Sir Harold Nicolson and International Relations: The Practitioner As Theorist

SIR HAROLD NICOLSON AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

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Sir Harold Nicolson and International Relations

The Practitioner as Theorist

Derek Drinkwater

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP 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 Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Derek Drinkwater 2005 The moral right of the author has been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 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 organization. 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 ISBN 0-19-927385-5 (hbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

In memory of my father

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Foreword Adam Roberts

Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) is deservedly remembered for his many achievements and for his intriguing character: diplomat, diarist, prolific author, controversialist, and husband of the one and only Vita Sackville-West. Several of these roles came together in one of his most notable letters. In 1919, as a remarkably young member of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, he wrote to Vita complaining about meetings of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and US President Woodrow Wilson: But, darling, it is appalling, those three ignorant and irresponsible men cutting Asia Minor to bits as if they were dividing a cake … Isn't it terrible—the happiness of millions being decided in that way—while for the last two months we were praying and begging the Council to give 1 us time to work out a scheme? In these few words one can detect an endearing combination of personal and public comment, of practitioner and theorist, and of iconoclasm and seriousness. These qualities informed much of Nicolson's thought and writing on international relations. Living as he did in extremely troubled times, he played some part in them as a practitioner—first as a diplomat (1909–29), later as a politician and Member of Parliament (1935–45). The reasons he abandoned his promising diplomatic career in 1929 shed light on the complexity of his character. As Nigel Nicolson has written, he hated the enforced separation from Vita, who would have been ‘as unhappy as a caged lark if she had been forced into the diplomatic life’. In addition, ‘friends in England, notably Virginia and Leonard Woolf, told him that he was wasting his talents. He 2 should be a writer; or he should enter politics.’ He was to do both. In the 1930s, both in his writings and in his performance in the House of Commons, he was strongly opposed to appeasement. Yet in the end he did not carry great weight in the House, and it was not as a practitioner that he made

1

H. Nicolson to V. Sackville-West, Paris, 4 May 1919, in N. Nicolson (ed.), Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992), 83.

2

N. Nicolson, ‘Introduction’ to H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–1939 (London: Collins, 1966), 32. This was the first of three volumes (published in 1966–68) of Nicolson's diaries and letters.

viii his mark. Perhaps he did not have the necessary ambition and single-minded determination to make it to high office. As he said in a letter to Vita in July 1938, written at a time when he was distancing himself from the political fray because of his opposition to appeasement: ‘It is really true that I would rather you finished a long poem than I became Secretary of State.’ The letter continued with a nice counter-point: ‘And I 3 know (with absolute conviction) that you would be more pleased if I were appointed to the Cabinet than if you finished a long poem.’ Either way, it was not to be. His service in 1940–41 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information was hardly the apogee of his career. Where his greater contribution lay was in his thought. His books and other writings on international events brought together many qualities: a historical perspective, a skill with analytical concepts, a capacity to get to grips with forward-looking proposals, a willingness to re-think his own previous positions, and a lucid writing style. His thought on the European crisis 1919–39, on the European idea, and on the concept of world government was challenging in his time. Despite many problems, weaknesses and inconsistencies—these blemishes are not hidden from the reader of this book—it still has significance for us today. Nicolson's thought, never remote or abstract, was given depth and seriousness by his life as a practitioner. Perhaps it would be more accurate 4 to speak of a life in proximity to events or, as he put it in a diary entry in 1941, ‘someone on the edge of things’. He was there, and yet he wasn't there: he was in some sense analogous to a spy, less concerned with controlling events directly than with recording what he saw. Almost all the ‘diaries’—the papers on which he typed out daily his immediate accounts of events—remained unpublished until the last two years of his life. They are, like all diaries, sometimes staccato and superficial. They reveal his sense of his own absurdity. Yet it is partly because he was so close to events, and wrote about them with such immediacy in his diaries as well as more analytically in his longer works, that his thought has a special fascination. Derek Drinkwater is an Australian much of whose career has been devoted to writing about the public figures and political life of his own country. On top of his day job as an officer of the Australian Parliament he boldly embarked on a doctoral thesis at The Australian National University. It was even bolder to take as a subject for his thesis the life, the times and the thought of so major and complex a figure as Harold Nicolson. The result, first as a doctoral thesis (which I had the pleasure of examining), and now in revised form

3 4

H. Nicolson to V. Sackville-West, London, 11 July 1938, in Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–1939, 349. Diary entry, 26 February 1941, in N. Nicolson (ed.), H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1939–1945 (London: Collins, 1967), 147.

ix as a book, is a well-informed, perceptive and extremely readable study of Harold Nicolson's understanding of international relations. This book draws on a wide range of sources: not just Harold Nicolson's own voluminous and sometimes florid writings, but also official records, Nicolson's letters, the writings of contemporaries, and a great body of secondary literature, including—dare one say it?—International Relations theory. Dr Drinkwater uses them all impressively, to build up a nuanced picture of Nicolson's mental landscape and intellectual contribution. In addition, he shows considerable understanding of Nicolson's contemporaries, which helps to bring into sharper relief what it was about Nicolson's approach that was particular to him. Dr Drinkwater properly favours examining theorists in their own right, rather than forcing them into simple intellectual categories; and he succeeds in doing this brilliantly in respect of Nicolson. This account confirms that Nicolson was deeply influenced by his period as a student at Balliol College, Oxford, where this foreword is being written exactly a hundred years after his arrival here. The classical education that Nicolson received at Balliol reinforced a sense of patrician service and of long historical perspectives that his family would already have inculcated in him. Perhaps also his education contributed to his strong sense of the enduring differences between nationalities—a recurring theme in his writing. While Nicolson gained much from his period as a student at Oxford, which he greatly enjoyed, his formal academic results (namely, a pass degree) were disappointing: perhaps this contributed to the sense of insecurity, the search for recognition, and the concern to prove himself academically, that was evident in his later career. Drinkwater's central argument is that Nicolson embodied what might be termed a ‘liberal realist’ outlook on international relations. This is an outlook that recognizes, as so-called ‘realists’ do, the brute strength of elemental factors of power and self-interest—but that also sees the importance of norms and of political structures in influencing basic issues of international order. It has always been hard to place Nicolson at one single point on a spectrum between idealist and realist. As Drinkwater shows, here is a man who argued that the human race was progressing toward the abolition of violence; and yet he was in many respects firmly in the realist camp, especially in recognising the importance of power. He accepted the importance of norms and principles in international relations, but was extremely dubious about international law and lawyers. He believed in almost linear progress, yet he also came to believe that pre-1914 diplomacy had been better than most of what followed. This account illuminates all these tensions brilliantly, and gently suggests that one factor that may have weakened Nicolson's grasp of events was his classy disdain for many democratic developments of his own time: he particularly disapproved of the tendency for diplomacy to be conducted in a blaze of

x publicity; and he also disliked, almost obsessively, such consequences of the post-imperial world as the empty posturing of representatives of large numbers of states in the UN General Assembly. There is an element in him, too, of English aristocratic aloofness regarding the US and its role in the world: the Americans do not loom as large in his analysis as one might expect. In many regards the Harold Nicolson presented to us by Dr Drinkwater could be seen as having been, or at least become, a subscriber to the same nexus of beliefs about and approaches to international relations that is now often referred to as the ‘English School’. Nicolson did, after all, occupy some of the same ground as the largely academic ‘English School’ of theorists of International Relations. Key elements of this approach include acceptance that there is a society of states which interact regularly with each other and profess to have at least some values in common; a belief that the concept of ‘interest’, broadly conceived, is a key to understanding state behaviour; an awareness that the distinct mental perspectives of different states and peoples are powerfully shaped by their history; and a suspicion of highly ideological views of the world. Yet Dr Drinkwater, while spotting such similarities, is right to be critical of the ‘English School’. He writes devastatingly about its extraordinary degree of reliance on its ‘own torchbearers’, and its failure to engage sufficiently in a more wide-ranging debate with political theorists and philosophers. One could add, too, its notable failure to explore the extent to which the ideas of the ‘English School’ reflect ideas that exist in society more widely, and indeed have long been the stock-in-trade of diplomats, policy-makers and writers. The concept of an ‘English School’ should not be seen as the exclusive preserve of fully paid-up and practising academics, talking to one another. If one wants to broaden the concept, and to find a link in the world of diplomats, policy-makers and writers, there is nowhere better to look than in the life and work of Harold Nicolson. Today, in Britain and more widely, there is much interest in the thinkers on international relations of Nicolson's generation. Some, such as Leonard Woolf, have been the subject of rescue missions to save them from the intellectual pigeon-holing as either ‘realists’ or ‘idealists’ that 5 had earlier been imposed on them. The interest in Harold Nicolson himself—at least in his capacity as a writer and as husband of Vita—has never lapsed. His younger son Nigel (1917–2004) contributed impressively to our knowledge of Harold in many ways. Himself a polymath as politician, editor, publisher, and biographer, his meticulous editing of his father's diaries in three volumes, published in 1966–68, was followed up with other works relating to Harold, including his account of his parents' remarkable partnership, Portrait of a

5

For example, see P. Wilson, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism (New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

xi Marriage, published in 1973. There was some new material in his last publication, a single volume of Harold's diaries and letters that appeared 6 this year. Sadly, Nigel died in September 2004, a few weeks after publication of this newest rendering of the diaries. Dr Drinkwater's book is a significant and welcome contribution to our understanding of a profound, entertaining and in some ways tragic figure in the history of international relations. Despite the fact that Harold Nicolson is not presented as unblemished, and his inconsistencies and errors are brilliantly brought out, this account makes a strong case for the concept of ‘liberal realism’ as constituting a valid perspective on the world; and it is also persuasive in arguing that, while an amalgam of liberalism and realism was hardly unknown even before his time, Harold Nicolson made an important contribution by demonstrating in his work and in his life that these two approaches were compatible and could co-exist without contradiction. Balliol College, Oxford October 2004

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N. Nicolson (ed.), H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1907–1964 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004). This incorporates in one volume some hitherto unpublished material as well as much that was previously published, principally in the earlier three-volume series of diaries and letters which had covered the period 1930 to 1962, and in the single volume edited by Stanley Olson, which took the story up to 1964 (London: Collins, 1980).

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Contents Acknowledgements Note on the Author 1. International theorist ‘Sage of Sissinghurst’ The Western diplomatic tradition A theorist in his time International and political theory 2. Diplomat Father and son Peacemaking and a new world Home and abroad Man of letters and MP Diplomatic reflection and diaries 3. Liberal realism Oxford and the classics The classical canon A ‘middle course’ Continuity or departure? 4. International order Imperium to dominion The elements of foreign policy National character and prestige The balance of power Nation-states and the international idea Principle and practice 5. Diplomacy ‘Theory’ and ‘shape’ The ideal diplomat Tribal times to golden age Old and new forms

xv xvi 1 1 5 9 11 17 17 20 22 25 32 37 37 42 47 54 61 61 64 70 74 77 81 89 89 94 96 102

xiv National diplomatic styles The twentieth century and after Liberal realism reaffirmed 6. European security, 1919–39 ‘Dangerously angry’ and ‘dangerously afraid’ The spirit of Locarno Hitler and the furor teutonicus A resurgent Italy ‘Collective defence’ and the League of Nations ‘The Foreign Office mind’ 7. Federalism and peace Pan-Europa or federal union? The new Europe Forms of integration World commonwealth A slow growth The creation of peace 8. Practice and theory Stealing a march on power Prophecy and patience Bibliography Sir Harold Nicolson Other works Index

108 111 112 117 117 125 129 133 136 147 161 161 169 178 185 193 198 203 203 206 213 213 220 239

Acknowledgements For his invaluable comments on this study as doctoral dissertation and draft book I am indebted to Emeritus Professor James L. Richardson. Professor Ian Clark, Emeritus Professor J. D. B. Miller, Dr Peter Wilson, and Mr Gregory Fry also provided detailed suggestions for which I am very grateful. A Visiting Fellowship in The Australian National University's Department of International Relations enabled me to write the book in ideal circumstances. I thank the members of the department, in particular its Head, Professor Christian Reus-Smit, for making this possible. The late Mr Nigel Nicolson was most generous with his time and hospitality during my visits to Sissinghurst Castle to research his father's papers. I owe special debts to Sir Adam Roberts for his insightful Foreword and to Sir Harold's friend and biographer, the late Mr James Lees-Milne, for encouraging me to pursue my interest in Nicolson's diplomatic oeuvre. I am obliged to the following for allowing me to quote from unpublished material: The Master and Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford (Sir Harold Nicolson's pre-1930 diary), the Bodleian Library (Lionel Curtis Papers), Mr Christopher Long, and the late Mr Nigel Nicolson (the post-1930 diary of Sir Harold Nicolson in Balliol College Library as well as his letters, lecture notes, and broadcast transcripts held at Sissinghurst Castle, in the Bodleian Library, and in St Antony's College Library). The Spectator has also generously permitted me to quote extensively from Sir Harold's contributions to its pages over three decades. Every care has been taken to contact copyright owners, but this has not always been possible prior to publication. If notified, the publisher would be pleased to come to a suitable arrangement in each case. The staffs of the following institutions were unfailingly helpful: in Oxford, the libraries of Balliol and St Antony's Colleges and the Bodleian Library; in the United States, Princeton University Library and the library of Temple University; and the National Library of Australia. Mr Dominic Byatt and Ms Claire Croft, of the Oxford University Press, have been model editors. Ms Mary-Louise Hickey and Mrs Lynne Payne gave me much valuable help in preparing the typescript for the publisher. My thanks go, as ever, to K. L. W., for her understanding and patience. D. D. Canberra

Note on the Author Dr Derek Drinkwater is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Relations at The Australian National University and a contributor on diplomatic subjects to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).

1 International Theorist ‘SAGE OF SISSINGHURST’ 1

Sir Harold Nicolson (1886–1968) was highly regarded asa diplomatic thinker and historian during his lifetime. He was esteemed by diplomats, 2 3 international relations scholars, and distinguished historians such as G. M. Trevelyan for the insight, clarity, ‘grace of style’, and ‘cultivation 4 of mind’ which he brought to the study of international affairs. Between the 1930s and 1960s Nicolson enjoyed an enviable reputation as a 5 6 diplomatic commentator. In 1939, the historian, Sir Lewis Namier, called him Britain's ‘most expert and most brilliant writer on diplomacy’. His contribution to international theory, however, has been overlooked. 7

The two studies of Nicolson as foreign affairs analyst have concentrated on his diplomatic writings. While this approach is well-merited, Nicolson needs to be seen in a wider context as an international theorist. As he himself emphasized, his interest and expertise went beyond 8 9 diplomacy to encompass ‘the theory and practice of international relations’. Nicolson was more than a ‘diplomat-turned-pundit’. Such estimates derive from perceptions of him as a talented amateur who spread himself too widely as writer and man of action to achieve

1

C. W. Thayer, Diplomat (London: Michael Joseph, 1960), 15. I. D. Duchacek (comp.), Conflict and Cooperation AmongNations (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 509. 3 Nicolson diary, 21 March 1945, Balliol College. 4 The Times, 2 May 1968, 12. 5 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Perspectives on Peace 1910–1960 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 200. 6 L. B. Namier, Review of H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (1939), Manchester Guardian, 6 April 1939, 5. 7 D. Drinkwater, ‘Professional Amateur: Sir Harold Nicolson's Writings on Diplomacy’, B.A. (Hons) thesis (Brisbane, 1977); T. G. Otte, ‘Nicolson’, in G. R. Berridge, M. KeensSoper, and T. G. Otte, Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 151–81. 8 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 26 January 1940, 107. 9 M. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The BritishPeace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 331. 2

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success in a single sphere, and from reservations about the practical value and coherence of his international thought. The posthumous public fascination with Nicolson as man of letters and gardener, and the great interest in his unorthodox marriage, have also detracted from consideration of him as a theorist of international relations (as distinct from a gifted authority on diplomacy). Nicolson's prose style, one highly redolent of his personality, is that of a classical philhellene and Francophile at home in the world of affairs 12 and the realm of letters—cultivated, assured, and urbane. While he lived, Nicolson was acknowledged as one of the leading Western experts on diplomacy. Nevertheless, even during his lifetime some critics regarded the ‘famous urbanity’ and florid flourishes of his writing as evidence 13 of a lack of substance. DidTsar Alexander I really believe, for example, that ‘the rocks of national interest could in some way be melted by 14 15 the alchemy of his smile’? The claim that Nicolson ‘probably never wrote a boring line’ has drawn the response that ‘he never wrote a 16 profound one, either’. The high praise accorded to him as a man of letters has led many scholars to dismiss his diplomatic works as marginal contributions to the study of international relations. Even some of his admirers describe Nicolson's writings on diplomacy as having no serious 17 theoretical foundations. Martin Green's portrayal of him as one who lost his way because of a susceptibility to a particular cult of youth (the Sonnenkind) has also harmed his reputation. Green contends that this cult, exemplified in the worship of the male adolescent by older men, dandyism, aestheticism, the rococo, the baroque, the commedia dell'arte, Byzantine painting, and ballet, handicapped the careers of many of its devotees (the ‘Children of the Sun’, or, Sonnenkinder). ‘Nicolson's career suggests better than anything else how the Establishment, in its most respectable form, 18 intellectually, was vulnerable to the anarchic playfulness of the Sonnenkinder’. The assertion that instead of becoming an ambassador or realizing his gifts as a writer Nicolson remained largely an amateur, his career and writings hamstrung by the Sonnenkind, is not borne out by an examination of his life.

10

S. Kauffmann, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39 (1966), New Republic, 12 November 1966, 40. G. McDermott, ‘Diplomacy: A Valediction’, Twentieth Century, 174/1029 (1966), 28–31. 12 J. Wain, Review of H. Nicolson, Good Behaviour (1955), Spectator, 16 September 1955, 367. 13 P. Toynbee, ‘The Gentle Critic’, Observer, 11 August 1963, 6. 14 H. Nicolson, ‘Victory Celebrations, 1814’, Cornhill Magazine, 161 (1945), 340. 15 J. Lees-Milne, ‘Sir Harold George Nicolson(1886–1968)’, in E. T. Williams and C. S. Nicholls (eds.), The Dictionary of National Biography: 1961–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 796. 16 D. Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1995), 221. 17 Otte, ‘Nicolson’, 155. 18 M. Green, Children of the Sun: A Narrative of ‘Decadence’ in England After 1918 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 6–7, 206–7. 11

International Theorist

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From the publication of his first diplomatic work in 1930 there were international relations specialists and historians, who, while impressed by the grace and fluency of his style, recognized in Nicolson a serious writer on international affairs. One American analyst concluded, ‘As a writer and authority on foreign affairs, he enjoys an international reputation. His honesty is undisputed and his eagerness to serve the highest 19 interests of international relations is self-evident’. Leonard Woolf enjoined Nicolson's readers not to miss the ‘solid core of history’ beneath 20 21 the stylish surface of his books. He was also seen as ‘a precise and scholarly historian’. The continuing relevance of Nicolson's diplomatic works remains a contentious question. His most vehement critic was the British diplomat and commentator on diplomacy, Geoffrey McDermott, who considered Nicolson's approach to diplomacy to be that of a dilettante. He derided his ideas on organization and negotiation as being barely contemporary in his own day, and insisted that they offered little of value for 22 today or tomorrow. At every opportunity McDermott was scathing about ‘the dead hand of Harold Nicolson’, recommending Che 23 Guevara's works as more instructive. Many diplomats, however, have acknowledged Nicolson's enduring value. ‘The problems facing diplomacy’, wrote Sir Douglas Busk in 1967, ‘have not altered to an extent that invalidates the conclusions earlier reached by Nicolson, despite 24 the violent progression of the world during recent years’. A former Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth 25 Office observed in 1974 that Nicolson's Diplomacy remained ‘indispensable reading’. In 2003, Shaun Riordan, a former British diplomat, argued (with a few reservations) that the assumptions and principles enunciated by Nicolson still constituted the ‘bedrock’ of international 26 intercourse. Nicolson's writings on diplomacy constitute a rich storehouse of common sense guidance for diplomats, but how well does he translate to the status of international theorist with something to say to the twenty-first century? Here, it is worth remembering Hedley Bull's warning about the hazards of searching

19

J. Shaplen, Review of H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (1933), New York Times Book Review, 17 September 1933, 1. L. Woolf, Review of H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna (1946), New Statesman and Nation, 27 July 1946, 68. 21 Q. Hogg, Review of H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna (1946), Spectator, 7 June 1946, 588. 22 G. McDermott, Letter to the author, 12 August 1977. 23 G. McDermott, The Eden Legacy and the Decline of British Diplomacy (London: Leslie Frewin, 1969), 207, 229; The New Diplomacy and Its Apparatus (London: The Plume Press in association with Ward Lock, 1973), 131, 183. 24 Sir Douglas Busk, The Craft of Diplomacy: Mechanics and Development of National Representation Overseas (London: Pall Mall Press, 1967), 278. 25 Lord Gore-Booth, With Great Truth and Respect (London: Constable, 1974), 16. 26 S. Riordan, The New Diplomacy (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 31–4. 20

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for conclusions in international studies that can be presented as ‘“solutions”’ or ‘“practical advice”’. Clearly, as an expositor of the principles of sound diplomacy and an interpreter of the recurring issues of diplomatic interchange, Nicolson's works continue to be useful. Like those of 28 George F. Kennan they constitute incisive studies of ‘diplomacy as an art and international relations in a universal context’. However, the question of Nicolson's importance as an international theorist needs to be explored at a deeper level than that of whether or not his ideas and injunctions have continuing practical utility. The curiosity throughout the English-speaking world concerning Nicolson the man, diarist, littérateur, and gardener has hampered attempts to take his measure as an international theorist. Nicolson's bestselling Diaries and Letters were a masterpiece of self-revelation, a superbly drawn portrait of upper class social, literary, and political life in mid-twentieth century Britain, and a treasure trove for historians. They secured him a 29 30 place among the great English diarists. Two biographies of Nicolson have, to all intents and purposes, completed the picture. The story of the remarkable marriage of Nicolson and the poet and novelist, Victoria (‘Vita’) Sackville-West—both bisexual—was told with skill and candour by their younger son, Nigel, in Portrait of a Marriage (1973). He also edited a collection of their letters entitled Vita and Harold (1992). Their creation, with Nicolson as designer and Sackville-West as planter, of the renowned garden at Sissinghurst in Kent has been the subject of four books. This attention, or adulation, has earned ‘Vita and Harold’ a special place in the public imagination. However, especially in Nicolson's case, this has come at a price. 31

32

Perceptions of Nicolson as ‘a small particular adornment of his age’ and ‘The Sage of Sissinghurst’ —a figure whose career was a unique combination of diplomacy, literature, and politics—have obscured the significance of his writings on international relations. As David Cannadine has pointed out, Nicolson (and Sackville-West) ‘have been too much the objects of a cult of personality, and too little the subjects of 33 serious historical inquiry’.

27

H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977), 319–20. D. Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 331. 29 H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters (ed.), N. Nicolson, 1930–1939 (London: Collins, 1966); 1939–1945 (London: Collins, 1967); 1945–1962 (London: Collins, 1968); S. Olson (ed.), 1930–1964 (London: Collins, 1980); Diaries and Letters 1907–1964 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004). The original is held in the library of Balliol College, Oxford. 30 J. Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson: A Biography,1886–1929, vol. 1 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1980); 1930–1968, vol. 2 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981); N. Rose, Harold Nicolson (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005). 31 L. Kronenberger, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39 (1966), Atlantic Monthly, 218/1 (1966), 131. 32 Sir Denis Brogan, ‘The Sage of Sissinghurst’, Spectator, 17 May 1968, 668. 33 Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, 241. 28

International Theorist

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Nicolson's ‘sizeable, varied and original body of writing’ has long been eclipsed by ‘the public idea of Harold Nicolson—the urbane exdiplomatist and man of letters, the clubman, broadcaster and MP, the remembrancer of Proust and A. J. Balfour and Mussolini, the biographer 34 of Tennyson and Constant, the planner of gardens, the Horatian classicist, the residential traveller in Persia’. James Lees-Milne's biography indicated a deeper level of achievement for its subject as diplomat and writer than had hitherto been 35 acknowledged. Nicolson also remains of interest to international relations scholars such as Norman Rose. James Joll particularly admired Sir 36 37 Arthur Nicolson (1930) and King George V (1952). Nicolson has also been dubbed ‘the doyen of diplomatic theory’. In 2000, the Head of Oxford University's Foreign Service Programme described Nicolson as ‘a very important figure of the recent past, whose influence seems 38 likely to continue’. Nevertheless, the historian, Sir Martin Gilbert's observation that ‘Nicolson's abilities as a diplomatic analyst have been 39 unfortunately obscured by the focus to date on his literary work’ (and his other lives) remains largely true.

THE WESTERN DIPLOMATIC TRADITION Since the growth of a recognizable Western diplomatic profession, the writings of diplomatic theorists like Nicolson have been among the 40 main repositories of diplomatic values. The first general treatise on Western diplomacy is generally acknowledged to have appeared in 1485, 41 and the earliest systematic work on the subject a century later. The fin de siècle French envoy, Jules Jusserand, regarded the writings of these 42 43 44 theorists and their successors, the Dutchman, Abraham de Wicquefort, and the Frenchmen, François de Callières and Antoine Pecquet, 45 as a practicaland moral ‘school for ambassadors’.

34

J. Raymond, ‘Not So Urbane’, New Statesman, 10 May 1968, 609. N. Rose, ‘Harold Nicolson: A Curious and Colorful Life’, in Wm. R. Louis (ed.), Still More Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 145–59. 36 J. Joll, Letter to B. Nicolson, 7 May 1968, Sissinghurst Castle. 37 J. Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 80. 38 C. Long, Letter to the author, 7 June 2000. 39 M. Gilbert, Letter to the author, 25 July 1977. 40 G. de Villadiego, Tractatus de Legato (Rome: 1485). 41 A. Gentili, De Legationibus Libri Tres (London: 1583). 42 A. de Wicquefort, L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions (The Hague: 1681). 43 F. de Callières, De la Manière de Négocier avec les Souverains (Paris: 1716). 44 A. Pecquet, Discours sur l'Art de Négocier (Paris: 1737). 45 J. Jusserand, ‘The School for Ambassadors’, American Historical Review, 27 (1922), 426–65. 35

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The primary aim of these theorists was not to produce exhaustive histories of diplomacy along the lines of David Jayne Hill's magisterial A 46 History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, nor was it to compile definitive manuals of procedure such as Sir Ernest Satow's 47 A Guide to Diplomatic Practice. They had an overriding interest in diplomatic theory: the philosophy and purposes of diplomacy, the means employed to achieve diplomatic ends, and the international values at play in these transactions. In essence, they were concerned with ‘the character of the institutions of diplomacy and the art of negotiation’ rather than ‘the history of foreign relations or the history of foreign 48 policy’. This was very much Nicolson's approach; not for nothing was he known as ‘a connoisseur of diplomacy, in its old sense of the fine 49 art of negotiation’. 50

James Der Derian, in his ‘theoretical enquiry’ into the origins of diplomacy, underrates the normative-theoretical element in the works of Callières and Nicolson. He sees theirmain interest as diplomatic practice. Yet their analyses display a greater concern with motive and standards in international conduct than is to be found in guides like Satow's. Nicolson, though he considered Satow ‘the greatest living 51 authority upon diplomatic practice’, recognized this. It explains his insistence on always drawing a distinction in writing and discussion 52 between the theory and the practice of diplomacy. Callières and Nicolson sought to understand what drives individuals, rulers, and governments, to determine how interstate relations are affected as a result, and to establish certain precepts for action between nation-states. Their prescriptions for diplomacy (Callières spokeof ‘negotiation’) were rooted in specific conceptions of human nature, and in beliefs about the proper ends of policy. Their thinking owedmuch to the writings of earlier diplomatic theorists, to their observationsand experience of the world (most had been diplomats), to the works of several important political thinkers, who since ancient times have set the pattern, directly and indirectly, for international thought, and to their education in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome. Even here there were significant differences. While Callières admired the ancients in the 53 spheres of literature and taste, he largely ignored them as a source of guidance to the world around him. Nicolson's empathy with

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

D. J. Hill, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, 3 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905–14). Sir Ernest Satow, A Guide to Diplomatic Practice, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1917). Lord Strang, The Diplomatic Career (London: André Deutsch, 1962), 9. R. M. Lovett, Review of H. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase (1934), New Republic, 5 September 1934, 109. Der Derian, On Diplomacy, 2. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964), 80. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 29 June 1936, 131. M. Keens-Soper, ‘François de Callières and Diplomatic Theory’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 497.

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classical thinking was greater, and the influence of the ancients on his international thought stronger. In order to establish that Nicolson was more than an authority on diplomacy, it will be necessary to evaluate his international thought by analysing the nature of his theoretical conceptions of, and ambitious practical vision for, international society. To this end theorists are usually classified as realists (exponents of realism, or realpolitik) or idealists (exponents of idealism, or idealpolitik). The mistaken identification of ‘idealism’ (or, more accurately, ‘practical idealism’) for ‘utopianism’—a legacy of E. H. Carr, the acknowledged commander-in-chief of twentieth-century British realism—has distorted the reputations of a number of significant inter-war thinkers. Other classifications such as Martin Wight's ‘Three Traditions’ (examined below) are also invoked. There has been a greater recent preparedness to examine theorists in their own right rather than as mere representatives of the realist or 54 idealist traditions. Even Carr has increasingly come to be seen as ‘a Utopian as well as a realist’. The simplistic ‘straw-man realism’ attributed 55 to Carr as well as his intellectual assault on the so-called idealists are being questioned. This is occurring within a scholarly environment in which ‘detailed and empathetic investigation of specific theorists’ is seen as more rewarding than drafting ‘the perfect formulation of a 56 supposed realist creed, whether for worship or sacrifice’. Identifying similarities between a modern theorist's work and that of an important past thinker has its risks. Nicolson's writings, for instance, 57 replicate the realism of the ancient Athenian historian, Thucydides. His outlook was also influenced by the political and ethical schemata of 58 59 60 the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, the obiter dicta of the Greek statesman-historian, Polybius, the philosophy ofthe Roman poet, Lucretius, 61 and the philosophico-legaltracts of the seventeenth-century Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius. The employment of classifications like realist or idealist, while helpful in adumbrating the outlines of Nicolson's international thought, is not necessarily the most fruitful means of identifying the subtleties of his thinking; it ignores, for instance, the crucial and necessary distinctionbetween ‘practical’ and ‘utopian’ idealism. This isespecially so in Nicolson's case, as his outlook and writings represent an unusual amalgam of ancient, medieval, and modern

54

R. W. Davies, ‘Edward Hallett Carr (1892–1982)’, in Lord Blake and C. S. Nicholls (eds.), The Dictionary of National Biography: 1981–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 76. 55 C. Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 12. 56 Ibid., 5. 57 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. 58 Aristotle, Politics; Nicomachean Ethics; Treatise on Rhetoric. 59 Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire. 60 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. 61 H. Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace (1625).

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political ideas and ethical approaches, of realism and idealism, or what might more accurately be termed a ‘liberal realist’ philosophy of international relations. Hedley Bull, who sensed this dichotomy and complexity, reflected that although ‘in some respects’ Nicolson's Diplomacy 62 was a realist work, ‘in general it would be wrong to treat Nicolson as a “realist”’. 63

Nicolson's international thought has affinities with realist thinking, notably that of Thucydides and E. H. Carr. It also contains many 64 65 practical idealist elements found in the works of Immanuel Kant and Sir Alfred Zimmern. Yet, clear differences distinguish the twentiethcentury realists, who constituted a school in only the broadestsense. Nicolson, for example, ascribed less importance to economic forces than 66 did Carr. Themain difference between Nicolson and the practical idealists concerned the means and timing of reform rather than their desired ends. Carr failed to distinguish between the early twentieth-century utopian idealist works of thinkers like Sir Norman Angell, Leonard Woolf, and Zimmern and their 1930s practical idealist thinking. The result was a flawed depiction (in The Twenty Years' Crisis) of them as utopian idealists who shared the Christian reformist outlook of Lionel Curtis and Lord Lothian, the anti-imperialism and international government zeal of J. A. Hobson, and the philosophy of Christian pacifism expounded by George Lansbury and H. R. L. Sheppard's Peace Pledge Union. This has done them and their works less than justice. If the chief difference between the realists and the idealists is to be found in their contrasting philosophies of history—the former are 67 reconciled to the inevitability of conflict (‘cyclical’) and the latter entertain hopes of future reform (‘directional’) —then Nicolson's realism, especially in relation to the possibilities of a united Europe, a world federation, and ‘perpetual peace’ (Kant's term), has a strong idealist stamp. Certainly, he held the liberal view that, however slowly, international society was evolving through increased cooperationtowards greater stability and harmony. However, as has emerged, his thinking contained several realist elements. Consequently, any attempt to classifyhim rigidly as a realist or an idealist could render his intellectual fate that of Angell, Woolf, and Zimmern. These practical idealists, whose reputations

62

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63 64 65 66 67

H. Bull, ‘The Theory of International Politics, 1919–1969’, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939). I. Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace (1795). A. Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law 1918–1935 (London: Macmillan, 1936). D. Goldfischer, ‘E. H. Carr: A “Historical Realist” Approach for the Globalisation Era’, Review of International Studies, 28 (2002), 697–719. A. Osiander, ‘Rereading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory: Idealism Revisited’, International Studies Quarterly, 42 (1998), 409–10.

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suffered from being categorized as utopian idealists with unrealistic expectations of human nature and misplaced optimism about the potential 68 forreforming international society through rationality and institutional change, have been consigned to ‘dishonourable graves in footnotes to 69 the realist ascendancy’. Realism is best seen as ‘a spectrum of ideas of varying hues from light to dark rather than as a fixed point of focus with sharp definition that 70 distinguishes itself exclusively and at every point of the compass fromits idealist counterparts’. The emphasis here will be on examining the origins and assessing the significance of Nicolson's ‘liberal realism’, aderivative of realism and practical idealism, but a conception possessing other significant aspects as well. It is similar to the principled realism of George F. Kennan and Walter Lippmann, though its classical derivation andthe ways in which Nicolson doggedly sought to reconcile realism and idealism in pursuit of long-term change in international society make it distinctive.

A THEORIST IN HIS TIME Nicolson's international thought was shaped by his background, upbringing, education, and experience as diplomat and MP. Its canvas is the effect on twentieth-century international relations of democracy, ideology, and propaganda, the enormous changes wrought on international society by two world wars, which greatly weakened former imperial powers like Britain, the creation of new power blocs, and the likely future shape of international relations as a result of this unprecedented change. Harold Nicolson satisfies Peter Wilson's criteria for consideration as an important inter-war authority on international relations: International relations were at the heart of their thought… they did more than comment on current crises and the burning international issues of the day. Their approach to the subject was theoretical. They sought to develop a general conceptual and historical framework within which past events could be meaningfully interpreted and future courses of action effectively prescribed…they were historicists in that they saw international relations as part of an intelligible, and broadly progressive, historical process. The job of the observer of the international scene was to discover, understand, and clearly articulate this process and make policy recommendations consistent

68 69 70

B. C. Schmidt, ‘Lessons from the Past: Reassessing the Interwar Disciplinary History of International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 42 (1998), 432, 434. L. M. Ashworth, Creating International Studies: Angell, Mitrany and the Liberal Tradition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 108–30. J. Haslam, No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations Since Machiavelli (New Haven, CT, London: Yale University Press, 2002), 249.

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International Theorist with it…they were regarded as leading experts in international affairs by the various political, research, and policy bodies with which they 71 were closely associated.

In any future study of inter-war ‘thinkers’ (Wilson's term) who are difficult to identify as realists or idealists (David Long and Peter Wilson's edited collection deals with the idealists), Nicolson deserves a place. His failure to outline adequately the main theoretical premises of his 72 work—its ‘lack of methodological self-reflection’—the ‘affable prolixity’ of its style and presentation, and his preference for the less rigorous 73 and detailed prescriptions of ‘contingent generalization’ over more comprehensive theorizing, have been largely responsible for his neglect as an international theorist. Prolific in output and eclectic in approach, he was also active in ‘the golden age of the amateur’, when university 74 international relations study was in its infancy. Academic consideration of international issues differed markedly from that of men of affairs 75 76 like Nicolson, who moved freely between Oxbridge, Whitehall, and Westminster. Undoubtedly, more intensive academic scrutiny of Nicolson's writings would have given his works a sharper focus, and secured a wider audience and greater influence for them. Fortunately, the tendency to ignore or underestimate the contribution of theorists like Nicolson is being addressed; ‘inter-war writings are returning from the 77 status of mere historical curios to be once again the source of scholarly interest for international theory’. Nicolson's aristocratic background and his education in the Greek and Roman classics were important influences on the development of his international thought. His liberal realism sits comfortably within the ‘Anglo-American tradition’ in international affairs in which a leader is urged to combine two basic goals: ‘the primary though prudently conceived objective of self-preservation—call it the vital national security 78 interest’ and ‘a fulfillment of the moral law to the maximum compatible with the primary duty of defense’.

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P. Wilson, ‘Introduction: The Twenty Years' Crisis and the Category of “Idealism” in International Relations’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 19. 72 Osiander, ‘Rereading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory’, 429. 73 A. L. George and R. Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York, London: Columbia University Press, 1974), 632–40. 74 Wilson, ‘Introduction’, 17. 75 D. Long, ‘Conclusion: Inter-War Idealism, Liberal Internationalism, and Contemporary International Theory’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 308. 76 W. Wallace, ‘Between Two Worlds: Think-Tanks and Foreign Policy’, in C. Hill and P. Beshoff (eds.), Two Worlds of International Relations: Academics, Practitioners and the Trade in Ideas (London, New York: Routledge, 1994), 140. 77 Long, ‘Conclusion’, 318. 78 A. Wolfers and L. W. Martin (eds.), The Anglo-American Tradition in Foreign Affairs: Readings from Thomas More to Woodrow Wilson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1956), xxvii.

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In December 1936, Nicolson expressed his views on future British policy towards the European dictators. He believed that Britain's recent conduct in this sphere, chiefly her pusillanimity over Italy and Abyssinia, had harmed her international reputation. ‘I do not believe’, he stressed, ‘we have lost all international authority, all diplomatic initiative or that our policy should be wholly negative. I believe it should be cautious, patient, unprovocative, reserved and not ungenerous’. However, he warned, ‘We cannot afford emotional or doctrinal luxuries. We have got to be extremely hard-headed. But, again, my middle policy does not imply such a degree of caution that it would amount almost to 79 isolationism if not actually to non-resistance’. This statement encapsulates Nicolson's liberal realist approach to the resolution of international problems—one based on an understanding of the purposes and limitations of diplomacy. It also touches on the principles that should govern relations between nation-states and reflects his attitude, both practical and intellectual, to the main international issues of his time. While not hostile to the idea of a united Europe or the conception of world government, Nicolson took a characteristically pragmatic stance on both questions. He was dubious about the short- and 80 81 medium-term possibilities of achieving European federation and world government on the ground that planning for such ambitious undertakings was embryonic. Nicolson believed that permanent peace would prove unattainable for a century at least because insufficient 82 numbers of nation-states and individuals were convinced of the advantages of pacific thought and action.

INTERNATIONAL AND POLITICAL THEORY 83

The assertion that Nicolson's international thought displays ‘no major theoretical aspirations’, and that he was just another diplomatic 84 empiricist, is inaccurate. His work is also more than ‘political realism with manners’. Political (and diplomatic) ideas are ‘products of history’ 85 and ‘factors in politics’. Accordingly, Nicolson's approach to international relations was

79 H. Nicolson, ‘Limited or Unlimited Obligations? What Ought British Foreign Policy To Be?’ (Discussion with Sir Edward Grigg and Sir Norman Angell), Listener, 9 December 1936, 1107. 80 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 16 January 1942, 57. 81 H. Nicolson, ‘Between Two Worlds’, Nation, 28 December 1940, 651–5. 82 H. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace: A Discourse’, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Perspectives on Peace 1910–1960 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 43–5. 83 Otte, ‘Nicolson’, 155. 84 P. Sharp, ‘Herbert Butterfield, the English School and the Civilizing Virtues of Diplomacy’, International Affairs, 79 (2003), 860. 85 C. Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London: Longman, 1970), 10.

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grounded in, and shaped by, his experience in diplomacy and politics and his ideas about international conduct—a philosophy or theory of political, more specifically, international political, action. Martin Wight, in describing the influence of such a philosophy or theory, has delineated a distinctively Western ‘Whig or “constitutional” tradition in diplomacy’. Among its members he numbers Hugo Grotius, Callières, and Nicolson. Wight identified as the fundamental factor in the formation of a Western diplomatic culture a recurring pattern of medieval and 86 modern ideas, the ancient Greeks and Romans, in his view, having given scant attention to political, still less to international, ethics. 87

For Wight (as for Nicolson) diplomacy was both a practical and a philosophical subject involving questions of pragmatism and morality. 88 Wight and his fellow twentieth-century scholars in the ‘English School’, an intellectual fraternity whose existence has been much debated, are often described as pursuing a classical approach to the study of international relations. The word ‘classical’ in this context can confuse, by suggesting an approach rooted in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome. In fact, the early leaders of the English School, principally Wight and Bull, cast their minds more widely by combining the methods of the liberal historian, the Oxford philosopher, the international lawyer, 89 and the political theorist. Nevertheless, according to one denizen of the English School, its members have never underrated the importance 90 of the ancient political classics. Indeed, Wight and Bull's works indicate their high regard for the classics as sources of international political 91 theory. Recurring attempts are made to restore the English School to a more central place in international relations study, to strengthen the role of historical

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M. Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 90, 126–7. 87 R. Jackson, ‘Martin Wight's Thought on Diplomacy’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 13/4 (2002), 2, 4–5. 88 R. E. Jones, ‘The English School of International Relations: A Case for Closure’, Review of International Studies, 7/1 (1981), 1–15; S. Grader, ‘The English School of International Relations: Evidence and Evaluation’, Review of International Studies, 14/1 (1988), 29–45; T. Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Antony's College, Oxford, 1998), 1–3, 22. 89 M. Frost, Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14; H. Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, World Politics, 18 (1966), 361; E. B. F. Midgley, ‘The Crisis of Modernity in the Theory of International Relations’, in The Year Book of World Affairs 1981 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1981), 235. 90 R. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 76. 91 M. Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (eds.), G. Wight and B. Porter (Leicester, London: Leicester University Press for the RIIA, 1991), 44, 129; H. Bull, ‘The Importance of Grotius in the Study of International Relations’, in H. Bull, B. Kingsbury, and A. Roberts (eds.), Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 65–95.

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scholarship and political philosophy in its study and teaching, and to remove it from the shadow of long-dominant North American social 92 93 scientific approaches to the discipline. In the process it has come to be seen less and less as a reservoir of ‘pure realism’. Notwithstanding this, the demise of the English School continues to be proclaimed, usually on the basis that its members have failed to acknowledge a coherent 94 set of common foundations for their pursuit of international study. However, intellectual diversity does not necessarily betoken a dead or moribund scholarly approach; arguably, the School endures because it is ‘a tradition of conversation…in which people can participate without 95 being committed to particular strictures’. Nicolson's approach to international theory has many parallels with that of the English School, and, in identifying the constituents of his liberal realism, Martin Wight's work is especially useful. 96

Nicolson regarded ‘the middle course’ as the soundest basis for prudent action in international affairs. This, Martin Wight argued, placed him within the Whig tradition. Nicolson's position there would appear to be confirmed by his approach to ‘the policy of collective security between the World Wars as a middle way between the pacifists and disarmers on the one side and the imperialists turned appeasers on the other’. In Wight's view, the middle way's origins do not lie primarily in ancient Greece or Rome, but in medieval and modern Europe which, ‘in contrast to classical civilization…cultivated [a] middle ground, and developed the conception of a political morality distinct equally from 97 98 personal morality and from Realpolitik’. While the idea of a middle way is not ‘indefinable’, the conception—as elaborated by Wight and defined by Nicolson—requires, and will be the subject of, more precise definition. Wight and the English School's understanding of classical political philosophy and the middle way has been questioned on the basis that, while their starting point is the state, Plato and Aristotle began 99 with the individual. David Boucher takes this line of argument further. He asserts that the most prominent members of the English School (Wight and Bull), by insisting that international theory has no tradition of theorists to match that of political theory, by seeking to establish a critical corpus largely separate from political theory,

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Dunne, Inventing International Society, 2, 15–16; S. Hoffmann, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’, Daedalus, 106/3 (1977), 54. Dunne, Inventing International Society, 3. I. Hall, ‘Review Article: Still the English Patient? Closures and Inventions in the English School’, International Affairs, 77 (2001), 942. B. Buzan and R. Little, ‘The “English Patient” Strikes Back: A Response to Hall's Mis-Diagnosis’, International Affairs, 77 (2001), 944. H. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, International Affairs, 14 (1935), 608. Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, 91, 127. M. Forsyth, ‘The Classical Theory of International Relations’, Political Studies, 26 (1978), 413. Jones, ‘The English School of International Relations’, 1–2.

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and by failing to discriminate between first- and second-rank thinkers, impeded the discipline's capacity to draw on the works of individual 100 This extreme theorists from Aristotle onwards, and anchored their approach to international theory on shaky philosophical moorings. criticism has met with the reply that there now exists (with the literature to support it) a separate entity called ‘international political theory’, 101 which need no longer genuflect to political thought. 102

Wight, who had a high regard for Nicolson as an international relations thinker and individual, postulated the existence of three traditions in Western international thought: Realist (Machiavellian), Rationalist (Grotian), and Revolutionist (Kantian). He cautioned that the traditions were neither philosophically constant nor akin to railroad tracks running parallel into infinity. The second, representing ‘the broad middle road of European thinking’, with its roots in ancient Greece (especially with the Stoics), is helpful in analysing Nicolson's philosophy of international relations. In its emphasis on sustained interstate intercourse during peacetime, its conceptions of constitutionalism as applied to international relations in the Aristotelian and Grotian senses, its Virgilian resonances of ‘imperial vocation’ so important to Nicolson, and its cautious 103 approach to reform, this tradition best describes his international thought. Central to the English School's classical approach to the study of international relations is familiarity with the actors' understandings of 104 In order to arrive at the latter, it is necessary to explore the vital role played by Nicolson's classical education in forming their world. his international thought. Classically educated diplomats of Nicolson's generation acknowledged the value to their later careers of texts such as 105 Some diplomatic historians have also explored the importance of classical study within the pre-First World War British Aristotle's Politics. 106 107 Sir Alfred Zimmern's The Greek Commonwealth, for example, ‘reflected the emotional public school curriculum.

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D. Boucher, ‘Political Theory, International Theory, and the Political Theory of International Relations’, in A. Vincent (ed.), Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 193–214. 101 N. Rengger, ‘Political Theory and International Relations: Promised Land or Exit from Eden?’, International Affairs, 76 (2000), 756. 102 F. Field, Letter to N. Nicolson, 2 May 1968, Sissinghurst Castle. Field was one of Wight's students. 103 Wight, International Theory, 7–8, 14, 29, 44, 129, 260. 104 Jackson, The Global Covenant, 95. 105 Sir David Kelly, The Ruling Few, or, The Human Background to Diplomacy (London: Hollis and Carter, 1952), 15. 106 Z. Steiner, ‘The Diplomatic Life: Reflections on Selected British Diplomatic Memoirs Written Before and After the Great War’, in G. Egerton (ed.), Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London: Frank Cass, 1994), 167. 107 A. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth: Politics and Economics in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911).

International Theorist attachment that many classicists had in the high noon of British imperialism with the ideals of Hellenic Greece’.

15 108

This fascination was an especially potent influence on the lives of many, among them Nicolson's friend, the chronicler of civilizations and 109 Although he did not believe in a Christian God, Nicolson insisted on the importance of certain international thinker, Arnold Toynbee. 110 They were central to the classical realism of absolute moral values whose existence could be demonstrated by classical political philosophy. Thucydides and the practical reason of Aristotle; he regarded them as the soundest foundations for personal and political conduct. This 111 classical schema formed the basis for personal relations and ‘international morality’. 112

Nicolson was wary of extreme forms of realism and idealism—the realist was ‘too cynical’ and the idealist ‘too visionary’. He was even more cautious of utopian idealism, whether manifested in over-ambitious internationalist blueprints, pacifism, isolationism, the more extreme elements of the League of Nations Union, or what he considered premature schemes for European integration and world government. 113 Nicolson had much in common intellectually with E. H. Carr. He also shared many aspects of Zimmern's ‘cautious idealism’. While most of his contemporaries (like Woolf and Zimmern) had also been saturated by the classics, it was the approach to classical thought and religion he absorbed at Balliol College, Oxford, and his diplomatic and political grounding, which forged Nicolson's liberal realist philosophy of international relations. Scott M. Thomas has insisted on the need to explore Martin Wight's Christian beliefs in order to understand his 114 the same can be said of the classics in Nicolson's case. international thought;

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P. Rich, ‘Alfred Zimmern's Cautious Idealism: The League of Nations, International Education, and the Commonwealth’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 89. 109 W. H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 26–7, 38–46, 94, 96–8, 287–8. 110 H. Nicolson, ‘The Need for Leadership at Paris’, Listener, 29 August 1946, 269. 111 H. Nicolson, ‘Diplomacy: Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, 40/1 (1961), 49. 112 H. Nicolson, ‘The Future of the League: IV. Back to First Principles’, Spectator, 5 June 1936, 1028. 113 Rich, ‘Alfred Zimmern's Cautious Idealism’, 79–100. 114 S. M. Thomas, ‘Faith, History and Martin Wight: The Role of Religion in the Historical Sociology of the English School of International Relations’, International Affairs, 77 (2001), 907.

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2 Diplomat FATHER AND SON 115

E. H. Carr advised scholars to ‘study the historian before you begin to study the facts’. Similarly, for Harold Nicolson, ‘the essential quality of a writer’ is to be found in ‘the experiences that have formed his character’ and ‘the elements that render his sensibility distinct from those of 116 Nicolson's ‘sensibility’ as diplomat and international theorist was among the most distinctive of his time. The main elements in its others’. 117 formation were membership of the ‘service nobility’ as distinct from the ‘authentic territorial aristocracy’, a classical education at public school and university, the prevailing diplomatic and political cultures of his day, and twenty years in diplomacy. Harold George Nicolson was born at the British Legation in Tehran, Persia, on 21 November 1886, the third son of Arthur Nicolson, Acting Chargé d'Affaires (and future Head of the Foreign Office), and his wife, Catherine Rowan Hamilton, a member of a prominent Anglo-Irish Protestant family. Nicolson spent his formative years abroad with his parents, at a Kentish preparatory school, The Grange, and at Wellington College. He acknowledged only one enduring legacy of his time there—a love of the Greek and Latin languages and classical literature fostered 118 by Wellington's remarkable headmaster, the scholar-cleric, Dr Bertram Pollock. In late 1903, Nicolson passed the entrance examination for Balliol College, Oxford, which he entered the following October. The two Balliol figures whom he most admired and whose influence on him was greatest were the Junior Dean, Francis (‘Sligger’) Urquhart, and his classics tutor, Cyril Bailey. He was also well served by Balliol's A. L. Smith, Oxford's leading turn-of-the-century

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E. H. Carr, What is History? (The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures, January–March 1961) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 26. H. Nicolson, ‘Poetry and Personality’, Observer, 5 April 1959, 20. D. Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1995), 214. H. Nicolson, ‘Foreword’ to B. Pollock, A Twentieth Century Bishop: Recollections and Reflections (London: Skeffington and Son, 1944), 8.

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modern history tutor. Nicolson's fascination with the classical political thinkers and historians, notably, Aristotle and Thucydides, began at Balliol. Though never a brilliant student, he would eventually become a polished product of ‘Greats’, the Oxford degree based on the study of the classical texts. It was the brainchild of Balliol's pre-eminent nineteenth-century master, Benjamin Jowett, sometime Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University, and editor of new translations of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides. As Nicolson recalled, ‘In my day, the fellows 119 and tutors had all sat at the feet of Jowett and each one of them, in their different ways, reflected some facet of his elaborate personality’. The classics had a deep effect on Nicolson. They became part of his being, and he read them at every opportunity, in the original and in 120 Of classical Greece, he wrote that ‘still she shines for us, violet-crowned and unblemished, serene and formidable, across two translation. 121 Undoubtedly, the ‘delight in classical literature’ he spoke of in his 1951 presidential address to the thousand years of fog and strife’. 122 Classical Association, and his knowledge of Greek and Roman political philosophy and history were central influences on the development 123 After rejecting the liturgy and the of his international thought. Nicolson represented for Freya Stark the epitome of classical ‘“civilitas”’. 124 sacraments of the Christian Church (but not Christ's teachings) at an early age, he embraced the classics as the source of his ethical beliefs. 125

126

Edwardian Balliol was ‘a small Utopia’ characterized by ‘a tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority’, which rested on a skilfully concealed bedrock of hard work and self-discipline. Nicolson's aspirations at Balliol, though, outweighed his achievements. He departed with 127 For Nicolson, a late developer, ‘a sense of wastage’, having left behind him ‘the reputation, if any reputation at all, of a frivolous man’. 128 ‘Balliol, Balliol, Balliol,’ he wrote in Balliol's legacy would bear fruit only in adulthood; he was to become one of its most distinguished sons. 129 Having decided to try for a diplomatic career, middle age, ‘the cardinal factor (except for Vita) in my life’.

119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

Nicolson diary, 25 November 1952, Balliol College. Ibid., 1910–64 (the diaries reveal his favourite classical authors to have been Aristotle, Cicero, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Homer, Lucretius, Plato, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Thucydides); ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 25 April 1947, 460. H. Nicolson, Good Behaviour: Being A Study of Certain Types of Civility (London: Constable, 1955), 13. H. Nicolson, The English Sense of Humour and Other Essays (London: Constable, 1956), 185. F. Stark, The Coast of Incense: Autobiography 1933–1939 (London: John Murray, 1953), 238. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 8 November 1946, 479. L. E. Jones, An Edwardian Youth (London: Macmillan, 1956), 41. The Times, 23 July 1908, 12. H. Nicolson, ‘Lord Percy of Newcastle’, Durham University Journal, new ser., 20/3 (1959), 98. Sir David Keir, Letter to N. Nicolson, 1 May 1968, Sissinghurst Castle. Keir was Master of Balliol College from 1949 to 1965. Nicolson diary, 11 November 1939, Balliol College.

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Nicolson spent much of his final university year in language cramming, before the disappointing announcement of a Third. He fared much better in the highly competitive Diplomatic Service entrance examination, and in late 1909 commenced duty as a Foreign Office clerk based in London (a ‘grub’ serving at home rather than a Diplomatic Service ‘butterfly’ stationed abroad). New recruits' tasks were mundane, though the 130 pace was leisurely. Nicolson transferred to the Diplomatic Service as Attaché in Madrid in February 1911, returning to the Foreign Office in September. He was promoted to Third Secretary two months later, and posted to Constantinople in January 1912 where he witnessed at first hand the effects of 131 In August the Balkan Wars. Nicolson remembered the Diplomatic Service as being at this time ‘a tiny profession, as close as any regiment’. 1913, his engagement to ‘Vita’ Sackville-West, the only child of Lionel, 3rd Baron Sackville and his wife, Victoria was announced. Many were surprised by Vita's choice of a penniless diplomat over a number of wealthy, titled suitors. Harold and Vita were married on 1 October 1913. Within six years each was aware of the other's bisexuality, but after a serious marital crisis in 1919–20, they remained married and devoted to 132 They had two surviving sons, Lionel Benedict, each other for the rest of their lives. For them, ‘sexual division made for emotional union’. born in 1914, and Nigel, born in 1917. The couple returned to Constantinople in November 1913, but the idyll did not last. In July 1914, one month before war began, Nicolson joined the Foreign Office's Eastern Department, soon to merge with the Western Department to form the War Department, where he spent the First World War. He was a member of its ‘Third Room’, whose officials were engaged in diplomatic negotiations relating mostly to Greek and Italian affairs and to long-range post-war settlements, in which connection he concentrated on 133 south-eastern Europe and the Balkans. Nicolson's reputation rose steadily until war's end in 1918. His contribution to the drafting of the secret Treaty of London in 1915, whereby Italy entered the war as an ally, highly regarded work on Pope Benedict XV's peace proposals, involvement in framing the Balfour Declaration, and important memoranda on future British foreign and diplomatic policy, chiefly, ‘Synopsis of Our Obligations to Our Allies and Others’, increased his stock with the Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Sir Eyre Crowe, and the Foreign Secretary,

130 131 132 133

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 11 July 1947, 44. Ibid., 29 June 1951, 859. P. Quennell, Customs and Characters: Contemporary Portraits (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 39. Z. Steiner, ‘The Foreign Office and the War’, in F. H. Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 519–20.

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A. J. Balfour. Nicolson was the cynosure of many Foreign Office eyes at this time. This ‘brilliant, self-reliant, clear-headed’ young man 135 Even his manner of writing would be immortalized, Lawrence Durrell's fictional diplomat, appeared destined for ‘a dazzling career’. 136 Antrobus, remarking on ‘the old Foreign Office Prose Style—the early Nicolson type’.

PEACEMAKING AND A NEW WORLD His inclusion in the British Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (January–June 1919) signalled further Foreign Office recognition of Nicolson's abilities. He was to write that, at the Conference, ‘I was given an amount of work greater than my capacity, and a degree of 137 His experiences there led him to question seriously for the first time Britain's responsibility wholly unsuited to my experience or my years’. role as a Great Power and his own as a diplomat. It also prompted some of Nicolson's political and Foreign Office superiors to doubt his judgement. His main duties at the Conference related to central and south-eastern Europe, Greece, the future of European and Asiatic Turkey, and Italy's claims in the Adriatic. He and his colleagues, Allen Leeper and Lewis Namier, advised by the historian, R. W. Seton-Watson, produced proposals for creating two new states, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and for altering the boundaries of three others—Romania, 138 Bulgaria, and Greece. He served as Secretary to the Czech Committee, and, as Technical Adviser to the Greek Committee, was introduced to the complexities of the Graeco-Turkish question. Nicolson considered the Adriatic problem to be the central issue of the Conference. It concerned undertakings given to Italy in the 1915 Treaty of London to induce her to enter the war on the Allied side. She had been promised the port of Trieste and other clearly Yugoslav territory. The leaders of the Paris Peace Conference failed to honour these commitments, the resulting imbroglio eventually being resolved through the Treaty of Rapallo (1920) between Italy and Yugoslavia. Italy, in Nicolson's view, rightly

134

H. Nicolson, ‘Synopsis of Our Obligations to Our Allies and Others’ (‘British Diplomatic Obligations’), in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: The First World War, 1914–18, vol. 3, 6 February 1918 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1989), 312–26. 135 R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Retreat from Glory, 2nd edn. (London: Putnam, 1935), 16, 17. 136 L. Durrell, Antrobus Complete (London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1985), 23. 137 H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964), 113. 138 S. Crowe and E. Corp, Our Ablest Public Servant: Sir Eyre Crowe 1864–1925 (Braunton: Merlin Books, 1993), 315–16.

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received Trieste, but undeservedly also got Fiume and all of the Istrian Peninsula, to which she was not entitled.

Though pleased by his promotion to Second Secretary in April 1919, Nicolson's disillusionment with the Conference had begun early. On its 140 His second day he found himself agreeing with the veteran French diplomat, Jules Cambon's description of it as merely ‘Une improvisation’. pessimism soon gave way to despair. ‘How fallible one feels,’ he recorded in his diary on 24 February, ‘A map—a pencil—tracing paper … 141 Why my courage fails at the thought of the people whom our errant lines enclose or exclude, the happiness of several thousands of people’. 142 The did it go wrong? The open diplomacy of Paris blurred the basis of negotiation and the expectations of the negotiators and the public. 143 As a result, one Conference mood had also been one of ‘self-satisfied optimism’ and a ‘confident, and indeed rather smug, righteousness’. 144 of its central tasks—to find ‘some middle path between French realism and American idealism’—had not been achieved. Proceedings nevertheless had their enjoyable side. There was the welcome camaraderie of new and old friendship, some 60 per cent of the British delegation's civil staff having been at Balliol. There was also the opportunity to participate in the foundation of the Royal Institute of 145 A future RIIA director later paid International Affairs and America's Council on Foreign Relations (at a Paris dinner on 30 May 1919). 146 tribute to Nicolson's ‘creative part in working out the pattern of an independent Institute’. More significantly, he had so impressed the newly appointed Secretary-General of the League of Nations, Sir Eric Drummond, that the latter invited him to join his staff in establishing the new organization. This the young diplomat duly did, soon earning high praise from Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, 147 On New Year's Eve 1919, Nicolson was appointed CMG and advanced to the rank of as ‘the best F.O. man in the Secretariat-General’. First Secretary. He was involved closely in drafting the Austrian peace settlement—the Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919)—and returned to the Foreign Office in June 1920. Later that year he moved to the Central European and Persia Department. While Nicolson's views on Central Europe aroused little disquiet at the Conference, the same cannot be said of his approach to GraecoTurkish relations. On this issue Nicolson's objectivity in securing a fair outcome for

139

H. Nicolson, ‘The “Big Four” and Trieste’, Listener, 12 September 1946, 335, 347; ‘The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question’, Edinburgh Review, 231 (1920), 209–32; ‘The Italo-Yugoslav Problem’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 4, 6 August 1919 (London: HMSO, 1952), 43–50. 140 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 242. 141 Ibid., 269. 142 Ibid., 71. 143 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 8 December 1944, 526. 144 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 321. 145 Ibid., 352–3, 361. 146 K. Younger, Letter to N. Nicolson, 3 May 1968, Sissinghurst Castle. 147 S. Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, 1919–1931, vol. 2 (London: Collins, 1972), 165.

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both parties was compromised by his love of Greece, exemplified in Paris by the charismatic Greek Prime Minister, Eleuthérios Venizelos. Both were enthusisatic philhellenes with great reverence for the classics. Nicolson compromised his detachment by succumbing to 148 This was not lost on his Foreign Office superiors during and after the Conference. Sir Eyre Crowe and the new the Venizelosian charisma. Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon's comments at this time on Nicolson's memoranda concerning Greece and Turkey reveal a growing 149 impatience with his pro-Greek line.

HOME AND ABROAD Despite his many reservations about the Paris settlement and the tensions surrounding his views on Greece and Turkey, Nicolson retained hopes of a long foreign service career and continued to be seen as promising. Landmark memoranda, principally, ‘The Freedom of the 150 which dealt with British shipping access during peace and war to the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, and the Black Straits’ (November 1922), Sea, impressed his Foreign Office and political chiefs. Nicolson attended the first phase of the Lausanne Conference on Graeco-Turkish relations (November 1922–February 1923), where he worked closely with Lord Curzon. A consequence of his close association with this ‘Superior Person’ was a lifelong fascination with the great man. He especially admired His Lordship's ‘mystic faith in the imperial destiny of his 151 152 country’, and wrote a book about Curzon's diplomatic triumphs and failures. Curzon the imperial nobleman, proconsul, and civil servant appealed enormously to Nicolson's hard-working, conventional side. From February 1923 until November 1925, Nicolson held senior Foreign Office positions in Whitehall. Sir William Tyrrell succeeded Crowe as Permanent Under-Secretary of State in 1925. Tyrrell was no friend to Nicolson, who had difficulty in adjusting to the new regime. However, there were compensations. Balliol, ‘subtly changed’ yet ‘more distinctive and less patrician’,

148

Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 251; J. Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson: A Biography, 1886–1929, vol. 1 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1980), 111–12. H. Nicolson, ‘The Greek Situation’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 12, 20 November 1920 (London: HMSO, 1962), 517, 518–20; ‘Future Policy Towards King Constantine’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 12, 20 December 1920 (London: HMSO, 1962), 553. 150 H. Nicolson, ‘The Freedom of the Straits’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 18, Appendix I, 15 November 1922 (London: HMSO, 1972), 974–84. 151 H. Nicolson, ‘George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925)’, in J. R. H. Weaver (ed.), The Dictionary of National Biography: 1922–1930 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 234. 152 H. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1934). 149

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continued to weave her spell, and his literary career was flourishing. Nicolson's first book, a study of the nineteenth century French Symbolist poet, Paul Verlaine (March 1921) was followed by Sweet Waters (November 1921), a novel of diplomatic life. In March 1923, Tennyson appeared, and, in February 1924, Byron, The Last Journey. The latter illustrated Nicolson's fascination with rebellious, anti-Establishment, bohemian outsiders. The high-minded, conservative, heterosexual Curzon represented one element of Nicolson's nature; the heroic, reckless, bisexual poet another. Swinburne was published in March 1926. 154

He admitted privately to Nicolson's literary pursuits were leading even Crowe to see him as ‘not wholly safe nor temperamentally sound’. 155 A transfer to the Diplomatic Service seemed the increasing boredom with the Foreign Office and a declining interest in foreign politics. only way out, and, given a choice between Tehran and Peking, he chose Persia. Nicolson was confirmed as a Counsellor en route in November 1925. His reputation had preceded him. One of his juniors there, Gladwyn Jebb, recalled ‘the highly civilized Harold Nicolson…a dazzlingly 156 urbane and already quite famous character, an example of what you might become if you pegged away in the Service’. Nicolson soon mastered the intricacies of Anglo-Persian relations. His relationship with the Minister, Sir Percy Loraine, began well, though their rapport quickly dissolved. Nicolson agreed less and less with ‘Ponderous Percy’ on Britain's Persian policy. In August 1926, he told his parents that the 157 Loraine-Persian Government portrayal of a stable Persia, though acceptable to the Foreign Office, was fanciful. Privately expressed criticisms were one thing; voicing them in a memorandum (‘Anglo-Persian Relations’, September 1926) was another. This missive was not well-received in the Foreign Office. It antagonized Tyrrell, Lancelot Oliphant, Head of the Eastern Department (a Nicolson ally), and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamberlain. Nicolson emphasized the precarious basis of Britain's presence in Persia, pointed to the ‘prevailing uncertainty’ bedevilling her Persian policy which rendered its execution ‘so disheartening’, and lamented that the British had unwisely placed their hopes in one man (the Shah). Yet he offered no solutions, concluding only that ‘the policy of creating a stable and self158 Chamberlain's response reaffirmed dependent Persia, capable of maintaining herself unaided, must be regarded as somewhat chimerical’. his support for Loraine's policy of maintaining ‘good relations’

153 154 155 156 157 158

Nicolson diary, 12 February 1921, Balliol College. Ibid., 29 January 1924. Ibid., 25 May 1925. Lord Gladwyn, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 25. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lord and Lady Carnock, 28 August 1926, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson, ‘Anglo-Persian Relations’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 2, 30 September 1926 (London: HMSO, 1968), 814–17.

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with the Persian Government in a dispatch which represented a reprimand for Nicolson. 160 more than ‘a nice and consoling expression for a policy of inaction’.

‘Good relations,’ to Nicolson's mind, was little

He also interpreted Chamberlain's riposte as a message regarding promotion prospects. His future looked bleak, and he felt like ‘an ageing 161 162 His wife's refusal to join him permanently in Persia, and Nicolson's nostalgia for ‘the limpet clinging to the hulk of British diplomacy’. 163 forced a bold refusal to continue there. In 1927, he published a book of satirical pen-portraits entitled Some ancient parapets of Europe’, People, and delivered the fourth of the ‘Hogarth Lectures on Literature’, which appeared as The Development of English Biography. Such activity did not suggest a man absorbed by his diplomatic duties. Nicolson was becoming increasingly disenchanted with diplomacy. The nadir seems to have been reached on 23 August 1927 when, 164 certain that the Persian Dispatch ‘bids fair to be my swansong’, he feared being ‘strand[ed] in this bog in which I have wasted the best years 165 His superiors indulged Nicolson's wish not to return to Persia, and, after considerable haggling, he settled for the Counsellor's of my life’. job in Berlin where he served between October 1927 and December 1929. The question of a poor, economically unstable Germany, bitter about her defeat in war and the outcome of the Paris settlement worried him. Nicolson thought that the Germans had not really ‘changed their 166 By August spots’, and that they were tortured more by ‘self-pity’ over their defeat than by ‘self-reproach’ over their conduct during the war. 1929, he was convinced that ‘every German feels he is almost under a moral obligation to destroy the Treaty of Versailles and lie continuously 167 about their evasions’. The fascination of European politics aside, diplomacy's charm for Nicolson continued to fade. He felt under-employed and now had only 168 ‘affectionate contempt’ for the Diplomatic Service. ‘I am a stepney wheel of a car that is seldom taken out of the garage,’ he wrote to his old Foreign Office cohort, Robert

159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168

Sir Austen Chamberlain, ‘Persia and Good Relations’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 2, 29 November 1926 (London: HMSO, 1968), 837, 841. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lord and Lady Carnock, 30 December 1926, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Oliphant, 28 December 1926, Sissinghurst Castle. V. Glendinning, Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 190–1. H. Nicolson, Letter to Sibyl, Lady Colefax, 9 September 1926, Colefax Papers, Ms Eng. c 3166, Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Nicolson, Letter to O. O'Malley, 23 August 1927, Sir Owen O'Malley Papers, St Antony's College, Oxford. H. Nicolson, Letter to O. O'Malley, 23 August 1927, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lord and Lady Carnock, 28 March 1928, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson, ‘Germany and the Rhineland’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 6, 7 August 1929 (London: HMSO, 1975), 489. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lady Carnock, 28 May 1929, Sissinghurst Castle.

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Bruce Lockhart, on 22 July 1929. Well-paid journalism seemed the only means of supporting a life of full-time authorship, should he leave diplomacy. Lockhart arranged a £3000 a year job on Lord Beaverbrook's Evening Standard. Although he was anxious about resignation 170 he realized that escape would allow him to write and prepare for a possible political career. (diplomacy had, after all, been his only career), In December 1929, Nicolson resigned from diplomacy. Arnold Toynbee later described him as ‘a first-class diplomatist and civil servant’ who 171 Nicolson's later political involvements led some of his contemporaries to doubt this. His would have reached the top of his profession. capacity for calm deliberation and clear judgement did not match his father's.

MAN OF LETTERS AND MP Nicolson soon realized his mistake in agreeing to work for the buccaneering Lord Beaverbrook. The Times would have been a more suitable journalistic home for him. His frustration at contributing to the Evening Standard's ‘Londoner's Diary’ (a political and society gossip column) was offset by the success of his first diplomatic biography—a life of his father. Sir Arthur provided ‘an admirable example for the study of the 172 old diplomacy at its best’. The book was well-received. Theodore Collier, of Brown University, thought that ‘no one has more clearly 173 revealed the workings of the pre-war mind of Europe, or more accurately analyzed the psychological causes of the war’. The Times Literary 174 A. L. Kennedy Supplement called Sir Arthur Nicolson ‘something more than a biography: it is a well-ordered diplomatic history of the period’. identified its main weakness. By attributing the origins of the war to Germany (1900–14) and its long-term causes to Britain (1500–1900), 175 J. A. Nicolson's desire for detachment had prevented him from isolating the principal culprits—German territorial and naval ambitions. 176 Spender agreed.

169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176

Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 1915–1938, vol. 1 (ed.), K. Young (London: Macmillan, 1973), 99. H. Nicolson, Letter to Sir Horace Rumbold, 21 September 1929, Rumbold Papers, Ms dep. 37, Bodleian Library, Oxford. A. Toynbee, Letter to B. Nicolson, 2 May 1968, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart. First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1930), x. T. Collier, Review of H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson (1930), American Historical Review, 36 (1931), 398. Times Literary Supplement, Review of H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson (1930), 3 April 1930, 283. A. L. Kennedy, Review of H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson (1930), International Affairs, 9 (1930), 701–2; Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, xv–xvi. J. A. Spender, Review of H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson (1930), Nation and Athenaeum, 12 April 1930, 51.

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In July 1929, Nicolson had described himself to Robert Bruce Lockhart as ‘left-liberal’ or ‘right-labour’, strongly pro-American, and an 177 Imperialist. This mixture may explain his involvement in 1930–31 with Sir Oswald Mosley's New Party, as he sought to serve his country as 178 Nicolson was one of several liberal intellectuals of the 1930s politician and writer. Yet he could never decide on which role best suited him. initially attracted by Mosley's solutions to the economic problems created by the Great Depression, a disaster in the face of which the principal political parties seemed impotent. Resort to Mosley's prescriptions did at first not seem revolutionary, nor did the man himself appear to be extremist. Nicolson persisted with his New Party dalliance, despite the warnings of friends and the worldly wise Beaverbrook that he was heading up a dangerous cul-de-sac. The ‘Londoner's Diary’ work was proving increasingly unpalatable, and he left Beaverbrook's employ in August 1931, hoping to concentrate more on his literary and political activities. Nicolson's dismal performance as the New Party candidate for the Combined English Universities seat at the 27 October 1931 general election, however, ended his active New Party involvement. He soon broke with Mosley when Sir Oswald's attraction to Fascism became clear (the outcome was the British Union of Fascists). ‘He believes in fascism,’ Nicolson wrote in his 179 diary on 2 November 1931, ‘I don't. I loathe it’. 180

Little wonder, after this bruising experience, that the ‘orderly privacy’ of diplomacy seemed attractive. Yet the terms of a return to the fold 181 It told of a four-day political crisis in June 1939, the could not be agreed on. In October 1932, Nicolson's novel, Public Faces, appeared. principal characters being based on well-known figures of the day such as Philippe Berthelot, a former Secretary-General of the Quai d'Orsay, Winston Churchill, and Mosley. The book is best remembered for its detailed prediction and description of the atomic bomb, the kernel of this idea coming from Nicolson's friend, the scientist, Gerald Heard. William C. Olson cited Public Faces as an example of a sophisticated (if 182 somewhat eclectic and unsystematic) attempt to reveal the inner workings of international relations. During 1932 and 1933, Nicolson began to establish a place for himself in quality journalism as lead reviewer for the New Statesman and Nation (from October 1932), and the Daily Telegraph (from May 1933). In July 1933,

177 178 179 180 181 182

Lockhart, Diaries, 99–100. L. Wolff, ‘The Public Faces of Harold Nicolson: The Thirties’, Biography, 5 (1982), 240–53. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–1939 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1966), 97. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–1964 (ed.), S. Olson (London: Collins, 1980), 37. H. Nicolson, Public Faces: A Novel (London: Constable, 1932). W. C. Olson, ‘The Growth of a Discipline’, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 16–17.

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Peacemaking 1919 was published. A study of the transition from the ‘Old’ to the ‘New Diplomacy’, it contained Nicolson's reflections on the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the lessons to be learned from it (Part I), as well as extracts from the diary he had kept during the 183 Another critic sensed (and overstated) Nicolson's uneasiness Conference (Part II). One reviewer called the book ‘a surprising tour de force’. with the post-war world. ‘Confronted by a universe in labor,’ he wrote, ‘he is torn between his desire to play the mother and his duty to act the 184 midwife’. May 1934 marked the publication of Curzon, The Last Phase. The book explored how Curzon, ‘a nationalist and an imperialist to the depths of 185 had sought in executing British foreign policy to reconcile two conflicting diplomatic and political formulas—‘the Roman, or his soul’, 186 One perceptive critic labelled Curzon, The Last Phase aristocratic, formula of authority’ and ‘the American, or democratic, formula of consent’. ‘partly a sermon and partly a life’, and concluded, ‘The trouble with the book and with Mr. Nicolson is that he is plainly the victim of contrary forces within himself. A liberal streak makes him desirous of ending the evils of the old diplomacy…but a distrust of democratic processes 187 holds him back’. Nicolson's last real diplomatic biography, published in October 1935, was a life of the American diplomat, lawyer, Republican Party Senator, and Presidential aspirant, Dwight Morrow. The book completed his diplomatic tetralogy, illustrating the transition from the Old to the New Diplomacy. Morrow's contribution to international thought had been the creation of ‘a new pattern for the practice and the theory of diplomacy’ by his evenhanded thoroughness in negotiations over essential materiel provision (chiefly, Allied shipping and supply) during the 188 189 A wartime associate of Morrow, Sir Arthur Salter, confirmed Nicolson's assessment (one shared by Walter Lippmann). First World War. Unhappy at having no place in public life (preferably as an MP), and seeing authorship and journalism as feeble alternatives, Nicolson's 190 Something that did, though, was his candidature for the seat of West thoughts returned to diplomacy. Again his overtures came to nothing. Leicester in the National Labour interest. The election campaign proved testing, but on 14 November 1935 an elated Nicolson was elected to the House of Commons.

183

C. Seymour, Review of H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (1933), Yale Review, 23 (1933), 387. F. H. Simonds, Review of H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (1933), Saturday Review of Literature, 16 September 1933, 105. 185 Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 44. 186 Ibid., 68. 187 O. G. Villard, Review of H. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase (1934), Nation, 8 August 1934, 165, 166. 188 H. Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (London: Constable, 1935), v. 189 Sir Arthur Salter, Review of H. Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (1935), Spectator, 11 October 1935, 553; R. Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (London: The Bodley Head, 1981), 243–4. 190 H. Nicolson, Letter to Sir Lancelot Oliphant, 24 August 1935, Sissinghurst Castle. 184

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He soon established a name for himself as a knowledgeable and forthright speaker on foreign affairs, a supporter of the League of Nations, an advocate of a cautious line of resistance to the foreign and domestic policies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and, when he realized that there was no purpose in further parleying with the Italian and German dictators, a determined opponent of the British Government's policy of appeasement. The Conservative Party MP, Henry Channon, described Nicolson's ‘brilliant address’ on Anglo-German relations to the Foreign Affairs Committee (27 February 1936) as ‘shrewd, but alarming and we almost heard the tramp-tramp of the troops. Harold predicted that 191 Nicolson served as Vice-Chairman of the Committee (from April 1936) trouble would come from the German source in 1939 or 1940’. 192 and also wrote the foreign policy statement of the National Labour Party. 193

Despite his efforts, Nicolson was destined to remain ‘the one backbencher in that pathetic splinter group of latter-day would-be Peelites’. 194 He understood why: ‘“I am not by nature a party man”’. He lacked, too, the combativeness necessary to impose his personality on the 195 By late 1936, notwithstanding the good impression he had made in the foreign affairs realm, Nicolson was still House of Commons. struggling to establish himself at Westminster. He lost a heaven-sent opportunity to do so on 3 November when he botched the seconding of the Address-in-Reply. On 23 April 1937, Nicolson delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University on a subject which had long interested him—‘prestige’ as a 196 Helen's Tower, Nicolson's life of his uncle, the outstanding Victorian Viceroy-diplomat, Lord Dufferin, was factor in international affairs. published in November 1937. His political capacities and confidence began to improve, and, as the 1930s advanced, he found his foreign affairs expertise in greater demand, both inside and outside Parliament. He chaired a Royal Institute of International Affairs inquiry into 197 colonial questions, and developed a sound reputation as an authority on international relations through his newspaper writing, articles in leading journals (mainly International Affairs), and lectures. During his anti-Munich Agreement speech in the House of Commons on 5 October 1938, Nicolson spoke forcefully and eloquently against the

191 192 193 194 195 196 197

Sir Henry Channon, Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (ed.), R. Rhodes James (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 59. H. Nicolson, Politics in the Train (London: Constable, 1936). R. W. Lyman, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39 (1966), American Historical Review, 73/1 (1967), 143. Nicolson, Politics in the Train, 6. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 315. H. Nicolson, The Meaning of Prestige (The Rede Lecture, 23 April 1937) (Cambridge: The University Press, 1937). Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Colonial Problem (London: Oxford University Press, 1937).

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Chamberlain Government's attempt to pacify Hitler by dismembering Czechoslovakia. He also stressed the need for Britain to maintain ‘moral 198 In December standards in Europe’, to ensure ‘a settled pattern of international relations’, and to defend the interests of the Small Powers. 1938, Nicolson agreed to produce a weekly article for the Spectator, which he was to write almost without interruption until December 1952. Known as ‘People and Things’ (and, from August 1941, as ‘Marginal Comment’), it became one of the most successful journalistic enterprises of its time. As a combination of public affairs commentary and literary causerie it had no equal. 199

Dedicated to his old Berlin chief, ‘Horace Rumbold An Ideal Diplomatist’, this study of the Diplomacy appeared in January 1939. philosophy, history, and purposes of Western diplomacy has deservedly become a classic. Its most frequently quoted words are Nicolson's 200 The book's stylish arabesques (like the definition) contribute much to Diplomacy's charm, but it is definition of ‘The Ideal Diplomatist’. undeniably a serious contribution to international thought. It confirmed Nicolson's reputation as Britain's leading theorist and interpreter of 201 diplomacy. In his ‘Penguin Special’, Why Britain is at War (November 1939), Nicolson analysed ‘the Hitler phenomenon’ historically ‘in terms of action’ and philosophically ‘in terms of thought’. The British had been let down badly by their governments. In fact, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and his foreign affairs adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, had ‘stepped into diplomacy with the bright faithfulness of two curates entering a pub for the first time’. Nicolson outlined the two compelling reasons for fighting the war: the physical motive of ‘selfpreservation’ and the moral motive of ensuring the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon ideal over those of ‘the rubber truncheon and the 202 concentration camp’. Nicolson had his first (and last) taste of political office between May 1940 and July 1941 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information under Alfred Duff Cooper. Nicolson erred as Parliamentary Secretary by formulating a statement of British war aims, an exercise supported by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, but opposed by Prime Minister Churchill. When it was published in toto in the New YorkNation, and in abridged form in the Manchester Guardian (how it got there is unknown), a furious Churchill demanded an explanation and forbade any further work on it. As an attempt

198 199 200 201 202

H. Nicolson, Hansard, 5 October 1938, 426–34. H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1939). H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1988), 67. L. B. Namier, Review of H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (1939), Manchester Guardian, 6 April 1939, 5. H. Nicolson, Why Britain is at War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1939), 31, 106, 134–7.

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to explain why the war was being fought and to predict the shape of the post-war world (it dealt with subjects such as European federation and world government), the document constituted what Nigel Nicolson has correctly called his father's ‘greatest single contribution to British 203 He continued as Parliamentary Secretary until a Ministerial reshuffle resulted in the policy during his period at the Ministry of Information’. offer, not of another political post—he would like to have been Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office—but a Governorship of the BBC where he remained until 1946. In an impassioned House of Commons address on 26 March 1942, Nicolson put paid to a motion calling for his dismissal as a BBC Governor tabled on the ground that he had recently made a defeatist speech in Dublin. Far from denigrating Britain's capacity to wage war, Nicolson stated, he had made it clear to his audience that, ‘if they were to picture the British lion as a rampant beast, red in tooth and claw, seeking whom it might devour, then…they would get a completely false and distorted picture of our war effort. It would be much wiser to think of the British lion as an elderly, replete, self-satisfied, moth-eaten…animal whose tail in the last 20 years has been so frequently twisted that very few 204 hairs remained…but an animal which at this moment was alert and angry’. Seeking solace from politics, Nicolson began research for a study of his ancestor, the United Irish rebel, Hamilton Rowan, which appeared under the title The Desire to Please in May 1943. Nicolson was shaken by one review, in which the American critic he most respected, Edmund Wilson, took him to task for the way in which his writing invariably resembled ‘a schoolboy story in which England is always St. George. Mr. Nicolson has been quite uncontaminated by the more cynical aspects of foreign policy…[He] gives us the impression of standing, well-brushed and well-bred…looking out through the Embassy window at the streets of strange non-English cities which he knows that he mustn't 205 explore’. 206

Throughout the war, Nicolson remained a champion of the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle. In March 1945, he was elected Chairman of the Anglo-French Interparliamentary Committee. By this time Nicolson was resigned to losing his seat at the election to be held when hostilities ceased.

203

H. Nicolson, ‘Between Two Worlds’, Nation, 28 December 1940, 651–5; Manchester Guardian, 3 February 1941, 6; Diaries and Letters: 1939–1945 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1967), 139 and n, 143–4; ‘Allied War Aims’, New Republic, 26 February 1940, 272–5. 204 H. Nicolson, Hansard, 26 March 1942, 2168; Diaries and Letters: 1939–45, 218 and n, 219. 205 E. Wilson, ‘Through the Embassy Window: Harold Nicolson’, in Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties (London: W. H. Allen, 1951), 123. 206 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 14 August 1942, 149; Hansard, 15 December 1943, 1600.

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He disliked ‘the falsity, the noise, the misrepresentation, the exhaustion and the strain’ of electioneering. Nicolson knew also that the National Labour Party had no future. He lost his seat at the July 1945 general election. However, he entertained the odd conviction that the Labour Party (in power between 1945 and 1951) would ennoble him if he became a member and proved his bona fides by fighting a difficult by-election. He did both, his March 1948 North Croydon by-election experience proving, personally and politically, one of the most mortifying of his life. When it was over, he wrote in a ‘Marginal Comment’ article, which infuriated his supporters and the party organization, ‘I was 208 Nevertheless, Harold Nicolson treasured his certainly not intended by nature or by training for one of the central figures in a harlequinade’. 209 decade as an MP—‘the most interesting and important in my life’. His political disappointments, if anything, acted as a fillip to Nicolson's writing. He resumed his Daily Telegraph reviewing in October 1946, and the books continued to flow: a nostalgic anthology (compiled with Vita) entitled Another World Than This (December 1945), a long essay, The 210 English Sense of Humour (December 1946), and, most significantly, The Congress of Vienna. It was published in May 1946 to coincide with preparations for the peace conference in Paris (July–October) which Nicolson reported on for the BBC. His commentaries were a huge success attracting at their peak some 20 million listeners. In May 1949, his biography of the important French political theorist, Henri Constant de Rebecque (Benjamin Constant) was published. At this time Nicolson demonstrated a realistic and forward-looking view of the world, writing in April 1948: ‘If for one moment we allow our thoughts to dribble along the old cart-tracks of Europe we shall lose all confidence; if we think in wider circles there is no cause to feel 211 Yet he remained concerned about international political change—‘all the old piers and causeways and breakwaters collapse one dismayed’. 212 after the other’. Cold war tensions worried him, and the ‘Marginal Comments’ of the late 1940s and early 1950s display an increasing 213 In his W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture (November 1948), he stressed that ‘the English-speaking World must concern with European security. 214 adjust itself with clarity and resolution to the changed proportions of power and to the altered conditions of defeat or victory in war’.

207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214

Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–64, 288. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 19 March 1948, 344. Nicolson diary, 23 December 1946, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (London: Constable, 1946). H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 2 April 1948, 404. Nicolson diary, 27 May 1948, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 12 August 1949, 203, 30 June 1950, 885. H. Nicolson, The Future of the English-Speaking World (W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture, 9 November 1948) (Glasgow: Jackson, Son and Company, 1949), 16.

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DIPLOMATIC REFLECTION AND DIARIES In February 1949, Nicolson ceased reviewing for the Daily Telegraph and became chief reviewer for the Observer, where he remained until July 215 1963. He would soon return to his metier—serious writing—in the form of the official life of King George V. The book, published in August 1952, was a masterpiece, the diplomatic historian, Sir Charles Webster, describing it as ‘an official biography so well proportioned and 216 Nicolson was soon deep in preparation for the Chichele Lectures, which he composed that it will surely rank as a classic of its kind’. delivered at the University of Oxford in November 1953. The distillation of his experience of, and reflections on, diplomacy, they were 217 218 and last reissued in 1998. In the four lectures, he surveyed ‘Diplomacy in published as The Evolution of Diplomatic Method in June 1954, Greece and Rome’, ‘The Italian System’, ‘The French System’, and ‘The Transition Between the Old Diplomacy and the New’. Nicolson had come to exemplify a rare species of Western diplomat and writer. One reviewer of his history of manners, Good Behaviour (1955), aptly described it as ‘a perfect illustration of a type of civility as expressed in writing and thinking. If posterity wishes to know what kind of achievement was characteristic of the elaborately trained English professional diplomat of the first half of the twentieth century, this is the 219 Three books followed in the 1950s: a collection of his articles, lectures, and addresses (April 1956), a biography document that illustrates it’. of the nineteenth-century French literary critic, Sainte-Beuve (June 1957), and Journey to Java (November 1957), in which Nicolson analysed 220 contentment and melancholy by recourse to his favourite classical authors. 221

Britain, France, and Israel's seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956—‘a squalid and most humiliating episode’—appalled Nicolson. The old classicist was reasserting his lifelong beliefs about international relations rooted in classical political philosophy and history. Whether he was discussing domestic or foreign affairs the standards contained in the classics represented for Nicolson

215 216 217 218 219 220 221

H. Nicolson, King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign (London: Constable, 1952). Sir Charles Webster, Review of H. Nicolson, King George V (1952), Spectator, 15 August 1952, 221. H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (London: Constable, 1954). H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, Leicester University, 1998). J. Wain, Review of H. Nicolson, Good Behaviour (1955), Spectator, 16 September 1955, 368. H. Nicolson, Journey to Java (London: Constable, 1957), 7, 118, 149–55, 160–5, 177–80. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1945–1962 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1968), 324.

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‘a voice which will remind [us] that in our human lives there are certain values, certain sins, certain virtues, which are not concerned in any way 222 He believed that the perpetrators of the Suez operation had flouted the values whatever with the economic or social theories of our time’. 223 of Europe. The critics were lukewarm about Nicolson's The Age of Reason (December 1960), and his Monarchy needed drastic revision before publication (November 1962). The death of his wife in June 1962 was a blow from which Nicolson never fully recovered. He died of a heart attack at Sissinghurst Castle on 1 May 1968, aged 81, and was buried in the parish churchyard. One third of Harold Nicolson's diary, edited by his son, Nigel, was published in three volumes in October 1966, September 1967, and June 1968. Each was a bestseller, highly praised for its readability and as a mid-century chronicle. There were few dissenting voices. The notable exception was Oxford University's Regius Professor of Modern History, Hugh Trevor-Roper, who called Nicolson a self-satisfied snob and dilettante whose achievements did not warrant the special privileges he claimed for himself and 224 225 his friends. Nicolson was an elitist, but his disdain for pomp and circumstance puts the lie to the label ‘snob’. His diplomatic, political, and literary legacies—all of which were considerable—also render the word ‘dilettante’ wide of the mark. Trevor-Roper did, however, raise questions about Nicolson's abilities and achievements that had troubled the diarist during his 226 Even as an MP ‘the tipsy imp of frivolity’ had lifetime—concerns he never resolved. Nicolson had been ‘the Peter Pan of diplomats’. 227 228 Into his sixties he retained ‘a somewhat boyish or undergraduateish air’. A reluctance to pursue his ambitions with surrounded him. determination accompanied this engaging youthfulness. Nicolson worked hard and achieved much in public life. Nevertheless, his achievements (a parliamentary secretaryship and a knighthood) never matched his aspirations (Ministerial office and a peerage). The talents 229 were there, but the steel and the mettle were not. Nicolson was never more than a national figure of the second degree. David Cannadine's explanation for this is that Nicolson lacked the outstanding abilities necessary in public affairs or letters for admission to ‘the

222

H. Nicolson, ‘The Need for Leadership at Paris’, Listener, 29 August 1946, 269. H. Nicolson, ‘The Values of Europe’, Listener, 2 January 1958, 11–12. 224 H. Trevor-Roper, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1945–62 (1968), Spectator, 6 September 1968, 327–8. 225 T. G. Otte, ‘Sir Harold George Nicolson (1886–1968)’, in H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 890. 226 M. Curtiss, Other People's Letters: A Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 114. 227 ‘Watchman’ [S. V. T. Adams], Right Honourable Gentlemen (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1939), 212. 228 Quennell, Customs and Characters, 41. 229 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1939–45, 402. 223

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aristocracy of achievement’. He therefore remained an ‘ultimately, second-rate’ man whose ‘sense of superiority was based on ancestry more than accomplishment, on attitudes rather than attainment’. In Cannadine's view, Nicolson's career, with its strong resonances of political and 230 The fact that Cannadine allows such a judgement to diplomatic failure, was emblematic of twentieth-century aristocratic loss and decline. stand without examining Nicolson's contribution to international thought is itself symptomatic of his treatment at the pens of scholars who study him with blinkered preconceptions of his abilities in order to prove a specific thesis; only the evidence to support a particular argument, and on occasions a prejudice, is admitted. 231

He also publicly rejected the criticism that he To the end of his life Nicolson remained sensitive to the charge of a superior literary urbanity. 232 Yet he asked himself privately, ‘if I should have benefited was ‘a dilettante in life and letters’, preferring the sobriquet surviving Edwardian. more from Cambridge than from Oxford…Oxford is always slightly amateur except for the main scholars and I feel that the essence of my 233 comparative failure in life is an abundant and slightly flippant dilettantism’. Perhaps Nicolson's tragedy was an inability to liberate himself 234 It may have been political folly to remain ‘an Asquithian Liberal’ in an age of from Edwardian preconceptions of life, politics, and society. 235 By doing so, however, Nicolson preserved for exultant mass democracy and Conservative and Labour Party-dominated parliaments. himself an independence of mind and opportunities for forthright utterance which the political and academic time-servers of the day had long since forsaken. Nicolson's friend, John Sparrow, described him most accurately as ‘a complex human being—a nineteenth-century 236 character…living an eighteenth century life in the middle of the twentieth century’. 237

Nicolson, more than his friend Duff Cooper, deserves the appellation ‘scholar-diplomat’. Yet the combative Cooper was a more energetic and single-minded individual than Nicolson. Duff Cooper enjoyed the political rough-and-tumble whereas Nicolson misunderstood parliament, seeing it as ‘a kind of enlargement of the Oxford Union in which, by ritual and protocol’, he could achieve ‘neat triumphs’ or suffer 238 ‘caste failures’. Nicolson was in

230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238

Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy, 5, 224, 239. H. Nicolson, ‘Urbanity’, Spectator, 28 March 1958, 384. H. Nicolson, ‘In Our Time: War of the Generations’, Observer, 15 January 1961, 28. Nicolson diary, 24 August 1940, Balliol College. S. R. Graubard, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1939–45 (1967), American Historical Review, 74/1 (1968), 180. Nicolson, Politics in the Train, 8. J. Sparrow, Harold Nicolson and V. Sackville-West: Memorial Service Address Delivered at St James's Church, Piccadilly, 16 May 1968 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 6. J. Charmley, Duff Cooper: The Authorized Biography (London: Phoenix, 1997), 3. S. Kauffmann, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39 (1966), New Republic, 12 November 1966, 40.

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many respects a man interested principally ‘in conserving the standards by which he has been raised, not in adaptation’. He clearly had difficulty in adjusting to aspects of twentieth-century international affairs, but Nicolson was not alone in that. However, as will emerge in later chapters, this was not a serious handicap to his international relations theorizing and analysis. On 28 September 1935, Nicolson provided his publisher with the names of five institutions to be sent advance copies of Dwight Morrow. For fifty years those on the list—the London Library, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Foreign Office, the Travellers' Club, and 240 This list suggests a man with conventional and conservative views on international affairs. Balliol College—defined his public world. Nicolson's background, classical education, and diplomatic and political experience, however, also produced an individual with his own distinctive philosophy of international relations. This derived from his attempts to formulate an approach to international theory aimed at forging a new international society, one which avoided the pitfalls of utopian idealism and the temptations of untrammelled power politics.

239 240

S. Kauffmann, Review of H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1945–62 (1968), New Republic, 3 August 1968, 35. H. Nicolson, Letter to M. Sadleir, 28 September 1935, Constable and Company Collection, Temple University Library, Philadelphia.

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3 Liberal Realism OXFORD AND THE CLASSICS Cornelia Navari has outlined the advantages of identifying patterns of philosophical discourse and applying them to the works of theorists 241 when assessing their contribution to international theory. She rates highly the influence of intellectual milieu, teachers, and contemporaries. A similar approach is adopted in this book in exploring the main sources of Harold Nicolson's liberal realism—a classical education and his analyses of realist and idealist reaction to inter-war international relations. In late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain, there developed civilian and military governing elites whose members were educated less and less by private tutors and increasingly at public school and university, in the political, historical, and literary classics of ancient Greece and Rome. The classical authors were a valuable means of inculcating the ideals of patriotism and public service into young male British 242 patricians. So well-entrenched in curricula did classical studies become that it was possible to ‘scratch a Victorian and…find an Athenian 243 The Victorian and Edwardian fascination with ancient Greece and Rome was strongly reflected in intellectual life and underneath’. 244 education, especially at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. As we have seen, Nicolson had been introduced to ancient Greek and Latin at Wellington College, but the classics only came alive for him at Oxford. It was here that he received his first systematic introduction to classical political, historical, and literary study through Literae Humaniores (‘Greats’)—the

241

C. Navari, ‘Review Article: Varieties of History in International Thought’, European Journal of International Relations, 1 (1995), 411, 417. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, London: Yale University Press, 1992), 167–8. 243 R. M. Ogilvie, Latin and Greek: A History of the Influence of the Classics on English Life from 1600 to 1918 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 121. 244 F. M. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT, London: Yale University Press, 1981), 5–6; N. Vance, The Victorians and Ancient Rome (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 4. 242

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translation and criticism of a set of classical texts. When Nicolson entered Balliol College ‘Greats’ comprised two sets of examinations: ‘Moderations’ (or ‘Classical Honour Moderations’) (primarily Greek and Latin literature), which was held after two years, and a second examination (‘Finals’) (ancient political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and history), that took place after four years. By the early twentieth century, almost half of Oxford's graduates read ‘Greats’. Its centrepiece was Aristotle's Ethics—the most translated Greek philosophical text of the nineteenth century (often studied in conjunction with Aristotle's Politics). The book's elegance of style, conservative sentiments, good sense, 245 and practicality rendered it an ideal means of preparing young men for political and civil service careers. Though the legendary Benjamin Jowett had died a decade before Nicolson entered Balliol, his presence there as Master and within the University as Regius Professor of Greek and translator of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, was still felt. In the influential prefaces to his 246 translations, Jowett sought to demonstrate the abiding relevance of these thinkers. He was also adamant that the ancient teaching on the inseparability of ethics and politics, the classical recognition that ethics were essential in maintaining sight of the just and the unjust, and the 247 Jowett's approach to classical study of classical political philosophy contributed to a better conception and understanding of society. interpretation and teaching had a pragmatic, Aristotelian bent; for him, the teaching and character formation of undergraduates destined for 248 careers as rulers and servants of Britain and her empire represented ‘the pinnacle of educational wisdom’. A similar ethic of service is to be found in the work of T. H. Green, a Balliol Fellow from 1860, and Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University from 1878 until his death in 1882. Both Jowett and Green, in his landmark 1870s Oxford lectures, The Principles of Political Obligation (1900), drew on Aristotle (as well as the idealism of Plato and G. W. F. Hegel). There significant parallels end. Jowett's Aristotelian pragmatism focused more directly on developing aptitudes and qualities for the custodians of history's greatest empire. He avoided overreliance on metaphysics as a basis for the Oxford philosophical education. In contrast, Green and his followers—Bernard Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley, and Edward Caird—leaned more heavily on the tenets of Platonic and Hegelian idealism (and Hegel's interpretation of Aristotelianism) in forming

245

Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, 324–5. R. Jenkyns, ‘Classical Studies, 1872–1914’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 329; B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd edn., vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), xxv–xxvi; The Politics of Aristotle, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), xiii. 247 Ibid., xiii, cxxi, cxxii. 248 M. Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), 145. 246

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their vision of a moral state charged with ensuring the well-being of its citizens. class, but the intellectual and practical outcomes of each approach would differ.

39 Both approaches produced liberal sons of the governing

The influence of Green's ‘new liberalism’ on twentieth-century international relations is to be found in idealist approaches to foreign policy and 250 Ernest Barker was one of several the creation of enterprises such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). 251 classicists to acknowledge a debt to Green in interpreting Plato and Aristotle. The thinking of Alfred Zimmern (New College, Oxford, First 252 Though a liberal—like Sir Norman Angell, Leonard Woolf, and in ‘Greats’, 1902) owed much to Green's philosophical idealism. Zimmern—Nicolson did not share the intense secular reformist faith of a J. A. Hobson, or the adundant optimism of Christian progressives like Lionel Curtis and Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) in the power of rationality and institutions to solve international problems. One approach left too much to reason, the other too much to God. Nicolson's thought and practice would always remain closer to the Aristotelian approach as reflected in ‘Greats’ and enunciated by Jowett. The latter was an important influence on the development of his liberal realism, especially during the 1930s, when the contrasting teachings of Jowett and Green found expression in divergent outlooks on European security, federalism, and peace among Britain's largely Oxbridge and London School of Economics-educated international relations specialists (at Oxford, Nicolson and Arnold Toynbee (Balliol), Curtis, Lothian, Zimmern (New College), at Cambridge, E. H. Carr and Woolf (Trinity), and at the LSE, David Mitrany). In Victorian and Edwardian Britain, few history dons or their students would have disputed Polybius's claim that studying history promised 253 ‘the best education for the situations of actual life’. As taught at Oxford in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern history 254 and philosophy set standards of responsible citizenship by enumerating the qualities required of Britain's rulers. In Edwardian England the teachers of history—‘the moral

249 S. M. Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 44–52; P. Nicholson, ‘Thomas Hill Green: Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation’, in M. Forsyth and M. Keens-Soper (eds.), The Political Classics: Green to Dworkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 17, 33. 250 C. Navari, ‘Chatham House and the Broad Church View of British Foreign Policy’, in A. Bosco and C. Navari (eds.), Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1994), 345–7. 251 E. Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (London: Methuen, 1906), vii. 252 P. Rich, ‘Alfred Zimmern's Cautious Idealism: The League of Nations, International Education, and the Commonwealth’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 80, 88–9. 253 Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), I. 35, 80. 254 R. N. Soffer, ‘Modern History’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 363.

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haberdashers of the governing élite’ —regarded modern history's contribution to the training of young men for careers in politics and imperial administration as being more important than that of law and at least the equal of ‘Greats’. In the words of one Balliol-educated diplomatic historian, history constituted ‘a complete ethic’; indeed, it provided ‘an answer to all our moral problems and a solvent for all our 256 spiritual doubts’. Between 1872 (when the first examination in Honours Modern History was held at Oxford) and the First World War, there grew from the study of the subject at Honours and Pass levels ‘a licensing system for a national elite’. The majority of its graduates—produced by Balliol 257 Modern history's noble ideals of College, Oxford and King's College, Cambridge—chose careers characterized by ‘high-minded obligation’. 258 The other public service and patriotism notwithstanding, the subject represented only one element of a classical liberal education. formidable component of Nicolson's Oxford education—the ancient ethical, political, and historical classics—endowed him with enduring critical capacities of evaluation and judgement in international affairs. In Richard Symonds's view, ‘the influence of the classics, and of those who taught them, though less direct, was as important as that of modern history…While the study of Aristotle and Plato inspired principles of 259 conduct, practical lessons of history emerged from that of Thucydides’. It is impossible to determine exactly which subjects Nicolson read at Oxford as part of ‘Classical Honour Moderations’; only that he received a 260 However, Oxford University's student handbook provides a detailed description of the choices of books and subjects of study open Third. to Nicolson and his contemporaries. Names which recur include those of Aristotle, Cicero, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Livy, Lucretius, Plato, 261 Tacitus, and Thucydides. ‘The History of the British Dominion in India to the Year 1860’ was also offered. The ancient thinkers most responsible for the development of Nicolson's ethical and political beliefs were the Greek political philosopher, Aristotle, the ancient Athenian historian, Thucydides, the Roman poet, Lucretius, the Greek

255

R. N. Soffer, ‘Modern History’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 383. 256 R. B. Mowat, ‘History as Ethics’, Contemporary Review 153/1 (1938), 49. 257 R. N. Soffer, Discipline and Power: The University, History, and the Making of an English Elite, 1870–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 5, 8. 258 Ibid., 209–10. 259 R. Symonds, ‘Oxford and the Empire’, in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, vol. 7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 693–4. 260 Balliol College, ‘Minutes’, 19 March 1907, Balliol College Library, Oxford. 261 University of Oxford, The Student's Handbook to the University and Colleges of Oxford, 17th edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 135–7, 144–7.

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philosophers, Epicurus and Epictetus, and the Stoics. While he considered the New Testament to be ‘the finest of all human documents’, Nicolson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He was convinced, too, that the West owed more to the libertarian Graeco–Roman 263 264 This ‘inveterate philhellene’ was certain that classical political values than to Christianity, which had traditionally opposed such values. philosophy contained all the necessary constituents of a coherent ethical system: The good pagan, we are told, can never achieve virtue, or even contentment, since he works without a conscience or an aim. Certainly the agnostic disbelieves in any system of ultimate rewards or penalties, and would affirm his ignorance of any purpose, whether natural or supernatural, which can explain teleologically the meaning of life upon this earth. Yet he would deny that he works without a conscience, since his very disbelief in the supernatural compels him to cultivate and defend a highly sensitive conscience, to establish by his own reason certain definite ‘ideas’ or ‘values’, and to fix certain principles which his own experience and intelligence have shown him to be conducive to the good life. He knows that there are some vices, such as cruelty, untruthfulness or sloth, which are ‘evil’ absolutely, always, everywhere. He knows that there are some virtues—such as gentleness, mercy, compassion, honesty, courage, magnanimity, unselfishness, and energy—which are ‘good’ absolutely, always, everywhere. He knows that without these qualities, to which the Greeks often gave the generic name of ‘Justice’, no man can hope to lead a good or happy life…There is no laxity, no relativity, in these his 265 principles. 266

Robert Speaight was among the few to recognize the significance of Nicolson's ‘classical formation’. His writings, lectures, speeches, and broadcasts on international relations reflect the classical conviction that, unsupported by a belief in certain ‘permanent and undeniable’ 267 268 269 270 truths, ‘politics are not enough’. He insisted on ‘the efficacy of moral principles’, and the existence of certain immutable values 271 272 and ‘transcendental’ principles, which form the basis of ‘the common conscience of mankind’. Nicolson's

262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272

H. Nicolson, ‘The Achievement of Pleasure’, in Lord Inman (ed.), My Philosophy of Life: A Symposium (London: Odhams Press, 1958), 120. A. Osiander, ‘Religion and Politics in Western Civilisation: The Ancient World as Matrix and Mirror of the Modern’, Millenium, 29 (2000), 789. H. Nicolson, Review of A. Toynbee, Hellenism (1959), Observer, 17 May 1959, 20. Nicolson, ‘The Achievement of Pleasure’, 133. R. Speaight, Letter to N. Nicolson, 4 May 1968, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson and V. Sackville-West, ‘Romanticism vs. Classicism’, Sissinghurst Castle (193?), 16. H. Nicolson, BBC Overseas Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 11 November 1937, 5. H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (London: Constable, 1946), xiii. H. Nicolson, ‘The Need for Leadership at Paris’, Listener, 29 August 1946, 269. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 10 March 1950, 304. H. Nicolson, BBC Overseas Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 30 August 1946, 2.

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Whiggish veneration for ‘the mighty bastions of eighteenth-century taste and reason’ 274 deserted him.

273

and his faith in the strength of classical values never

THE CLASSICAL CANON In analysing classical authors' writings on international affairs it is necessary to separate ‘the inferential from the properly analytical. The first category concerns the treatment of theorists who did not, generally because they could not, address International Relations directly, or who did 275 This is especially important when evaluating the effect of an ancient so only in the most marginal manner. Aristotle is a case in point’. philosopher like Aristotle on the international thought of a twentieth-century theorist such as Nicolson. A balance must be struck between identifying general similarities in their work—an exercise that often serves little purpose—and drawing too many parallels. Although Aristotle did not address the nature of international relations in detail, he did produce a body of knowledge and criteria for judgement applicable to international affairs today. The main ethical and political principles underlying his thought greatly influenced Nicolson's outlook on international relations. An understanding of the influence of the classics must rest on a knowledge of the ancient books, the method employed in studying them, and 276 the values to which teacher and taught (and reader) subscribe. All of these remained stable during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. 277 The resilience of the At least one scholar of the 1890s regarded the contemporary British polity as being inferior to that of ancient Athens. 278 Greek nation-state as a model is remarkable. In 1906, it was still seen as ‘the ideal of our modern States’ rather than as a historical curiosity. Gilbert Murray argued that in their political and ethical works the ancient Greeks had established a means and a criterion for evaluation which 279 Nevertheless, he cautioned against too frequent recourse to constituted ‘the natural standard of any philosophical historian’. classical–modern analogies on the ground that ‘such parallels must only be

273 274 275 276 277 278 279

H. Nicolson, Journey to Java (London: Constable, 1957), 42. H. Nicolson, ‘The Values of Europe’,Listener, 2 January 1958, 11–12. Navari, ‘Varieties of History in International Thought’, 414–15. R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge: The University Press, 1954), 5. J. W. Headlam, Election by Lot at Athens (Cambridge: The University Press, 1891). Later Sir James Headlam-Morley, diplomat and historian. Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, 16. G. Murray, ‘The Value of Greece to the Future of the World’, in R. W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 2.

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allowed to amuse our reflections’ and not ‘to distort our judgements’. The classics remain a means of evaluating our age, one whose 281 example can be accepted or rejected, but whose value and utility continue to be affirmed. Its classical inheritance has been one of the chief influences on the West. ‘The evidence of past systems,’ Adam Watson wrote, ‘makes it clear that the pattern of an international society, its social contract so to speak, is not drawn up afresh for each society. It is to a large extent inherited 282 An example of a lasting nationfrom previous societies; though its practices, and thus with a certain delay its legitimacies, continually alter’. state imperative is given by Pierre Hassner, who asserts that present in Western civilization since its expression in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides has been an ideal of peace through a closed community, whereby the rulers of a nation-state should strive for peace while 283 preparing its citizens for war. How did the ancients, in seeking to resolve the dual challenges of peace and war, contribute to the development of Nicolson's international 284 This is not exaggerated praise for the works thought? Balliol had taught him that in Aristotle was to be found the whole of human wisdom. of a ‘self-confessed empiricist, who sought to capture the essence of the social and political world in which he lived’. In a rare recognition of the importance of Aristotelian thought in international relations, Christian Reus-Smit has argued that Aristotle's ethical and political writings 285 are a valuable starting point for defining ancient Greek conceptions of the moral purpose of the nation-state. Reus-Smit explores what few international relations scholars have realized or acknowledged: although Aristotle is a classical thinker absent from the discipline's ‘standard list 286 of canonical sources’, his writings on the nation-state remain very relevant to international relations study. The centrality of moral purpose was the paramount constituent of the Aristotelian legacy for Nicolson. The second, restated by Jowett in his translation of Aristotle's Politics, was a preference for Aristotelian pragmatism over Platonic idealism, a difference outlined by Sir Ernest Barker. ‘Aristotle tells us that the subject with which Political Science deals…is one which

280 281 282 283 284 285 286

G. Murray, Essays & Addresses (London: Allen and Unwin, 1921), 33. R. Jenkyns, ‘The Legacy of Rome’, in R. Jenkyns (ed.), The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1–37. A. Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis (London, New York: Routledge, 1992), 318. P. Hassner, ‘Beyond the Three Traditions: The Philosophy of War and Peace in Historical Perspective’, International Affairs, 70 (1994), 741. J. Lees-Milne, Harold Nicolson: A Biography, 1886–1929, vol. 1 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1980), 111. C. Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 46. Ibid., 170.

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does not admit of absolute exactitude…To Plato Political Science starts from absolute principles, and arrives at equally absolute conclusions…Aristotle…recognises the general “laxity” of actual life, the impossibility of concluding man wholly within the pales of any 287 scheme’. The Aristotelian schema has been well summed up by George Sabine. ‘Aristotle, with a heavy obligation to common sense and the wisdom of the ages…might be reformist but never revolutionary. The whole bent and bias of his thought must be toward the view that the ideal, while conceded to be an effective force, must still be a force within the actual current of affairs and not dead against it,’ wrote Sabine. ‘The wisdom inherent in custom must, so to speak, be a guiding principle that takes advantage of such plasticity as actual conditions include to lift them 288 Aristotle's approach to government and reform, one which concentrated on what was achievable gradually to a better conformation’. within a moral framework, prompted R. N. Berki to call him ‘the first acknowledged master of political realism’. Two aspects of Aristotle's work have important implications for his standing as an international theorist: a model of political understanding in which individual and nation-state behaviour are judged by the same ethical criteria (no dichotomy between private and public morality), and the principle of 289 moderation, or the ‘mean’. A fine (seldom quoted) example of Aristotelian realism is to be found in Book II of the Politics. A ‘legislator should consider also [the state's] relation to neighbouring nations, and to all who are outside of it. The government must be organized with a view to military strength,’ Aristotle insisted. ‘The property of the state should not be so large that more powerful neighbours may be tempted by it, while the owners are unable to 290 repel the invaders; nor yet so small that the state is unable to maintain a war even against states of equal power, and of the same, character’. Aristotle's political philosophy influenced Nicolson's international theory at a deeper level than that of supplying well-considered advice on the defence of the state. It enunciated moral and practical standards for Nicolson's prescriptions on international relations. In Aristotle's eyes man by nature was ‘a political animal’ who inhabited a state or community established for some good. The bond of citizens in a state was justice, and the administration of justice—the determination of what was just—constituted ‘the principle of order in political society’. Man alone had a sense of good and evil, of the just and the unjust, and ‘the association of living beings who have this sense

287 288 289 290

Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, 162. G. H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd edn. (London: Harrap, 1963), 99. R. N. Berki, On Political Realism (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1981), 42. Aristotle, ‘Politics’, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (ed.), J. Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), II. 7, 2010–11.

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makes a family and a state’. Aristotle analysed the theories of a perfect state and concluded that ‘if politics be an art, change must be 292 Political necessary in this as in any other art’. Securing the common good ought to be the purpose of political inquiry and political life. idealism should always be tempered by realism. He also reminds us that ‘political writers, although they have excellent ideas, are often unpractical’. Most importantly, ‘we should consider, not only what form of government is best, but also what is possible and what is easily attainable by all’. The ‘mean’ provided the most practical and admirable model for the individual and the state, since ‘the life which is in a 293 mean, and in a mean attainable by everyone, must be the best’. The thinker second only to Aristotle in shaping Nicolson's international theory was the ancient historian, Thucydides. Nicolson, who believed Thucydides to be ‘the first and finest historian of all time’, prized his History of the Peloponnesian War as ‘this great book, this eternal 294 possession’. It remains the first (and among the most insightful) analyses of power politics at work in the world. Nevertheless, the view that Thucydides was the father of realism has been rejected on the ground that he provided only unscientific insights into political power and 295 Steven Forde disputes this, asserting that the History hegemony, rather than scientific general laws explaining international conflict. 296 accurately chronicles observable behaviour, and, by so doing, defines how individuals and nation-states will behave. For Michael Joseph Smith, one of the three chief characteristics of Thucydidean realism is its rejection of the notion of a benign and perfectible 297 The moral sense and practicality of human nature. Thucydides's book certainly displays ‘a sense of brooding tragedy’ about the world. Aristotle and the pragmatic realism of Thucydides formed the main basis of Nicolson's liberal realist outlook. However, his philosophy of international relations was ultimately more optimistic than that of Thucydides. It is here that, as will become apparent, the twentieth-century theorist diverges from his ancient progenitor. In the world of Thucydides ‘an irresolvable tension’ surrounds the interaction of realism and 298 ethics. For him, ‘true realist prudence would bow to those realist necessities of international politics that are genuinely unavoidable, while attempting to moderate the impulse to carry realism to its limit. The result would be a subtle and nuanced policy motivated by some realist

291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298

Aristotle, ‘Politics’, I.1–I. 2, 1986–8. Ibid., II. 8, 2013. Ibid., IV. 1, 2045, IV. 11, 2056. H. Nicolson, Comments: 1944–1948 (London: Constable, 1948), 292. D. Garst, ‘Thucydides and Neorealism’, International Studies Quarterly, 33/1 (1989), 3, 25. S. Forde, ‘International Realism and the Science of Politics: Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Neorealism’, International Studies Quarterly, 39 (1995), 150–1. M. J. Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, LA, London: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 10. S. Forde, ‘Classical Realism’, in T. Nardin and D. R. Mapel (eds.), Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 70.

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and some ethical concerns’.

Nevertheless, he was sceptical about man's capacity to achieve this.

Nicolson concluded that it was possible to address the dilemmas facing international society through what will be called ‘liberal realism’. He 300 always preferred the outlook of ‘the liberal realist and pragmatist’ to utopian or extremist philosophies of the right (‘wild imperialism’), or the left (Marxist-Leninism). Thucydides, even in the smaller compass of the then known world, was more pessimistic than Nicolson about change in human affairs. Nicolson absorbed much from Thucydides about humanity and power. Individuals shared the same essential nature. 301 It was wise to remember that people act in the end in accordance with their interests. ‘It has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong,’ in which case the strong ‘do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept’. Yet an 302 Nicolson also identified similarities between the unavoidable relationship exists between power and justice that is ignored at great cost. 303 Greek and British imperial undertakings; he was ambivalent about both. Other ancient authors influenced Nicolson. He especially admired Lucretius, whose long poem On the Nature of Things reflected his own belief 304 that the universe had not been created, and nor was it shaped, by divine intervention. He also esteemed highly the Epicurean emphasis on 305 reason, free will, temperance, and moderation. Nicolson subscribed to many of the tenets of Stoic philosophy, such as a belief in a ‘First Cause’ (called variously Zeus, Destiny, the World-Soul, Nature, God, Logos, or Reason), an acceptance of the reality of evil, and an insistence that without it there could be no virtue. Like the Stoics, he believed that all human beings possessed an instinct, or conscience, which enabled an individual to distinguish between good and evil. Everybody should also try to render themselves in harmony with Logos, or Nature, or universal reason. Humans could thereby acquire the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. ‘Above all,’ Nicolson 306 insisted, ‘the Stoics were…no escapists, in that they regarded virtue as a positive, and not merely as a negative, capacity’.

299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306

Forde, ‘International Realism and the Science of Politics’, 155. D. Gillies, Radical Diplomat: The Life of Archibald Clerk Kerr, Lord Inverchapel, 1882–1951 (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 68. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), I. 84–5, VI. 83, 461–2. Ibid., I. 76, 80, V. 89, 402. Ibid., I. 75–6, 79–80. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), V. 55–234, 383–97; Nicolson, Journey to Java, 149–50, 160–5. Epicurus, Morals (London: Peter Davies, 1926), 21–5, 42–5, 62–6; Nicolson, ‘The Achievement of Pleasure’, 123; Journey to Java, 164. Ibid., 178.

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Harold Nicolson admired Stoicism's strong emphasis on ethics as reflected in the treatises of the earliest Roman Stoic, Seneca, Epictetus, 308 In the end he rejected the Epicurean preference for avoiding pain, courting pleasure, and pursuing and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. 309 While Nicolson valued Stoicism for seeking wisdom and virtue, and for its refusal to surrender to pleasure, his peace of mind as escapist. firmest preference was for Epictetus's philosophy, which combined virtue and pragmatism. Nicolson was especially attracted to Epictetus's 310 ‘shrewd worldly aphorisms’: ‘“You will prove unconquerable…if you enter into no contest which you are unlikely to win”’. The liberal realist never doubted the efficacy of Aristotle's teachings, and he profited from the bottomless quarry of observations on individual and nation-state behaviour in Thucydides. The Stoics' emphasis on reason, balance, conscience, and ethics also left a strong impression. Yet Aristotle's philosophical injunctions could be applied only so far beyond the nation-state, and Nicolson's optimism about enduring improvements in international relations contrasted with the dark picture painted by Thucydides. The intellectual legacy of the Stoics proved too diffuse a basis for an integrated theory of individual, nation-state, or interstate action. Nicolson followed no theorist uncritically, always reaching conclusions based on the classical texts and his own experience. He formulated liberal realism in the same manner.

A ‘MIDDLE COURSE’ 311

Harold Nicolson's belief in the durability of liberal values was lifelong—‘ces principes de libéralisme…conservent une validité éternelle’. Nevertheless, liberalism's credibility as an intellectual foundation for foreign policy had been eroded by the incapacity of Europe's politicians and liberal intellectuals to deal with the international crises of the inter-war years. This was best exemplified in the failure of the most prominent idealist mascot of liberal internationalism, the League of Nations, to counter Japanese, Italian, and German aggression. Nicolson believed that another approach was needed to resolving European interstate tensions and to addressing the question of conflict in international society. A means of understanding liberal realism is to be found in Martin Wight's formulation of three traditions of inquiry in international theory. It comprises, first, the Realist (Machiavellian), which stresses the element of international

307 308 309 310 311

M. L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature, vol. 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 36. F. Hazlitt and H. Hazlitt (eds.), The Wisdom of the Stoics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 13, 97, 162; Nicolson, Journey to Java, 149–55, 160–5, 177–80. Epicurus, Morals, 14, 18, 71. Hazlitt, The Wisdom of the Stoics, 180. H. Nicolson, BBC European Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 3 August 1946, 1.

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anarchy and ‘a multiplicity of independent sovereign states acknowledging no political superior, whose relationships are ultimately regulated by warfare’. Secondly, the Rationalist (Grotian), emphasizing an international society characterized by ‘continuous and organized intercourse’ between nation-states through diplomacy and commerce during periods of peace. Thirdly, the Revolutionist (Kantian), or a society of nationstates based on a ‘recognition that the multiplicity of sovereign states forms a moral and cultural whole’ imposing on its members moral, 312 The first describes international relations in sociological terms, the second in psychological, legal (and possibly political) obligations. 313 teleological terms, and the third in ethical and prescriptive terms. The Rationalist-Grotian tradition derives from conceptions of constitutionalism in international relations traceable to Aristotle, the works of 314 the Stoics, and the insistence of the sixteenth-century Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, that international relations be subject to the rule of law. Nicolson held that ‘one can believe in goodness without ascribing to it any super-natural origin’ and that ‘virtue is part of a general 315 His conviction that, unassisted by Christian theology, it was possible evolutionary process and is therefore a condition of happiness’. through classical political philosophy to arrive at a rationally based standard of moral conduct for human beings translatable to interstate relations, one promising a steady evolution in individual virtue and an improvement in the moral character of public affairs, confirms him as an international theorist with an outlook akin to that of the Rationalist-Grotians. At the same time it distances him from the Realist-Machiavellians such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hans J. Morgenthau, who were less sanguine about human nature and the prospects for positive change in international relations. It also distinguishes him from the RevolutionistKantians, whose adherents (practical idealists like Immanuel Kant, Angell, Woolf, and Zimmern) were more optimistic about reform. It should be stressed that these traditions, though valuable guides to intellectual understanding, are not exclusive typologies for classifying a thinker; Nicolson's vision of perpetual peace, for example, much resembled Kant's. E. H. Carr's depiction of an inter-war idealist–realist struggle in British foreign policy, diplomacy, and international thought has harmed 316 international study. Carr's interpretation, based on an uncompromising distinction between realism and idealism and a confusion of the latter with ‘utopianism’—one

312

M. Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (eds.), G. Wight and B. Porter (Leicester, London: Leicester University Press for the RIIA, 1991), 7. Ibid., 24. 314 Ibid., 14, 129. 315 Nicolson, ‘The Achievement of Pleasure’, 136. 316 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939); K. W. Thompson, ‘Idealism and Realism: Beyond the Great Debate’, British Journal of International Studies, 3 (1977), 209. 313

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repeated by many scholars—is unjustly dismissive of the practical inter-war idealists and too laudatory of realism. It also ignores the fact that realist and idealist views coalesced to influence British foreign policy during these years. The variety of characteristics ascribed to idealism and its mislabelling as utopianism have done a significant disservice to these international relations idealists. The associated implication that to have 317 ideals implies a lack of realism in implementing them has also been highly damaging to international theory since the Second World War. This process was well advanced by 1948 when Gilbert Murray criticized Carr for disseminating the view that ‘moral ideals were out of place in 318 The categories of realist and idealist ‘as roles in a manichean theatre…have served politics’, the ‘politics of power’ being the ‘only reality’. primarily to close off serious discussion in a manner that has helped to insulate the discipline of international debate’, and, if not impoverished, 319 then certainly starved international theory. Although in 1919 Nicolson was an idealist and an initial enthusiast for President Woodrow Wilson's open diplomacy, much of his faith in the Wilsonian vision had evaporated before the delegates left Paris. ‘I believe now that hard, diamond intelligence is better for the world than all 320 Nicolson did the idealism possible,’ he wrote in his diary on 18 May 1919. ‘Americanism, when faced with reality, has not been a success’. not question realist assumptions about power's central presence in international relations. While civilization was ultimately more important 321 ‘All politics are power’; than power, the possession of great physical power was necessary to enable a nation-state to develop its civilization. 322 however, what always mattered most to Nicolson was not the possession of power but the purposes to which it was put. Power, something essential to the maintenance of order, was not in itself evil. It became so only when ‘uncontrolled by conscience and a sense of duty, or 323 324 Nicolson, who at times proclaimed himself a ‘realist’, believed that law enforcement unchecked by a reasonable institutional balance’. depended on both consent

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P. Wilson, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism (New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 20, 217. G. Murray, From the League to U.N. (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 7. 319 R. B. J. Walker, ‘History and Structure in the Theory of International Relations’, in J. Der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 315. 320 H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964), 342. 321 H. Nicolson, Progress: Sweden and the New Europe (Address to the Anglo-Swedish Society, 28 January 1941), in Friendship, Progress, Civilisation (London: Anglo-Swedish Society, 1941), 13, 14. 322 H. Nicolson, ‘Democratic Diplomacy’, United Empire, 37 (1946), 118. 323 H. Nicolson, Review of Lord Radcliffe, The Problem of Power (1952), Observer, 13 April 1952, 7. 324 H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 16 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 318

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and power: ‘it is unrealistic to suppose that nations any more than individuals will submit to law unless constrained to do so’.

Realist scepticism of some inter-war idealist ideas is evident in Nicolson's international thought. One of the chief lessons of the 1919 Paris 326 In diplomacy, ‘it is better for the peace of the world Peace Conference was that ‘peace must be founded on realities rather than on hopes’. 327 Following centuries of to promise only what you are certain to perform, than to indulge in cloudy promises which carry small conviction’. conflict the Europeans knew from the outset what the Americans did not, that ‘the defensive value of armaments, strategic frontiers, alliances, 328 and neutralization, could be computed with approximate accuracy: the defensive value of “virtue all round” could not be thus computed’. For Nicolson, history had demonstrated that ‘no single prescription, above all no patent medicine’, such as collective security, ‘could usefully 329 Better solutions would come from the application to apply to those variegated but endemic diseases which create international conflicts’. 330 affairs of ‘an acquired habit of mind’, life being largely a matter of ‘intelligent improvisation’. Nicolson also doubted that the idea of the 331 ‘Civitas Dei’ (the Supreme Law of Nature) would be revived in the ‘realistic’ twentieth century. 332

Harold Nicolson recognized the recurring tension in international relations between the desirable and the achievable. He insisted also that 333 ‘politics are always based upon power’. In this sense he was a realist in the tradition of Thucydides and Machiavelli. Yet he was never comfortable with the realist refusal to accord ethics a pivotal place in political life, nor did he share realist doubt about the reform of international society. The search for what the ancients had termed the ‘Good Life’, and the possibility of securing European stability, a united 334 Europe, world government, and enduring peace, even if some of these goals took a century (or centuries) to realize, always inspired him. To Nicolson, the Realist-Machiavellian idea that international relations would forever follow the pattern of nation-state conflict was repugnant.

325

H. Nicolson, The Old Diplomacy and the New (David Davies Memorial Lecture in International Studies, March 1961) (London: David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies, 1961), 9. 326 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, xiv. 327 Ibid., xv. 328 Ibid., 192. 329 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 5 October 1945, 310. 330 H. Nicolson, ‘Introduction’ to M. Goldsmith, Frederick the Great (London: Victor Gollancz, 1929), 10. 331 Nicolson, Review of Lord Radcliffe, The Problem of Power, 7. 332 H. Nicolson, ‘Limited or Unlimited Obligations? What Ought British Foreign Policy To Be?’ (Discussion with Sir Edward Grigg and Sir Norman Angell), Listener, 9 December 1936, 1107. 333 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 5 October 1945, 310. 334 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 16 January 1942, 57; ‘Between Two Worlds’, Nation, 28 December 1940, 651–5; ‘Perspectives on Peace: A Discourse’, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Perspectives on Peace 1910–1960 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 43–5.

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How international theorists regard the idea of progress can be a useful indicator of their attitude to change. Ian Clark has referred to a Whig interpretation of history, one based on the premise that progress is not only possible but constantly occurring. He also discusses a Tory 335 interpretation, one sceptical of progress, which assumes the immutability of the elements of international political life. Clark sees the former as reflecting utopianism—‘the ideological impetus to reform of the international order’—and the latter as exemplifying realism—‘the main 336 337 Indeed, one of the most marked realist–idealist differences is their contrasting conceptions of progress. Idealism source of resistance’. 338 works towards reform in international affairs (‘directional’), while realism assumes an apparently inevitable pattern of sameness (‘cyclical’). By this standard Nicolson emerges as a practical idealist rather than a realist. 339

In theory and practice realism is diverse in character. R. B. J. Walker has contended that no single tradition of ‘political realism’ exists. 340 Realism is without doubt ‘a many-mansioned tradition of thought’ and not ‘a single theoretical entity’. According to James Der Derian, 341 So marked are the disparities between realist thinkers, writes Charles R. Beitz, that no canonical ‘realism is protean in form, eclectic in style’. 342 The diversity of realism seems to be generally acknowledged. It remains necessary, however, to form of political realism can be said to exist. explore its broad twentieth-century outlines in order to understand Nicolson's liberal realism and to determine how much of the latter originates from modern, and how much from classical, sources. In this context, it is helpful to recall Hans J. Morgenthau's six principles of 343 The later political realism, which stress the reality of conflict arising from the primacy in international relations of interest defined as power. 344 Morgenthau also insisted on the importance for political realism of ideals and moral principles. Realism remains the premier paradigm. Nevertheless, while ‘realism is compelling for the right reason—power is a crucial determinant of political

335

I. Clark, The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4, 7. Ibid., 49. 337 R. G. Gilpin, ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, International Organization, 38 (1984), 304. 338 Osiander, ‘Rereading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory’, 410. 339 R. B. J. Walker, ‘Realism, Change, and International Political Theory’, International Studies Quarterly, 31/1 (1987), 65. 340 R. D. Spegele, ‘Three Forms of Political Realism’, Political Studies, 35 189. 341 J. Der Derian, ‘Introduction’ to J. Der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 1. 342 C. R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, 2nd edn. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 185. 343 H. J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th edn. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 4–16; Dilemmas of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 274. 344 Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 7. 336

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behavior…it is…not the only determinant’. Considerations other than interest defined as power are important in international society. Nicolson was convinced that, by identifying and harnessing these factors, and by reintegrating them into the theory and practice of international relations, some lasting improvement in international interchange could be arrived at. An example of what he had in mind can be found in his attitude to Machiavelli's theory of power, to Palmerstonian realism, and in John J. Mearsheimer's ‘offensive realism’. Mearsheimer depicts a world destined for ‘perpetual great-power competition’ in the absence of ‘global 346 hegemony’ by a single nation-state. Lord Palmerston usurped George Canning's legacy of preserving British independence through security, 347 Nicolson's damning (and somewhat stability, and direct dealing, replacing them with belligerence, intervention, and disingenuousness. simplistic) view of the Machiavellian philosophy rested on his conviction that forces other than power and arms were significant, and could be decisive in international relations. ‘Machiavelli, as Hitler,’ Nicolson argued, ‘misconceived the unity of average virtue; failed to foresee the eventual refusal of mankind to be coerced into false opinions; and ignored the wave of revolt that is bound to arise when a whole nation is 348 conditioned forcibly and told lies’. Idealist aims, if pursued by realist, ethical means, could be realized in international relations as long as the proportions of realism and practical idealism were sound (and utopianism avoided). Yet Nicolson remained cautious about what might be achieved. The idea of reforming international relations was inspiring, and he considered that gradual progress could be made in the areas of European stability and integration, world government, and universal peace. Nevertheless, he thought that in the short- and medium-terms, ‘in all important disputes between 349 Nicolson believed in many tenets of the advanced democratic states it is national interest and national character which counts in the end’. realist approach while insisting on the importance of ethical practice in international relations—‘a political realism that ignores ethics is as 350 truncated and unreal as a political ethic that ignores power’. Nicolson's

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B. Fozouni, ‘Confutation of Political Realism’, International Studies Quarterly, 39 (1995), 507. J. J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 2, 14. 347 H. Nicolson, ‘Lord Palmerston’, in H. J. Massingham and H. Massingham (eds.), The Great Victorians (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1932), 372–3, 376–8. Henry Adams observed that diplomats had little cause to complain of deceit—it was part of their profession. Yet he considered Palmerston's habit of laying traps for his diplomatic interlocutors reprehensible. 348 H. Nicolson, Monarchy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 211. 349 H. Nicolson and V. Sackville-West, ‘National Character and International Cooperation’, Sissinghurst Castle, (193?), 8. 350 R. L. Shinn, ‘Realism and Ethics in Political Philosophy’, in K. W. Thompson and R. J. Myers (eds.), Truth and Tragedy: A Tribute to Hans J. Morgenthau (Washington, DC: New Republic Book Company, 1977), 102. 346

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beliefs about what was ultimately possible in international relations reveal him as a patient and practical reformer. ‘The fact that universal peace 351 will only be attained after the passing of many human generations,’ he stated in 1935, ‘does not detract from its validity as an objective’. The reluctance of international relations scholars to integrate the teachings of ancient political thinkers into their work has arisen from a longstanding conviction that the classical thinkers' preoccupation with the internal politics of the nation-state militated against them undertaking 352 As a result, classical political thought is perceived as having marginal relevance to modern serious analyses of interstate relations. 353 Jean Bethke Elshtain, for example, asserts that classical political theory is concerned with civil society, whereas international theory. 354 international relations encompasses ‘what goes on at the boundaries between, the space created by all “states” in their relations’. One of the consequences of ignoring the classical Greek and Roman philosophers and historians has been an uneasy search by international relations scholars for theories and patterns of ideas with which to underpin their theories of international affairs. Martin Wight, believing that the ancient Greeks and Romans had devoted little attention to political or international ethics, concluded that they also provided no foundation for principles of statecraft situated somewhere between a statesman's personal honour and humane conduct based on expediency. Medieval and modern Europe redressed this deficiency, according to Wight, by creating ‘the conception of a political morality distinct equally 355 from personal morality and from Realpolitik’. Wight also identified one aspect of the political philosophy of constitutional government as a ‘Whig or “constitutional” tradition in diplomacy’, whose representatives included Hugo Grotius, François de Callières, and Nicolson. Another element of Western constitutionalism emphasized by Wight was the idea of ‘a via media’, that appeared generally as ‘the juste milieu between definable extremes’. It found expression in attempts to 356 reconcile realism and idealism in inter-war British foreign policy. Wight endorsed the Aristotelian principle of the mean as a guide to action, and stressed the importance

351

H. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, International Affairs, 14 (1935), 607. H. Butterfield, ‘Diplomacy’, in R. Hatton and M. S. Anderson (eds.), Studies in Diplomatic History: Essays in Memory of David Bayne Horn (London: Longman, 1970), 366. 353 M. Wight, ‘Why is there no International Theory?’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 17, 18, 20. 354 J. B. Elshtain, ‘International Politics and Political Theory’, in K. Booth and S. Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 266. 355 M. Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 127 356 Ibid., 90–1. 352

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in international relations of the ‘middle ground’ as ‘an alternative policy [embodying] the notion of a middle course, of a permissible 357 accommodation between moral necessity and practical demands’. The role of the pre-eminent classical political philosophers in shaping the thought of modern theorists like Nicolson has been little explored. The cost to the discipline of international relations of the English School's attempts to establish its own group of theoretical torch-bearers by the almost wholesale exclusion of the giants of political theory, however, has been widely discussed. Contrary to the prevailing view, issues of 358 international theory and analysis can be said to involve classical political thought. Twentieth-century international theory suffered by being 359 It should be stressed, however, that Wight's International Theory: The Three Traditions (1991) cut adrift from the tradition of political theory. 360 The same can be said of reveals a mind richly aware of the formative role of the ancient classical thinkers in shaping international thought. 361 Hedley Bull's work on Hugo Grotius.

CONTINUITY OR DEPARTURE? Nicolson shared the (Thucydidean) view that ‘the only certain thing in human nature is self-interest, and, in terms of national nature, that self362 He also held the Aristotelian belief that the behaviour of nation-states and individuals should be judged by the same interest is self-defence’. 363 The failure to conduct ethical criteria—the standard of intrastate and interstate conduct ought to be as high as that of personal conduct. 364 365 to denigrate or to fail to recognize the importance of this precept, constituted a serious public affairs on a basis of private morality, problem for international intercourse. This was

357 M. Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 91, 128. 358 F. Halliday, ‘The Pertinence of International Relations’, Political Studies, 38 (1990), 503. 359 D. Boucher, ‘Political Theory, International Theory, and the Political Theory of International Relations’, in A. Vincent (ed.), Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 198. 360 Wight, International Theory, 14, 44, 99, 129. 361 H. Bull, ‘The Importance of Grotius in the Study of International Relations’, in H. Bull, B. Kingsbury, and A. Roberts (eds.), Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 73. 362 H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, in The Future of the League of Nations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 138. 363 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 36–7. 364 H. Nicolson, Public Faces: A Novel (London: Constable, 1932), 22. 365 H. Nicolson, The Age of Reason (1700–1789) (London: Constable, 1960), 106.

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the main argument of R. B. Mowat's Public and Private Morality (1933), a book Nicolson called one of ‘the bibles of my faith’. 367

Although reluctant to use the word ‘moral’ in international relations (he believed it savoured of self-righteousness or cant), Nicolson agreed with E. H. Carr on the existence of ‘international morality’—a stock of common ideas standing above national interests which served as a 368 The modernist in Carr asserted that the morality required of the nation-state differed from that demanded yardstick for interstate conduct. 369 The classicist in Nicolson recognized no such distinction, one he regarded as erroneous and dangerous. of the citizens of such a state. 370 Martin Wight's convictions—central to his conception of a via media—that political morality differs fundamentally from personal morality, and that the ancients had shirked the question of how best to determine objective standards of practical, ethical conduct in statecraft and diplomacy, were not shared by Nicolson. The moral basis of his ‘middle course’ in international relations may appear similar to that underlying 371 the via media. The former is rooted, however, in Nicolson's understanding of classical philosophy's ethical and political injunctions, and not, like the latter, in medieval and modern ideas about nation-state and personal conduct. For Nicolson, Hugo Grotius was an ‘idealist’, who, in his On the Law of War and Peace (1625), posited the existence of ‘a Law of Nature, evolved, 372 He also conceived the idea of an ‘international society’, in which nationas it were organically, from the conscience and reason of mankind’. 373 The Grotian enterprise exposed interstate relations to states and their rulers must observe laws, thus forming a society or community. natural law principles in a tradition going back to classical Greece and Rome and early Christianity; Grotius acknowledged Aristotle as his 374 ‘The law of nature is a dictate of right reason,’ Grotius wrote, ‘which points out that an act, according as it is greatest intellectual benefactor. or is not in conformity with rational nature, has in it a quality of moral baseness or moral necessity; and that, in consequence, such an act is 375 either forbidden or enjoined by the author of nature, God’. The

366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375

H. Nicolson, Review of R. B. Mowat, Revolution and Recovery (1933), Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1934, 8. H. Nicolson, ‘“We Must Burn No Boats”’, Listener, 26 September 1946, 399. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 185; H. Nicolson, ‘Diplomacy: Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, 40/1 (1961), 49. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 191. Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, 128. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, 608. H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (London: Constable, 1954), 49, 50. Bull, ‘The Importance of Grotius in the Study of International Relations’, 71. H. Grotius, Prolegomena to De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (The Law of War and Peace) (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964), 24. H. Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (The Law of War and Peace), Book I (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964), 38–9.

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Grotian approach rejected extremes in international affairs. The insistence of Aristotle and Grotius on the necessity of measured policy in international relations—policy incorporating the ethical and the practical—found expression in Nicolson's liberal realism. 376

The liberal realist believed that ‘success is never, either in diplomacy or in foreign policy, an ultimate justification’. Nicolson was certain that 377 ‘the idea of international principles as opposed to the idea of purely national expediency’ was supremely desirable. Moreover, ‘the principles 378 of sound foreign policy are identical with the principles of sound domestic policy, namely honesty, liberalism, fairness, order and strength’. 379 In international relations the adjustment of lofty general principles to prosaic practical detail was difficult, but ‘the failure of a principle 380 381 Certain permanent and universal standards governed diplomatic negotiation. These derived from the Greek matters less than its denial’. 382 and Roman ethical virtues. Their observance would ensure that the unchanging principles of sound diplomacy ultimately prevailed. Nicolson acknowledged Aristotle's ‘indestructible’ teaching on rhetoric as the authority for his contention that successful diplomacy rested on 383 The quality, ‘moral character,’ Aristotle argued, ‘carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in the integrity and veracity of the negotiator. 384 making credible’. In Nicolson's view, Britain's foreign policy and diplomacy fluctuated between idealism and realism. The typical British approach to any 385 During periods of stability this approach, which accommodated by international problem proceeded from the idealistic to the realistic. turns various shades of realist and idealist opinion, presented few problems. However, the unstable European situation of the 1930s made some international theorists (including Nicolson) realize that, in dealing with Japanese, Italian, and German aggression, a better defined, more vigorous foreign policy was necessary. How could a workable theory of international relations encompassing the ethical and the realizable be devised—one which avoided extreme realism and utopianism (as distinct from practical idealism)? ‘Ought we to…return to the political realism of the nineteenth century, and maintain the League merely in the form of a fact-finding Secretariat working as the organ of a clearinghouse for international dispute?’, Nicolson asked, ‘or should we adopt the reverse process

376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385

Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna, 165. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 15 August 1938, 6. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 10 October 1941, 354. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 189. ibid., xxiv. H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1988), 68. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 93. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 1 September 1950, 262. Aristotle, Treatise on Rhetoric (London: George Bell and Sons, 1906), I. 4, 12. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 75.

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and envisage the League as a crusade against all theories of sovereignty and power?’

Both courses were impracticable:

If we are to avoid the error of treating idealism and realism as on the same plane, we should outspokenly affirm a differentiation in terms of time. Instead of promising to do everything for everybody at the same moment, we should admit that the League idea must be taken as something which in modern conditions cannot be either universally or simultaneously applied. We must set before ourselves a chronological programme, marked by the classic time-sequence of all processes of pacification, namely (1) Authority, (2) Conciliation, (3) Order. First you repress a revolt; then you examine those social or economic grievances which led to the revolt; and, finally, you impose 387 the habit of order. Nicolson contended that, on the evidence of history, unrestrained realpolitik and utopian forms of idealpolitik were unworkable. Inter-war crises had not been solved solely by blunt realism or radical idealism. However, he concluded: There is a middle way between these two extremes. One can believe that violence can only be controlled by force, even as one can believe that the unresisted triumph of evil is an event more horrible than war itself. And to this proposition there is an evident corollary—namely, that power, if exercised with determination and intelligence, can be both benevolent and beneficial. The problem, therefore, is to define the frontier between force and conciliation and to have some general idea of the areas in which force is harmful 388 and the areas in which conciliation is harmful. 389

The purpose of statecraft and diplomacy was to reconcile the practical and the ideal by employing a standard deducible from the ethical and 390 Prudence political writings of the classical authors. It is one based on ‘prudence’ (a fusion of ‘practical wisdom’ and ‘philosophic wisdom’). 391 is ‘the wise application of the principles of justice to the contingencies of interest and power in political life’. Adam Watson has referred 392 Nicolson similarly to the twin elements of moral responsibility and ‘the prudential assessment of advantage’ in international relations. believed, as Michael Howard would later put it, that in international affairs ethical considerations need not enfeeble power,

386 387 388 389 390 391 392

H. Nicolson, ‘The Future of the League: IV. Back to First Principles’, Spectator, 5 June 1936, 1028. Ibid. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 29 September 1944, 286. Nicolson, The Old Diplomacy and the New, 1. Aristotle, ‘Nicomachean Ethics’, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (ed.), J. Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), I. 8, 1736, I. 13, 1742, VI. 13, 1808. K. W. Thompson, ‘Practical Morality and Prudence’, Australian Outlook, 33 (1979), 278. A. Watson, Diplomacy: The Dialogue Between States (London: Methuen, 1984), 205–6.

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nor need considerations of power sully ethics.

Kenneth W. Thompson has described how:

Practical morality proceeds on the basis of the ubiquity of both self-interest and national interests…it seeks ways of identifying convergent interests, not denying their existence. Practical morality observes that neither men nor nations can escape moral valuations. Thus it rejects moral cynicism. Practical morality understands the reality of power without sanctifying it as man's final end in life…Practical morality operates at the intersection of politics and morality, not promising utopia nor accepting the ‘war of each against 394 all’. The roots of Nicolson's ‘middle course’ lay in classical political philosophy, in the idea of the ‘mean’ as applied to political life, and in the classical formulation, prudence. The latter, largely an Aristotelian conception, admitted of a richer and more ambitious reform agenda in international relations than either Realist-Machiavellianism or Revolutionist-Kantianism. At the same time it reflected a more cautious approach than that of the practical idealists and a sceptical regard for utopianism in international affairs. Ken Booth's ‘utopian realism’ is 395 evidence of continuing interest in the formulations underlying Nicolson's liberal realism; however, while Nicolson was in some respects an 396 idealist, he never saw utopianism—‘the pursuit of the unattainable ideal’ —as a serious alternative to realism and practical idealism, or as a sound basis for reforming international society. A. J. P. Taylor has identified ‘Dissent’ in British foreign policy and diplomacy as an important determinant of alternative approaches to international relations between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Richard Cobden's nineteenth-century espousal of international arbitration, and David Urquhart's advocacy of international law as a corrective to Great Power intervention in Small Power affairs, found rich expression in twentieth-century dissenting thought. J. A. Hobson's influential Imperialism: A Study (1902) and Towards International Government (1915), Leonard Woolf's early anti-colonialist tract Europe and Commerce in Africa (1920), Norman Angell's early (like Woolf, his thinking had altered by the mid-1930s) pro-peace The Great Illusion (1910), and E. D. Morel's Union of Democratic Control—an unforgiving critic of classic diplomacy and its institutions—represented the first stage of early twentieth-century dissent or utopianism, whichever word is preferred. These culminated in the 1930s in shades of pacifism and isolationism, whether moderate (the League of Nations Union), or radical (Canon ‘Dick’ Sheppard's Peace Pledge Union), and brands of pro-disarmament Christian

393 394 395 396

M. Howard, ‘Ethics and Power in International Policy’, International Affairs, 53 (1977), 369. Thompson, ‘Practical Morality and Prudence’, 280. K. Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’, International Affairs, 67 (1991), 527–47. Clark, The Hierarchy of States, 49.

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pacifism such as that of the former Labour Party leader, George Lansbury, an erstwhile advocate of collective security. Though Taylor does 397 not explore it, this also gave rise to the radical anti-nation-state Christian reformism of Lionel Curtis and Lord Lothian. Nicolson was quick to see the difference between himself and the utopian idealists. In forestalling war, he told Curtis, ‘I advocate physical prevention and you 398 399 He also rejected Christian pacifism as unrealistic, and dismissed Lansbury's suggestion that the advocate spiritual prevention’. 400 conception of ‘righteous force’ had no place in international relations. Another tripartite classification less familiar than Wight's is valuable in understanding Nicolson's international thought. His classical and historical studies at Oxford and experiences as diplomat and MP led Nicolson to an intellectual position which had strong affinities with the third of the three traditions of international relations identified by David Boucher. Neither ‘Empirical Realism’ (Thucydides and Niccolò Machiavelli—‘interest and expediency’ as arbiter of nation-state action), nor ‘Historical Reason’ (G. W. F. Hegel and the British Idealists like T. H. Green—the conception of ‘a world moral community’), but the tradition of ‘Universal Moral Order’ (Aristotle, the Stoics, Hugo Grotius), 401 Benjamin Jowett's reinterpretations of classical thought, Cyril in which ‘rule or principle’ provide the standard for interstate conduct. 402 and A. L. Bailey's classicism, Dean Urquhart's philosophy of public affairs (expressed in seminal contributions to international relations), Smith's exposition of modern British history had found intellectual and practical expression in yet another son of Balliol.

397 398 399 400 401 402

A. J. P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers: Dissent over British Foreign Policy 1792–1939 (The Ford Lectures, 1956) (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957), Chapters 2, 4–6. H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 16 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Nicolson, ‘Causes and Purposes’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 126 (1939), 385–6. H. Nicolson, ‘Letter to the Editor: Policy and Armaments’, New Statesman and Nation, 15 February 1936, 223. D. Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 28–47. F. F. Urquhart, ‘The Causes of Modern Wars’, in A. J. Grant et al., An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1916), 37–66.

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4 International Order IMPERIUM TO DOMINION Although Harold Nicolson rarely employed the term ‘international order’, the conception is germane to his international thought. He regarded the custodians and guarantors of international order as the Great Powers, nation-states endowed by virtue of their strength with the obligation to maintain peace, to protect Small Powers from aggression, and to foster a cooperative spirit in international affairs. The idea of international order derived largely from the ancient Romans who had contributed to diplomatic theory ‘the conception of international order and 403 discipline’. It was diplomacy's purpose to ensure that interstate relations were based on ‘certainty’ in order to achieve ‘not an inflated, but a 404 deflated currency in international order’. Nicolson's philosophy of international order is rooted in the conviction that only a small number of Western Great Powers could be entrusted with maintaining peace in this way. He recognized that addressing the complexities of international order was becoming more difficult because of the greater role of ideology and public opinion in international relations. Such far-reaching change was transforming international society. The years between 1919 and the 1946 Paris Peace Conference after the Second World War marked British power's transition from a longstanding imperium over a worldwide empire to a lesser one of dominion over her former colonial possessions. Though the First World War left Britain territorially richer, the foundations of international order, which had begun to change imperceptibly to her disadvantage during the nineteenth century, continued to shift to her detriment following the 1919 Conference. The Conference's principal progeny, the Treaty of Versailles, was born in uncertain times to confused parents. ‘Formal peace settlements…flourish in a homogeneous, conservative, aristocratic

403 404

H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1988), 19. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 24 May 1944, 787.

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society…They do not fit a time of permanent revolution, dizzying change, and spiritual uncertainty. Nor do they, perhaps, fit a time of 405 democracy’. The young diplomat hoped that the Conference would create a just peace, establish solid legal and territorial bases for the new nation-states devised during its counsels, retain the best features of the existing order (such as the ‘Old Diplomacy’), and ensure continued global European dominance. Nicolson realized, though, that there would be a price. ‘I have great hopes of the Congress’, he wrote, ‘so long as we keep in with 406 the Yanks’. However, the Americans, in the form of their President, Woodrow Wilson, brought to Paris three convictions antipathetic to 407 In a trio of the European mind: a dislike of European institutions, a distrust of diplomacy, and a missionary faith in the equality of man. addresses Wilson set out his twenty-three ‘Terms of Peace’, comprising ‘Fourteen Points’ (8 January 1918), ‘Four Principles’ (11 February 408 1918), and ‘Five Particulars’ (27 September 1918). The strong appeal of Wilson's widely trumpeted intention to secure ‘open covenants of 409 Yet the president's confusion of principle and detail in peace, openly arrived at’ led Nicolson to become an early Wilson admirer. negotiation, and his vacillation over the final settlement, disillusioned Nicolson, who left Paris convinced that ‘the new order had merely fouled 410 the old’. One factor essential to international order—a consistency of purpose in diplomacy—had been absent in Paris. The ramifications of this were disruptive and unsettling to international relations. While the exponents of realism at the Conference were convinced that a durable peace depended on physical guarantees against German aggression, the idealistic Wilson believed that it could be founded on human reason and virtue. It was ‘that division of principle which rotted the whole Peace Conference’, Nicolson argued. ‘In seeking to compromise between these two opposites, the Conference fell between the two stools of realism and idealism, and produced a Treaty which, while sufficiently onerous to 411 In 1940, provoke and prolong resentment, was not sufficiently powerful to prevent Germany from rendering that resentment effective’. Nicolson contended that the essential error of the Treaty of Versailles lay, not in the political frontiers it imposed, nor in its economic clauses, but

405 406 407 408 409 410 411

S. Haffner, ‘What Went Wrong at Versailles’, Observer, 28 June 1959, 8. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lady Carnock, 10 January 1919, Sissinghurst Castle. H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (London: Constable, 1954), 84. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964), 38–42. W. Wilson, The Politics of Woodrow Wilson: Selections from His Speeches and Writings (ed.), A. Heckscher (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), 303. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 187. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 20 March 1942, 278; ‘Five Lessons for the Peacemakers’, New York Times Magazine, 8 April 1945, 44.

International Order in ‘the compromise adopted between the physical and the moral aspects of the treaties, between security and justice’.

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Two years on, his view had not changed: The first element of peace is security, and…security is a matter, not of idealism but of power. The Treaty of Versailles, in its ultimate effect, created both the desire and the hope of revenge. The main lesson…of the…Conference is that it is essential that the main Powers should be clear from the start exactly where realism ends and idealism begins…No treaty, however admirable in appearance, can remain effective unless the parties to it are determined to secure, and above all capable of securing, that it is observed. The Treaty of Versailles failed, not because it was a bad treaty, but because its most vital portion, namely, the Covenant of the League of Nations, was not carried 413 out. With the end of the Second World War imminent, and another peace conference likely, Nicolson speculated in April 1945 that, in this instance, ‘Instead of allowing the compromise between force and conciliation to permeate the whole treaty, it is probable that security will be maintained 414 in terms of power’ based on ‘a just balance between nationality, defensive necessities, security and economic need’. Britain's future as a Great Power and her role in maintaining international order now dominated Nicolson's thoughts. His thinking alternated between optimism and uncertainty. Nicolson had long been concerned with Albion's relative position in the hierarchy of nation-states. ‘Greece constitutes a very positive asset in 415 Visiting a prosperous British imperial policy’, he observed in 1921, ‘and so long as we have an Empire, our policy is bound to be imperial’. Cairo in November 1924, he wrote to his parents of how odd it felt ‘to pass from our défaitisme at home, to this rattle of gold and scarlet. One has the impression that the British Empire has some vitality of its own—quite independent of Downing Street and the Daily Express. I admit 416 that it makes even me feel slightly jingo’. In January 1926, after reflecting on British rule in Persia, Iraq, and Egypt, he confessed, ‘I am becoming immensely imperialist: after all, if we are not imperial, what are we? And how gloriously and manfully imperial we are!…I don't like war—because it mars people. But I like 417 dominion, when it is exercised as we have exercised it, and as…we are exercising it today with perfect calm’. A conversation with Leonard Woolf eighteen months later steadied Nicolson's enthusiasm. ‘I talk to Leonard about Imperialism’, he recorded in his diary on 17 July 1927. ‘He says the question is not whether it

412 413 414 415 416 417

H. Nicolson, ‘Allied War Aims’, New Republic, 26 February 1940, 273. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 20 March 1942, 278. Nicolson, ‘Five Lessons for the Peacemakers’, 44. H. Nicolson, ‘The Revision of the Treaty of Sèvres’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 17, 18 January 1921 (London: HMSO, 1970), 15. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lord and Lady Carnock, 15 November 1924, Sissinghurst Castle. Ibid., 22 January 1926.

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is right or wrong but that it is practically impossible. I fear he may be right. But it saddens me as I feel our national genius is that way and that 418 In 1934, Nicolson admitted that in relation to ‘the anomaly of our position in Egypt’ (and, impliedly, in other British way only’. possessions), the justification for Britain's presence there constituted an uneasy and increasingly indefensible amalgam of ‘authority or force’ 419 420 Nicolson told the House of Commons in March 1942 that ‘Imperialism was dead and, I devoutly hoped, buried’. Later and ‘consent’. 421 that year, he stressed that Britain's future policy towards her erstwhile colonies should be one of assistance instead of exploitation. The Pax Britannica may be a relic of history, Nicolson observed during wartime in October 1942, but ‘the problem of law and power must still 422 In the wake of Singapore's surrender to the Japanese the previous be solved in something like the same terms’ as in former centuries. February, Nicolson feared that liberal intellectuals like himself, in their ambivalence over Britain's imperial role, had weakened the capacity of her elites to govern and wage war. He lamented that ‘we are only half-hearted in fighting the whole-hearted…we have derided the principles of 423 force upon which our Empire is built. We undermined confidence in our own formula’. After the Second World War, the country's leaders were repeatedly misjudging the extent of British power. This was distorting her place in the order of nation-states. ‘We have not really adjusted as yet our foreign policy to the changed proportions of power; we still assume that we can achieve nineteenth century ends by nineteenth century means’, Nicolson stated. ‘And as a result we are continually finding ourselves in false 424 positions…When we were immensely invulnerable we could afford to act empirically and by rule of thumb; we cannot do that today’. Nineteenth-century liberalism, with its conceptions of human rationality and perfectibility, and the more radical prescriptions of the foreign 425 policy utopians or ‘dissenters’, could no longer be considered ‘the last word in human wisdom or experiment’.

THE ELEMENTS OF FOREIGN POLICY For Jules Cambon (as for Nicolson), the foreign policy imperatives of most nation-states were, if not immutable, then certainly predictable and permanent.

418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425

Nicolson diary, 17 July 1927, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1934), 164. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 26 March 1942, 2168. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 4 December 1942, 526. Ibid., 23 October 1942, 382. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1939–1945 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1967), 214. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 16 October 1946, 6–7. Ibid., 22 September 1946, 3, 4.

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‘Foreign policy is not a matter of sentiment’, wrote Cambon. ‘National interests never change; for they are determined by nature, geography, 426 International order was best secured through realism in foreign policy as the basis for a future liberal realist and the character of a nation’. approach to international relations. ‘No foreign policy can ever be reliable unless it be based upon national egoism. The main difference between a “good” and a “bad” foreign policy is that, whereas the former is based upon enlightened egoism, the latter is based upon egoism of 427 428 Foreign policy, which is shaped by ‘national self-interest expressing itself in terms of political expediency’, and the the “sacred” variety’. 429 430 is determined in the end by geography. Britain's foreign policy desire for self-preservation (‘the most permanent of human desires’), must be straightforward, open, and precise. No government should make undertakings which it knew it could not honour. National strength must always be commensurate with a nation-state's responsibilities, and a government ought never to assume commitments beyond its 431 capacities. Much of Nicolson's foreign policy thinking falls within the empirical British realist tradition, one marked by ‘its self-conscious pragmatism, its acknowledged acceptance of palliatives when fundamental solutions appear beyond reach, and its emphasis on compromise, and trial and 432 However, Nicolson realized that the most desirable foreign policy demanded more than ‘pragmatism’. So, too, did his contemporary, error’. E. H. Carr, who wrote in 1939, ‘Foreign policy is not, as some people imagine, the discovery and application of appropriate means to achieve known ends. It involves the discovery and formulation of ends and means, and the adaptation of both to the circumstances of the moment. 433 434 Nicolson, who considered Carr's analysis ‘most acute’, did not regard foreign This is one reason for its extraordinary complexity’. affairs—‘the current of events’—as ‘a slow but majestic river, flowing sedately in a uniform direction requiring merely, at moments of crisis, a glib but scrupulous rectification of the banks’. Rather, it resembled ‘the more recondite currents of the greater seas…deflected by chance

426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434

J. Cambon, The Diplomatist (London: Philip Allan, 1931), 11, 12. H. Nicolson, ‘A Man and a Crisis: Being a Sketch of Anthony Eden’, Sissinghurst Castle, 1935, 1. H. Nicolson, ‘The Psychology of Anglo-French Relations in 1935’, Sissinghurst Castle, 1935, 1. H. Nicolson, ‘The Origins and Development of the Anglo-French Entente’, International Affairs, 30 (1954), 416. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 30 June 1950, 885. H. Nicolson, ‘Treaty Making 1946’, Current Affairs, 4 May 1946, 9; ‘Our Treaty with France: The Background’, Listener, 6 March 1947, 328–9. K. W. Thompson, ‘Statesmen as Philosophers: Written and Living Theories’, Review of Politics, 20 (1958), 456. E. H. Carr, Britain: A Study of Foreign Policy from the Versailles Treaty to the Outbreak of War (London: Longmans, Green, 1939), 1–2. H. Nicolson, Review of E. H. Carr, Britain (1939), Daily Telegraph, 1 December 1939, 5.

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obstacles, by tiny landslides…by successive collapses along the line of least resistance’.

435

In formulating liberal realism Nicolson rejected the notion of ‘an ideal British foreign policy’ attainable through ‘a single set of formulas 436 One such formula favoured by his superiors in diplomacy during the applicable to any combination of circumstances which may arise’. 1920s was ‘that clean label of “good relations”, stamped so neatly with O.H.M.S.’. For him, ‘good relations’ represented little more than Britain 437 securing superficial (and usually short-lived) amity at almost any price, or at a price not worth paying. ‘I was never, I fear, much of a believer in “good relations” as an aim in themselves’, he told a colleague. ‘They act as a useful lubricant: and bad relations paralyse all action. But if one 438 Essentially, ‘good relations’ denoted nothing merely attains “good relations” one merely attains an island completely surrounded by bog’. 439 more than ‘impotence’. Not surprisingly, a man of Nicolson's background found it hard to accept the increased role of public opinion in the framing and execution of foreign policy. He deplored the ways in which the democratic voice—increasingly vocal, strident, and alert, but to him largely ignorant—had 440 The dominant attitude of the English prevented the leaders of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference from implementing the Fourteen Points. elector towards foreign affairs was one of ‘unrealized perplexity’, which arose from generally abysmal press reportage and commentary, an absence of any common purpose or intention, and a lack of knowledge of foreign affairs and foreign psychology. The results were unfocused and indiscriminate suspicion, ‘escapism’ (the resort to catchphrases, slogans, formulas, and comforting words), a preference for party political 441 What was needed for the right exercise of individual over national solutions, and irresponsibility in addressing international relations issues. 442 sovereignty in foreign affairs was not ‘knowledge of facts but habits of correct and fundamental thinking’. Nicolson found ample evidence for this when he read out at meetings during the 1935 general election campaign a letter from a constituent asking if he supported the League of Nations and ‘collective security’, while opposing any British entanglements in Europe. He recorded that at each gathering only a few people in the audience recognized the reasoning behind the letter as

435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442

H. Nicolson, Public Faces: A Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1944), 5–6, 110. H. Nicolson, The Independent Member of Parliament (Address on behalf of the Hansard Society, 14 March 1946) (London: The Hansard Society, 1946), 14–15. H. Nicolson, Letter to O. O'Malley, 23 August 1927, Sir Owen O'Malley Papers, St Antony's College, Oxford. H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Oliphant, 26 January 1926, Sissinghurst Castle. Ibid., 14 January 1927. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 64–5, 89–90. H. Nicolson, ‘Democratic Diplomacy’, United Empire, 37 (1946), 116. H. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, International Affairs, 14 (1935), 605.

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443

‘self-contradictory nonsense’. The public, while conscious of their rights in the sphere of foreign affairs, was not fully aware of the duties 444 445 Clearly, Britons needed educating in ‘a sense of their responsibility for foreign policy’. and obligations accompanying those rights. Nevertheless, he did not dismiss public opinion as a determinant of international order. In 1935, Nicolson stated that ‘public opinion has now 446 It was the elite's duty to inform become a constant, rather than an intermittent, factor in the conception and execution of foreign policy’. 447 though Nicolson admitted that in some instances, such as relations between the Foreign Office and educate the public about foreign affairs, 448 Another negative effect of democratic public opinion was the time-delay that will always exist and the populace, this would not be easy. between the thoughts of the statesman or diplomat and their acceptance by the public. Democracies also tend to repudiate engagements into which they have entered. As Nicolson concluded, ‘this time-lag places democratic diplomacy at a grave disadvantage in dealing with 449 autocracies’, while ‘the unreliability of democratic good-faith depreciates the value of international contract’. In ambivalent praise of the citizenry's understanding of foreign affairs, Nicolson observed that ‘public opinion, although it is generally right in 450 Yet this was little consolation. He remained convinced that, in the Anglo-American context at least, the end, is often wrong at the time’. ‘Everyman has less comprehension of the common good than the statesmen and professionals have shown. Our statesmen and our diplomatists understand each other excellently. It is when one reaches the lower levels of society that one comes up against a wall of prejudice 451 Accordingly, Nicolson recommended that the leaders of democratic nation-states should refrain from developing and misconception’. foreign policies that were unreceptive to open, detailed explanation, because the public generally understood principles but did not comprehend manoeuvres; ‘a foreign policy based upon ascertainable and avowable principles is more likely to command the ordinary citizen's 452 consent than one based in any respect upon ingenuity or adventure’.

443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452

H. Nicolson, ‘British Public Opinion and Foreign Policy’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 1/1 (1937), 59. H. Nicolson, ‘Has Britain a Policy?’, Foreign Affairs, 14 (1936), 558. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 10 October 1941, 354. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, 599. H. Nicolson, ‘What is Imperialism?’, England: The Journal of the Royal Society of St. George, new ser., 2/15 (1943), 4, 10; ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 26 November 1948, 693. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 29 December 1944, 597. H. Nicolson, ‘The Foreign Service’, Political Quarterly, 7 (1936), 217; ‘Men and Circumstance’, Foreign Affairs, 23 (1945), 484. H. Nicolson, ‘Open Covenants and Open Negotiations’, Listener, 27 July 1939, 180. H. Nicolson, ‘Anglo-American Misunderstanding’, American Scholar, 12/1 (1942–43), 21. Nicolson, ‘Men and Circumstance’, 484.

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Nicolson's views concerning the effect of public opinion on foreign policy after the Second World War mirrored those he had held after the First World War. ‘The public…are apt to regard peace treaties as the termination of past difficulties’, he wrote in May 1946, ‘rather than as the 453 By 1948, his approach to the British–American relationship had not altered from that outlined in the starting-point of future obligations’. American Scholar (1942–43). As he told Sir Alfred Zimmern, in what could be considered a charmingly candid or an infuriatingly patronizing tone, ‘the only way to improve Anglo-American relations is to do so by private discussion with key people. The idea of making any mass 454 appeal is hopeless. I have always found that Americans think individually, but feel corporately’. In August 1946, Nicolson stated that the purpose of the second Paris Peace Conference (July–October 1946) was to attempt to create a foundation of mutual trust or mutual respect between the USSR and the Western Powers. This alone could prevent another war. As such, the 455 gathering would determine whether the Christian principles of the Atlantic Charter (1941) would regulate relations between nation-states. It soon became apparent that the Conference had not been convened ‘for purposes of negotiation but as the public expression of the 456 Its outcome would be of central importance to international order. underground conflict between the east and the west’. At the 1919 Paris Conference there had existed ‘a certain uniformity of principle’ and agreement among participants about the shape of the international society they wished to create. In 1946, no such uniformity of desire was present, the aims of the two groups (or blocs) being inimical. This conflict of principle shaped decisively the proceedings and outcome of the Conference. The blocs were divided by conflicting 457 economic and social theories, and by ‘a fundamental, if unexpressed, divergence between the two conceptions of the proper use of power’. The Conference also exemplified open diplomacy at its worst, with predictable and deplorable implications for international order. In place of 458 ‘open covenants openly arrived at’ there had been ‘open insults openly hurled’. Proceedings were reduced to the level of ‘a charade’. This prevented negotiators from establishing real diplomatic rapport in private. Consequently, ‘the whole theme—and as it may happen, the central 459 tragedy—of this conference is the theme of trust or distrust, of confidence or suspicion’. The public at

453 454 455 456 457 458 459

Nicolson, ‘Treaty Making 1946’, 7. H. Nicolson, Letter to Sir Alfred Zimmern, 23 July 1948, Zimmern Papers, Ms 55, Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 4 August 1946, 6. Nicolson diary, 28 September 1946, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Peacemaking at Paris: Success, Failure or Farce?’, Foreign Affairs, 25 (1947), 198. H. Nicolson, ‘The Need for Leadership at Paris’, Listener, 29 August 1946, 269. H. Nicolson, ‘Russia and the Peace Conference’, Listener, 22 August 1946, 235.

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home became the main audience for ‘a succession of propaganda speeches which took no account of the merits of the issue under discussion, which committed the several delegations to positions from which it would be difficult to retreat, which aroused some resentment, and which 460 filled the assembled delegates with weariness and despair’. The problems experienced in Paris were also partial proof of two maxims applicable to interstate relations when a large-scale conflict nears its end: ‘as ultimate victory seems assured, the consciousness of separate interests tends to overshadow the sense of common purpose’ and 461 The reasons for Russian distrust of the West ‘coalitions begin to disintegrate from the moment that the common danger is removed’. before and after the war were deep-rooted and understandable. Britain had tried to smother the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 at the outset by assisting White Russian forces, Russia had been snubbed at the 1919 Conference, and British inter-war foreign policy had convinced the 462 Russians that Britain was seeking to foster a strong Germany as a buffer against Soviet power. In order to address this problem (and 463 without jeopardizing its interests) the West should be more direct and honest in its dealings with the USSR. The 1946 gathering introduced four innovations to conference diplomacy, each of which affected international order: the vanquished nationstates were permitted publicly to plead their cause, small nation-states were allowed to participate fully in proceedings, the many delegations recorded their opinions in the form of votes, and, even more than in 1919, discussions took place in circumstances of maximum publicity. Nicolson was especially critical of the vote-counting procedure, arguing that never before on such a scale had votes been cast ‘not on the merits of any given case, but in accordance with the line taken, or the instructions given, by the leading members of the two conflicting 464 It had been envisaged that the 1946 Conference would make recommendations rather than reach decisions, and therefore the groups’. recording of delegation views by vote was seen as valuable. Soon, however, most nation-states fell into line behind the Eastern bloc behemoth (the USSR) or the Western bloc leaders (the United States, Britain, and France), which prompted Lord Vansittart to write of ‘these shy-making 465 Big Fours—the Apotheosis of Avoirdupois’. As Nicolson realized, ‘the effect of the voting system was to emphasize the division between 466 the two groups, rather than to furnish any true indication of majority opinion’.

460 461 462 463 464 465 466

Nicolson, ‘Peacemaking at Paris’, 197. H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (London: Constable, 1946), 49, 262. H. Nicolson, ‘Why Russia Distrusts Us’, Listener, 5 September 1946, 310. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 28 August 1946, 2–4. H. Nicolson, ‘New Methods in Treaty-Making’, Listener, 17 October 1946, 501. Lord Vansittart, ‘The Decline of Diplomacy’, Foreign Affairs, 28 (1950), 185. Nicolson, ‘Peacemaking at Paris’, 196.

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The experienced former diplomat and MP accurately informed his many radio listeners in October 1946 that the Conference had neither 467 As Stephen Kertesz has concluded, unlike at Westphalia (1648), Utrecht (1713–14), Vienna increased nor diminished East–West tension. (1814–15), and Paris (1919), ‘a constructive peace settlement’ in 1946 was never feasible owing to conflicting conceptions of international 468 The USSR's aim in Paris had been the transformation of the armistice agreements into peace treaties, a society between East and West. move resisted by the Western Powers. When the treaties were signed in February 1947, the most that could be said of the whole exercise was 469 that it represented ‘not much more than recasting the armistice agreements with some trimming into peace treaties’.

NATIONAL CHARACTER AND PRESTIGE In Nicolson's view, an important component of international order was the ‘recognisable, formative and political’ entity of national character. It encompassed an understanding of ‘not merely the needs, not merely the interests, not merely the ambitions, not merely the history of foreign 470 Powers, but also their frame of mind and their habits of thought’. An understanding of ‘national philosophies and traditions’ was essential 471 Sir Lewis Namier argued similarly that ‘it is the ethos of a nation which determines the nature of its wars in divining the reasons for wars. 472 and dominion’. Yet even trenchant knowledge of a country's language and literature could not provide a wholly reliable estimate of its 473 Failure to take national character into account, or to assume that a diplomatic protagonist shared one's approach to national character. 474 The cautious Nicolson warned that, as ‘it is not possible wholly to comprehend the mentality of negotiation, could lead to many difficulties. a foreign nation’ or ‘to make guesses regarding their possible reactions’, it is ‘dangerous to deduce from certain generalisations upon national 475 character that a given nation will behave in a predicted way’.

467

H. Nicolson, BBC European Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 15 October 1946, 4. S. Kertesz, The Last European Peace Conference: Paris 1946—Conflict of Values (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 15. Only the collapse of the USSR and its dependent nation-states in 1989–90 resolved this conflict, an outcome enshrined in the Peace of Paris (1990). 469 Ibid., 23, 43. 470 H. Nicolson, National Character and National Policy (Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations, 4 March 1938) (Nottingham: University College, 1938), 2, 3–4. 471 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 8 September 1939, 352. 472 L. B. Namier, Avenues of History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1952), 92. 473 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 14 December 1951, 814. 474 Nicolson, Diplomacy, 68. 475 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 10 October 1952, 467. 468

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The stability and permanency of national character enabled it to shape (indeed sometimes to determine) foreign policy in peace and war. In 477 Germany, Britain's chief adversary in two twentieth-century wars, presented fact, war represented the supreme test of national character. British foreign policy-makers and diplomats with a significant national character dilemma. Nicolson was uneasy about ‘the Nibelungen spirit, 478 The German craved ‘a national form’ and needed a ‘sense of outline, solidity and which simmers as a kettle in every German soul’. 479 These imperatives largely explained German aggression. Early in the Second World War, Nicolson argued that ‘to ignore the Panpurpose’. German ideal is to ignore one of the most vital elements in the background of the present conflict’. Under Hitler this conception, with its 480 origins in the ideas of J. G. Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, Heinrich Treitschke, and Friedrich Nietzsche, had grown into ‘stark imperialism’. As such, Nazism was built on the exploitation of the defects of the German national character. In allowing themselves to be thus exploited the 481 Germans were guilty of complicity. Nevertheless, ‘the Nazis do not represent the German virtues; and these virtues exist’. Despite his reservations about Russian diplomacy, Nicolson thought that Western leaders were unnecessarily preoccupied with the MarxistLeninism of the communist regime at the expense of deep-rooted assessments of the Russian national character. As early as January 1919, he 482 One of the dangers of twentieth-century dictatorships was lamented that ‘our rulers seem to see in Russia only the welter of bolshevism’. that, in contrast to aristocratic and monarchical regimes such as Frederick the Great's, contemporary dictators were ignorant of foreign mentalities. This tempted them ‘to believe that they can go further than they really can go; and since they are unable to lose face by retreating, 483 As for the Americans, while serving in Persia in the situations may be created out of this ignorance which are situations leading to war’. 1920s Nicolson worked hard to support them in their contretemps with Russia over the future of Persian oil because, ‘I like and admire 484 them’. Nicolson the aristocrat described the American national character as ‘the noblest type of character that the human race has produced’. Yet American foreign policy

476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484

Nicolson, National Character and National Policy, 2–3. H. Nicolson, ‘Then and Now: September 1939…August 1914’, Listener, 14 September 1939, 507. H. Nicolson, ‘Hindenburg’, Yale Review, 20 (1931), 663. H. Nicolson, The Meaning of Prestige (The Rede Lecture, 23 April 1937) (Cambridge: The University Press, 1937), 17. H. Nicolson, ‘The Diplomatic Background’, in H. A. L. Fisher et al., The Background and Issues of the War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), 102, 106. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 30 June 1944, 590. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 229; ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 15 February 1946, 166. Nicolson diary, 1 July 1947, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lord and Lady Carnock, 11 September 1926, Sissinghurst Castle.

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was still struggling with a conflict between ‘the missionary spirit, namely, the desire to reform the world, and the isolationist spirit—namely, the 485 desire not to meddle in other people's affairs’. 486

What Nicolson called in 1938 ‘a new, multiple and highly dangerous instrument in international policy’ was already developing into one of 487 In order to strengthen Britain's position in international the most formidable features of modern politics and diplomacy—propaganda. society, Nicolson advocated the development of propaganda in accord with the British national character. Within the imperatives of national 488 security, it would aim at inspiring trust and confidence by disseminating truth. Six months before the Second World War began, Nicolson 489 For him, insisted that ‘an immediate and efficient Ministry of Propaganda would be worth all the balloon barrages in Christendom’. approaches to propaganda were a sound reflection of different national approaches to foreign affairs and diplomacy. The principles, purposes, and methods of British and German propaganda, deriving as they did from contrasting national characters, differed profoundly. British 490 propaganda's goal was a long-term accretion of confidence unlike that of the Germans who sought short-lived ‘smash and grab’ victories. 491 The Germans aimed to inspire fear, the British to create confidence. Many diplomatic practitioners have shared Nicolson's belief in the significance of national character. Jules Cambon, for example, wrote that ‘knowledge of a country implies comprehension of its mental 492 attitude, familiarity with its ideas, and the capacity to appreciate the connection between its internal and foreign policies’. 493

Martin Wight observed in 1946, ‘Honour is the halo round interests; prestige is the halo round power’. In the same year Harold Nicolson 494 Yet he never underestimated its importance reflected that ‘idiotic’ things happen when nation-states become too mindful of their prestige. in international affairs, concluding that Britain's vacillation over, and failure to justly address, the issues raised by Italy's seizure of Corfu in 495 1923 in clear violation of the League of Nations Covenant had gravely damaged her prestige everywhere. Nicolson believed that the meaning of prestige, like that of national character, varied between nation-states. For the British, the word meant not glamour, or

485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495

Nicolson, National Character and National Policy, 5. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 16 February 1938, 1929. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 10 February 1939, 214. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 16 February 1938, 1929–30. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 24 March 1939, 482. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 18 December 1940, 1315. Ibid., 7 July 1942, 685. Cambon, The Diplomatist, 8. M. Wight, Power Politics (London, New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1946), 37. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 4 August 1946, 5. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 372.

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glory, or honour alone, but national reputation based on present wealth and power, past achievements, and, above all, national character. Britain esteemed ‘“power based upon reputation rather than reputation based upon power”’, character and conduct being the sources of 496 A drawback of Nicolson's approach is that past performance is not always a reliable guide to present or future action in the reputation. sphere of reputation; political and diplomatic decision-makers do not consistently use another nation-state's past behaviour as a means of 497 predicting her conduct today or tomorrow. By the late 1930s, Nicolson was having doubts about the value of power based on reputation when pitted against reputation based on power. It was all very well to assert that ‘the idea of prestige is not so much the exercise of power, as the maintenance of our reputation and credit at 498 But how realistic was this approach? Surely, Britain owed her power and such a level as will render the exercise of power unnecessary’. survival as much to her wealth and naval and military strength as to the moral suasion she exercised across the globe through foreign policy and diplomacy? Nicolson could only conclude, ‘The problem is not, therefore, one of power alone; it is a problem of the proportions in which 499 power and reputation should be mixed’. This question troubled him until the 1950s when he reached a dispiriting final view about it. On 2 March 1956, he wrote in his diary, ‘It looks as if we have lost the struggle in Asia and the Middle East. The whole Arab world against us, and 500 Greece as well. It is evident that prestige is based on force alone. The moment wealth or power declines, the whole pack turns against us’. Prestige has long been a neglected constituent of international order, though some international relations authorities have considered it important. E. H. Carr, writing during the Second World War, stressed the need for Britain to enhance her ‘prestige’ as well as her ‘power’, if 501 Nicolson never underrated ‘the role of prestige, of status aspirations in she wished to play a significant role in the post-war world. 502 international affairs’. R. P. Dore has posited the existence of ‘a prestige hierarchy of nations’ and argued that the policies of nation-states are 503 Dore's analysis reaffirms the importance of Nicolson's liberal realist conception of explicable largely in terms of their place in this hierarchy. prestige, one combining considerations of hierarchy, power, morality, and Great Power responsibility for Small Power security against aggressive nation-states when international institutions are unable or unwilling to intervene.

496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503

Nicolson, The Meaning of Prestige, 9, 16. J. Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, NY, London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 226–7. Nicolson, The Meaning of Prestige, 22. Ibid., 30. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1945–1962 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1968), 299. E. H. Carr, Conditions of Peace (London: Macmillan, 1942), 274. R. P. Dore, ‘The Prestige Factor in International Affairs’, International Affairs, 51 (1975), 206. Ibid., 192.

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For both Nicolson and Dore, ethical questions are central to sound foreign policy formulation and diplomacy. If liberal realist conceptions of prestige were integrated into national policy, there may develop an international society characterized by ‘a rough consensus on the criteria which determine rank’ such as ‘power’, and progress in the areas of ‘equality and justice’ and ‘national cohesion’, rather than anxious 504 Andrew Hurrell makes the preoccupation with external power and prestige—in short, nation-states with some claim to ‘moral leadership’. point that, for Hedley Bull, the best analyses of power are those which examine it within the context of quintessentially social conceptions such 505 The clarity of Nicolson's liberal realist thinking on prestige has been an important factor in preventing as authority, legitimacy, and prestige. its relegation to the status of a 1930s curio within his international thought.

THE BALANCE OF POWER 506

The conception of the balance of power is one of the most misunderstood and abused in the study and practice of modern statecraft. 507 Students of the subject must wade through ‘the trackless swamp of the alternative interpretations’ of it. The idea did not exist in ancient Greece or Rome, and, as Sir Herbert Butterfield made clear, ‘More than most of our basic political formulas [it] seems to come from the 508 modern world's reflections on its own experience’. The theory and practice of the balance of power was crafted during the late seventeenth century in order to preserve the independence of international society's leading (European) nation-states. Underlying this endeavour was the promotion of Great Power security and national interests through foreign policy, the recognition that another nation-state's domestic values and institutions were not matters of legitimate concern in foreign affairs, and an acknowledgement that war should be a limited tool of foreign 509 policy and not a means of destroying other nation-states.

504

R. P. Dore, ‘The Prestige Factor in International Affairs’, International Affairs, 51 (1975), 202. A. Hurrell, ‘Foreword’ to H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edn. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), ix. 506 R. G. Gilpin, ‘The Global Political System’, in J. D. B. Miller and R. J. Vincent (eds.), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 122. 507 M. Sheehan, The Balance of Power: History and Theory (London, New York: Routledge, 1996), 2. 508 H. Butterfield, ‘The Balance of Power’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 133. 509 Gilpin, ‘The Global Political System’, 136. 505

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James Joll has contended that the idea of the balance of power is ‘a commonsense arrangement which does not need any elaborate theoretical 510 Nicolson regarded it as a more complex formulation: analysis’. Ponderous and uncertain is that relation between pressure and resistance which constitutes the balance of power. The arch of peace is morticed by no iron tenons: the monoliths of which it is composed are joined by no cement. Impressive in their apparent solidity, these granite masses lean against each other, thrust resisting hidden thrust. Yet a swarm of summer bees upon the architrave, a runnel of April water through some hidden crevice, will cause a millimetre of displacement, will set these monoliths stirring against each other, unheard, unseen. One night a handful of dust will patter from the vaulting: the bats will squeak and wheel in sudden panic: nor can the fragile 511 fingers of man then stay the rush and rumble of destruction. Harold Nicolson's interpretation of the nature and operation of the balance of power contained both realist (preponderance) and idealist (equilibrium) elements. However, he never really resolved which component of the balance was more necessary to the maintenance of stable interstate relations. Nicolson perceived the balance of power as a ‘policy’ (even an instrument of policy) rather than a ‘law’. He saw it, too, as a non-static entity, one not susceptible to formulaic manipulation. Like Friedrich Gentz, Secretary-General of the Congress of Vienna, in his Fragments Upon the Present State of the Political Balance in Europe (1806), Nicolson envisaged the ‘balance’ as one characterized by dynamism, 512 fluidity, and changing power relationships between nation-states rather than as a search for ‘“equipoise”’. In international society the balance of power comprises ‘a multiplicity of sovereign states [which] tends to fall into unstable equilibrium, 513 The twentieth-century realist Henry Kissinger's mature thinking on the striving always for even distribution, but constantly losing it again’. balance of power's contribution to international order (like that of Nicolson) is tempered by normative considerations of purpose and morality. ‘The balance of power inhibits the capacity to overthrow the international order; agreement on shared values inhibits the desire to overthrow the international order’, Kissinger reflected in 1994. ‘Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tempts empty 514 posturing’.

510

J. Joll, ‘The Ideal and the Real: Changing Concepts of the International System, 1815–1982’, International Affairs, 58 (1982), 212. H. Nicolson, Public Faces: A Novel (London: Constable, 1932), 152–3. 512 R. Little, ‘Friedrich Gentz, Rationalism and the Balance of Power’, in I. Clark and I. B. Neumann (eds.), Classical Theories of International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Antony's College, Oxford, 1996), 225. 513 M. Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (eds.), G. Wight and B. Porter (Leicester, London: Leicester University Press for the RIIA, 1991), 168. 514 H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 77. 511

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The balance of power constituted ‘the very principle of stable security’. It was ‘a mistake to regard the balance of power as some iniquitous plotting of forces; it was rather the achievement of such a distribution of strength as would render aggression by any single country a policy of 516 After the Napoleonic Wars and especially during the European Congress system (1812–22), some the greatest uncertainty and danger’. statesmen, such as Austria's Foreign Minister, Prince Metternich, regarded the balance of power as a principle approaching cosmic proportions without which there could be no ‘equilibrium’ and ‘repose’ in international affairs. Nicolson questioned the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh's striving for ‘an ideal equilibrium, calculated almost mathematically in terms of population and power’. Instead, he preferred the insistence of France's Talleyrand-Périgord (Talleyrand) that any balance must be relative. ‘It was this more realistic conception which enabled 517 him to confront the facts with peculiar lucidity, elasticity and speed’. As Nicolson explained, ‘The essential fallacy of Castlereagh's political philosophy was that by exaggerating the general need for “repose” he sought to enforce static principles upon a dynamic world…He failed to realise with sufficient clarity that an Alliance based upon the maintenance of the existing order could not preserve its unity in a Europe in 518 which interests and ambitions were in a state of constant flux’. For the balance of power to be ‘an effective instrument of peace it must convey an impression of certainty and inevitability’, unlike the Entente 519 Nicolson described the unravelling of the system of ‘weights Cordiale of 1904, whose definition of mutual obligations had been too vague. and balances’ supporting European security prior to the First World War in these terms: eventually, ‘the weights became too heavy’, he wrote, ‘and the balances too slight’. Clearly, ‘Security, which is based upon the ponderable stress and counter-stress of armaments can never prove collective security. If Germany…is sufficiently armed to feel secure, then Great Britain must feel insecure; if France has sufficient war material to feel at ease, then Italy cannot feel at ease’. Undoubtedly, ‘the worst of the Balance of Power is that it is adjustable only in terms of ever 520 added weights; it ends by unbalancing itself’. In 1960, Nicolson observed that ‘the true criticism of the balance of power is not that it led to 521 competitive armaments and war, not that it created entangling alliances, so much as that it failed to operate when the crisis came’.

515 516 517 518 519 520 521

H. Nicolson, Peacemaking (Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations, 19 March 1946) (Leeds: The University, 1946), 6. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna, 123. Ibid., 155. Ibid., 260. Nicolson, ‘The Origins and Development of the Anglo-French Entente’, 415. Nicolson, ‘A Man and a Crisis’, 1–2. H. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace: A Discourse’, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Perspectives on Peace 1910–1960 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 34.

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Nicolson thought that the balance of power represented the best means of preventing war until international society evolved towards more pacific interstate relations. ‘In a world in which no single country tried to impose its will by force the system of the balance of power would of course become unnecessary’, he told a BBC audience on the eve of the Second World War. ‘But until we reach such a utopia we must realise 522 that the only means of resisting violence is to oppose it with a greater balance of force and once you have done that to treat it generously’. In 1954, he stated in a Chatham House address: ‘I shall always regard the Balance of Power as the best method, short of world government or 523 an effective league of nations, of avoiding a major war, since no aggressor will make war if he knows he is bound to lose it’.

NATION-STATES AND THE INTERNATIONAL IDEA In 1935, Nicolson explained why, like many of his contemporaries, he had been so receptive in 1919 to an internationalist approach to addressing global problems. An organization such as the League of Nations, whose philosophy so contrasted with the assumptions and practices of power politics, ‘seemed to us an alternative which, while preventing the dominance of any one Power in Europe, would also avoid the necessity of competitive armament’, he wrote. ‘Our aim in supporting the League was not, therefore, altruistic; it was a hard and level524 headed calculation of needs;—enlightened perhaps, but still selfish’. The dominant inter-war peacekeeping conception—‘collective security’—whereby most law-abiding nation-states contributed their ‘quota of power’ to ‘the general pool of law’ seemed logical. Yet Nicolson admitted in 1936 that, at least in its earliest incarnation, ‘collective security’ had been an imprecise and dangerous formula. The line between ‘practical assistance’ and ‘theoretical assistance’ was difficult to draw, self-preservation and national interest, as ever, proving the main arbiters 525 of nation-state action. The League of Nations proved unable to force the Great Powers to honour their commitments to their treaty and alliance partners and to Small Powers, for whose territorial independence they had a moral, if not a legal, responsibility. The League's weakness and inability to enforce sanctions rendered it increasingly ineffective during the 1920s and 1930s as the boldness of Japanese, Italian, and German territorial aggrandizement grew. Nicolson had

522 523 524 525

H. Nicolson, BBC Television Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 19 July 1939, 3. Nicolson, ‘The Origins and Development of the Anglo-French Entente’, 415. Nicolson, ‘A Man and a Crisis’, 2. H. Nicolson, ‘The Accent on Collective Security’, Christian Science Monitor, 24 June 1936, 2.

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high early expectations of the League; in 1922 he stated that the best means of ensuring the ‘Freedom of the Straits’ (right of passage for commercial and military vessels through Turkish waters and the Black Sea) was to appoint an American League of Nations High Commissioner rather than a mixed-nationality Commission. ‘If the Allies are unable themselves to establish physical force in the zone of the Straits, they must rely upon some other broad-based moral force working through an individual’, he insisted. ‘The combination of the 526 extremes of moral appeal and personal efficiency can only be achieved through the appointment of a League High Commissioner’. By 1925, Nicolson's enthusiasm for the League colossus had waned. ‘As a clearing-house for international disputes, the League of Nations is a wholly admirable institution’, he reflected. ‘In many minor questions it has already played a most useful part, but at present, and probably for many years, it will be unsafe to count upon its authority being sufficient to restrain a Great Power in any case in which that Power considers its 527 vital interests to be at stake’. Nicolson had identified the problem that would plague the League and hinder its attempts to maintain peace until the Second World War all but destroyed the organization as a force in international society (its humanitarian achievements notwithstanding). As for the League's successor, after studying the Dumbarton Oaks plan for a ‘United Nations’ in early 1945, Nicolson told the House of Commons that the matter of the purposes it would serve was ‘vital’. He criticized its preference for ‘moral sentiments’, disputed the wisdom of basing the whole schema on ‘“the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving nations”’, and rejected the planners' insistence that 528 Equal voting-power was to be a central feature of the new body, but one to which member-states should not engage in, or threaten, force. Nicolson never reconciled himself. In 1948, he wrote of ‘the absurd unreality of the voting system which has intruded its clumsy head into the 529 cat's-cradle of international negotiation’. Nicolson's reasoning was based on the conviction that entrenching such arrangements in institutions was both unproductive and a menace to international stability. ‘The legend that all men are born equal has, more perhaps than any 530 However, other legend, led to confusion and discontent. When applied to international affairs it creates situations of grotesque unreality’. Nicolson ignored the crucial distinction here between the working of the General Assembly and that

526 527 528 529 530

H. Nicolson, ‘The Freedom of the Straits’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 18, Appendix I, 15 November 1922 (London: HMSO, 1972), 982. H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the European Situation’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 27, 20 February 1925 (London: HMSO, 1986), 315. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 17 April 1945, 117–18. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 3 September 1948, 300. Ibid., 2 November 1951, 567.

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of the more important Security Council: in the latter equal voting did not apply. In Nicolson's opinion, the rule of law was not a practical alternative to the rule of force because: Force and law are not contrasting, but complementary, aims. Force without law is anarchy: law without force is mere theoretic jurisprudence: the ideal is to unite both in the same hands. Today they are not so united. The alternative therefore is to accumulate on the side of the law as much force as is possible. The efforts required to render the coalition of order preponderant in power entail great 531 sacrifices: but it is wrong to allow people to escape from these harsh necessities by babbling to them about Flushing Meadow. Nicolson continued to criticize the conception of nation-state equality, as entrenched in the General Assembly, with terrier-like tenacity. It was, 532 In 1960, he dismissed ‘the fable that all he observed in 1954, ‘an idea which does not correspond to reality and which creates mixed ideas’. States are equal’. Nicolson was especially critical of the way in which the United Nations veto rule when applied in the Security Council ‘in fact enables a member to act as judge in his own case, which is a patent denial of the rule of law’. The USSR's abuse of the veto power had been responsible for the transfer of more and more controversial questions from the Security Council to the General Assembly. So split by bloc antipathies were these forums that the capacity of the United Nations to deliver justice impartially was being eroded. Nicolson proposed a solution which would have been difficult to realize. ‘The problem of effectiveness can be solved’, he wrote, ‘only when it is agreed that those 533 States which possess the greatest responsibilities should be accorded superior powers and that the votes of the majority should prevail’. By October 1961, when Nicolson published his last wide-ranging observations on international affairs, his views on the subject had not changed: The principle of egalitarianism has altered the balance of diplomatic power…The Security Council of the United Nations was intended to be a sort of cabinet of action. Its decisions are negatived, however, by the veto of the Soviet Union…Thus the power of decision has been to all intents and purposes transferred to the Assembly, in which a majority of the 99 nations represented can block all action…Thus power has been transferred into the hands of those who lack strength, and a situation has been created which is dominated by uncertainty. Uncertainty and the unpredictable are dangerous elements in any international situation. It is impossible to 534 conduct sound banking when there exists no stability of exchange.

531 532 533 534

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 2 November 1951, 567. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 87. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace’, 42–3. H. Nicolson, ‘Diplomacy: Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, 40/1 (1961), 48.

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The issue of the equality of nation-states and their voting strengths represented a continuing dilemma for the ageing Nicolson. The outcome was a view of equal voting that overlooked the special powers of the permanent members of the Security Council regarding matters of security and the use of force. In this important respect the United Nations, by reflecting Great Power influence, mirrored Nicolson's conceptions of how best to maintain international order, though he seemed reluctant to reconcile the real and his preferred ideal solution in this instance. ‘The principle of one-man-one-vote is conditional on the existence of the rule of law. But there is no international rule of law, only a few accepted conventions; thus it is fallacious to suppose that peace can be preserved by votes’, he declared. ‘The fact that the world is obliged to rely for 535 peace on an organization that so obviously lacks realism, if not reality, is a major misfortune’. R. J. Vincent restated Nicolson's concerns in 1978, drawing attention to what was clearly an enduring problem on the basis that ‘the doctrine of one-state-one-vote that follows from the principle of equality’ renders the United Nations less efficient. ‘It does so by preventing the writ of the powerful, on whose support the survival of the organization depends, from running and by allowing resolutions to be carried by coalitions 536 of small states of whose acceptance in the international community at large there is little prospect’. In his 1961 article, Nicolson summarized the implications of institutionalizing the conception of equality in international relations. His reflections amounted to a lament and a brief but accurate survey of the changes that had transformed international order since 1919: The former theory of the balance of power, the device of the Concert of Europe, has, since the First World War, been replaced by international tribunals, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. It was not foreseen by those who drafted the Charter at San Francisco 15 years ago that the principle of one-state-one-vote might in the end prove irrational. Today the votes of the 99 sovereign states in the Assembly bear no relation to the amount of power they can exercise or the degree of responsibility they can assume. The strength of the United Nations is subject to so many variables that the exercise of its authority is unpredictable. Valuable as the tribunal ought to be in arranging for the pacific settlement of disputes, the incidence of its authority is too uncertain to give its decisions the inevitability of public law. The veto has paralyzed the Executive and the voting system may paralyze the Assembly. The major decisions in this world are taken by those who possess power and are prepared to exercise it. The substitution of consent, or 537 votes, for force has given the United Nations a certain unreality which hampers its authority.

535 536 537

H. Nicolson, ‘Diplomacy: Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, 40/1 (1961), 48. R. J. Vincent, ‘Western Conceptions of a Universal Moral Order’, British Journal of International Studies, 4/1 (1978), 37. Nicolson, ‘Diplomacy’, 48.

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Nicolson experienced particular difficulty in coming to terms with two of the four great ideologies that emerged after the First World War, each of which revolutionized foreign policy and diplomacy: liberal self-determination of peoples and nation-states and a worldwide rejection of 538 The post-imperial world, albeit one still dominated by the West, posed special problems of understanding for Nicolson, the imperialism. aristocratic diplomat and international theorist. Of these, the question of international organization through the United Nations was the most perplexing.

PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE Liberal realism was Nicolson's attempt to adjust his early idealist beliefs and later realist convictions in the light of events and experience. The result was an approach to international relations combining elements of realism and practical idealism. In some senses he was another twentieth-century realist with certain idealist convictions (George F. Kennan or Walter Lippmann), or another twentieth-century practical idealist with certain realist convictions (Arnold Toynbee or Sir Alfred Zimmern). What rendered his thinking original was its roots in classical political and ethical theory. This infused his realism with a distinctive pragmatic idealism, a refusal to accept wholeheartedly the dictates of modern realism or idealism (practical or utopian) as to what constituted the optimum solutions to international problems, and a Kantian vision of how international society might evolve. Nicolson's perception of international society rested on an understanding of classical European political forms and values. The main elements 539 of this society—the nation-state, the theory of political realism, and the balance of power system —were central to his outlook. Until well 540 The ‘elaborate into the twentieth century, ‘the universal international society was one of states, but not everywhere of peoples or nations’. and remarkably successful international society’ created by Europeans based its rules and institutions on the principles of juridical equality of 541 nation-states and absolute sovereignty of member-states. International order and change were sustained by the balance of power, rules of peace and war (later international law), treaties and

538

H. Seton-Watson, ‘The Impact of Ideology’, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 214; Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 38–42; Nicolson diary, 6 January 1962, Balliol College. 539 Gilpin, ‘The Global Political System’, 116. 540 H. Bull, ‘The Emergence of a Universal International Society’, in H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 125. 541 A. Watson, ‘European International Society and Its Expansion’, in H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 23.

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agreements following congresses of sovereigns or their representatives, and continuous diplomatic intercourse between European 542 For Nicolson, the study of history was essential to successful diplomacy and sound international relations theorizing. Interstate statesmen. relationships and solutions to the problems they created were in no sense static. Ethical considerations should remain in the foreground of diplomacy and international study. The liberal realist's purview was that of an ‘international society’ rather than an ‘international system’, because of his belief that nation-states and not individuals were the primary participants in interstate interchange. The term ‘international society’ can be said to encompass the political and diplomatic relationships between nation-states. As Hedley Bull has written, ‘A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be 543 bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions’. The conception of 544 is frequently used to describe the network of an ‘international system’, which is less ambitious than that of an ‘international society’, 545 international institutional relationships. The Nicolsonian conception of international order—one rooted in the idea of the Greek polis and the nation-state—contrasts with what Hedley Bull called ‘world order’. Bull regarded the latter as ‘something different from international order. Order among mankind as a whole is 546 something wider than order among states; something more fundamental and primordial than it; and also…something morally prior to it’. Nicolson considered the nation-state the primary instrument for achieving and maintaining international order, while Bull accorded a greater ultimate status to world order. In Bull's judgement, ‘World order is wider than international order because to give an account of it we have to 547 deal not only with order among states, but also with order on a domestic or municipal scale’. Nicolson was convinced that world order had been dealt with by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and that their political and ethical philosophy provided an admirable basis for resolving intrastate and international relations questions. When reflecting on international order, he advised against simplistic assessments of international relations—‘it is a mistake to interpret Foreign 548 He praised reliance on facts instead of theories, Affairs in terms of right or left’.

542 543 544 545 546 547 548

A. Watson, ‘European International Society and Its Expansion’, in H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 24–5. H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977), 13. E. Luard, The Balance of Power: The System of International Relations, 1648–1815 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), xi–xii. G. R. Berridge and A. James, A Dictionary of Diplomacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 135. Bull, The Anarchical Society, 21–2. Ibid., 21. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–1964 (ed.), S. Olson (London: Collins, 1980), 279.

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and held that foreign policy should be governed by circumstances as much as by ideas. Nicolson rejected ‘the hazy tenets of International 550 and warned of ‘the intricacies, the difficulties and the dangers which arise…and render it almost impossible to lay down general Law’, 551 This represented his strongest rebuke to the principles or to follow in any rigid or specific manner the precepts of international law’. international law tradition of the British foreign policy dissenters exemplified in the work of the nineteenth-century British diplomat, David Urquhart. Interstate relations were not necessarily determined by the same standards that governed relations within nation-states. The latter, unlike the former, were decided ultimately by law. ‘There can be no real analogy between the ethical values of an organised, and those of an anarchical, 552 One should always be hard-headed about the likelihood of other nation-states honouring their commitments, especially when war society’. was imminent—‘the only certain point at which you can demand from a country that immensity of self-sacrifice which is implied by war is the 553 point of self-defence’. In identifying the causes of war, arriving at just settlements after conflicts, and preventing future wars, however, more than historical knowledge and understanding—in fact, a new approach to theorizing—was needed. An excellent example of the type of interpretative approach Nicolson had in mind is to be found in his judgement on the First World War. Here, historical and diplomatic analysis occurs within a wider international-theoretical perspective: The War of 1914–1918 was caused by a false conception of international values. In every European State the generations which succeeded each other from 1850 onwards were taught that national egoism was an honourable, and indeed a necessary thing. It was considered ‘patriotic’ to desire that one's country should be larger, richer, and above all more powerful than any other country. It was not considered patriotic to desire that one's own country should on every occasion set an example of unselfishness, humanity and intelligence. It thus came about that all but a small minority of scientists and intellectuals approached the problem of civilisation in a competitive and not in a co-operative spirit. In organised communities this competitive spirit can be controlled by the authority of law. 554 The European community of nations was not an organised community, and for them the ultimate appeal was not to law but to force.

549 550 551 552 553 554

H. Nicolson, Comments: 1944–1948 (London: Constable, 1948), 112. H. Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (London: Constable, 1935), 315. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 14 April 1937, 1092. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 395. Hedley Bull entitled his magnum opus, The Anarchical Society (1977; 3rd edn. 2002). H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, in The Future of the League of Nations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 138. H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart. First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1930), 258–9.

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Diplomacy was always preferable to an imposed solution deriving from a formula or an ideology. ‘A settlement…which aims at applying a single formula to diverse conditions will always be a transitory settlement; a lasting settlement can only be made by applying different formulas 555 Interstate agreements must be based on self-interest rather than written expressions of intent. As Sir Arthur to different conditions’. Nicolson wrote to his superiors after concluding the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, because the undertaking had not been ‘“the natural result of ordinary evolution”’, a real understanding between the two countries would come about only when their material and political 556 interests corresponded more closely. Although Nicolson's liberal realist approach to international order was evident from the late 1920s, it developed more concrete form only during the next decade as he grappled with questions of British power and European security. Among these was the morality of the British imperium. The imperial venture was clearly experiencing problems, if not slowly coming apart. As early as 1930, Nicolson had been forced to contemplate the possibility that ‘the sense of race is supplanting the sense of dominion’, and that London may soon no longer be ‘the centre of 557 Imperial gravity’. To a liberal-paternalist like Nicolson this represented a painful dilemma. ‘The doctrine of force, particularly in its application to “backward” races, is based, not merely upon overwhelming physical power, but on certain moral forces behind that power’, he reflected in 1934. ‘The peoples exercising that authority must believe in its ethical justification and must possess a united will for its continuance. The peoples upon whom that authority is exercised must, for their part, be convinced of its inevitability, and must never come to 558 During the inter-war years, neither ruler nor ruled felt as assured or as contented as they had regard it as an outrage on individual dignity’. done before 1914. Nevertheless, whether Britain was dealing with the important question of her imperial future or the even more pressing one of totalitarian aggression, as Nicolson reminded Sir Alfred Zimmern, generally ‘the desirable is not practicable…it is only upon the practicable or realistic 559 Accordingly, Nicolson formulated foreign and defence policies for the late 1930s which had affinities that a sound policy can be based’. 560 Harold Nicolson sought ‘to define in with what he termed Sir Norman Angell's ‘imaginative realism’.

555

Nicolson, ‘Five Lessons for the Peacemakers’, 44. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, 261–2. 557 Nicolson diary, 30 June 1930, Balliol College. 558 Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 69–70. 559 H. Nicolson, Letter to Sir Alfred Zimmern, 30 April 1936, Zimmern Papers, Ms 39, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 560 H. Nicolson, Review of Sir Norman Angell, The Defence of the Empire (1937), Daily Telegraph, 18 June 1937, 7. In this book Angell rejected the thesis of his The Great Illusion (1910) that imperial possessions were not important; he now rated the need to maintain ‘order’ as paramount. 556

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advance what is the gold-standard of national determination’ by ascertaining what nation-states would ‘certainly contribute to Authority and in what form’. Britain, for instance, could make clear what she would fight to defend (the British Isles, her colonies, and specific nation-states), and those countries which, if threatened, she would assist financially and economically under the aegis of the League of Nations. Nicolson's liberal realist approach to attaining European peace could then proceed in three stages. ‘An examination of the national needs of other like-minded States would disclose similar areas and categories of certainty where national purposes coincided with and overlapped international purposes’, he wrote. ‘If a map were drawn of these areas of certainty, it would be shown that the forces of order were overwhelmingly preponderant over the forces of disorder. And in this manner the rule of Authority would gradually be affirmed’. Nicolson was ready for his critics. ‘The timid will counter by stating that such a scheme implies encirclement, armaments, and fear; that it would lead to alliances of the pre-War pattern; and that war is indivisible’. Nicolson responded that ‘the establishment of Authority is but the first, and most unpleasant, stage by which general pacification is to be attained; that violence can only be restrained by overwhelming force; that benevolent pacifism is far more dangerous to peace than is determined defensive planning; and that the will-to-peace must be as intensive, as realistic and as organised as the will-to-war’. The outcome was a liberal realist one. ‘Only when we have firmly laid again the foundations of Authority can we pass to Conciliation—political, territorial and above all economic—and thereafter to the final stage of Order and progressive 561 disarmament’. Early in the Second World War, Nicolson also put forward a liberal realist argument concerning British policy in defence of neutral Small Powers: From the moral point of view, any preventive action, any negotiations which might sully the virginity, or wound the pride, of the smaller neutrals, would be incompatible with the ideas and purposes by which our intervention in this tragedy has alone been justified. Conversely, from the practical point of view, it is evident that unless our intervention is fully planned and fully equipped the Germans may [conquer the small neutrals] before we have recovered from our scruples or surprise. The right course seems to lie between the moral and the practical. We should never commit an aggression on our own part; but we should at once prepare with the utmost industry such schemes as shall enable us to intervene with rapid efficacy at the very instant when the neutrality of a small State is 562 obviously violated. Night and day should the fire-brigade be at its post. The intellectual foundations of Nicolson's approach to international order were both ancient and modern. He believed that ‘the wise householder is he

561 562

H. Nicolson, ‘The Future of the League: IV. Back to First Principles’, Spectator, 5 June 1936, 1028–9. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 3 May 1940, 624.

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who mingles in his treasure the just proportion of things new and old’. Preserving the independence of one's nation-state is a time564 The ruler should strive to secure, not only the survival of his nation-state, but also its dominion, for ‘it honoured and universal imperative. 565 The reasons proffered by the Athenians for refusing to give up their is a general and necessary law of nature to rule wherever one can’. 566 empire could have been those of twentieth-century Britons: security, honour, and self-interest. The resonances of ancient thought are obvious in Nicolson's approach to contemporary events, as are the ideas of a modern European thinker he esteemed highly—Hugo Grotius. While not an uncritical devotee of the Grotian corpus of writing (notably, that on international law), Nicolson admired the moral basis of Grotius's thought as a foundation for international theory, and as a source of ideas about international 567 ‘It is…the duty of kings to cherish good society. Increasingly, ‘treaties are made by order of the highest authority’ and must be honoured. faith scrupulously, first for conscience's sake, and then also for the sake of the reputation by which the authority of the royal power is 568 supported’. As an international theorist with deep respect for, and knowledge of, ancient classical thought and history, Nicolson's outlook was close to that of the English School, whose aims, wide remit, and concern for both realist and idealist norms have been described by Robert Jackson: ‘the classical approach regards international relations as a meaningful human activity not merely in part but in its entirety; it is a distinctive sphere of human relations; it exists in historical time and changes over time’, writes Jackson. ‘International relations is thus a story of war and peace…and of many other distinctive international activities in which humans engage. All those activities raise value questions. If the study of 569 international relations seeks to be empirical it must be able to give an academic account of such questions’. 570

Like George F. Kennan, Nicolson had reservations about the practicality of ‘the legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems’. He also

563 564 565 566 567 568 569 570

3rd Viscount Halifax, Speeches on Foreign Policy (ed.), H. H. E. Craster (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 177. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), VI. 83, 461. Ibid., V. 105, 404. Ibid., I. 76, 80. H. Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Book II (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964), 391. H. Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Book III (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964), 860–1. R. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 101. G. F. Kennan, American Diplomacy 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 95.

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shared E. H. Carr's view that international order must rest on an amalgam of morality and power. For Kenneth W. Thompson, ‘the nation572 Thompson state is both the problem child of international relations and the highest effective expression of genuine moral consensus’. captures well the liberal realist ambivalence Nicolson felt towards the nation-state. His theorizing about international order derived from the belief that the nation-state was a necessary and desirable entity in world affairs, one which would endure until other forms of interstate relationship (regional federations or world government) became permanent features of international society. Like many an English School 573 thinker, Nicolson had a ‘cautious and agnostic’ regard for history, while being at the same time ‘a reformist’ in international relations. 574

The Rationalist politician or diplomat exists in ‘a state of moral tension between the actual and the desirable’, observed Martin Wight. Nicolson's public career exemplified this tension. Before him always was the example of the ‘practical idealists’ and the ‘idealistic practitioners’ 575 of 1919. For Nicolson, both realist and idealist approaches to international order had been found wanting. His classical education left him with the conviction that international order was best maintained by political and diplomatic interchange conducted according to the canons of ancient Greek and Roman thought. To risk any ambitious departure from this approach seemed unwise and even dangerous. The period of imperium to dominion was a testing one for the Great Powers, including Britain, as nationalism and ideology forced a re-examination of the elements of twentieth-century international order. Nevertheless, Nicolson's faith in the Greek and Roman models never wavered.

571 572 573 574 575

E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939), 213. K. W. Thompson, Understanding World Politics (Notre Dame, IN, London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 208. Wight, International Theory, 29. Ibid., 243. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 210.

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5 Diplomacy ‘THEORY’ AND ‘SHAPE’ Diplomacy is a pursuit amenable to scholarly inquiry. As J. D. B. Miller insisted, its ‘shape’ is something scholars can reasonably claim for 576 Harold Nicolson's liberal realist conception of diplomacy reflected his belief, one embedded in ancient Greek and Roman ethical and study. political theory, that diplomacy is essential to peaceful coexistence between nation-states and a stable international society. Nicolson always followed the Oxford English Dictionary definition of diplomacy: ‘The management of international relations by negotiation; the method by which these relations are adjusted and managed by ambassadors and envoys; the business or art of the diplomatist’. He also invariably employed the 577 term ‘diplomatist’ (‘one engaged in official diplomacy’) in preference to ‘diplomat’ (‘one employed or skilled in diplomacy’). 578

Martin Wight characterized Nicolson's conception of diplomacy as a uniquely British one. Yet Nicolson acknowledged the possibility of wider meanings—‘that method of international procedure which commends itself to sensible persons of any given epoch, as the most 579 Diplomacy was not ‘the art of conversation’ but “representative” and the most “efficient” for conducting negotiations between States’. 580 581 Its core concern was the creation and expansion of confidence in preparing the ‘negotiation by the exchange of written documents’. 582 ground for ‘an equable exchange of interests’ on a basis of mutual trust.

576 577 578 579 580 581 582

J. D. B. Miller, The Shape of Diplomacy (Inaugural Lecture, 17 September 1963) (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1963), 1. The Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 385, 386. M. Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (eds.), G. Wight and B. Porter (Leicester, London: Leicester University Press for the RIIA, 1991), 180. H. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1934), 184. H. Nicolson, ‘Secret Diplomacy: Old and New’, News-Letter: The National Labour Fortnightly, 4 December 1937, 70. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 25 August 1950, 239. H. Nicolson, ‘British Diplomatic Methods’, Listener, 17 January 1952, 92.

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Like Lord Strang, Harold Nicolson distinguished between foreign policy (substance) and diplomacy (negotiation). He did not believe in the indivisibility of foreign policy and diplomacy, and argued that ‘the general conception and rules of the art of negotiation emerged as something 584 essentially different from (although always supplementary and even subservient to) state-craft on the one hand and politics upon the other’. Nicolson never lost sight of the gap separating ‘the curative methods of diplomacy’ and ‘the surgical necessities of foreign policy’. He explained the nexus between foreign policy, diplomacy, and war in realist terms: Foreign policy is based upon a general conception of national requirements; and this conception derives from the need of selfpreservation, the constantly changing shapes of economic and strategic advantage, and the condition of public opinion as affected at the time by such diverse factors as energy or exhaustion, prejudices or sympathies (whether ideological or humane), future ambition or past pride. Diplomacy, on the other hand, is not an end but a means; not a purpose but a method. It seeks, by the use of reason, conciliation and the exchange of interests, to prevent major conflicts arising between sovereign States. It is the agency through which foreign policy seeks to attain its purposes by agreement rather than by war. Thus when agreement becomes impossible diplomacy, which is the 585 instrument of peace, becomes inoperative; and foreign policy, the final sanction of which is war, alone becomes operative. J. W. Burton and Henry Kissinger have questioned Nicolson's distinction between foreign policy and diplomacy. For them, the diplomat's work is determined more by political and administrative considerations than Nicolson conceded. Kissinger contended that ‘the effectiveness of diplomacy depends on elements transcending it; in part on the domestic structure of the states comprising the international order, in part on 586 Burton regarded Nicolson's definitions as inadequate on the ground that ‘the making and execution of foreign their power relationship’. policy were never entirely separate. In contemporary conditions of highly developed permanent civil services and improved communications the term diplomacy is best used to include the whole process of managing relations with other States and international institutions’. The enterprise was a circular and interactive one involving the perception of the environment, assessing interests, balancing internal and external 587 pressures, and testing responses to proposed policies before their implementation.

583 584 585 586 587

Lord Strang, The Diplomatic Career (London: André Deutsch, 1962), 9. H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1988), 5. H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (London: Constable, 1946), 164–5. H. Kissinger, ‘The Congress of Vienna: A Reappraisal’, World Politics, 8 (1956), 264. J. W. Burton, Systems, States, Diplomacy and Rules (Cambridge: The University Press, 1968), 199.

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Michael Donelan's description of diplomacy and the context in which it functions is similar to Nicolson's. ‘First and last,’ he writes, ‘the true source of security in international relations is national power and military force, handled with true diplomacy. Diplomacy is the recognition and 588 Diplomacy's principal purpose is to assist commun- ication of the facts of power. It is the peaceful enactment of otherwise violent conflict’. 589 by gaining the most valuable commodity in international relations—the unguent of the process of securing ‘international stability’ 590 591 The essence of good diplomacy is to be found, not in scoring off time —which produces opportunities for the relaxation of tension. 592 Diplomatic triumphs, which leave behind them only a feeling of resentment, should your adversary, but in identifying areas of agreement. 593 594 The best outcomes in diplomacy are those where both parties believe they have secured a measure of success. be avoided. 595

‘Bluff and bluster’ and the diplomatic gamble should never be countenanced as legitimate negotiating methods. ‘The aim of sound diplomacy’, Nicolson wrote, ‘is the maintenance of amicable relations between sovereign States. Once diplomacy is employed to provoke 596 international animosity, it ceases to be diplomacy and becomes its opposite, namely war by another name’. Nicolson's liberal realism extended this classic view by identifying more clearly, through reliance on classical philosophy and history, the means diplomacy should employ and the ends it should serve. Diplomacy thus becomes not merely a device for securing objectives but a vehicle for shaping the character of diplomatic outcomes. Diplomacy requires sound negotiation, adaptability in addressing the needs of a non-static international society, truthfulness, directness, and concreteness in diplomatic dealings. These should be pursued for themselves, and in establishing a reputation for candour and reliability. Nicolson regarded diplomacy's capacity to reconcile conflicting interests and disentangle intricate issues by patient discussion and analysis as one of its greatest strengths. He thought that this form of interchange benefited both sides by delivering to neither all of its demands. Feelings of triumph or defeat were thereby tempered and friction reduced. Henry Kissinger has claimed that Nicolson overrated the influence of the negotiating process, diplomatic skill,

588 589 590 591 592 593 594 595 596

M. Donelan, Elements of International Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 36. H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (London: Constable, 1954), 91. H. Nicolson, ‘“We Must Burn No Boats”’, Listener, 26 September 1946, 399. H. Nicolson, ‘The Past Week’, Listener, 25 August 1938, 388. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 18 August 1946, 5. Ibid., 25 August 1946, 3. Ibid., 7 August 1946, 6. H. Nicolson, ‘Lord Palmerston’, in H. J. Massingham and H. Massingham (eds.), The Great Victorians (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1932), 372, 375. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 12 January 1951, 43.

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and a willingness to reach agreement, and underrated the effects of external and internal policy factors. It would be more accurate to say that Nicolson was sometimes too optimistic about the successes achievable through traditional diplomacy. Nevertheless, he was a theorist whose experience had left him with few illusions about the difficulties of reconciling realism and idealism—nor did he underestimate the significance of foreign and domestic considerations. For Nicolson, ‘the business of diplomacy, as that of sound commerce, is the patient establishment of credit, the inviolability of contract, and 598 As he stressed in 1925 when analysing British policy towards Europe, ‘If we are to contribute to general the exchange of advantages’. security, we must first establish certainty and conviction. It is far better to give restricted promises which Europe realises will inevitably be executed, than to enter into wide commitments, the ultimate execution of which would always allow of doubt. In order to carry such 599 conviction we must base our policy, not on possible tendencies, but on generally recognisable facts. We must be direct, simple and explicit’. A broad-based conception of international society was at the heart of Nicolson's approach to diplomacy, a pursuit which did not possess ‘a detached identity of its own—parasitic, and not organic, to the living growth of the State’; rather, it was required to display ‘a constant, if not 600 very immediate, process of adjustment to the shifting incidences of sovereignty’. Indeed, ‘the history of diplomacy cannot be divorced from 601 The distinction between the theory of diplomacy that of the state, its institutions, responsibilities and political and social dogmas’. (normative questions of means and ends) and its practice (the pursuit and achievement of diplomatic objectives) was an important one to 602 Nicolson. 603

604

His chief concern was not the history of the subject (David Jayne Hill), or the minutiae, however significant, of its practice (Satow). The biographer in Nicolson shared the seventeenth-century Dutchman, Abraham de Wicquefort's ‘delight in the virtuosity of human conduct’ evident in his

597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604

Kissinger, ‘The Congress of Vienna’, 264, 267; A World Restored (London: Victor Gollancz, 1973), 342. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 17 May 1946, 503. H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the European Situation’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 27, 20 February 1925 (London: HMSO, 1986), 316. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 184. K. Hamilton and R. Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration (London, New York: Routledge, 1995), 241. H. Nicolson, Review of M. Bruce, British Foreign Policy, Isolation or Intervention? (1938), Daily Telegraph, 13 January 1939, 8; Nicolson diary, 24 April 1941, Balliol College. D. J. Hill, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, 3 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905–14). Sir Ernest Satow, A Guide to Diplomatic Practice, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1917).

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L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions (1681). However, he had most in common with, and greatest respect for, François de Callières, whose De la 606 607 Nicolson called ‘the best manual of diplomatic method ever written’. By concentrating on the Manière de Négocier avec les Souverains (1716) political relationships between Europe's nation-states and placing less emphasis on their necessary obeisance to the restraints of natural or 608 His work remains ‘the most positive law, Callières, if he did not exactly turn Western diplomatic theory on its head, certainly shook it up. 609 important general analysis of diplomacy and its place in international society’. As a theorist Nicolson's areas of interest were much wider than Callières's. He sought to understand interstate relations at a deeper theoretical level than his French predecessor, whose primary preoccupation was diplomacy. Nicolson defined ‘diplomatic theory’ as ‘a generally accepted 610 ‘Diplomacy’ and ‘diplomatic’ signified neither foreign policy idea of the principles and methods of international conduct and negotiation’. nor international law but ‘the art of negotiation’. The word ‘method’ encompassed both the diplomatic machinery and the general theory in 611 accordance with which the machinery was used. Nicolson was wary of the view that the steady historical improvement in diplomatic standards was due more to ‘the gradual approximation of 612 public to private morality’ than to an increase in ‘the conception of a community of human interests’. Though he believed that ‘ethical impulses’ had done much to advance diplomatic theory, he cautioned against the self-righteousness, partisanship, and moral indignation that 613 In 1939, Nicolson declared that his sympathies here were with could result when the missionary spirit gained the ascendancy in diplomacy. the realists rather than the idealists. ‘Diplomacy is not a system of moral philosophy…The worst kind of diplomatists are missionaries, fanatics and lawyers; the best kind are the reasonable and humane sceptics. Thus it is not religion which has been the main formative influence in 614 diplomatic theory; it is common sense’. He identified two contrasting conceptions of diplomacy and argued that a compromise between them constituted the soundest approach to diplomatic intercourse. The first was the German ‘warrior or heroic’ theory, whose

605 606 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614

M. Keens-Soper, ‘Abraham de Wicquefort and Diplomatic Theory’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 8/2 (1997), 17. F. de Callières, The Art of Diplomacy (eds.), H. M. A. Keens-Soper and K. W. Schweizer (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983). Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 62. M. Keens-Soper, ‘François de Callières and Diplomatic Theory’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 496, 501–2. H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977), 168. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 16. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 2. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 23. Ibid., 23–4. Ibid., 24.

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exponents perceived diplomacy as war by other means. The second was the British ‘mercantile or shop-keeper’ theory, whereby diplomacy is seen as an aid to peaceful commerce based on the assumption that there exists a middle point at which the negotiators can reconcile their 615 Abba Eban has suggested that Nicolson idealized British negotiating techniques and represented them as the norm conflicting interests. 616 It is more likely that he used them as a vehicle for examining other styles, from which all other diplomatic styles were mere deviations. British approaches being most familiar to him. The warrior and mercantile conceptions rather than moral values, Nicolson asserted, had exercised a greater influence on the development of diplomatic theory. Both theories contained ‘idealism and realism’; however, the former was essentially a dynamic theory, reliant for its expression on diplomatic gambles and conquest, and the latter a static one dependent on calm, peace, and amity in international relations as a 617 basis for furthering the interests of commerce. Nowhere was this better reflected (and nowhere were the advantages and disadvantages of each more apparent) than in actual ‘diplomatic practice’. This he defined as either the long-standing habits deemed by diplomats to be the most efficient for the conduct of international business, or the principles of negotiation common to all international intercourse, which are 618 With these considerations in mind Nicolson declared that it was independent of passing changes in governmental systems or foreign policy. important neither to underestimate nor to overestimate the value of the diplomatic craft. ‘Diplomacy is always a tentative sort of affair…I believe in power [exercised] realistically in the common good. Let us be as tentative as possible in diplomacy and only present in the shape of 619 policy something which is concrete, effective and right’.

THE IDEAL DIPLOMAT 620

Harold Nicolson well understood that ‘the diplomat is a paragon definable in terms of personal qualities’. He believed that diplomacy's success or failure depended greatly on a diplomat's character and capacities. So, also, did Callières, who produced a compendium of these 621 characteristics. Nicolson

615 616 617 618 619 620 621

Nicolson, Diplomacy, 25–6. A. Eban, The New Diplomacy: International Affairs in the Modern Age (New York: Random House, 1983), 124. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 26–7. Ibid., 5. Nicolson diary, 23 May 1935, Balliol College. P. Calvocoressi, ‘The Diplomat’, Political Quarterly, 28 (1957), 352. Callières, The Art of Diplomacy, 75.

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compiled a similar list comprising sixteen qualities (of both the ideal diplomat and the ideal diplomacy): truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good 622 This thumbnail temper, modesty, loyalty, intelligence, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, charm, industry, courage, and tact. 623 These qualities were an moral and practical primer has passed into Western diplomatic theory and practice as ‘“the Nicolson test”’. amalgam of the Graeco-Roman ethical values, the moral injunctions of the Enlightenment, and the characteristics of the English 624 In Nicolson's opinion, they enhanced the diplomat's negotiating ability by fostering the growth of skills rarely found in other gentleman. 625 They also helped the diplomat, as Nicolson's father put it, to develop and perfect those invaluable diplomatic talents of vocations. 626 ‘reporting accurately, finding the true causes, noting certain symptoms, sifting information, calculating chances’. 627

From his Oxford classical and historical studies Nicolson imbibed a respect for the ‘facts’ of any given situation. His twenty years in diplomacy strengthened Nicolson's certainty that in the end it was not the policies of a political party or a minister's speeches that had the greatest influence on foreign affairs and diplomacy but ‘the facts of the case’. He defined these as ‘the files, the previous papers, the figures, the 628 precedents, above all the sharp distinction which exists in all administrative affairs between the desirable and the practicable’. Nicolson developed considerable respect for the British Civil Service as a stable anchor in domestic governance and diplomacy. It constituted ‘the 629 630 whose continuity and flexibility as an ‘organism’ rather than a ‘machine’ made it an immensely useful instrument. flywheel of the State’, The other important determinants of a diplomat's effectiveness were his capacity to represent his country's interests and his understanding of 631 The chain of representation was: Diplomat–Foreign Secretary–Cabinet–Parliamentary Majority–The Imprimatur of the the host country. 632 Electorate.

622

Nicolson, Diplomacy, 67. Sir Ernest Satow, Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice, 5th edn. (ed.), Lord Gore-Booth (London, New York: Longman, 1979), 451. 624 H. Nicolson, Good Behaviour: Being A Study of Certain Types of Civility (London: Constable, 1955), 40–80, 162–205; ‘Introduction’ to Sir Horace Rumbold, The War Crisis in Berlin July–August 1914, 2nd edn. (London: Constable, 1944), xix. 625 Nicolson, Diplomacy, 55. 626 H. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart. First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1930), 18. 627 H. Nicolson, Letter to Sir Arthur and Lady Nicolson, 29 August 1908, Sissinghurst Castle. 628 H. Nicolson, Politics in the Train (London: Constable, 1936), 7, 8. 629 H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 18 December 1940, 4; ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 9 June 1950, 787. 630 H. Nicolson, Hansard, 10 July 1941, 306. 631 H. Nicolson, Friday Mornings: 1941–1944 (London: Constable, 1944), 175; The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 82. 632 Nicolson, Diplomacy, 42. 623

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Nicolson insisted that the diplomat's role was not exclusively a representative one. Diplomats possessed (sometimes considerable) latitude in seeking expert knowledge and advice before forming and voicing their opinions. As the veteran French diplomat, Paul Cambon, observed: ‘An Ambassador is not a subaltern charged with the execution of a policy. He is a collaborator who must always, even at the risk of courting 633 Nevertheless, the diplomat's lack of real power in comparison with that of the politician or the man on horseback displeasure, speak freely’. 634 often reduces his status to one of ‘“Pathetic Hero”’. 635

A diplomat abroad for too long could also lose touch with opinion at home. ‘The diplomat is a stranger by dint of the very effort to be true to his mission. The advice that the great minds of diplomacy—de Callières, Satow and Nicolson—give to the ideal diplomat amounts to the 636 Nicolson concealment of his true nature, the repression of his emotions and the accommodation to all sorts of whims and tempers’. understood this danger, pointing out that in extremis the diplomat could become ‘denationalized, internationalized, and therefore, an elegant 637 638 empty husk’ —little more than ‘a queer cosmopolitan’. Diplomats may also succumb to ‘the occupational disease’ of their vocation—what Nicolson called ‘the cautionary sickness’—a reluctance to report on subjects or express views unwelcome to their 639 superiors.

TRIBAL TIMES TO GOLDEN AGE David Jayne Hill argued that an understanding of diplomacy's historical development is essential when analysing diplomatic practice and 640 Nicolson acknowledged the advantages of Hill's historical method; however, he regarded diplomacy's evolution as linear in theory. 641 642 Nicolson's approach to diplomatic development accentuated ‘continuity’ rather than ‘sudden spurts and long retardations’. As nature. he put it, ‘There was Roman law and the memory of a

633

J.-F. Blondel, Entente Cordiale (London: The Caduceus Press, 1971), 41. S. Sofer, ‘Being a “Pathetic Hero” in International Politics: The Diplomat as a Historical Actor’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 12/1 (2001), 107–8. 635 H. Nicolson, ‘Diplomacy: Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, 40/1 (1961), 43. 636 S. Sofer, ‘The Diplomat as a Stranger’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 8/3 (1997), 182–3. 637 H. Nicolson, ‘The Faults of American Diplomacy’, Harper's Magazine, 210 (1955), 54. 638 Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 35. 639 H. Nicolson, ‘The Easy Chair—Intelligence Services: Their Use and Misuse’, Harper's Magazine, 215 (1957), 16. 640 D. J. Hill, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe: The Struggle for Universal Empire, vol. 1 (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905), vii. 641 D. J. Hill, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe: The Diplomacy of the Age of Absolutism, vol. 3 (London: Longmans, Green, 1914), v–vi; Nicolson, Diplomacy, 17. 642 Ibid., 16. 634

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world-state capable of rendering it international. There was the Byzantine tradition of ingenuity. There was the imperial legacy of powerpolitics leading to the conception of diplomacy as an adjunct to the military feudal caste. There was the papal idea of a world discipline resting upon religious sanctions’. Woven ‘in and out of these glittering strands of development, ran the homely worsted of the mercantile conception of a diplomacy governed by the reasonable bargaining of man with man. Sound diplomacy was the invention of middle-class citizens’. Law and commerce were the 643 Nicolson regarded as an oversimplification R. B. vehicles which enabled diplomatic theory to develop in an ascending, parallel pattern. Mowat's division (1935) of diplomacy into three distinct historical periods: 476 to 1475 (the absence of organized diplomacy), the Renaissance 644 until the First World War (nation-states and organized diplomacy), and the 1920s and 1930s (democratic or the ‘New Diplomacy’). The significant contrasts between Hill, Nicolson, and Mowat have been brought into sharp focus by James Der Derian. Nicolson's diplomatic theory (and to some degree classical international theory), he asserts, by insisting on continuity and seeking evidence for it, creates a historical and a logical foundation for a stilted, evolutionary version of diplomatic development. This results in the attribution of uniformity to

643 644

Nicolson, Diplomacy, 23–4. Ibid., 15–16; R. B. Mowat, Diplomacy and Peace (London: Williams and Norgate, 1935), 16–17.

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diplomacy's origins and history that distorts interpretations of its actual development. It also imposes a unitary body of theory on a reality which did not, and does not, exist. Der Derian cites as an example Nicolson's emphasis on common sense as the pivotal element in moulding diplomatic theory, pointing out that, during the Middle Ages, religious, social, ideological, and unconscious forces also shaped diplomacy's 645 evolution. The classic statement of the view that diplomacy had tribal origins remains Ragnar Numelin's The Beginnings of Diplomacy (1950). Numelin contended that the history of diplomacy predates European classical antiquity and the ancient Oriental, Indian, and Chinese civilizations to 646 Adam encompass the tribal peoples of Australia, Oceania, Asia, Africa, and North and South America—peoples without a written history. 647 Nicolson, when discussing diplomacy's origins, trod Watson also dates diplomacy to the oral message-carrying heralds of primitive times. 648 lightly, because of his belief that they ‘lie buried in the darkness preceding…“the dawn of history”’. A relieved Nicolson told his readers, 649 Even when he was ‘When we pass from the mythological to the historical, we find ourselves upon surer and more reputable ground’. writing, however, there was clear evidence—the Amarna letters, for example (discovered in 1887)—of the existence of cuneiform diplomacy 650 in the Ancient Near East. Harold Nicolson's real starting point for discussing diplomatic

645

J. Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 35, 46, 69, 80–1, 202. R. Numelin, The Beginnings of Diplomacy: A Sociological Study of Intertribal and International Relations (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 13–14. Keith Hamilton and Richard Langhorne have observed that diplomacy began when the earliest human societies chose to hear a message in preference to eating the messenger. 647 A. Watson, Diplomacy: The Dialogue Between States (London: Methuen, 1984), 83. 648 Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 2. 649 Nicolson, Diplomacy, 7. 650 R. Cohen, ‘The Great Tradition: The Spread of Diplomacy in the Ancient World’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 12/1 (2001), 23–39. 646

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theory was the ancient Greeks, who had developed ‘an elaborate system of diplomatic intercourse’. Andrew Wolpert maintains that Nicolson's traditional view overestimates its complexity and underrates the effects on Greek diplomacy of differences between the various 652 Nevertheless, by the fifth century, the Greeks had built a complex apparatus for poleis regarding their respective strategic interests. interstate interchange. It included Amphictyonic Councils, leagues and alliances, principles governing the declaration of war, the conclusion of peace, the ratification of treaties, arbitration, neutrality, the exchange of ambassadors, and a consul's functions, as well as certain rules of 653 Nicolson's explanation for the failure of the Amphictyonic Councils— ‘something between a Church Congress, an Eisteddfod and a war. meeting of the League of Nations Assembly’—had instructive parallels for the 1930s: they were not universal—many important nation-states never became members—and they possessed insufficient force to enable them to impose their decisions on the stronger Powers. However, the 654 Councils did engender an awareness of common international interests. The Greeks passed their diplomatic traditions and precepts to the Romans, who had little inclination or aptitude for negotiation. Their 655 Rome's overwhelming approach to diplomatic intercourse was more that of ‘the legionary and the road-maker’ than that of the diplomat. power and capacity to impose her will through arms militated strongly against the evolution of a highly developed Roman diplomatic 656 For the Romans, ‘might was right… a sharp sword in the hand of a disciplined soldier was the most persuasive argument in world method. 657 Among Rome's main contributions to diplomatic theory was ‘a theoretical respect for good-faith, and an understanding of the diplomacy’. 658 Whether this produced ‘a distinctive procedure of diplomacy’ is debatable. Brian purely practical importance of reliable contracts’. 659 Campbell thinks it did; Nicolson thought not, seeing in Rome a juggernaut with little or no need to parley with her geopolitical inferiors. With the end of Roman dominance there developed a new competitive spirit in diplomacy; ‘policy ceased to be stated in the sharp alternatives of obedience or revolt, but became a question of adjusting rival ambitions, or of fortifying national security, by the conciliation of enemies and 660 Diplomacy was the acquisition of allies. It was then that professional diplomacy…became one of the branches of statesmanship’. transformed during post-medieval times by the influence of power politics, national prestige, status, precedence, and glamour, as well as by 661 Nicolson's approaches to these aspects of diplomatic theory even now profit politics, appeasement, conciliation, compromise, and credit. command widespread agreement. One that has always provoked criticism, and continues to do so, is his attitude to Byzantine and Venetian diplomacy. While conceding that the Emperors of Byzantium were the first to organize a special department of state to deal with external affairs, and to train professional negotiators to serve as their ambassadors to foreign courts, Nicolson regarded Venice as the birthplace of the 662 first organized diplomatic system. The discussion this view prompted was a whisper compared to the arguments generated by his devastating indictment of the Byzantine legacy: There came under the Byzantine system a recrudescence of diplomacy in its most unconstructive form. Diplomacy became the stimulant rather than the antidote to the greed and folly of mankind. Instead of co-operation, you had disintegration; instead of unity, disruption; instead of reason, you had astuteness; in the place of moral principles you had ingenuity. The Byzantine conception of diplomacy was directly transmitted to Venice, and, from those foetid lagoons, throughout the Italian peninsula. Diplomacy in the Middle Ages had a predominantly Italian, and indeed Byzantine, flavour. It is to this heredity that it owes, in modern Europe, so much of its 663 disrepute. An ‘intricate and unreasonable pattern’ characterized such diplomacy, one ‘that ignored the practical purposes of true negotiation, and 664 introduced an abominable filigree of artifice into what ought always to be a simple machine’.

651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 664

Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 3. A. Wolpert, ‘The Genealogy of Diplomacy in Classical Greece’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 12/1 (2001), 71, 84–5. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 8–9. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 18, 19. Ibid., 9. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 14. 1st Earl of Birkenhead, The Speeches of Lord Birkenhead (London: Cassell, 1929), 210. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 17. B. Campbell, ‘Diplomacy in the Roman World (c.500 BC–AD 235)’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 12/1 (2001), 1. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 24. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 24–5. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 25. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 20. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 25.

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Nicolson made clear his preference for the diplomacy of antiquity over ‘the wolf-like habits’ of the Renaissance Italians, who had been 665 Their methods were theoretically and practically unsound. indoctrinated with the Byzantine or ‘oriental defects of duplicity and suspicion’. In teaching that ‘international justice must always be subordinated to national expediency’ and ‘in inculcating the habits of deception, 666 This was compounded by the harmful effect opportunism, and faithlessness’, the Italians did much to discredit the whole art of diplomacy. of their ‘ceaseless fiddlings’ with the balance of power, which were deducible from the political theory of Niccolò Machiavelli, whose writings (chiefly The Prince) had so many regrettable consequences for Western Europe. Nicolson conceded that the author of Il Principe was not creating ‘a permanent doctrine’ but ‘expounding la verità effettuale, the effective truth, as he experienced it in his own life-time’. Nevertheless, Machiavelli's ‘general theory that the safety and interests of the State take precedence over all ethical considerations was, in after years, adopted 667 and expanded… with…very unfortunate results’. 668

G. R. Berridge has referred to Nicolson's ‘elegant caricature of the “Italian method” of negotiation’. Christian Reus-Smit questions Nicolson's interpretation of Renaissance diplomacy on the ground that emphasizing ‘the irrational, highly ritualized, ornamental, and premodern character of Italian practices’ (as Nicolson does) results in a misconception of Italian diplomacy as ‘the antithesis of modern diplomatic practice…public not private, personalized not detached, affected not efficient, demonstrative not deliberative, ritualized not technocratic’. The outcome is an underestimation of Renaissance diplomacy, a downplaying of the power and effectiveness of Italian political elites (‘indulgent peacocks, beguiled by oriental extravagances’), and a misunderstanding of Renaissance diplomacy because it is being 669 evaluated against the standards of latter-day European diplomatic theory and practice. Adda B. Bozeman also dismisses Nicolson's condemnation of Byzantine diplomacy (and its effect on that of the Venetians) on the basis that in the Nicolson analysis ‘Venetian diplomacy is being measured…in terms of its compliance or noncompliance with the standards of political 670 Other critics of Nicolson's strictures behavior that have come to prevail in the diplomatic circles of the modern Western society of states’. on Byzantine and Italian

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Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 23, 27. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 31, 32. G. R. Berridge, ‘Guicciardini’, in G. R. Berridge, M. Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte, Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 34. C. Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 68–9. A. B. Bozeman, Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), 477.

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diplomacy have claimed that he distorts the character of both. According to Raymond A. Jones, for example, Nicolson's evolutionary conceptions are ‘teleological fantasies’, since Venetian diplomatic development was a Renaissance growth confined largely to the Italian peninsula, more particularly to newly emergent, independent nation-states with their own diplomatic machines. Italian diplomatic practice, 671 In the face of this barrage—the product of therefore, was not by nature primarily an imitative and pale offshoot of Byzantine diplomacy. research conducted in archives opened years after Nicolson pronounced on Byzantine and Venetian diplomatic development—his interpretation of this subject is less persuasive than it was in 1939 (Diplomacy) and 1954 (The Evolution of Diplomatic Method). The Nicolson version of events, though evocatively rendered and supremely readable, derives largely from his intellectual prejudices, chiefly a readiness to debate the diplomacy of Byzantium and Renaissance Italy in terms of the dominant forms and values of the modern nation-state. Post-medieval ‘classic diplomacy’ was exemplified in the diplomatic theory and practice nurtured and perfected by France's Chief Minister, 672 In the 1600s and the eighteenth century, the French method, encapsulated in Callières's classic work, became Cardinal Richelieu. 673 Its influence has been enormous, and this ‘historical diplomacy’ continues to set the pattern for much Western ‘predominant and universal’. 674 It ushered in a ‘Golden Age of Diplomacy’ in which French diplomatic theory and practice and non-Western diplomatic interchange. 675 reached their efflorescence between the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) and the First World War (1914–18). Nicolson regarded the French system as ‘that best adapted to the conduct of relations between civilised States. It was courteous and dignified; it was continuous and gradual; it attached importance to knowledge and experience; it took account of the realities of existing power; and it 676 More especially, he esteemed its emphasis on defined good faith, lucidity and precision as the qualities essential to any sound negotiation’. diplomatic negotiation as a permanent, unhurried activity, and its recognition of diplomacy as a continuous rather than an ad hoc process. Nicolson also shared the French perception that the interests of the State should (within certain defined ethical limits) rank above those of sentiment, ideology, or doctrine. He agreed, too, that in perilous

671

R. A. Jones, The British Diplomatic Service 1815–1914 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), 3–4. Q. Wright, ‘The Decline of Classic Diplomacy’, Journal of International Affairs, 17/1 (1963), 18–29. 673 Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 53. 674 H. Butterfield, ‘The New Diplomacy and Historical Diplomacy’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), 181–93. 675 C. B. Marshall, ‘The Golden Age in Perspective’, Journal of International Affairs, 17/1 (1963), 10. 676 Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 72. 672

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times one's allies must be chosen primarily for their physical or geographical strengths and not for their ‘integrity or charm’. The French axiom that ‘no policy could succeed unless it had national opinion behind it’ was one that Nicolson considered of universal value to politicians and diplomats. He also echoed Richelieu's conviction concerning the sanctity of treaties as instruments of statecraft, and, like the French, lauded the principle that certainty was the premier element of sound diplomacy. Nicolson subscribed to the diplomatic theory of the 677 678 while finding Machiavelli's political cynicism ‘repulsive’. He stated in 1954 that, although the enormous changes in ‘realist’ Richelieu, international society wrought by the First World War had required a reformed realism, pre-1914 diplomacy was ‘infinitely more efficient than 679 that which we employ today’.

OLD AND NEW FORMS The merits and demerits of the ‘Old Diplomacy’ and the ‘New Diplomacy’ have inspired much analysis. The term ‘New Diplomacy’ is 680 traceable to 1793, but the most notable changes in modern European diplomatic practice to warrant this description did not occur until after the First World War. The extent of these changes—indeed the question as to whether they deserve the appellation ‘New Diplomacy’ at all—has also prompted considerable discussion. Jules Cambon asserted in 1931 that ‘to talk about new and old diplomacy is to make a distinction without a difference. It is the outward appearance, or, if you like, the make-up of diplomacy, that is gradually changing. The 681 R. B. Mowat, writing in 1935, claimed that the immediate post-war alterations in diplomatic method represented substance will remain’. 682 In 1988, Sasson ‘not a “New Diplomacy”, but the old diplomacy going on, amplified, developed, but retaining continuity with its past’. Sofer described the distinction as ‘simplistic and inaccurate’, and insisted that ‘continuity and evolution’ rather than ‘revolution’ had 683 characterized twentieth-century diplomatic theory and practice. In Peacemaking 1919 (1933), Nicolson argued that ‘the contrast between the old and the new diplomacy is…not merely an exaggeration, but may

677 678 679 680 681 682 683

Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 50–3. H. Nicolson, Monarchy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 211. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 73. F. Gilbert, ‘The “New Diplomacy” of the Eighteenth Century’, World Politics, 4/1 (1951), 1. J. Cambon, The Diplomatist (London: Philip Allan, 1931), 142. Mowat, Diplomacy and Peace, 15. S. Sofer, ‘Old and New Diplomacy: A Debate Revisited’, Review of International Studies, 14 (1988), 195.

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prove harmful to the scientific study of international relations’. The incidence of sovereignty, not the essential principles of sound diplomacy, had changed. A year later, he wrote: ‘It is the interaction between the need of exact “representation” and the impulse towards increased “efficiency” which has, since the fourteenth century, constituted the main influence formative of diplomatic practice: the conflict 685 In 1939, between the “old” and the “new” diplomacy is thus no sudden phenomenon, but a stage in this long process of adjustment’. Nicolson stressed: ‘No sudden conversion has taken place; no sharp contrasts of principle or method can be recognized; all that has happened is that the art of negotiation has gradually adjusted itself to changes in political conditions’ such as ‘a growing sense of the community of 686 nations; an increasing appreciation of the importance of public opinion; and the rapid increase in communications’. However, in his last significant pronouncement on the subject (1954), Nicolson concluded that the transition had originated, not in increased colonial expansion, greater commercial competition, or improved communications, but in ‘the belief that it was possible to apply to the conduct of external affairs, 687 the ideas and practices which, in the conduct of internalaffairs, had for generations been regarded as the essentials of liberal democracy’. 688

Harold Nicolson was alert to the strengths and imperfections of the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’. The principal pillars of the ‘Old Diplomacy’ were ‘the conception of Europe as the centre of international gravity; the idea that the Great Powers, constituting the Concert of Europe, were more important and more responsible than the Small Powers; the existence in every country of a trained diplomatic service possessing common standards of professional conduct; and the assumption that negotiation must always be a process rather than an episode, and that at every 689 stage it must remain confidential’. The four great advantages of the ‘Old Diplomacy’ were ‘knowledge of local conditions and feelings; no publicity; no public expectations; and 690 no time-pressure’. A ‘distinguished group’ of nine Ambassadors was accredited to the Court of St James's prior to the First World War. They represented France, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Spain, Italy, Russia, the United States, Turkey, and Japan (the last three, Nicolson observed, played ‘subsidiary roles’). These envoys were ‘men of peace’; some were individuals of ‘outstanding ability’ who ‘represented all that was most wise, honourable and pacific in the

684

H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964), 5. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 184. 686 Nicolson, Diplomacy, 28–9, 36. 687 Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 84. 688 Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 39–40. 689 Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 77. 690 H. Nicolson, The Old Diplomacy and the New (David Davies Memorial Lecture in International Studies, March 1961) (London: David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies, 1961), 7. 685

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Old Diplomacy’. During the 1912–14 crises occasioned by the Balkan Wars, they succeeded under the direction of Britain's Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, in establishing what amounted to a European Concert. The Ambassadors' Conference held in London in 1913 constituted a classic instance of joint intervention by the Concert of Europe in a dispute between Small Powers to prevent a Small Power crisis from escalating into a Great Power confrontation. As it happened, this proved to be ‘the last, as well as the best, example of the old diplomacy 692 in action’. 693

The ‘Old Diplomacy’ carried the blame for ‘the mistakes, the follies and the crimes’ of pre-First World War European foreign policy. The conflict also transformed the diplomatic terrain in that it ‘destroyed the formula, or the convention, under which the old diplomatists fulfilled 694 The existing apparatus remained in place, though reformed by the addition of ‘open diplomacy’, the product of an idealist their functions’. vision of diplomatic theory and practice introduced by the American President, Woodrow Wilson, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. At a deeper level, too, interstate relations were under siege from economics and ideology. The USSR purported to represent the world's workers; 695 Nazi Germany claimed to speak for the Aryan race; and the Western Powers saw themselves as the voice of the international community. Hedley Bull questioned Nicolson's conviction that the decline of the ‘Old Diplomacy’ was ‘a deplorable development’, since the altered shape of international society made the ‘New Diplomacy’ ‘a necessary instrument of foreign policy for any state’. He cited two spheres in which this is evident—the role of public opinion in foreign relations and the disappearance of the Concert of Europe. However, it will become apparent 696 that Nicolson did not dismiss the ‘New Diplomacy’ to the degree that this suggests. Nicolson defined post-First World War ‘democratic diplomacy’ as ‘the execution of foreign policy, either by politicians themselves, or through 697 the medium of untrained negotiators whom they have selected from among their own supporters or personal friends’. The supreme disadvantage of this form of diplomacy is that ‘its representatives are obliged to reduce the standards of their own thoughts to the level of 698 699 It also presents the problem ‘of adjusting the emotions of the masses to the thoughts of the rulers’. He objected other people's feelings’. to ‘the unctuous inertia, the flood-lit self-righteousness, the timid

691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699

H. Nicolson, King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign (London: Constable, 1952), 176 and n. Nicolson, ‘The Faults of American Diplomacy’, 53. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 72–3. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 20 December 1946, 671. R. Vinen, A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2000), 208–9. Bull, The Anarchical Society, 175–6. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 397. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 64. Ibid., 190.

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imprecisions, the appalling amateurishness of democratic diplomacy’. Nicolson stressed that ‘the main distinction…between the methods of the new and those of the old diplomacy is that the former aims at satisfying the immediate wishes of the electorate, whereas the latter was concerned only with the ultimate interests of the nation’. Of ‘democratic diplomacy’ Nicolson concluded, ‘In its desire to conciliate popular feeling it is apt to subordinate principle to expediency, to substitute the indefinite for the precise, to prefer in place of the central problem (which is often momentarily insoluble) subsidiary issues upon which immediate agreement, and therefore immediate popular approval, can be 701 attained’. In diplomacy, ‘the ideal to be achieved…is to differentiate between policy and negotiation…to combine…the confidential and expert handling of negotiation, with the maximum democratic control of policy in the form of ratification. Let agreements be negotiated between technicians working in privacy: and let these agreements, once reduced to precise and detailed form, be submitted to the open comment, criticism, 702 rejection or consent of the parliaments and peoples whose interests are affected’. To be avoided are the worst aspects of the ‘New Diplomacy’—insult and propaganda. These lead to controversy, competition, publicity, sensationalism, animosity between the negotiators, and 703 feelings of anger or wounded pride among the public of the participating nation-states. In 1946, Nicolson observed, ‘It may be that in many ways the conventions of the old diplomacy were cumbrous, inscrutable and lethargic. Yet the slap-dash diplomacy of our modern times, which leaves behind it such divergences of interpretation and so many imprecisions, cannot as yet claim to constitute an improvement. Assuredly it is quicker than the older method; but is it more comprehensible? Is it as conciliatory or 704 The following year (1947), he expressed the view that the ‘New Diplomacy’ had yet to find its own formula. Yet he was confident exact?’ 705 that it would do so. In 1961, Nicolson acknowledged the impossibility of returning to the forms and practices of the ‘Old Diplomacy’. He held out hope, however, that the practitioners of the ‘New Diplomacy’ could benefit from the institutional experience and wisdom of their 706 predecessors. 707

Nicolson confessed to ‘a professional prejudice against sudden diplomacy’ —the framing of diplomatic agreements by politicians or their nominees (usually foreign ministers), in an atmosphere of haste, improvisation,

700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707

Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 40. Ibid., 185–6. Ibid., 41. Nicolson, The Old Diplomacy and the New, 1. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 17 May 1946, 503. H. Nicolson, ‘The Working of the New Diplomacy’, Listener, 11 December 1947, 1000. Nicolson, The Old Diplomacy and the New, 1. H. Nicolson, Marginal Comment January 6–August 4 1939 (London: Constable, 1939), 125.

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and imprecision. No practitioner of this ‘paradiplomacy’, defined by Rohan Butler as ‘a personal and parallel diplomacy, complementing or 708 competing with the regular foreign policy of the [government]’, is prepared to bind him or herself openly and in advance to a precise policy. 709 The outcome is not precise ‘policy’ but imprecise ‘aspiration’; in diplomacy, ‘precision’ is ‘the very principle of action’. He also objected to many aspects of ‘diplomacy by conference’, which politicians had taken to after the First World War ‘as wild geese to 710 On the atmosphere of water’ (twenty-three separate international conferences were held between January 1920 and December 1922). conferences, he shared his contemporary, Lord Vansittart's view that ‘the pace of a troop was proverbially regulated by the slowest horse; the 711 However, he did not subscribe to Sir David Kelly's belief that ‘open diplomacy is a tone of a conference is set by its noisiest delegation’. 712 Nicolson hoped that ‘surely there must exist some mean between secret diplomacy contradiction in terms; if it is open it is not diplomacy’. 713 and diplomacy by loud-speaker’. As he conceded in 1934, ‘Obviously there are occasions when international agreement can only be achieved by oral discussion between plenipotentiaries. There are occasions, also, when the issues are so vital and immediate that “policy” as well as “negotiation” is involved. On such occasions the negotiators must be identical with the framers of policy, and the resultant congresses 714 and conferences must be attended by the Prime Ministers or Foreign Secretaries of the several Powers’. A year later (1935) Nicolson repeated that he was not opposed totally to diplomacy by conference, since situations would arise in which those responsible to parliament for devising foreign policy had to be involved directly in its execution. Nevertheless, gratuitous personal contact 715 as it tended to make the minister ‘not the master of his opportunity but the slave of an between ‘ambulant politicians’ should be avoided, 716 In the words of a former US Secretary of State, ‘the course of wisdom lies in reducing the impact which accidents of personality occasion’. 717 have upon the relations among nations’.

708 709 710 711 712 713 714 715 716 717

R. Butler, ‘Paradiplomacy’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in Honour of G. P. Gooch (London: Longmans, 1961), 13. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 208; ‘Introduction’ to Sir Horace Rumbold, The War Crisis in Berlin July–August 1914, xx. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 186. Lord Vansittart, ‘The Decline of Diplomacy’, Foreign Affairs, 28 (1950), 185. Sir David Kelly, ‘The Lost Art of Diplomacy’, Encounter, 4/6 (1955), 6. H. Nicolson, Comments: 1944–1948 (London: Constable, 1948), 198. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 397. H. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, International Affairs, 14 (1935), 610. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 29 June 1936, 131. D. Rusk, ‘The President’, Foreign Affairs, 38 (1960), 366.

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Diplomacy via conference deprived diplomatic interchange of another valuable resource. ‘The diplomatic service acts as a filter in the turgid stream of international affairs. Direct contact between British and foreign statesmen dispenses with that filter’, Nicolson stated. ‘I admit that the rush of water is thereby rendered more potent and more immediate: yet the conduct of foreign policy requires no gush or rush; it requires 718 The risks accompanying conference diplomacy made it ‘perhaps the most unfortunate diplomatic deliberation, experience and detachment’. 719 method ever conceived’. Harold Nicolson believed that openness and publicity had prevented real negotiation from taking place at the 1946 Paris Peace Conference. He speculated that the best outcome of 1946 would have been a realization that conferences must begin with confidential negotiation before 720 While maintaining his belief that open diplomacy between ministers moving on to public consideration of the results of that negotiation. was sometimes necessary, Nicolson remained certain that ‘more misery has been caused to mankind by the hurried drafting of imprecise or 721 meaningless documents than by all the alleged machinations of the cunning diplomatist’. He also had reservations about the parliamentary diplomacy of the League of Nations and the United Nations. ‘These conferences…do much to diminish the utility of professional diplomatists and, in that they entail much publicity, many rumours, and wide speculation,—in that they tempt politicians to achieve quick, spectacular and often fictitious results,—they tend to promote rather than allay suspicion, and to create those very states of uncertainty which it is the purpose of good diplomatic method to prevent’. Nicolson described the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly as ‘exercises in forensic propaganda’ that did not even purport to be ‘experiments in diplomatic 722 In 1960, he observed that ‘the endeavour to establish “open diplomacy” has led delegates to make propaganda speeches in public method’. 723 and to conduct serious negotiations in the privacy of hotel bedrooms—which leads to waste of time and farce’. In 1963, a former United Nations official acknowledged the accuracy of Nicolson's criticisms of its open assemblies. Yet he claimed that ‘corridor or office diplomacy’, whereby many issues were resolved satisfactorily in private, compensated for the disadvantages of this form of intercourse. Parliamentary 724 diplomacy was, therefore, public and multilateral.

718 719 720 721 722 723 724

Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, 610. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 397. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 13 October 1946, 7. H. Nicolson, ‘An Open Look at Secret Diplomacy’, New York Times Magazine, 13 September 1953, 48. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 89, 91. H. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace: A Discourse’, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Perspectives on Peace 1910–1960 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 37. A. Cordier, ‘Diplomacy Today’, Journal of International Affairs, 17/1 (1963), 5, 6.

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These perceptions of conference or ‘summit’ diplomacy were surely out of balance. Nicolson took fright at the mere idea of this supposed new development, whose workings he considered too much in thrall to public pressure. Yet summit diplomacy had a long history. The meetings of medieval and early modern sovereigns, and the periodic congresses of the seventeenth century, although not susceptible to the democratic 725 Other men of affairs and pressure of later centuries, were not unaffected by the influences of political opinion and strategic necessity. veterans of 1919 like Lord Hankey were proclaiming that ‘diplomacy by conference has come to stay’, and that its ‘judicious development’ offered the best hope of avoiding future wars. In no sense, Hankey made clear, did this presage a decline in the prestige or functions of 726 diplomats. One of these, Sir William Hayter, was confident that ‘summitry’ still had a role to perform in concluding existing negotiations or 727 Johan Kaufmann also disputes Nicolson's conclusions regarding conference diplomacy, on the ground that ‘public initiating new ones. 728 intergovernmental conferences can very well provide the stage for the practice of “quiet diplomacy”’. Nicolson had strong reservations about ‘personal diplomacy’. While King Edward VII was much praised for his contribution to the Entente Cordiale (1904), Sir Arthur Nicolson had generally found His Majesty to be lazy and without real knowledge of affairs. Nonetheless, the 729 younger Nicolson conceded to Count Harry Kessler that ‘“He was somebody you could trot out on occasion” to captivate some victim’. Harold Nicolson regarded good diplomacy as the preserve of professionals; too great an emphasis on the individual often led to problems.

NATIONAL DIPLOMATIC STYLES Harold Nicolson was not alone in his belief, one shared (as we have seen) by experienced and reflective diplomats such as Henry Kissinger, that diplomatic success depended on an understanding of ‘national character’. British diplomacy's strengths derived from its reliance on ‘the sound business principles

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E. Goldstein, ‘The Origins of Summit Diplomacy’, in D. H. Dunn (ed.), Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 23. Lord Hankey, Diplomacy by Conference: Studies in Public Affairs 1920–1946 (London: Ernest Benn, 1946), 38, 39. Sir William Hayter, The Diplomacy of the Great Powers (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960), 67–8. J. Kaufmann, Conference Diplomacy: An Introductory Analysis, 2nd edn. (Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, 1988), 73. Count Harry Kessler, The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan 1918–1937 (ed. and trans.), C. Kessler (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), 374.

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of moderation, fair-dealing, reasonableness, credit, compromise, and a distrust of all surprises or sensational extremes’. Nicolson emphasized that he was not claiming any moral superiority for British diplomacy over that of other nation-states, only that the high value its practitioners placed on reliability in negotiation had produced an enduring and successful style of diplomatic discourse. Its chief weakness was a tendency to 730 become ‘too optimistic, confused, non-committal, irrational and elastic’. In contrast to the British, ‘the Germans are always inclined to envisage diplomacy as war by some other means, and to take actions that are essentially military actions such as ‘the “trial of strength”, or Kraftprobe, the surprise attack, the ambuscade, the encircling movement, the trench 731 Building on the example of ‘the most Machiavellian of raid, the strategic withdrawal, the preliminary bombardment, and the mass attack’. 732 Frederick the Great, the nineteenth-century Prussian titan, Otto von Bismarck, devised methods which ‘although effective diplomatists’, when controlled by his own iron will, became disastrous when applied by men of lesser strength…His actual trickery degraded the hitherto accepted standards of political and diplomatic honesty…He convinced his people that the only standard of statesmanship was that of success; 733 and at the same time he taught them methods in which only he could succeed’. The diplomacy of France, for all its precision, was ‘tense, rigid and inelastic’. For French diplomats, ‘the interests of France loom so exclusively that the forefront is apt to become blocked. Moreover, their passion for logic, the legal temper of their minds, their extreme realism, their distrust of all political emotion, often blind them to the motives, the feelings and often the thoughts of other nations’. Consequently, French diplomacy, ‘with all its magnificent equipment and its fine principles is often ineffective’. A predictable unpredictability characterized ‘the mobile diplomacy of the Italians’, who had developed an opportunistic diplomatic method based on ‘incessant manoeuvre’. Their approach, which aimed to achieve, not ‘durable credit’ but ‘immediate advantage’, was the antithesis of the British method. Unlike the Germans, Italian foreign policy-makers and diplomats based power on diplomacy, not diplomacy on power. The Italian system was also the complete opposite of that of the French in that its practitioners sought, not to secure permanent allies against an unchanging enemy, but assumed the interchangeability of ally and foe. Italy attempted ‘to acquire by negotiation an importance greater than can be supplied by her own physical 734 strength’.

730 731 732 733 734

Nicolson, Diplomacy, 71, 77. H. Nicolson, ‘The Origins and Development of the Anglo-French Entente’, International Affairs, 30 (1954), 410. H. Nicolson, The Age of Reason (1700–1789) (London: Constable, 1960), 105. H. Nicolson, Review of E. Eyck, Bismarck and the German Empire (1950), Observer, 9 July 1950, 7. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 81–2.

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Nicolson's approach to the diplomatic theory and practice of the USSR (and her mendicant nation-states) was similar to Lord 735 736 He accepted Vansittart's—‘the total perfidy of Totalitaria’ and ‘the New Barbarians’ —though his analysis of both was more measured. that the Russians were ‘resolute doubtless, intensely convinced, well versed in dialectics, ingenious in a way, indefatigable in the pursuit of their 737 Many years would pass before the own projects—but assuredly not clever diplomatists according to any correct definition of those terms’. 738 In words less strident than but as assured West could establish with the Russians ‘any community of thought, of principle, even of purpose’. 739 To the as Vansittart's, he proclaimed that the USSR had evolved no method of negotiation worthy of the description ‘diplomatic system’. end of his life, Nicolson maintained the belief that ‘diplomacy is the art of establishing credit through reliability; Soviet diplomacy, which seeks 740 Of America's diplomacy, Nicolson concluded that no to establish fear through being unpredictable, is not diplomacy but something else’. identifiable diplomatic ‘formula’ derivative of her national character had yet emerged. The clearest such contribution was the distinction 741 between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’. The conception of national character as a determinant of a nation-state's foreign policy and diplomatic practice, far from being an antiquarian relic of European international thought, is still taken seriously by diplomats and scholars. Henry Kissinger, one of the twentieth century's leading scholar-diplomats, emphasized its importance in the last volume of his memoirs, published at century's end. Writing of the 1970s, Kissinger reflected that ‘Franco-American tensions were more the result of a cultural gap than of policy disagreement. British diplomats stressed partnership and practical solutions. French leaders emphasized theory and adopted an instructional, superior, often hectoring manner. Britain sought cooperation; France maneuvered to create the impression that Paris had somehow exacted what we might have been quite 742 willing to offer’. Kissinger argued that this characteristic of French diplomacy was evident as early as the seventeenth century. He also 743 The effect of a nation-state's pointed out that the sometimes irritating French diplomatic style had been ‘aptly described’ by Nicolson. national character on its

735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743

Vansittart, ‘The Decline of Diplomacy’, 183, 188. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 17 February 1950, 208. Ibid., 12 January 1951, 43. H. Nicolson, ‘“We Speak a Different Language”’, Listener, 24 October 1946, 547. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 90. H. Nicolson, Review of Sir William Hayter, The Diplomacy of the Great Powers (1960), Observer, 11 December 1960, 30. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 72. H. Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 618, 620. Ibid., 620–1.

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foreign policy and diplomacy is not easy to determine. Yet Nicolson and Kissinger never doubted its significance.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND AFTER Although critical of the ‘New Diplomacy’, Nicolson favoured some of the experiments and developments it had spawned. Chief among these was the First World War inter-allied strategic planning and materials distribution body. He described it as ‘a fundamental innovation in what until then had been the usual practice of international negotiation. In place of a national policy expressing itself by competitive and conflicting diplomacy, you had a common international interest imposing the need of international co-operation’ through bodies such as the Allied Maritime Transport Council. Nicolson praised this ‘valuable innovation in international practice’, and complimented its practitioners on achieving ‘a more continuous standard of mutual confidence and co-operation than professional diplomatists had ever managed to 744 Admittedly, this had occurred in wartime when the national existence of all but one of the parties (the United States) was achieve’. threatened, and the need to collaborate and reach agreement was paramount. The American legislature's refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles (an instrument negotiated and signed by President Woodrow Wilson) was an 745 early twentieth-century reversal that dealt ‘a heavy blow to the sanctity of contract and the reliability of negotiation’. As the century unfolded, Nicolson's anxiety about developments in diplomatic method (especially the excesses of open diplomacy) intensified. He reflected in 1950 that ‘the machinery of international negotiation has almost completely broken down … Once the principles are discarded, the methods, which were the servants of those principles, also go by the board … Our only course is for ourselves to maintain the old principles and the old 746 methods in the face of every provocation. In the end they must prevail; since they are demonstrably correct’. He had difficulty in accepting that improvements in communications had diminished an Ambassador's essential responsibilities and altered the nature of many diplomatic 747 tasks. Nicolson was also slow to understand that, while the contribution of diplomacy and its practitioners remained significant, diplomacy's complexity was increasing and its character changing.

744 745 746 747

Nicolson, Diplomacy, 85. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 89. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 17 February 1950, 208. Nicolson, ‘The Faults of American Diplomacy’, 55.

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However, his exact contemporary and 1919 Paris confrère, the diplomatic historian, Sir Charles Webster, did appreciate that ‘diplomacy has become to a very large extent not so much a relation between two states as a complex of relations inside groups of states and between different 748 The high number of twentieth-century diplomatic negotiations was matched perhaps only by the variety of subjects groups of states’. discussed. In what might reasonably be called ‘the century of diplomacy’ the craft, rather than receding in importance, has continued to follow 749 Now, as in Nicolson's day, ‘the diplomatic system is the communications system of the a path of ‘logical, requisite, historical change’. 750 international society. Without it there could be no international society … nor any functioning collectivity of states’.

LIBERAL REALISM REAFFIRMED 751

Diplomacy's principal purpose, for Nicolson, was the maintenance of international stability. The society of European nation-states provided manifold opportunities for statesmen and diplomats to pursue this goal by adopting the principle of concert in practising diplomacy, framing alliances, adjusting the balance of power, offering and honouring guarantees, engaging in arbitration, and, when necessary, initiating 752 753 wars. Nicolson emphasized the importance of common sense to diplomatic theory and practice. Martin Wight has argued that this common sense conception as enunciated by Nicolson is ‘the central or “classical” view of diplomacy’. It is also an explicitly Grotian one which, as an element of international thought, can be easily attached to the Grotian theory of the balance of power. The Rationalist-Grotian approach is based on ‘a theory constructed in terms of tension, balanced opposites, political factors interpenetrated by moral ones, and power harnessed 754 by purpose’. Diplomatic theory was one of the two pillars of Nicolson's international thought, the other being international order. His conception of it mirrored A. J. P. Taylor's outlook on diplomatic history, a subject which for Taylor encompassed ‘the greatest of themes … the relations of 755 States … peace and war … the existence and destruction of communities and civilisations’. Nicolson's concern was wider than that of the diplomatic historian in that as

748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755

Sir Charles Webster, The Art and Practice of Diplomacy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), 3. Sofer, ‘Old and New Diplomacy’, 205, 208. A. James, ‘Diplomacy’, Review of International Studies, 19/1 (1993), 95–6. Nicolson, ‘The Faults of American Diplomacy’, 58. Wight, International Theory, 141, 144–5. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 24. Wight, International Theory, 188. A. J. P. Taylor, ‘Diplomatic History’, Manchester Guardian, 23 May 1939, 7.

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an international theorist he sought to address questions of ends and means in the arenas of statecraft and diplomacy. In his view, ‘It is not … sufficient to possess a [diplomatic] machine; what is important is the purposes for which that machine is employed and the spirit in which it is 756 Both liberal realist ends and diplomatic means become important. operated’. 757

The roots of liberal realism went back to the fifth-century Athenians, more specifically, the Greeks' acknowledgement of ‘the existence of certain divinely ordained principles governing the conduct of international affairs’. These included the sanctity of treaties (the spiritual bailiwick of the God, Zeus Pistios), the prohibition on abandoning an ally in mid-campaign, and the condemnation of surprise attacks on one's 758 neighbours. 759

Harold Nicolson approached historical parallels with care. Yet he did find instructive that between the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain's dealings with the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, in September–October 1938 over the future of the Sudeten Germans, and Demosthenes's accusations against Aeschines in a speech in 343 BC. Nicolson's criticisms related to Aeschines's and Chamberlain's dilatoriness and overreliance on their opponent's verbal assurances in negotiation, and, in the former case, to intentionally misleading the citizenry on his return. The speech's Greek title derives from a verb meaning to misconduct an embassy, but its Latin name (De Falsa Legatione), in which form it has passed to posterity, is the handiwork of Cicero. The exact charges were that Aeschines had been untruthful in his reports, disobedient to 760 Nicolson also disagreed with the view of politicians like Chamberlain that his instructions, dilatory (with treacherous intent), and corrupt. ‘the immense complexity of international affairs has in some manner become entangled in the skein of diplomatic professionalism and that the tangle can be suddenly unwound’ by themselves. This had led Chamberlain to confuse appeasement (giving way to others from fear and not 761 from principle) with negotiation, conciliation, or compromise. Chamberlain was criticized, too, for engaging in ‘dual diplomacy’ (one 762 diplomatic approach in public, another in secret). The liberal realist was not slow to invoke Aristotle, his classical ideal, in insisting on a measured approach to negotiation. In 1950, he wrote that ‘the main contention of [Aristotle's] Technique of Rhetoric remains to my mind indestructible’. Accordingly, if ‘the aim of oratory is to persuade; there can be

756 757 758 759 760 761 762

Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 9. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 9. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 9–10. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna, xi–xiii. Demosthenes, De Corona and De Falsa Legatione (London: Heinemann, 1926), 232–3; Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 12–14. Nicolson, Comments, 114; Nicolson diary, 5 July 1951, Balliol College. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 70–1.

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no persuasion unless confidence is established; there can be no confidence unless the orator is a man of reliable character who speaks the truth. Momentary passions, transitory moods of conviction even, can be aroused or created by propaganda and polemics; yet those false 763 For this reason, Nicolson abhorred Sir Henry Wotton's apophthegm (written in jest methods are subject to the law of diminishing returns’. 764 or not) describing an ambassador as an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country. Liberal realism also encapsulated classical approaches spelt out by Thucydides, who stressed the importance of ensuring that in negotiation ‘our actual strength is keeping pace with the language that we use’. In diplomacy, it was necessary to proceed with caution and to conduct 765 766 oneself with honour and courage. While exploring Hugo Grotius's writings on ‘the general theory of diplomacy and … the precepts that he advocated for the better conduct of international relations’ (based on a Law of Nature), Nicolson noted the Grotian insistence that (in Nicolson's words): ‘No just equilibrium could ever be secured unless the rulers of the world realised that there were certain principles other than national expediency that must govern their policies and their acts’. Harold Nicolson admired the ‘idealist’ Grotius, the distant progenitor of the League of (and the United) Nations, and ‘the first systematic philosopher to propose that some institution should be established 767 For Grotius, a Law of Nations was deducible from this Law of Nature, the whereby the Law of Nature could be administered and enforced’. 768 most important concrete diplomatic right deriving from it being that nation-states should have ‘the right of legation’. The classical emphasis on ethical conduct is strongly reflected in the works of Callières, Jules Cambon, and Nicolson. According to Callières, ‘a 769 Jules Cambon insisted that skilful negotiator ought never to found the success of his negotiations on false promises and on breach of faith’. 770 For Nicolson, reliability and ethics are the foundations of the best ‘moral influence is the most essential qualification for a diplomatist’. 771 diplomacy, since diplomatic negotiation is ‘the art of discovering an equable exchange of interests between people who trust each other’.

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H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 1 September 1950, 262; Aristotle, Treatise on Rhetoric (London: George Bell and Sons, 1906), I. 4, 12. Nicolson, Diplomacy, 21. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), I. 82, 84, I. 84, 84–5. H. Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (The Law of War and Peace), Books I, II, III (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964). First published in 1625. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, 49, 50. H. Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (The Law of War and Peace), Book II (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964), 438–50. Callières, The Art of Diplomacy, 83. Cambon, The Diplomatist, 7. H. Nicolson, ‘British Diplomatic Methods’, Listener, 17 January 1952, 92.

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Liberal realism has continuing value for diplomats and statesmen charged with resolving the dominant interstate issues of the twenty-first century. It would assuredly serve the needs of international society more effectively than the dominant paradigm of realism has done. In 2003, a retired British diplomat, Shaun Riordan, called for an alternative to ‘short-term and reactive’ realism, insisted that the liberal approach need not be confined to ‘“woolly-minded” morality’, and concluded that ‘foreign policy [and diplomacy] which allows more room for the ethical and 772 takes a greater interest in the nature of states may serve better the national interest in the medium term and may thus be more “realistic”’. The tenets of liberal realism clearly endure in the discourse of international theory.

772

S. Riordan, The New Diplomacy (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 45.

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6 European Security, 1919–39 ‘DANGEROUSLY ANGRY’ AND ‘DANGEROUSLY AFRAID’ 773

Harold Nicolson established an enviable reputation as a historian and analyst of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. His conclusions concerning the Paris settlement's repercussions for inter-war European security provide valuable insights into his liberal realism. A study of Nicolson's international thought between 1919 and 1939 reveals a change from an idealist (though never a utopian) outlook on international relations in 1919 to a more measured degree of idealism with realist overtones during the mid-1920s. His late 1920s and 1930s European security thinking, especially in relation to Italy and Germany, was characterized by a gradual and ultimately full synthesis of realist and idealist approaches to the international affairs issues of the day. A number of First World War victors—Italy among them—were unhappy with the Peace Conference outcome. One Italian Ambassador to Britain, Count Grandi, argued in 1935 that the peace settlement had burdened Europe with two unrealistic conceptions of international relations: an idealist ‘apocalyptical ideology’ disseminated by President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and a realist ‘reactionary spirit’ expounded by France's Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau. ‘One of these tendencies seeks to immobilize Europe in a network of theoretical 774 formulae,’ Grandi concluded, ‘the other to force it into an iron frame based upon past events’. As a result, the Conference had failed due to 775 the inability or unwillingness of the peacemakers to find a coherent ‘middle path’ between French realism and American idealism. 776

The ‘Versaillais’ had much to answer for. Conference, expressed his

773 774 775 776

One of their number, John Maynard Keynes, a senior British Treasury representative at the

H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (London: Constable, 1933); 2nd edn. (London: Constable, 1945); new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964). D. Grandi, ‘Italy’, in J. Cambon et al., The Foreign Policy of the Powers (New York: Harper and Brothers for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1935), 84. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (1964), 321. H. Nicolson, Review of J. F. Dulles, War, Peace and Change (1939), Daily Telegraph, 16 June 1939, 8.

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objections to the peace settlement in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). Keynes argued that the obsession in Paris with sovereignty and frontiers, and the punitive reparations imposed on Germany, had been disastrous errors of policy. A sounder course would have been to 777 Keynes's focus, given his background as a Cambridge create an economically prosperous Germany as the bulwark of a stable Europe. University economics don, was emphatically economic. Nicolson's, considering his experience in diplomacy, and in Paris, was primarily 778 political. The historian, J. L. Hammond, recognized this, describing Peacemaking 1919 as a ‘counterpart’ to Keynes's book. In an eloquent rejoinder to Keynes, The Carthaginian Peace (1946), Étienne Mantoux contended that he had exaggerated the negative economic effects of the Treaty of Versailles, and that the important (and largely neglected) outcomes were political. Chief among them was the division of central and south-eastern Europe. This had resulted in a strong, centralized Germany surrounded by several Small Powers reliant for their 779 independence on distant Great Powers. No true Continental balance of power thus emerged. There had been concerted attempts at the Conference, however, to forestall the problems of sovereignty, nationality, and borders, especially in relation to Eastern Europe. The belief that Eastern European security was tied inextricably to that of Western Europe had been advanced in 780 Paris by the members of ‘New Europe’, who sought to create a European order based on revivified liberal foreign policy principles. Founded in 1916 by the scholar, R. W. Seton-Watson and the Czech nationalist, Thomas Masaryk, the group's well-placed members like Nicolson ensured the inclusion in the final settlement of proposals for establishing new Eastern European nation-states, in an attempt to 781 New Europe's idea of a fair settlement rested on moderate ensure a more stable balance of power across Western and Eastern Europe. treatment of Germany, and a balanced implementation of political and economic forms of redress in an effort to maintain European peace. Nicolson shared Keynes's contempt for many aspects of the peace settlement. He regarded the reparation and indemnity clauses of the Treaty 782 Nicolson and Keynes were clearly more than ‘peripheral as ‘immoral and senseless’.

777

J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919), 51, 211. J. L. Hammond, Review of H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (1933), New Statesman and Nation, 17 June 1933, 792. 779 É. Mantoux, The Carthaginian Peace, or, The Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), 187. 780 E. Goldstein, ‘Great Britain: The Home Front’, in M. F. Boemeke, G. D. Feldman, and E. Glaser (eds.), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Washington, DC: The German Historical Institute, 1998), 150. 781 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 33. 782 Ibid., 359. 778

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participants’ at the Conference whose strictures on it count for little. Their judgements on proceedings flowed from the experience of two not uninfluential delegates with different spheres of interest. In Keynes's view, the ills of the settlement derived from the preoccupation of the Allied leaders with ‘politics, strategy, ethnicity, punishment and the balance of power’ at the expense of the economic exigencies of ‘food, coal, 784 and transportation’. Keynes underrated geopolitics and overvalued economics, leading Nicolson to describe his categorization of a ‘“Carthaginian”’ versus a 785 He argued instead that the Conference had failed owing to a deep-rooted combination of political and ‘“Wilsonian”’ Peace as ‘irrelevant’. economic factors compounded by confusion over its aim and purpose. Hence the gravest faults of the Treaties of Peace was their 786 ‘It was the endeavour to ‘sanctimonious pharisaism’, which would have such far-reaching implications for inter-war European security. reconcile the hopes of the many with the doubts of the few’, Nicolson insisted, ‘that brought such seeming falsity to foreign policy in the 787 twenty years between 1919 and 1939’. For Nicolson, the student of Aristotelian political prudence and Thucydidean historical observation, the only attempts to maintain peace worth pursuing were those based on a realistic understanding of human nature, and an acknowledgement of the limitations of politics and diplomacy. International relations approaches which misconceived or denied the nature of human beings and the evidence of history, generally resulted in the extreme realism and utopian idealism that had rendered so much of the 1919 settlement and inter-war European foreign relations false and, ultimately, disastrous. Only four of President Wilson's twenty-three Conditions of Peace (fourteen Points, four Principles, and five Particulars) were actually 788 incorporated into the Treaties of Peace. Nicolson claimed that these had left a deplorable legacy: Our covenants of Peace were not openly arrived at: seldom has such secrecy been maintained in any diplomatic gathering. The Freedom of the seas was not secured. So far from Free Trade being established in Europe, a set of tariff-walls were erected, higher and more numerous than any known before. National armaments were not reduced. The German Colonies were distributed among the victors in a manner which was neither free, nor open-minded, nor impartial. The wishes, to say nothing of the

783

W. R. Keylor, ‘Versailles and International Diplomacy’, in M. F. Boemeke, G. D. Feldman, and E. Glaser (eds.), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Washington, DC: The German Historical Institute, 1998), 489. 784 M. G. Fry, ‘British Revisionism’, in M. F. Boemeke, G. D. Feldman, and E. Glaser (eds.), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Washington, DC: The German Historical Institute, 1998), 589 and n. 785 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 84. 786 Ibid., 187. 787 H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (London: Constable, 1954), 88. 788 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 44.

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interests, of the populations were (as in the Saar, Shantung and Syria) flagrantly disregarded. Russia was not welcomed into the Society of Nations, nor was she accorded unhampered freedom to develop her own institutions. The frontiers of Italy were not adjusted along the lines of nationality. The Turkish portions of the Ottoman Empire were not assured a secure sovereignty. The territories of Poland include many people who are indisputably not Polish. The League of Nations has not, in practice, been able to assure political independence to Great and Small Nations alike. Provinces and peoples were, in fact, treated as pawns and chattels in a game. The territorial settlements, in almost every case, were based on mere adjustments and compromises between the claims of rival States. Elements of discord and antagonism were in fact perpetuated. Even the old system of Secret Treaties was not entirely and universally 789 destroyed. Although a severe critic of the peace settlement—one of many who had arrived as ‘fervent apprentices’ to Wilsonism and departed as 790 ‘renegades’ —Nicolson did not share Keynes's view that economic prescriptions would prove more important than political ones in creating a pacific Germany and forging European political stability. Over time he even came to believe that—their faults notwithstanding—the Treaty of Versailles, its attendant treaties, and the Covenant of the League of Nations could have played an important role in securing European peace. It was the vagueness and half-heartedness with which they were conceived and employed that made them of limited (and finally of no) 791 792 value in preventing another world war. Indeed, ‘the real tragedy of the Paris Peace Settlement was that it was never carried out’. In 1938, Harold Nicolson claimed that if the Covenant could be utilized properly in dealing with aggressive nation-states, another world war might be averted. He thought, too, that German concerns about Versailles could be addressed through negotiation, and Treaty provisions adjusted amicably to the altered conditions of peace. Such a course, if followed from a position of strength, might check or curtail the excesses 793 of the Italian and German dictators. He may have been proven right, had the Great Powers not shirked the main inter-war question of how 794 to enforce collective security. From this conviction—formed by the early 1940s—Nicolson never wavered. It represented a fusion of the belief of practical idealists and pragmatic internationalists like Sir Alfred Zimmern and Leonard Woolf that the League of Nations could play a positive role in maintaining world peace, and Nicolson's view that the League could do so only if fortified by the joint

789 790 791 792 793 794

Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 43. Ibid., 187. H. Nicolson, ‘The Future of the League: IV. Back to First Principles’, Spectator, 5 June 1936, 1028–9; ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 23 October 1942, 382. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 14 June 1946, 606. H. Nicolson, ‘Balance of Power Up-to-Date’ (Discussion with Sir Alfred Zimmern), Listener, 16 March 1938, 571. M. MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray, 2001), 499–500.

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resolve of nation-states. It also represented a departure from approaches to European security dominated by the conception of the balance of power. Realism as engaged in by individual nation-states had not prevented the Second World War; no international organization devoid of power could have done so. The only means of achieving this was to create a collective determination on the part of the world's pacific nationstates to deter any aggressor through the machinery of a strong League of Nations. Idealism alone was not enough; neither was classical realism. International relations needed a new lingua franca as a foundation for peace and international cooperation between nation-states. The young idealist of 1919, intellectually reared in Aristotelian and Thucydidean ideas at Balliol, had never before been required to test their mettle on a scale demanded by the Paris Conference. He divined early in proceedings the significance of the realist–idealist divergence, and its important potential consequences for the task of peacemaking. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Nicolson increasingly came to embrace Aristotelian realism (as interpreted by Jowett). It formed the basis of his liberal realism—a practical, evolutionary solution to the problems of European instability arising from aggressive ideologies of the right. Foreign Office advice to successive Cabinets during the 1920s was distinctly realist in character. It embodied principles and policies based squarely on national interest; these were aimed at securing a global balance of power to ensure British security. The hallmarks of Albion's 795 This was not the unambiguous course it seemed. Henry Kissinger has noted a policy were ‘immutable interests and mutable friendships’. confused duality about British foreign policy throughout the period. Britain, having forsaken her 300-year-old pursuit of equilibrium, fluctuated between a superficial implementation of balance of power principles directed at France and a growing devotion to the principle of 796 collective security, which it refused to enforce. Nicolson worked in Whitehall between 1920 and 1925 where, as a member of the Foreign Office's Central Department (the brainchild of Sir 797 Crowe and his successor as Permanent Under-Secretary of Eyre Crowe), he was involved closely in formulating Britain's European policy. State, Sir William Tyrrell, shared the reluctance of post-war Prime Ministers (and the Foreign Secretaries, Lord Curzon and Sir Austen Chamberlain) to accord the League

795

B. McKercher, ‘Old Diplomacy and New: The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919–1939’, in M. Dockrill and B. McKercher (eds.), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 107–8. 796 H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 374), 266. 797 E. Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919–1926 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1994), 57–60, 79, 133–8, 162–72; S. Crowe and E. Corp, Our Ablest Public Servant: Sir Eyre Crowe 1864–1925 (Braunton: Merlin Books, 1993), 400, 406.

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of Nations a central place in their foreign policy thinking. With the exception of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour Prime Minister (and Foreign Secretary) from January to October 1924, they followed a more independent course. Despite his reservations about the peace settlement, Nicolson envisaged a political role for the League in world affairs. In 1922, he proposed that a League force be deployed to ensure the free passage of authorized vessels through the Straits (the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea) so as to prevent their use as a safe haven 798 for enemy shipping. This had occurred during the First World War at great cost to the British. Nicolson was one of the few Foreign Office 799 officials of the 1920s to recognize the value of the League of Nations in implementing British foreign policy. 800

Those directing Britain's foreign relations between the mid-1920s and early 1930s embarked on a path of ‘“pactomania”’. In January 1923, after Germany defaulted on her reparations payments, France and Belgium occupied her industrial nerve-centre, the Ruhr Valley. Britain's prolonged attempts to deal with the threat that this represented to European security (and to British interests) took two forms—the ‘Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance’ (1923–24) and the ‘Geneva Protocol’ (1924–25). In February 1924, Ramsay MacDonald requested Foreign Office advice on Britain's European policy, especially in relation to France. Nicolson's forthright response displayed an uncharacteristic wariness towards that country. France, he argued, was intent on permanently controlling the Rhineland (under Allied occupation since the peace settlement) in order to dominate Europe. The French constituted, 801 therefore, a possible menace to Britain. MacDonald's joint attempt (with France's Prime Minister, Édouard Herriot) to strengthen European security resulted in the abortive ‘Draft Treaty’. It came to grief in July 1924, due to its close linkages with the League of Nations, public perceptions that foreign policy commitments resulted too readily in war, and concerns about the place of the British Commonwealth and Empire in such an arrangement. The seven-article ‘Geneva Protocol’, also a MacDonald initiative, was designed to address the deficiencies of the unratified ‘Draft Treaty’. It proved more popular on the Continent than in Britain where its insistence on the compulsory referral of political disputes to the League or to arbitral bodies (Article 3) was seen, especially within the Foreign Office, as a severe potential

798 799 800 801

H. Nicolson, ‘The Freedom of the Straits’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 18, Appendix I, 15 November 1922 (London: HMSO, 1972), 982. J. Barros, Office Without Power: Secretary-General Sir Eric Drummond 1919–1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 386. J.-B. Duroselle, ‘Changes in Diplomacy Since Versailles’, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 109. J. R. Ferris, The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–26 (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with King's College, London, 1989), 142–3.

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restriction on the conduct of British foreign policy. On 23 January 1925, a Committee of Imperial Defence sub-committee recommended against the adoption of the Protocol, and on 2 March it was rejected by the British Conservative Cabinet (MacDonald's Labour administration had been defeated the previous October). In place of the Protocol Chamberlain considered several proposals. They included a British–French–Belgian agreement and what finally emerged—a four-power pact that included Germany. Nicolson's contribution to the final outcome was significant. In a minute on disarmament and security (9 September 1924), he had advocated the establishment of arbitration machinery as a basis for a system of European public law. Certain of the British distaste for alliances, he argued that Britons might agree to defend this new system (with penalties for violation such as financial and economic blockade, as well as naval, though not military, force). Such a modus operandi, he stated, might provide an effective alternative to prevailing governmental and public 802 Should the leading Western European unwillingness to embrace the League of Nations as a vehicle for ensuring European security. democracies reject such an opportunity for collaboration (despite encouraging indications from the German Foreign Minister, Gustav 803 the Stresemann, in January 1925 that Germany would be willing to enter into mutual non-aggression undertakings with the Allied Powers), best course for Britain was to re-establish herself as the arbiter of European affairs by again becoming the maestro of the balance of power. The British Government indicated a preparedness to sign a Non-Aggression Pact in relation to Germany's western border. However, it insisted that security on Germany's eastern border must be pursued through the League of Nations Covenant, a course that would require Germany to join the League of Nations as a permanent Council member. Nicolson's reliance on Sir Eyre Crowe's seminal 1907 memorandum on Britain's relations with France and Germany, in which Crowe had restated the principle of the balance of power and re-emphasized its importance to Britain's survival, is one of the two main elements of his thinking on inter-war European security. As he later wrote, ‘the whole 804 basis of our international theory is contained in the famous Memorandum written…by that acute realist, Sir Eyre Crowe’. The 805 The other leitmotif of his 1920s and 1930s thinking is the Memorandum had sanctified the balance of power as almost ‘a law of nature’. possibility of League solutions to foreign relations crises.

802

Nicolson diary, 9 September 1924, Balliol College. Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 167–8. 804 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 23 October 1942, 382. 805 E. Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, in British Documents on the Origins of the War: 1898–1914, vol. 3, Appendix A, 1 January 1907 (London: HMSO, 1928), 403. 803

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Chamberlain shared Nicolson's views on Europe, which were still held by Crowe, but not by most members of the Cabinet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, believed that Britain's interests would be better served if she remained aloof from European, especially 806 Nicolson thought that, in order to achieve an effective European security policy, Britain must further clarify her position French, concerns. in world affairs. Should British foreign relations, for example, have a Downing Street (and, presumably, a European) emphasis, a Dominion 807 focus, or should they be an uneasy fusion of both? At this time (late January 1925), Nicolson produced a report on Anglo-French relations. His observations were dispiriting. Britain could do little to remove French concerns about Germany, most of which were firmly and realistically grounded in the enduring factors of geography 808 French fears of Germany were ‘the root cause of the present insecurity of Europe. They constitute for every Frenchman and population. an increasing nervous ideal, a persistent obsession…The French dread of Germany is hereditary and inevitable, nor would we wish to see it entirely removed. Within limits, it serves as a corrective to the enterprising vanity of the French character which, if unchecked, would 809 undoubtedly bring our two countries into conflict’. On 22 January 1925, Chamberlain requested the opinions of his officials on possible future European security initiatives. Nicolson responded by preparing under Crowe's direction a brilliant and vivid analysis (20 February 1925) refining his earlier views and setting the whole question in a wider context. His description of the state of Europe was a graphic one. In a document which so impressed the Foreign Secretary that he circulated it to King George V, the Cabinet, and the Dominion governments, Nicolson reflected: ‘All our late enemies continue full of resentment at what they have lost; all our late Allies are fearful of losing what they have won. One-half of Europe is dangerously angry; the other half is dangerously afraid’. As a result: The friction between these inflamed emotions is incessant, and acts as some septic irritant, poisoning the wounds which are yet unhealed. Fear begets provocation, armaments, secret alliances, ill-treatment of minorities; these in their turn beget a

806 807 808 809

McKercher, ‘Old Diplomacy and New’, 97. Nicolson diary, 22 January 1925, Balliol College. R. S. Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe: British Foreign Policy, 1924–29 (London, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997), 38. F.O.371/11065/W2035/9/98, 23 January 1925, quoted in E. Goldstein, ‘The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy for the Locarno Pact, 1924–1925’, in M. Dockrill and B. McKercher (eds.), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 120 and n.

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greater hatred and stimulate a desire for revenge, whereby fear is intensified, and its consequences are enhanced. The vicious circle is 810 thus established. In his classic memorandum Nicolson also argued that Russia, though a cause of uncertainty, was presently detached from European events. She should not, therefore, be considered a significant factor in British security thinking. Germany, however, by virtue of her industrial potential, would in all likelihood re-emerge as a great military power and seek redress for the most obnoxious outcomes of the Treaty of Versailles, thus alarming France. Nicolson doubted the present value of the League of Nations in resolving serious interstate disputes, while not entirely dismissing it. He stressed that ‘splendid isolation’ was no longer a practicable policy. The United States may be able to remain ‘powerful and aloof ’, but such a course would spell for Britain only ‘danger, vulnerability and impotence’. Any British attempts to achieve stability by returning to the Concert of Europe would depend on Britain's success in reassuring France of her commitment to French security. ‘The road is too dark for any altruism or digression; it is our own security which must remain the sole consideration’. The soundest course for Britain was a new British Commonwealth and Empire–French entente, and concrete recognition of the fact that the essential interests of 811 imperial defence were linked closely with European security. Nicolson's realist prescriptions appealed to Chamberlain and Crowe, but their eventual expression in British foreign policy differed considerably from Nicolson's expectations. In this memorandum the Aristotelian and Thucydidean classicist remained to the fore. The transition to liberal realism was of later date.

THE SPIRIT OF LOCARNO The denouement of this intense Foreign Office activity was the Locarno Pact (initialled on 16 October 1925 and ratified on 1 December 1925). David Dutton asserts that the Locarno idea originated with Stresemann and the German Government; nonetheless, he concedes that 812 Sir Austen Chamberlain worked towards its realization with ‘the devotion of a natural parent’. Though strongly European in thrust (as Nicolson had advocated) the Pact—in line with Chamberlain's preferred policy—ignored imperial defence

810 811 812

H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the European Situation’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. I, vol. 27, 20 February 1925 (London: HMSO, 1986), 312. Ibid., 311–18. D. Dutton, Austen Chamberlain: Gentleman in Politics (Bolton: Ross Anderson, 1985), 246, 249–50.

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factors entirely, and included Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain's ‘early support for an Anglo-French pact, was much less important to him than is thought, and he was able to adapt his position towards Germany since he 813 advocated an Anglo-French agreement as a strategy, rather than a principle’. The centrepiece of the seven Locarno Treaties was the ‘Treaty of Mutual Guarantee’. It assured the inviolability of the German–Belgian and the German–French frontiers as determined by the Treaty of Versailles. Britain and Italy undertook to go to war should France attack Germany and vice versa. The chief consequences of the Pact were Germany's admission to the League of Nations with a seat on its Council (September 1926), and the eventual evacuation (June 1930) of Allied occupation forces from the Rhineland (‘demilitarization’). Germany's invasion of the Rhineland in March 1936 destroyed the Pact. 814

Nicolson had reservations about the ‘hysterical jubilation’ Though he considered the Locarno Pact ‘a remarkable diplomatic achievement’, 815 Germany was again an accepted Great Power, and, as Britain's Ambassador to Germany, and ‘orgiac gush’ that surrounded its signing. Lord D'Abernon put it in a letter to the King, Locarno portended ‘the pacification of Europe’ on ‘the basis of mutual security’. The German 816 people could now pursue ‘the policy of conciliation’. For some years this occurred. By mid-1932, the Allies had withdrawn from the Rhineland and achieved at least an interim settlement of the reparations question (the latter under the terms of the Dawes Plan of August 1924 and the Young Plan of June 1929). Disarmament and German financial arrangements remained a source of mutual concern, but not great anxiety. A semblance of reassurance had also been supplied by the August 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact (or Pact of Paris) in which sixty-two nation-states agreed to disavow war as a means of pursuing their international relations objectives. Nevertheless, as Nicolson reflected in his inimitable way, ‘The heavenly alchemy of the Locarno spirit, the triumphant splendour of those autumn days, did not prove of long endurance. Almost 817 immediately the vanity of nations came to mar that glorious dawn’. Locarno's legacy of stability was soon under threat from the Great Depression and the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler, German Chancellor from 20 January 1933. David Dutton has argued that, by including in its provisions a specific guarantee protecting the French–German border, Locarno's framers divided Europe into spheres of primary and secondary importance. This implied that Britain would not defend the Central and Eastern European nation-states created by the Treaty of Versailles. By so limiting her commitments Britain

813 814 815 816 817

Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe, 66–7. H. Nicolson, King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign (London: Constable, 1952), 408. Ibid., 408, 409. Ibid., 409. Ibid., 410.

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allowed Germany to move unhindered towards the revision of the Treaty in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet he concludes that, even in the days of the Pax Britannica, the British had exercised little influence in the region. Consequently, it was unrealistic to expect Britain to assume a 818 There were still ‘New leadership role in that part of Europe at a time when her power had been depleted by a large-scale conflict. Europeans’ in the Foreign Office during the 1920s (such as Nicolson and Sir James Headlam-Morley), advising Chamberlain to conclude an Eastern European Locarno. The Foreign Secretary dismissed the suggestion on the ground that Eastern and Central Europe were not 819 essential to the European balance of power. In October 1925, Harold Nicolson left London for Tehran where he served until his return to Europe in October 1927 as Counsellor in Berlin. As a senior diplomat Nicolson was well placed to observe German life. His private and official reflections on Germany and the 820 Germans fluctuated. Of the latter, he wrote that ‘a curious uncertainty and diffidence and inferiority complex’ oppresses them. He was encouraged by the new Chancellor, Hermann Müller's affirmation of support for the Locarno Pact (3 July 1928), and his constructive attitude towards the issue of disarmament. Nicolson noted cautiously that Germany seemed at last to have a ‘durable, positive and efficient’ government, one which might complete the task of rebuilding the nation ‘with such intelligence as the German body politic is able to 821 provide’. Yet he stressed that as the country had not yet recovered her national self-confidence, German leaders would require many inducements 822 He believed that German restlessness would again result in European turmoil. On 7 August 1929, before making diplomatic concessions. Nicolson wrote to Orme Sargent in the Foreign Office: I…do not wish you to suppose…that the new Germany is psychologically different from the old. There is, it is true, a strong current against militarism. But this current, which is largely due to the fact that militarism was not successful, is a current which flows in the same old river of German obstinacy and determination. It would take but a slight turn of the tide to set the current swinging in the opposite direction, and carrying with it all the flotsam and jetsam of the very third-rate Social-Democratic politicians. I do not intend to imply for one second that there is any immediate danger or that we need fear anything for, let us say, seven years. And, after all, as things 823 move to-day, seven years is a long period of time.

818 819 820 821 822 823

Dutton, Austen Chamberlain, 250–3. Goldstein, ‘The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy for the Locarno Pact, 1924–1925’, 125, 134–5. Nicolson diary, 8 November 1927, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Herr Müller's Policy Declaration’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 5, 4 July 1928 (London: HMSO, 1973), 160, 161. H. Nicolson, ‘Germany and Concessions’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 5, 20 July 1928 (London: HMSO, 1973), 191–2. H. Nicolson, ‘Germany and the Rhineland’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 6, 7 August 1929 (London: HMSO, 1975), 489–90.

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Nicolson distrusted prophecy, but on this occasion his prediction was to prove remarkably accurate. Having withdrawn their military forces from Germany, the First World War victors were largely powerless to moderate the claims of an 824 increasingly resentful and restive country, whose leaders and people felt they had ‘a moral obligation’ to destroy the Treaty of Versailles. Nicolson was particularly concerned about German plans for the demilitarized zones when Allied occupation forces were withdrawn. He feared that after their departure the ‘whole ingenuity of the Reichswehrministerium’ would be applied to establishing secret defence systems 825 Nicolson knew aimed at protecting the Ruhr Valley and the Rhineland in defiance of the demilitarization clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. also that the widespread German belief that Germany had ‘fulfilled in every particle’ the Treaty's disarmament and demilitarization provisions, 826 In order to counter a dissatisfied Germany Britain needed a more independent and less Francophile foreign policy based on was mistaken. 827 an understanding with the United States and a reconstituted European balance of power. His only consolation was ‘the really remarkable achievement of having disarmed Germany for ten years and…the hope that in the future the pacific spirit in Germany and some future 828 This was scant comfort. Not since measures of general disarmament may prevent her constituting a menace to her western neighbour’. leaving Paris in 1919 had Nicolson so despaired of European affairs. The Thucydidean injunction, ‘when dealing with an enemy it is not only his actions but his intentions that have to be watched, since if one does 829 He was especially troubled by the vagueness and narrowness of Britain's not act first, one will suffer first’, was not lost on Nicolson. European policy, her imprecise diplomacy, and the absence of a clear strategy to contain or combat German ambitions. Also disturbing was the fact that classical warnings about maintaining obvious sufficient strength for deterring a potential aggressor, while not provoking an attack 830 on oneself, were absent from British foreign policy-making.

824 825 826 827 828 829 830

Ibid., 489. Ibid., 488–9. H. Nicolson, ‘The Demilitarization of the Rhineland’, in Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919–39, ser. IA, vol. 6, 23 August 1929 (London: HMSO, 1975), 582. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart 1915–1938, vol. 1 (ed.), K. Young (London: Macmillan, 1973), 83. Nicolson, ‘The Demilitarization of the Rhineland’, 581. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), VI. 38, 435. Aristotle, ‘Politics’, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (ed.), J. Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), II. 7, 2010–11.

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HITLER AND THE FUROR TEUTONICUS The 1930s were a watershed for Continental Europe, for Britain, and for Harold Nicolson. ‘During that fateful decade humanity looked to 831 London for the words and action that spelled war or peace. There still lay the casting vote’. Throughout 1930 and 1931, Nicolson remained anxious about the attitude of German public opinion towards the Versailles and Locarno Treaties. He also began to doubt the capacity of British parliamentary institutions to confront the economic crisis arising from the October 1929 New York stock market crash, and worried 832 He believed that ‘there is a centrifugal tendency developing a rapid flight that this may lead to British irresolution in dealing with Germany. to the extremes…affairs are rapidly pushing the left towards communism and the right towards fascism…Social democracy is as dead as 833 Toryism’. With his hopes of an Anglo-American alliance and a newly minted European balance of power fading—in the light of America's isolationism and a Continental reluctance to reshape Locarno—Nicolson considered briefly the idea of greater unity of the British Commonwealth and 834 However, he concluded that collective security through the League of Empire—‘Let us become an organic Empire and an organic State’. Nations, ill-defined though this manifestation of the liberal approach to Europe's security might be, represented the soundest present method of ensuring European stability. By such means Britain and the Continent's democracies could exert coordinated power against an aggressor. The classical elements necessary for the collective employment of justifiable force against real or threatened aggression were present, despite the tepid commitment of some democracies to this end. Nicolson considered this an uncertainty worth shouldering. Although he abhorred the Nazi philosophy, Nicolson did not regard it as a crude expression of nationalism unrelated to German history, or as an aberration of political and international theory. He saw Nazism as an extension—a ‘ruthless vulgarisation’—of the centuries-old Pan835 ‘The vague and undefined schemes of Teutonic expansion,’ observed Crowe, German idea identified by Crowe in his 1907 memorandum. ‘are but the expression of the deeply rooted feeling that Germany has…established for herself the right to assert the primacy of German 836 Of one thing, Crowe was certain: ‘For national ideals’.

831 832 833 834 835 836

J. H. Huizinga, Confessions of a European in England (London: Heinemann, 1958), 109. H. Nicolson, People and Things: Wireless Talks (London: Constable, 1931), 93–7. Nicolson diary, 12 September 1931, Balliol College. Nicolson, People and Things, 148. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 17 November 1939, 682. Crowe, ‘Memorandum’, 406.

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purposes of foreign policy the modern German Empire may be regarded as the heir or descendant of Prussia’. Through ‘systematic territorial aggrandizement’, chiefly, the defeat of France in the Franco-German (or Franco-Prussian) War (July 1870 to May 1871), the new Germany 837 had absorbed the spirit of Prussia and thus entered the councils of the Great Powers. Nicolson's early acceptance of Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle) as a serious statement of its author's domestic and international political ambitions was rare for the time. On 24 January 1932, during a visit to Berlin, he described ‘Hitlerism’ as ‘a doctrine of despair’ that had been a 838 A month later, on 23 February, in a lecture at Chatham House entitled ‘The Political Situation in Germany’, catastrophe for Germany. 839 He kept abreast Nicolson became one of the first to sound a public warning in Britain about the danger Hitler posed to European security. of developments in Germany by visiting the (from March 1933) Third Reich, through an extensive series of personal contacts there, and by 840 reading all he could on the country. In April 1939, he reckoned that since 1934 he had read several hundred books on the subject. The first 841 ‘a political study of real significance’, which analysis of Nazism to make a real impression on him was Geoffrey Moss's novel, I Face the Stars, 842 depicted the Nazi ascendancy as ‘a poignant tragedy’. 843

Robert Dell's Germany Unmasked impressed Nicolson even more—‘the most formidable and important indictment of Hitlerism that has yet 844 Nicolson agreed with Dell's been published’ and ‘the most lucid and intelligent work…written in English upon modern Germany’. 845 and that force may prove the only means of checking Hitler. assertions that ‘Hitlerism is…divorced from ethics, reason and intelligence’, However, he argued that an adjustment of the balance of power so as to forestall German attacks on other nations was preferable to Dell's proposed solution of immediate intervention in the Reich to prevent its self-destruction. The problem of Germany, Nicolson believed, would not be solved by inflexible recourse to traditional forms of containment on the part of the European democracies (though, as the Dell review indicates, Nicolson held out some hope that balance of power

837

Crowe, ‘Memorandum’, 403, 404. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–1939 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1966), 108. 839 A. J. Crozier, ‘Chatham House and Appeasement’, in A. Bosco and C. Navari (eds.), Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1994), 239–40; Nicolson diary, 23 February 1932, Balliol College. 840 H. Nicolson, Review of E. Mann, School for Barbarians (1939), E. Hambloch, Germany Rampant (1939), and D. Spearman, Modern Dictatorship (1939), Daily Telegraph, 14 April 1939, 19. 841 G. Moss, I Face the Stars (London: Hutchinson, 1933). 842 H. Nicolson, Review of G. Moss, I Face the Stars (1933), Daily Telegraph, 20 October 1933, 6. 843 R. Dell, Germany Unmasked (London: Martin Hopkinson, 1934). 844 H. Nicolson, Review of R. Dell, Germany Unmasked (1934), Daily Telegraph, 6 July 1934, 7. 845 Dell, Germany Unmasked, 21. 838

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principles might restrain her). Still less did the solution lie in an idealist determination to correct the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles by making open-ended concessions to Germany devoid of guarantees. Appeasement in this instance would be even less successful, since it traditionally assumed some comity of aim and purpose between international relations protagonists. As the decade unravelled, Nicolson became increasingly pessimistic about Germany, which had withdrawn from the World Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933. He came to believe that only a combination of firmness and conciliation would prove successful in diplomatic interchange with the leaders of the Third Reich. Nicolson's faith in idealism as a basis for international relations had begun to evaporate at the Paris Peace Conference. Yet, as he now realized, even enlightened realism, evidenced by Locarno, had proven inadequate in meeting the demands of European security. He was convinced that a new approach combining concession and force was necessary for the purposes of addressing German grievances and maintaining European peace. This could best be arrived at by utilizing the League of Nations Covenant. Clearly, ‘nothing will content German opinion but “victory”,’ he wrote on 20 December 1933: They will treat the Treaty of Versailles as an artichoke, pulling it to pieces leaf by leaf. The bad parts of that Treaty have already revised themselves. What remains is not unjust and its disturbance would lead to disturbance all round. But let us re-examine the Treaties, repair 846 what can be repaired, and then cement them by an open defensive alliance. The continuing difficulty, though, was that Germany regarded the Treaty of Versailles as a dead letter instead of a basis for negotiation directed 847 at improving European relations. Events within Germany in mid-1934 confirmed Nicolson in his conviction that resolute British foreign policy and diplomacy was the only means of dealing with the Nazis. Since 1930, he had been a member of the Anglo-German Association, one of several bodies hopeful of creating common ground between the two countries. The criminality of Hitler's regime was revealed fully by the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ (30 June 1934), the dictator's successful attempt to dispose violently of his political rivals and opponents. This event intensified existing differences of opinion about the Nazis within the Association and rent it asunder. An Anglo-German Fellowship was established in its place, but outspoken critics of ‘Hitlerism’ such as Nicolson and the historian, G. P. Gooch, refused to join it. The Association was dissolved on 9 848 December 1935.

846 847 848

Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 157–8. H. Nicolson, Letter to Lady Carnock, 6 February 1934, Sissinghurst Castle. Nicolson diary, 17, 19 February 1930, 31 May, 9 July 1934, 9 December 1935, Balliol College; G. P. Gooch, Under Six Reigns (London: Longmans, Green, 1958), 289–90.

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When explaining the Nazi hold on Germany and its disastrous consequences for the Germans themselves, Europe, and Britain, Nicolson tried 849 Nicolson reflected in 1949 that to be as objective as he could. His views closely mirrored those expressed in Crowe's 1907 memorandum. the tragedy of modern Germany was that from the end of the First Reich (1806), the ideal of liberty had become fused with the task of liberation. After 1862, when Otto von Bismarck became Prime Minister of Prussia, the ideal of unity was imposed in terms of ‘blood and iron’ and not in terms of voluntary fusion. Whereas the British had achieved the organic State through the gradual development of liberty and union, the ‘dislocated and vulnerable’ Germans had done so only by successive acts of force. It was to argue from false premises to criticize the Germans as if they had enjoyed Britain's opportunities. German policy was determined by special conditions that had uniquely affected the German national character. To judge Germany fairly required knowledge of German history, knowledge too often the subject of British 850 Nicolson's close attention to Germany and his striving for fairness in dealing with her leaders and people was almost certainly indifference. related to the importance he ascribed to the individual characteristics of nation-states as an element in international relations study. In May 1940, Harold Nicolson observed that greater Allied support for the Weimar Republic might have prevented the conditions which 851 made the Nazi revolution possible. Yet he later insisted that, once Hitler was Chancellor, ‘the congenital German trust in State authority as the guardian of law’ led the majority of Germans to become passive hostages to State direction; this cemented Nazism's hold on the 852 Nicolson concluded, too, that the effects of the early 1930s economic crisis had destabilized Locarno and created a fertile country. 853 He continued to defend the League of Nations on the ground that the Western environment for German social and political unrest. democracies, in failing to employ the Covenant with clarity and determination, had ignored the best available means of rebuffing the German and Italian dictators. ‘The Covenant remains one of the wisest documents ever contrived by the mind of civilised man. It was not the Covenant that failed; it was the democracies of the world who failed to understand its purpose, its implications or its necessity,’ Nicolson wrote in 1942. He went on to state ruefully, ‘The road which led us astray from that great Charter is marked today by

849 850 851 852 853

Crowe, ‘Memorandum’, 403–4. H. Nicolson, Review of G. P. Gooch, Studies in German History (1948), Observer, 3 April 1949, 3. H. Nicolson, ‘War Aims and Peace Aims’, News-Letter: The National Labour Fortnightly, May 1940, 9–10. H. Nicolson, Review of F. von Papen, Memoirs (1952), Observer, 13 July 1952, 7. Nicolson, King George the Fifth, 408–9.

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many Cenotaphs—Corfu, Manchukuo, Abyssinia, Spain. It is not necessary today to contrive a better Covenant; it is necessary only to 854 consider the means by which the old Covenant can be enforced’. Nicolson's liberal realist conviction that the German threat and the Italian menace could be dealt with through collective security—the 1930s 855 hallmark of his liberal realism and the classically grounded ‘middle course’ —was to be tested repeatedly after 1935. He did not resile from the classical conceptions of political life gained at Balliol and since reinforced by his sustained reading of ancient philosophy and history. Nicolson's developing liberal realism represented a means of confronting the European security threat posed by expansionist fascism during the 1930s. Although the true magnitude of this menace had not emerged by 1935, Nicolson's attempt to create a fresh approach to the crises of European security would soon assume a desperate immediacy.

A RESURGENT ITALY Between 1935 and 1939, Harold Nicolson's liberal realism assumed a more mature form and began to influence British parliamentary and public thinking on international affairs. Several serious foreign relations crises confronted British governments during these years. The maintenance of the balance of power remained the raison d'être of British foreign policy between 1919 and 1939, though the stability 856 bequeathed by Locarno was fractured by Hitler's assumption of power and the Japanese, Italian, and German aggression of the 1930s. By late 1935, Nicolson's liberal realism was exemplified in the belief that European security could be best secured through ‘the middle course’. This involved a system of ‘collective guarantees’ similar to the Locarno Pact whereby the ‘pacifist’ nation-states (the Western democracies)—under the auspices of the League of Nations—would contain the territorial ambitions of the ‘militarist’ ones (Nazi Germany 857 This conviction received a jolt when Italy invaded Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The invasion was almost universally and Fascist Italy). condemned, League of Nations members voting for

854

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 23 October 1942, 382. H. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, International Affairs, 14 (1935), 608. 856 B. J. C. McKercher, ‘Shield of Memory: Memoirs of the British Foreign Policy-Making Élite, 1919–39’, in G. Egerton (ed.), Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London: Frank Cass, 1994), 204. 857 Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, 608. 855

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economic sanctions against Italy (a measure proposed at Geneva by Britain's Minister for League of Nations Affairs, Anthony Eden). However, the invasion continued, prompting the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, and France's Foreign Minister, Pierre Laval, to formulate a plan in Paris in early December partitioning Abyssinia and allowing Italy partial sovereignty over it. The Hoare–Laval Pact was approved by the British Cabinet on 9 December. When its contents became public an outcry ensued and on 18 December Hoare resigned. In these circumstances, and on this issue, Nicolson delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons. 858

859

he privately termed it ‘really disgraceful’. Yet he soon came to see its terms (though Initially, Nicolson reacted to the Pact with ‘outrage’; 860 His approach to the Abyssinian question represented a perplexing attempt to justify a not the manner of their devising) as ‘none so bad’. flagrant violation of international conduct. It illustrates that, while his liberal realism was obviously in an evolutionary state and he had a high regard for collective security through the League of Nations Covenant and Locarno-style guarantees, Nicolson had not yet resolved the intellectual tensions between his realist and idealist outlooks. He told the House of Commons that the British Government's main objective 861 should not be to preserve Abyssinia's integrity, and that as a plan of partition it represented ‘a very brilliant essay in vivisection’. Nicolson also described Hoare–Laval as ‘a highly ingenious and practically workable compromise’ which allowed Abyssinia a degree of independence, limited the gains and restrained the ambitions of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, and ensured that the League of Nations 862 He did criticize it, though, on the ground that ‘peace under the aegis of the League’ was retained some authority in international affairs. preferable to the Hoare–Laval form of secret conference diplomacy whereby politicians presented a solution to the League as a fait 863 Nicolson came to regret his misplaced optimism over League of Nations economic sanctions as a solution to the Abyssinian accompli. crisis. He later also insisted that, while force should have been employed to drive the Italians from Abyssinia, the episode had accentuated more deep-seated problems surrounding the League's capacity to deal with such crises. His scepticism concerning the British public's understanding of foreign affairs led Nicolson to reflect privately in 1935 that ‘our public opinion thinks

858 859 860 861 862 863

H. Nicolson, ‘Lord Percy of Newcastle’, Durham University Journal, new ser., 20/3 (1959), 103. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 232. Nicolson diary, 16 December 1935, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 19 December 1935, 2078–9. H. Nicolson, ‘A Case of Conscience’, News-Letter: The National Labour Fortnightly, 21 December 1935, 104. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 19 December 1935, 2080–1.

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strategically in terms of 1895’. Although agreeably surprised by the early public opposition to the Hoare–Laval proposals—‘a most 865 sensational demonstration of la volonté générale’ —he doubted that the British had thought seriously about the question. The majority of 866 while ignoring the demanding Britons preferred to place their trust in easily digested formulas such as ‘the lullaby of “collective security”’, foreign policy and military commitments it entailed. The British people and their leaders had come to regard the League as ‘an insurance 867 requiring no premium’. June 1936 saw Nicolson's mea culpa over Abyssinia. His clumsy attempt to reconcile himself to Italy's aggression in realist terms had not been a success. Nicolson's idealist faith in the Covenant as a vehicle for resolving the Italo-Abyssinian dispute had also proven illusory. ‘The League, in this Abyssinian problem, has failed completely,’ he declared. ‘Its constitution has proved to be both inoperative and old-fashioned; and the 868 famous “League spirit” has shown itself but a volatile vapour compared to the concentrated essence of Mussolini's determination’. Italian Fascist foreign policy between 1922 and 1945 represented Italy's last attempt to become a leading naval power and to assume a primary 869 regional role in Euro-Mediterranean affairs. 870

The Abyssinian issue had demonstrated ‘the inefficacy of the rule of law in coping with determined violence’. Nicolson defended the Government's decision to abandon its ineffective economic sanctions against Italy and supported the (now Foreign Secretary) Anthony Eden's determination to strengthen the League by restoring to it the plenitude of its powers. He advocated the reconstruction of the League ‘in terms of actuality and force’, with each nation-state's contribution taking three forms: the certain (self-defence), the probable (specific areas and theatres of operation), and the possible (no warfare, but economic and financial assistance). Harold Nicolson did not spare himself over the Hoare–Laval Pact. ‘We League people have been shown finally and absolutely by our ineptitude in this Abyssinian question that economic 871 sanctions are not enough. We know…that aggressive violence can only be restrained by force’.

864

Nicolson diary, 14 September 1935, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Little Man, What Now?’, News-Letter: The National Labour Fortnightly, 4 January 1936, 125. 866 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 3 February 1939, 175. 867 M. Wight, Power Politics (London, New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1946), 55. 868 Nicolson, ‘The Future of the League’, 1028. 869 M. Rimanelli, Italy Between Europe and the Mediterranean: Diplomacy and Naval Strategy from Unification to NATO, 1800s–2000 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 623; R. Mallett, The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism 1935–1940 (London: Frank Cass, 1998). The author is grateful to Professor Vernon Bogdanor for referring him to Mallett's excellent book. 870 H. Nicolson, ‘The Accent on Collective Security’, Christian Science Monitor, 24 June 1936, 2. 871 H. Nicolson, Hansard, 23 June 1936, 1666–7. 865

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‘COLLECTIVE DEFENCE’ AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS Italy loomed larger in Nicolson's foreign policy thinking at this time than Germany. In 1935, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the Reich had begun to rearm, conscription was introduced, and a military staff college established. Nicolson considered ‘far-sighted’ Eden's plan to avoid large-scale conflict by making concessions to Germany provided the Germans signed a disarmament treaty and rejoined the League of 872 Harold Nicolson insisted that British policy in dealing with the German and Italian dictators must be forthright and Nations. unequivocal—either one of disarmament (on certain conditions) or rearmament (which he favoured)—but in no circumstances a combination 873 874 Unless Britain rearmed, her foreign policy constituted a liability for collective security and not an asset. On 27 February of the two. 1936, Nicolson addressed the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Anglo-German relations. ‘My general line is Germany is an aggressive Power and wants war,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘We must first arm so as to speak with authority. We must then face her with an alternative between einkreisung [isolation] and the League plus disarmament. In other words back to the old idea of…disarmament by 875 force’. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, the Covenant, and Locarno, Germany reoccupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. This threat to France alone should have led to an immediate offensive response from the chief Locarno signatories, Britain and France. No such response followed. Nicolson described the parliamentary and public reaction in his diary entries for early March. ‘General mood of 876 the House is one of fear. Anything to keep out of war,’ he wrote. ‘The country will not stand for anything that makes for war’. The most vocal parliamentary advocate of firm action was Winston Churchill, whose attitude Nicolson shared. Yet there was another serious difficulty. Nicolson regarded Hitler as a ‘limited little revivalist’, and the Reichswehr and the German General Staff as ‘realists’ in matters political and 877 diplomatic. ‘We can cope with realists,’ he observed, ‘against revivalists we cannot use the implements either of force or reason’.

872 873 874 875 876 877

Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 243. Germany had been a member from 1926 to 1933. H. Nicolson, ‘Letter to the Editor: Policy and Armaments’, New Statesman and Nation, 15 February 1936, 223. H. Nicolson, ‘Letter to the Editor: Arms and Policy’, New Statesman and Nation, 22 February 1936, 260. Nicolson diary, 27 February 1936, Balliol College. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 248. H. Nicolson, Review of K. Heiden, Hitler (1936), Daily Telegraph, 13 March 1936, 9.

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Addressing the Foreign Affairs Committee on 17 March 1936, Nicolson called for a renewed British commitment to Locarno, 878 L. S. Amery described Nicolson's utterance as ‘an able and forcible speech reminding the meeting of the extent of especially to France. 879 At a special Chatham House forum on 18 March, Nicolson appealed to his audience to consider Britain's treaty our Locarno obligation’. obligations as well as ‘the real moral issue’ at stake—the ‘cumulative and enormous’ British responsibility for her Locarno Pact guarantee to Germany in the event of a French invasion. This understanding had allowed Germany to rearm and mobilize. The British should, therefore, issue an immediate assurance to the French that Britain would defend France were she attacked. An international force must also be sent to the Rhineland to render the German presence less provocative. Fearing war, and, after Abyssinia, increasingly dubious about the League, Nicolson stopped short of advocating the League-led expulsion of 880 the German occupiers by force. Nevertheless, he emphasized the necessity of finding ‘a middle way, a way between war and dishonour’. Nicolson concluded that ‘we have got to deal with realities, and the whole tragedy of post-War Europe is that we have dealt so much in terms 881 In Parliament on 26 March he called for the framing of an of theories and unrealities, and so little in terms of what we are prepared to do’. 882 Anglo-French agreement (rather than a formal alliance) guaranteeing British assistance to France should Germany directly threaten her. With the British Government's response to the Rhineland invasion one of inaction, Nicolson turned his attention to another aspect of the German problem—the possibility of settling German claims regarding her former colonies. Many had been mandated to the victorious Powers in 1919. In a statement to the House of Commons on 27 April 1936, the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, indicated that the 883 On 22 July, 118 MPs (among them the former Foreign Government was not considering any return of the ‘Mandated Territories’. Secretary and Conservative elder statesman, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, L. S. Amery, and Nicolson) signed a petition 884 opposing any transfer of the Mandates to Germany. Nicolson's approach to the German colonial issue was straightforward. ‘Obviously, if it is a question between complete defeat and the surrender of the German colonies,’ he wrote in his diary on 15 November 1937, ‘there can be no question whatsoever. But if we

878 879 880 881 882 883 884

Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 252. L. S. Amery, The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries 1929–1945 (eds.), J. Barnes and D. Nicholson (London: Hutchinson, 1988), 411. H. Nicolson, ‘Germany and the Rhineland’, in Germany and the Rhineland (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 4, 9–12. Ibid., 11. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 26 March 1936, 1471–2. S. Baldwin, Hansard, 27 April 1936, 552–4. M. Gilbert and R. Gott, The Appeasers (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), 90 and n, 97.

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are in fact able to defend ourselves, I see no reason why we should make concessions without receiving something in return’.

885

Nicolson did not believe that returning Germany's one-time colonial possessions was the real issue for the Nazi regime; indeed, ‘what the Germans really want is power. All other desiderata on their part are merely symbols of that major objective. They desire the colonies, not in 886 By early 1938, he was convinced that the German colonial order to repair their weaknesses, but in order to demonstrate their strength’. question was a ‘side-show’. It would be more fruitful to concentrate on a determined revision of the Treaties of Peace. This should be undertaken, not on the basis of old nationalities or frontiers, but in terms of economic planning and European cooperation on an ambitious new scale. Nicolson was adamant that ‘to restore the colonies in return for German “friendship” would be to exchange a substance for a 887 shadow’. L. S. Amery's The German Colonial Claim (1939) set out at length the convictions of international relations analysts like Nicolson that ‘colonial retrocession’ was unacceptable, on the grounds of moral responsibility for the native populations concerned, and of the safety and existence of 888 889 and a Chatham House study group the British Commonwealth and Empire. He considered Amery's book to be ‘masterly and effective’, on the colonial question (chaired by Nicolson) recommended in mid-1939 that the European Powers should demonstrate to other Powers an 890 intention to administer their colonies in the general interest of colonial peoples rather than exercise monopoly rights. For Nicolson, Nazi Germany represented a special threat to the Small Powers of Europe. Therefore, Britain's centuries-old duty to protect 891 He continued to these nation-states from the depredations of any single Power or coalition still held—parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. 892 Nevertheless, Nicolson value ‘that Quixotic element which has always distinguished our diplomacy & preserved the integrity of little States’. was well aware that in this sphere as with Abyssinia, public opinion could be a great handicap. Before Czechoslovakia's future had become an issue, Nicolson wrote to his wife on 28 April 1936 that ‘in practice it would be quite impossible

885

Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 312. H. Nicolson, ‘Germany and the Colonies’, Fortnightly, December 1937, 646. 887 H. Nicolson, ‘The Colonial Problem’, International Affairs, 17/1 (1938), 40–1. 888 L. S. Amery, The German Colonial Claim (London: W. and R. Chambers, 1939), 175. 889 H. Nicolson, Review of L. S. Amery, The German Colonial Claim (1939), Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1939, 8. 890 Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Colonial Problem (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 270–1. 891 Nicolson, ‘The Colonial Problem’, 33. 892 Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Lantern Slides: The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter 1904–1914 (eds.), M. Bonham Carter and M. Pottle (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996), 305–6. The words are Lady Violet's. 886

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for us to get the British people to fight Germany for the sake of the Czechs’. The most pressing problem for the custodians of British foreign policy, Nicolson told Sir Alfred Zimmern on 30 April 1936, was that the Government could define its action precisely only if it was certain that the electorate would agree to such action. As Britons were unwilling to commit themselves to any exact course, their country's 894 external relations would continue to remain inconclusive. Only five days after the Rhineland invasion, Nicolson concluded that Anglo-French weakness in the face of this aggression spelt ‘the final end 895 He did not doubt that the League had failed because ‘the Covenant was born of a marriage between two different and even of the League’. conflicting states of mind…the nineteenth-century tradition of national sovereignties based upon power…[and]…the Wilsonian theory of a commonwealth of nations based upon consent. The impact of these two divergent states of mind resulted in an unhappy compromise’. As part of this compact, ‘The upholders of the nineteenth-century tradition were appeased by being accorded political, and eventually economic, frontiers collectively guaranteed. The Wilsonians were able to introduce their democratic conceptions of “equality” and “universality”’. The outcome was unfortunate: The doctrine of State sovereignty enabled its supporters to use the League as a machinery for perpetuating the territorial and other servitudes of the peace settlement. Egalitarianism…became for the faithful a stumbling-block and for the heretics an absurd fiction. Whereas universality, in that it made each member of the League a guarantor of every other member, imposed upon democracies a 896 degree of responsibility which, when it came to the point, they would often be unwilling to assume. By the mid-1930s, this disastrous confusion of purpose and method was paralyzing the League. Neither realist power politics nor practical idealism could resolve this dilemma. Instead, ‘a defensive League of Nations with limited 897 This failure arose, as Walter Lippmann commitments’ must be created in place of ‘an offensive League of Nations which has failed’. explained, from a Great Power misconception that, while endowing the post-war collective security system with an equality of rights in all other spheres, they could retain for themselves ‘ultimate power’ in dealing with international disputes. Aggressive nation-states like Italy, Germany, and Japan did not aspire to ‘limited wars’,

893 894 895 896 897

Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 259. H. Nicolson, Letter to Sir Alfred Zimmern, 30 April 1936, Zimmern Papers, Ms 39, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 250. Nicolson, ‘The Future of the League’, 1028. Nicolson diary, 15 June 1936, Balliol College.

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which collective security was designed to prevent, but to ‘national supremacy’, something beyond the powers of the Versailles settlement to 898 thwart. On 18 June 1936, Nicolson reflected privately that ‘all extreme League idealism at this moment is midsummer madness…the League must be 899 Regrettably, the terms ‘“The League”’ and ‘“Collective Security”’ suggested to the British people ‘not a reconstituted on a basis of facts’. 900 rather than a body and a galling responsibility for the defense of other League members, but some form of blessed isolationism’, conception concerned with ensuring international order through a preponderance of power. At a Chatham House ‘Discussion Group’ (7 July) on policy towards Germany and Italy, Nicolson asserted that any future aggression must be 901 He also attended meetings of the New Commonwealth Society. At one such met ‘in terms of contributions to League of Nations force’. gathering, on 14 July 1936, its President, Winston Churchill, emphasized that while all political parties were united in their support for the rule of law and a desire for peaceful change, New Commonwealth members believed in the marshalling (under League auspices) of physical force against the aggressor. ‘The League we wish to build will be a League based on realities and not on shams,’ Nicolson recorded in his diary. ‘The contributions of force to be made by each member against aggression must not only be carefully calculated, but must be publicly known. Only 902 when such a preponderance of physical force is on the side of law shall we be able to restrain the aggressor’. Should the League of Nations not regain sufficient peacemaking authority, Nicolson stated in September 1936, Britain would have no choice 903 In preventing this and restoring the but to revert to strategies based on the balance of power, traditional diplomacy, and armed alliances. League's capacity to create and enforce peace, Nicolson advocated less emphasis on general concessions and a more concrete approach to conciliation in exchange for clear guarantees. This could be achieved if Chatham House and similar organizations engendered a more informed understanding of the issues involved, and if an independent committee of international experts was appointed to adjudicate on the justness of the Treaty of Versailles. The League must also be rebuilt in terms of strength. Nicolson again condemned the doctrine of universality as a vague ideal, describing it as the theory most responsible for destroying the

898 899 900 901 902 903

W. Lippmann, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society, 2nd edn. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1943), 150–2. Nicolson diary, 18 June 1936, Balliol College. Nicolson, ‘The Accent on Collective Security’, 1. Nicolson diary, 7 July 1936, Balliol College. Ibid., 14 July 1936. H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, in The Future of the League of Nations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 131.

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League's authority. ‘It has inflated the currency of contract until the pound note of League contract is not worth twenty shillings, but it is worth 904 Henceforth, the emphasis must be on well-defined commitments and about eight pence. We have got to restore the currency of contract’. certainty, not on broad principles and universality. ‘Collective security’—a tarnished though not wholly discredited doctrine—had to give way to ‘collective defence’, namely, a strengthened form of collective security through the League of Nations Covenant. It was an expression also used by Angell and others to sharpen the sinews of 905 In outlining a possible model for the latter Nicolson employed a commercial analogy. foreign affairs and defence discussion at this time. Britain, for example, could offer four types of commitment: debenture shares (conscription), preference shares (trained professional assistance in terms of force, or by sending quotas of the navy, the air force, and the army to assist beleaguered nation-states), ordinary shares (financial and economic assistance), and deferred shares (goodwill, benevolence). The best means of countering aggressive regimes was to forge ‘a group, a preponderance of power, on the side of authority and order which would deter any such aggressor from threatening the peace of the 906 world’. As part of his effort to strengthen the League's activities in Britain Nicolson joined the League of Nations Union. He was elected to its 907 908 and re-elected in June 1937. The chief force behind the Union was Lord Cecil of Chelwood, its Executive Committee in October 1936 President between 1923 and 1945. Among its chief initiatives (conducted by a National Declaration Committee) was the ‘National Peace Ballot’ of 1934–35, undertaken in order to determine Britons' support for the League of Nations. The organization was dogged by internecine struggle, in which Nicolson participated with gusto. He noted after one meeting that ‘there are real political cleavages in the Union between 909 right, left and centre’. His main efforts as a member were directed at minimizing the influence on Union activities of an associated body, the 910 Communist-inspired International Peace Campaign. The Campaign's parent—the Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix—which included pacifist groups, but also a few prominent individuals such as M. K. Gandhi and the French man of letters, Romain Rolland, had been formed in France in September 1935 for the purpose of promoting League of Nations interests. Its English counterpart, whose members included Sir Norman Angell, was

904 905 906 907 908 909 910

Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, 134–8. M. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 369. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, 139–40. Nicolson diary, 22 October 1936, Balliol College. Ibid., 10 June 1937. Ibid., 29 October 1936. Ibid., 17 November 1936, 1 February 1938.

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established as a separate entity in November 1936 after nine months of wrangling within the Union about alleged Campaign duplication of Union functions. The Times dismissed the Campaign contemptuously as one of ‘a miscellany of organizations among which the Communistic 911 According to Martin Ceadel, the Rassemblement was ‘sufficiently tarred with the Moscow brush to be are remarkable for their presence’. 912 Nicolson was determined to ensure that the League of anathematized by Britain's trade unions, Roman Catholics, and Conservatives’. Nations Union did not suffer by being a Campaign affiliate, or by becoming too closely identified with this pro-Communist propaganda group. Internal dissension led its leaders to dissolve the International Peace Campaign in September 1940; the League of Nations Union endured until 1945. Harold Nicolson's thinking on a reconstituted League of Nations was influenced greatly by the Spanish Civil War, which broke out on 18 July 1936 and lasted for three years. Italy and Germany supported General Franco, France and Russia the incumbent government. Only Britain observed the official Great Power policy of non-intervention. The conflict has been called ‘the most important event between the wars for 913 socialists, liberals, intellectuals, and perhaps even the workers’. Nicolson cared little for either side's beliefs and methods; however, he was not slow to see the war's wider implications for European security. He regarded the administration in Madrid as ‘a mere Kerensky Government at the mercy of an armed proletariat’, but reflected on 8 August 1936 that ‘Franco and his Moors are no better’. The conflict accentuated the division of Europe between left and right, and he was certain that ‘the pro-German and anti-Russian tendencies of the Tories 914 This would undoubtedly make it easier for those within the British Government eager to pacify Germany to will be fortified and increased’. increase their efforts in that direction. The events in Spain had also further demonstrated the League's inability to deal with interstate 915 disputes. In the absence of anything better, Nicolson remained convinced that peace could best be preserved, not by a powerful coalition of democratic nation-states confronting an intending aggressor—a course he considered provocative, divisive, and unwieldy—but by sharing resources 916 through a stronger League system. Britain's soundest possible contribution to European security and ‘a world order’ was ’certainty‘, or clarity in her foreign policy. Nicolson recommended that she proclaim a form of Monroe Doctrine, whereby she

911

The Times, 16 December 1936, 15. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, 350. 913 N. Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers: Conservative Opposition to Appeasement in the 1930s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 115. 914 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 270. 915 H. Nicolson, Hansard, 3 November 1936, 20. 916 H. Nicolson, ‘Limited or Unlimited Obligations? What Ought British Foreign Policy To Be?’ (Discussion with Sir Edward Grigg and Sir Norman Angell), Listener, 9 December 1936, 1072. 912

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would declare her preparedness to fight to defend the British Commonwealth and Empire as well as the zone in Europe essential to protect London and British industrial cities against aerial bombardment. Such a policy could serve as a starting point for instituting a federation of 917 While his prescriptions for British foreign policy at this time large and small nation-states pledged to the principles of the Covenant. envisaged limited liabilities, Nicolson made it clear that much wider or even unlimited liabilities might soon confront Britain. In order to 918 through the League of prevent another war it would be necessary to ‘create force immeasurable on the side of democracy’ (10 June 1937) 919 Nations (30 June 1937). On 15 November 1937, Nicolson reflected on the difficulty of reaching sound conclusions about ‘foreign politics’ without accurate knowledge 920 His dilemma was soon eased by an invitation to join an international policy body known as the All Souls of Britain's ‘real defensive power’. Foreign Affairs Group, or ‘Salter's Soviet’. It met on nine occasions between 18 December 1937 and 15 May 1938, and was the brainchild of Sir Arthur Salter, a Fellow of All Souls and Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions at Oxford University. Members (there were twenty-one regular attendees) included the Labour politician, Clifford Allen (Lord Allen of Hurtwood), Sir Norman Angell and Lionel Curtis, the historians, H. A. L. Fisher and Arnold Toynbee, a future Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, the classicist and cofounder of the League of Nations Union, Gilbert Murray, the international relations scholar, E. L. Woodward, the military historian, Basil Liddell Hart, and the historian-poet, A. L. Rowse. Under the guidance of its convenors, Salter and Nicolson, this galaxy of intellectual talent and public achievement gathered to discuss and analyse foreign affairs. Nicolson attended on 18–19 December 1937, 15–16 January, 6 and 26 February, 16 and 31 March, and 15 May 1938. At its first meeting (18 and 19 December 1937), the Group identified Germany as the main threat to European security. Lionel Curtis acknowledged Nicolson's crucial role in convincing the thirteen members present of the aggressive nature of German ambitions, and in persuading them to reject the policies of pacifying Germany or playing for time. The outcome was a document entitled ‘A General Settlement’. 921 The ‘General It was based on the premise that Britain's policy towards Germany should be one of ‘firmness followed by conciliation’. Settlement’ stipulated that in return for

917

Nicolson, ‘Limited or Unlimited Obligations?’, 1107. Nicolson diary, 10 June 1937, Balliol College. 919 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 303. 920 Ibid., 312. 921 S. Aster, ‘ “Salter's Soviet”: Another View of All Souls and Appeasement’, in M. G. Fry (ed.), Power, Personalities and Policies: Essays in Honour of Donald Cameron Watt (London: Frank Cass, 1992), 147–9. 918

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Anschluss (Austria's union with Germany), conditional ‘cantonal status’ for the Sudeten Germans, a recognition of the German right to possess colonies, and the retention of existing German economic interests in Eastern Europe, the British would require a German undertaking not to attack other nation-states, the Reich's agreement to limit its armaments production (her position in Central Europe would be one of ‘preponderance but not supremacy’), and a German commitment not to support Italy's territorial ambitions in the Mediterranean and 922 The record of the meeting was provided to Eden, who agreed with the Group's analysis. Africa. When it met on 15–16 January 1938, Nicolson advocated containing Germany by means of collective action through the League of Nations. This raised the ire of Lionel Curtis, who regarded it as a certain path to war. By the 6 February 1938 meeting, Lord Allen had become the Group's chief proponent of peace through Anglo-German friendship. Some of Allen's proposed safeguards notwithstanding, this was not a 923 course Nicolson favoured. On 8 March 1938, several members of the Group (including Lord Allen, Lionel Curtis, Gilbert Murray, Sir Arthur Salter, and Nicolson) met at Chatham House to discuss a draft paper prepared by Arnold Toynbee on the possible consequences for Britain if she abandoned the League. In Sidney Aster's judgement, ‘Nicolson as usual cut to the heart of the matter by stating that the real issue was “between the traditions of our policy (namely to oppose the strong and to protect the weak) and an experiment in a new policy of trying to 924 Despite his forthright public confidence, Nicolson was privately pessimistic; he wrote to his wife on 9 March, ‘We conciliate the strong”’. are suddenly faced by a collapse of our authority, our Empire and our independence…Nobody who is well-informed believes that there is any 925 chance of negotiations with Germany leading to anything at all’. On 11 July 1936, Hitler had signed a non-aggression pact with Austria. Predictably, opinion on how to counter German aggression became increasingly divided after Germany's military annexation of Austria on 12 March. Nicolson was abroad on 24 April, when the Group resolved that in future ‘the primary effort of British policy should be directed not to resistance to aggression, but to appeasement and the finding of a 926 modus vivendi with the aggressor states’. Liddell Hart, Murray, Toynbee, and Nicolson—and perhaps others more circumspect in expressing their opinions—were opposed absolutely to this policy (enunciated in large part by Allen). After attending what would be the Group's last meeting (15 May 1938), Nicolson wrote in his diary: ‘There is really a split between the realists and

922 923 924 925 926

‘Conference on Foreign Policy’ (All Souls College), 18–19 December 1937, in Harold Nicolson diary (typescript), Balliol College, 1937. Aster, ‘“Salter's Soviet”’, 151–3. Ibid., 156. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 330. Aster, ‘“Salter's Soviet”’, 162.

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the moralists. Gilbert Murray and I do not approve of expedients. Allen says that peace should be bought at any price or almost any price’. On 17 May, Allen explained his position more fully in a letter to Toynbee. It represented an approach which neither Nicolson the liberal realist nor Toynbee the practical idealist could accept. ‘I am prepared to back international law by force and to uphold it, but unless the force is overwhelming I think one then has to choose between two evils—the evil of a catastrophe in trying to uphold law, and the evil of allowing temporary casualties in morality,’ Allen wrote. ‘It is for that reason that I am willing to take risks with morality during the transitional period in 928 As Sidney Aster has pointed out, ‘Salter's Soviet’ never produced ‘an the hope—perhaps a vain one—that events will play into our hands’. agreed public statement on foreign affairs’. So contentious were the subjects with which it had to deal, that the attempt by Lord Allen (and 929 others) to achieve a comprehensive formula of ‘“peace at any price”’ among members finally dissolved any remaining unity of outlook. Nicolson exercised his greatest influence as an MP in the field of foreign affairs during 1938 and 1939. As John Connell wrote, ‘The dishonour, the repeated humiliations and disasters which beset Britain in those two years were the worst in the whole of her diplomatic 930 As its Vice-Chairman, Nicolson addressed the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on 17 February 1938. He called history’. 931 (and Italy), earning praise and gratitude from Eden for his ‘robust’ for rearmament and warned strongly against concessions to Germany 932 933 ‘Germany is out for Weltmacht,’ Nicolson told his wife on the same day, ‘and will carry that through with grim determination’. A stance. problem closer to home soon demanded his attention—Eden's resignation as Foreign Secretary on 20 February. Both Anthony Eden and the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, wished to remove Italy from Germany's orbit, but they differed markedly on how to do so. The former, in the light of Italy's conduct over Abyssinia, insisted on some demonstration of good faith before negotiations could begin; the latter dismissed the need for this, leading Eden to resign. Nicolson supported Eden, on the ground that Britain's foreign policy should be conducted on ‘a basis of principle’ and not ‘a basis of expediency’. The essential problem was ‘whether a country which has continuously, consistently, deliberately and without apology, violated every engagement into which she has ever entered

927 928 929 930 931 932 933

Nicolson diary, 15 May 1938, Balliol College. M. Gilbert, Plough My Own Furrow: The Story of Lord Allen of Hurtwood (London: Longmans, 1965), 401. Aster, ‘ “Salter's Soviet”’, 168. J. Connell, The ‘Office’: A Study of British Foreign Policy and Its Makers 1919–1951 (London: Allan Wingate, 1958), 274. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 323. 1st Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs: Facing the Dictators (London: Cassell, 1962), 579. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 322.

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can be taken back into the fold with a smile; or whether it is better to make a few concrete conditions before negotiations are resumed’.

Undoubtedly, Nicolson declared, ‘The late Foreign Secretary struggled hard to preserve the rule of law and order, the theory of the League of Nations, the belief in the sanctity of treaties, and the confidence of the world—which we may lose by this action’. Never before had Britain ‘definitely defended wrong with cool and planned deliberation as we are doing now. I regret that those great principles of our policy, those charters of that authority which we have for so many centuries exercised in the world should now lie tattered at our feet, should be called 935 scraps of paper or matters of detail. Above all, I regret that we should see: “their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday”’. Nicolson reflected on 25 February that the British Government's action represented a reversion to pre-war power politics and bargaining, that from now on Britain would be forced to purchase Italian and German friendship by making sacrifices, that such friendship would prove practically worthless in international relations terms, and that in doing so the British would lose the confidence of France (though French 936 policy was similar to Britain's), the USSR, the USA, and Europe's Small Powers. His predictions were realized. Chamberlain's anti-Russian and anti-American attitudes were a great limitation in creating a united front against Germany and Italy. ‘The soul 937 of that ironmonger,’ Nicolson observed on 7 March 1938, ‘is not one which will save England’. He believed also that the time had come for Britain and France to make ‘an overwhelming and incontestable affirmation of strength’ to remind Italy that the British would fight to defend 938 their vital interests near Spain, notably, Gibraltar, and to retain control of the Straits and the Mediterranean. On 16 March 1938, Nicolson explained his approach to countering the dictators' territorial ambitions. Sound foreign policy was based on a nation-state identifying itself in a given situation with those nation-states who shared its strategic interests. In realist vein, he asserted that, while it was easy to speak in terms of ‘vague idealism’ and to talk optimistically about ‘collective security’, the terrible nature of modern warfare dictated that no nation-state (especially no democratic one) would wage war unless its key interests were threatened. The real issue was not ‘the 939 question of an ideal foreign policy, but the question whether in the world as it now is such an ideal foreign policy is at all practicable’.

934 935 936 937 938 939

H. Nicolson, Hansard, 21 February 1938, 99. Ibid., 104; H. Nicolson, Letter to M. Sadleir, 23 February 1938, Constable and Company Collection, Temple University Library, Philadelphia. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 325–6. Ibid., 329. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 16 March 1938, 524. H. Nicolson, ‘Balance of Power Up-to-Date’ (Discussion with Sir Alfred Zimmern), Listener, 16 March 1938, 570–1.

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Nicolson called on the Western European democracies and the United States to negotiate a new international balance of power designed to strengthen the League of Nations. The large and small democratic nation-states could then act in concert to redress reasonable (and reject unreasonable) German grievances arising from the 1919 settlement. They could also stand ready to resist aggression. In this way, ‘Our moral 940 The fusion of realist and idealist approaches conviction and our physical force would be harmonised instead of clashing as they do today’. to securing peace had resulted in liberal realism—an approach which sought to reconcile force and conciliation in international relations.

‘THE FOREIGN OFFICE MIND’ At this time Nicolson began to emerge as one of the most forceful critics of British foreign policy. He resented the Parliament's supine attitude 941 to Eden's resignation—‘a step back away from light and progress’ —and he was soon numbered with Winston Churchill and L. S. Amery 942 His constituents gave Nicolson strong support, his party among what the Chamberlainite MP, Henry Channon, called ‘The Insurgents’. (National Labour) very little. He resigned as Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee (along with its two other office-bearers) over the Eden issue at the Committee's 24 February 1938 meeting; however, he was persuaded to withdraw his resignation in response to many 943 requests, principally Churchill's and Amery's. Nevertheless, on 7 April Nicolson agreed to the Committee's request to quit as ViceChairman; his continuing criticism of the Government had become unacceptable to other Committee members sympathetic to Chamberlain's policy. By March 1938, Nicolson began to believe that Germany did not desire a general war, only to obtain territory and influence—preferably by threats of violence rather than by violence itself. This policy would succeed for a limited time before the democracies (which still held the balance of power) countered her. Whereas the weaknesses of the democratic nation-states were often apparent, those (economic, financial, and strategic) of Germany and Italy were frequently hidden (even from themselves). Therefore, Nicolson concluded on 23 March, while the League of Nations was being reconstituted (through stronger democratic Great Power collaboration) British policy towards the dictators 944 should be one of firm conciliation.

940 941 942 943 944

Nicolson, ‘Balance of Power Up-to-Date’, 571. Nicolson diary, 22 February 1938, Balliol College. Sir Henry Channon, Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (ed.), R. Rhodes James (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 153. Amery, The Empire at Bay, 458. H. Nicolson, ‘Muddling Through the Muddle’, Christian Science Monitor, 23 March 1938, 1–2, 12.

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Earlier that month an American critic had unwittingly identified an important element of Nicolson's liberal realism—the principled implementation of foreign policy objectives in order to avoid conflict for as long as possible: The question of the mind of Britain, that awesome and mercurial vexation, is very present with us today … Mere self-interest cannot simply explain it…What it all has something to do with is just this: The English play the waiting game the longest, the best, and win most often…They have an experienced technique for elastic decisions which may end in eventual war and dismemberment, but not 945 until every humanly conceivable policy or possibility has been consciously employed and exploited. Under the terms of the Anglo-Italian Agreement (16 April 1938), Britain formally recognized Italy's subjugation of Abyssinia and agreed to turn a blind eye to Mussolini's Spanish ambitions. In mid-May, at the request of his old friend, Sir Robert Vansittart, the Head of the Foreign Office, Nicolson arranged for the representative of the Sudeten Germans, Konrad Henlein, to meet a number of Conservative and Labour Party MPs during his brief and secret London visit to gauge opinion concerning British Sudetenland policy. The message conveyed to Henlein, a Hitler lackey, at Vansittart's request, was that any German insistence on integrating the Sudetenland into Germany by force would result in 946 war. With the rapid movement of events between the Anschluss in mid-March and the Czechoslovakian crisis of September 1938, Nicolson's views on the European situation (like those of most politicians and international relations authorities) varied considerably. On 13 May, he observed that ‘the prevention of war depends to-day not upon any illusions regarding collective security, but upon the policy of the Five Great Powers’. Yet he was quick to stress ‘the relation which “realism” can and should bear to “idealism”’ because ‘the errors of the past have been due to an 947 indolent neglect of our ancient principles of policy as of those moral values which alone can fortify our unity or inspire our determination’. By 6 June, he was convinced that Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler would achieve only ‘temporary peace at the price of ultimate 948 defeat’. In a BBC broadcast on 15 August, Nicolson stated that, with the demise of the Holy Alliance, the Concert of Europe, and ‘the habit of international honesty’, the League of Nations represented one of the few remaining repositories of ‘the idea of international principles as opposed to the idea of purely national expediency’. It was a greatly weakened, though not a lost cause. It

945 946 947 948

L. Kirstein, Review of H. Nicolson, Helen's Tower (1937), Nation, 5 March 1938, 277. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 340–1, 340n; ‘Letter to the Editor: “Diplomatic Twilight” ’, The Times, 5 June 1953, 7. H. Nicolson, Review of R. W. Seton-Watson, Britain and the Dictators (1938), Daily Telegraph, 13 May 1938, 6. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 345.

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was also one that public opinion in all democratic nation-states should embrace in preventing a recrudescence of power and brute force as the 949 only arbiters of international conduct. Hitler's territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe (and beyond) depended on the conquest of Czechoslovakia. To realize them, he used as a pretext the 3.5 million Sudeten Germans living under Czech rule on Czechoslovakia's northern, southern, and western frontiers. When Hitler and Chamberlain met for the first time at Berchtesgaden on 15 September, Hitler insisted on the return of the Sudeten territories, despite the 950 fact that (as Nicolson had pointed out in a BBC broadcast on 1 August 1938), they had never belonged to Germany. Nicolson was certain 951 from the beginning that the German leaders had no desire to settle the matter justly. Chamberlain hoped to arrive quickly at a diplomatic rapprochement with Germany. It is clear that at this time the Prime Minister's unofficial foreign policy advisers and information apparatchiks were successful in restricting criticism of Government policy. One of their main targets was Nicolson, who had little choice but to agree to the broadcast on 5 September of a censored version of his radio talk criticizing 952 Chamberlain's initiatives over Czechoslovakia. Nicolson saw the Sudeten German issue as symptomatic of a greater conflict between two contrasting theories. One was based on the belief that interstate disputes could be settled by mutual agreement, and the other on the 953 conviction that they could be resolved only on a basis of power. ‘The struggle, which was watched by all the world, centred upon the issue whether violence, and the threat of violence, were in fact the decisive factors in international affairs…The problem ceased to be a Czech, or 954 even a European, problem; it became a world problem’. As an element of his wider foreign policy, Chamberlain set about resolving the Sudeten question. An Anglo-French plan was devised whereby, irrespective of the wishes of the population, all parts of Czechoslovakia in which more than half of the inhabitants were German would be ceded to the Reich. Hitler rejected this plan when presented with it by Chamberlain at Godesberg on 22 September, demanding instead acquiescence in complete German occupation of the Sudetenland by 1 October. Chamberlain reluctantly advised the British Cabinet and the Czechs to accept this proposal. There was Cabinet opposition, however (from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Alfred Duff Cooper), and from the French.

949 950 951 952 953 954

H. Nicolson, ‘The Past Week’, Listener, 18 August 1938, 336. Ibid., 4 August 1938, 242. Ibid., 1 September 1938, 445–6. R. Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain, Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 112, 193–5. H. Nicolson, ‘The Past Week’, Listener, 8 September 1938, 483. H. Nicolson, ‘After Munich’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 124 (1938), 518.

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Neville Chamberlain notified Hitler that Britain would support France should the latter decide, in defiance of these proposals, and in accordance with her Treaty commitments to Czechoslovakia, to go to war to assist the Czechs. On 27 September, the French army and the British fleet were partly mobilized, and on the following day 1.5 million Czech soldiers assembled along the German frontier. News of a proposed conference (ostensibly an Italian proposal but actually one of German devising) aimed at avoiding war arrived as Chamberlain was addressing Parliament on 28 September. Hysteria gripped the House of Commons when Chamberlain told MPs of his intention to attend the meeting. At the conference, which took place in Munich, Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and France's Prime Minister, Édouard Daladier (Czechoslovakia was not asked to send an emissary) agreed on 30 September to almost all of Hitler's Godesberg demands. This signalled the partition of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain returned to London brandishing a sheet of paper signed by Hitler and himself which contained, he said, Britain and Germany's pledges never to go to war with one another. From an upstairs window at No. 10 Downing Street he proclaimed to cheering crowds that this constituted ‘peace with honour’ and ‘peace for our time’. 955

a transaction which convinced him that The MP, Walter Elliot, found Nicolson to be ‘Abyssinian in his anger and shame’ over Godesberg, 956 After Munich he regarded it as inevitable. Nicolson argued strongly outside and war had been postponed but almost certainly not averted. inside Parliament against the Munich Agreement. At a luncheon in Manchester he claimed that the Prime Minister's ‘surrender’ had secured 957 Inside the Commons Nicolson described the ‘Munich capitulation’ as ‘one of the most peace, not for a generation, but for six months. 958 Chamberlain's misreading of the German national character, and his ignorance of the principles and disastrous episodes’ in British history. traditions of British foreign policy, had allowed Hitler to achieve all of his aims: the annexation of the Sudetenland, the destruction of 959 Czechoslovakia, and German hegemony in Europe. In his finest ever parliamentary speech—Anthony Eden called it ‘a very courageous 960 and brilliant performance’ —Nicolson proclaimed resoundingly: I know that in these days of realism those of us who try to keep our election pledges are told that we are disloyal to the party…I know that those of us who try to be consistent are accused of having ‘one-track’ minds, I know that in these days of realism principles are considered as rather eccentric and ideals are identified with hysteria.

955 956 957 958 959 960

C. Coote, A Companion of Honour: The Story of Walter Elliot (London: Collins, 1965), 168. H. Nicolson, ‘The Past Week’, Listener, 22 September 1938, 595. The Times, 3 October 1938, 19. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 5 October 1938, 431. Ibid., 428–31, 433. A. Eden, Letter to H. Nicolson, 5 October 1938, Harold Nicolson Papers, C0913, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey.

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I know that those of us who believe in the traditions of our policy, who believe in the precepts which we have inherited from our ancestors, who believe that one great function of this country is to maintain moral standards in Europe, to maintain a settled pattern of international relations, not to make friends with people whose conduct is demonstrably evil, not to go out of our way to make friends with them but to set up some sort of standard by which the smaller Powers can test what is good in international conduct and what is not—I know that those who hold such beliefs are accused of possessing the Foreign Office mind. I thank God that I possess the 961 Foreign Office mind. Nicolson never moved an inch from these sentiments. He was convinced that the ‘meaningless and dishonourable’ Munich Agreement 962 constituted a shift in the balance of power to Britain's detriment. The pre-First World War balance achieved by the Triple Entente (between 963 France, Russia, and the British), and the post-war balance represented by the League of Nations, had both been abandoned. Munich also 964 Nicolson observed on the last day of 1938: ‘It has been a bad year. represented, he told Walter Lippmann, ‘a vast strategical surrender’. 965 Without doubt, ‘Munich disturbed not only the physical but also the moral balance of Chamberlain has destroyed the Balance of Power’. 966 the world…it was the power of Great Britain which for so many generations maintained this useful moral balance’. Sidney Aster has observed that, of the older members of ‘Salter's Soviet’ and their younger brethren at All Souls College, Oxford, such as A. L. Rowse (and, it can be said, the MPs and international relations authorities of the 1930s), ‘few can lay claim to being consistently either an 967 The tendency of appeaser or a resister…failure to agree on where to take a stand was the central issue at the heart of appeasement’. international relations scholars and historians to categorize the dramatis personae of this great tragedy as being primarily for or against 968 appeasement has been compelling. Nicolson has not escaped this process. Yet David Carlton described him perceptively as ‘a so-called anti969 presumably because he spelt appeaser’,

961

H. Nicolson, Hansard, 5 October 1938, 433–4. H. Nicolson, ‘Alfred Duff Cooper, first Viscount Norwich (1890–1954)’, in E. T. Williams and H. M. Palmer (eds.), The Dictionary of National Biography: 1951–1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 249. 963 Nicolson, ‘After Munich’, 521. 964 W. Lippmann, Public Philosopher: Selected Letters of Walter Lippmann (ed.), J. M. Blum (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1985), 375n. 965 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 384. 966 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 3 March 1939, 347. 967 Aster, ‘ “Salter's Soviet”’, 169. 968 T. G. Otte, ‘Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), in J. Ramsden (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century British Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 472. Nicolson's views of appeasement were more complex than those of ‘a constant and bitter opponent’ of the policy. 969 D. Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (London: Allen Lane, 1981), 81. 962

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out the dangers of conciliating Hitler and the perils of not doing so. Close examination of Nicolson's writings and speeches reveals the limits he placed on the practice of appeasement. An underlying consistency characterized his position on appeasement, though, as with the execution of most (if not all) policy, new circumstances necessitated pragmatic responses to the dictators. The year between Munich and Britain's declaration of war on Germany following the latter's invasion of Poland (3 September 1939) saw a final unravelling of appeasement as pursued by Neville Chamberlain, and the discrediting of what had for centuries been considered a sound approach to British foreign policy and diplomacy. As an MP, Nicolson was involved closely in these events through his membership of the ‘Eden Group’. Though a member of the December Club of mainly Conservative Party MPs opposed to British foreign policy towards the 970 971 Nicolson had never been ‘one of the Winston brigade’. Nevertheless, he did not disguise his German, Italian, and Spanish dictators, admiration for Churchill, writing in June 1938 of ‘the prescience of Mr Churchill…the blind optimism of his critics…the blend of realism and 972 idealism which renders [his] present theory so far above the jangles and tangles of party controversy’. Nicolson also participated in the activities of the group, Focus for the Defence of Freedom and Peace (‘Focus’, or ‘The Focus’), formed in 1935 to coordinate opposition to 973 Nazi Germany, of which Churchill soon became the impresario. The Munich Agreement was the chief factor behind the formation in early November 1938 of the ‘Eden Group’, an informal assembly of some twenty to thirty MPs (mainly Conservatives), who met weekly to discuss Chamberlain's foreign policy. It also published the Whitehall 974 the Edenites presented no serious challenge to Chamberlain. News Letter. Dismissed by the Conservative Party Whips as ‘“Glamour Boys”’ 975 The dilemma of Eden Group Nigel Nicolson's description of the Group as a ‘ginger’ rather than an ‘opposition’ group best sums it up. members was well described by A. J. P. Taylor. ‘The uncompromising opponents of Munich were the eminently respectable, men who loathed Dissent and who had spent their lives in or near the sanctity of the Foreign Office…men who knew their way to the

970

M. Egremont, Under Two Flags: The Life of Major-General Sir Edward Spears (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 134–5, 139. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 328. 972 H. Nicolson, Review of W. Churchill, Arms and the Covenant (1938), Daily Telegraph, 24 June 1938, 8. 973 E. Spier, Focus: A Footnote to the History of the Thirties (London: Oswald Wolff, 1963); Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 328; Nicolson diary, 1 March, 6 April 1938, 27 July 1939, Balliol College. 974 D. Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Arnold, 1997), 129. 975 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 377. 971

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Athenaeum,’ Taylor observed, ‘not to the derelict premises of the 1917 Club [the defunct headquarters of British foreign relations 976 utopianism]’. Nicolson, like many Edenites, was an ardent though politically not very effective critic of an entrenched Conservative administration still dominated by Chamberlain. Nevertheless, Group members fortified themselves constantly with the hope that ‘we may keep the Whips on the 977 Their efforts were not assisted by Eden's less than vigorous opposition to Chamberlain. By 18 July jump by sniping at the Government’. 1939, a demoralized Nicolson was writing: ‘Anthony does not wish to defy the Tory Party and is in fact missing every boat with exquisite 978 The Group faded out after Eden returned to office as War Minister in elegance. We drift and drift and pass the rudder into other hands’. Churchill's first Ministry in May 1940. An understanding of Nicolson's liberal realism—over Abyssinia, the Rhineland, Spain, and Czechoslovakia—rests in large part on an appreciation of the policy of appeasement as pursued before and after Munich. Neville Thompson has referred to appeasement's few 979 Prior to Munich, in Paul Kennedy's view, there existed only seven recognizable parliamentary critics and to their ineffectiveness. Conservative (or Conservative Party-aligned) critics, who constituted ‘a small, unco-ordinated and in part unorthodox cluster…often divided 980 Only three prominent MPs consistently questioned and criticized Chamberlain's policies in the House of Commons among themselves’. 981 well before the Munich Agreement: Churchill, Amery, and Nicolson. By late 1938, although a member of the ‘Eden Group’, Nicolson never hesitated to express his more independent views on European security policy. He rejected Sir Robert Vansittart's request to ignore his differences with Chamberlain and serve under him in a proposed ‘Government 982 of Reconstruction’, largely out of personal loyalty to ‘Van’, who had been removed by Eden (with Chamberlain's blessing) as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office to the sinecure of Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Government in January 1938. However, Nicolson was attracted to Vansittart's policy of a global strategy based on alliance diplomacy, one aimed at halting German territorial ambitions and preserving the British Commonwealth and Empire through a renewed balance of power and alliances with France and the USSR under the

976 977 978 979 980 981 982

A. J. P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy 1792–1939 (The Ford Lectures, 1956) (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957), 197. Nicolson diary, 27 June 1939, Balliol College. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 406. Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers, 3. P. Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy, 1865–1980 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), 286–7. Ibid., 296. N. Rose, Vansittart: Study of a Diplomat (London: Heinemann, 1978), 232.

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umbrella of the League of Nations. In November 1938, Nicolson still hoped that a world congress could be convened of those nation984 He was certain, states determined to resist the dictators, one at which policies other than Chamberlain's might be aired and discussed. though, that Chamberlain had left Britain dangerously (perhaps even fatally) vulnerable, and that it was essential to increase armaments 985 production and to place the country on a war basis as soon as possible. The word ‘appeasement’ appeared rarely in Nicolson's pronouncements on British foreign policy until after the Munich Agreement because, like most MPs and international relations experts, he regarded it as a proven tool of British policy. Only when Chamberlain began to distort its moral and practical basis did Nicolson coin the word more frequently, and contrast its original with what he considered its increasingly debased meaning. In January 1939, he defined it as ‘the policy of conciliating Germany and Italy by concessions irrespective of their moral 986 His thinking increasingly reflected a Thucydidean injunction: ‘When one makes concessions to one's enemies, one regrets it justification’. 987 Nicolson's attitude to the time-honoured policy of afterwards, and the fewer concessions one makes the safer one is likely to be’. appeasement as executed by British governments before 1938 has been well summarized by Martin Gilbert. ‘“Munich” was a policy, dictated by fear and weakness…Appeasement was quite different; it was a policy of constant concessions based on common sense and strength…The norm of international affairs remains the assumption that agreement is possible. For as long as this assumption holds good, appeasement is a 988 necessary policy, combining expediency with morality’. 989

Appeasement, with its origins in the nineteenth century, represented ‘the policy of pragmatic compromise’ in British foreign relations. Until 990 After Munich, appeasement came to be seen as ‘a craven late 1938, it was regarded as ‘the most noble term in the diplomatic vocabulary’. 991 surrender to threats rather than the wise and rational application of moral principles’. With realist and idealist support for the policy diminishing inside and outside Parliament after Munich, its days were numbered. Chamberlain's honourable intentions notwithstanding, he must shoulder ‘the responsibility for deceiving

983 984 985 986 987 988 989 990 991

M. L. Roi, Alternative to Appeasement: Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy, 1934–1937 (Westport, CT, London: Praeger, 1997), 172–7. Nicolson, ‘After Munich’, 523. Nicolson diary, 15 December 1938, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘What France Means to England’, Foreign Affairs, 17 (1939), 359. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I. 34, 56. M. Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), 187. P. Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy 1870–1945: Eight Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 25. Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers, 27. Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy 1870–1945, 28–9.

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and misleading the majority of those in whose name he exercised power’ and ‘for imposing sacrifices on the publics of countries who had 992 looked to Britain as a model and a protector’. This, in D. Cameron Watt's view, represented appeasement's ‘immorality’. By mid-1939, appeasement was in its death throes. Chamberlain belatedly pursued alliance diplomacy (an Anglo-French military commitment 993 offered guarantees to Eastern Europe's nation-states, and promised stronger support for collective security. Nicolson in the event of war), followed events in 1939 uneasily, his reaction typifying the confusion created among MPs by Chamberlain's policy. He saw the British-French 994 initiative (6 February) as marking ‘not the end of appeasement, but the realization that appeasement is a means and not an end’. To his wife, 995 He struggled with the question of whether or not however, he indicated on 7 February that it represented the end of appeasement. Chamberlain, in negotiations with the dictators, and as the representative of Europe's democracies, constituted ‘a tremendous diplomatic asset’. Certainly, the Prime Minister's willingness to negotiate made it difficult for the German (and Italian) regimes to portray him as ‘the big 996 black wolf of British belligerency’. Nicolson seemed to miss the obvious point that, even if the majority of Germans and Italians regarded 997 Chamberlain as a man of peace, they were ruled by men to whom this was irrelevant. Nicolson described Italy's military annexation of Albania (7 April 1939) as ‘a deliberate smash and grab raid on the German model’; it 998 Although he approved of Chamberlain's assurances to Greece and Romania represented ‘the last nail in the coffin of appeasement’. 999 Nicolson confided to his diary, ‘I cannot but feel that there is something amateurish about the whole thing. We are following the invasion, increasing our liabilities by leaps and bounds without taking similar action to increase our assets. I am becoming convinced that he 1000 Eleven days later Nicolson was convinced that ‘Chamberlain Must Go. He is too shifty and furtive [Chamberlain] is a very stupid man’. 1001 for any confidence to be inspired’. 1002

By 9 May 1939, he was certain that Conservative Party opinion was almost solidly anti-appeasement. accept ‘vague

992

One month on he was prepared to

D. Cameron Watt, ‘Chamberlain's Ambassadors’, in M. Dockrill and B. McKercher (eds.), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 169. 993 N. Chamberlain, Hansard, 6 February 1939, 623. 994 Nicolson diary, Balliol College, 6 February 1939. 995 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 390–1. 996 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 17 February 1939, 260. 997 Ibid., 24 March 1939, 482, 7 April 1939, 590; Hansard, 3 April 1939, 2524–5. 998 Nicolson diary, 7 April 1939, Balliol College. 999 N. Chamberlain, Hansard, 13 April 1939, 5–15. 1000 Nicolson diary, 13 April 1939, Balliol College. 1001 Ibid., 24 April 1939. 1002 Ibid., 9 May 1939.

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appeasement’, but only if accompanied by ‘strong and rapid armament’. By 16 June, Nicolson was relieved that at last the Government 1004 On 22 May, Germany and Italy concluded a ‘Pact of Steel’. It was now seemed to be pursuing a ‘dual policy of resistance and conciliation’. pointless, Nicolson wrote on 30 June, to attempt to persuade Germany that Britain had no intention of encircling or further appeasing her since, to the Germans, the nation-states aiming at ‘renewal’—the Mächte der Erneuerung (Germany, Italy, and Japan)—were destined to triumph over the democracies—the Mächte der Beharrung—who wished only to retain their existing territory. Therefore, war was inevitable, because ‘the 1005 Nazi system is a hoop which topples over if it stops’. Adolf Hitler's diplomatic pressure on Poland to return Danzig (the German Hanseatic port made a Free City by the Treaty of Versailles) to Germany began in earnest in January 1939. Chamberlain's reluctance to engage Russia as an ally made Russian connivance in Hitler's real aim—the conquest of Poland—more and more likely. Hitler occupied Prague on 15 March and the Czechoslovak State was dissolved—an indisputable violation of the dictator's diplomatic pledges which led to a marked change in British public opinion regarding appeasement. This prompted the Manchester Guardian in a report entitled ‘The Gift of Prophecy’ to reflect on Nicolson's far-sightedness in describing the defence guarantee given to Czechoslovakia at the time of Munich as ‘the most farcical piece of diplomatic hypocrisy that has ever been 1006 On 31 March, the British Government undertook to assist Poland should she come under German attack. The path of perpetrated’. 1007 appeasement, described by Chamberlain himself as long and bristling with obstacles, was at an end. Hitler denounced Germany's Treaty of Non-Aggression with Poland (signed in January 1934) and the Anglo-German Naval Treaty (concluded in June 1935) on 28 April. In early July, Nicolson asserted that the rights of the Danzigers were about to be exploited by Hitler as a pretext for destroying Polish independence, thus opening the way for a German invasion of Romania and the Ukraine. The overland route to India would then be secured, and a significant portion of the British Empire encircled. Although ‘from the hedgerows still come some chirps 1008 it was now clear that the British Government and people had reached a crossroads. ‘The essential divergence seems to of appeasement’, be between those who fear that the full and immediate

1003 1004 1005 1006 1007 1008

Nicolson diary, 8 June 1939, Balliol College H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 16 June 1939, 1035. Ibid., 30 June 1939, 1126. Manchester Guardian, 15 March 1939, 10; H. Nicolson, Hansard, 5 October 1938, 430. N. Chamberlain, Hansard, 3 October 1938, 48. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 7 July 1939, 13.

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organisation of our physical, moral and diplomatic power may serve as a provocation; and those who hope that it will act as a deterrent’. Nicolson argued that in practice there was no longer any halfway house between appeasement and resistance; from now on it would be necessary either to appease with the maximum of concession or to resist with the maximum of force. No satisfactory compromise was possible. Therefore, ‘we 1009 should now cease drawing elegant arabesques around the alternations and combinations of appeasement and resistance’. Chamberlain's change of policy was too little, too late. Nicolson insisted that the democracies had no choice but to convince the Axis Powers by a sustained show of military strength and diplomatic resolve that they were determined on resistance, while indicating in a ‘Manifesto of 1010 He also called for the inclusion in the Cabinet of prominent Chamberlain critics Peace’ their preparedness to meet all reasonable demands. such as Churchill and Eden as a sign of increased British resolution, and for the transfer of the conduct of foreign affairs from the Prime 1011 Minister to the Foreign Secretary and his expert advisers. Nicolson's conclusions were reinforced by three convictions. It was now impossible to temper Hitler's ambitions by appealing to the saner counsels of the German General Staff, since the dictator had assumed sole command of Germany's armed forces on 4 June 1937. As Hitler's victories since then had rendered him unassailable, no opportunity remained to persuade the German people to desert their Führer. For these reasons attempts to detach Italy or Spain from the Axis by diplomatic methods would prove unsuccessful. ‘When people are anxious to die 1012 On 31 July, Nicolson told the House of dangerously,’ he wrote, ‘there is small propaganda value in the carpet-slippers of democratic ease’. Commons that, with appeasement ‘dead’, there was no longer any place for ‘this ridiculous duality between appeasers and resisters’. In future, 1013 The statement the British Government must exercise ‘the maximum of resistance first, and thereafter the maximum of conciliation’. represented a succinct statement of his liberal realist approach to the European international relations crisis. In the Spectator on 4 August, Nicolson outlined how such a policy could be realized: The only hope of maintaining peace lies in our being able to convince Herr Hitler that a German victory is not a physical possibility, but that a general peace, honourable to

1009 1010 1011 1012 1013

H. Nicolson, ‘Is War Inevitable?’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 126/749 (1939), 5, 8. Ibid., 8–9; Diaries and Letters: 1930–39, 405. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 7 July 1939, 13. Nicolson, ‘Is War Inevitable?’, 9. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 31 July 1939, 2083–4.

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Germany, can be made a physical possibility. We must deprive him simultaneously of ambition and despair. The danger of appeasement was that it endeavoured to purchase momentary alleviation by successive sacrifices; the value of the peace front is that it first creates a collective force demonstrably superior to the strength of the Axis and then offers the Axis the prospect of a durable and general 1014 settlement. In one hand we hold the sword; in the other the olive branch. Yet it was too early for the democracies to proclaim their terms of peace. Any such pronouncement must follow and not precede a firm agreement with the USSR. It should aim, too, at fortifying the conscience of the anti-fascist world, and not at satisfying the aspirations of Germany and Italy. The Reich must also restore Czech liberties and disarm. On 23 August, the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression pact. Hitler's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 resulted in British and French declarations of war on Germany two days later. Certainly, ‘we are not making war unreasonably, but only as the result of exceptional provocation’ by those with a desire ‘to spread their dominion far and 1015 Nicolson regarded the war as a conflict of principles and arms between the wide’. With them ‘we must simply fight it out to the last’. torchbearers for Western values, and the Hitlerian system, which he considered the most evil form of human governance since that of Genghis 1016 1017 Khan. A struggle had been joined for the evolution and destiny of the human race. The ‘fundamental principle’ behind the war centred on Hitler's conviction that force was all-important in international relations, and the democratic belief that law was so necessary in 1018 Nicolson was uncharacteristically caustic about the erstwhile advocates of international affairs that all efforts must be made to defend it. 1019 —and, as the conflict progressed, ‘the isolationists…the shiver-sisters of Mayfair and the appeasement—‘the untutored Munichois’ wobble-boys of Whitehall…the Peace Pledge Union, the Christian Pacifists …the friends of Herr von Ribbentrop [Germany's Foreign 1020 Minister and former Ambassador to Britain]…and the disjecta membra of former pro-Nazi organizations’. As a member of Lord Salisbury's Watching Committee on Chamberlain's performance as Prime Minister in April and May 1940—its members sought greater Executive accountability to the backbench at this perilous

1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1020

H. Nicolson, Marginal Comment January 6–August 4 1939 (London: Constable, 1939), 199. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I. 38, 59, IV. 92, 320. H. Nicolson, ‘Then and Now: September 1939…August 1914’, Listener, 14 September 1939, 507. H. Nicolson, ‘Causes and Purposes’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 126 (1939), 390. H. Nicolson, ‘Hitler's Own War’, Current Affairs, 4 July 1942, 3. Nicolson, Marginal Comment January 6–August 4 1939, 198. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 8 March 1940, 327.

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time —Nicolson finally despaired of the Prime Minister. After the Second World War, he described Chamberlain's pursuit of appeasement as a story with ‘all the pity and terror of a Greek tragedy’ in which two contrasting forms of hubris had confronted each 1023 other—‘the megalomania of Hitler and Chamberlain's masterful sense of mission’. In 1952, Nicolson summed up the Hitlerian phenomenon with exquisite elegance: The little man in the soiled and ill-fitting aquascutum becomes the ruler of Europe, the Sieg Heils pulsate gratingly as a steam-saw in vast auditoriums, potentates and premiers are dragged as captives to Obersalzburg, and in the palaces of fallen dynasties the Austrian wastrel dictates the destinies of half the world. Yet in all the splendour of his triumph, in all his harsh gloating over the subjugation of his enemies, he remains astonishingly insignificant and inappropriate. The tragedy follows the classic form: his egomania degenerates into hubris; the jealousy of Olympus is aroused; and in the last act the Furies flit and jibber like vampires among the smoking ruins. Yet as we ponder upon the desis and lusis of this frightful tragedy we are left, not with the purifying effects of pity and terror, but with a sad sense that here was no herioc figure defying the Fates, no symbol of magnificent madness or error, but someone small and barren, generating 1024 superhuman force by the very intensity of his envy and rancour. Nicolson's liberal realist conviction that during the 1930s the Western democracies could have preserved peace through the machinery of the League of Nations never deserted him. As late as April 1940, he reflected that resort to the League, rather than attempts at European 1025 Nicolson believed that contrasting integration such as Pan-Europa or Federal Union, remained the best means of containing the conflict. British and French conceptions of the organization's purpose were chiefly responsible for the League's failure; ‘whereas we regarded the League as a valuable ideal which might become dangerous’ by drawing Britain into Continental quarrels, ‘the French regarded it as an instrument which might prove useful’. Between 1919 and 1939, ‘they took the League too narrowly and we took it too vaguely. If their conception had been less precise and ours more realistic the League might have survived’. By making the League ‘an instrument of policy, the 1026 French destroyed its moral efficiency’; in seeing it as ‘a desirable but rather imaginative theory we destroyed its practical effect’.

1021 1022 1023 1024 1025 1026

G. Stewart, Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party (London: Phoenix, 2000), 407–8. Egremont, Under Two Flags, 153–4. H. Nicolson, Review of K. Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (1946), Daily Telegraph, 13 December 1946, 6. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 7 November 1952, 595. Nicolson diary, 1 April 1940, Balliol College. Nicolson, ‘What France Means to England’, 358–9.

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The idealist of 1919, and the realist of the late 1920s and early 1930s, acknowledged the failure of realism and practical idealism to resolve inter-war foreign policy crises. At length, however, he developed a philosophy of international relations aimed at preventing a second European war. The reconstituted League of Nations and ‘collective defence’ advocated by Nicolson as successors to collective security failed to engage the interest of statesmen or foreign policy-makers in Britain, on the Continent, or throughout the British Commonwealth and Empire. Nor did the United States acknowledge the potential of a League so reformed for preventing war. The fact that the British political and civil service elite never embraced these approaches to foreign policy and diplomacy is not to the discredit of liberal realism. Similarly, it does not detract from Nicolson's eloquent anti-appeasement record and endeavours to reconcile realism and League of Nations idealism. ‘Collective defence’, if reinforced by the political and diplomatic determination of the Great Powers (including the United States and the USSR)—a liberal realist approach—could arguably have countered the ambitions of the Italian and German dictators. Interestingly, in April 1941, Nicolson recorded in his diary the following conversation with the Russian Ambassador to Britain. ‘Maisky says that Russia only desired peace and that when we obviously did not want to help her she came to a pact [August 1939] with the enemy. He indicated that this 1027 Two months later, Germany invaded the USSR. pact was not unalterable’.

1027

Nicolson diary, 24 April 1941, Balliol College.

7 Federalism and Peace PAN-EUROPA OR FEDERAL UNION? Cautious enthusiasm characterized Harold Nicolson's approach to the conceptions of European integration, world government, and ‘perpetual peace’. He believed that a united Europe would evolve as international society moved towards world government and universal peace. To this end, Nicolson participated in the activities of Europe's leading inter-war unification movement and promoted the work of key authors and pamphleteers in the field. The most prominent advocate of European integration between the wars was Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. He founded the European Union in 1922, and his creed Pan-Europa attracted supporters on the Continent and in Britain. Among them was a group of forward-looking MPs, which included Harold Nicolson. In Pan-Europe (1923; first English edition, 1926), Coudenhove-Kalergi set out his proposal for a united Europe. The Pan-European Movement would work through the European Union to create a political-economic federation of largely self1028 sufficient member-states. The Count rejected conflict as a route to European unity, proposing to avoid it through governmental collaboration, a system of arbitration treaties, and a customs union. A House of Peoples and a House of States would fulfil the federation's political representation needs. Declining European tension during the mid-1920s rendered Pan-Europe ‘a utopia in 1923, a problem in 1924, 1029 and a program in 1925’. Pan-Europe, in Coudenhove-Kalergi's view, was necessary in order to prevent war, forestall economic ruin, and defend the Continent from any Russian threat. The ultimate global solution to conflict was not to be found in the League of Nations which as a federation of nation-states represented neither states nor peoples, but in a federation of federations. Pan-American and Pan-European cooperation would provide the best basis for this, because Anglo-American collaboration was essential to all ‘practical peace politics’. The Count envisaged a system of federations—organized balance of power groupings such as the

1028 1029

R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan-Europe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 214. Ibid., 197.

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British Commonwealth and Empire, the USSR, Europe, China and Japan, and America. However, he overestimated the willingness of other nation-states and groupings to conform to this Western model of international governance. Coudenhove-Kalergi aimed to reverse the tide of Marxist materialism and extremist democratic politics; he also sought to revive the 1031 His anti-Communism, however, obscured the fact that the main obstacle to European union was not aristocracy's role in political life. 1032 Aristide Briand (as French Foreign Minister and external (the USSR) but internal (the relationship between Germany and France). President of the Pan-European Union) attempted to use Locarno and Pan-Europa to secure a European balance of power, to check German influence, and to soften Germany's demands for a revised Treaty of Versailles. The movement thus became a tool in European realpolitik. Similarly, Pan-Europa was envisaged as a buttress against Communism by British statesmen and opinion-formers, who were confident that it would make few concrete demands on Britain, and constitute no threat to her empire. Although L. S. Amery, one of its early champions, endorsed Coudenhove-Kalergi's thesis concerning distinct groups of nation-states and a unified Europe, he insisted that Britain must remain a 1033 1034 ‘It was not possible,’ Amery declared, ‘to have two patriotisms in opposite directions’. separate entity and a bridge between groups. 1035 Winston Churchill feared that Pan-Europa would lead to the ‘antagonisms of continents’ replacing the ‘conflicts of countries’. When economic calamity beset the Western world following the October 1929 New York stock market collapse, Pan-Europa's political and 1036 economic prescriptions were seen by many in power as being neither timely nor adequate in addressing the situation. The 1930s marked a decisive change in the fortunes of the Pan-European Movement. Italian Fascism's increasing stridency and the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany necessitated a re-evaluation of Pan-European strategies. Direct Franco-British cooperation assumed greater significance in the face of Hitlerian belligerency. Within Germany, Pan-Europa came under attack. Its headquarters (in Vienna) were destroyed at the time of the Anschluss in March 1938. Although

1030 1031 1032 1033 1034 1035 1036

R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, ‘The Pan-European Outlook’, International Affairs, 10 (1931), 638–42. P. Rich, ‘Visionary Ideals of European Unity After World War I’, in P. Murray and P. Rich (eds.), Visions of European Unity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 23. P. M. R. Stirk, A History of European Integration Since 1914 (London, New York: Pinter, 1996), 27. L. S. Amery, ‘The British Empire and the Pan-European Idea’, International Affairs, 9/1 (1930), 12. L. S. Amery, ‘Summary of Discussion’, in Coudenhove-Kalergi, ‘The Pan-European Outlook’, 646. W. Churchill, ‘The United States of Europe’, Saturday Evening Post, 15 February 1930, 51. A. Bosco, ‘Introduction’ to A. Bosco (ed.), The Federal Idea: The History of Federalism from Enlightenment to 1945, vol. 1 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1991), 10.

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for these reasons the Movement's appeal waned in Britain during the 1930s (to be replaced by Federal Union), neither the Count nor his keenest adherents were discouraged. Coudenhove-Kalergi was kept busy opposing the dictators. In 1938, he published The Totalitarian State Against Man, which dismissed the nation-state, the centralist continent, and centralism as exemplified by the League of Nations. In their place he trumpeted federalism from the bottom up. The best models for such political reform were the British Empire, the North American Union, 1037 and the Swiss Federation. Nicolson first met the Count in 1938. Throughout the 1920s, he had regarded Coudenhove-Kalergi's doctrine as ‘little more than some “idle song for pipe or virelay”’, and its author as ‘one among the many amateurs who contributed their trills and tremolos to the orchestra of Geneva’. Later, ‘the deep double-bass’ of Briand ‘boomed out in sympathy with the adolescent flute of Paneuropa’. Since then the Count had persisted with his flute-playing, ‘patiently, persuasively, delicately’. In January 1939, an admiring Nicolson wrote that this ‘prophet of the United States of Europe’ had ‘a habit of discovering old-fashioned ideas in the Caledonian Market of Europe, of taking them home with him and 1038 cleaning them up, and of then producing them, burnished and neat, among the exhibits of modern political theory’. Early in 1938, Coudenhove-Kalergi set about making Pan-Europa a political force in Britain as a means of ensuring stronger Anglo-French cooperation in resisting the dictators. In June of that year, Amery spoke on European federalism at Chatham House. On 2 June 1939, the Count addressed a Chatham House gathering to explain his shift from a European federalist policy that excluded Britain to one which 1039 included her. He spoke again on 15 June. One week later an eight-member Pan-Europa MPs group was formed. Nicolson was a member. The Group aimed at securing parliamentary support for a ten-part reform programme designed to achieve ‘European solidarity in foreign, 1040 military, economic, and currency policies’. Their manifesto was a melange of ideas designed as a starting point for European integration. Amery nominated the Count for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Nicolson supported the nomination on the grounds that ‘you who are the pioneer 1041 of Federalism are about the only man who can become its pilot’. In late 1939, with the British and Germans at war, Coudenhove-Kalergi emphasized that

1037

R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, The Totalitarian State Against Man (Glarus: Paneuropa Editions, 1938), 190–1. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 6 January 1939, 15. 1039 A. Bosco, ‘Chatham House and Federalism’, in A. Bosco and C. Navari (eds.), Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1994), 319–27; Nicolson diary, 22 June 1939, Balliol College. 1040 Bosco, ‘Chatham House and Federalism’, 326. 1041 H. Nicolson, Letter to R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, quoted in Bosco, ‘Chatham House and Federalism’, 327. 1038

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Britain had at last become a truly European nation-state, so central was her role in the anti-German coalition. The aeroplane, more than anything else, had established her European status, reinforced her position as the moral arbiter of Europe, and dictated the need for Britain to devise ‘a whole-hearted European policy’. The course of Europe's future (Pan-German, Soviet, Pan-European) rested entirely with the 1042 Nothing shook the Count's conviction that the third Europa—the United States of Europe—would eventually come into British. 1043 Identifying himself as a long-time supporter of Pan-Europa, existence in succession to the Roman Empire and the Christian West. 1044 Nicolson praised the Count's Europe Must Unite as a ‘wise and simple alternative’ to ‘the blatant foolishness of the Federal Unionists’. 1045 Nicolson and the Count were reluctant to take Federal Union seriously. Yet, as Pan-Europa's influence fell away in Britain during 1939–40, and with the need for more concrete approaches to unity emerging, Federal Union's grew. The Count continued his activities throughout the 1940s and 1950s, only to see Pan-Europa eclipsed by more economic approaches to European integration. While Pan-Europa's champions were heralding it as a political panacea, a number of inter-war British federalists, notably, Lord Lothian, Lionel Curtis, and Lionel Robbins, were busy damning the nation-state. All three identified nation-state sovereignty, especially the primacy of state over individual interests, as the catalyst for inevitable economic nationalism and war. They believed that European unity was part of an evolutionary process towards world federalism. Lothian, the most influential and eloquent of the trio, argued that the conception of national sovereignty was slowly dying, and that even great quasi-federations like the British Commonwealth and Empire would eventually coalesce into an international federation. ‘The troubles of the world are due not to the malignity of [peoples] but to the anarchy which perverts the policies of all nations’. 1046

In In 1935, Lothian predicted that ‘organic federation’ and international peace would grow from the pooling of national sovereignties. more metaphysical mode, Lionel Curtis traced a series of steps from small communities to nation-states, culminating in a Christian-based 1047 In the late 1930s, Lionel Robbins urged reform of world political and economic arrangements on the basis international commonwealth. that the present system of nation-states was redundant

1042 1043 1044 1045 1046 1047

R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, ‘Europe Tomorrow’, International Affairs, 18 (1939), 623–4, 632. R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Europe Must Unite (Glarus: Paneuropa Editions, 1940), 94. H. Nicolson, Review of Coudenhove-Kalergi, Europe Must Unite (1940), Daily Telegraph, 6 April 1940, 4. Nicolson diary, 16, 17 March 1940, Balliol College. 11th Marquess of Lothian, Pacifism is Not Enough: Collected Lectures and Speeches (eds.), J. Pinder and A. Bosco (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1990), 262. L. Curtis, Civitas Dei, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1934), 283–7; vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1937), vi, 533–4; vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1937), 120, 126.

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1048

and would prove militarily and economically destructive. While he doubted that the ideal of world federation would be realized during his lifetime, Robbins was optimistic about creating European or other federations by mutual agreement; and he was convinced that ‘unless we 1049 destroy the sovereign state, the sovereign state will destroy us’. Others were active in the field besides Lothian and the two Lionels. With the influence of Victorian Imperial Federation and Edwardian Round 1050 other federalist organizations (such as Niall MacDermot's New Europe Table approaches to federalism dissipating during the 1930s, 1051 and Federal Union) came to the fore. Nicolson's active involvement with Pan-Europa spanned 1938–40, and then ceased. Despite group his efforts on its behalf, and his admiration for Coudenhove-Kalergi's programme, he came to consider Pan-Europa's approach to federalism premature. Nevertheless, he supported the Pan-European cause, remarking with Nicolsonian irony, ‘Lost causes are today the only respectable 1052 causes which are left for us to defend’. Nicolson did not participate in Federal Union's activities, though its publications influenced his thinking on European integration. Federal Union was established by three young men (Derek Rawnsley, Charles Kimber, and Patrick Ransome) in response to the Munich Agreement 1053 (30 September 1938)—‘one treaty too far’. By the early 1940s, the organization's eclectic membership included 15 000 people in 250 branches across Britain, France, and Switzerland, as well as an advisory panel comprising Lothian and Curtis—‘a mixed bag, but an influential 1054 The founders were intent on building a European federal union. They did not envisage a fusion of the North Atlantic one’. 1055 1056 1057 Anglo-American union, or an amalgam of both. Confusion soon arose about the form of Federal Union that was democracies, being, or ought to be, pursued. As Kimber has made clear, ‘This variety of proposed unions added a further difficulty; how to prevent the 1058 term “federation” from degenerating into a “cause” behind a catchword’.

1048

L. Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order (London: Macmillan, 1937), 309–29. L. Robbins, The Economic Causes of War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), 105. 1050 A. Bosco, ‘Federal Union, Chatham House, the Foreign Office and Anglo-French Union in Spring 1940’, in A. Bosco (ed.), The Federal Idea: The History of Federalism from Enlightenment to 1945, vol. 1 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1991), 319. 1051 Nicolson diary, 31 March 1938, Balliol College. 1052 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’,Spectator, 6 January 1939, 15. 1053 Sir Charles Kimber, ‘Federal Union’, in P. Catterall with C. J. Morris (eds.), Britain and the Threat to Stability in Europe, 1918–45 (London, New York: Leicester University Press, 1993), 107. 1054 Ibid., 108. 1055 C. K. Streit, Union Now: A Proposal for a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939). 1056 C. K. Streit, Union Now With Britain (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941). 1057 W. B. Curry, The Case for Federal Union (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1939). 1058 Kimber, ‘Federal Union’, 108. 1049

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The situation was further complicated by Curtis's attempts to make Federal Union a vehicle for Streit's version of federalism. After war's outbreak in September 1939, Federal Union continued its work. A research institute consisting of discussion groups was created, and their proceedings published as a series of ‘Federal Tracts’. With Winston Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, and the evacuation of Dunkirk at the end of that month, Britain's role in forging a European federation quickly took second place to her primary aim of ensuring national survival. Support for Federal Union and Continental entanglements soon evaporated throughout the country, as resources were diverted to prosecuting the war. On 15–16 June 1940, in an effort to fortify French resistance and enlist France as an active ally, the British Cabinet made an offer of ‘indissoluble union’ to that country. Although supported by the Free French leader, General Charles de Gaulle, it was overtaken by France's capitulation on 16 June. Harold Nicolson believed that a lasting Federal Europe would depend on cooperation between Britain and France (and a democratic post-war Germany). Accordingly, he worked to foster a strong bond between the two nation-states as a member of the Anglo-French Parliamentary 1059 With some residual faith in the League of Nations, Nicolson wrote in Association (on whose Executive Committee he also served). October 1939 that a reconstituted League should have ‘the avowed purpose and aim of creating, by gradual but determined stages, a Federal Europe. Our present conception of the inevitability of sovereign States must be replaced by some wider conception of the United States of 1060 Europe’. The following month, he explained how a reformed League might create a united Europe under the protection of security guarantees. The solution resided in air power, with no European nation-state being permitted to possess or deploy civil or military aircraft. Civil aviation (national and international) was to be a League responsibility. A permanent military air force (along the lines of Lord Davies's 1000-aircraft 1061 ‘International Police Force’) would be established to enforce League of Nations decisions in interstate disputes. While Nicolson supported the retention of Europe's existing national parliaments, he recommended that a central authority of the United States of Europe should set 1062 criteria governing armaments, foreign policy, raw materials, and credits. 1063

Nicolson feared that the desire for a European Federation would blind its advocates to the numerous difficulties they would encounter. He was especially

1059

Nicolson diary, 4 August, 15 November 1939, 17 January 1940, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Causes and Purposes’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 126 (1939), 394. 1061 B. Porter, ‘David Davies and the Enforcement of Peace’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 64. 1062 H. Nicolson, Why Britain is at War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1939), 156–9. 1063 H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 1 December 1939, 774. 1060

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concerned about European federalism's economic implications which, in his opinion, had not been adequately thought out. Nicolson concluded that, until this and other questions germane to the federalist schema were resolved in some inductive way, little would separate the 1064 He continued to assert that European federalism's time had not come. In April 1940—seven various proposals for a united Europe. months into the war—Nicolson reflected that the best means of preventing an escalation of the conflict was to strengthen the League of 1065 Nations rather than to resort to Pan-Europa or Federal Union. In discussing the post-war ‘new world order’ Nicolson insisted that, while the restoration of European stability would require some type of 1066 Nicolson retained federal system, Federal Union remained ‘an ideal which, in the present condition of the world, is wholly impracticable’. his belief that the idea of Federal Union was in many respects ‘quite fantastic’, given the absence of a palpable federal spirit throughout the world, and of sanctions machinery to enforce order in international relations. Yet he remained receptive to the idea of gradual Anglo-French 1067 unification by means of a shared foreign policy, joint military budgeting and staffing arrangements, and education. For Nicolson, Britain, as the leader of the anti-Nazi forces in Europe, had a unique responsibility to secure European unity at war's end. ‘We must be prepared (however overwhelming may be our victory) to sacrifice some of the monopolies which we enjoy. We must be prepared to sacrifice to some central European authority…a portion of our national sovereignty. We must be prepared to abate tariffs, to share our financial resources, and to place our colonial raw materials at the free disposal of the world,’ Nicolson wrote with abundant optimism. ‘We must accord progressive liberty to those of our dependencies which are in a position to maintain it, and we must be willing, for many years to 1068 Post-war planners should concentrate on ensuring come, to take our full part in the defence and reorganisation of European civilization’. security against war, security against poverty, and security against wastage of resources in a ‘New Order’ in which consent would be valued 1069 over compulsion, and free association over dominance. Of the leading members of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Federalist School’, a group of thinkers admired even today on the Continent but generally 1070 Nicolson esteemed most highly the writings of the Australian-born lawyer, R. W. G. Mackay, and Sir William forgotten in Britain, Beveridge. He regarded them as

1064 1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1070

H. Nicolson, ‘Allied War Aims’, New Republic, 26 February 1940, 274. Nicolson diary, 1 April 1940, Balliol College. Nicolson, Review of Coudenhove-Kalergi, Europe Must Unite, 4. Nicolson diary, 18 April 1940, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘War Aims and Peace Aims’, News-Letter: The National Labour Fortnightly, May 1940, 13–14. H. Nicolson, ‘Challenge to the Rights of Man (Discussion with Collin Brooks), Listener, 26 December 1940, 903–5. Bosco, ‘Introduction’, 11.

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pragmatic Federal Unionists, and Streit and W. B. Curry as utopian ones. Though his reviews rarely ran to superlatives, Nicolson described 1071 1072 as ‘the most comprehensive and acute study of the subject which I have yet read’. He also praised Mackay's Federal Europe (1940) 1073 ‘a sound and sensible tract’ highly Beveridge's practical approach to European and world federalism, calling his Peace by Federation? (1940) 1074 by ‘a citizen of the world’. R. W. G. Mackay's book—‘Being the Case for European Federation Together With a Draft Constitution of a United States of Europe’—represented for Nicolson a thoughtful and detailed blueprint for unifying Europe. He shared Mackay's belief that the success or failure of a United States of Europe would depend on the complete commitment of Britain, France, and Germany. The federation must have a democratic, more particularly a responsible, form of government. Its central authority should exercise sole legislative power over foreign affairs, defence, customs and excise, and the currency. Nicolson also endorsed Mackay's call to exclude the United States (because of her isolationism), the USSR (on account of her undoubted self1075 sufficiency), and India (because her population would swamp such a union). He rejected a common Federal Unionist idea beloved of Streit and W. B. Curry that a federated Europe would render war less probable between federations or coalitions of other nation-states (though 1076 Nicolson acknowledged that a European Federation would reduce considerably the likelihood of conflict among its member-states). Mackay defended his fellow Federal Unionists on the ground that the case for a European Federation did not rest on its capacity to abolish 1077 Nicolson did not wholly reject this view; however, he remained convinced that much war, but on its ability to remove war from Europe. Federal Unionist thinking was ill-conceived, muddle-headed, and utopian. Sir William Beveridge proposed a ‘Peace Federation’ comprising those democratic nation-states affected by the war (including Britain, the British Dominions and Eire, and Germany, once she reverted to democracy after the war). Under a division of powers modelled on that of the United States, specific responsibilities would be allocated to the federal government. The remainder would accrue to national governments, unless transferred to the central authority or reserved for the people by constitutional guarantees. One House of the bicameral federal legislature was to be elected directly by the people,

1071 1072 1073 1074 1075 1076 1077

R. W. G. Mackay, Federal Europe (London: Michael Joseph, 1940). H. Nicolson, Review of R. W. G. Mackay, Federal Europe (1940), Daily Telegraph, 13 April 1940, 4. Sir William Beveridge, Peace by Federation? (London: Federal Union, 1940). H. Nicolson, Review of Sir William Beveridge, Peace by Federation? (1940), Daily Telegraph, 4 May 1940, 3. Mackay, Federal Europe, 23–8, 91–2, 105. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 12 January 1940, 43. Mackay, Federal Europe, 129–32.

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and the other elected or nominated by the national governments. This would ensure equitable representation for each nation-state. Other constituents of the system included executive accountability to the legislature, and interpretation of a written constitution by a Federal 1078 judicature. Peace would be maintained by a federal air force. Nicolson shared Beveridge's view (and this was his main point of departure from Federal Unionists like Streit) that the short- and medium-term focus must be on the achievement of European unity. ‘Federalism is a strong remedy for a virulent disorder; it is not a healing lotion that can be sprayed over the world,’ wrote Beveridge. ‘World federation is for 1079 the millenium. The federation projected here is for the next peace treaty’. Nicolson agreed.

THE NEW EUROPE Nicolson's contribution to the European federalist debate during the Second World War was based on four convictions: a stable, democratic France was essential to any federal Europe, an enduring European federation would require a strong German democracy, broad wartime discussion of the shape of post-war Europe was a necessary prerequisite to European integration, and a united Europe would stand a greater chance of success if it were based on shared beliefs, sentiment, and economic interests than if it was imposed by constitutions and institutional arrangements. 1080

In July 1942, Harold Nicolson was involved closely in reviving the Anglo-French Parliamentary Association (dormant since mid-1940). 1081 Between March 1943 and July 1944, he participated in a Chatham House discussion group on the future of Anglo-French relations. 1082 Nicolson used his position as an MP to urge the Allies to restore France to Great Power status. He also advocated that she be accorded 1083 1084 and treated as ‘an equal and a potent partner’ in discussions about Europe's future. He believed that equality in Allied deliberations, only a total end to German military power would destroy Germany's militaristic spirit, and allow the creation of a civilian national 1085 character. Nicolson hoped, too, that ‘The proportions of power in the

1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 1083 1084 1085

Beveridge, Peace by Federation?, 11–13, 18–23. Ibid., 23. Nicolson diary, 2 July 1942, Balliol College; Diaries and Letters: 1939–1945 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1967), 235. Nicolson diary, 1, 22 March, 12 April, 24 May, 21 June, 12 July, 9, 30 August, 27 September, 15 November 1943, 3, 31 January, 3 July 1944, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 15 December 1943, 1599–1604. Ibid., 24 May 1944, 789–91. Ibid., 29 September 1944, 681. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 23 April 1943, 382.

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modern world render any German political or military hegemony impossible’. He had no doubt that while a stable Europe depended 1087 largely on a contented Germany, in the end only the Germans themselves could achieve such contentment. On 26 February 1940, there appeared in the New Republic Nicolson's most incisive Second World War analysis of the future pattern of European federalism. He stated that, in an attempt to avoid a disastrous error of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, ‘war aims’ and ‘peace aims’ must be dealt with separately at war's end. With the war aims of defeating the Axis Powers and securing peace attained and enshrined in a treaty at a peace conference, the question of peace aims (a morally just peace settlement and the creation of a ‘New World Order’) should be addressed at a second conference a year later. Nicolson emphasized the importance of convincing all Allied and Neutral Powers that neither Britain nor France would seek territorial gains from the conflict or the peace settlement. They wanted only ‘security’ and ‘a more reliable world system’. He also insisted that, while such a system might take some federal form, its resilience would depend on the planning behind it. The result could otherwise be ‘a large and glittering balloon entirely filled with air’. Nicolson conceded the possibility of establishing a successful post-war federation comprising Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (with Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Turkey joining later). He insisted that the federation's longevity (or even its very existence) would rely on Germany and the USSR's recognition that it represented no threat to their 1088 The threat posed by the Soviets remained as real to Nicolson as it had to Coudenhove-Kalergi. He feared that they national interests. would attempt to establish a vast Eastern European federation; in countering this the West must create another Holy Roman Empire. ‘We shall 1089 have our western Europe, the old Europe of Roman domination,’ he reflected privately, ‘and from that we must work as from a redoubt’. Although he pursued an independent course in working out his philosophy of European (and world) federalism, Nicolson drew intellectual sustenance from the works of the few thinkers active in this sphere. In early 1942, he observed that ‘a disheartening sense of unreality’ 1090 characterized most schemes for a New Europe. The majority he regarded as long on utopian idealism and short on realism. The European unification debate was soon to take on a different shape and a more detailed focus. Interest in Federal Union and the forms of federalism propounded by Lothian, Curtis, Streit, Curry, Mackay, and

1086 1087 1088 1089 1090

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 17 March 1944, 242. Ibid., 15 March 1946, 270. Nicolson, ‘Allied War Aims’, 272–5. Nicolson diary, 20 March 1945, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 16 January 1942, 57.

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Beveridge declined during the war. The Federalists believed that an ambitious pooling of the machinery of political sovereignty by Europe's nation-states was the necessary foundation for European integration. The exponents of a re-emergent approach—Functionalism—asserted that stronger unity would follow if nation-states increased their collaborative efforts to reduce economic competitiveness and restrain nationalism. The Federal Unionists emphasized integration on the basis of territory, while the Functionalists emphasized interdependence on the basis of the connecting activities and functions of the nation-state. Two works established the boundaries of the ‘New Europe’ debate— E. H. Carr's book, Conditions of Peace (1942), and David Mitrany's tract, A Working Peace System (1943). Peter Wilson has described these works, without exaggeration, as being ‘in their range, depth, and originality the 1091 Two issues two most important contributions to wartime British thought about postwar European and, indeed, world reconstruction’. were central to the debate: national sovereignty and national self-determination. Of these, ‘The idea of restricting state sovereignty by creating 1092 a federal or some other kind of international authority became the dominant idea of the period’. Carr insisted that in planning Europe's future, long-dominant assumptions such as the desire of all peoples for self-determination through the 1093 nation-state must be questioned. He also described the conception of the balance of power as ‘irretrievably bankrupt’. In his strictures on Federal Union and the United States of Europe, Carr observed that ‘legalistic discussions about sovereignties, leagues and federations may serve as a red herring to divert public opinion from those practical issues of cooperation and interdependence, military and economic, on which the future depends’. Because Britain's post-war position among the Great Powers was difficult to predict, she must engage with Europe rather than relapse into the community of the English-speaking peoples. The idea of a Pax Anglo-Saxonica as a force in international society had gone the way of the dodo. Carr concluded confidently that the United States, whose interests were bound up with the security of Britain, 1094 would undoubtedly support the British in maintaining their influence on the Continent. Nicolson's reaction to Conditions of Peace was mixed. He thought it ‘an interesting book—but ill tempered,’ and reflected that Carr had tried ‘to 1095 Two articles in The Times in late 1943 (written by make a superior synthesis out of other people's mistakes…He has not got a clear mind’. Carr, that newspaper's Assistant Editor from 1941 to 1946), were better received. The first

1091 1092 1093 1094 1095

P. Wilson, ‘The New Europe Debate in Wartime Britain’, in P. Murray and P. Rich (eds.), Visions of European Unity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 39. Ibid., 47. E. H. Carr, Conditions of Peace (London: Macmillan, 1942), xxi, 199. Ibid., 165, 200. Nicolson diary, 7, 13 December 1942, Balliol College.

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advanced the case for more concrete political and economic approaches to European federation. Nicolson had been advocating this since early 1096 1940. He was even more receptive to the second article entitled ‘The Unity of Europe’, in which Carr eschewed the imposition of a New European Order through federalist structures, argued that if Europe were treated as a functional whole it would develop its own common political institutions, stressed the need for ‘unified European organs of control for essential services’, and insisted that ‘the broader unity of Europe’ 1097 must encompass Germany. Nicolson's thinking on European integration at this time was essentially functionalist. In the mid-1940s at least, he agreed with Carr that ‘the functional unity of Europe furnishes the soil in which political unity will have to grow. Out of the processes of unification for purposes of military security, of reconstruction, of transport, and of other vital services new constitutional forms will evolve 1098 whose precise shape it would be hazardous and unprofitable to predict’. There is no evidence that Mitrany influenced Nicolson's thinking directly, but he was responsible for ‘the conceptualization and systematic 1099 In varying degrees both men were sceptical of the role of universal exposition of a new form of international political organization’. (World State) and regional (United States of Europe) federalist structures in sustaining political integration. Each believed that the most effective means of achieving unity were medium- and small-scale gradualist ones. Like Carr, they valued the organic growth resulting from increased economic, social, and sentimental attachment and connectedness. Mitrany had defined Functionalism's role in international relations as one of removing ‘the need and the wish for changes of frontiers’. Accordingly, ‘The functional approach may be justifiably expected to do precisely that: it would help the growth of such positive and constructive common work, of common habits and interests, making frontier lines meaningless by overlaying them with a natural growth of 1100 common activities and common administrative agencies’. Although Carr envisaged some form of European unification, Mitrany did not. For Carr and Mitrany (as indeed, for Nicolson)

1096

The Times, 20 November 1943, 5; Nicolson, ‘Allied War Aims’, 274; Diary, 20 November 1943, Balliol College. The Times, 10 December 1943, 5; Nicolson diary, 10 December 1943, Balliol College. 1098 The Times, 10 December 1943, 5; H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 16 January 1942, 57. 1099 C. Navari, ‘David Mitrany and International Functionalism’, in D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.), Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 236. 1100 D. Mitrany, A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs; New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), 26–7. 1097

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social and economic forces were the principal determinants of community, and they underlay political union, not vice versa.

While Functionalism replaced Federalism as the dominant school of inquiry in the field at the height of the war, Nicolson's works display few exact and coherent parallels with functionalist thinking. Mitrany, for example, questioned the idea of a ‘“union of peoples”’ advanced by some international relations writers (including Nicolson) as an alternative to that of a ‘“union of states”’. He called the former impractical and 1102 In contrast, in January 1941, Nicolson had emphasized that a democratic European ‘New Order’ would consist of ‘a community illogical. of free peoples…a union of peoples, each one of whom will sacrifice something of its political and economic independence for the good and 1103 for the defence of the community as a whole’. Nicolson differed from Mitrany, arguing for limitations on the process of organic union. He recommended that member-states have the power to determine their own social structure, tariffs, and migration policies. They should also be permitted some financial control over their 1104 security. Nicolson's place in the New Europe debate has been accurately summed up by Peter Wilson: ‘A functionalist future for Europe 1105 In a number of respects, Nicolson was one such individual. was embraced by all those who, either in whole or in part, rejected federalism’. By the late 1940s, the sharpness of Carr and Mitrany's analyses had been blunted by events, although their works continue to be seen as seminal contributions to the literature of European and international organization. After the war, Nicolson's thinking, while still influenced by functionalist ideas, changed direction. In May 1944, Nicolson explained that the principles and traditions of British foreign policy must remain, as they always had been, dual ones: in character, general and special, in scope, worldwide and local, oceanic and Continental. He also lamented the British Government's ‘uncertain 1106 and timid’ attitude towards Europe. His fear of the USSR persisted throughout 1944 and 1945, and Nicolson was certain that this was not the time for Britain to join a European federation. In the short-term, assistance from the British Dominions and alliance with the United States would best guarantee her independence and security. Nicolson never underplayed the military or sentimental importance to Britain of her American connection. Nevertheless, by

1101

Wilson, ‘The New Europe Debate in Wartime Britain’, 57. Mitrany, A Working Peace System, 10–11. 1103 H. Nicolson, Progress: Sweden and the New Europe (Address to the Anglo-Swedish Society, 28 January 1941), in Friendship, Progress, Civilisation (London: The Anglo-Swedish Society, 1941), 14. 1104 H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 12 July 1943, Curtis Papers, Ms 27, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 1105 Wilson, ‘The New Europe Debate in Wartime Britain’, 54. 1106 H. Nicolson, Hansard, 24 May 1944, 788. 1102

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December 1945 he was promoting the idea of a French-led European union. The proposal revealed a shift in his thinking from functionalism to a more federalist approach: The idea, in its cultural, ethical and psychological aspect, is unquestionably valuable. It is in this sense that it should serve as a criticism, and even as a corrective, of those conceptions of “universality” which are today again so fashionable. It implies indeed that those who desire an expanded internationalism should start from an inner nucleus of cohesion, and thereafter extend outwards. This is surely a more prudent method of procedure than that which is so frequently advocated, by which the principle of universality is laid down at the outset, and the subsequent stages of cohesion are left until later. Without some initial sense of cohesion, no institutional devices, no blue prints, will in the end prove effective. The element of cohesion is provided by an instinctive sense of unity…We are psychologically so constituted that we find it difficult emotionally to identify ourselves with causes, areas or communities which are too dissimilar or too remote; and since “patriotism” is a more constant human emotion than economics, and implies the identification of self with some 1107 wider community, it is by the enlargement of patriotism that the sense of cohesion can be widened. Nicolson concluded in a mood of restrained optimism: Thus, whereas the creation of a world-patriotism, in that it ignores the ordinary functioning of human emotions, is a remote ideal, the creation of European patriotism, based upon an already existing sense of similarity and contiguity, is in no sense a fantastic ideal. Instead of starting from some universal dogma of brotherhood, you would start to build slowly upon the foundations of an inward community 1108 of tradition, culture, feeling and purposes. It has been in this manner that all stable federations have been formed. Early in 1947, Nicolson was invited to join Winston Churchill's Committee on United Europe, which advocated the ending of war through regional (European) association and eventually world government, while reserving for Britain a position of independence and separateness from Europe. Nicolson admired Churchill, but had doubts about his abilities in this arena. ‘Churchill possesses acute political instinct rather than deep political philosophy,’ he told Lionel Curtis. ‘His love of action blinds him to ideas, and part of his force in times of danger is that his 1109 ideas are few, simple, and common to all. But his distrust of theory is a weakness when it comes to reconstruction’. Because of Nicolson's lukewarm response to the Churchill Committee's articles of intellectual association, his name was not among the list of members announced on 18 January (it included Curtis and Gilbert Murray). The

1107 1108 1109

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 14 December 1945, 566. Ibid. H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 19 August 1943, Curtis Papers, Ms 27, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

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Committee's manifesto stated that only world government could eliminate war; in the meantime regional federations must prepare the 1110 ground. Nevertheless, Nicolson was obviously still considered a fish worth catching. In June 1947, Denis Rhodes, the Secretary of a committee bent on encouraging European economic integration (one whose members wished to avoid too close an association with the Churchill group), 1111 By January 1948, Nicolson was becoming preoccupied with the approached Nicolson for advice and assistance—without success. question of how Britain could expand her relations with the European Powers. Assuming this took an institutional form, he asked, should it be another Entente Cordiale (1904), a new system of alliances, a Western bloc, a customs union, a federation, or a union? ‘Such terms have been 1112 bandied about for years,’ he observed, ‘and have become symbols of theories’. 1113

The liberal realist had reservations about Ronald Mackay's later proposals for unifying Europe. In Britain in Wonderland (1948), Mackay advocated a ‘United States of Western Europe’ resting on alternative political and economic systems to those now in place in Western nation1114 In the House of Commons on states. Continental federations arranged on this basis would eventually merge to form a world government. 18 March 1948, Mackay (a Labour MP from 1946 to 1951) moved that a motion regarding European Union be debated (it had the support of some 120 MPs). Mackay proposed the creation of a short-term political federation based on a ‘Council of Western Europe’. He also envisaged the establishment of a European Federation with a constitution founded on the principles of common citizenship, political freedom, and 1115 representative government. Given the great sacrifices of national sovereignty that this would entail, Nicolson insisted that a democratic federation of Europe was as yet neither practicable nor necessary, and that its development would depend on two factors: There must exist, in the first place, some wide and deep community of race, language, creed or political tradition. In the second place, there must exist some geographical isolation, some physical identity, some sharply defined outline. Neither of these two hypotheses is present in Western Europe today. Such community of feeling as exists does not penetrate below the governmental or departmental level; 1116 and the eastern edge of Europe melts away into forests of birch and sand.

1110 1111 1112 1113 1114 1115 1116

Nicolson diary, 18 January 1947, Balliol College. The first ‘United Europe’ conference (known also as ‘The Congress of Europe’) took place at The Hague between 7 and 10 May 1948. Churchill acted as honorary chairman. Nicolson diary, 3 June 1947, Balliol College. Harold Butler chaired the Committee's British section. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 30 January 1948, 132. R. W. G. Mackay, Britain in Wonderland (London: Victor Gollancz, 1948); Nicolson diary, 5 April 1948, Balliol College. Mackay, Britain in Wonderland, 19–23. R. W. G. Mackay, Hansard, 18 March 1948, 2302–3. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 26 March 1948, 372.

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Other impediments were also present: If the psychological obstacles to federation are for these reasons, and for an unforeseeable period, insurmountable, the institutional difficulties are as great. It is not reasonable to imagine that Russia and her satellites would be anything but bitterly hostile to any such federation; nor, in the face of such hostility, would it be prudent to count upon the whole-hearted co-operation of the three Scandinavian States. Our own relations with the Dominions, some of whom during the next fifty years will be on the way to becoming world Powers, would not be strengthened by any such federal organi-sation; they have, in fact, always been averse from any federal constitution even among themselves. The problem of representation, and voting powers, in any federal Assembly would create a sorry wrangle, nor is it to be supposed that the masses in this or any other country would willingly accept the dictates of [a European or] an international Government which would appear to them both irreplaceable and remote. The surrender of national sovereignty would, 1117 when it came to the point, appear as the surrender of acquired rights and interests. Nicolson speculated (without explanation) that Mackay's plan would be realizable in ad 2048. Soon after the Council of Europe met for the first time (in Strasbourg) in August 1949, an ambivalent Nicolson asked whether the organization would mark ‘a creative advance towards European unity’ or whether it would become merely the stage for ‘many magnificent speeches and a few meaningless formulas’. Would its Committee of Ministers and its Consultative Assembly evolve into a European Government and Parliament responsible for framing a constitution for a federal Europe, a revival of the Council and Assembly of the League of Nations (a form of Amphictyonic Council which met only at times of crisis to organize common action against an external threat), or the precursor to a broad cooperative arrangement that would ultimately be integrated into a wider North Atlantic defence and security 1118 Nicolson's views on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also formed in 1949, were mixed. While certain that its arrangement? emergence was ‘a great event’ that might ‘redress the balance of power’, he feared that it could also divert to armaments resources needed for 1119 European economic recovery. 1120

The atmosphere of Strasbourg was one of ‘unreality’, and Nicolson advised the Europeanists to emulate Coudenhove-Kalergi's aims (but not necessarily his methods). He reiterated the Count's decade-old objectives: a European military alliance with a common air fleet, a European Court of Arbitration, a European customs and currency union, and a broad European

1117 1118 1119 1120

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 26 March 1948, 372. Ibid., 12 August 1949, 203. Nicolson diary, 18 March, 1 April 1949, Balliol College. Ibid., 28 June 1949.

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culture rooted in the national cultures of Europe's nation-states. His urgings still radiated a functionalist air, but they were unquestionably those of one finding his own way towards a European federalist philosophy. In the early 1950s, after which time he wrote nothing of note on the subject, Nicolson's views on European integration had a clear liberal realist stamp. In April 1952, he took part in a BBC Forum on Foreign Affairs, which included Ronald Mackay and the historian, Alan Bullock. Nicolson shared the majority view that Britain must henceforth regard the United States, rather than the European democracies, as her principal defence partner, since ‘a federal Europe in the sense of the third Great Power is too uncertain to be counted on as an element of force’. He also agreed with the position of the so-called ‘Oxford Radicals’, whose leader, Bullock, advocated a policy of ‘“containment”’ in 1122 combination with an ‘active’ rather than a ‘passive’ defence policy. Nicolson's outlook on European integration had altered direction a number of times since the late 1930s when it was an amalgam of realist and idealist approaches. In October 1939, he predicted the future unification of Europe and envisaged Britain, France, and Germany as its bulwarks. However, the realist in Nicolson cautioned against Pan-Europa and its leader's optimism about how long this process would take. His scepticism increased after the outbreak of war, the collapse of French willpower and arms confirming his belief that the first priority for nation-states would long remain their national interest. Serious experiments in European unity would have to wait. Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Nicolson struggled with the questions of the form an integrated Europe should take, of how Britain could best assist in forging European unification, and of the ways in which she could preserve her status as a Great Power sandwiched between an American Goliath and what would probably become a European Goliath. His most disquieting fear was that, as British Commonwealth member-states slipped away to emerge as Powers in their own right, Britain could be left as a third-rate Power. The liberal realist sought to reconcile present realism and future practical idealism. Britain must improve her economic, social, and sentimental links with Europe, reject ambitious federalist attempts at European governance, and work steadily towards the Pax Europaica through educational, economic, social, and structural means. The careful, incremental practicality of Aristotle, which stressed what was achievable in pursuing a goal such as European unity, was ever present; not for Nicolson the all-embracing federalist blueprints of Lord Lothian and Lionel Curtis rooted in 1123 the ‘“new liberalism”’ or ‘liberal idealism’ of T. H. Green.

1121

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 12 August 1949, 203. Nicolson diary, 30 April 1952, Balliol College. 1123 C. Navari, ‘Chatham House and the Broad Church View of British Foreign Policy’, in A. Bosco and C. Navari (eds.), Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1994), 345. 1122

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Having experienced two world wars, Nicolson had no wish to see international society forever poised on a knife-edge of economic nationalism and conflict. Human nature, and the character of international society, was one of evolution, not one of stasis, and the way forward lay through integration and peace. The liberal realist insisted that the exercise of Aristotelian prudence and practical statecraft in pursuing idealist political goals would best serve the ends of European unity. Chatham House's liberal idealists advocated ‘personal and institutionalised cooperation 1124 While Nicolson admired the approaches of the practical idealists between individuals and groups, together with the eschewing of conflict’. and the ideas of some utopians, he believed that history had demonstrated their deficient understanding of human nature, of power, and of the 1125 character of change in international society. For him, a European federation would only develop as a result of complex, organic growth, and not as an outcome of imposed institutional reform.

FORMS OF INTEGRATION Nicolson's philosophy of world government represented an extension of his thinking on European integration. During the twentieth century, as Adam Roberts has made clear, the United Nations (and, it may be said, the League of Nations), far from reading the nation-state's last rites, was instrumental in establishing its continuing significance as a political unit. ‘The old society of states has been overlaid with, but not replaced by, elements of a more uniform and structured world of international law and organization’, which have strengthened both the nation-state 1126 The activities of the League of Nations (1920–46) and its successor the United Nations (founded 1945) and international organization. have, however, not stifled inquiry into other means of preventing war and securing peace through international institutions. When Nicolson began to think seriously about world government, a sizeable literature on the subject already existed. In 1914, Sinclair 1127 The broad Kennedy had envisaged a federation of Britain, the USA, Canada, Newfoundland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. outlines of the debate were established by 1930, and it was within these boundaries that Nicolson's

1124

C. Navari, ‘Chatham House and the Broad Church View of British Foreign Policy’, in A. Bosco and C. Navari (eds.), Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (London, New York: Lothian Foundation Press, 1994), 347. 1125 Nicolson diary, 7 December 1955, Balliol College. 1126 A. Roberts, ‘Towards a World Community? The United Nations and International Law’, in M. Howard and Wm. R. Louis (eds.), The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 317. 1127 S. Kennedy, The Pan-Angles: A Consideration of the Federation of the Seven English-Speaking Nations (London: Longmans, Green, 1914), 80–1, 193.

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contribution to the subject would be made over the next three decades. The two main schools of opinion were those of world federalism and international organization. As Inis L. Claude has written of their exponents: ‘The fundamental difference between them is that the former think in terms of governmental institutions…whereas the latter emphasize the ideal of obtaining governmental results by whatever methods may be 1128 tried and found useful’. Nicolson agreed with elements of the diagnosis but not the treatment regime for international society's ills put forward by the Christian idealist denizens of Chatham House, Lord Lothian and Lionel Curtis, and the economist, Lionel Robbins. In The Prevention of War (1923), Lothian (Philip Kerr) proclaimed that, in the absence of machinery to resolve differences arising from territorial and economic nationalism, peace must be secured in interstate relations as it is in intrastate dealings—by law reinforced with power. Such a change would help to bring about the 1129 ‘national self-government’ which is ‘the only foundation upon which world unity and world peace can rest’. In Civitas Dei Lionel Curtis 1130 The agnostic Nicolson disliked the book, labelling it advanced the case for a world government resting on Christian principles. 1131 Curtis argued that an international commonwealth or world government would succeed the nation‘sentimentality dressed as scholarship’. state as the latter had superseded tribal life. He warned, however, that such a government would endure only if anchored in Christian 1132 The member-states of the British Commonwealth and Empire offered the best present stepping-stone to a world teaching. 1133 1134 —a supremely ill-timed utopian schema for its day. commonwealth Curtis claimed that the integration of a unified Europe, the British Commonwealth and Empire, and the United States would ensure peace for 1135 Lionel Robbins asserted that not capitalism but nationalism and the nation-state—‘a political structure which has outlived its a generation. 1136 utility’—was in urgent need of liberal reform. However, Nicolson was more sanguine, believing that ‘[the] issue capitalism-communism, if not actually out of date, is a transitory statement of [the] issue competition-cooperation, individualism-collectivism…Our political genius 1137 should be able to find a way between these two’.

1128 1129 1130 1131 1132 1133 1134 1135 1136 1137

I. L. Claude, Jr., Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization, 4th edn. (New York: Random House, 1971), 434. P. Kerr and L. Curtis, The Prevention of War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1923), 49, 51–2, 61–2. Curtis, Civitas Dei, vol. 1, 281–9. H. Nicolson, Review of L. Curtis, Civitas Dei (1934), Daily Telegraph, 6 April 1934, 6. Curtis, Civitas Dei, vol. 2, 523–35. Curtis, Civitas Dei, vol. 3, 120, 126. D. Lavin, From Empire to International Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 273–4. L. Curtis, Faith & Works, or, A World Safe for Small Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), 95, 98. Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order, 327. Nicolson diary, 1 April 1932, Balliol College.

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Nicolson believed that ‘national character’ or ‘nationalism’ was a more potent force in international relations than ‘international cooperation’ or 1138 Still very ‘internationalism’; something like five centuries would have to pass before global peace was attained through world government. much a realist on the question of world government, he regarded internationalism as ‘a subjective emotion capable of furnishing no firm basis 1139 Nicolson saw international on which to operate: nationalism, on the other hand, if humanely conceived, was concrete and creative’. organization as a nascent entity. Despite its value as ‘the clearing-house of international disagreements’, the League of Nations, for example, 1140 He lamented the even if the United States had joined it, would never have become ‘a super-state directing all international activity’. 1141 and stated that the absence of a ‘creative international formula’ to provide the basis for Salvador de Madariaga's ‘World Commonwealth’, 1142 main responsibility for devising this formula rested with Britain. Soon after the Second World War began, Nicolson proposed that a post-war European Zollverein and Danubian Federation be created in order to pacify Germany while the democracies established a new League of Nations. All members of such a reconstituted League would be required to surrender some of their national sovereignty. The organization would command an armed force stronger than that of any European Power. Rather than being merely ‘a diplomatic areopagus at Geneva’, this transformed League might well represent the first stage in a ‘United States 1143 of Europe’. In 1939, Harold Nicolson was not ready to write off the nation-state as ‘an exhausted social form’ that must yield to ‘some species of collective 1144 On this subject he was receptive to the views of E. H. Carr, who argued (also in the landmark year 1939) that attempts to organization’. 1145 ‘In international politics, arrive at world government should avoid the classic mistakes of the utopian (naivety) and of the realist (sterility). post-war utopianism became a hollow and intolerable sham, which served merely as a disguise for the interests of the privileged Powers,’ Carr wrote. ‘The realist performs an indispensable service in unmasking it. But pure realism can offer us nothing but a naked struggle for power which makes any kind of international society

1138 1139 1140 1141 1142 1143 1144 1145

H. Nicolson and V. Sackville-West, ‘National Character and International Cooperation’, Sissinghurst Castle (193?), 21. H. Nicolson, Curzon, The Last Phase, 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (London: Constable, 1934), 42. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (London: Methuen, 1964), 204. S. de Madariaga, The World's Design (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938), 249. H. Nicolson, Review of S. de Madariaga, The World's Design (1938), Daily Telegraph, 11 March 1938, 7. Nicolson, ‘Causes and Purposes’, 392–4. G. Catlin, Anglo-Saxony and Its Tradition (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 57. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939), 17.

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impossible…We still need to build a new utopia of our own’. However, whereas Carr mistook practical idealism for utopianism, Nicolson recognized the difference, seeing value in the internationalist ideas of Zimmern and Woolf (but not in the utopian early Streit or Curry schemas). Like Carr, Nicolson believed that in the near future ‘a world legislature’ could not by itself solve the problems of peace and war. ‘Power, used, threatened or silently held in reserve’ and the observance of ‘just and reasonable norms’ in interstate relations offered the soundest route to 1147 A 1939 Chatham House study group on nationalism (chaired by Carr) described the suggestion world government and universal peace. that nation-states would soon disappear as ‘rash’, and asked if ‘a single world-State is a possible ideal’. Perhaps, study group members observed, ‘The very concentration of power which would be needed to bring such a State into being would put unlimited possibilities of 1148 tyranny into the hands of the comparatively small number of men exercising that power’. Nicolson had more confidence than Carr that human nature and international society would ultimately take on the strongly pacific character needed to bring about a world government. However, he feared that, in their efforts on behalf of European integration or world government, federal groups may inculcate a sense of 1149 Despite his caution about peaceful change, group identity and nationalism more pervasive and dangerous than what had gone before. 1150 It was a far-sighted view Carr saw the nation-state as ‘a way-station en route to some new, unspecified form of political organization’. Nicolson shared. The question of how best to achieve world government was explored during the 1940s in a debate between the advocates of Federal Union and those of Functionalism (though neither the proponents nor the ideas of each were as easily classifiable as this suggests). Clarence K. Streit, the founder of Federal Union, and its President for almost half-a-century, proposed a supranational arrangement of twelve North Atlantic democracies (the United States, Britain, Canada, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland), and three non-Atlantic British Dominions (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), in the areas of citizenship, defence, customs, the currency, 1151 and postal and telecommunications services. This would provide the foundation for ‘effective inter-state democratic world government’.

1146

Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939, 118. Ibid., 277, 279. 1148 Royal Institute of International Affairs, Nationalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 339–40. 1149 H. Nicolson, Review of Royal Institute of International Affairs, Nationalism (1939), Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1939, 4. 1150 J. Mayall, ‘Nationalism in the Study of International Relations’, in A. J. R. Groom and M. Light (eds.), Contemporary International Relations: A Guide to Theory (London, New York: Pinter, 1994), 184; E. H. Carr, Nationalism and After (London: Macmillan, 1945), 37, 46–7, 70; Nicolson and Sackville-West, ‘National Character and International Cooperation’, 21. 1151 Streit, Union Now, 24. 1147

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In 1941, with the Second World War enveloping both the Old and the New Worlds, Streit published Union Now With Britain, a plea for a federation of the English-speaking democracies (the United States and the member-states of the British Commonwealth and Empire). He 1152 Despite their popularity throughout the envisaged it as a vehicle for securing an Allied victory and a comprehensive peace settlement. United States and Britain, Streit's proposals were never implemented. He overestimated ‘Anglo-Saxony’ as a source of common purpose between the Americans and the British. Commonwealth of Nations member-states were already assuming more distinct national identities. They also wished to establish clearer autonomous regional roles for themselves. The linguistic and cultural barriers separating the ‘Pan-Angles’ and the ‘Continentals’ (and the latter from each other) remained vast, and, for the moment, unbridgeable; nor were national governments prepared to embrace the complexities of supranational experimentation at such an uncertain time in international affairs. Federal Union was not well-received by Nicolson. He considered that, in their quest for a ‘New World Order’, the Federal Unionists presupposed a capacity for human cooperation whose existence would make all federal machinery unnecessary. He thought, too, that they were ignoring many of the pitfalls to be overcome (e.g. persuading the United States to lower its tariffs). They also risked creating a body that non-members (Germany, the USSR, and Japan) might regard as ‘a peculiarly unctuous synonym for encirclement’. Nicolson deplored the Federal Unionists' disdain for detail—‘the submerged reefs upon which their fine ship may founder’ (e.g. rules regarding secession and the 1153 1154 Not surprisingly, the realist in him also criticized their ‘reckless optimism’. treatment of aggressive member-states). Nicolson dismissed W. B. Curry's claim that federal forms of government were history's only ‘tolerable or durable’ ones, and rejected his ninepart plan for world government: each nation-state would surrender independent control of its foreign policy, all armed forces must be pooled, the economic relations of nation-states would be governed by an international body, national and international finance must be regulated at the world level, colonies would be placed under international control pending decisions on their future, world communications must be internationally regulated, an international currency would eventually replace national currencies, the world federation must determine the 1155 movements of peoples and populations, and the international community would mould public opinion. 1156

Curry's proposal was ill-judged and impractical. that ‘one

1152 1153 1154 1155 1156

Nicolson was unmoved by Curry's enthusiasm and queried the Federal Unionist claim

Streit, Union Now With Britain, 20–3. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 12 January 1940, 43. Ibid., 26 January 1940, 107. Curry, The Case for Federal Union, 107–16, 133. H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 12 January 1940, 43.

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must…rid the mind of artificial notions about “independent States”’. As Nicolson put it, ‘such notions are not artificial; they represent the organic growth of thousands of years; they are profoundly rooted in the traditions and sentiments of millions of ordinary men and women. Mr. Curry will not uproot those traditions by drafting ideal constitutions…I believe that with patience we can and must achieve something like 1157 the United States of Europe. But is it impertinent to suggest that any such achievement must be based upon reality?’ Yet Nicolson did not reject the ideas of all Federal Unionists; for those of R. W. G. Mackay he continued to have considerable respect. Mackay believed that a world government in the short term was wholly impracticable, owing to the variety of international organization blueprints in need of analysis. He was convinced that the strongest world commonwealth would be built on the foundations of a European and other federations (centred, for example, on the USSR, the United States, and Asia). Mackay argued that ‘people must crawl before they walk and it is wiser to build first a small compact unit of organisation, which has a geographical justification, than to try to erect a World Union for which at 1158 Mackay also recognized (as had Nicolson before him) that the exclusivity of political unions exacerbated present there is no foundation’. 1159 existing ‘anarchy and insecurity’. When the issue of European regional federations connected by a central organization (the latter to operate under the general direction of the League of Nations) was raised at a League of Nations Union meeting in May 1940, Nicolson insisted that the League itself should be the 1160 He considered that the building of an international central organization, and, as such, an important vehicle in fostering world government. commonwealth should be a pragmatic and an incremental enterprise. Post-war attempts at attaining world government must aim at forging an international society combining ‘authority with liberty and power with consent’. It would be a ‘loose federation’ of overwhelming economic and physical power that few nation-states would be able to resist joining. Nicolson was adamant that ‘government, and above all world government, must be based upon authority. The best international charters…even as the best types of social order…cannot be imposed or maintained without authority, or in other words without power’. He defined world government as ‘the extension to large communities of those habits of order and obedience which, in any group of civilized beings, regulate the relations between man and man’. Indeed, ‘that same balance between rights and duties which…has progressively regulated the relations between members of a family, members of a tribe, and members

1157 1158 1159 1160

H. Nicolson, ‘People and Things’, Spectator, 26 January 1940, 107. Mackay, Federal Europe, 116–17. Ibid., 95. Nicolson diary, 2 May 1940, Balliol College.

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of a nation ought…to be capable of almost unlimited expansion so as to embrace the nations of the world’.

1162

Harold Nicolson had no wish to see the expressions ‘world government’ and ‘international organization’ become ‘mystic formulas’ (the fate of both ‘collective security’ and ‘Federal Union’). Instead, convinced that ‘international organization can never be viewed on the shifting sands of reason, it must always be based upon the rock of organized force,’ he emphasized the need for a stronger League of Nations, one 1163 which, through its air force and other agencies, would establish concrete, elastic military and civil peacebuilding machinery. To further this end, in late 1942, he joined a group convened by the Spectator's editor, Wilson Harris, to discuss European reconstruction and 1164 After a few meetings Nicolson concluded reluctantly that air power could not eradicate aggressive peacekeeping through air power. military capacity or ensure large-scale disarmament: Pearl Harbours will become part of the text books of future wars. Moreover an air force by itself can intimidate but not quell, it can deal with a rising but not an insurrection; you must have ground troops and naval forces to follow up your action. It might be an interesting ‘experiment’ to have a Foreign Legion at the disposal of the League. But it would never be anything more than an experiment. It looks more and more as if the future of peace can only be secured by international control of raw materials and production. The idea of a 1165 League Air Force, although a help, would not prove decisive. Nicolson argued that, in the short term, ‘Emotionally the common people may well indulge in a vague form of internationalism; but when the clash of interests comes…democracies will tend to shape their foreign policies according to their own interests, without regard to the interests 1166 Speculation on the possible machinery of world government (Lionel Curtis was in the vanguard of this) or even the rights of others’. prompted Nicolson to write to Curtis in July 1943, expressing his liberal realist sentiments on the subject. ‘I cannot resist the impression that the idea of some organic union (with which I agree absolutely) is being unnecessarily hampered and confused by this insistence on an International Parliament’. Nicolson added: I believe that in the final resort decisions in vital matters are taken in the national interest and that the advice of an international parliament will not alter that fact. The most we can hope to do, to my mind, is to increase and fortify international expert

1161 1162 1163 1164 1165 1166

H. Nicolson, ‘Between Two Worlds’, Nation, 28 December 1940, 651–5. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 10 October 1941, 354. H. Nicolson, ‘International Organisation: Past and Future’, United Empire, 33/2 (1942), 46–7. Nicolson diary, 2 December 1942, Balliol College. Ibid., 16 December 1942. H. Nicolson, ‘Anglo-American Misunderstanding’, American Scholar, 12/1 (1942–43), 21.

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bodies…and to concentrate upon seeing that the self-interest of democratic electorates is by constant education rendered enlightened 1167 self-interest. Federalism, which reached its apogee in 1940, declined as the all-consuming demands of war took hold, and the nation-state again emerged as international society's primary political unit. As we have seen, functionalism, an approach to international organization resurrected by David Mitrany in his A Working Peace System (1943), was regarded by many during the 1940s as an alternative route to world government (his ideas also underwent a revival as ‘Neo-Functionalism’ in the 1960s). Mitrany believed that the League of Nations had failed due to its inability to extend the conception of ‘“peaceful change”’. There were two principal ways forward: to negate or eradicate nation-state divisions by means of a world government, or (Mitrany's preferred method) to superimpose on such political divisions a matrix of international activities and agencies, thereby gradually integrating the interests of nation-states and the lives of their citizens. The fundamental aim should be ‘to make 1168 international government co-extensive with international activities’. A reformed League of Nations would be too loose a basis for this enterprise, and sectional federations too self-focused or too self-interested to ensure its success. Mitrany rejected geography (Pan-Europe or Pan-America) as a foundation for change—the closer the union the greater the chance that it would be dominated by its most powerful member. He also dismissed the ideological form of union on the ground that it assumed a unity of purpose and member-state agreement on political goals and principles which may prove, on closer examination, superficial 1169 or even non-existent (for example, Streit's democratic federation).

WORLD COMMONWEALTH Nicolson never wholly accepted, nor did he completely reject, the federalist and functionalist solutions to the world government question. In coming to terms with Britain's altered post-war situation, he sought increasingly to define a role for his country in establishing a world government so as to ensure that she remained a Great Power. He also wished to create a more collaborative and pacific international society. 1170 Nicolson believed that Britain could no longer act unilaterally, and that in order to exercise any real world sway, she would first need the military and economic support of the United States and the Dominions

1167 1168 1169 1170

H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 12 July 1943, Curtis Papers, Ms 27, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Mitrany, A Working Peace System, 5–6, 7. Ibid., 11–17. Nicolson diary, 24 September 1943, Balliol College.

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in countering future threats from the USSR and Germany. He admitted that working out the minutiae of this would not be easy; ‘the first thing to consider is how we can get the Dominions to take a greater share in world security and how in return we can give them a greater share in 1171 directing policy’. E. H. Carr was also crystal ball-gazing. He advocated ‘a foreign policy which, firmly rooted in national efficiency and national ideals, contributes vigorously and effectively to the building of this new international society’ within the context of ‘a new social and economic order, 1172 Nicolson understood the manifold challenges this involved; he also based on a diversity of organs of international cooperation and unity’. realized its implications for the enterprise of world government. Any successor to the League of Nations, or any attempt to build a world government, Nicolson thought, must avoid the main mistaken conception underlying the League Covenant—that human beings were naturally pacific. Future efforts in the arena of international 1173 organization had to be based on ‘certainty of contribution and certainty of effort’. In decidedly realist mood, Nicolson compared the example of the League of Nations with the plan of its proposed successor, the ‘United Nations’, formulated in late 1944 at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, DC. The latter was founded on ‘a far more realistic estimate of human vice and error. Drafted as they were by men who for twenty years have watched the old League functioning they are based,—as the 1919 plan could never have been based—upon practical experience of the inter-action in world affairs of general principles and sectional interests’. Thus, ‘Instead of postulating a world of universal reason and beatitude, they postulate a world in which conflicting passions, prejudices, timidity and selfishness will have to be directed 1174 He was quick to observe, however, that although greater in power, better designed, and clearer and controlled. And this is all to the good’. of purpose than its predecessor, the United Nations Organization would not immediately alter the direction of the world government 1175 debate. In November 1945, Philip Edwards (a member of the Executive Committee of Federal Union) asked Nicolson to become one of the organization's Vice-Presidents. He hedged, promising a reply in early 1946, and reflecting in his diary: I quite agree that (a) there must be some international organization to which all members surrender a portion of their sovereignty (b) that this organization must be in the position to impose its decisions upon recalcitrant members by force. What I do not see is why this could not be brought about by an intergovernmental association similar to

1171 1172 1173 1174 1175

Nicolson diary, 1 October 1943, Balliol College. The Times, 20 November 1943, 5. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 24 May 1944, 787. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 20 October 1944, 358. H. Nicolson, Hansard, 17 April 1945, 115–20.

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the old League. I quite agree that the San Francisco Charter [that of the UNO signed there on 26 June 1945] is not a device for giving security to all but only a device for perpetuating the dictatorship of the Great Powers. But it should be possible to make some association of strength either inside or outside UNO. What I fear is that ‘Federal Union’ may become an incantation which will blind the people to the realities of the balance of power. Fundamentally what the masses want is to obtain security without effort; it is most unpopular to tell them that if they desire peace they must be trained and prepared for war; it is unnecessary to contrive for peace as among the peace-loving nations; they, owing to their very nature, will be pacific; what you have to defend yourself against is the war-loving nations and the only thing that will convince them is force; a State that believes that it can increase its power or prosperity by attacking its neighbours will be deterred by one thing only, namely the conviction that such an attack will not prove successful. To invent new institutional devices without this truth being at the very centre of their function and programme is to mislead the public and to provide it with narcotics. I shall not be associated with any 1176 such drug traffic. Edwards tried to reassure Nicolson that the Federal Unionists understood his concerns, and that like him they believed in power as the ultimate sanction. ‘Of course they [Federal Union] have their cranks and their idealists,’ observed Nicolson, ‘and that is why they want me to 1177 He declined Federal Union's request. join them’. Emery Reves's The Anatomy of Peace (1946), the world government bestseller of its day, was coolly received by Nicolson. Reves criticized the long-dominant ‘nation-centric’ conception of international affairs, and claimed that religion, capitalism, and socialism had failed human beings and international society, as well as preparing the path for twentieth-century fascism. This was ‘the inescapable result of the conflict between industrialism and nationalism at their saturation point within the framework of a sovereign nation-state, irrespective of whether the economic system is capitalist or socialist’. The Revesian solution to the problem of war and peace was based on world government and law instead of traditional foreign policy and diplomacy. Reves called for the establishment of a universal legal order to regulate the relations of peoples beyond and above the nation-state by transferring elements of the sovereign authority of nation-states to a global supranational institution. If this proved unachievable by common consent, democratic means, and peaceful methods, the universalism implicit in world government must be pursued through 1178 conquest. Nicolson the liberal realist was aghast at such sentiments and dumbfounded by Reves's self-contradictory manifesto.

1176

Nicolson diary, 28 November 1945, Balliol College. Ibid. 1178 E. Reves, The Anatomy of Peace (London: Allen and Unwin, 1946), 23, 88, 128–31, 219, 232. Nobody is so wanting in pity, reflected Jules Cambon, than the visionary intent on realizing his dreams. 1177

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He regarded Reves as a utopian zealot with an outlook untempered by much workaday knowledge. After their first meeting (1 September 1946) Nicolson recorded his objections to Reves's proposals in his diary: His main theory is of course that wars are due entirely to the existence of sovereign States and that the only thing to prevent war is for each country to merge its sovereignty into a world Government…the bits of his idea which are true are commonplaces…the bits which are not commonplaces are not true…wars do not always arise owing to the existence of sovereign States—e.g. Wars of Independence, Civil Wars etc. If world Government existed, then the only difference would be that wars in future were called rebellions or civil wars…nobody would feel his world Government was anything but provocative unless Russia entered it. But she would not enter it. 1179 Therefore his idea was impossible. Despite his reservations about the United Nations (e.g. perhaps too many concessions had been made to the USSR in securing the passage of 1180 Nevertheless, he insisted that limits be placed on the its Charter), Nicolson considered it a fine example of international relations reform. extent of compromise with the Soviets. Western Europe's power was weak, but her moral influence, if used wisely, could inspire the willing cooperation of millions in rebuilding Europe. The form and scale of compromise with the USSR being pursued by the West over the principles of the Atlantic Charter, however, were not only jeopardizing a stable European equilibrium, but eroding the West's moral 1181 authority. It should never be forgotten, warned the classicist and man of affairs, that this was a further expression in international relations of ‘the struggle between the liberal and the totalitarian conception of the good life, the old controversy between the state and the individual, the 1182 The liberal realist reminded his readers that Western ideals could be realized only principle of compulsion and the principle of consent’. 1183 through ‘united vigilance and strength’. Even if the United Nations was up to the task of international peacekeeper, Nicolson argued, Britain had to comprehend the true extent of her 1184 He had ‘slight faith in power if she was to play a useful role in shaping the post-war world and creating an international commonwealth. the continuity of American [foreign] policy’, given its propensity to lapse into isolationism and its vulnerability to the vagaries of public 1185 Nicolson was also wary opinion.

1179 1180 1181 1182 1183 1184 1185

Nicolson diary, 1 September 1946, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 1 November 1946, 448. Ibid., 24 May 1946, 530. H. Nicolson, ‘Peacemaking at Paris: Success, Failure or Farce?’, Foreign Affairs, 25 (1947), 201. Ibid. H. Nicolson, ‘“We Must Burn No Boats”’, Listener, 26 September 1946, 399. Nicolson, ‘Peacemaking at Paris’, 202–3.

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of appeals to blood and culture in Anglo-American relations. In 1948, he addressed ‘the question whether the conception of an Englishspeaking World is no more than an emotional fallacy, no more than a sentimental quagmire upon which it will be impossible to construct firm 1187 He concluded that such a world still existed, but warned that its continued existence and authority in international affairs foundations’. depended on the pursuit of a liberal realist approach in international relations. ‘The future of the English-speaking World should not be founded upon sentiment alone; it must be founded upon co-ordinated power,’ Nicolson stated. However, ‘if we also are not to surrender to a 1188 materialist fallacy…sentiment and…ideals must be ever present’. By the late 1940s, Nicolson was insisting that Europeans (including the British) must recognize the need for radical realignments in international relations: The Western European Powers…although more united and alert than they were a hundred and twenty years ago, are far less powerful…The European balance of power, the old Concert of Europe, has collapsed; the great nations which a century ago protected the bastions of peace are gone or are weakened; Europe herself has shrunk to the proportions of a small peninsula of Asia. [We must] abandon our old European way of thinking and…envisage the situation in far wider proportions…alter our geography…face the fact that the balance of power has ceased to be continental and become hemispheric; that we cannot even begin to assess our present position unless we first discard all the old European habits of thought, and think in the proportions of world power. No longer should we allow the shape of our conceptions to be dominated by such old geographical factors as the Vistula, the Oder, the Elbe, the Rhine or even the Channel. Our ideas must expand outwards across the globe…Our whole conception of Middle Eastern strategy must be revised…Only when we have extended our imaginations to such wider limits can we hope to assess the potentialities of our own 1189 Commonwealth or the decisive importance of the United States. 1190

Nicolson was convinced that ‘The balance of power has not been destroyed; it has merely changed its shape and location’. 1191 (like Carr) that ‘the concert of Europe…must now become a concert of the world’. 1192

After publicly lambasting the idea of federalist utopias in August 1949, Nicolson

1186 1187 1188 1189 1190 1191 1192 1193

He believed 1193

and being admonished privately by Lionel Curtis for doing so,

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 9 July 1948, 44. H. Nicolson, The Future of the English-Speaking World (W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture, 9 November 1948) (Glasgow: Jackson, Son and Company, 1949), 9. Ibid., 29. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 2 April 1948, 404. Ibid. The Times, 20 November 1943, 5. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 12 August 1949, 203. L. Curtis, Letter to H. Nicolson, 15 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

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responded to Curtis's question concerning the limits he would impose on new schemes of world government once the maximum of physical strength had been secured. Nicolson replied that there was no limit to speculative philosophies. The danger to world peace came only when such philosophies induced people to neglect their physical powers of self-defence. He could not resist some provocative reflections on the idealist preference for easy solutions (‘some patent medicine’) over difficult ones (‘a surgical operation’) in addressing complex international 1194 relations issues. 1195

Nicolson's April 1951 review of Clarence Streit's updated edition of Union Now was benign. He now regarded Streit differently, seeing him as ‘assuredly no fanciful idealist’ but ‘a man with first-hand knowledge of international relations’ and ‘preferable to any of the other publicists 1196 Streit conceded the impracticality of some of his earlier who have sought, often hysterically, to arouse interest in the federal idea’. universalist prescriptions. He envisaged an expanded Federal Union (membership would include more European nation-states such as Luxembourg and Iceland, as well as non-North Atlantic ones, for example, ‘the Philippine Commonwealth’). This was an attempt at greater inclusiveness to resolve the problem of rivalry between Federal Unions. Streit also placed great emphasis on the five powers that the dominant European and English-speaking federation would need as it merged with others to form a truly worldwide commonwealth. These he termed the ace of clubs, or armed power, the ace of spades, or productive power, the ace of diamonds, or raw material power, the ace of hearts, or 1197 moral power, and the joker, or the Union's power to grow. Harold Nicolson foresaw a significant problem for the parent federation, one that could endanger Streit's whole proposal. Britons (and, assuredly, the citizens of other European and non-European member-states) might refuse to accept the dependence on the United States that 1198 membership of such a body would involve. On 2 November 1951, Nicolson set out his liberal realist thoughts on how an international commonwealth might come to pass. He finished his ruminations with a tantalizingly speculative, but inconclusive, prediction. Clearly, ‘in spite of many setbacks and returns to barbarism’, he observed, ‘the tide of human enlightenment advances century by century’. A thousand years hence the world's rulers might have mastered the political and diplomatic arts. ‘It may be that, once this perfect condition of international

1194 1195 1196 1197 1198

H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 16 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. C. K. Streit, Union Now: A Proposal for an Atlantic Federal Union of the Free (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 251–327. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 27 April 1951, 552. Streit, Union Now (1949), 280–1, 288–9. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 27 April 1951, 552.

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thought and feeling has been achieved, it will be unnecessary to have any [international] organisation at all’. Despite such innovative general thinking on the question of world government, Nicolson continued to be seen by some (such as Frederick L. Schuman) as an inflexible 1200 realist and anti-federalist with antediluvian conceptions of international organization. International interest in world government re-emerged in the early 1960s. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote at this time that both the North Atlantic and the South-East Asia Treaty Organizations were better equipped to provide the nucleus of a future world federation than the United Nations. Unlike the latter, they possessed unified military means of ensuring order and securing peace, by arms alone and through legal 1201 and arbitral institutions backed by military strength. Harold Nicolson, as ever, moved more slowly than the Count. He was convinced that, while Britons might consent to an international decision affecting their country in external matters, they would be less inclined to do so if such a decision affected internal matters such as their incomes or living standards. ‘Such obedience to an external judgment would only be achieved if the world community became a world commonwealth, recognizing a common law,’ Nicolson wrote. ‘It is visionary to suppose that such a 1202 transformation will be accomplished within a century’. During the next half-century, discussion of these issues continued, latterly in terms of ‘global governance’ within the context of ‘globalization’. As the 1960s advanced, it seemed that ‘the sovereign state, far from becoming outmoded with the growth of economic interdependence and 1203 The international organization, [had] been enhanced in its role as protector of its people's interests and mouthpiece of their wishes’. balance of power would also remain central to interstate affairs. ‘So long as the absence of international government means that Powers are primarily preoccupied with their survival, so long will they seek to maintain some kind of balance between them…The alternative to the 1204 balance of power is not the community of power: unless this means federation, it is a chimera’. The centre (the nation-state) was holding—as the realist in Nicolson believed it would do for centuries. Nevertheless, the surrounding economic, social, sentimental, and moral environment of international society was

1199 1200 1201 1202 1203 1204

174.

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 2 November 1951, 567. F. L. Schuman, The Commonwealth of Man: An Inquiry into Power Politics and World Government (London: Robert Hale, 1954), 467. R. N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, From War to Peace (London: Jonathan Cape, 1959), 160. H. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace: A Discourse’, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Perspectives on Peace 1910–1960 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960), 43–4. J. D. B. Miller, The Shape of Diplomacy (Inaugural Lecture, 17 September 1963) (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1963), 2. M. Wight, ‘The Balance of Power’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966),

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changing steadily around it. This Nicolson had also envisaged. In fact, the forms and institutions of Western international relations were not only enduring, but being imitated by numerous non-Western nation-states. As Hedley Bull and Adam Watson observed in 1985, ‘the most striking feature of the global international society of today is the extent to which the states of Asia and Africa have embraced such basic elements of European international society as the sovereign state, the rules of international law, the procedures and conventions of diplomacy 1205 and international organization’. 1206

The question of how long it might take to establish an international commonwealth is unanswerable. Yet it raises the equally important 1207 David Sanders claims that the more utopian of the twentieth-century one of the degree of reform necessary to achieve such change. idealists ignored ‘the question as to what specific mechanisms of compellance or of self-discipline might induce sovereign states to abide by unfavourable judicial or supranational decisions’ (a conviction shared by Nicolson). As a means of redressing this deficiency, Sanders proposes 1208 greater integration through treaties; however, he admits that the efficacy of such an approach could only be rated as ‘probabilistic’. Ken Booth reiterates two of Nicolson's views concerning tomorrow's international society. ‘The textbook states system with which international theory deals is not eternal…there is no reason to suppose that it will dominate world politics for the rest of time’ and ‘politics are open-ended, 1209 and are rooted in ethics…institutions can grow wiser and can positively shape human behaviour’. The nation-state and supranationalism will continue to coexist in a fine equipoise. As the twentieth century demonstrated, each needs the other 1210 Philip Bobbitt has argued that, even acknowledging the enormous changes occurring in ‘in order to remedy its own inherent limitations’. today's global civil society, ‘the death of the nation-state by no means presages the end of the State’. Although an entity under sustained 1211 pressure, it will endure and be redefined in both the national interest and that of the collectivity of nation-states. Andreas Osiander has asserted that in the second half of the twentieth century another European conflagration was avoided in no small part because

1205 1206 1207 1208 1209 1210 1211

H. Bull and A. Watson, ‘Conclusion’ to H. Bull and A. Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 433. H. Williams, International Relations in Political Theory (Milton Keynes, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1992), 89. M. J. Smith, ‘Liberalism and International Reform’, in T. Nardin and D. R. Mapel (eds.), Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 221. D. Sanders, Lawmaking and Co-operation in International Politics: The Idealist Case Re-examined (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), 20, 24–5. K. Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’, International Affairs, 67 (1991), 542, 545. Roberts, ‘Towards a World Community?’, 317–18. P. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Penguin Books, 2003), xxiii.

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international society had reached a further consensual stage in interstate relations. This stage is of the kind described by Nicolson, one in which peace and interdependence are gradually superseding conflict and separateness in international interchange. From the 1930s onwards, Nicolson the liberal realist maintained his conviction that world government would ultimately be attained. The idealist aspects of his philosophy reminded him, though, that while a reversion to stringent realist approaches promised little or no hope of enduring reform in international relations, nor would utopian idealism provide a solution to the complex questions of international governance. World government and enduring peace—perhaps the most desirable and elusive secular dreams in history—were ones that must be pursued through an amalgam of realism and practical idealism. Yet Nicolson remained convinced that they were goals worth working for. As he asked in December 1940: ‘Are we to admit, therefore, that man is only capable of subduing anarchy within prescribed limits, and that whereas he can achieve national order over wide areas of the earth's surface he is unable to achieve order as between nation-states? I refuse to accept so negative an assumption’. Nicolson believed in ‘a natural evolution from international anarchy toward international order’ and argued that ‘the tide and trend of human development’ is to be found in 1213 However, he never clearly enunciated how a more pacific human nature and the direction of world government and universal peace. perpetual peace would be arrived at. If the classical thinkers had been correct in their judgement of human beings and the nature of intrastate and international relations, how could the Kantian vision be fully realized? Nicolson provided no clues; he did not even seriously pose the question.

A SLOW GROWTH During the 1930s, in the face of an increasingly unstable European situation, Nicolson began to think seriously about peace (rather than 1214 peacemaking) as an ideal for international society. He considered it unlikely that ‘a stable state of peace’ would be arrived at in his lifetime. 1215 His efforts on behalf of peace represented instead ‘a humbler attempt…to bridle the horses of war’. Nicolson shared the idealist view that war could be abolished and perpetual

1212 1213 1214 1215

A. Osiander, The States System of Europe, 1640–1990: Peacemaking and the Conditions of International Stability (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 332–3. Nicolson, ‘Between Two Worlds’, 652. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 1 November 1946, 448. H. Butterfield, Christianity, Diplomacy and War (London: Epworth Press, 1953), 101.

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peace achieved. However, unlike most idealists (practical and utopian), he believed that this would not occur for centuries. Until then diplomacy, and, when it failed, a collective willingness to employ force would remain the sole means of preventing or countering war and 1217 He believed that the refusal of the fostering peace. Nicolson rejected the idealist tenet, ‘The worst arbitration is better than the best war’. European democracies to invoke the League of Nations Covenant in dealing with Mussolini and Hitler had been one of the main origins of the Second World War. Nicolson's philosophy of peace had both realist and idealist features. He insisted that creating peace would demand a decidedly realist approach. His conviction that a permanent state of world peace was a desirable and tenable political goal distinguished Nicolson's theory of peace from that of the realists. This also gave it something of an idealist character. While he agreed with the practical and utopian idealists on the need for sustained universal peace, Nicolson differed from them about how long such a radical change in international relations would take, and how it could best be achieved. In his most penetrating analysis of peace, written in 1960, he observed that ‘the peaceful settlement of international disputes—a cause which has been espoused by philosophers and statesmen for more than two thousand years—has not hitherto proved more than an idealistic theory, and has repeatedly failed when challenged by the ambitions of determined leaders or by the emotions of 1218 popular pride’. Even during the twentieth century, the League of Nations, like the councils of antiquity, had been unable to mobilize nation-states into 1219 Nicolson had studied earlier theorists' plans for lasting peace and was most influenced effective action to prevent or deal with aggression. by that of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who argued that perpetual peace was realizable through a civitas gentium (a society of nations) whereby all nation-states agreed to observe a real law of nations (‘universal laws’). Such observance would prove more effective in 1220 securing peace than organizations wielding only the sanction of force. In his earliest discussions of the subject Nicolson insisted on the need to distinguish between different national conceptions of peace. He warned of the international relations implications of assuming that British and American perceptions of peace were the same. Nicolson argued in September 1935 that, although Britain and the United States each desired world peace, their

1216 1217 1218 1219 1220

M. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1. Sir Norman Angell, ‘Versailles and Geneva’, in Lord Riddell et al., The Treaty of Versailles and After (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), 183. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace’, 31. Ibid., 33–5, 41–3. I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 22–3, 53–4, 67.

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conceptions of peace, and their ideas about how to achieve it, varied. The former, occupying an insular, continental geographical position, and being closer to European tensions, was concerned chiefly with preventing war. The latter, whose position was mainly oceanic and much further from the centres of potential and real disturbance, was preoccupied with elaborating the theory of peace—‘the primary interests of the 1221 one are but the secondary interests of the other and it is thus that much confusion results’. Commonly held hopes of international peace were admirable, Nicolson contended, but they should not obscure the fact that in interstate relations, even between close allies, national interest dominates policy-making. One year on (September 1936) his views on the subject remained more realist than idealist. He insisted that, in order to attain peace, it was essential to first establish, by means of physical force and moral suasion, the conditions necessary for its development—‘the enforcement of peace’ before ‘the creation of peace’. Yet, even after this difficult task had been accomplished, ‘the creation of peace…cannot…ever be either absolute or universal. It must always be relative—a 1222 relative creation of peace’. Nicolson's thinking on peace during the late 1930s remained essentially realist, but as early as 1935 his writings reveal a search for a richer conception of peace. He shared R. B. Mowat's conviction that ‘Peace is not simply the absence of war; it is a moving, dynamic thing, a state of 1223 Henry Wickham Steed had similar ideas, and his book Vital Peace (1936) found a receptive reviewer in tolerance and co-operation’. Nicolson. Steed rejected the long-dominant view of peace—what he termed ‘the non-war conception of peace’— wherein it was perceived merely as an absence of war. This made it difficult if not impossible to pursue ‘the waging of peace’, namely, working towards the goal of world peace as a basis for a more equitable international order. Nation-state participation in, and compliance with, the decisions and actions of an international policing body responsible for maintaining peace were essential to the creation of ‘vital’ peace. Steed insisted that ‘all members of an international community are bound, alike in selfinterest and in honour, to join, actively or passively, in upholding a common law of nations by any needful threat or exercise of lawful force…in a world set free from war, the only rightful function of armaments, reduced to a minimum, is to serve as elements of 1224 Nicolson found ‘important and inspiring’ Steed's insistence that, as Nicolson put it, ‘the an—increasingly superfluous—police force’. purely static type of mind which aims only at the avoidance of warfare must

1221 1222 1223 1224

H. Nicolson, ‘America and Us-II’, Listener, 11 September 1935, 429. H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, in The Future of the League of Nations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 131, 132. R. B. Mowat, International Relations (London: Rivingtons, 1931), vi. H. W. Steed, Vital Peace: A Study of Risks (London: Constable, 1936), 322.

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be replaced by a dynamic state of mind determined to face the Revolution of Peace’.

1225

International society, according to Nicolson, was moving towards a condition, not of ‘negative peace’—the absence of imminent or actual war—but one of ‘positive peace’, defined by Sir Michael Howard as ‘a social and political ordering of society that is generally accepted as 1226 At the heart of Nicolson's theory of peace was the belief that ‘the human race is progressing gradually towards the elimination of just’. 1227 In order to achieve a widespread public recognition of this, conventional perceptions of the relationship between peace and war violence’. must change. To this end, and in Kantian terms, he told a Chatham House audience on 28 May 1935: It would first seem necessary to persuade them [the public] that war and peace, that militarism and pacifism, are not, as they imagine, two contradictory and mutually exclusive ethical systems, but that they represent two different stages in human progress. The fact that universal peace will only be attained after the passing of many human generations does not detract from its validity as an objective; it merely means that two or three more centuries will be required before that objective can be reached. All that we of the present generation can hope to do is to advance an inch or two closer towards this far-off divine event, and I contend that in comparison with previous centuries we have made amazing progress in that direction within the last fifteen years. If, therefore, the public could be taught to approach the problem in terms of history rather than in terms of actuality, in terms of gradualness rather than of impatience, in terms of evolution rather than in terms of immediacy, they would come to see that we are not engaged to-day in a conflict between two equally valid principles, but are passing through a transitional stage in which the principle of war is slowly dying and the principle of peace is 1228 slowly gathering life. Nicolson considered a number of intermediate steps towards international peace that would allow pacific thought to take root in nation-states. The first was a reconstituted ‘Balance of Power’, one no longer denoting or constructed around ‘a group of armed and hostile States’, but one made up of nation-states with a mutual interest in contributing to a ‘scheme of constructive peace’. His model was the post-1931 Statute of Westminster ‘Commonwealth of Independent Nations’, which he described as a unique conception in international relations offering 1229 He numerous opportunities for collective action in pursuit of peace, but only through the realist construct of a reshaped balance of power. dismissed the possibility of achieving universal peace through

1225 1226 1227 1228 1229

H. Nicolson, Review of H. W. Steed, Vital Peace (1936), Daily Telegraph, 3 July 1936, 7. M. Howard, The Invention of Peace and the Reinvention of War, 2nd edn. (London: Profile Books, 2002), 2. H. Nicolson, ‘Modern Diplomacy and British Public Opinion’, International Affairs, 14 (1935), 608. Ibid., 607. H. Nicolson, ‘Balance of Power Up-to-Date’ (Discussion with Sir Alfred Zimmern), Listener, 16 March 1938, 570.

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utopian panaceas such as radical federalist proposals or Christian pacifism, numbering himself among those with ‘too little faith, or too sharp a 1230 sense of reality’ to find intellectual solace there. In May 1940, Nicolson argued that the only means of disarming post-war Europe would be to abolish national civil airlines and military airforces and concentrate all aircraft in the hands of the League of Nations, or a body with the same functions but a different name (he 1231 Despite his acknowledgement of air power's revolutionary effect on suggested the ‘Federal Council of the United States of Europe’). interstate relations and defence, he never accepted that European political unity in any form would guarantee permanent peace. At this time Harold Nicolson's philosophy of peace closely paralleled that of the British realist thinker, E. H. Carr, whose conception of it was more sophisticated and idealist than is usually assumed. In his analysis of inter-war idealism in international relations, The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939), Carr wrote, ‘To establish methods of peaceful change is…the fundamental problem of international morality and of international politics…In practice…peaceful change can only be achieved through a compromise between the utopian conception of a common feeling of 1232 right and the realist conception of a mechanical adjustment to a changed equilibrium of forces’. Neither Nicolson nor Carr subscribed to Hans J. Morgenthau's view that enduring global peace would be realized only under the aegis of a 1233 Nicolson's world state after nation-states had surrendered their weaponry (and effectively their sovereignty) to such an organization. approach was similar to that of Sir William Beveridge, whose The Price of Peace (1945) contained a plan for the peaceful settlement of differences between nation-states through a global policing system. The arbiter would not be a ‘World-State’ but a ‘super-national authority’ overseeing 1234 this policing organization. Beveridge, like Steed and Nicolson, aspired first to negative peace as a foundation for positive peace. On 19 March 1946, in his Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations at Leeds University, Nicolson stated that ‘no single formula 1235 Although he would always warn against ‘the use of catch phrases’ and ‘the escapist rush into can by itself suffice to preserve the peace’. formulas’ as solutions to the dilemma of peace, Nicolson rejected the realist assumption that human nature rendered conflict inevitable. There were no single or multiple ‘evils’ impeding or preventing the attainment of peace, Nicolson insisted—only the

1230 1231 1232 1233 1234 1235

Nicolson, ‘Causes and Purposes’, 385; Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, 424–8. H. Nicolson, ‘War Aims and Peace Aims’, News-Letter: The National Labour Fortnightly, May 1940, 13. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 283–4. H. J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 445. Sir William Beveridge, The Price of Peace (London: Pilot Press, 1945), 62, 78–83. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking (Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations, 19 March 1946) (Leeds: The University, 1946), 9.

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refusal to acknowledge that achieving it would be a protracted and difficult task. Yet by the mid-1940s he was struggling to reconcile his experience of the twentieth century with his liberal realist belief in peace's ultimate triumph; he never satisfactorily succeeded in doing so.

THE CREATION OF PEACE While Nicolson envisaged some progress towards world peace during the twentieth century, he did not dismiss the possibility of resort to war by Western nation-states (or a collection of such states) as a means of ensuring their security and defending their interests. In realist mood, he 1237 reflected privately: ‘We think we desire peace above everything, but in fact we prefer survival and independence to peace’. Nicolson was convinced that not even the unprecedented destructive power of the atomic bomb (first used by the United States against the Empire of Japan in August 1945) would ensure perpetual peace. In fact, in a clear recognition of the international security dilemma posed by the bomb, he saw its advent as reason for increased vigilance in maintaining peace. ‘The invention of the atomic bomb has made this difference: it is no longer the fate of this or that country which will be determined by the next war; it is the fate of all humanity,’ Nicolson wrote in May 1946. ‘The preservation of peace has therefore become the central preoccupation, not of politicians and diplomatists only, but of every man and woman 1238 throughout the world’. In his novel, Public Faces (1932), Nicolson had speculated that a pacific nation-state, in possession of a single weapon of preponderant destructive capacity like an atomic bomb, would be able to impose pacis imponere morem (the habit of peace) throughout the globe. He now rejected this argument for two reasons. First, while such a form of warfare would almost certainly deter a potential aggressor bent on territorial aggrandizement, it might prove less successful in dealing with the fear, hatred, and suspicion which also precipitate war. Secondly, serious anxiety might infect interstate relations should any nation-state remain unconvinced of the pacific Power's preparedness to use this weapon. Thus, ‘the atomic bomb, instead of introducing…an era of universal peace has introduced an era of universal anxiety. Cumulative anxiety is 1239 one of the major causes of war’.

1236 1237 1238 1239

H. Nicolson, ‘Democratic Diplomacy’, United Empire, 37 (1946), 118. Nicolson diary, 30 November 1947, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, ‘Treaty Making 1946’, Current Affairs, 4 May 1946, 9. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 12 December 1947, 740.

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The best means of securing permanent peace resided in a collaborative effort by Western nation-states to combat communism's ideological and geographical ambitions. The question of ‘the future relations between east and west,’ Nicolson wrote in December 1947, ‘transcends in 1240 In confronting the questions of international security and world peace, only a realist immensity all other problems that may arise’. approach to the idealist conception of an ‘English-speaking World’ would suffice for Nicolson. ‘The unity of the English-speaking World is thus not cemented by such gossamer threads as those of race, or sentiment or language; it is founded upon the hard facts of self-preservation,’ he stated in November 1948. ‘The more that unity can be emphasised, the more the immense potential power of such an union can be 1241 organised and proclaimed, the more likely are we to postpone, and perhaps even to avert, the menace of a third world war’. Five years on, he gently chastised the United States for not being more ‘consistent, convincing and reliable’ in leading the English-speaking 1242 world. Though Nicolson's position on the short- and medium-term possibilities of universal peace remained realist rather than idealist, he continued to develop his liberal realist approach to the eventual attainment of perpetual peace. He well understood the arguments of Lionel 1243 1244 1245 Coudenhove-Kalergi, and Emery Reves, that the surrender of national sovereignties to a central authority promised the Curtis, only means of achieving world peace. He continued to believe, however, that such proposals would prove untenable for hundreds of 1246 Nevertheless, Nicolson was optimistic that, when the habit of peace had permeated a majority of nation-states, conflict would cease. years. Another milestone would have been reached in the evolution of international society. This was his most far-reaching excursion into idealist thinking. In mid-century, as he pondered the causes of war and the optimum conditions for peace, Nicolson continued to regard his philosophy of peace as primarily realist. In August 1949, he reflected on the disparity of opinion surrounding the causes of war: dynastic ambitions, religious conflicts, imperialist expansion, demographic pressure, and the strains and stresses of capitalism. Again he rejected the view that universal 1247 This provoked a wigging from peace would follow the abolition of nation-states and their merger, for example, into a united Europe. Lionel Curtis, who, after complaining about Nicolson's supposed ignorance of the subject, demanded to know ‘what practical limits you set to your

1240 1241 1242 1243 1244 1245 1246 1247

H. Nicolson, ‘The Working of the New Diplomacy’, Listener, 11 December 1947, 999. Nicolson, The Future of the English-Speaking World, 20. H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (The Chichele Lectures, November 1953) (London: Constable, 1954), 93. Curtis, Faith & Works, 41, 95, 98. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Europe Must Unite, 94, 152–3. Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, 219, 242. H. Nicolson, BBC Home Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 22 September 1946, 5–6. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 12 August 1949, 203.

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realism. In plain words what constructive proposal have you for preventing another war?’

Nicolson responded:

It is not right to suggest that I, as a realist, do not dread and hate war as much as you do, or that I close my eyes to its consequences…Obviously the whole purpose of any international thought must be the avoidance of war. On that we are all agreed…What the idealists always seem to forget is that wars arise owing to the will-power of determined minorities. That will-power remains totally unaffected by anything except an equally forcible will-power on the other side. If it were possible to convert or convince the heathen, then let us all go out among the barbarians and preach our doctrines. Yet if the whole world were as highminded as the idealists, then there would be no need for any organisation or federalism or propaganda. One of the more practical lessons I have learnt in my life is that it is very easy to convince people that their own decent feelings can in some way be transferred to others. I am afraid I do not believe this and I think it a dangerous thing to do to suggest to people that violence can be controlled by anything except 1249 force. Curtis remained unmoved, and continued to argue that peace could be preserved only if the Western Powers placed their defence resources under a single command. The inescapable prerequisite for such a course was the creation of a world (‘federal’) government. Nicolson regarded this as impracticable and unnecessary, and pointed out that the defence capacity of the United States, the Commonwealth of Nations, and 1250 In April 1951, during the Korean War, Nicolson advocated rearmament other pacific nation-states would be enough to preserve peace. and close alliance with the United States in preference to world government in order to ensure British security. ‘I cannot but feel that these 1251 schemes of world-government are an escape from reality; the danger is so imminent that we have no time to snuff the cocaine of illusion’. Frederick L. Schuman criticized Nicolson for rejecting world government as a means of ending war, complaining that his method of preventing war was ‘as old as the pyramids and far less successful. Indeed its only results have been armament races between rival Powers 1252 invariably culminating in hostilities’. In his final reflections on peace, penned in 1960, Nicolson remained optimistic. He dismissed the assertions that human beings were by nature 1253 Nicolson was certain that a deep understanding combative instead of political, and instinctively attracted to violence rather than to peace. of the causes

1248 1249 1250 1251 1252 1253

L. Curtis, Letter to H. Nicolson, 15 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 16 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ibid.; L. Curtis, Letter to H. Nicolson, 18 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 27 April 1951, 552. Schuman, The Commonwealth of Man, 467. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace’, 31–2.

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of war would be required to prevent recurring conflict. ‘My view of the problem is practical rather than sentimental,’ he wrote. ‘We cannot secure the rule of peace by repeating, however violently, that we much dislike war. We cannot estimate the material, by which I mean the economic or demographic, causes of war unless we also probe the psychological causes. I am sure that economic desires, or the need for 1254 expansion, are less operative than states of mind’. Nicolson maintained his belief that in international relations force must be met by strength and not by blandishments. Nevertheless, he was aware of the risks involved in a group of nation-states maintaining international order through an overwhelming preponderance of power. The 1255 Nicolson believed that peace represented the next manifestation of such strength may cause alarm which could bring about war. evolutionary goal for human beings and international society, and that it must be pursued if the pattern of warfare and conflict was not to be 1256 repeated endlessly. By 1960, he was not persuaded that nation-states would share their sovereignty in the form of a world or European federation, and nor did he regard the Commonwealth of Nations as a model for such arrangements, given the increasing diversity and independence of its members. It would be necessary instead to convince nation-states of the great advantages of peace by first establishing a world policing body able to implement its decisions, one whose role would diminish gradually as the habit of peace grew stronger. If this did not occur, the realist sanction embodied in the policing body would remain. As Hedley Bull put it, collective intervention by a group of nation-states through an international body like this, in generally expressing the will of the society of such states, would not jeopardize the harmony and concord of international 1257 society (the possibilities of it doing so would certainly be less than if such a role were to be performed by a single powerful nation-state). Nicolson regarded such an authority as a realist solution to an age-old dilemma, but one with several idealist features. In fact, it encapsulated the essentials of his liberal realist philosophy of peace. ‘It is realistic rather than cynical to contend that peace can best be secured by the threat of greater violence. I make no such contention: I assert only that if the balance of power be on the side of the peace-loving nations, then time 1258 may be won to enable the rulers and the peoples of the world to be educated in pacific thought’. Nicolson realized that unless the theoretical lock step between realism and idealism over the subjects of peace and war could be broken, the situation described by Robert C. Johansen in 1994 could come to pass. ‘Realism's insensitivity to

1254 1255 1256 1257 1258

Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace’, 33. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 1 November 1946, 448. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace’, 43. H. Bull, ‘Conclusion’ to H. Bull (ed.), Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 195. Nicolson, ‘Perspectives on Peace’, 45.

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possibilities for positive change has produced a self-fulfilling dynamic of recurring insecurity in the real world’. Disarmament, an international court, and the observance of abstract universal laws, form little or no part of Nicolson's design for world peace. His experience of affairs and grounding in classical (notably, Aristotelian) political thought, ancient (particularly Thucydidean) history, and modern British historical study convinced him that the sanction of force applied by pacific nation-states through one international authority would be necessary for some centuries in maintaining peace. Although Nicolson's liberal realist theory of peace contained many realist elements, he did share with Kant the central idealist conviction that 1260 There are indications of progress in this direction. European ‘perpetual peace’ was no ‘chimera’ but a ‘problem’ which time would solve. statecraft and diplomacy could well be on the way to superseding power by means of laws, rules, transnational negotiation, and cooperation. In a sense, Europeans already inhabit a Kantian ‘post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity’. Nevertheless, this is made possible 1261 largely by the defence budget of the United States, a nation-state still operating very much in the anarchic Hobbesian world of power. Sir Michael Howard insists on the evolutionary nature of international society's shift from war to peace, and argues that the priority for Western nation-states should be to preserve a necessarily ‘imperfect peace’ rather than to wage war, preferably through time-honoured, non-warlike 1262 Among these Nicolson would have given classic diplomacy a prominent place. means.

1259

R. C. Johansen, ‘Swords into Plowshares: Can Fewer Arms Yield More Security?’, in C. W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995), 272, 275. 1260 Kant, Perpetual Peace, 67. 1261 R. Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), 3. 1262 Howard, The Invention of Peace and the Reinvention of War, 125–6.

8 Practice and Theory STEALING A MARCH ON POWER Sir Harold Nicolson was as much a maker of history, and an observer of history made, as a student of historical events. As Louis J. Halle observed, ‘like Thucydides he writes of political history as one who has seen for himself how its possibilities are constricted by the inherent 1263 1264 Without doubt, ‘there is no smooth and easy path for the conduct of international policy; nor for its study’. limitations of men’. Nicolson understood this well; it explains much about his cautious approach to the reform of international society—hence Lord Strang's apt 1265 description of Nicolson's thinking as non-didactic. As international theorist, historian, political liberal, and man of affairs, Nicolson sought to understand and explain events within a normative 1266 He insisted that the English-speaking world had context dictated largely by ancient Greek and Roman political and ethical philosophy. 1267 Nicolson also considered the political and social principles behind the United evolved history's most influential ‘theory of political liberty’. 1268 He was equally emphatic in opposing all forms of States to be ‘the finest development of the human spirit that this world has seen’. tyranny, describing ‘Hitlerism’ as ‘the most evil doctrine ever invented by the mind of man’, one which not only denied the ‘six great stages of advance in human progress’, but was determined ‘to uproot them from human life’. These stages he listed as the free mind's search for truth (ancient Greece), the importance of law and the sanctity of treaties and contracts (ancient Rome),

1263 1264 1265 1266 1267 1268

L. J. Halle, Review of H. Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (1954), American Historical Review, 61/1 (1955), 88. D. P. Heatley, Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), 48. Lord Strang, The Foreign Office (London: Allen and Unwin, 1955), 193. H. Nicolson, Comments: 1944–1948 (London: Constable, 1948), 116–21; ‘The Need for Leadership at Paris’, Listener, 29 August 1946, 269. H. Nicolson, BBC Overseas Service Broadcast, Sissinghurst Castle, 11 November 1937, 4. H. Nicolson, National Character and National Policy (Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations, 4 March 1938) (Nottingham: University College, 1938), 5.

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Jesus Christ and Christian love (ancient Palestine), the theory of chivalry and the protection of the weak from the strong (the Middle Ages), the 1269 ‘“The Long War”’ importance of reason and scientific thought (eighteenth-century France), and tolerance or ‘fair play’ (modern Britain). (the period from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 until the end of the cold war in 1990), which saw the Concert of Europe succeeded by a struggle for domestic and international legitimacy between the three dominant models of the nation-state—the parliamentary, the communist, and the fascist—witnessed the resolution by unprecedented conflict of what was, as Nicolson recognized, ‘in a deep sense a 1270 moral struggle’. Nicolson's main task during his fifty-year career as diplomat and international theorist was to resolve the tension between realities and hopes, between the disheartening evidence of history and over-sanguine future expectations, and between realism, practical idealism, and utopianism in elucidating his vision of an evolutionary, universal, and permanent improvement in interstate relations. Even for an optimist like Nicolson it was a daunting exercise. Establishing positive coexistence for realism and practical idealism in the twentieth-century international relations environment was difficult enough. Harnessing their respective strengths and ameliorating their particular weaknesses in an attempt to improve the international society of tomorrow was a significant undertaking. ‘No paradox is more misunderstood than that of the relationship between 1271 force and an ethical order,’ observed Sir Herbert Butterfield in 1953, ‘whether in one's own country or in the field of international politics’. Nicolson knew this from painful experience. The outcome of Nicolson's education in the ancient Greek and Roman classics and modern history at Balliol College, Oxford, two decades in diplomacy, and thirty years as an international theorist, was a liberal realist philosophy of international relations. It rested on a coherent amalgam of realism and practical idealism as a criterion for international conduct. Utopian thinking—exemplified in his day in the works of the foreign policy ‘dissenters’—was eschewed. Nevertheless, at the centre of his international theory lay the conviction that peace could ultimately banish war and provide the foundation for a just international order. In such a world an international policing organization, backed by the military strength of the Western Powers, would guarantee peace until pacific thought proved all embracing. International society and its member-states could then move towards world government and perpetual peace. The young idealist of 1919 began to fuse realist and idealist approaches to international affairs during the 1920s, and, by the late 1930s, he had formulated a liberal realist conception of international relations, which he applied to

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H. Nicolson, ‘Hitler's Own War’, Current Affairs, 4 July 1942, 9, 10. P. Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 41, 61. H. Butterfield, Christianity, Diplomacy and War (London: Epworth Press, 1953), 66.

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international order, diplomacy, the foreign affairs maelstrom of inter-war Europe, European integration, world government, and peace. What Nicolson was engaged in—a venture in realist and idealist international relations reform—has been well described (in another context): History as we know it would be unthinkable if it were not possible for men to steal a march on power—definitely steal a march on it and not merely supersede it with greater power…One could conceive the next step in progress to be one which would involve a crucial act of faith in human nature…It would be a thing not without risk—a risk which itself would have to be very carefully calculated; and it is a 1272 measure that could be achieved only by a state that would be acting from a position of power. Despite the indisputable similarities between Nicolson's thinking and that of the twentieth-century realists and practical idealists, he was a theorist who made an original contribution to international thought, and not merely a foreign affairs commentator of considerable erudition. In addressing the principal issues of international relations which have preoccupied thinkers from Aristotle and Thucydides, to Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, to the present, Nicolson surveyed deeply the thought underpinning each important international relations question and addressed it in order to better define his liberal realism. He also devised a sound schema of solutions to the main problems of international intercourse, one anchored in a well-grounded system of theory. Nicolson identified, too, the chief forces at work in international society, and included in his theory an ordered and systematic analysis of their implications for international affairs now and in the future. Harold Nicolson never shirked theoretical analysis of the main concerns of international relations. For him, ‘the scientific study’ of the subject 1273 By this he meant a rigorous approach based on classical philosophical and historical inquiry. His models and methods were was essential. those of ancient political theory and modern history rather than twentieth-century social science. Aristotle's prescriptions for a polis, which aimed at securing the greatest good for the greatest number in intrastate affairs, and at the same end through ‘prudence’ in interstate affairs, were pivotal to Nicolson's international theory. He also esteemed highly, Thucydidean realism, considering it essential to sound statecraft and diplomacy. Yet he was more optimistic than his ancient predecessor about the possibilities of reducing discord and increasing harmony between human beings and among nation-states. These influences made Nicolson a distinctive international theorist.

1272 1273

H. Butterfield, ‘Morality and an International Order’, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 356. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, new edn. (London: Methuen, 1964), 5.

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E. H. Carr, like Nicolson, acknowledged the existence of a ‘science of international politics’, and, also like Nicolson, perceived politics as ‘a meeting place for ethics and power’ in which ‘the fundamental problem of international morality and of international politics’ is the 1275 Harold Nicolson shared as many of the theoretical concerns of classically educated twentieth-century achievement of peaceful change. practical idealists like Sir Norman Angell, Arnold Toynbee, Leonard Woolf, and Sir Alfred Zimmern as he did of the century's leading realists such as Carr, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr. While he held the idealists' belief in the desirability of perpetual peace, and shared the realists' scepticism regarding its realization, Nicolson differed markedly from both as to the means and timing involved in realizing this 1276 goal. He had little in common intellectually with the proselytizers and practitioners of ‘Dissent’ such as J. A. Hobson, utopian idealists (especially Christian progressives) like Lionel Curtis and Lord Lothian, Christian pacifists (Canon Sheppard, George Lansbury), federalists such as W. B. Curry, and world government advocates like Emery Reves. He was also careful to distinguish the thinking of the practical from that of the utopian idealists. Nicolson praised the ‘imaginative realism’ of the later Angell, admired the Christian Toynbee's 1930s thinking, developed a great respect for Leonard Woolf, who questioned the astringent intellectual influence of G. E. Moore's rationalism and its effect on his early thinking as a Cambridge Apostle at the turn of the century (‘We 1277 attributed to human nature a rationality which it has never possessed’), and was at one with much of Zimmern's ‘cautious idealism’. However, Nicolson forged his own path, for reasons that will be explored.

PROPHECY AND PATIENCE While clear parallels exist between Nicolson's approaches to international relations and those of contemporary realists and practical idealists, there are also many differences. His international theory bore several of the hallmarks of realism as set out by E. H. Carr in his classic work, The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939). Nicolson thought it folly, for example, ‘to suggest to people that

1274

E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939), 14. Ibid., 228, 283. 1276 H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 2 November 1951, 567. 1277 H. Nicolson, Review of Sir Norman Angell, The Defence of the Empire (1937), Daily Telegraph, 18 June 1937, 7; M. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 369; L. Woolf, ‘The Beliefs of Keynes’, Listener, 9 June 1949, 993. 1275

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violence can be controlled by anything except force’. He argued that ‘the first element of peace is security’, which is ‘a matter, not of 1279 Nicolson was certain that ‘we have to accept solutions in terms of politics which are not ideal and which are not idealism but of power’. 1280 He was convinced of the need for clear deterrence, ‘since no aggressor will make war if he knows he is bound to lose even satisfactory’. 1281 As for the practical idealists, Harold Nicolson admired Sir Norman Angell's attempt to reconcile the requirements of a strong 1930s it’. 1282 British defence policy with the moral imperatives that he thought must govern its conduct. Harold Nicolson's differences with the realists and the idealists, however, are clear. Despite their similarity of outlook in so many areas, Nicolson disagreed with Carr on two central questions of international relations: the role of morality in international affairs and the prospects for reforming international society. As a thinker in the ancient classical mould whose theory was anchored in absolute standards of ethical and political judgement, Nicolson rejected the ethical relativist Carr's belief that no universal moral values existed or were deducible. He also differed with Carr on the possibilities for purposive change in international affairs, holding out much greater hope of permanently reforming international society than Carr was prepared to contemplate. The belief that the only ‘international morality is the morality of states’ seemed to 1283 Harold Nicolson an especially negative one for statesmen and diplomats. Despite the clear intellectual parallels between Nicolson and Butterfield— for example, the importance of a community of nation-states, the balance of power, limited war, the disdain for moralism in foreign affairs, and the premium placed on ‘prudence’—Nicolson's more optimistic expectations contrasted with those of the English School's Christian thinkers, owing to his classical (rather than Christian) conceptions of 1284 He preferred to place his trust in the ancient classical values as the basis for policy, in the reformed apparatus of traditional human nature. diplomacy, and in public education as the foundation of a more pacific and stable international order. By adhering strongly to Aristotelian and Thucydidean conceptions of the possibilities and limitations of political life, and choosing the philosophical

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H. Nicolson, Letter to L. Curtis, 16 August 1949, Curtis Papers, Ms 58, Bodleian Library, Oxford. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 20 March 1942, 278. 1280 H. Nicolson, ‘Germany and the Rhineland’, in Germany and the Rhineland (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 12. 1281 H. Nicolson, ‘The Origins and Development of the Anglo-French Entente’, International Affairs, 30 (1954), 415. 1282 H. Nicolson, ‘Limited or Unlimited Obligations? What Ought British Foreign Policy To Be?’ (Discussion with Sir Edward Grigg and Sir Norman Angell), Listener, 9 December 1936, 1071–3, 1106–8. 1283 Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 191. 1284 I. Hall, ‘History, Christianity and Diplomacy: Sir Herbert Butterfield and International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 28 (2002), 736. 1279

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realism of Benjamin Jowett over the philosophical idealism of T. H. Green, Nicolson separated himself from both his realist and idealist contemporaries. Harold Nicolson was an unusual combination of hubris and humility, a man often surprised to find that those whom he regarded as his superiors intellectually or in public life found him formidable. His relative failure at Balliol remained an enduring regret and he seemed not to notice that—most notably at Munich—few could match his gifts as an expositor of foreign affairs questions. Distinctiveness and singlemindedness have a price, however, and these factors may explain why Nicolson has been neglected as an international thinker, and why his contributions to international theory have for so long been seen as more limited than they were. He belonged to no ‘school’, and it requires knowledge of his voluminous occasional writings, speeches, lectures, and broadcasts (here examined for the first time), rather than just his diplomatic books, to divine his true measure as an international theorist. In his own day, and until now, his contribution has been much underrated. The surest means of reforming international relations and improving international society, for Nicolson, was to avoid the ‘intellectual extremes’ to which the realists, the practical idealists, and especially the utopians, were prone. There was ‘a middle way between these…extremes…namely, that power, if exercised with determination and intelligence, can be both benevolent and beneficial’. The problem was one of defining ‘the frontier between force and conciliation’ and maintaining ‘some general idea of the areas in which force is harmful and 1285 the areas in which conciliation is harmful’. Harold Nicolson never resiled from his belief in the present and future benefits of a liberal realist approach to international relations, one that sought to avoid extreme realism and utopian idealism. He regarded the Suez operation as ‘one of the most disgraceful transactions in the 1286 whole of our history’, and was certain that ‘it will take years for us to regain our moral authority in the world’. With his Suez policy, the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, had not only violated an international treaty, but severely shaken the Commonwealth of Nations, 1287 now (1956) largely maintained by ‘unity of ideas’. This was a classic instance in which realism and past experience could have provided 1288 ‘moral teaching’ to the politician and the diplomat. The urbane, Aristotelian classicist argued characteristically that, in politics and diplomacy, the standard of ‘the civilized man’ was most worthy of

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H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 29 September 1944, 286. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters: 1945–1962 (ed.), N. Nicolson (London: Collins, 1968), 314. Nicolson diary, 9 November 1956, Balliol College. H. Nicolson, Review of Sir Charles Webster, The Art and Practice of Diplomacy (1961), Observer, 7 January 1962, 23.

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emulation. It was a criterion whose practitioners never separated (or resisted separating) realism and idealism; they were aware, as Nicolson put 1289 The emphasis was on both it with his usual elegance, of the pitfalls of storing the ‘fluids’ of their realism and idealism in ‘separate flagons’. realism and practical idealism, but on realism first as the only secure basis for practical idealism. Nicolson the liberal realist invariably preferred 1290 In September 1936, in the face of increasing instability on the Continent, Nicolson ‘tiny idealisms in practice, to vast idealisms in theory’. argued that in the immediate future, ‘We must be determined in our realism, and keep our idealism very carefully, without abating one jot of it 1291 till we have restored in Europe that atmosphere of sanity in which alone idealism can flourish’. Nicolson's long-range hopes and philosophy of change found eloquent expression in the words of one of his favourite contemporary historians, A. J. P. Taylor. ‘There is a third way between Utopianism and despair,’ Taylor wrote. ‘That is to take the world as it is and to improve it; to have faith without a creed, hope without illusions, love without God’, secure in the Western belief that ‘rational man will in the end prove 1292 stronger and more successful than irrational man’. The essence of Nicolson's approach was enunciated in his characterization of Dwight Morrow's theory of international relations: A constant endeavour to adjust the balance between the practicable and the desirable; as a habit of thought which led him in all the affairs of life, to prefer the tentative footsteps of correct tendencies to the impatient strides of what might prove incorrect experiments; as a conviction that any given set of circumstances, however defective it might be, represented some organic growth within the womb of history; as an intellectual distrust of all extreme opinions or impatient remedies; and as a belief that the practical idealist must proceed 1293 from within, and not from without, the circle of conditions in which chance or his own abilities may happen to have placed him. The Aristotelian means of resolving political problems is well reflected in this statement of an outlook comprising realist and practical idealist elements. It sums up precisely Nicolson's approach to the international questions, large and small, with which he had to deal in his own day, and about which he theorized in relation to the international society of the future. In foreign affairs and diplomacy, it was an approach which rejected utopian solutions to political problems, such as ‘the adoption of a single set of formulas applicable to any combination of 1294 In an article on F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), circumstances’.

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H. Nicolson, Dwight Morrow (London: Constable, 1935), 52. Ibid., 95. H. Nicolson, ‘British Policy in Relation to the League’, in The Future of the League of Nations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1936), 140. A. J. P. Taylor, Rumours of Wars (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1952), 262. Nicolson, Dwight Morrow, 128. H. Nicolson, ‘The Independent Member of Parliament’ (Address on behalf of the Hansard Society, 14 March 1946) (London: Hansard Society, 1946), 14–15.

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Nicolson restated his outlook, explaining that the reconciliation of the moral and the practical was essential to the achievement of enduring 1295 political, economic, and social reform. As an international theorist, Nicolson made a considerable contribution to the intellectual and public life of his day. He believed passionately that ‘co-operation between the peoples of the world can more effectively be achieved by a meticulous though tolerant investigation of basic facts than by any adjustments of current political or economic theories’. In diplomacy (the most valuable tool of nation-state interchange), ‘effective agreements bearing upon concrete points are more valuable to mankind than any ineffective idealisms, however righteous or 1296 comprehensive these may seem’. Sometimes Nicolson was naive about the role of ‘Western values’ in international affairs. His pride in the superbia Britannorum, though tempered by the ideals of the liberal intellectual, could cloud his understanding of foreign perceptions of Britain. Consequently, he did not always 1297 comprehend the great changes taking place in twentieth-century international relations. If Nicolson's grasp of certain aspects of interstate affairs could be tenuous, his grip on the fundamentals of international intercourse remained sound. There were doubts about what the West had unleashed during his lifetime. ‘Would it not have been wiser in 1919 if we had abandoned all desire for mandates, allowed the Arab world to unite, stuck to a rigid application of the 14 points, and insisted on the moderation of the claims made by the succession states?,’ he confided to his diary in November 1958. ‘I am sure that if the Americans had had a free hand to make the peace it would have been a better one and we 1298 might have been spared both the second war and the upsurge of nationalism. This is a sad and salutary reflection’. However, these were minor difficulties with his thinking. The main question confronting the analyst of Nicolson's international thought concerns his failure to explain adequately how the combativeness of human beings—as reflected in the cauldron of intrastate and interstate conflict and the struggle between realism and idealism—would allow humanity to reach a state of perpetual peace. This was the conundrum at the centre of his international theory. Had the Greeks been correct in their diagnosis of human nature and political prescriptions, this could not happen; yet Nicolson always held out hope that human nature would become more pacific, thus allowing peace to triumph over war. If such ‘progress’ depended on a world policing organization, was this really an advance in the Kantian sense? Kant had set out his schema

1295 1296 1297 1298

H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 7 July 1944, 10. Nicolson, Dwight Morrow, vi. H. Nicolson, ‘Marginal Comment’, Spectator, 9 July 1948, 44; The Age of Reason (1700–1789) (London: Constable, 1960), 292. Nicolson diary, 1 November 1958, Balliol College.

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in detail. Nicolson outlined the role of a policing function, but then lapsed into generalization about how an evolution of personal and civic virtue would evolve into a pacific human nature and universal peace in ‘two or three more centuries’. This book has sought to establish a place for Harold Nicolson in the pantheon of twentieth-century international theorists. More particularly, it has attempted to dispel the long-standing, limited perceptions of him as a gifted man of letters, an elegant stylist, and a foreign affairs commentator, and to reveal as well his significant contribution to international theory. It has also sought to account for his neglect as an international relations thinker (as distinct from a highly esteemed authority on diplomacy), chiefly because he eludes easy classification as a realist or an idealist. Finally, it has tried to demonstrate how misinterpretations of ancient political and ethical philosophy, a reluctance by many international relations scholars to draw on classical thinking, and a widespread confusion of practical and utopian idealism, have hindered a clear appreciation of the originality and value of Nicolson's international thought. As the recent re-examinations of inter-war theorists (e.g. David Long and Peter Wilson's Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis (1995)) have demonstrated, several significant theorists of the period were for too long consigned to the corridors of international thought. Nicolson occupied an antechamber due to his prominence as the acknowledged twentieth-century successor to Callières, but he is only now beginning to occupy a main room of the house along with the likes of Carr and Angell. His legacy remains somewhat diffuse, but the calls for foreign policy and diplomacy to be revivified by approaches with many similarities to liberal realism are growing in number (e.g. Ken Booth and Shaun Riordan). The classifications ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ are useful starting points for evaluating Nicolson's international thought; however, they are not and never were entirely adequate. This has necessitated the pursuit of innovative means of describing, understanding, and evaluating the significance of this neglected international thinker. Martin Wight's acknowledgement of the important effect of ancient classical thinking on the 1299 thought of some international theorists (in his International Theory: The Three Traditions), and Ian Clark's arguments in support of ‘the 1300 (in Nicolson's case, his background, education, and experience of public rediscovery of the contextual and historical bases of ideas’ affairs)—approaches adopted in this book—have made it possible to mount a strong (and, it is hoped, conclusive) case for regarding Nicolson as an important international theorist.

1299

M. Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (eds.), G. Wight and B. Porter (Leicester, London: Leicester University Press for the RIIA, 1991). I. Clark, ‘Traditions of Thought and Classical Theories of International Relations’, in I. Clark and I. B. Neumann (eds.), Classical Theories of International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Antony's College, Oxford, 1996), 16. 1300

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The significance to international relations and its actors of influences such as ‘current experience, or recent memories, or imminent 1301 It would be difficult to overstate the effect on him of his classical expectations’ is well illustrated in considerations of Nicolson's career. education, and the tumultuous international relations climate of the twentieth century, one whose gravest crises and triumphant reformism he experienced at close hand. The discipline of international history also has an important role to play in explicating the intellectual and historical bases underlying theoretical approaches to the questions and events of international relations (and, for that matter, the international thought of 1302 As E. H. Carr insisted, ‘before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment. individual theorists such as Nicolson). The historian, being an individual, is also a product of history and of society; and it is in this twofold light that the student of history must learn 1303 For ‘history’ and ‘historian’, the words ‘international theory’ and ‘international theorist’ could easily be substituted. to regard him’. Like Sir Herbert Butterfield, Nicolson the seasoned diplomat, politician, and international theorist was under no illusions that ‘the realm of international relations, more than any other, is calculated to suffer at one and the same time from the cupidities of the wicked, the anxieties of 1304 Sir Harold Nicolson, however, never lost his liberal realist faith that in striving patiently to the strong, and the unwisdom of the virtuous’. achieve idealist ends by realist means and by rejecting utopianism, human beings could transform international society for the better. As he wrote in classical vein, ‘I believe in fact that certain principles are absolute and must in the end prevail. But I admit that their functioning is 1305 Nicolson might have obscure…and that if history can teach us anything it can teach us the folly of prophecy and the wisdom of patience’. 1306 practitioners and theorists should be mindful of the added that, in seeking to translate ‘international anarchy’ into ‘international order’, injunction: Qui patitur vincit.

1301 1302 1303 1304 1305 1306

I. Clark, Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 169. J. L. Richardson, ‘History Strikes Back: The State of International Relations Theory’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 29/1 (1994), 187. E. H. Carr, What is History? (The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures, January–March 1961) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 54. Butterfield, ‘Morality and an International Order’, 343. H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (London: Constable, 1946), xiii. H. Nicolson, ‘Between Two Worlds’, Nation, 28 December 1940, 652.

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ZIMMERN, A., The Greek Commonwealth: Politics and Economics in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). —— The League of Nations and the Rule of Law 1918–1935 (London: Macmillan, 1936).

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Index All Souls Foreign Affairs Group (1937–38), 143–5 Allen, (Reginald) Clifford, Baron Allen of Hurtwood (1889–1939), 143, 144, 145 Ambassadors' Conference (London, 1913), 104 Amery, Leopold Stennett (1873–1955), 137, 138, 147, 162 Angell, Sir Norman (1874–1967), 8, 39, 58, 84, 142, 143, 206, 207 Anglo-Russian Convention (1907), 84 appeasement, 28, 99, 113, 144, 151–60 Aristotle (384BC–AD322), 7, 13, 14, 15, 18, 38–40, 42–5, 47, 48, 54, 55, 56, 59, 113, 177, 205 Atlantic Charter (1941), 68, 188 atomic bomb, 26, 198 balance of power, 74–7, 80, 81, 100, 112, 118, 119, 121, 123, 127–31, 133, 140, 147, 151, 153, 161, 162, 171, 176, 187, 189, 191, 196, 201, 207 Balliol College, Oxford, 15, 17, 40, 204 Beveridge, Sir William Henry, Baron (1879–1963), 167–9, 171, 197 Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold von (1815–98), 109, 132 British Commonwealth and Empire (1931–47), 122, 125, 129, 138, 143, 153, 160, 161–2, 164, 179, 182 British Empire, Second (1783–1931), 63 Bull, Hedley Norman (1932–85), 3, 8, 74, 82, 104, 192, 201 Butterfield, Sir Herbert (1900–79), 74, 204, 212 Callières, François de (1645–1717), 5, 6, 12, 53, 93, 94, 96, 101, 114, 211 Cambon, Jules (1845–1935), 21, 64, 72, 102, 114 Cambon, Paul (1843–1924), 96 Cambridge University, 28, 34, 118 Canning, George (1770–1827), 52 Carr, Edward Hallett (1892–1982), 7, 8, 15, 17, 39, 48, 55, 65, 73, 86, 171, 180, 186, 197, 206, 212 Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount (1769–1822), 76 certainty, 61, 76, 85, 92, 95, 102, 141, 142, 186 Chamberlain, Sir (Joseph) Austen (1863–1937), 23, 121, 125, 127, 137 Chamberlain, (Arthur) Neville (1869–1940), 29, 113, 145, 150, 152 Chatham House, 39, 77, 130, 137, 138, 140, 144, 163, 169, 178, 179, 181, 196; see also Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874–1965), 26, 29, 124, 136, 137, 140, 147, 152, 153, 162, 166, 174, 175 classical education, 14, 17–18, 35, 37–8, 87, 212 Cobden, Richard (1804–65), 58 collective defence, 136, 141, 160 collective security, 13, 50, 59, 66, 76, 77, 120, 121, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 146, 148, 155, 160, 184 colonies, 182; British, 64, 85; German, 119, 137, 138, 144 Commonwealth of Nations (1947–), 182, 200, 201, 208 communism, 129, 199 Concert of Europe, 80, 103, 104, 125, 148, 189, 204 conciliation, 57, 63, 85, 90, 99, 113, 126, 131, 140, 143, 147, 156,

157, 208 conference diplomacy, 69, 107, 108, 134; see also diplomacy, open Corfu incident (1923), 72, 133 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nicolaus, Count von (1894–1972), 161–4, 165, 176, 191, 199 Council of Europe (1949), 176

240

Index

Covenant of the League of Nations (1919), 63, 120 Crowe, Sir Eyre (1864–1925), 19, 22, 121, 123, 124, 129, 132 Curry, William Burnlee (c.1897–1962), 168, 170, 181–3, 206 Curtis, Lionel George (1872–1955), 8, 39, 59, 143, 144, 164–6, 170, 174, 177, 179, 184, 189, 190, 199, 200, 206 Davies, David, 1st Baron (1880–1944), 166 Dawes Plan (1924), 126 Dell, Robert (1865–1940), 130 Demosthenes (384bc–ad322), 40, 113 deterrence, 207 diplomacy, 4, 6, 11, 17, 29, 89, 90, 91; alliance, 153–5; American, 104, 110–11; British, 3, 24, 48, 56, 58, 108–9; Byzantine, 99, 100; cuneiform, 98; democratic, 49, 66, 67, 97, 104, 105; French, 101–2, 109, 110; German, 109; Greek, 32, 98; Italian, 99, 100–1, 109; medieval, 97, 99; new, 3, 27, 32, 97, 103, 104, 105, 111; old, 25, 27, 32, 50, 64, 83, 95, 102–5, 111; open, 21, 49, 68, 104, 106; parliamentary, 107; personal, 106, 108; Roman, 32, 98–9; Soviet, 71, 110; tribal, 97–8; Venetian, 99, 100–1, diplomatic history, 112, 145 diplomatic theorists, 5, 6 diplomatic traditions, 5–9, 98 diplomatic values, 5 diplomats, 1, 3, 6, 14, 71, 94–6, 102, 106, 108, 110, 112, 115, 207 dissent, 58, 152, 206 dissenters, 64, 83, 204 dissenting tradition, 58–9 Eden, Sir (Robert) Anthony, 1st Earl of Avon (1897–1977), 134, 135, 136, 145, 147, 150, 157, 208 Eden Group (1938–40), 152, 153 Edward VII, King (1841–1910), 108 English School, 12–14, 54, 86, 87, 207 English-speaking world, 4, 189, 199, 203 Entente Cordiale (1904), 76, 108, 175 Epictetus (fl. c.520BC–c.500BC), 41, 47 Epicurus (341BC–AD270), 41 European integration, 15, 159, 161, 163–5, 169, 171, 172, 177, 178, 181, 205 fascism, 26, 129, 133, 162, 187 federal union, 159, 165–7, 171, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187, 190 federalism, 39, 161–93 First World War (1914–18), 14, 19, 27, 40, 61, 76, 80, 81, 83, 97, 101–4, 106, 111, 117, 122, 128, 151, 204 Focus for the Defence of Freedom and Peace, 152 force, doctrine of, 79, 84, 147 foreign policy, 6, 27, 28, 30, 39, 47–9, 53, 56, 58, 64–7, 69, 71, 73, 74, 81, 83, 90, 93, 94, 104, 106, 107, 109–11, 115, 118, 119, 121–3, 125, 128, 130, 131, 133, 135, 139, 142, 143, 145–50, 152, 154, 160, 166, 167, 173, 182, 186, 187, 188, 204, 211 Frederick II (Frederick the Great) (1712–86), 71, 109 functionalism, 171–3, 174, 181, 185 Geneva Protocol (1924–25), 122 Gentz, Friedrich von (1764–1832), 75 good relations, 23–4, 66 great powers, 61, 77, 87, 103, 118, 120, 130, 148, 160, 171, 187 Greats, 18, 39; see also Literae Humaniores

Green, Thomas Hill (1836–82), 38, 39, 59, 208 Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645), 7, 12, 48, 53–6, 59, 86, 114 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831), 38, 59, 71 Hill, David Jayne (1850–1932), 6, 92, 96 Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 113, 126, 156 Hoare–Laval Pact (1935), 134, 135 Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679), 205 Hobson, John Atkinson (1858–1940), 8, 39, 58, 206 Holy Roman Empire, 170

Index idealism, 7–10, 15, 21, 35, 38, 48, 49, 51, 53, 81, 92, 94, 117, 121, 131, 140, 148, 152, 201, 207, 209, 210; American, 117; cautious, 206; T. H. Green's philosophical, 39, 208; Hegelian, 38; inter-war, 197; liberal, 177; platonic, 43; political, 45; practical, 52, 56, 58, 81, 139, 160, 177, 181, 193, 204, 209; pragmatic, 81; utopian, 119, 170, 193, 208, 211 idealists, 7–9 ideology, 9, 61, 84, 101, 104; apocalyptical, 117 imperialism, 15, 46, 58, 63, 64, 71, 81 international order, 51, 61–87, 90, 112, 140, 193, 195, 201, 204, 205, 207, 212 international organization, 81, 121, 173, 178–80, 183–6, 187–8, 191, 192 International Peace Campaign, 141, 142 international politics, 45, 180, 197, 204, 206 international relations, 9–11, 12–15, 205, 208, 210, 212 international society, 7–9, 35, 43–8, 50, 52, 58, 61, 68, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 86, 87, 89, 91–3, 102, 104, 112, 115, 161, 171, 178–81, 183, 185–7, 191–3, 196, 199, 201–12 international system, 82 international theory, 1, 10, 13, 14, 35, 37, 44, 45, 47, 49, 53, 54, 86, 97, 115, 123, 129, 192, 204–6, 208, 210–12 internationalism, 47, 174, 180, 184 Jowett, Benjamin (1817–93), 18, 38, 59, 208 Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), 8, 48, 194 Kellogg–Briand Pact (Pact of Paris) (1928), 126 Kennan, George Frost (1904– ), 4, 9, 81, 86 Keynes, John Maynard, Baron (1883–1946), 117, 118, 119 Kissinger, Henry Alfred (1923– ), 75, 90, 91, 108, 110, 111, 121 Lansbury, George (1859–1940), 8, 59, 206 League of Nations, 21, 28, 47 63, 66, 72, 77, 78, 80, 85, 98, 107, 120–3, 125, 126, 129, 131–4, 136, 139, 140, 141–4, 146–8, 151, 154, 159–61, 163, 166, 167, 178, 180, 183–6, 194, 197 League of Nations Union, 15, 58, 141–2, 143, 183 liberal realism, 9, 10, 13, 37–59, 66, 81, 91, 112–15, 117, 121, 125, 133, 134, 147, 148, 153, 160, 205, 211 liberalism, 47, 56; new, 39, 177; nineteenth-century, 64 Lippmann, Walter (1889–1974), 9, 27, 81, 139, 151 Literae Humaniores, 37–8 Locarno Pact (1925), 125–7, 133, 137 London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 39 Lothian, 11th Marquess of (Philip Henry Kerr) (1882–1940), 39, 164, 179 Lucretius (c.94BC–51/50BC), 7, 40, 46 MacDonald, (James) Ramsay (1866–1937), 122, 123 Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527), 59, 100, 205 Mackay, Ronald William Gordon (1902–60), 167, 168, 170, 175, 177, 183 Metternich, Klemens, Prince von (1773–1859), 76 Mitrany, David (1888–1975), 39, 171–3, 185 Morel, Edmund D. (1873–1924), 58 Morgenthau, Hans Joachim (1904–80), 48, 51, 197, 206 Morrow, Dwight Whitney (1873–1931), 27, 35, 209 Moss, Geoffrey (Geoffrey McNeill-Moss) (1886–1954), 130 Mowat, Robert Balmain (1883–1941), 40, 55, 97, 102, 195 Munich Agreement (1938), 150–5, 165 Murray, (George) Gilbert (Aimé) (1866–1957), 42, 43, 49, 143–5,

241 174

242

Index

Mussolini, Benito Amilcare Andrea (1883–1945), 134 Mutual Assistance, Draft Treaty of (1923–24), 122 Namier, Sir Lewis Bernstein (1888–1960), 1, 20, 29, 70 nation-state, 77–80, 180, 191–2, 201, 202 national character, 52, 70, 108–11, 180; American, 71–2, 110; British, 72, 73, 108–9; French, 110; German, 71, 72, 109, 132, 150, 169; Italian, 109; Russian, 71, 110 National Peace Ballot (1934–35), 141 nationalism, 87, 129, 164, 171, 178, 179–81, 187, 210 nazism, 71, 129, 130, 132 negotiation, 3, 6, 21, 27, 62, 68, 70, 78, 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 98–101, 103, 105–11, 113, 114, 120, 131, 144, 145, 146, 155, 202; diplomatic, 19, 56, 101, 112, 114; international, 111 New Commonwealth Society, 140 New Europe, 118 Nicolson, Sir Arthur, 1st Baron Carnock (1849–1928), 25, 84, 108 Nicolson, Sir Harold George (1886–1968),; background, 17; career (diplomacy), 19–25; career (politics), 27–31; education, 17–19; international theorist, 9–15, 200, 203–12; see also diplomacy; federalism; functionalism; international order; liberal realism; peace; power; war North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (1949), 176, 191 order, 44, 51, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 65, 82, 85, 118, 122, 142, 147, 172, 182, 183, 204 Oxford University, 5, 18, 33, 40, 143 pacifism, 15, 58, 85, 196; Christian, 8, 59, 197 Palmerston, 3rd Viscount (Henry John Temple) (1784–1865), 52 Pan-Europa, 161–4, 167, 177 Pax Anglo-Saxonica, 171 Pax Britannica, 64, 127 Pax Europaica, 177 Pax Romana, 98–9 peace, 39, 43, 48, 50, 55, 61–3, 70, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 85, 86, 90, 94, 98, 112, 117–21, 134, 138–42, 144, 145, 147, 150, 155, 157–9, 193–202, 204–7, 210; international, 141, 142, 164; permanent, 11; universal, 53, 211 peace conference (Paris, 1919-20), 20–1, 27, 50, 61, 62, 66, 104, 117, 170 peace conference (Paris, 1946), 31, 61, 68, 107 Pecquet, Antoine (1704–62), 5 perpetual peace, 8, 48, 161, 193, 194, 198, 199, 202, 204, 206, 210 Plato (c.428BC–348/347BC), 13, 18, 40, 43, 44 political theory, 11–14, 53, 54, 89, 100, 163, 205 Polybius (c.200BC–c.118BC), 7, 39 power, 31, 35, 44, 46, 49–52, 57, 58, 63, 64, 68, 73, 79, 90, 91, 109, 139–41, 143, 146, 149, 168–70, 173, 201, 202, 205–8; air, 166, 184, 197; armed, 190; British, 61, 64, 84, 151; destructive, 198; diplomatic, 79, 109, 157; European, 138, 146, 175, 180, 188; material, 190; moral, 190; physical, 84, 190; political, 45, 49; power of politics, 45, 49, 77, 97; productive, 190; raw material, 190; Soviet, 69; veto, 79; voting, 78, 80, 176; see also balance of power power politics, 35, 77, 97, 99 prestige, 28, 72–4, 99 propaganda, 9, 72, 105, 107, 114, 142, 157, 200 prudence, 45, 57, 58, 95, 205, 207

Index Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix, 141 realism, 7–9, 15, 45, 49, 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 63, 65, 80, 81, 94, 102, 109, 115, 119, 121, 131, 148, 150, 152, 160, 170, 177, 180, 193, 200, 201, 204, 206, 208, 209; Aristotelian, 44, 121; British, 7; classical, 15, 121; empirical, 59; French, 21, 101–2, 117; imaginative, 84, 206; liberal, 9, 10, 13, 37, 58, 59, 66, 81, 112–15, 117, 121, 125, 133, 147, 160, 211; Nicolson's, 8, 91, 148, 153, 205; offensive, 52; Palmerstonian, 52; political, 11, 44, 51, 52, 56, 81; pure, 13; Thucydidean, 45–6, 205; utopian, 58 realists, 7, 8, 10, 93, 136, 144, 194, 205–8 Reves, Emery (1904–81), 187–8, 199, 206 Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal (1585–1642), 101, 102 Robbins, Lionel Charles, Baron (1898–1984), 164, 165, 179 Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), 21, 28, 35, 39; see also Chatham House Russia, 69, 71, 103, 120, 125, 146, 151, 156, 160, 176; see also USSR Sackville-West, Victoria Mary (1892–1962), 4, 19 Salter, Sir (James) Arthur, Baron (1881–1975), 27, 143, 144 Satow, Sir Ernest Mason (1843–1929), 6, 92, 96 Second World War (1939–45), 49, 61, 63, 64, 71–3, 77, 78, 85, 121, 159, 169, 170, 180, 182, 194 Sheppard, Hugh Richard Lawrie (1880–1937), 8, 206 small powers, 29, 58, 61, 73, 77, 85, 103, 104, 118, 138, 146, 151 Spanish Civil War (1936–39), 142 splendid isolation, 125 Steed, (Henry) Wickham (1871–1956), 195 Stoicism, 47 Stoics, 14, 41, 46, 47, 48, 59 Streit, Clarence Kirshman (1896–1986), 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 181, 182, 185, 190 Stresemann, Gustav (1878–1929), 123, 125 Suez crisis (1956), 32, 33, 208 summitry, 108 superbia Britannorum, 210 Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de (1754–1838), 76 Taylor, Alan John Percivale (1906–90), 58, 59, 112, 152, 153, 209 Thompson, Kenneth Winfred (1921–), 57, 58, 65, 87 Thucydides (c.460BC–400BC), 7, 8, 15, 18, 38, 40, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 59, 114, 203, 205 Toynbee, Arnold Joseph (1889–1975), 15, 25, 39, 81, 143, 144, 206 Tyrrell, Sir William George, Baron (1866–1947), 22, 23, 121 Union of Democratic Control (UDC), 58 USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), 68–70, 79, 104, 110, 146, 153, 158, 160, 162, 168, 170, 173, 182, 183, 186, 188; see also Russia United Nations, 81, 107, 114, 178, 186, 188, 191; Charter, 78, 80, 187; General Assembly, 78, 79, 80, 107; Security Council, 79, 80, 107 Urquhart, David (1805–77), 58, 83 utopianism, 7, 48, 49, 51, 52, 56, 58, 153, 180, 181, 204, 209, 212 utopians, 64, 178, 208 Vansittart, Sir Robert Gilbert, Baron (1881–1957), 148, 153 Versailles, Treaty of (1919), 24, 61–3, 111, 118, 120, 125, 126, 128,

129, 131, 136, 140, 156, 162 via media, 53, 55 Vienna, Congress of (1814–15), 31, 70, 75, 101

243

244

Index

war, 83, 193–4, 195–6, 198, 199–202 Watson, Adam (1914–), 43, 57, 81, 97, 192 Webster, Sir Charles Kingsley (1886–1961), 32, 112 Weimar Republic (1919–33), 132 Western Powers, 68, 70, 104, 200, 204 Wicquefort, Abraham de (1598–1682), 5, 92 Wight, (Robert James) Martin (1913–72), 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 47–8, 53–5, 59, 72, 75, 87, 89, 112, 135, 191, 211 Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow (1856–1924), 62, 104, 111, 117, 119 Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880–1969), 3, 8, 39, 58, 63, 120, 206 world government, 11, 15, 30, 50, 52, 77, 87, 161, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180–93, 200, 204, 205, 206 world order, 82, 142; new, 167, 170, 182 Young Plan (1929), 126 Zimmern, Sir Alfred Eckhard (1879–1957), 8, 14, 15, 39, 68, 81, 84, 120, 139, 206