolutions to Westminster. It also published pamphlets addressing the different aspects of the peace question—‘economics’, ‘social reform’, ‘education’. Much of this literature comprised speeches made by better-known peace activists at the national congresses, including Courtney; Noel Edward Buxton, Liberal MP; F. W. Hirst; and J. A. Hobson, who described himself in  as believing in ‘peace almost at any price’.17 The NPC did its best to promote the existence of a distinct peace movement by publishing the Peace Year Book (edited by Heath) which reported news and gave biographical details of leading peace activists, including those not formally attached to the peace societies. The NPC was keen to exert greater political pressure and wanted an MP as chairman. Arthur Ponsonby, the aristocratic former diplomat turned Radical politician, whose interest in the peace cause originated in a meeting with Felix Moscheles and attendance at an IAPA meeting, refused the post. His reason was that, as an MP, he should be ‘entirely free’ from ‘any body which has a . . . marked policy on these questions’ (he did, however, speak regularly at peace congresses and wrote NPC literature). The second choice was the MP for Rochdale, Gordon Harvey, a Radical who was a prominent free-trader and had been a Pro-Boer (despite the fact that his textile mills had made large profits from turning 16 Concord, July , ; HP, July , ; July , –; NPC MSS, MB,  July ;  Nov. ;  Aug. ;  May . 17 Ibid.  June ; H. W. Nevinson, Peace or War in the Balance (London, ), .

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Pre-War Peace Movement

out khaki uniforms). He accepted the post. To raise the Council’s profile, Harvey suggested setting up a political committee: Courtney, Weardale, and Noel Buxton were among those who joined. Another indication that the NPC had some success in attracting well-known political figures is the involvement of Ramsay MacDonald, Buxton, Hirst, Loreburn, Courtney, and Angell in a committee to consider Britain’s role at the third Hague Conference, which was planned for .18     The NPC took under its wing new peace groups such as the Rationalist Peace Society—another manifestation, albeit a small one, of the intensification of peace activity in the Edwardian period, and of the increasing dominance of secular pacific-ism within the peace movement. The RPS was formed in November  with the purpose of carrying on propaganda ‘in the interest of international peace on essentially and avowedly rationalist lines, without reference to religious sanctions of any kind’. It aimed to attract ‘the large number of persons’ who had ‘held aloof from any of the existing peace societies, none of which explicitly recognises the fact that . . . any appeal to supernatural intervention is anachronistic and futile’. Its broad outlook was a combination of Positivism and the ‘scientific’ peace advocacy represented on the Continent by Jacques Novicow and the German journalist Alfred Fried.19 The RPS claimed that the modern peace movement, though ‘appropriated by Christianity’, was ‘essentially rationalist’ in its Enlightenment origins. It despaired of the Peace Society, which relied on ‘superstitions’ rather than ‘economic and social facts’.20 The president of the RPS was J. M. Robertson, the chairman Hypatia Bonner and the secretary E. G. Smith (formerly an assistant to Cremer at the IAL). Other members of the executive included Harry Snell, an ethicist and charity-worker; F. J. Gould, another South Place ethicist; J. F. Green; and S. H. Swinny, president of the London Positivist Society and a delegate of the RPS on the NPC. Carl Heath was also involved. The 18 R. A. Jones, Arthur Ponsonby (London, ), ; Bodleian Library, Ponsonby MSS, Box , draft; for Harvey, see Alexander Gordon Cummins Harvey: A Memoir, ed. F. W. Hirst (London, ), ; NPC MSS, Min. Bk., –. 19 For Novicow and Fried, see Peter van Den Dungen, ‘Industrial Society and the End of War—The History of an Idea’, Ph.D thesis (Univ. of London, ); Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War (Princeton, ); Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe – (New York, ). 20 Rationalist Peace Quarterly, Oct. , .

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

Society opposed conscription and advocated immunity from capture of private property at sea as well as democratic control over the power of making war.21 It produced a quarterly journal and a volume, Essays Towards Peace, which included contributions from Angell, Roberston, and Swinny. The RPS was never large—it had two hundred members in April —and was hampered throughout its existence by insufficient support, but it continued to organize meetings and distribute literature. It was eclipsed by the success of Angell’s campaign, which was also conducted on secular, ‘rational’ principles but without any suggestion of being in the pocket of the Positivists or secularists.       Another new organization represented on the NPC was the Church of England Peace League, founded in October  by a small group of Anglican peace activists among whom were M. H. Huntsman (assistant to the NPC secretary), her sister Sophie Huntsman and Caroline Playne (NPC representative and later author of The Pre-War Mind in Britain). Canon Horsely was chairman of its executive; its other members included C. F. G. Masterman, and Edward Lee Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln, who became its president. W. L. Grane, author of The Passing of War and an adherent of the liberal, evolutionary theology which influenced many Churchmen in the period, was also a recognized spokesman of the League. It was a small operation, with only  members at the end of ; subscriptions and donations decreased from the £ received in its first year.22 The objects of the League were general and apolitical: to keep before members of the Church of England ‘the duty of combating the war spirit’ and ‘to promote universal and permanent peace by encouraging arbitration, conciliation and international friendship’. Its manifesto referred to ‘the enormous number of arbitration treaties recently made, the frequent and successful resort to arbitral tribunals and the rapid growth of international jurisprudence’. Its members were not pacifists: Hicks, for example, had supported collective military action against Turkey in , though he had opposed the South African War. In The Passing of War, Grane made much of his ideological detachment from the existing peace movement. He described non-resisters as ‘fanatics’ and endorsed W. T. Stead’s comment that ‘there are no such enemies to the peace movement 21 The Rationalist Peace Society: Its Aims and Methods (London, ); Bishopsgate 22 Institute, RPS MB. CEPL, Annual Reports.

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Pre-War Peace Movement

as the “peace people” ’—disarmament campaigns were particularly futile, he thought.23 Grane also countered the ‘materialistic’ arguments of Angell and advocated giving Germany an increased empire as a means to Anglo-German rapprochement.      The formation of the Associated Councils of Churches for Fostering Friendly Relations between the British and German Peoples (ACC), which was dedicated to the specific aim of preventing an Anglo-German war, is another indication that Christians of all denominations were increasingly interested in peace questions. The ACC was supported by defencists as well as pacific-ists, though this seems not to have been a problem for the peace associations, which were sympathetic. That the ACC’s outlook was anodyne and establishment-friendly was also no barrier to co-operation. This is perhaps because the original initiative to form the ACC was taken by a member of the Society of Friends, James Allen Baker, who was Liberal MP for East Finsbury and president-elect of the Metropolitan Church Council. Baker made contact with German church leaders at The Hague in  when he presented the Conference with a memorial signed by religious bodies from Britain, America, and Germany. In December of that year he visited Britain and Cologne, interviewing influential religious leaders and arranging a high-profile visit of German pastors to Britain (the cost of which was borne partly by substantial contributions from the Peckover and Rowntree families). A souvenir programme of the visit was published, entitled Peace and the Churches. ‘Some of the foremost prelates of the Church’, the IAL noted, ‘have preached international fraternity as they have never done before.’24 In return, a British delegation visited Germany in  and was received by the Kaiser, just after he had inspected his troops (an incongruity not remarked on by the Quaker journals or the Herald of Peace). Baker spoke at the Peace Society’s annual meeting in  and described a transition in the peace cause: ‘Those peace societies that have been 23 Graham Neville, Radical Churchman: Edward Lee Hicks and the New Liberalism (Oxford, ), –; W. L. Grane, The Passing of War (London, ), . 24 Friend,  Jan. , . See Darril Hudson, The Ecumenical Movement in World Affairs (London, ), ch. ; B. D. Phillips, ‘Friendly Patriotism: British Quakerism and the Imperial Nation, –’, Ph.D. thesis (Univ. of Cambridge, ), section .

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

working along certain lines for years are perhaps at the point where their work will break outside their borders . . . Let us look to some of these persons placed in high positions.’ Following the Anglo-German exchange of visits, an ‘After-Work Committee’ was set up to approach congregations with a request that they adopt relevant resolutions. The appeal produced over two thousand replies from all religious communities in Britain. A permanent body, the ‘British Council of Churches’, and a German equivalent were set up to organize this liaison. Membership of the British body—restricted to churchgoers—reached , during the year  to  (many times that of the Peace Society). The Council issued a quarterly magazine, Peacemaker, which was edited by W. H. Dickinson, MP for St Pancras, and then by the Revd J. H. Rushbrooke, a Baptist fluent in German. Its circulation—, in —was far higher than the established peace journals.25 The first issue of Peacemaker made clear the catholicity of the ACC, which included not only ‘doctrinaire advocates of peace’ but others who, without committing themselves to absolute condemnation of war, hold that the relations of Britain and Germany are such that war between these two powers should be made impossible. It includes advocates of a strong navy, eager to express the firm conviction that the British navy exists for defensive purposes alone, and side by side with them stern critics of naval expenditure; advocates of compulsory military training and of voluntaryism; those whose religious convictions do not allow them to take up arms under any circumstances. All are at one in their enthusiastic devotion to the ideal of lasting peace between the peoples with whom our movement is concerned.

The work of the Associated Councils was later described in the journal as ‘quite outside what may be described as official’. Yet the Council’s object was later described as to ‘back up and support our respective Governments in all they say and do’. A widely reported gathering in London in  was presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury who had just taken part in launching the latest Dreadnought. And when Britain effectively backed France in the Agadir Crisis—the FrancoGerman stand-off in  over the future of Morocco and the French Congo—the ACC took up a pro-Government position, reflecting rather than easing the international hostility.26 25 HP, Jan. , –; July , ; Friend,  June , ; British Friend, Aug. , ; see E. A. Payne, James Henry Rushbrooke – (London, ),  ff.; BF, May , . The circulation of the Herald of Peace was approximately ,. 26 Peacemaker, May , ; Oct. , –.



Pre-War Peace Movement  -  

Once the possibility of war against Germany became tangible and the extent of peace feeling made itself evident, the Anglo-German Friendship Society (formed, as noted, after the Tangier Crisis) began to attract many sponsors from business and financial circles—enough even to worry the Foreign Office.27 The Society’s main spokesman was Sir Frank Lascelles, a former British ambassador to Berlin whose personal relations with the Kaiser were ‘singularly cordial, even intimate’. The Society’s other main instigators were Lord Brassey, of Brassey’s Naval Annual fame, a stalwart of the Navy League as well as a supporter of the National Service League (founded in  to press for compulsory military service), and Lord Avebury.28 Among the two hundred prominent names on the general council and executive committee were four admirals, two field-marshals, and three generals, including General (later Field-Marshal) Haig. Like the ACC, the Friendship Society represented a form of appeasement rather than agitation for permanent peace. Following the Agadir Crisis, the Society held a meeting at the Mansion House, at which the main resolution was that ‘no responsible body in the United Kingdom wished to deny Germany her title to a share in the settlement of international questions, or to view with unjustifiable hostility the colonial ambitions pertaining to a great power.’ The AGFS, like the ACC, generally took a pro-Government line: Sir Thomas Vezey Strong, the Mayor of London, argued, for example, that the Agadir Crisis was ‘due to a regrettable misapprehension on the part of the German public’. He denied that it was the intention of the meeting to ‘criticize the action of the Government in the conduct of foreign affairs’.29 The NPC was eager to combine with the ACC and AGFS despite their defencist inclinations. It proposed an Anglo-German Understanding Conference to take place in the summer of  and set up a special committee, chaired by Lascelles, the members of which included A. G. C. Harvey, J. A. Baker, Hypatia Bonner, W. H. Dickinson, F. W. Fox, Maddison, Moscheles, T. P. Newman, and Perris. The conference had to be postponed several times due to lack of German support. It was eventually held from  October to  November . Amid much talk of the closeness of the two nations, Sir Harry Johnston, speaking on the question of ‘Colonial Development and the Removal of Conflicting Interests’ 27 28 29

Zara Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London, ), . DNB – (Lascelles entry by ‘V. C.’; Brassey entry by ‘V. W. B.’); Arb., June , . Report of a Meeting held at the Mansion House on November nd  (London, ).

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emphasized Germany’s urgent need for ‘wide colonial areas capable of supplying plenty of raw material’, though Lord Brassey asked the Germans to accept with equanimity their late start in the race for colonies. Both the Government and Opposition gave their imprimatur to the conference (the dinner, hosted by Harvey at the House of Commons, was attended by Lloyd George, Bonar Law, and Lord Robert Cecil; the delegates were invited to the Palace). Not surprisingly, Perris, despite his own involvement, was disturbed that the Friendship Society seemed to offer nothing more than ‘banquets and amiable speeches’ when a ‘radical transformation’ of the processes of foreign policy was required. Even in , he had noted that ‘under the smiling surface, behind the banquets at which toasts are drunk to Anglo-German friendship, the old savagery lies unappeased.’30   The most striking example of the expansion of the peace movement in the years before the war was the Norman Angell movement. By  it could boast more than fifty clubs and study circles in British cities and debating unions in at least ten universities.31 Angellism was, according to one historian, ‘the most talked about notion relating to international affairs in Britain, if not in the world, in the years just before the First World War’.32 G. G. Coulton, a critic of Angell, blamed him for the ‘recent enormous diffusion of pacificist doctrines’.33 Angell’s ‘New Pacifist’ message could be reduced to the simple formula of the economic irrationality of conquest. Its emphasis on self-interest rather than morality meant it could be presented as a viable, hard-headed argument against war. As a result, his ideas were attractive to defencists keen to resolve the international crisis and to preserve the status quo, as well as to pacific-ists eager for a fresh peace initiative.34 From the start, 30 Anglo-German Understanding Conference, Report of the Proceedings of the AngloGerman Understanding Conference (London, ); Chickering, Imperial Germany, ; BF, Nov. , ; Concord, Nov. , ; G. H. Perris, Our Foreign Policy and Sir Edward Grey’s Failure (London, ), –; Labour Leader,  Mar. , . 31 H. S. Weinroth, ‘Norman Angell and The Great Illusion: An Episode in Pre- Pacifism’, Historical Journal,  (), . See also P. D. Hines, ‘Norman Angell: Peace Movement –’, Ph.D. thesis (Ball State University, Ind. ). 32 Robbins, ‘Public Opinion, Press and Pressure Groups’, . 33 G. G. Coulton, ‘Pacificism, Truth and Common Sense’, Nineteenth Century and After,  (), . 34 Niall Ferguson claims to have discovered Angell’s appeal for ‘realists’; he also argues, perplexingly, that Angell’s book was not genuinely meant as a peace tract: The Pity of War (London, ), .

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Pre-War Peace Movement

Angell aimed to attract a new constituency of support. He insisted that ‘the banker, the merchant, and, in general, the commercial classes are doing the real work of peace, though they will not wear the laurels,’ and canvassed for the support of commercial groups, such as bankers’ institutes.35 The strategy paid off: he received financial backing from the Conservative industrialist Sir Richard Garton. Together with £, from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (set up in ), this funding far exceeded that available to existing peace organizations. Angell received the support of Lord Esher; his book was studied by Edward Grey. Such official interest was feasible because Garton, in providing the money for his Foundation based on Angell’s ideas, insisted that the body should ‘not at present have anything to do with the relaxation of armaments’. Angell was no absolutist and made clear his ‘lifelong and passionate belief that a nation attacked should defend itself to the last penny and the last man’. Moreover, Angell successfully distanced himself from the existing peace movement. His monthly journal, War and Peace, was eager to ridicule ‘old pacifism’. ‘There is something wrong, and all pacifists know it,’ it said of the Hague UPC in , ‘with a great world congress which the newspapers boycott and ridicule, which the statesmen ignore, and the delegates find dull.’ The message of The Great Illusion was put forward, according to War and Peace, as ‘a sort of anti-pacifist pacifism’. Anything ‘really new’ on the subject, Angell argued, was best coming from a different source than the existing peace societies which were merely ‘family parties’—groups of people who told each other what they already knew. One pro-Angell commentator on the ‘Anglo-German Problem’ denounced ‘misguided pacifists’ who opposed the armaments race, and celebrated The Great Illusion as doing more for the peace cause ‘than all the resolutions of a dozen peace conferences’.36 Angell’s talent for publicity gave a tremendous boost to the Edwardian peace movement, but his assertion of the economic interdependence of nations was far from original. It was reconstituted Cobdenism, brought up to date with a focus on the developing financial links between nations. For Angell, as for Cobden and Herbert Spencer, the transition to highly commercial societies, accompanied by integrated markets, portended a War and Peace, Oct. , . Weinroth, ‘Norman Angell and The Great Illusion’, ; Norman Angell, Peace Theories and the Balkan War (London, ), ; War and Peace, Oct. , ; Dec. , ; Sept. , ; Oct. , ; Library of Congress, Stead MSS, Angell to Stead,  Nov. ; Charles Sarolea, The Anglo-German Problem (London, ), , . 35 36

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constant diminution in the number of major international disputes. And, like Cobden in free-trade mode, Angell did not look to governments to achieve peace. Despite the official interest in his ideas, Angell advocated ‘Man versus the Statesman’, and he scorned the belief of some peace advocates that ‘a round dozen men in the world . . . could inaugurate universal peace tomorrow’. He was also a Cobdenite non-interventionist. War and Peace argued that Britain should maintain the splendid isolation ‘for which her insular position marked her out’ and recommended ‘leaving to others the guardianship of their liberties’. It opposed ‘knight errantry’, preferring a policy of friendly insularity to one which involved Britain becoming ‘the “Meddlesome Meg” of world politics’. Angell’s pacific-ism was more purely liberal and less radical than Cobden’s, however. He refrained from targeting aristocrats, armament makers, and newspaper editors, and played down the need for domestic political reform—another guarantee of his acceptability in high places. Instead he concentrated on spreading the idea of the mutuality of financial interest. Indeed, he was so confident in the power of this revelation that he was interpreted as believing that war among the western European powers had already become impossible—an argument J. A. Hobson later called ‘The Pacifist Illusion’.37 Although Angell’s liberal pacific-ism was highly influential within the peace movement, it was challenged in the peace journals in two ways. First, some peace activists regarded finance as a shallow and ineffective basis on which to approach the peace question, and argued that only deep moral revulsion would bring about the abolition of war. In the heat of a dispute, they said, cold calculations of self-interest would not always prevail. (Moreover, if it could be proved that conquest did in fact pay, there would be little left of Angell’s peace propaganda.) This moral challenge—conducted by Evans Darby, some Quaker peace activists, and E. G. Smith of the RPS—had a special piquancy because of Angell’s ridicule of ‘old pacifism’. Darby, already uneasy about the ‘multiplication of societies’ within the peace movement, objected to the ‘materialism’ of Angell’s peace ideas: they reinforced the long-term process of secularization within the peace movement, which he criticized in a pamphlet, The Claims of the New Pacifism. Another Peace Society activist complained that religious arguments for peace were now heard all too rarely: ‘The earlier peace conferences, of sixty or seventy years ago, before “materialism” became predominant amongst “peacemakers”, were of a different, 37 War and Peace, Dec. , ; Oct. , ; Dec. , ; J. A. Hobson, Democracy after the War (London, ), .

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Pre-War Peace Movement

and, I venture to say, of a healthier complexion.’38 The criticism of E. G. Smith was the most virulent. Angell’s appeal to the business classes symbolized, he thought, an unwholesome change which had taken over the peace movement: ‘There is a great danger that pacifists in their desire to be thought well of by emperors, bankers and journalists—especially journalists—will gradually forget the faith and moral enthusiasm which have made the peace movement a live thing.’ He argued that ‘pacifism’ was being turned into a business proposition, as symbolized not only by Angell but by the Carnegie Endowment and the Nobel Peace Prize (the first of which was awarded in ): The peace movement needs to go back to its simple enthusiasm. It should cultivate the derision of journalists and the contempt of bankers . . . For it must be remembered that the journalist who now speaks with patronizing approval of the New Pacifism and the politician who says ‘God bless my soul, war does not pay!’ will not stand as allies in the time of jingo fever. The Angellic vaccination will not save them.

Angell replied by writing an article in Concord entitled ‘Are We Sordid?’ As he saw it, Smith’s ideal might suffice for a ‘little band of saints nursing their creed in monastic seclusion’, but it could never generate a revolution in popular thought. What was needed, Angell declared, was ‘the least common denominator’ that would bind together all who willingly accepted a rational attitude towards international relations.39 The second challenge to Angell’s peace programme came from the radical tradition. ‘True as it may be that war is contrary to the economical interest of a nation as a whole,’ J. A. Farrer pointed out in his review of The Great Illusion in Concord, ‘it remains the distinct interest of certain large and influential classes which, as against the true interests of the nation, wield an immense and preponderating power.’40 This critique formed a major part of H. N. Brailsford’s The War of Steel and Gold () and other pre-war pacific-ist works. The latest manifestation of it was the campaign against the ‘Armaments Trust’ or ‘War Trust’—an international fraternity of interests devoted to maintaining high levels of armaments—initiated by Karl Leibknecht’s revelations to the German Reichstag in  of contacts between Krupp’s, the German War Office, and newspaper journalists in France. Equivalent British research was carried out by the Quaker socialist Walton Newbold, who discussed the question to great effect at the Leeds National Peace Congress in , and 38 40

39 HP, Oct. , . Concord, Oct. , –; Weinroth, ‘Norman Angell’, . Concord, Dec. , –.

‒



by G. H. Perris, whose findings caused ‘quite a sensation’ at the Hague UPC, and appeared in his book, The War Traders.41 ‘Mr Norman Angell has shown that wars do not pay nations’, J. A. Hobson commented; ‘Mr Perris shows that war panics and preparations do pay powerful groups of businessmen.’ Echoing the peace movement’s critique of the South African War, Perris described the activities of nefarious cosmopolitan capitalists, working for their own profit: ‘Messrs Armstrong will build warships for any country in the world’, he told the Hague UPC; this was ‘truly the larger patriotism (laughter)’. Gradually, as Arbitrator pointed out, even Angell seemed increasingly to recognize that there were ‘vast operative forces’ influencing public opinion which were not catered for in his theory.42 The older peace societies in time embraced Angell, who in turn adopted a more sympathetic stance towards ‘old pacifism’. A rehearsal of Angellism became de rigueur at any peace meeting: ‘the ideas of this book’, the Peace Society reflected, ‘have become part of the texture of current thought.’ Edward Grubb recognized that The Great Illusion was convincing ‘many who think that peace advocates are unpractical visionaries’. J. W. Graham, the Quaker peace activist, joined the Manchester Norman Angell League. At the Conference in  which was to lead to the formation of a new Quaker peace body, the Friends’ Northern Counties Peace Board, he said: We now find that peace is being advocated from economic motives . . . What is to be the attitude of Friends to this new form of peace propaganda? Shall we decline to have anything to do with it, deeming it outside the scope of a religious society? If we are really desirous of securing peace, we shall recognize how strong are all these objections to war.

In  he wrote to his son of an address he had given at Bootham which argued for a ‘widening of the scope of our peace argument’, and also mentioned that Angell’s secretary was coming to see him the following day. He was, he said, ‘pretty well up to my eyes in this kind of thing’.43 41 Concord, Aug.–Sept. , ; Nov. , ; July , . Newbold received financial help for his research from the NPC; see MB,  Jan. ; he published The War Trust Exposed in . 42 Concord, July , . See also Clive Trebilcock, ‘Radicalism and the Armaments Trust’, in A. J. A. Morris (ed.), Edwardian Radicalism – (London, ); Congrès universel de la paix, Bulletin officiel (), ; War and Peace, Feb. , ; Arb., Nov. , . 43 HP, Jan. , ; BF, Feb. , ; J. W. Graham MSS, Box , Graham to Richard Graham,  Feb. .



Pre-War Peace Movement   

It was not until – that Evans Darby, faced with palpable signs of his organization’s decline, decided on a ‘forward movement’ to boost public awareness of, and financial support for, the Peace Society. Discussing its shortage of funds, he emphasized that ‘the very multiplicity of new organizations accentuates the difficulty, as does the weakening of enthusiasm through the more general conventional acceptance of the principles.’ The Society was still prosperous by the traditional standards of peace organizations, but the annual figure of subscriptions and donations did not rise above £, during the Edwardian period (the three most important single sources of funding were the Fry, Cadbury, and Peckover families) and the special appeals which had amassed £, in the early s now raised £,. Darby described the Society as having ‘to depend very much indeed on a few constant Friends’. By the summer of , it owed £, to its printers, and the publication of the Herald of Peace was disrupted.44 One initiative of Darby’s ‘forward movement’ was an attempt to counteract the impression among some supporters that the Society was ‘purely’ a ‘London operation’. Various campaigns were planned so that it could ‘get into political, religious and social circles’ and attract the influential support of provincial MPs. A large, non-executive council was organized to meet regularly in different towns. Greater efforts were made to secure ‘eminent men’ as vice-presidents: in ,  MPs were invited. In a significant development, prominent peace activists such as G. P. Gooch and John Macdonell—who, if asked, would have made clear their rejection of non-resistance—were invited to sit on the executive committee. This indicates a conscious, if again unacknowledged, relaxation of the Society’s rules regarding its executive membership. (At the same time, Darby criticized the majority of peace activists for their failure to appreciate that non-resistance was the only consistent peace approach.) The annual meetings became much grander affairs, held at the Guildhall, often with the Lord Mayor presiding; Darby attempted to secure Asquith, Winston Churchill, and even Bonar Law and Balfour as speakers.45 But more than ever the Society avoided taking up a controversial position on specific armaments and foreign policies. Unlike the Society 44 HP, Jan. , ; May–June , . Between  and , the Cadbury family donated £,; the Fry family (principally J. S. Fry) £,; and the Peckover family £, (these amounts are calculated from amounts of £ and over). 45 HP, June , ; PS MSS, MB,  Oct. ;  Sept. ,  Oct. ;  June ;  Apr. ;  Feb. ;  Feb. ; HP, July , –.

‒



of Friends—which as a significant religious body was resourceful enough to revive its pacifist witness from within, while also playing a key role in a varied and often politically challenging peace campaign—the Peace Society was, by , neither a vital expression of pacifism nor an influential body within the peace movement.     Cremer’s association had gradually lost its nationwide network of artisan contacts and was, in the Edwardian period, a small, London-based operation. Despite its continued links with Lib–Lab MPs and with the InterParliamentary Union, the League might have struggled to survive had it not been for the financial fillip of Cremer winning the Nobel Peace Prize in  for his work in setting up the IPU. The bequest was worth £,. In a gesture which was greeted with universal admiration, Cremer gave £, of the award to his often-impoverished peace association—he declared that ‘not a penny’ would be spent on his ‘personal comforts or enjoyment’, finally squashing the old rumours that he was a professional agitator. The bequest was to be used to place the IAL at last in ‘a position of independence’: the League would become ‘permanently established as a great organization’. Its income from subscriptions and donations—an average £ per year until —was soon overtaken by interest from the Cremer fund. Furthermore, Carnegie made arrangements for a £ annual subscription which remained ‘a substantial part’ of the IAL’s income.46 (He refused, however, to finance a grand ‘Temple of Peace’ to house the revitalized League.) By  the annual income of the League was over £,; in  it was £,, still a tiny amount compared to the financial resources of other pressure groups, but denoting affluence by the standards of most pre-war peace societies. A sumptuous dinner was held in Cremer’s honour after he received the Prize. The guests included an Anglican bishop and two Conservative MPs; a toast was raised ‘to the King as pacificator’. Cremer also accepted a knighthood in . The Nobel award therefore gave him the sort of recognition he was sure he deserved (indeed, he had loudly advertised himself as a recipient of the Prize). His genuine dedication to the peace cause was widely acknowledged—F. W. Soutter said of him that he was ‘a very fine character with simple tastes, a glutton for work, and a terror to 46 Times,  May , ; IAL MSS, Maddison to N. M. Butler (representative of the Carnegie Endowment),  Dec.  (copy) and attached note written by Maddison, dated .



Pre-War Peace Movement

sluggards’—but this respect was still combined with exasperation at his irascibility and over-sensitivity. He was, in Maddison’s description, ‘dogmatical, fanatical if you will’, not only on the peace question, but also in relation to other issues, including votes for women (Mrs Philip Snowden, a suffrage campaigner, refused to speak alongside him at peace meetings).47 Hodgson Pratt wrote to Passy when Cremer’s receipt of the Nobel Prize was expected: It is indeed deplorable when men who are willing and able to promote great reforms in human society spoil their work by immoderate egotism! This sad tendency has been too often seen in Cremer; and it has greatly weakened his usefulness; and men shrink from close relations with him. With growing age and infirmity this fault increases, and he is always on the look-out for causes of offence! For many years I have managed—through great care—not to tread on his toes. He has great ability and is thoroughly in earnest, with other good qualities; but, no doubt, he has not received the honour he deserves. Men are afraid of quarrelling with him. This he attributes to class pride because he is a workman, or to jealousy on the part of other workmen . . . I am very sorry for him.48

Cremer had few friends and, his second wife having died, he lived on his own. On the landing leading to his room—also his office—he fixed a small iron gate he always kept locked; a peephole enabled him to decide whether or not he was to receive his visitor. ‘The most pugnacious of all pacificists’ died, in , a ‘pathetically lonely man’.49 He stipulated that in order for the League to continue receiving his Nobel money, two-thirds of the council had always to be working men. This meant in practice that the League remained Lib–Lab, a political tendency in decline at Westminster. Lib–Lab MPs were outnumbered by Labour MPs after the  General Election, and in  they were reduced to a rump when the Miners’ Federation joined the Labour Party. Cremer’s successor as secretary, Maddison, was himself staunchly Lib–Lab; he lost his seat in January  and never managed to return to the Commons. The Arbitrator denied that the IAL was ‘sectional’—i.e. merely Lib–Lab—and referred to Labour members such as Will Crooks, George Barnes, and C. W. Bowerman with whom the League was linked. The examples are telling, however: all three held political views closer to traditional radicalism than socialism. 47 F. W. Soutter, Fights for Freedom (London, ), ; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer: His Life and Work (London, ), , . 48 Hague Peace Palace Library, Frédéric Passy MSS, Pratt to Passy,  Apr. ; see also 49 Pratt to Passy,  Nov. . Arb., Aug. , –; Evans, Sir Randal Cremer, .

‒



While Edward Grey was viewed with suspicion by most Radicals because of his anti-German inclinations and rumours of secret obligations made to France, the IAL under Maddison championed him as a devoted friend of peace. In the years before the First World War, the League financed annual banquets which provided Grey and Asquith with a platform to reassure the Radical wing of the party that the Government believed in non-intervention and peace. (After a feast at the Holborn Restaurant, Evans affirmed revealingly: ‘Our friends . . . will not suppose for a moment that the League has degenerated into a mere dining club.’50) Maddison lacked Cremer’s radical streak and his willingness to oppose Liberal administrations. So at the time when the Nobel bequest enabled the IAL to raise its profile among progressives, the League’s views represented not so much Radical troublemaking as a peace-movement version of the message from Downing Street.       The IAPA, in contrast to the IAL, moved to the left during the Edwardian period and strengthened its links with socialism. Perris, who moved from the Tribune to the Daily News (which he left in ), began to describe himself as a ‘socialist’, and to write for the Labour Leader. This no doubt reflected the fact that the ILP was more united than the Liberal Party on those international and armaments issues which were always Perris’s main concern. He told Concord’s readers again and again that international socialism was the brightest hope of the peace movement. One disconcerted correspondent argued that such an emphasis on the Second International implied that there was no need for peace associations or ‘for a peace party as such. The corollary of the argument is that we should join the state socialists.’51 Concord praised the ILP for devoting an increasing amount of its time to peace campaigns. When Hardie organized the ‘autumn campaign’ in —a nationwide agitation for arms reduction which culminated in an impressive international meeting at the Albert Hall—the IAPA journal referred ‘with a glow of pleasurable excitement’ to ‘a most remarkable demonstration of the strength of the peace party’. No doubt as a result of the IAPA’s sympathetic viewpoint, Hardie, who was one of the most active peace campaigners of the pre-war period, attended several IAPA meetings. The Association also supported the ILP when, after the Agadir 50

Arb., Apr. , .

51

Concord, June , .

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Pre-War Peace Movement

Crisis, Hardie focused on a workers’ strike against war.52 Although this was largely a tactic of threat, the idea of a strike was unacceptable to most members of the peace societies. (It was, in fact, a divisive policy even within the ILP.) According to Evans Darby, strikes represented force and were therefore the essence of the war system. The FPC, too, concluded that a strike against war was not an ‘admirable’ measure for the maintenance of peace, and Concord noted that most Friends rejected the idea. The IAL was also opposed: Lib–Labism had always preferred arbitration to any sort of strike. When the trade unions failed in  to respond enthusiastically to a strike circular distributed by the British Section of the International, Maddison considered it a vindication of his views as to the proper role of unions. Maddison later recalled that Perris was ‘on what might be called the left wing of the peace movement, and at that time we were not always able to go with him’.53 When Hardie introduced a strike resolution to the National Peace Congress in , Perris seconded it, arguing that ‘it was absurd to ask the workers to go on waiting patiently till everybody else was pleased with the fruits of arbitration.’ (The Quaker J. W. Graham also supported the principle of a strike against war: ‘If there was a sufficiently powerful and united International TUC,’ he said, it ‘could stop war as fast as a Rothschild could make one’.)54 The strike proposal was eventually deferred to the  National Peace Congress when Perris again gave it his support: ‘he did not wish to accentuate the question of class, but there was no getting away from the fact that this Congress was mainly composed of very comfortable people . . . It is not for us to check any effort of labour . . . to grapple with this great problem.’ The proposal provoked an ‘animated discussion’ but was eventually defeated by eighty-nine to fortyseven votes.55 The IAPA, unlike the IAL, was outspoken in its criticism of Grey, in particular his Russian policy and his association with ‘secret diplomacy’. It also became part of a network of groups concerned with supporting the principle of national self-determination: a joint meeting held in  to 52 Concord, June , –; Nov. , ; June , ; D. J. Newton, British Labour, European Socialism and the Struggle for Peace – (Oxford, ), ch. . 53 HP, July , ; Apr. , ; FPC MSS, MB,  May ; Concord, June , ; Labour Leader,  June , ; Arb., May , ; Feb. , . 54 Concord, Feb. , ; BF, Mar. , ; Apr. , . 55 Friend,  May , . See also the later comments of the Quaker socialist journal Ploughshare denouncing the bourgeois security and dogmatism of the ‘old peace movement’, cited in K. G. Robbins, The Abolition of War: The ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain – (Cardiff, ), .

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

discuss subject races involved—as well as the IAPA—the SFRF, the London Indian Society, the Gaelic League, the Congo Reform Committee, the Friends of Armenia, and the Aborigines Protection Society. Green summed up the principles of the IAPA: ‘) that peace must be based on justice and liberty; ) national control of foreign relations; ) respect for the principle of national independence.’ The Association was supported by a range of prominent progressives. Those involved in the Hodgson Pratt Memorial lectures, for example, included Ramsay MacDonald, J. A. Hobson, Brailsford, Ponsonby, Gooch, Loreburn, Hirst, and J. M. Robertson. A gathering to celebrate Green’s twenty-fifth year as secretary attracted (as well as several of those mentioned) the Positivist S. H. Swinny, the Pro-Boer Fred Mackarness, and the playwright and campaigner for female suffrage, Israel Zangwill.56 Despite these contacts and the high reputation of Perris and Green, the resources of the IAPA continued to be very limited: its annual income from  to  was only £–£. The two largest single contributions in the period were from Quakers: a legacy from Mrs S. J. Capper of £ in  and £ from Joseph Rowntree towards the publication of Concord. Those who made donations over £ also included established Quaker benefactors such as Arthur Albright, J. P. Thomasson, and Priscilla Peckover. The IAPA recognized the humble scale of its operations, but took comfort from what it saw as the increasing influence of internationalism.       The peace movement continued to argue that a ‘small navy’ could easily guarantee Britain’s security. When in  it became clear that Germany was quickly building ships of the Dreadnought class, however, it became more difficult to deny that some British response was required—a section of the movement accepted the need for more money to be spent on the navy. Gordon Harvey, president of the National Peace Council, was selected by the Armaments Committee of Radical MPs to move an amendment against the proposed estimates, but declined at the last moment: ‘I feel that the ministers have convinced the House and the country’, he said, ‘that some development of naval strength is necessary.’ Thomas Burt, IAL president, also adopted the Government’s position and John Ward, a member of the IAL council, thought it ‘perfectly justified’ 56

Concord, Aug. , ; Peace Year Book (), ; Concord, Dec. , .



Pre-War Peace Movement

to assume that the German naval build-up was a challenge to Britain. Harry Nuttal, a Manchester businessman and NPC member, argued at a Liberal Club meeting that ‘despite the ruinous armaments race, we must see to it at the same time that we have sufficient ships to protect our country.’57 Progressives had always accepted the need for a measure of British maritime supremacy; Harvey, Burt and the others now assumed that ‘liberal England’ needed protecting. As A. J. A. Morris has put it, such Radicals ‘scampered’ back ‘to the Liberal fold’—their action was indeed a blow to the peace movement.58 It is worth noting, however, that, although these peace advocates accepted the need for a stronger navy, this did not necessarily mean that they had abandoned their commitment to pacific-ism. They continued to argue for British freedom from alliances and to condemn those who believed that an armed truce was the best guarantee of a lasting peace. For other peace activists, opposition remained unproblematic. Britain was still dominant on the seas, they argued, and Germany did not even now represent a serious threat—increased estimates would only cause a further deterioration in Anglo-German relations. They held that those activists who were taking a different line had been swayed by invasion scaremongering. Pacific-ists who continued to oppose higher estimates were no less insistent about the need for an adequate navy—the Labour Leader declared, for example, that ‘no sane politician would dream of opposing expenditure necessary for national defence’—but considered the  scare merely a device to distract workers’ attention from welfare legislation. Perris asserted that ‘this kind of jingoism that prefers poverty, war, any kind of anarchy to social reform . . . must be choked at its throat.’ ‘Estimates of Provocation’ were wanted only by ‘English Junkers’. It was therefore particularly galling to see Labour MPs with dockyard and arsenal constituencies voting for increased estimates.59 All peace activists continued to advocate abolition of the right of capture as a means to defuse the Anglo-German naval rivalry. In , the IAL held a series of conferences devoted to the subject; J. M. Robertson and Sir John Simon, the Solicitor-General, gave the keynote speeches. Abolition, they said, would immediately remove the threat of a blockade of Britain. And the signing of the Declaration of London regarding rules 57 Newton, British Labour, ; Howard Weinroth, ‘Left-Wing Opposition to Naval Armaments in Britain before ’, Journal of Contemporary History,  (), . 58 Morris, Radicalism against War, . 59 Paul Ward, Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism and the British Left – (Woodbridge, ), , ; Labour Leader,  Mar. , ; Concord, Jan. , ; June , .

‒



of naval warfare (a spin-off agreement from the  Hague Conference) seemed to suggest that all nations would follow an international procedure such as abolition.60 In  the IAL organized another series of right-of-capture meetings. The main speaker this time was Hirst, who wrote a pamphlet for the League entitled ‘The Treatment of Commerce in Naval Warfare’. Both Hirst, in his book The Six Panics () and Brailsford in The War of Steel and Gold, argued that immunity was the key to all future armaments reductions. Hardie, too, believed that ‘there is no country in the world which has more to gain from this reform than Great Britain.’61 - Mr Brown, the bumbling dealer in Berlin wools whose property is the centrepiece of An Englishman’s Home, a play staged in the West End in , staunchly opposes attempts ‘to convert the people of England to militarism’—i.e. conscription—‘a condition of slavery which our country up to now has escaped, and I trust always will’. ‘As to defending the country,’ he tells the assembled company, ‘the country is in no danger of attack. The British fleet . . . is strong enough to render invasion impossible.’ Brown’s confidence is misplaced. His property is eventually overrun by an invading German army and he dies conducting an amateur defence of his Englishman’s home.62 Guy du Maurier’s play, like William Le Queux’s bestselling novel The Invasion of  (first serialized in ), was intended as a warning to those Edwardians who believed that Britain could never lose its immunity from invasion. The warning was dismissed by peace activists as scaremongering and their view was to some extent backed up at the highest levels—even the Committee of Imperial Defence thought an invasion of Britain highly unlikely. The peace movement therefore opposed the argument that Britain’s safety could only properly be secured by it becoming an ‘armed nation’. A navy-based defence, peace activists (and many defencists) argued, had always been a means to preserve ‘liberal England’, characterized by a small, voluntary army and an absence of militarism from the body politic. 60 Arb., Oct. , . For the Committee for Furthering the Ratification of the Declaration of London, which involved prominent members of the peace movement, including Courtney, Noel Buxton, and J. M. Robertson, see Bernard Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy: Ideology, Interests and Sea Power during the Pax Britannica (), . 61 Arb., Apr. , ; Brailsford, War of Steel and Gold, ; War and Peace, May , ; see also Lord Avebury, ‘The Right of Capture’, Nineteenth Century and After,  (). 62 A Patriot [Guy du Maurier], An Englishman’s Home (London, ), –.

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Pre-War Peace Movement

The peace movement viewed with alarm the widespread enthusiasm in Edwardian Britain for rifle ranges and military-style youth groups, such as the Boys Brigades and Scouts—part of a British tradition of ‘Christian militarism’ which was revived in the pre-war period, and which has been invoked in explanations of the ‘rush to volunteer’ in .63 The peace associations had always refused to believe that anything militaristic was genuinely popular. Hardie, at the annual meeting of the IAPA in , spoke of Boys Brigades, Church Brigades, and military processions: ‘All these things are going on not by accident. They are part of a carefully thought-out scheme. They are all being promoted by vested interests.’ The need to influence the young was a constant preoccupation of the peace societies. They opposed shooting in schools and ridiculed the Boy Scouts—‘foolish little boys who put on comic clothes and trot about with poles’. H. S. Perris’s book, The Cult of the Rifle and the Cult of Peace (), was one attempt to set out the case against school militarism. A Teachers’ Conference was held at the London UPC in , addressed by J. A. Hobson among others; and the NPC later sponsored a School Peace League, on whose committee sat John Clifford, J. W. Graham, and the Congregationalist minister Silvester Horne. G. H. Perris spoke to the Young People’s Meeting at the  Congress, and told his audience that, no matter what it said in boys’ magazines, modern war was not heroic: ‘The idea is of two great impersonal machines grinding at each other. Men firing at each other at distances of ten miles, never seeing each other. They are absolutely impersonal; and I should say there is no possibility of heroism about it.’ Young people should realize the horror of warfare, he said, so that if a war started, they would refuse to submit to conscription, ‘even to the point of going to prison’.64 The peace movement faced an uphill task: war was still commonly seen as an adventure, a test of courage and, perhaps most important, something which would not affect the lives of most Britons. The educational issue was also an important channel for women’s peace activism, in the form of the influential ‘maternalist’ argument that 63 Olive Anderson, ‘The Growth of Christian Militarism in Mid-Victorian Britain’, English Historical Review,  (); Anne Summers, ‘Edwardian Militarism’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism,  vols. (London, ), i; John Gooch, ‘Victorian and Edwardian Attitudes to War’, in Brian Bond and Ian Roy (eds.), War and Society (London, ); N. P. Quinney, ‘Edwardian Militarism and Working-Class Youth’, D.Phil. thesis (Univ. of Oxford, ). 64 Concord, June , ; Arb., Aug. , ; Jan. , ; HP, July , ; Concord, July , ; Oct. , –; NPC MSS, MB,  May ;  Feb. ;  Mar. ; Report of the  Peace Congress, .

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

women, because they were imbued with a peaceful, non-aggressive and life-giving outlook, had a vital role in turning the young against war. (The ‘equal rights’ argument, which held that peace would only be guaranteed by the enfranchisement of women and a greater role for women in politics, remained more controversial.65) At the first National Peace Congress, Emmeline Pankhurst urged that the peace movement should ‘get at the teachers’. Priscilla Peckover addressed ‘sisters all and everywhere’, asking them to tell their children about the cruelty and sinfulness of war.66 Youth militarism was interpreted by the peace associations as preparation for the introduction of compulsory military service, calls for which had become more intense since the South African War. When the Norfolk Commission on Militia and Volunteers recommended in May  the raising of a home defence army on the basis of compulsion, the Arbitrator warned the Government of the likely consequences: ‘The passive resistance of Nonconformists over the Education Act would be mere child’s play.’ Military service was taken up in  by Lord Roberts, a hero of the South African War, who became president of the National Service League. By  the NSL claimed a hundred thousand members, and was backed by numerous Conservative MPs and peers. Arbitrator pointed out that it paid out more in salaries than the total income of all the peace societies. When Roberts began a drive to increase the NSL’s working-class membership, the Friend noted: ‘a policy of conscription is ceasing to be an abstract or academic proposition, and is emerging as a serious part of our political life.’ Responding to the NSL’s activity in , the peace associations met together to discuss a counter-agitation. Open-air meetings against conscription were held as part of the National Peace Congress in Leeds. The IAPA pronounced itself always ready to send speakers to oppose the propaganda of the League. Quakers were also active, the FPC appointing a provisional committee to organize meetings, and donating , cards to the ILP’s ‘No Conscription!’ campaign. Edward Grubb published The True Way of Life, a reply to John St Loe Strachey’s national-service book, The New Way of Life. ‘The NSL is an extremely vulnerable institution,’ J. W. Graham wrote to his son, ‘I have smitten it easily many a time.’67 65 See Lloyd George’s address in Proceedings of the National Liberal Federation (London, ) ; Concord, Mar. , –. 66 P. H. Peckover, An Earnest Appeal to All Women Everywhere, in WLPA MSS. For the arguments of Ellen Robinson and Hypatia Bonner, see, e.g., Concord, July–Aug. , ; Mar. , . 67 Arb., Feb. , ; Apr. , ; Friend,  Mar. , ; Concord, June , –; Nov. , ; FPC MSS, MB,  June;  Nov. ; J. W. Graham MSS, Box , Graham to Richard Graham,  Feb. .



Pre-War Peace Movement

A central platform of the NSL was that military service would create a democratic citizen militia, of the sort advocated by Continental socialists as preferable to a standing army. Although a militia was endorsed by the SDF, the bulk of the British labour movement and almost all other progressives rejected it (H. W. Nevinson was an exception). Cremer’s association had subscribed to the idea of a citizen army in the early s, but had long since been convinced of the need for British exceptionalism: We are an island with no land frontiers to defend and our geographical position alters the whole character of national defence. Even if it is not admitted that universal service is a necessity where invasion is only a question of crossing an artificial boundary, it is surely good sense for us to take full advantage of our freedom from such nearness to our neighbours.

Military service in Britain, the peace movement claimed, would never be necessary for defence, so could only mean an intention to intervene in a Continental war. As early as , the Arbitrator asserted: ‘All these conscript soldiers are for the defence, not of England, or Scotland, or even Ireland, but of France.’ The Peace Society campaigned on similar grounds: ‘no advocacy of universal military service for the simple defence of these islands is possible; the cloven hoof of an expeditionary force shows itself.’68 Pacifists and pacific-ists in Britain could unite in their opposition to the NSL (and, at UPCs, in support of Gustave Hervé and other Continental opponents of military service).69 Threats to voluntarism had, however, a special significance for pacifists. Evans Darby described ‘the conscription question’ as ‘for us . . . the most prominent of all questions in the peace movement’. The FPC were particularly concerned when young ‘birthright’ Quakers decided to join the voluntary Territorial Army, established in  as part of a series of reforms introduced by R. B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War. The question was discussed at the  Yearly Meeting and it was resolved that the FPC should prepare a document. ‘Our Testimony for Peace’ was designed to ‘bring loving and sympathetic counsel to Friends who may not altogether see with their fellow members on the question of peace’. During  and  a lively correspondence was carried on in the Friend about the Territorials, the large majority of those involved arguing that TA membership was inconsistent with the Quaker peace witness. Edward Grubb expressed ‘intense 68 Arb., Feb. , –; Jan. , ; HP, Jan. , . For similar sentiments in the Liberal and Radical press, see G. L. Bernstein, Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England (Winchester, Mass., ), . 69 Concord, Sept.–Oct. , ; Friend,  Sept. , ; Newton, British Labour, .

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

regret’ at the action of those who had joined, and opposed the belief of some Friends that ‘the peace testimony could be dropped like broadbrimmed hats and coal-scuttle bonnets, leaving the fabric of the Quaker faith unharmed’—the peace testimony was a ‘vital organ’ to Quakerism, without which it could not stay alive. Mary Cooke reminded Quakers of their national responsibility: ‘Friends, though a small body, are a vital part of the life of England; and if we fail to keep an advanced position of this question, no other church is yet ready to step into our place and lead.’70 The introduction of compulsory military service in the British colonies of Natal and, more importantly, Australia and New Zealand, was a special factor in the reinvigoration of the Quaker peace witness before the war. In the light of the agitation of the NSL in Britain and talk of a ‘PanBritannic’ conscripted force, it was pointed out at London Yearly Meeting in  that there might soon be an opportunity of finding out who were ‘true Friends’. This entailed a recognition that ‘non-resistance is a logical deduction from most of the teaching of the New Testament.’ The  London Meeting for Sufferings formed an Australian Defence Acts Committee to monitor events. Military service in Australia also introduced an important test case of Quaker collaboration with pacificists: should Friends limit their agitation to gaining their own exemption from military service, or should they work for the abolition of military service, co-operating with groups who opposed it for reasons other than pacifist Christian conscience? The Defence Acts Committee advised that Australian Friends should join the wider campaign, but reminded W. H. F. Alexander and Alfred Brown—two British Quakers sent out by London Yearly Meeting to help Australian Friends in their campaign— that the basis of Friends’ approach was religious, not political.71 J. W. Graham advised his son that Friends were part of the peace movement and so should ‘refuse exemption for the sake of the chance of overthrowing the whole bad system’. Walton Newbold wrote to the Friend: All our civil liberties are at stake, and all that Puritanism and Quakerism have meant in the life of England . . . Do not let us, therefore, wait until it is too late to ward off conscription and then content ourselves with securing a conscience clause, if we can, but now throw all our influence into the scale and bend every energy in the fight for liberty.72 70 Concord, May , –; HP, Nov. , ; FPC MSS, MB,  Feb. ; BF, July , ; Friend,  Sept. , –. 71 Friend,  July , ; See W. N. Oats, ‘The Campaign against Conscription in Australia—–’, Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society,  (). 72 J. W. Graham MSS, Graham to Richard Graham,  Feb. .



Pre-War Peace Movement

Quaker peace activists who tackled the NSL were nonetheless increasingly conscious of the sectarian implications of pacifism: ‘if the evil day came in this country,’ Grubb said in Concord, ‘some of us would have to face imprisonment.’73       The pre-war peace movement continued to press not only for British freedom from military commitments on the Continent but, more broadly, for a new structure of European politics involving mutual cooperation instead of rival blocs maintaining a ‘balance of power’. In The War of Steel and Gold, Brailsford argued that the arms race was ‘no more than an expression and a consequence of the practice of the doctrine of a balance’. Perris similarly remarked that the peace movement had given much attention to ‘the symptoms’ of ‘our diplomatic disease’ but ‘very little to the causes’.74 The notion of a true ‘Concert of Europe’—not simply the rhetoric of co-operation masking great-power selfishness—was embraced by pacific-ists as an alternative to the hardening alliances. Such a Concert, it was argued, could facilitate disarmament and give voice to a chorus of disapproval against aggression. Many peace activists continued to endorse the Gladstonian tenet that Britain had a duty to promote justice and ‘public law’ on the Continent, particularly in respect to peoples struggling against oppression. Brailsford declared in  that, in relation to such questions, the ‘no-foreign-politics’ doctrine of the Manchester School was ‘a sterile and impracticable ideal’, involving a failure to recognize that ‘the sympathies of our common humanity went beyond the Channel.’ ‘When we think of peace,’ he argued in The War of Steel and Gold, ‘we must learn to think as Europeans.’ As they had done in the s and s, progressives looked to joint action on the part of a justice-minded European Concert to pressurize the Turkish Empire into liberating its subject peoples, and were frustrated by great-power rivalry which prevented such action. When, in , the Young Turk Party engineered an apparently bloodless revolution in Constantinople, it seemed to herald not only the arrival of Western political values in Turkey but also the liberation of Macedonia and Armenia. A leader of the Young Turks, Ahmed Riza Bey, was welcomed Friend,  Mar. , ; Concord, June , . Brailsford, War of Steel and Gold, ; Perris, Our Foreign Policy, ; see also War and Peace, Nov. , . 73 74

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

at the London UPC.75 There was now the possibility of home rule for the Christian provinces, organized within a Balkan Federation. Just when enthusiasm was in full flow, Austria annexed BosniaHerzegovina, a move Concord decried as ‘outrageous and indefensible’. Grey criticized the Austrian action and called for a European conference to discuss the Balkan crisis. He was much praised by the peace associations for doing so. Perris invoked Gladstone’s view that ‘England never can forswear her interest in the common transactions and the general interests of Europe’, and endorsed a conference as a foreshadowing of an international parliament. When Germany stood by her ally, however, the peace movement became more alive to the anti-German implications of Grey’s rebuke. As a result, some peace activists retreated into a position of ‘no foreign politics’—Lord Courtney, for instance, questioned Grey’s intervention. Perris, as usual in favour of an active British role, continued to support Grey’s call for a conference to discuss Austria’s ‘disregard of the considerations of public law’.76 All peace activists denounced the alliance system which prevented joint European action against aggression. Similar denunciations were provoked by the inability of the Concert to respond effectively to the Italian invasion of Turkish-controlled Tripoli in . The peace movement suspected that the Foreign Office had encouraged the Italians in their adventure, or at least consented to it, in an attempt to detach Italy from the Triple Alliance. The Italian aggression provoked, in the words of D. M. Mason—the Radical MP for Coventry who attempted to rally a protest—‘an outburst of indignation from the friends of freedom and foes of aggression’ in Britain. The IAPA pointed to the ‘complicity of the powers that will not dare, or do not care, to intervene in the name of humanity’. The IAL was more cautious, noting that there were ‘irresponsible people’ who were hinting at the use of the British fleet in the interests of Turkey. The right course of action, the Arbitrator argued, was to persuade the Concert to mediate: ‘One day an offence like that committed by Italy will be dealt with by an international law court . . . We do not ask the Government to adopt a pro-Turkish policy. We are only partisans in the cause of arbitration and peace.’77 The IAL’s position followed the dictates of non-interventionism, but it was also supportive of Asquith and Grey. 75 F. M. Leventhal, ‘H. N. Brailsford and the Search for a New International Order’, in Morris (ed.), Edwardian Radicalism, ; Brailsford, War of Steel and Gold, ; Concord, Aug.–Sept. , . 76 Concord, Nov. , ; Perris, Our Foreign Policy, –. 77 D. M. Mason, Six Years of Politics: – (London, ), , , ; Concord, Nov. , ; Arb., Dec. , ; Oct. , .



Pre-War Peace Movement

Peace-movement hopes that Turkey would make concessions to the Christian peoples in their empire had meanwhile been crushed. From  to  there were further massacres in Armenia and a clampdown on insurrection in Albania. The Balkan League—comprising Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece—was formed in response, with the aim of ousting Turkey from Europe. In the early autumn of , the League took the initiative and launched an attack against Turkish occupation, in what later became known as the first Balkan War. Within a few weeks the allies had driven the Turks back to Constantinople; by December, Turkey was forced to sue for an armistice. Some members of the peace movement, including Gordon Harvey, president of the NPC, welcomed the allies’ victory as a realization of their time-honoured demand for freedom from Turkish rule. Kate Courtney wrote in her diary: ‘War in the Balkans . . . has come after centuries of slaughter and unrest and come in the best way, if war can ever be a good way, by the rising of the subject races and not from the outside.’ Norman Angell, too, declared it an occasion to ‘rejoice’.78 ‘Many “pacifists” ’, A. J. A. Morris argues, ‘were so far excited by the prospect of the collapse of Turkish rule in Europe that they claimed this was no ordinary war but a Christian crusade of defence and liberation and therefore worthy of their support. This exculpation of their sudden martial enthusiasm in  was a sad intimation of the ready moral surrender by so many “pacifists” in .’79 The mistaken assumption behind this argument is that the entire peace movement was nonresisting, opposed to all wars. A recognition of pacific-ism as a consistent ideology, together with an understanding of previous progressive agitations regarding the Balkans, would suggest that more was involved in the peace movement’s reaction than ‘a gigantic exercise in . . . self-deception’. Moreover, Morris’s argument shows little sensitivity to the tension within peace thinking between avoiding war and obtaining justice. Angell, for example, in his Peace Theories and the Balkan War, a book written partly to exonerate peace activists from the charge of inconsistency (and a work which is in many ways more interesting than The Great Illusion), put a defensive slant on the war as one waged against a nation whose very raison d’être was one of aggression and conquest: ‘that is why those of us who do not believe in military force rejoice.’ It was wrong to 78 Howard Weinroth, ‘Radicalism and Nationalism: An Increasingly Unstable Equation’, in A. J. A. Morris (ed.), Edwardian Radicalism – (), –; Angell, Peace Theories and the Balkan War, . 79 Morris, Radicalism against War, .

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‘tax pacifists with approving war’ because they approved ‘the measure aimed at bringing it to an end’. Angell underlined that ‘to the immense bulk’ of peace activists, ‘pacifism’ did not connote non-resistance. ‘What have peace theories to do with this war?’ he asked: ‘Well, they have everything to do with it.’ Kate Courtney’s endorsement of military action to throw off foreign oppressors followed a long tradition of pacific-ist support for such wars. Brailsford went further, endorsing a crusade undertaken by the Balkan League to help Macedonia, a non-member, rid itself of Turkish oppression: it was a ‘war of liberation’. He may not have been acting as a consistent pacific-ist in supporting such a war, but, in placing national self-determination above peace in the Balkans, he was following a well-established ‘idealist’ tradition.80 Other peace activists regretted the failure of non-military methods of settling international disputes. Noel Buxton addressed the  National Peace Congress: must I abandon my desire to see home happiness brought to the unfortunate subjects of Turkey, must I abandon my hope that this can be done by peaceful means, and so must I become an advocate of war? That is a dilemma . . . because the very members of the peace societies are also members of such bodies as the Anti-Slavery Society and the Balkan Committee, and other bodies which desire better conditions for oppressed people. And it must have occurred to their minds what a horrible contradiction presents itself in this matter.

Despite the IAPA’s previous statements that wars against reactionary and aggressive powers—including ‘wars of liberation’—were sometimes justified, J. F. Green and G. H. Perris were not tempted to support the Balkan League, partly because they still harboured hopes of Turkish liberalization. Cries of ‘the Cross against the Crescent’ were particularly distasteful, Concord argued: ‘Who thinks of butchering the Russian people to avenge the wrongs of Finland?’ The IAL took up a similar position. ‘If any war is justified, it is a war of liberation’, Arbitrator noted, but Maddison and Evans wondered if the motives of the Balkan League were pure.81 Quakers and other pacifists, of course, could not support conflict in any circumstances. The Meeting for Sufferings deplored the war and chose to focus on the issue of relief for non-combatant victims. Discussing Britain’s proper role, all the peace associations blamed the war on the long-standing refusal of the powers to exert united peaceful 80 Angell, Peace Theories and the Balkan War, , , , , ; Brailsford, War of Steel and Gold, . 81 Concord, Nov. , –; Dec. , ; Arb., Aug. , ; Dec. , ; Friend,  Nov. , .



Pre-War Peace Movement

pressure on Turkey. D. M. Mason, going further than his Peace Society audience would have wished, urged the justice of Britain sending a fleet ‘in conjunction with the other powers’. The IAL warned against explicit British support for the Balkan League: joint action by the Concert was acceptable, but it was ‘quite another matter to risk or make war on behalf of those who excite our sympathies . . . whenever a crisis arises there are not a few men who, though pacifists in the abstract, are too prone to let their natural sympathies obliterate their reasoning faculties. They would make Don Quixote the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain.’ Even if the Concert were ‘torn asunder by war, say, between Russia and Austria’, the IAL asserted, ‘British policy is clear . . . neutrality first and last is the true course to pursue.’ The peace movement approved of Grey calling a conference of powers to discuss the Balkan question—‘for once,’ J. F. Green wrote, ‘one has had the unusual pleasure of approving in the main Sir Edward Grey’s policy.’ Brailsford saw in the London Conference the germ of a United States of Europe.82 But the European powers proved unable to stop the Balkan allies turning on each other in  to produce the second Balkan War. The forces of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece occupied portions of Macedonia, each with designs on the territory. The peace movement was united in denouncing this as a war of conquest. Green remarked that the allies who had claimed to be waging a war of liberation were now discussing the spoils of victory: the ‘consistent pacifist’ had to protest against this: ‘Over and over again at our international congresses we have denied the “right” of conquest, and maintained that every nationality has a right to decide its own destiny and that no people should be transferred from one rule to another without being consulted.’83 Peace-movement conceptions of an effective European Concert continued to involve heated debate about the Anglo-Russian Agreement. The argument reached its height in  when the Tsar visited Britain. A Persian nationalist leader, Ishmail Khan, spoke at the IAPA’s annual meeting that year and denounced Britain for failing to protest against Russian interference in the Persian Parliament. Other peace activists, however, were still reluctant to endanger friendly Anglo-Russian relations and so refused to join the sizeable anti-Tsar agitation. The Herald of Peace contained a letter from ‘a member of the Peace Society’ on the subject of the ‘greatest danger to peace just now in England’—‘the energy and bitterness with which some 82 Concord, Nov. , ; Arb., Nov. , –; HP, Jan. , –; Arb., Nov. , –; Concord, Apr. , ; Brailsford, War of Steel and Gold, , . 83 Concord, Apr. , .

‒



men . . . who profess to favour peace and disarmament, are fond of attacking and insulting foreign powers’. Writing in Concord, Perris (who left the Liberal Party as a result of the Tsar’s visit) expressed his ‘astonishment’ at ‘a letter in one of our pacifist contemporaries’. He questioned the meaning of a ‘peace’ which ignored justice and liberty within nations. The IAL, however, lined up alongside the Peace Society: our doubts are not based on the objections which we find advanced by some pacifists . . . those who contend that the test of our policy must be the liberalizing effect it has on Russian institutions and maintain that the Anglo-Russian Convention has strengthened the hands of autocracy. Frankly, we cannot accept this view at all . . . As peace advocates we must take countries as they are, and not as we should wish them to be.

The IAL again endorsed Grey’s policy. If the Foreign Secretary ‘appeared to play the role of an apologist for autocracy’, it was a ‘price worth paying’. Brailsford summed up the dilemma presented to the peace movement, pointing to the fact that ‘pacifist and nationalist’ were ‘divided in their sympathies’: ‘the former, thinking only of European peace, rejoices when Russia and Britain end their differences by partition of Persia. The latter, seeing only that a nation has been destroyed, regards the agreement as a particularly evil development of imperialism.’84 In his book, Our Foreign Policy and Sir Edward Grey’s Failure () Perris, too, highlighted ‘a logical dilemma between two important articles of our national tradition’: the ‘desire to preserve peaceful and even amicable relations with all foreign states, even those most arbitrarily governed, on the one hand, and the desire to assist democratic and liberationist movements on the other’. He argued that the principle of ‘no foreign politics’ had ‘lost all the spirit which once gave it life’, and in fact criticized Grey for repeating this ‘old maxim’. He admitted the difficulties of reconciling ‘peace and liberty’ and distanced himself from ‘any sudden desire to embark upon liberationist adventures’. But he also ridiculed the fear ‘of many generous people—a fear cultivated in Whitehall—as to the consequences of “interference” in the internal affairs of other nations’. The peace movement should do everything it could to replace militarism and conquest with self-determination and democracy. A temporary absence of war was not enough: Perris underlined the need to balance ‘two great principles—the desire for peace, and the desire for liberty’.85 84 HP, Jan. , ; Concord, Jan. , ; Arb., Feb. , ; Brailsford, War of Steel and 85 Gold, . Perris, Our Foreign Policy, , , .

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Pre-War Peace Movement

Russia remained an abomination to many peace activists. Prussia, on the other hand, although the nation most associated with the doctrine of militarism, was regarded more positively because of its parliamentary system and the strength of the Socialist party in the Reichstag. Given the racial, religious, cultural, and economic ties between Britain and Germany, peace activists assumed that the two nations could easily coexist—there was no rational reason for an Anglo-German conflict. This view was encouraged by personal contact with peace-professing Germans. The Universal Peace Congress movement, and a succession of exchange visits—such as that organized by the IAL with German trade unions in —led to the assumption that German and British people viewed international relations in the same way. Sir William Collins, president of the Cardiff National Peace Congress, for example, observed that those who had taken part in ‘mutual hospitalities between the democracies of Europe and our own people’ had ‘a truer vision of international relations than was obtained through the distorting media of a costly and cynical diplomacy’. Peace activists went to great lengths to dislodge the received opinion of a hostile Prussia. When the Kaiser visited London in , the Arbitrator commented that ‘for more than twenty years’ he had ‘been the sovereign of the strongest country in Europe, with full power to make war, and yet he has never drawn the sword.’86 It was assumed that Prussian militarism was gradually being undermined by peaceful elements in German politics. According to Angell, ‘the school of thought which we call “German”—the Bernhardis and the Biebersteins—whose discredited crankism masquerades in England as German policy’ represented ‘an infinitesimally small section of the German nation’. Perhaps the most detailed study of German political culture within the peace movement was a work by Perris: Germany and the German Emperor (). The book demonstrated some understanding of Germany’s illiberal political structure, the influence of Junkerdom, and the importance Junkers placed on military values. But Perris also made much of the growth in influence of left-wing forces in Germany: at the time of publication, the SPD had just achieved a significant increase in their number of seats in the Reichstag. This was evidence of a ‘national awakening’.87 British peace advocates in general failed to recognize the HP, July , ; Arb., June , . Labour Leader,  Aug. , ; Arb., July , ; War and Peace, Jan. , –; J. A. Hobson, The German Panic (London, ), –; G. H. Perris, Germany and the German Emperor (London, ), , ; see also Perris’s full-page open letter to the Labour Leader,  July , . 86 87

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

drive of the German ruling class to match Britain’s power by acquiring a Middle European empire—as they underestimated the strength of patriotic feeling within all European labour movements. The peace movement’s radical critique of war encouraged it to argue that there was ‘no essential difference between the present ruling class’ in Britain and Germany. ‘We can assure our friends in Germany, the IAL stated, ‘that if it were not for the mischievous activity of the class they call “Junkers” . . . the pacific majority in this country would be overwhelming.’ J. L. Hammond was to write to Bertrand Russell in October : ‘If you think that the Nation has not allowed enough for the warlike forces in Germany in the past I agree. I think that has been the mistake of all the peace people.’88 Perris pointed out that a diplomatic ‘encirclement’ of Prussia only played into the hands of the Junkers. After the Agadir Crisis, the peace movement was increasingly worried about the possibility of a secret British commitment to France to help in a war against Germany. Lloyd George had said in his Mansion House speech during the crisis that the ‘interests, honour and prestige’ of Britain were involved, but had not explained why. Resolutions were passed at a meeting of the NPC in July  which referred to ‘deep dissatisfaction with the failure of diplomacy’ and to the fact that ‘international agreements, originally intended to remove differences, and to be the forerunner of similar agreements with other powers, have resulted in the antagonistic grouping of the European nations.’ One of the most vocal pacific-ists at this highpoint of dissent against the Government’s foreign policy was E. D. Morel, the Quaker-influenced author who was well known for his exposure of King Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo. Morel insisted that rapprochement with Germany depended on a full and clear denial of any secret obligations to France. His Morocco in Diplomacy claimed that Britain had been ‘led blindfold to the very brink of war, as the outcome of liabilities secretly contracted by its diplomatists without its authority’.89 Protests against ‘secret diplomacy’ served to re-assert the need for isolationism. But by  there was also the occasional, tentative suggestion within the peace movement that a war of forward defence might be necessary to protect the northern coast of Europe from German domination. (This was despite the Government’s silence on the issue.) The IAL 88 Arb., July , ; Bertrand Russell, Autobiography,  vols. (London, ), i, . See also J. A. Hobson, The German Panic (London, ), –. 89 BF, Aug. , ; C. A. Cline, ‘E. D. Morel: From the Congo to the Rhine’, in Morris (ed.), Edwardian Radicalism, .



Pre-War Peace Movement

emphasized that ‘hardly anybody’ in Britain was willing to engage in a war over Alsace and Lorraine, but argued: ‘England would rightly regard the invasion of Holland as a direct menace to herself.’ In the event of a German invasion of Belgium, ‘the Dutch would not stand alone; on the contrary, their subjugation could only be effected after a gigantic European war.’ Other progressives used moralistic rather than strategic arguments. A. G. Gardiner, editor of the Radical Daily News and a supporter of peace policies, for example, wrote that it was ‘idle to talk’ of Germany’s ‘supposed designs on Belgium and Holland. If those designs ever mature . . . Liberal England will not fail in its duty to small nationalities.’ But Gardiner described the chances of a German invasion of Belgium as extremely remote, while the Arbitrator argued that a conquest of Belgium and Holland was more than unlikely because it would risk antagonizing the SPD, ‘the bête noir of German imperialism’.90 The priority of the peace movement had always been, in any case, to emphasize that a European war could and should be avoided. All its various elements argued that the peoples of Europe had no genuine interest in, and would only suffer as a result of, such a war. The peace associations pointed out that Britain, in particular, had nothing to gain from involvement in a Continental conflict. The homeland was secure— protected by a strong navy—and free of conscription. Peace activists were suspicious of Grey but had no concrete reason to believe Britain would not remain neutral in the event of a Continental war, and many were confident that the British Government genuinely wanted peace. In turn, Asquith and Grey did not initiate any debate about the need for a forward defence of Britain because they feared that the loss of British lives merely to settle a conflict between two rival Continental blocs would be unacceptable to a large section of the political nation. Adamant that Britain did not face a direct threat of invasion, peace activists therefore spent little time thinking through the hypothesis of a forward defence of the homeland in northern Europe. Throughout the period covered by this book, the peace associations had united—despite their disparate ideologies and approaches—in opposing every British war and military intervention. Their conclusion in each case was that peace and justice could be reconciled. When war broke out on the Continent in the summer of , they faced their most serious test yet. The first reaction of peace activists was to condemn the conflict as the terrible product of an international system in which the 90 Arb., Apr. , ; Feb. , ; S. E. Koss, Fleet Sreet Radical: A. G. Gardiner and the ‘Daily News’ (London, ), ; Arb., Mar. , .

‒



élites of all nations foisted militarism on peaceful peoples. The imperative was to ensure British neutrality. But after Germany invaded Belgium with, by all accounts, extreme brutality, new and crucial questions arose. Would British involvement be a legitimate defensive response to the sort of aggression which could eventually endanger the homeland? Even if Britain was not at risk, should the army and navy be engaged to help Belgium against a powerful aggressor? Was it selfish merely to stand aside? In other words: could peace and justice still be reconciled?



The Reaction ofthe Peace Movement to European War In August , after a hastily organized campaign for British neutrality, the peace movement divided: some peace activists supported British intervention in the European war, others opposed it. While the activities and arguments of those who opposed the war have received much attention from historians,1 the arguments of those who supported it have been less carefully studied. The usual account is one of a volte-face on the part of ‘pacifists’ who had previously called for British neutrality and friendship with Germany—a total renunciation of previous peace beliefs. L. W. Martin, for example, concludes: ‘Quite clearly these Liberals had performed an astounding volte-face.’ Jill Wallis describes Percival, Bishop of Hereford, as having ‘changed his views completely’ in supporting the war. Alan Wilkinson refers to ‘the volte-face of most Free Church leaders at the outbreak of war’. Stephen Koss maintains that leading Free Churchmen, ‘as if to atone for their earlier pacifism’, engaged in a ‘volteface’ and were ‘transformed into holy warriors, who often asserted their patriotism with calculated truculence’. For A. J. A. Morris, loyalty to the Liberal Government triumphed over ‘pacifist’ beliefs which were merely ‘sentimental and emotional’. Colin Nicholson argues that the outbreak of war brought with it the ‘complete eclipse’ of the ‘idealist’ approach to international relations.2 1 See K. G. Robbins, The Abolition of War: The ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain – (Cardiff, ); Marvin Swartz, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the First World War (Oxford, ); Sally Harris, Out of Control: British Foreign Policy and the Union of Democratic Control – (Hull, ); Jill Wallis, Valiant for Peace: A History of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (London, ); T. C. Kennedy, Hound of Conscience: A History of the No-Conscription Fellowship (Fayetteville, Ark., ). 2 L. W. Martin, Peace without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and the British Liberals (New Haven, ), ; Wallis, Valiant for Peace, ; Alan Wilkinson, Dissent or Conform? Peace and the English Churches – (London, ), ; S. E. Koss, Nonconformity in British Politics (London, ), ; A. J. A. Morris, Radicalism against War –: The Advocacy of Peace and Retrenchment (London, ), ; Colin Nicholson, ‘Edwardian England and the Coming of the First World War’ in Alan O’Day (ed.), The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability – (London, ), .

Reaction to European War



The peace journals attest to the fact that most activists did indeed change their position in August . Nevertheless, a more nuanced interpretation than that of a volte-face is necessary. In particular, the existence of two different ideologies within peace thinking—pacifism and pacific-ism—has not been sufficiently recognized. If war had been brought about by a German invasion of Britain, the large pacific-ist majority in the peace movement would clearly not have renunciated its peace beliefs in supporting a war of defence, since pacific-ists had always argued that such a war might be necessary to protect political reforms. As it was, the war did not directly entail invasion, though the British Government’s decision to enter the war was taken principally on defensive grounds. Appealing to the Commons on  August, Grey set out an argument for a forward defence: if the German fleet entered the Channel, he said, then Belgium, possibly France and probably Holland would lose their independence, Germany would control the northern coasts of Europe and Britain would be under threat (the supply of necessary food and raw materials, for example, could not be guaranteed). The British navy would therefore be justified in taking defensive action. This argument was not, however, the most memorable aspect of Grey’s speech to Parliament. The Liberal Government had not prepared the isolationist British public for a war of forward defence: Asquith and Grey had kept open the option of British neutrality in a European war and kept secret the half-promises which had been made to France. Even the majority of Cabinet members assumed during the July Crisis that Britain would stay out of a European war. To cater for this lack of preparation, Grey supplemented his defensive case with an appeal for a crusade (an altruistic war made necessary by Germany’s aggression). He emphasized, in what the Radical junior minister C. P. Trevelyan called a ‘bare-faced appeal to passion’, the need to ‘rescue’ Belgium from violation by Germany (as if Belgium’s proximity to Britain was immaterial). If Britain did not give assistance, Grey argued, its honour would be worth nothing.3 Grey understood the appeal of a crusade for progressives. As we have seen, pacific-ism had overbalanced into crusading on many previous occasions—during the Crimean War, in the Mazziniinspired agitations of the s, during the Franco-Prussian War, as a result of the Bulgarian atrocities, and even during the recent Balkan Wars (it was a long-standing point of weakness within the peace movement). 3 Morris, Radicalism against War, ; Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford, ), .



Reaction to European War

Some of the peace campaigners who decided to support Britain’s entry into the war did so partly because they understood the case for forward defence: an aspect of their justification of the war was that Britain could not tolerate a hostile power in its home waters. To the extent that they took this line, such campaigners had not abandoned pacific-ism (which incorporated support for defensive wars to protect liberal reforms). The majority of peace activists, however, explained their support for British involvement in terms of Britain’s moral responsibility to Belgium. Grey’s tactics were successful: progressives still reluctant to accept the case for a war of forward defence were swayed by the emotive language of the need for a crusade to rescue a small country being attacked. Furthermore, they soon endorsed other crusading arguments deployed by the Government in support of British involvement: the necessity of crushing Prussian militarism, and war as a means to inaugurate a new, peaceful international community. Peace activists who used such arguments had indeed strayed from the pacific-ist path. They had not, however, relinquished their ‘idealist’ approach to international relations. Once again pacific-ism overbalanced into crusading when the attainment of justice did not seem reconcilable with peace. Many progressives had consistently expressed their belief in the justice of wars ‘to rescue sister peoples’—this view had been articulated even by the IAPA. Justifications emphasizing the need to rescue Belgium were not simply a fig-leaf to cover the embarrassment of pacific-ists who had patriotically abandoned isolationism: they were deeply rooted and sincerely believed. Most peace activists who viewed the war as a defence of the ‘public law of Europe’ had always endorsed the Gladstonian tenet of British engagement on the Continent to further peace and justice. Conceptions of Britain’s duty to protect small nationalities were wellestablished within the peace movement and a war to preserve international ‘public law’—unlike a war to preserve the balance of power—could be interpreted as a step towards permanent peace. Although the peace associations had previously opposed the idea of British crusades to impose democracy or to establish national self-determination, many activists had supported peaceful intervention and dismissed ‘no foreign politics’ as a policy of selfishness. No doubt it was easier for Liberals or Labour supporters to follow the party line when it was presented as philanthropic and righteous. A number of peace campaigners, moreover, clearly did shift from pacific-ism to defencism as a result of the war. What remains striking, however, is the pervasiveness of altruistic language even when a powerpolitical case—‘the homeland in danger’—could have been made.

Reaction to European War



This is not an attempt to ‘defend’ those peace activists who supported intervention. I mean simply to emphasize that the large majority of those involved in the British peace movement were not ‘non-resisters’ and that their peace theories were bound up with ideas of justice and political change. One obvious difficulty is that, because all the powers involved in the war professed to be acting defensively (the German Government, for example, declared that it had launched a pre-emptive strike when the threat of French invasion was palpable), pacific-ists in every country could claim some consistency in supporting the war. Progressives in France and Germany could argue, like those in Britain, that their nation was a bastion of liberty, and that its defence would further the goal of a peaceful international order. (Those who didn’t frame their justification in such a way, and merely referred to the ‘homeland in danger’, effectively retreated into defencism.) But while a detailed analysis of the British peace movement’s arguments in response to war in  shouldn’t obscure the structural weaknesses within pacific-ism or the complete collapse throughout Europe of efforts to prevent the conflict, it is insufficient merely to interpret the response of peace activists who supported the war as one of ‘ready moral surrender’.4    The peace movement, kept in the dark about the extent of Britain’s commitment to France, but aware that Britain was far from militarily prepared to fight an overland Continental war, was slow to realize the danger of the July Crisis. The leader writers of the Manchester Guardian, Nation, and Daily News commented on the situation with a tone of detachment, coupled with a desire to encourage the Government to play the part of mediator in the dispute: couldn’t Britain use its favoured position to save Europe from disaster? A Russian military campaign in support of Serbia against Austria was hardly a cause to stimulate British progressives. The argument of The Times and other Tory papers that Britain should fight because it was ‘our settled interest and traditional policy to uphold the balance of power’ was dismissed by peace activists who had always rejected the concept of a balance.5 Morris, Radicalism against War, . I. C. Willis, How We Went into the War (London, ), , . Irene Willis was an Angellite pacifist who was extremely critical of peace activists who supported the war; for another account of British press reactions to the crisis, see Harry Hanak, Great Britain and Austro-Hungary during the First World War (London, ), ch. . 4 5



Reaction to European War

If Britain joined the war, the peace journals argued, it would be, in effect, to help illiberal Russia fight against Germany in a clash between ‘two militarist leagues’.6 The peace movement had always opposed ‘entangling alliances’, so naturally regarded with alarm the prospect of France being drawn into such a war simply because of its connection with Russia. For Britain also to become involved because of a secretly agreed diplomatic tie was unthinkable. It was on this basis that the neutrality campaign was conducted, an agitation in which the peace societies played their part. G. H. Perris, J. F. Green, Evans Darby, and J. G. Alexander made an attempt to prevent war through the international peace movement. On  July they arrived in Brussels to attend an emergency meeting of the International Peace Bureau, which called for emergency sessions of the Parliaments of Europe. When the assembly broke up in the afternoon, they learned that Germany had cut the rail lines on the Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine borders. In London on the same day, the IAL council called a special meeting, which decided that the League should advocate British neutrality. On  August, the smaller executive committee met, presided over by Burt, and reaffirmed that, although the situation was such that Russia and Germany were likely to be involved in war, Britain’s ‘absolute neutrality’ should be maintained. Twenty thousand copies of a League flysheet entitled ‘Britain’s First Duty. No War!’ were distributed in London. War and Peace, the Norman Angell journal, printed a similar sheet—‘Stand Clear, England!’—which opposed fighting in support of Russia and the balance of power.7 Two new organizations were set up. The Neutrality Committee was formed by J. A. Hobson and the political writer Graham Wallas; its adherents included Courtney, Ramsay MacDonald, Gilbert Murray, A. G. Gardiner, the historian G. M. Trevelyan, Hobhouse, Hirst, and Hammond. The Neutrality League was launched by Angell and supported by Hicks, Percival, and C. P. Scott. A merger of the two was prevented because the League took against the Neutrality Committee’s publication of a statement referring explicitly to the past promises made by Asquith and Grey that England retained complete freedom of action in time of war. The Neutrality League distributed half a million leaflets in two days;  sandwich-men walked the streets of London; , posters were printed. The Government received neutrality resolutions from Liberal associations, trade unions, and churches. The Willis, How We Went into the War, , . Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe – (New York, ), –; Arb., Aug. , ; War and Peace, Aug. , . 6 7

Reaction to European War



ILP organized  anti-war demonstrations in the last days of July. On  August the labour movement held a large protest meeting in Trafalgar Square at which Hardie, Henderson, George Lansbury, and Herbert Burrows all spoke against the war. MacDonald voiced three arguments for neutrality: first, that intervention would be the tragic result of ‘secret alliances’; second, anything which assisted Russian autocracy was ‘offensive to the political traditions of this country and dangerous to Europe’; third, the people of Britain had no direct or indirect interest in the Austro-Serbian quarrel.8 The IAL refused to accept that Grey’s speech in the Commons on  August made a clear case for a defensive war against Germany. At a meeting the following day, the League’s committee expressed anger at the revelation that Britain had effectively promised France it would intervene in the English Channel; British involvement would have come about merely because it belonged to ‘a certain group of powers’. An explicit justification of the war on the grounds of forward defence was therefore rejected. ‘The only interest worth defending’, the committee decided, was ‘the neutrality of Belgium or of other states which declare and observe neutrality. We of the peace movement stand for the sacredness of international obligations, and whoever breaks them becomes the enemy of all nations.’ The National Peace Council called a special meeting which took place on  August. It reiterated its condemnation of the ‘grouping of powers in hostile combinations and the revival of the doctrine of the balance of power’ and objected ‘most strongly’ to the failure to reveal to the House of Commons the fact of the existence of conferences and conversations between military and naval experts of England and France, which, in spite of the denial of engagements and obligations, has led the Government of this country into a definite undertaking to protect by armed force the North and West Coasts of France.

The Council also opposed ‘in the strongest terms’ any infringement of the neutrality of Belgium.9 8 Marvin Swartz, ‘A Study in Futility: The British Radicals at the Outbreak of the First World War’, in A. J. A. Morris (ed.), Edwardian Radicalism – (London, ), –; P. D. Hines, ‘Norman Angell: Peace Movement –’, Ph.D. thesis (Ball State Univ., Ind., ), ; D. J. Newton, British Labour, European Socialism and the Struggle for Peace – (Oxford, ), . 9 Arb., Sept. , –; NPC MSS, MB,  Aug. —the  present included Harvey, J. G. Alexander, Hypatia Bonner, Burrows, Byles, J. F. Green, Maddison, Moscheles, Newman, C. E. Playne, Swinny, Heath.



Reaction to European War        

The IAPA issued a statement which blamed the war on ‘a small caste of militarists’, and argued that real peace could only be attained when secret treaties and armaments profiteering had been swept away and the subjection of small nations made impossible. But, according to the IAPA report of the following year, ‘the invasion of Belgium made the entry of Britain into the war inevitable.’ Perris and Green, writing in Concord, described British involvement as just and necessary. Emphasis was put on ‘gallant and heroic’ Belgium, but Green also employed the argument that Britain was herself threatened ‘when public law is broken’: an aggressive Germany controlling Belgium and France was one which would destroy all conception of an international community.10 Summarizing ‘England’s Duty in the War’, Perris described his decision as causing him ‘agonizing pain’. After a lifetime of opposing various wars, he decided to choose British involvement over both Tolstoyan pacifism—to which he had been drawn—and non-intervention. He saw Germany’s ‘violation’ of Belgian neutrality as revelatory proof of ‘the most deliberate, long-prepared, treacherous and savage aggression known to modern history’, and expressed shock and revulsion at German atrocities, reports of which had begun to appear almost immediately. (It was not so much the fact of German invasion as the nature of the invasion which seemed to persuade Perris and others to support the war.) He was confident that ‘the British Government strove to the end for peace.’ Perris had little sense of the defensive case for the war: he emphasized instead that innocent France and Belgium might have been reduced to ‘permanent servitude’ had Britain refused to help. His interventionist conception of ‘England’s Duty’ overrode reservations about secret diplomacy, the influence of vested interests and, in particular, his hatred of the Anglo-Russian Agreement. The ‘guilt of the Prussian governing caste’ meant that ‘there was no alternative’ but to express his approval of the war. He saw as hypocritical the fact that non-interventionists had already begun to envisage how, after the war, Europe could be organized into a ‘League of Peace’: ‘What sense or hope is there of dodging to and fro between irreconcilable ideas of a League of Peace and non-intervention—irreconcilable because a non-interventionist England rules itself out of the councils of Europe for purposes of peace as well as of war?’11 The IAPA had always argued that permanent peace in Europe depended 10 11

Concord, July–Aug. , ; Oct. , ; Oct. , . Concord, Nov.–Dec. , –.

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on the replacement of militarism with democracy, and that militarism not war was the real enemy of the peace movement. Perris now felt that only war stood a chance of defeating militarism. He was forced to leave the editorship of Concord when his main source of income dried up (he had lost his job as an assistant editor of the Home University Library). ‘So I should have had suddenly to find other work like millions of people all over Europe today’, he wrote to his daughter. He was offered a job by the Daily Chronicle as a war correspondent in Paris. ‘The Chronicle work, then, was the most fortunate opportunity for me. And, secondly, it gave me the chance, which I might not have been able to get any other way, of putting in an occasional public word for reason and against passion and hatred and cruelty.’ ‘Everything that is being destroyed will have to be rebuilt,’ he continued, ‘and the longest; hardest task of all will be to extinguish the devilish thoughts that are flying abroad today like a prairie fire, or an epidemic of disease, and to recreate the feelings of kindliness and justice which are the heart of civilization.’ He distinguished between the German people and ‘the Kaiser and a dozen of his big-bugs’ who had ‘gone mad’.12 Later in the war, Perris published The Campaign in  in France and Belgium, a book based on his Chronicle journalism. In the preface he quoted Asquith’s justificatory citation of Gladstone’s phrase: ‘The greatest triumph of our time will be the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea of European politics.’ Defining ‘public right’, Asquith had listed the ‘repudiation of militarism’; the ‘free development of the smaller nationalities’; and the substitution of force by a real European Concert. These principles had long been part of the IAPA’s programme of ‘peace with justice’. According to Perris, England had proved itself ‘still the England of Gladstone’.13 Within hours of meeting on  August, the members of the IAL executive had ‘unanimously agreed that the League could no longer oppose intervention’. It reminded its members that the League had never stood for ‘non-resistance’. The Arbitrator concentrated on ‘Belgium’s agony’. It proclaimed that the German military élite was acting in flagrant disregard of the cause of ‘internationalism’ and that the Belgian question involved ‘the sacredness of the public law of Europe’: For the invader of Belgium to succeed would be an indescribable calamity for the whole world, and would make a peace movement an impossibility . . . We must say 12

I am grateful to Robert Gomme for these quotations. G. H. Perris, The Campaign of  in France and Belgium (London, ), pp. xiii-xiv, , xv. 13

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Reaction to European War

frankly that no action taken by the peace movement which does not start from this point—support for Belgian neutrality and independence—can be, in our opinion, effective or consistent with its fundamental principles.

Burt, the president, ‘deplored the war’, but while his ‘friends’ John Burns and Morley had resigned from the Government in protest against British intervention, he supported it. He later said: ‘we could not have avoided it with honour. The battle is for justice and liberty and everything worth having in civilization, and for the right of weaker nations against the military domination of the strong.’14 Like many peace activists, Burt was faced with having to think through more carefully what sort of wars he considered just. The IAL had habitually favoured friendly relations with all nations whatever their political system, and had only rarely expressed hypothetical support for ‘wars to rescue sister peoples’. It was therefore less consistent than the IAPA in its use of crusading rhetoric to justify the war. Maddison’s personal backing of Grey was no doubt a factor in the IAL’s decision. The committee of the Rationalist Peace Society met on  August and rejected a statement opposing British intervention which had been drafted in its name by E. G. Smith. The bulk of the committee—including J. F. Green, J. M. Robertson, and Hypatia Bonner—supported the war. A later explanation of its position incorporated the idea of forward defence: Britain was ultimately defending ‘our own country and our own people’. The statement also emphasized the committee’s claims to ideological consistency: As pacifists, we utterly and entirely condemn all wars of aggression, whatever their excuse, regarding such wars as a base reversion to barbarism; nevertheless, we have always recognized that there are two classes of war, which, lamentable as they must be, might yet be quite justifiable; these are wars of defence and wars of independence. In these cases it is not a choice between the right way of doing a thing and the wrong way; it is a choice of evils . . . The committee are aware that some members of the Rationalist Peace Society—they believe a small minority— are of the opinion that under no circumstances should arms be used; that resistance should be moral, not physical. The committee have never held, and are unable to share, this standpoint.

E. G. Smith resigned the secretaryship in February  due to the Society’s support for the war; membership fell from  to .15 Beyond the peace associations, the interventionist case was set out clearly in Gilbert Murray’s How Can War Ever Be Right?, a pamphlet 14 Arb., Sept. , ; Nov. , ; Thomas Burt, An Autobiography (London, 15 ), . Concord, Jan.–Feb. , ; RPS MSS, MB.

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praised by Perris. Murray argued the case for forward defence: ‘our whole welfare is so vitally dependent on the observance of public law and the rights of nations and would have been so terribly endangered by the presence of Germany in a conqueror’s mood at Ostend and Zeebrugge, not to speak of Dunkirk and Calais, that in this case mere preservation called us to fight.’ He concluded that Britain’s interest coincided with her honour, and was also adamant about the consistency of his position: I have spoken and presided at more meetings than I can remember for peace and arbitration and the promotion of international friendship. I opposed the policy of war in South Africa with all my energies, and have been either outspokenly hostile or inwardly unsympathetic towards almost every war that Great Britain has waged in my lifetime . . . I do not regret any word that I have spoken or written in the cause of peace, nor have I changed, as far as I know, any opinion that I have previously held on the subject. Yet I believe firmly that we were right to declare war against Germany on  August .

John Clifford asserted that Britain ‘was compelled to share in making it absolutely impossible for the peoples of Europe to be subjected to the disastrous domination of any military caste’. The Council of the Baptist Union similarly described the German invasion of Belgium as an attempt ‘to destroy the very fabric of Christian civilization’. J. L. Hammond argued that support for British intervention was not incongruous with prewar peace activism: there was ‘no inconsistency in working for an AngloFrench-German entente for some years and in thinking that it is Germany that has wrecked it’. Hobhouse, too, also claimed consistency in supporting the war: ‘I have always been a Gladstonian in my foreign policies.’16 Peace activists who supported the war invoked England’s reputation as the friend of national self-determination. G. P. Gooch saw no deviation in his stance on the Armenian atrocities, his opposition to the South African War, and his anguish when faced with a Belgium overrun by Germany. Lloyd George appealed to British good samaritans to help Belgium, ‘that little country bleeding on the roadside’. Later in the war, the veteran Liberal G. W. E. Russell, who had also been a vocal Pro-Boer, wrote a patriotic paean to The Spirit of England: ‘Happily for England the championship of small states and weak nationalities, though it was periodically interrupted by reaction, has been an abiding feature of her polity.’ The 16 Gilbert Murray, How Can War Ever be Right? (Oxford, ), , –; John Clifford, War and the Churches (London, ), ; K. W. Clements, ‘Baptists and the Outbreak of the First World War’, Baptist Quarterly,  (–), ; Bertrand Russell, Autobiography,  vols. (London, ), ii, –; Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, ), .

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Reaction to European War

war was presented as a crusade to eradicate the doctrines of Bernhardi and Treitschke—in H. G. Wells’s phrase, ‘the blood and iron superstition of Krupp, flag-wagging Teutonic Kiplingism’—and as such, more positively, was ‘the war to end war’.17 Yet an influential group of pacific-ists opposed British intervention. They denied that a plausible case had been made for defensive war and stressed that Britain’s obligations to Belgium had never been regarded by the peace movement as a legitimate casus belli. They argued, moreover, that Britain could best promote justice by diplomatic, not military, intervention. Following Grey’s speech to the Commons, MacDonald replied: ‘If the right honourable Gentleman had come here today and told us that our country is in danger, I do not care what party he appealed to, we would be with him and behind him.’ Arthur Ponsonby similarly wrote in his diary entry for  August: ‘If Germany had attacked us I should be in the street myself waving a flag’, but this conflict was ‘criminal folly’. It had been caused, he wrote, by the fact that a ‘dozen or so diplomats, ministers and monarchs had offended one another’, and the result would be ‘the massacre of millions of peaceful citizens’. John Burns reiterated his principles: ‘Splendid isolation. No balance of power. No incorporation in a Continental system.’ These radical pacific-ist arguments were also characterized by a ‘Little England’ notion of national priorities: Keir Hardie argued that England should care more about starving children at home than fighting ‘a stock exchange war’.18 MacDonald, E. D. Morel, C. P. Trevelyan, and Angell—all noninterventionist pacific-ists—formed a new peace organization, the Union of Democratic Control. Morel, in particular, continued to argue that secret diplomacy and a class-based foreign policy had produced a war which was against the interests of the British people. He maintained that Germany was not alone in possessing a ‘politico-militarist school’, and highlighted Britain’s alliance with autocratic Russia. For Morel, the conflict was a clash between rival groups rather than a crusade for international justice. Brailsford, another UDC activist, also voiced a Cobdenite protest: 17 Frank Eyck, G. P. Gooch: A Study in History and Politics (London, ), ; Wilkinson, Dissent or Conform?, ; [G. W. E. Russell], The Spirit of England (London, ), , –, ; Willis, How We Went into the War, –. 18 Peter Stansky (ed.), The Left and War: The British Labour Party and World War One (New York, ), ; R. A. Jones, Arthur Ponsonby (London, ), –; Zara Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London, ), ; Willis, How We Went into the War, –.

Reaction to European War

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At present, to the question ‘What caused the unspeakable calamity of the war?’ British public opinion answers, ‘German militarism’, and prepares for the part of judge and executioner combined. The answer is too simple and too complacent. The direct causes were Prussian militarism, Russian pan-Slavism, French nationalism and the British dogma of the balance of power.

Angell similarly pointed to ‘the menace of English Junkerdom’, and C. P. Trevelyan asserted that if France had been the aggressor, Britain would have made ‘some protest short of plunging our country into war’.19 The ILP Labour Leader, faced with the collapse of the Second International, also articulated isolationist radical pacific-ism, with a particular emphasis on the Anglo-Russian Agreement. MacDonald wrote a ‘Reply to those who declare this to be a “Holy War” ’: I have always held that it was a legitimate purpose of British foreign policy to aid the birth of liberty wherever we could. But in doing that we have to choose our friends and we have to be careful of our own record. The policy of the ‘Little Englander’ is to keep his country clean, to provide it with honourable friends, and to make its influence felt all over the world. This is our first reply to the deluded ones who think this is a war for liberty. Our chief ally, Russia, will not allow us to claim that good credit . . . We debase one autocracy and exalt another.

British ‘nationality and independence’ was a cause worth fighting for, the Labour Leader argued, but the promotion of militarism whether Russian or German was not. To suggest that all the ‘war lords’ existed in Germany, and none in England, was ‘either prejudice or cant’.20 Isolationist pacific-ists were, of course, joined in their opposition to the war by pacifists. But pacifists could no longer look to the Peace Society for inspiration. Its executive issued a statement on  August which did not condemn British intervention (such a condemnation was unnecessary, it typically argued, as the Society’s opposition to war was well known) but merely declared that if peace principles had been followed no war would have broken out.21 J. A. Pease, the Society’s Quaker president, resigned his position, declaring Britain’s cause to be a just struggle ‘against the spirit of aggressive domination’.22 Over the next year three Quaker stal19 F. S. Cocks, E. D. Morel: The Man and his Work (London, ), , , ; Nation,  Dec. , ; A. F. Havighurst, Radical Journalist: H. W. Massingham (Cambridge, ), ; A. J. A. Morris, C. P. Trevelyan: Portrait of a Radical – (Belfast, ), . See also Harris, Out of Control. 20 Labour Leader,  Aug. , ;  Aug. , ;  Aug. , . 21 HP, Oct. , . 22 A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace: A Short Account of the Organized Movements for International Peace (London, ), .

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Reaction to European War

warts of the Peace Society committee—H. J. Morland, Walter Lean, and J. J. Hayward—as well as the Congregationalist Walter Hazell, announced their resignations, probably on account of the war. The Society considered revoking its rule that members of the committee should no longer be obliged to hold views in ‘strict’ accordance with Christian opposition to war (that is, pacifism), but the recommendation was withdrawn.23 Evans Darby did what he could: he continued to state the case for pacifism, publishing The Catechism of Non-Resistance and advocating ‘strict personal neutrality’ in relation to the war. Carl Heath, secretary of the National Peace Council, described himself as ‘in one sense deeply stunned, and in another deeply moved’ when British intervention was announced. As a result of the war, Heath’s peace views changed, in effect, from pacific-ism to pacifism: ‘personally it began to come home most strongly to me that the merely political basis of [an] anti-war [position] was but very shifting ground with little or no rock in it at all.’ He joined the Society of Friends: ‘I had been coming to see that the kind of internationalism that alone could result in a world at peace was of the order which Quakerism offered—a deep spiritual life expressed in a very vital and realistic practice.’24 Heath’s pamphlet Pacifism in War Time argued for opposition to all war. Quakers were no more adequately prepared than other peace groups for the outbreak of war. The committed peace activist Edward Grubb admitted that ‘Friends and . . . others who share our convictions about peace and war are not a little perplexed as to our duty under the present appalling circumstances.’ On  August  the Friends’ Peace Committee held a special meeting. It decided that Quakers should ‘strive to keep down panic and war fever’ and ‘maintain the continuity of ordinary occupations’. In September the Meeting for Sufferings suggested that the FPC be strengthened.25 The following month, the Society issued a ‘Declaration on the War’ stating that ‘no plea of necessity or of policy’ could release Friends from adherence to the truth that ‘all war is utterly incompatible’ with the spirit and teachings of Christianity. ‘Weighty’ Friends such as Seebohm Rowntree, the manufacturer and social investigator, urged Quakers to remain true to their convictions so that their 23 MB,  Oct. ;  Nov. ;  Jan. ;  July ; Sub-Committees MB (Organization Committee),  Sept. ;  Oct. . 24 Heath, autobiography, , , . 25 T. C. Kennedy, ‘The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Peace Movement –’, Albion,  (), –; FPC MSS, MB,  Aug. ;  Sept. . The new members included Stephen Hobhouse, Roger Clark, Marian Ellis, and T. E. Harvey.

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Society could become a ‘rallying point around which all friends of peace may gather’. Indeed, although many ‘birthright’ Quakers who played little part in the Society supported the war, other Friends were immediately active within the movement to oppose it. A Quaker conference at Llandudno on ‘the foundations of peace’ inspired a subsequent interdenominational meeting at Cambridge. This resulted in the formation, in the last days of , of the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR), under the chairmanship of Henry Hodgkin, a Quaker medical missionary. Its formation was final proof of how the Peace Society’s star had waned. Individual Friends, such as Grubb and Graham, were also influential within the UDC, and encouraged other Quakers to join. Graham wrote to his son in October : ‘I am extremely anxious to make our views heard just now in preparing the mind of the nation for a thorough-going peace settlement. Nothing in our time has been so important.’26 The revitalization of the Quaker witness, the organization of new bodies such as the FoR and, after , the test of conscription together provided a tremendous boost to British pacifism, which became more noticeable and politically important than it had been for centuries.    ‘’     One of the striking features of Perris’s account of his ‘agonizing’ decision to support the war is the description of himself, during the previous twenty years, failing adequately to think through the difference between ‘non-resistance’ and, in effect, pacific-ism. He referred to the influence on him of Tolstoy’s teaching, but also his recognition that force was sometimes required in dire political circumstances: Even then I shirked, evaded, trifled with the truth. Some of my friends in Russia had not hesitated to kill. Knowing the circumstances, I could not condemn them. I sought to have it both ways, bestrode the two stools of peace and liberty. Still, the wholesale, promiscuous, impersonal killing called war was impossible of palliation. The slaughter of the wounded Mahdists, the farm-burning in the Transvaal, the butchery in Manchuria, the bestial feuds in the Balkans or Mexico, and every new step in the development of the armed peace of Europe—no words could be strong enough to condemn these things. It is heart-breaking now to think of successive Anglo-German Friendship Committees. How joyfully I carried 26 For the FoR, see Wallis, Valiant for Peace; Robbins, Abolition of War, –; Martin Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain –: The Defining of a Faith (Oxford, ), ; Friend,  Feb. , ; Graham MSS, Graham to Richard Graham,  Oct. .

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majorities in the International Congress against Gaston Moch’s efforts to define a ‘right of legitimate defence’ (Moch is punishing me now, as military press censor in Paris!), and vilified the ‘War Traders’. It seems an age ago. Nothing would have appeared more impossible before the end of last July than that in the columns of Concord I should ever approve or condone any war.27

Perris went on to say that there was now ‘a lack of agreement on some fundamentals even among old internationalists’. E. G. Smith, for example, had accused him of being an ‘ex-pacifist’. In response to a letter from Mrs Spence Watson which similarly accused Concord of ‘backsliding’, Perris announced that it was high time the ‘fundamental difference’ between different types of ‘pacifist’ should be sorted out: On the one side stands the sincere and consistent non-resister; on the other, the pacifist who, while doing all he can to substitute agreement for force in international relations, recognizes the right and even the duty of using force, in the last resort, for the defence of things which he regards as more sacred than life itself. I have never held the former position myself, and therefore cannot properly be said to be ‘backsliding’ from it.

The peace movement contained a small minority of ‘non-resisters’ who opposed all war, he said, but ‘the great body of the international peace movement, and the mass of ordinary good-hearted citizens, stand on the other side.’ The choice was between the ‘individual saintly life’ expressed in ‘solitary acts of divine madness’ and ‘the evolving political life’: Two roads lie open before us. The one, as I see it, leads to an organization of international life on lines akin to Western organizations of national life—that is to say, a League of Peace having parliamentary, judicial and executive organs, and having some scheme of mutual defence, which would permit of a drastic reduction of armaments, and would be subject to the arbitral and other safeguards at present centred in the Hague Tribunal. The other road is hard and narrow. It is the path of the martyrs of non-resistance, and belongs to those alone who are ready for martyrdom.

It suited Perris to deny the legitimacy of non-interventionist pacific-ism, and to argue, despite his long-standing collaboration with Quakers, that a ‘non-resister’ necessarily ‘cuts himself off . . . from all existing political life, all existing citizenship’. He defended the consistency of the IAPA’s basic ideology: ‘Frightfully as this war hurts us, it has invalidated nothing in our international programme.’28 27

Concord, Nov.–Dec. , –.

28

Concord, Jan.–Feb. , .

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The question of the ‘dilemma of non-resistance’ was again raised in a review by Perris of Carl Heath’s Pacifism in War Time. Perris described what he called Heath’s refusal to address the immediate causes of the war as having nothing ‘international’ about it, ‘and nothing pacifist, unless a mistaken tenderness’. It was ‘as much a disloyalty to international justice as it would have been for us in  to refuse to recognize England’s guilt in South Africa, and the defensive character of the Boers’ resistance’. Perris described his own views as ‘pacifist’, and tried to set up a distinction between the ‘non-resister’ and the ‘pacifist who approves of armed defence’. Perris warned: ‘there has been some danger of the small minority of non-resisters representing themselves publicly as “the peace movement” in these islands.’29 At an annual meeting of the Rationalist Peace Society J. M. Robertson similarly claimed the term ‘pacifism’ as appropriate for his prointerventionist position on the war; and differentiated his beliefs from ‘non-resistance’: ‘We as rationalists have no common cause with those who are non-resisters. It is a misfortune that the peace movement should be associated with non-resisters who are not pacifists in the true sense; they make no appeal to the ordinary individual; they, indeed, compromise the peace movement.’ The IAL, at least for a time, also continued to describe itself as ‘pacifist’. Arbitrator argued that ‘not two men in Britain have a better right to be called pacifists than Clifford and Henderson’— both supported the war. James O’Grady MP, a vocal critic of Grey in the pre-war years and now a member of the IAL council who supported British involvement, wrote in : ‘Although abating in no part my faith as a pacifist, I hope that no attempt will be made by the peoples of Great Britain and the Dominions to suggest peace or frame any proposals for peace until the Germans are out of Belgium and France.’ Some ‘pacifists’, he said, had suggested that it was not right to pronounce any judgement on the merits of the war: ‘We do not so interpret the duty of pacifists. In the last resort justice comes before peace.’ Burt later maintained: ‘I have always been a peace man myself. For thirty-five years, I have been president of the IAL; but I am not a pacifist in the narrow, improper sense in which that term is now used. My hope for the future is that something like a League of Nations may be formed to preserve and enforce peace.’ The IAL began to worry that the ‘pacifist name’ would be denied to those who could not subscribe to ‘absolute non-resistance’: ‘All who are striving for the elimination of war as contrary to the law of nations have lasting 29

Concord, May–June , –.

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Reaction to European War

obligations to Belgium . . . the people of the warring nations are alike interested in the establishment of the very principle Mr Asquith declares that the Allies are risking their all for, and which lies at the heart of the pacifist faith.’30 The struggle for control over the language of ‘pacifism’ between interventionists and non-interventionists came to an end after the introduction of conscription in . Until then, voluntarism was a platform which could unite peace activists for and against the war. For those who supported the war, Britain’s volunteer army was an important symbol of the fight for freedom against militarism, and committee members of the new National Council Against Conscription included interventionists such as Clifford and Massingham. The No-Conscription Fellowship, established in November , stood, on the other hand, for an ethical, ‘brotherhood’ pacifism which recognized all human life as sacred. Edward Grubb was treasurer, but the Fellowship chiefly involved young members of the ILP including Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway, the founder. After the introduction of conscription, the term ‘pacifism’ became more closely identified with conscientious objection. The No-Conscription Fellowship proudly called itself pacifist and was a key welfare organization for conscientious objectors. Campaigners who endorsed the war, on the other hand, began to feel less comfortable with being referred to as ‘pacifists’. In April  one writer in the Arbitrator contended that those who believed in ‘peace with justice’ and supported the British war effort deserved a better label than ‘pacifist’, which now carried with it ‘implications of cowardice, treason or unreason’.31     The IAL and IAPA emphasized the consistency of their peace ideas, but their support for the war, together with the lack of vitality of the Peace Society, meant that most of the old peace associations were quickly supplanted by new bodies—in particular, the UDC, FoR, and the League of Nations Society, founded in May  by Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, W. H. Dickinson and other Liberals. Carl Heath later gave a pacifist’s version of the war’s impact on the peace movement: In  there was let loose a vast tidal wave of uncontrollable moral emotion . . . Men who had been the loudest and most vehement at peace congresses and on 30 Concord, May–June , ; Burt, Autobiography, , Arb., June , ; Aug. , . 31 Arb., June , ; Aug. , ; Mar. , ; May , –; Apr. , .

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peace platforms had swung right round, and some of these were central personalities on the National Peace Council and in the various peace organizations. For a time I suffered from a real sense of despair as the Peace Council showed signs of increasing paralysis, if not of completely breaking up. In the actual event this did not happen. Individuals and organizations went on withdrawing for a time, but the breakaway . . . was presently more than balanced by the formation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation . . . and the Union of Democratic Control.

He went on to list the men and women who ‘much more than made up for the defections’: Henry Hodgkin, E. D. Morel, C. P. Trevelyan, Arthur Ponsonby, and Helena Swanwick, one of the suffragists who set up the pacific-ist Women’s International League in April .32 During the initial stages of the conflict, the NPC attempted to represent all peace societies, even those supporting the war. Tension was soon apparent, however. In February  J. G. Alexander’s suggestion of NPC support for an International Peace Bureau assembly was dismissed.33 Heath’s pacifist pamphlets ‘alarmed’ several members and there was also disagreement about a document on international law couched in terms of accusation of Germany: the Council split eight to seven. In  first the IAL then the IAPA formally disaffiliated. The Arbitrator explained: It became worse than useless to attempt to co-operate with colleagues who, quite sincerely, made a dogma of what is only held to be true by a small minority of the world peace movement, and who invariably gave the premier place to peace rather than justice in their consideration of the questions relating to the war. So long as pacifists who hold that there is such a thing as legitimate defence, and something more important than mere cessation of armed conflict, are ruled out of the movement, or only tolerated on sufferance, it is best for each side to go its own way.

The Rationalist Peace Society had already noted the ‘altered temper’ of the NPC and served notice of its withdrawal.34 The one issue around which both factions managed to unite throughout the war was planning for a future peace—in particular for a League of Nations. The prevalence of moral justifications for Britain’s involvement in the war, in particular the positive crusading argument that it was ‘a war to end war’, helped to ensure that British progressives lost none of their basic optimism in their approach to international relations. The After 32 Heath, autobiography, . For the Women’s International League, see Catherine Foster, Women for all Seasons (Athens, Ga., ). 33 For Alexander’s role in trying to organize mediation by the US and European neutrals to bring an end to the war at the beginning of , see Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism, . 34 RPS MSS, MB,  May .

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Reaction to European War

War League, the Bryce Group, and the League of Nations Society all promoted, and drew up plans for, a new international body to ensure permanent peace. The shock of war convinced pacific-ists of the need for a more formal inter-governmental institution which would structure European politics. ‘When a man suddenly wakes up to find his room on fire,’ J. A. Hobson commented, ‘his movements are not slow.’35 Two aspects of the various schemes for a League of Nations now put forward had not featured in Victorian and Edwardian peace thinking: confederalism itself; and discussion of the need for military sanctions. A paper given to the Rainbow Circle by Harold Wright on ‘Foreign Policy and Pacifism’ summed up these developments. The minutes read: ‘Question for pacifists now is whether policy of non-intervention profoundly right in Cobden’s day is any longer adapted to present necessities, or whether the nations should not rather organize for mutual protection and advantage—including chastisement of the nation that breaks the compact.’ Although sanctions were now accepted as necessary by many peace activists, a section of pacific-ists—and, of course, all pacifists— opposed the use of force by a future League of Nations. A small number of activists was sceptical of the League altogether. E. D. Morel of the UDC, for example, thought it would be ‘at the mercy of the intrigues and imbecilities of professional diplomats and of the ambitions of military castes’.36 These arguments were to continue: the new peace movement, like the old, was characterized by tensions between pacifism and pacificism, and by disputes about engagement and non-intervention. What is most remarkable, however, is that the optimistic assumption held by British progressives as to the possibility of achieving a just and permanently peaceful Europe survived and was even encouraged by the war. The old peace associations slowly disintegrated. During the war the IAL drew up plans for a future peace—Maddison was secretary of a provisional committee designed to federate societies favourable to the idea of ‘mutual protection against aggression’.37 Yet the IAL remained resolutely opposed to a negotiated peace with Germany and was belligerent in its support for a crusade to eradicate German militarism. In  its report to the Carnegie Endowment (which was still providing it with funds) stated: ‘Throughout the prolonged conflict we maintained the position we Quoted in Robbins, Abolition of War, –. Minutes of the Rainbow Circle –, ed. Michael Freeden (), ; Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (Oxford, ), . 37 RPS MSS, letter from Maddison to Hypatia Bonner, secretary of the RPS,  May . The Committee, which had received the imprimatur of James Bryce, included among its members J. F. Green, H. G. Chancellor MP, and A. G. C. Harvey MP. 35 36

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took up the first hour that neutral Belgium was invaded, namely, that the complete overthrow of Kaiserism could alone rid the world of the curse of militarism and make possible the League of Nations.’ Maddison wrote to Lloyd George in  congratulating him on his role in bringing about the League: ‘Having shattered Kaiserism, the people look to the statesmen of the Associated Powers to apply in their own countries the principles of disarmament and voluntary service which they have rightly imposed on Germany.’38 The IAL continued in existence after the war but, like the Lib–Labism of its activists, it was a spent force. Some IALsupporting Lib–Lab MPs who secured re-election after the war had in the meantime moved to the right: James Rowlands and John Ward both stood for the Coalition Liberal Party (Ward had been a prominent recruiter during the war). Although the Arbitrator continued to be published thanks to Cremer’s Nobel Prize money, the IAL took no significant part in the inter-war peace movement. It was finally dissolved in  when it came under the aegis of an organization led by Dr Hugh Schonfield: the ‘Commonwealth of World Citizens’. ‘Our poor little organization is shattered’, Perris said of the IAPA in the autumn of . He went on to diagnose some of the weaknesses of the pre-war peace movement: The appearance of growing strength in our congresses, councils, and other bodies was an illusion. The typical peace society was a small body of gentle eclectics numbering, perhaps,  in a community of ,; but in many large cities no society could be maintained—individually respected and even honoured, but having collectively no influence whatever upon the course of public life. We did a good deal of small hero worship . . . With some of us, the illusion that the movement (I do not speak of the vague internationalist idea outside) was making great progress was only intermittent; and thus a few labour leaders were persuaded, not without difficulty, to associate themselves at least with our annual festivities. Little Bethel was growing; but the body of people stood outside.

In Germany, ‘the place where it was most needed’, there had been, Perris wrote, no organized peace movement, nor much commitment to peace. He continued: ‘Our international bureau and congresses were an amiable and virtuous conspiracy to conceal these facts. We may nearly all be blamed for pretending to a strength we never possessed, and I was myself one of the worst sinners in this respect.’ In an era of ‘anti-imperialist reaction, social reform, educational progress and multiplying arbitration treaties’, optimism had developed into a ‘blindness’. In Perris’s view there 38

IAL MSS, Maddison to Lloyd George, May , copy.

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Reaction to European War

was no likelihood of ‘a sincere union even of the old elements of the international movement’. Writing to Gilbert Murray, he again expressed embarrassment at his opposition to legitimate defence resolutions at UPCs, and declared himself ‘hopeless of the old “peace movement” ’. Perris did not relinquish his ‘idealism’—he was, until his death in , an active supporter of the League of Nations, and campaigned for the development of the Hague Court—but with its exit from the NPC in , the IAPA effectively ceased to exist.39 J. F. Green became increasingly anti-German as the war continued and adopted an antagonistic tone towards those who wanted a negotiated peace. He joined the Socialist National Defence Committee set up to counter ILP opposition to the war and addressed meetings alongside his old comrades Hyndman and Cunningham-Grahame. Green spoke out against British Jews who opposed the war: ‘It is hardly decent,’ he complained, ‘when we are fighting for our national existence, that men who are allowed to live here in a fuller enjoyment of liberty than in any other country should be denouncing the Government for going to war with Germany.’40 Having abandoned Christianity in his youth, he now abandoned socialism and pacific-ism, and moved to the right, perhaps having been provoked into doing so by the Bolshevik peace offer. From  to  Green was an MP representing Leicester West on behalf of the Milnerite National Democratic Party, having defeated Ramsay MacDonald in the ‘Coupon Election’ to win the seat. He joined the staff of Conservative Central Office, and became the permanent private secretary of the Conservative Transport Minister, Sir Eric Geddes. Having presided over the Peace Society’s tame response to British intervention, the elderly Evans Darby resigned as secretary and was replaced by the Baptist minister Herbert Dunnico, an active member of the ILP who was eager to revitalize the Society. Throughout the war it continued to function as a committee, and even suffered night attacks on its offices, but was overshadowed by the new pacifist groups. Despite this, Dunnico, like Henry Richard and Darby before him, was sensitive to taunts about the Society’s inefficacy. Replying to the criticism of the 39 Concord, Sept.–Oct. , –; Gilbert Murray MSS, Perris to Murray,  Nov. ; IAL MSS. Green wrote to Maddison in  stating that ‘the remaining members of the Committee of the old IAPA’ had met and decided to hand over the balance of £ to the IAL; the RPS, when it dissolved in , also handed the balance of its funds to the IAL, see Arb., Apr. , . The IAPA was finally struck off the list of incorporated companies in  (it had been incorporated in  to qualify for the Nobel Prize). 40 Justice,  Oct. , Paul Ward, Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism and the British Left – (Woodbridge, ), .

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Congregationalist pacifist Cecil Cadoux, he declared: ‘To suggest that the Fellowship of Reconciliation was the first Society to take a thoroughgoing and uncompromising stand against the present war is moonshine.’ The most important wartime role of Dunnico was as secretary of the Peace Negotiations Committee, set up in  to represent all those within the peace movement in favour of negotiating with Germany at the earliest possible opportunity.41 After the war, he attracted a number of Labour MPs onto the Society’s committee, and became an MP himself in . But the organization which had been the mainstay of British peace campaigning throughout the nineteenth century gradually lapsed into a moribund state.42 It was to make no serious contribution to the vibrant inter-war peace movement. 41 Robbins, Abolition of War, ; for the minutes of the Peace Negotiations Committee, see Peace Society MSS; and Robbins, Abolition of War, –. 42 Herald of Peace was still published (a few pages per issue only) until the Second World War. In the post-war decades, the Society supported a British nuclear deterrent (information from Mr Clive Dunnico).

BIBLIOGRAPHY   Manuscript Sources Bishopsgate Institute, London, George Howell MSS. Bodleian Library, James Bryce MSS; H. W. Nevinson MSS; Arthur Ponsonby MSS. British Library, Richard Cobden MSS. British Library of Economic and Political Science, Kate and Leonard Courtney MSS; National Peace Council MSS. Churchill College, Cambridge, W. T. Stead MSS. Copenhagen Royal Library, Fredrik Bajer MSS. Deed, Peter, International Arbitration League MSS. Fellowship House, London, Peace Society MSS. Friends House, London, Dictionary of Quaker Biography; R. A. Smith MSS. Glasgow University Library, A. M. Scott MSS. Library of Congress, Andrew Carnegie MSS. London University Library, Herbert Spencer MSS. Manchester University Library, J. W. Graham MSS; C. P. Scott MSS. National Library of Wales, Henry Richard MSS. National Museum of Labour History, British Section of the Second International MSS. Nuffield College, Oxford, Fabian Society MSS; Gainford MSS. Peace Palace Library, The Hague, Frédéric Passy MSS. Public Record Office, Foreign Office MSS; Colonial Office MSS. Swathmore College, Wisbech Local Peace Association MSS. Printed Sources Journals and Newspapers Annual Register Arbitrator Bee-Hive British Friend British Weekly British Workman Commonwealth Concord

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INDEX Aborigines Protection Society , 3, , 3,  Abraham, William (‘Mabon’) ,  Abrams, Irwin  Afghan Committee ,  Afghan War –, , ,  After-War League  Agadir Crisis –,  Alabama dispute and settlement , , , ,  Albright, Arthur , –, , ,  Alexander, Joseph Gundry , , , , , ,  Alexander, W. H. F.  Allan, William  Allen, Clifford  Alsace-Lorraine , , , , ,  Alsop, Robert  Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners ,  American Civil War –, ,  American Peace Society  American War of Independence  Angell, Norman: as author of The Great Illusion , , ,  and Balkan Wars – challenged within peace movement , – distances himself from peace associations ,  and First World War , – and German militarism  inspires popular movement , – as liberal pacific-ist  ‘materialistic’ arguments of  and National Peace Council  and RPS  supports defensive wars ,  Anglo-American Arbitration Committee  Anglo-American arbitration treaty, see arbitration (international) Anglo-French Intervention Committee  Anglo-German Friendship Society –, –, 

Anglo-Russian Agreement –, , , – Anti-Aggression League –,  anti-semitism , , ,  Anti-Slavery Society ,  Anti-Transvaal War Committee  appeasement – Applegarth, Robert –,  Appleton, Lewis: and Afghan Crisis  and belief in just war  and British and Foreign Arbitration Association  as collector of Peace Society , –, , ,  and dismissal from IAPA – and Eastern Question  and Egypt  as embezzler  as Quaker ,  as secretary of IAPA –, – Arabi, Colonel Ahmed  arbitration (industrial) ,  arbitration (international) , –, , , , , , –, –, , , , , ,  Anglo-American provenance of  Anglo-American treaty of –, –, –,  Anglo-French treaty of  Cobden’s motion in favour of  at Congress of Berlin  court/tribunal of , , –,  facilitates co-operation between pacifists and pacific-ists ,  and Hague Conferences –,  importance for peace movement , –, ,  and Inter-Parliamentary movement  limitations to , , , ,  obligatory , ,  and Paris Peace Conference ()  public interest in , –, , , –,  Richard’s motion in favour of –, 



Index

arbitration (international) (cont): treaties of –, , –, , –, –, , –,  and Universal Peace Congresses – view of on Continent ,  Arbitration Alliance of British Christians –, ,  Arch, Joseph , , –, , , ,  armaments spending , –, , , –, , –, , –, –, , , –, , – ‘armaments trust’ – Armenia –, , , , ,  arms race , , , –, , , –,  artisan radicalism , , –, –, – Ashanti War ,  Asquith, Herbert Henry , , , , , , , , , ,  Associated Council of Churches – Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations –,  Australia , ,  Austria , , , , , ,  Babbs, J.  Backhouse, Edward  Baines, Edward  Bajer, Fredrik  Baker, James Allen ,  balance of power , , –, , –, – Balfour, Arthur James , , ,  Balkans , , – Balkan Wars –,  Baptists , , , , , , ,  Barclay, Sir Thomas  Barnes, George  Barry, Maltman ,  Bax, Ernest Belfort  Beaconsfield, Lord, see Disraeli Beales, A. C. F.  Beales, Edmond: and British branch of ILPL  as chairman of WPC , – and Eastern Question ,  as president of WPA ,  and Reform League , ,  Bebel, August  Beesly, E. S. , , , 

Belgium , , –, , –, –, –, ,  Bellaire, Henri  Bellows, John  Bentham, Jeremy , ,  Bernard, Montague – Bey, Ahmed Riza  Binns, Richard  Bismarck, Prince Otto von ,  Blanc, Louis – Blind, Karl , –, ,  Bloch, Jean de  Blunt, W. S.  Bluntschli, Johann Kaspar – Boa, Andrew  Boer War, see South African War Bonar Law, Andrew ,  Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh , , , ,  Bonner, Revd W. H. ,  Bosnia-Herzegovina  Bowerman, C. W.  Boys’ and Girls’ Life Brigades  Boy Scouts  Bradlaugh, Charles , , , ,  Brailsford, H. N. , , , , , , , –,  Brassey, Lord – Bright, J. A.  Bright, Jacob , , , ,  Bright, John: and American Civil War – and arbitration  and Crimean War –,  and Eastern Question , , ,  family of , , ,  and ‘idealism’  opposes Disraeli  as pacific-ist , – in Parliament ,  remembered with nostalgia  resigns over Egypt – as vice-president of IAPA  Bright, Mrs Leatham  Bright, Ursula ,  Bristol, Marquis of  British and Foreign Arbitration Association  Britten, Benjamin , , , , ,  Broadhurst, Henry , , , ,  Brockway, Fenner  Brown, Alfred  Brunner, Sir John 

Index Bryce Group  Buchanan, George  Bulgaria , –, ,  Bülow, Prince von  Burma – Burns, John , , ,  Burritt, Elihu –, , –,  Burrows, Herbert , , , , , ,  Burt, Thomas: and Anglo-American relations ,  appointed WPA president  and Eastern Question  and Egypt – and First World War , ,  insulted by Cremer  and Inter-Parliamentary movement – as Lib–Lab MP  and naval estimates  opposes ILP  and SFRF  and South African War , ,  Butler, Josephine  Buxton, F. W.  Buxton, Noel –,  Byles, W. P. , , ,  Cadbury family ,  Cadoux, Cecil  Caine, W. S.  Cambon, Paul  Campbell, Sir George ,  Campbell-Bannerman, Henry , – Canada  Cape Colony  Capper, Mrs Samuel J.  Capper, Samuel J. ,  Carnegie, Andrew , –, , , , , , ,  Carpenter, Revd R. L.  Cassall, Charles  Catholicism , ,  Catford, Henry  Ceadel, Martin  Cecil, Lord Robert  Chamberlain, Joseph , , , –, ,  Chambers of Commerce  Chamerovzow, L. A.  Channing, F. A. , , – Channing, Revd W. H. 



Charleton, Robert  Chartism , ,  Chesson, Frederick W. , ,  China ,  Chinese labour scandal  Christian Endeavour groups  Christian Union for Promoting International Concord  Church of England , , – Church of England Peace League – Churchill, Winston  Cigar Makers’ Mutual Association  City Neutrality Committee  Clark, Gavin Brown: and Anglo-German friendship  criticizes peace associations  and Egypt ,  and IAPC  and Inter-Parliamentary movement  and IAPA  and South African War – and Transvaal Independence Committee – Clark, Roger  Clarke, William , , –,  Clayden, P. W. , ,  Cleveland, President Grover ,  Clifford, Revd John: and Anglo-American arbitration  and Anglo-French friendship  and Armenian massacres  and arms race  and Eastern Question  and Egypt  and First World War , – and Greco-Turkish War  invited to join Peace Society executive  and London UPC – as member of IAPC  as non-affiliated peace activist  and Peace Crusade –,  and School Peace League  and South African War  Coalition Liberal Party  Cobden, Richard: advises Henry Richard  and American Civil War  and arbitration –, ,  and arms spending , – and Crimean War – first involvement with peace movement of 



Index

Cobden, Richard (cont): and free trade ,  as ‘idealist’  and influence of ideas on peace movement , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –,  as liberal pacific-ist –, , – and non-interventionism ,  as pacific-ism’s main spokesman  on Palmerston  in Parliament , –, – and PCC  and Quakers  as radical pacific-ist  Cobden–Chevalier Treaty  Cobden Club , , ,  Collins, Sir William  Colman, J. J. ,  Committee for Imperial Defence  compulsory military service , , – Conan Doyle, Arthur  Concert of Europe , , , –, , ,  Conder, G. W.  confederalism  Congo , ,  Congregationalism , , , , , , , ,  Congress of Berlin – Congreve, Richard , ,  conscription , , , ,  Conservative Party , , –, , –, , , , , ,  Cooke, Mary Lamley , , , –,  Cooper, Ben  Cooper, Joseph  Cooper, Sandi  Cooper, Thomas  Corbett, J.  Corn Laws – Coulton, G. G.  Courtney, Kate , , – Courtney, Lord (Leonard): and Anglo-American relations  and Anglo-Russian Agreement  and armaments spending  and Egypt  and First World War  and London UPC – and non-interventionism 

and Peace Crusade ,  as president of National Peace Council – and South African War ,  Crane, Walter ,  Crawford, William  Cremer, William Randal: and Alabama campaign  and American Civil War  and Anglo-American arbitration –, – and Anglo-French friendship  and Anti-Aggression League  and arbitral court  argues freedom consequent on peace – and British branch of ILPL  as ‘broad-minded Christian’  and citizen militia ,  clashes with socialists  as craft union leader  as crusader  and Eastern Question –, – and Egypt ,  as ‘father’ of IPU  feels gloomy about politics ,  as founder of WPA , ,  and Franco-Prussian War – at Geneva Congress – and Hague Conference ()  and IAPC  impact of ,  and International Union  and Inter-Parliamentary movement , – and IWMA – libel case of  as Mazzinian – and National Peace Congresses  as Nobel Peace Prize winner , ,  opposition to female suffrage of –,  outspoken anti-imperialism of , –, – overseas ambitions of –,  pacific-ism of  in Parliament –, , –, ,  and Peace Crusade –, – as ‘Peace Lobbyist’ ,  and Reform League ,  republican sympathies of ,  and reputation as ‘professional agitator’ , , 

Index and South African War , –, –,  unpopularity of , –, , –, ,  Crete – Crimean War –,  Crooks, Will ,  crusading: as aggressive war – and artisan radicalism – and Balkan Wars –,  and Belgium ,  and Crimean War ,  defined  and Eastern Question , –, , –,  and Egypt  and First World War –, –,  and Franco-Prussian War –,  IAPA and  and Italy , ,  as Mazzini’s ‘one more war’ theory ,  and Poland  Cunninghame Graham, Robert ,  Cust, Henry  Dale, Revd R. W.  Darby, Revd Evans: and Angell  and Anglo-American relations  and Anglo-German friendship  appointed as Peace Society secretary  and Arbitration Alliance – and Armenian massacres  as author of International Tribunals ,  and compulsory military service  as energetic pacifist  and First World War ,  and Greco-Turkish War  and IAPC  new initiatives of  opposes centralized peace movement ,  opposes strike against war  and Peace Crusade  and Peace Society’s ‘forward movement’  resigns as Peace Society secretary  as secretary of London UPC 



and South African War –,  and Universal Peace Congresses – Darwinianism  Davis, George  Davitt, Michael – Dean, P.  Declaration of London – defencism , , , , ,  Denmark  Derby, Lord (E. H. Stanley) , –, , ,  Descamps, Edouard  Desmoulins, Auguste  Dickinson, W. H. –,  Dickson, Colonel – disarmament , , , –, –, , ,  at Inter-Parliamentary Conferences  at Universal Peace Congresses  see also armaments spending Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield) , –, –, ,  Dixon, George ,  Dogger Bank dispute  Dollfuss, Jean  Dornbusch, George  Downing, Mrs Stuart  Dunn, Andrew  Dunnico, Herbert – Durant, J. C.  Dykes, Revd Oswald  Eastern Question , , –, , , – Eastern Question Association , , ,  Edward VII, King , ,  Edwards, John Passmore , , , , , –, ,  Eglinton, John  Egypt , , , , – war in () , –, , , , – Egyptian Committee  Engels, Friedrich ,  ‘entangling alliances’ –, , , –, –,  Entente Cordiale – Esher, Lord ,  Evans, Howard: and American Civil War  and armaments spending  and Balkans 



Index

Evans, Howard (cont): as Cremer’s biographer  as Cremer’s right-hand-man  and Eastern Question – as Gladstonian  on IAL’s record ,  as Liberal Unionist  and Peace Crusade  and UPCs  and WPA ,  and WPC  Fabian Society –, ,  Facey, T. G.  Farrer, James Anson ,  Fashoda Crisis ,  Fawcett, Henry  federalism , –,  Fellowship of Reconciliation , –,  Fenwick, Charles , , ,  Field, David Dudley ,  financial critique of war –, , –, , , ,  Finland  First International, see International Working Men’s Association First World War –, , – Fordham, George  foreign policy, democratic control of  Forster, W. E.  ‘forward defence’ of Britain –, –, –, ,  Fox, F. W. , , –,  France , –, –, , –, , , –, , , , , , , , , , –, ,  Franco-Prussian War , –, ,  free trade , , , , , , , , , ,  French Arbitration Society, see Ligue internationale et permanente de la paix Frere, Sir Bartle  Fried, Alfred  Friends’ Northern Peace League  Friends’ Peace Committee: and Anglo-German relations  and compulsory military service  encourages Quakers to take action  and First World War  formation of – membership of  and National Peace Congresses 

pacifism of  and Peace Crusade ,  and South African War  and strike against war  and Universal Peace Congresses ,  Friends, Society of, see Quakers Fry family  Fry, Joseph Storrs  Gaelic League  Galbraith, John , –, – Gambetta, Léon  Gardiner, A. G. ,  Garibaldi, Giuseppe –, , – Garibaldian Italian Unity Committee  Garnett, Constance  Garnett, Edward  Garrison, William Lloyd ,  Garton, Sir Richard  Geddes, Sir Eric  Geldart, Revd E. M.  General Federation of Trade Unions  Geneva Congress (), see international congresses of peace societies Germany , , , –, , , , –, –, , –, , , , –, –, , , , –, , –, , –, , , – Gillett, George ,  Gladstone, William E.: and Alabama settlement  and Anglo-American relations  and arbitration – and arms spending , ,  and Eastern Question , –, – and Egypt – first Government of , – and Franco-Prussian War ,  and ‘idealism’ , ,  leads opposition to Disraeli , –,  opposes Palmerston  and policy of engagement , , –, , –, , ,  and popularity among working men , , , , ,  remembered with nostalgia , ,  second Government of ,  sets himself apart from peace movement –, ,  and South African War (–) 

Index and Sudan  third Government of  Glasgow United Trades’ Council  Gledstone, Revd J. P. ,  Goddard, C.  Goegg, Amand  Gooch, G. P. , , , ,  Gordon, General Charles George – Goschen, Sir George  Gould, F. J.  Graham, J. W.: and Angell  and Armenian massacres  and compulsory military service  and exemption  and First World War  and ‘Quaker Renaissance’  and School Peace League  supports strike against war  Grane, W. L. – Grant, Corrie  Granville, Lord  Greece –, ,  Green, Joseph Frederick: abandons clerical profession  abandons peace movement  and Anglo-German friendship  and arbitral court  and Balkans  and disarmament  as Fabian  and First World War ,  and IAPC  opposes Anglo-Russian Agreement  and Peace Crusade  and RPS  as secretary of IAPA , ,  as secretary of National Peace Congresses – as SDF representative – and SFRF ,  as socialist –,  and South African War ,  Grey, Sir Edward: and Anglo-Russian Agreement  and Balkans ,  criticized ,  denies existence of British obligations , , , , – and First World War –, ,  and Peace Crusade  reads Angell  Grubb, Edward:



and Angell  and Armenian massacres  and compulsory military service ,  and First World War – and No-Conscription Fellowship  and ‘Quaker Renaissance’  and South African War – and Territorial Army  Guedella, Joseph – Guile, Daniel ,  Gurney, H. E.  Gurney, Samuel  Hackney Working Men’s Club  Hague Conferences  () , –,  () –, , ,  Hague Tribunal –, , ,  Haig, Field Marshal Douglas  Haldane, R. B.  Hales, John  Hamilton, John – Hamilton, Vesey  Hammond, J. L. , , , ,  Hampstead Peace Society  Harcourt, William  Hardie, Keir: and Anglo-French friendship  and compulsory national service  in fierce exchange with Cremer  and First World War ,  and ILP  as key peace activist  and South African War – Harrison, A. F.  Harrison, Frederic , , –, –,  Hartington, Lord  Harvey, A. G. C. –, –, ,  Hayward, A. B.  Hayward, J. J.  Hazell, Walter , ,  Heath, Carl –, , – Henderson, Arthur , ,  Hervé, Gustave  Hicks, Edward Lee ,  Hill, William ,  Hindley, Charles  Hirsch, Max – Hirst, F. W. , , –, , ,  Hobhouse, Lord Arthur ,  Hobhouse, Emily  Hobhouse, L. T. , , , 



Index

Hobson, J. A.: and Angell ,  and armaments policies  as author of Imperialism ,  and education  and First World War ,  as friend of Perris  and IAPA –, ,  and International Union  and jingoism  as leading progressive ,  as liberal pacific-ist  and LLAAM  and National Peace Council  as radical pacific-ist  and South African War  Hobson, S. G. , ,  Hodgkin, Henry ,  Holland , ,  Holmes, Timothy  Holyoake, G. J. , ,  Horne, Silvester  Horniman, F. J.  Horniman, John , ,  Horsely, Canon  Howard, Michael  Howe, Anthony  Howell, George , , , , , , , ,  Hughes, Hugh Price , , , ,  Hugo, Victor  Humanitarian League ,  Hungary , –, ,  Hunt, H. M.  Hunt, Holman  Huntsman, M. H.  Huntsman, Sophie  Hyacinthe, Père (Charles Loyson)  Hyndman, Henry ,  ‘idealism’ , –, , , ,  defined  and First World War , ,  fracturing of , –, ,  strength of within British political culture ,  Illingworth, Alfred , , , –,  imperialism , –, , , , –,  peace movement’s critique of ,  opposition to –, –, , –

Independent Labour Party –, , , ,  and compulsory military service  and First World War , , ,  increasing interest in peace issues of  keeps its distance from peace associations  and National Peace Congresses – and Peace Crusade  pre-war campaigns of  and South African War  and strike against war  Indian Reform Association  Institute of International Law  International Arbitration League –, – and Angell  and Anglo-American arbitration treaty – and Anglo-French arbitration treaty  and Anglo-German relations – and Anglo-Russian Agreement  and armaments policies , , – and Armenian massacres – artisan radical core of  and Balkans , – and churches  and compulsory military service – and concern over Liberal Party  and ‘Cremer fund’ – demise of – finances of , , , – and First World War , –, – formation – and ‘forward defence’ of Britain – and Greco-Turkish War  and Inter-Parliamentary movement  as Lib–Lab body , , , ,  loses nationwide constituency  and National Peace Council – opposes strike against war  and South African War , – supports defensive wars  supports Sir Edward Grey –,  and Universal Peace Congresses  see also Workmen’s Peace Association International Arbitration and Peace Association –, –, – and Alsace-Lorraine , ,  and Armenian massacres – and Anglo-American relations  and arbitral court 

Index and arbitration , ,  and armaments policies ,  attitude to politics of –,  and Balkans , , – Basle congress of  Berne congress of  Brussels congress of ,  committee of ,  and compulsory military service – and Concert of Europe  and constituency of support , ,  and ‘councils of conciliation’ –,  and crusading ,  demise of – and democracy as foundation of peace , , , , –,  dismisses Lewis Appleton  and Egypt ,  finances of –, , –,  and First World War –, , – formation of , – French committee of ,  and importance of national selfdetermination – international ambitions of , , – looks to socialism , ,  and merger with TIC  and National Peace Council – opposes Anglo-Russian Agreement , ,  opposes Sir Edward Grey  pacific-ism of ,  and Peace Crusade , ,  recruitment of Perris fresh start for  resemblance to Continental peace groups  secularism of  and South African War –, – struggles to survive , –,  and Sudan  sympathizes with women’s suffrage – targets militarism not war , , – and Universal Peace Congresses , ,  and women’s peace activism  International Armaments Protest Committee –,  international congresses of peace societies: Brussels () ,  Paris () ,  Frankfurt () , 



London () ,  Geneva () –,  see also Universal Peace Congresses International Democratic Association  international law , –, –, , , – codification of , –, –,  International Law Society, see Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations International Peace Bureau –, ,  international peace movement , , –, –, –, , –, , –; see also Universal Peace Congresses International Union – International Working Men’s Association: First International –, –, , –, ,  Second International –, , , – Inter-Parliamentary Conferences: Paris () , – London ()  Paris ()  London ()  Inter-Parliamentary Union –, ,  invasion scares , , ,  Irish Home Rule – Italy , –, –, , , , , ,  Jameson Raid ,  jingoism , , , , , , – and Crimean War – and Eastern Question –,  enters the language  and First World War  and South African War –, , , , ,  Johnston, Sir Harry  Joiner, William  Jones, Ernest  Jones, William ,  Khan, Ishmail  Kimberley, Lord (John Wodehouse)  King, E. M.  Kingsley, Charles  Kinnaird, Lord  Koss, Stephen  Kossuth, Lajos 



Index

Kravchinsky, Sergey Mikhailovich (Stepniak) ,  Kropotkin, Prince Peter  Kruger, Paul  Labouchere, Henry , ,  labour movement , , –, –, –, ,  and armaments policies  patriotism within  Labour Party  Labour Representation Committee  Labour Representation League , ,  Labourers’ Union  Ladies Petition for Peace  Lancashire and Cheshire International Arbitration Association , ,  Land and Labour League ,  Lansbury, George  Lansdowne, Lord  Lascelles, Frank  Lassassie, F.  Laveleye, Emile de , ,  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid: and American Civil War  and Anti-Aggression League  and core idea of peace movement – and Eastern Question ,  and Egypt – and IAPC  and International Union  and Inter-Parliamentary movement  in Parliament  and Reform League  and South African War (–)  and South African War (–)  and Sudan  supports Richard’s arbitration motion  as WPA backer  League in Aid of Christians in Turkey  League of Liberals Against Aggression and Militarism ,  League of Nations , , , – League of Nations Society ,  League of Universal Brotherhood , – Lean, Walter  Leeman, George  Lehmann, Rudolph C. ,  Leicester, Joseph  Leicester Trades Council  Le Lubez, Victor , –, 

Lemonnier, Charles –, , ,  Levi, Leone , , , ,  liberalism –, ,  Liberal associations , , , ,  ‘Liberal Forwards’ –,  Liberal Imperialists , ,  Liberal Party , , –, , , , , , , ,  divided into two camps , ,  and Eastern Question , ,  and emergence of imperialist wing  formation of  accused of standing for ‘peace at any price’ ,  and ‘idealism’ ,  place of Radicals within , , ,  and South African War –,  Liberation Society ,  ‘Lib–Lab’ politics , , –, ,  Liebknecht, Karl  Liebknecht, Wilhelm  Ligue internationale et permanente de la paix , ,  Ligue internationale de la paix et de la liberté , ,  British branch of – Limousin, Charles  Liverpool and Birkenhead Women’s Peace and Arbitration Association ,  Liverpool Peace Society  Lloyd George, David , , , ,  London Committee on Eastern Affairs  London Esperanto Club  London Indian Society  London Trades’ Council  Loreburn, Lord (Robert Reid) , ,  Lorimer, James  Loubet, President  Lovett, William , ,  Lowe, J.  Lowery, Robert  Lubbock, Sir John (Lord Avebury) , , , ,  Lucraft, Benjamin , , , , , , , , ,  Luxembourg Crisis – Lytton, Lord  MacCree, George Wilson  MacDonald, Alexander 

Index MacDonald, James Ramsay: and Anglo-French relations  and First World War –, – as key peace activist  and London UPC  loses to Green in ‘Coupon Election’  and National Peace Council  and Peace Crusade  as supporter of IAPA  Macdonell, John –,  Macedonia , – Mackarness, Frederick  Maddison, Frederick: and Anglo-German relations  and Balkans  on Cremer  and First World War , – and LLAAM  and National Peace Council  opposes socialism  opposes strike against war  and Peace Crusade ,  and South African War  supports defensive wars  supports Sir Edward Grey  Manchester District Peace and Arbitration League  Manchester Peace Congress Committee  Mancini, Professor Pasquale S.  Manhood Suffrage League  Mann, Tom  Manning, Henry Edward  Martin, L. W.  Marx, Karl –,  Marylebone Electoral Reform Association  Mason, D. M. ,  Mason, Hugh ,  Massingham, H. W. , , ,  Masterman, C. F. G.  Maurice, Frederick Denison  Maurier, Guy du  Mazzini, Giuseppe , , –, –, – ‘one more war’ theory of –, , – Merriman, J. J. , ,  Methodism ,  Midland Arbitration Union  Miles, Revd James B.  militarism: as campaign for military service – definition of in Ceadel’s typology  early criticism of 



enters the language  and First World War ,  German , , –, – popular manifestations of in Britain , , , –,  Russian ,  targeted by Radical anti-imperialists , – Mill, James ,  Mill, John Stuart ,  Millais, John Everett  Milner, Sir Alfred  Moch, Gaston  Montenegro  Morel, E. D. , , – Morland, C. C.  Morland, H. J.  Morley, John –, , , ,  Morley, Samuel: and arbitration  and Eastern Question , ,  and Egypt  and Garibaldi  and Nonconformist Vigilance Committee  in Parliament  as Reform League backer  supports British branch of ILPL  supports defensive wars  as WPA backer ,  Morocco , ,  Morris, A. J. A. , , , ,  Morris, William ,  Moscheles, Felix : and Anglo-German friendship ,  as chairman of IAPA  early life of  and meetings at his studio ,  and Peace Crusade  as recruiter of peace activists ,  and South African War , ,  and UPCs  Mottershead, Thomas , , , ,  Mundella, A. J. , ,  Murphy, Revd G. M. ,  Murray, Gilbert , , –,  Napoleon, Emperor Louis –, – Napoleonic Wars ,  Natal  National Agricultural Labourers’ Union 



Index

National Council Against Conscription  National Democratic Party  National Free Church Council  National Liberal Federation , ,  National Peace Congresses ,  () ,  ()  ()  () ,  ()  () ,  () ,  National Peace Council , –, , –, , , , , ,  National Reform Union  National Service League , – National Society for the Resistance of Russian Aggression and the Protection of British Interests in the East  naval defence , , , , –, , –, , , , ,  Navy League ,  Neutrality Committee  Neutrality League  Nevinson, H. W. , , –, ,  New Zealand  Newbold, Walton ,  Newman, T. P. –, , , ,  Newman Hall, Revd Christopher , , , ,  Newton, Douglas  Nicholas II, Tsar –, ,  Nicholson, Colin  Nicoll, William Robertson  Nobel Peace Prize , , ,  No-Conscription Fellowship  Nonconformist Vigilance Committee  Nonconformity –, , –, , , , , , , , , –, , ,  non-interventionism , , , , –, , , , –, , , ,   criticism of , , –, –, –, , –, , , ,  non-resistance, see pacifism Norfolk Commission on Militia and Volunteers  Novicow, Jacques –,  Nuttal, Harry 

O’Brien, Bronterre  Odger, George , –, –, , – O’Grady, James  Oldham Trades Council  Olive Leaf Societies  Olivier, Sydney ,  Olney–Pauncefote Treaty – O’Neill, Revd Arthur , , , –,  Operative Painters’ Society  Orange Free State  Osborne, John , ,  Osborne, William  Owen, Robert  Owen, William  pacific-ism , , , , , , , , , , , ,  confident assertion of during s  defined  as dominant peace ideology  fails to acquire distinguishing label , –,  feminist  and First World War –, , –,  and Gladstone ,  liberal –, –, ,  original meaning of  radical –, , –, –, , –, , – socialist  and South African War (–)  and South African War (–) – structural weaknesses within ,  pacifism –, , , , , –, , , , , , –, –, , –, , , , –,  appeal of during s  and compulsory military service – defined  and disarmament  as equivalent of ‘non-resistance’ – and First World War , , –,  inspirations of , ,  and loss of popular appeal  minority position within peace movement of , –, , –, ,  original meaning of , – and sanctions  sectarian implications of 

Index and South African War –, – Tolstoyan ,  at Universal Peace Congresses – Paine, Thomas , , , ,  Palmerston, Lord –, –, ,  Pankhurst, Emmeline –,  Pankhurst, Richard Marsden  Paris Peace Conference ()  Passy, Frederic , –, , , , ,  Pauncefote, Julian ,  Peace Congress Committee ,  Peace Crusade – peace movement in America , –, ,  peace movement in Britain: acquires label ‘movement’  assumes isolationism always possible , , –, – defined – and general critique of imperial expansion  emphasizes education ,  endorses British naval superiority –,  ideological variety within , –, , , –,  importance of Nonconformity to –,  institutional structure of –, – and inter-governmental co-operation  mid-century successes of – and new generation of leaders  opposes compulsory military service – opposition to , – pacific-ist majority within  place in national politics of –,  renovation of during First World War – secularism within  strength of as compared to Continental movements , , ,  and Universal Peace Congresses – peace movement in France , , –, , , ,  peace movement in Germany , –, , , , –,  Peace Negotiations Committee  ‘peace party’ , , , , , , , –,  Peace Society , –, –, –

 and Afghan crisis  agents of , ,  and American Civil War – and Angell ,  and Anglo-Russian Agreement , – and Anti-Aggression League – and Armenian massacres – auxiliaries of , , , , , ,  and Balkans  becomes moribund  caution of –, , , , , , –, , , , , ,  and central committee membership , ,  changes name of journal  and citizen militia  and compulsory military service  and Congress of Berlin – core pacifism of , , , –, ,  and Crimean War  as dominant peace association ,  early politicization of ,  and Eastern Question –, –, –,  and Egypt –, – finances of , –, , , –, , –, , ,  and First World War – formation of  and formation of IAPA  and Franco-Prussian War , , – and Geneva Congress – and Greco-Turkish War  and IAL  international initiatives of – and IWMA , ,  Ladies Auxiliary of , , ,  and Lewis Appleton , – long-term achievement of  loss of ascendancy of , , , , ,  membership of , , –,  and National Peace Council – and opening of archive – opposes centralized peace movement –, –,  opposes Disraeli – opposes wars of national liberation , , 



Index

Peace Society (cont): presidents of ,  Quaker influence on , –, , , , ,  and Reform League ,  and sanctions  and secular peace arguments , , –, , – and South African War (–) – and South African War (–) –,  and UPCs – vice-presidents of – and women , , ,  and WPA , , , , –, ,  and Zulu War – Peace Union, see Women’s Local Peace Association Pease, Arthur  Pease, Edward  Pease, Henry ,  Pease, J. A.  Pease, J. W. , , , , ,  Peckover, Alexander  Peckover, Priscilla: and Anglo-German friendship  and Armenian massacres  opposes Unitarianism  as peace movement benefactor , , ,  and  Quaker peace conference  recommends Darby  and South African War  and Universal Peace Congresses –,  voices ‘maternal’ peace arguments ,  and Wisbech Local Peace Association  and Women’s Local Peace Association  Peel, Sir Robert ,  Penal Reform League  People’s International League ,  Percival, John , , ,  Perris, George Herbert: ambiguous peace beliefs of  and Anglo-German relations –, –, – and Anglo-Russian Agreement –,  and arbitration  and armaments policies , 

as author of Empire, Trade and Armaments  as author of Germany and the German Emperor – as author of Our Foreign Policy and Sir Edward Grey’s Failure  as author of The War Traders ,  brother a peace activist  and Concert of Europe ,  and disarmament  as editor of Concord  emerges as leading spokesman of IAPA – ethicist connections of  father a peace activist  and First World War , , –, , –, – as Gladstonian –, ,  and Hague Conference ()  and Hague Conference () – and hopes for democracy – and hopes for ‘peace party’ –,  and IAPC – and imperialism  and LLAAM  and London UPC  looks to socialism , –, – and National Peace Council – and national self-determination  and nature of modern war  and Peace Crusade – as secretary of Cobden Club  and SFRF ,  and South African War , – supports strike against war  and Tolstoy  Perris, Harry Shaw , ,  Perseverance Co-operative Society  Persia , – Phillips, William , ,  Pickard, Ben , ,  Playfair, Sir Lyon  Playne, Caroline  Pleasant Sunday Afternoon movement , ,  Poland , –, –, , –, ,  Polish Society of the White Eagle  Pollard, William , , , ,  Ponsonby, Arthur , , ,  Portugal  Positivism , ,  Potter, George , ,  Potter, T. B. 

Index Pratt, Hodgson: and Anglo-American relations ,  and Concert of Europe  on Cremer ,  criticizes Peace Society  decreasing importance of within IAPA  as driving force behind IAPA , – and Eastern Question  as European-minded , , –, –,  and formation of IAPA  and IAPA European federation –, – and International Union  lectures held in memory of  and Lewis Appleton – ‘noble character’ of  and need for a ‘political’ peace movement –, , , , , ,  as ‘old warrior’ on behalf of peace  and South African War –,  and Universal Peace Congresses , –,  as WPA backer  as WPA international agent ,  Pratt, Magee ,  Pratt, Samuel Peace  Presbyterians ,  Price, J. T.  Price, Richard  Priestman, John  Primitive Methodism  Pro-Boers, see South African War Prussia, see Germany Quakers , –, , , , , , ,  and Afghan crisis  in America  and Angell ,  and Anglo-German relations  and Arbitration Alliance  and Armenian massacres – as backbone of peace movement , – and Balkans  and collaboration with pacific-ists ,  and compulsory military service – and decline and revival of pacifist witness , –, –, , , , , –,  and Egypt , 



and ‘Evangelical’ resistance to politics ,  and exemption from military service  and First World War – at Hague Conference ()  and international congresses of peace societies , , ,  as large majority of pacifists  and national peace congresses ,  in Parliament  and Peace Crusade – and Peace Society  place within nation of , –,  and ‘Quaker Renaissance’ ,  and South African War –, – theology of  see also Friends’ Peace Committee Queux, William Le  radicalism , , ,  Radicals , , , , , , , ,  and armaments policies , – battle with Liberal Imperialists  and Crimean War  and influence within Liberal Party , , – and Mazzini-ism ,  and non-interventionism  oppose Sir Edward Grey  and South African War  Rainbow Circle  Rationalist Peace Society –, , , ,  ‘realism’ –, , ,  Reform League , –, , – ‘Reform Party’  Rhodes, Cecil , , , ,  Richard, Henry: and Afghan crisis  and Anti-Aggression League ,  appointed Peace Society secretary  and arbitral court  arbitration motion of () –,  and ARCLN – and British branch of ILPL  and Crimean War  defends Peace Society’s pacifism , , , ,  defends Peace Society’s record , ,  disarmament motion of () –



Index

Richard, Henry (cont): and Eastern Question –, –, , , ,  edits the Morning Star  and Egypt – and formation of IAPA – and Franco-Prussian War ,  as friend of Cobden  and IAPA’s activities – and IWMA  as key administrator of PCC  and Lewis Appleton – opposes Geneva Congress – opposes nationalism ,  in Parliament , , –, –,  as Peace Society’s greatest asset  praises Hodgson Pratt – and Reform League ,  retires as Peace Society secretary  tours Europe ,  travels to Paris Peace Conference  and workers’ peace activism – and WPA , , ,  right of capture , , – Roberts, Lord  Robertson, J. M.: and armaments policies ,  and First World War  and IAPA  and International Union  as leading progressive  and RPS –,  and South African War  Robinson, Ellen , , , , ,  Rogers, Revd James Guinness ,  Rogers, James Thorold , , ,  Rosebery, Lord –, ,  Rowlands, James , , –, , ,  Rowntree family  Rowntree, Joseph  Rowntree, Seebohm  Rushbrooke, Revd J. H.  Russell, Bertrand  Russell, G. W. E. , , , , ,  Russia , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , –, , –, , –, – Russian Atrocities Protest Committee  Rylands, Peter , , ,  Salisbury, Lord , , , ,  sanctions –, 

Schleswig-Holstein  Schonfield, Hugh  School Peace League  Scott, C. P. , , ,  Second International, see International Working Men’s Association ‘secret diplomacy’ , , , , , , ,  secularism , , , ,  Seebohm, Frederic  Seeley, John  Sefton-Jones, Hugh  Seligman, Isaac  Serbia , , ,  Seven Weeks War ()  Shaftesbury, Lord  Shaw, George Bernard ,  Shaw, Lord  Siccardi, Captain  Simon, Sir John  Simon, Jules  Sinclair, M.  Smith, E. G. , –, ,  Smith, Edward  Smith, Goldwin  Snape, Thomas ,  Snell, Harry  Snowden, Mrs Philip  Social Democratic Federation , , , , , ,  Social Democratic Party (Germany) –, ,  Social Science Association  socialism , ,  Socialist National Defence Committee  Society for Abolishing War  Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment  Society of Friends, see Quakers Society of Friends of Russian Freedom –, –, , –,  Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace, see Peace Society Soskice, David  South Africa Conciliation Committee , , – South African War (–) – South African War (–) , , , –, , , , , ,  Southey, Mrs ,  Soutter, F. W. , ,  Spence Watson, Mrs 

Index Spence Watson, Robert , , –, ,  Spencer, Herbert –, , ,  Spender, J. A.  sport, popularity of , ,  Staffordshire Pottery Trades Committee  Stainsby, W. D. ,  standing armies , ,  Stanhope, Philip (Lord Weardale) , , ,  Stanley, Lord, see Derby, Lord Stansfield, James  Stead, W. T.: and Anglo-American relations , – and Anglo-Russian relations  and armaments spending – and belief in Rhodesian imperialism  and belief in ‘United States of Europe’  at Hague Conferences –, – and naval scare () ,  opposes ‘small navy’  and Peace Crusade – ‘pilgrimages’ of , ,  ridicules peace associations , –, , – and South African War –, – Steadman, Will  Stepney, W. F. C. ,  Stokes, Revd William ,  Stop-the-War Committee , , ,  Stop-the-War League  Storey, Samuel  Strachey, John St Loe  strike against war , , ,  Strong, Sir Thomas Vezey  Sturge, Charles  Sturge, Edmund  Sturge, Joseph , , –, ,  Sudan –, , ,  Suttner, Baroness Bertha von , ,  Swansea Plasterers’ Society  Swanwick, Helena  Swinburne, Algernon  Swinny, S. H. –,  Switzerland  Tallack, William ,  Tangier Crisis ,  Taylor, A. J. P. ,  Taylor, P. A. , , , , , 



temperance , , –, , ,  Territorial Army  Thomas, George  Thomasson, J. P. , , ,  Thomasson, Thomas  Thompson, Frances ,  Thompson, George  Thorne, Will  Threlfall, T. R.  Tolstoy, Count Leo Nikolayevich ,  Trade Unionists’ Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association  Trades’ Garibaldian Demonstration Committee  Trades Union Congress , , , , , ,  trades union movement , , , , , , , ,  Transvaal Committee ,  Transvaal Independence Committee – Transvaal Republic –, , , , ,  Treaty of San Stefano  Treaty of Washington , ,  Trent dispute  Trevelyan, C. P. , –,  Trevelyan, G. M.  Turkey , –, –, , –, – Turkish Defence Association  Twiss, Sir Travers – Union of Democratic Control –, , – Union of Ethical Societies  Unitarianism , , , , ,  United Elastic Braid Hands  United Kingdom Alliance  United States , –, , , , –, , , –,  ‘United States of Europe’ , ,  Universal Peace Congresses , , –, , ,  Paris () ,  London () , ,  Rome ()  Budapest ()  Glasgow () ,  Rouen ()  Boston ()  Lucerne ()  London () , , –, ,  The Hague () , ,  Utilitarianism 



Index

Van der Linden, W. H.  Venezuela dispute – Victoria, Queen  Vincent, Henry , ,  Vivien, Henry  Volkhovsky, Feliks Vadimovich  Volunteer Force  Wade, Charles , ,  Wallas, Graham  Wallis, Jill  war: nature of modern ,  seen as adventure ,  Ward, John , ,  Wells, H. G.  Wesleyan Reform Society  Wesleyanism , ,  West of England Arbitration Association  Westcott, Bishop B. F. ,  Westminster, Duke of  Weston, John , ,  Wilde, Mrs Oscar  Wilhelm II, Kaiser , ,  Wilkinson, Alan  Williams, W.  Wilson, H. J. , , ,  Wilson, John , ,  Wolseley, Garnet  Women’s Local Peace Association , , ,  women’s peace activism ,  and Church of England Peace League  and Eastern Question  and Franco-Prussian War  and IAPA – and ‘Ladies Petition for Peace’  and ‘Olive Leaf Societies’  and Peace Society , ,  and Quakers , ,  and unwillingness to speak alongside Cremer  and Richard’s arbitration motion  and South African War –,  varieties of argument within , , , , – and Women’s International League  and Women’s Liberal Associations , ,  Women’s Peace Association  Wood, Martin ,  Woods, Sam ,  Worden, William  working classes , , –, –, –,

–, , , , –, , , –, , ,  Working Men’s Conservative Association  Working Men’s Garibaldi Committee  Workmen’s Club and Institute Union  Workmen’s Neutrality Committee  Workmen’s Peace Association ,  agents of –,  and Afghan War  and Anglo-American arbitration treaty – anti-imperialism of  anti-semitism of  and arbitration , , –, , , ,  Bristol branch of  and Christianity  and citizen militia  constituency of , ,  council membership of ,  and disarmament  and Eastern Question – and Egypt –,  finances of , , –, , , , – formation of , – and formation of IAPA  and High Court of Nations ,  and Hodgson Pratt , – influence of during s  membership of  national conference of () – overseas initiatives of –, –,  pacific-ism of  proclaimed independence of – and sanctions  ‘Scottish department’ of  and South African War (–) , – and Sudan  supports defensive wars  supports Gladstone , ,  and transition to IAL – see also International Arbitration League Workmen’s Peace Committee – Worley, W. C.  Wren, Walter  Wright, Harold  Wyndham, Percy  Yorkshire International Arbitration Association  Zangwill, Israel  Zulu War –, 