The New Commonwealth was an international non-governmental organisation founded in London in 1932 by British liberal millionaire David Davies, with branches in England, France, Germany and other countries. It advocated pacifism, disarmament and multilateral resolution of conflicts through political lobbying and different publications. The organization counted among its ranks leading antiwar and human rights campaigners.
, as well as militant army generals and Nazi sympathizers.[1]
Composition and organisation edit
The New Commonwealth Society was created in October 1932 in London by David Davies, a British millionaire of liberal convictions who had been Lloyd George's secretary.[2][3] Davies was the main spokesman for the Society, which he also financed to a large extent.[4] Among its patrons were Lord Gladstone, Lord Robert Cecil, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee.[5]
The first executive committee of the Society included, alongside Davies, one member from each of the larger national branches: the former leader of the Labour party George Barnes for Britain, the journalist Henry de Jouvenel for France, the liberal activist Ernst Jäckh for Germany, and the businessman Oscar Terry Crosby for the United States.[6][7] Other notable members were Eyvind Bratt from Sweden, J. J. van der Leeuw from the Netherlands, and distinguished academics such as the émigré Albert Einstein, who accepted the title of "honorary founding member", Norman Bentwich, Nicholas Murray Butler, George Scelle, Hans Kelsen[8] and Alfred Verdross, who founded the Austrian branch of the New Commonwealth Society in 1937.[9] The German journalist and expatriate Ernst Jäckh was appointed director of the organisation's Research Institute and vice-president of the Society.[3][10]. Also Walther Schücking, the German judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice who forced into exile from Germany in 1933, joined the Society p. 210. ++++
The German branch of the Society was led by the SA-group leader (SA-Gruppenführer) Friedrich Haselmayr. Their activities were tolerated and on occasions even encouraged by the Nazi regime.[2]
The Society advocated the creation of an international tribunal and an international police force.[11] The Society defended the creation of an international air force which would act as a military arm of the League of Nations, promoting disarmament and keeping the world's peace. Those promoting the New Commonwealth included the David Davies, who became its chairman, others who had taken part in building up the League of Nations Union, and Winston Churchill, who was elected as the organization's president.
In a speech to the Society in May 1937, Churchill said
We are one of the few peace societies that advocates the use of force, if possible overwhelming force, to support public international law.[12]
Some of the ideas of the New Commonwealth Society were later incorporated into the United Nations Charter.
Publications edit
To promote its aims, the Society published a monthly, The New Commonwealth, from 1932 to 1950. It also published a quarterly from 1935 to 1943, first named New Commonwealth Quarterly, later renamed the London Quarterly of World Affairs.[13] Otto Neurath was a member of the editorial committee.
The Society also published many pamphlets and books.
Citations and working notes edit
- Composition
- Aims
- Activities
"David Davies was the main spokesman for the New Commonwealth Society, a body which he founded and to a large extent financed."[4]
"In 1932, therefore he founded, and heavily subsidized, The New Commonwealth Society', an organization which, with its journal. The New Commonwealth, was designed both to promote the idea of an International Tribunal and Police Force and to mobilize opinion and undertake the necessary research. Many of those who were committed to strengthening the League of Nations—Churchill, Attlee, Macmillan, Archbishop Temple, Lord Cecil, Noel-Baker, and others—associated themselves with the movement, which acquired prestige, if not much active support, by recruiting as vice-presidents an impressive array of establishment figures, from generals and Anglican bishops to an Indian rajah. "[14]
"...he was no less interested in the means by which world peace could be enforced. The answer, he thought, lay in air power. An International Police Force consisting of a thousand aeroplanes, manned by volunteers, could, he maintained, satisfactorily deal with any aggressor ... The need for an air police force was a theme he returned to time and again in the House of Lords"[15]
"in 1936, Churchill agreed to become president of the British Section of the New Commonwealth, and the proposal for an International Police Force was publically adopted by the government of New Zealand"[16]
"the millionaire heir to a Welsh industrial fortune, Baron Davies, a former secretary to Lloyd George, founded the New Commonwealth Society, acquiring no less a figure than Ernst Jiickh as its international director, the two creating in turn an institute in 1 9 3 4, publishing a quarterly"[17]
"Led by SA-Gruppenführer Friedrich Haselmayr, the German group’s activities were tolerated and at times encouraged by the Nazi regime."[2]
"In the first week of June Churchill was asked to accept the Presidency of the British section of the New Commonwealth Society. This Society had been formed in 1932 to promote the maintenance of international law and order, ‘through the creation of an Equity Tribunal and an International Police Force’. It also favoured the creation, under the League of Nations, of an International Air Police. The members of the Society regarded Churchill as the leading public figure sympathetic to their basic principles, and forty-one MPs, members of the Society’s Parliamentary Group, urged him to accept. The Group included several of his friends, including General Spears, Robert Boothby and Josiah Wedgwood, and cut across all party boundaries. On June 5 Churchill accepted their invitation
745/1319
Churchill felt it necessary to explain his decision to join the New Commonwealth Society to his constituents. ‘I had a talk with Neville Chamberlain before accepting,’ he wrote to Sir James Hawkey on June 8, ‘and he told me he had subscribed and was a Member, and he thought that as the ultimate goal this was the right thing.’ " [18]
- Jenkins, Roy (2012-12-13). Churchill. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-330-47607-2.
But Churchill was very much the guiding spirit, as he was of the British Section of the New Commonwealth Society, of which Lord Davies a rich, public-spirited Welsh peer, persuaded him without undue difficulty to accept the presidency.[19]
In June 1936 Davies wrote long and flattering but manifestly heartfelt letters to Churchill, urging him to use the New Commonwealth Society as a platform and to become himself the light of world and to save Europe from disaster. Churchill responded with an enthusiasm which was only slightly wary [19]
The principles of the New Commonwealth Society distinguished it from the two most influential components of the interwar peace movement: the pacifists who opposed any use of force in international relations, and the "internationalist" who supported the League of Nations.[20]
"Hans Kelsen, The Legal Process and International Order (London, 1934), p. 15. From his exile in Geneva, Kelsen served as a board member of the New Commonwealth Research Institute. His essay on international law was the first publication in the NCS series of monographs. The society’s ‘Preliminary Opinion on the Tribunal’ reiterates Kelsen’s emphasis on the tribunal as a site for formulating new laws where the existing ones do not apply"
Contributors to the society’s publications repeatedly maintained that the general acceptance of unconfined national sovereignty nullified any attempt to prevent war; only a supranational authority granted the power to restrict national sovereignty could prevent the outbreak of international conflicts.6
"a transnational anti-war organization whose credo appeared to manifest certain entrenched liberal premises of the interwar era." "the society’s fundamental principle—the formation of an impartial international tribunal and an overwhelming military force that would enforce the rulings of the tribunal." [21]
"Unlike parallel organizations, however, the German NCS was allowed to propagate its ideas and maintain its operations until its demise in mid-1938."[22]
Notes and references edit
Notes edit
- ^ Ashkenazi 2018, p. 208.
- ^ a b c Ashkenazi 2018, p. 209.
- ^ a b Anderson, Perry (2011). The New Old World. Verso. p. 497. ISBN 9781844677214.
- ^ a b Wilson 2003, p. 20.
- ^ Pugh 1988, p. 335.
- ^ First Annual Report of The New Commownealth (London, The New Commonwwealth, 1933), internal cover.
- ^ Klinkert, Wim (2022). Dutch Military Thought, 1919-1939. Brill. p. 251. ISBN 978-90-04-51924-4. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
- ^ Ashkenazi 2018, pp. 210–211.
- ^ Busch, Jürgen (2012). "Ein Mann des Widerspruchs? Teil 1. Verdross im Gefüge der Wiener Völkerrechtswissenschaft vor und nach 1938". In Meissel, Franz-Stefan; Reiter-Zatloukal, Ilse; Schima, Stefan (eds.). Vertriebenes Recht - Vertreibendes Recht. Zur Geschichte der Wiener Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultät zwischen 1938 und 1945 (in German). Wien: Manz. p. 153. ISBN 978-3-214-07405-0.
- ^ Ashkenazi 2018, p. 209-210.
- ^ First Annual Report of The New Commownealth, (London, The New Commonwwealth, 1933), p. 5
- ^ Warren, Spencer (1999). "A Philosophy of International Politics". In Muller, James W. (ed.). Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech fifty years later. University of Missouri Press. p. 101. ISBN 0826212476.
- ^ Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1973)
- ^ Porter 2003, p. 63.
- ^ Porter 2003, p. 64.
- ^ Porter 2003, p. 65.
- ^ Anderson 2011, p. 497. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAnderson2011 (help)
- ^ Gilbert, Martin (2015) [1976]. Winston S. Churchill. Vol. 5, The Prophet of Truth, 1922–1939. Hillsdale College Pres. 745/1319. ISBN 978-0-7953-4461-9.
- ^ a b Jenkins 2012, 569/1200.
- ^ Ashkenazi 2018, p. 214.
- ^ Ashkenazi 2018, p. 220.
- ^ Ashkenazi 2018, p. 221.
References edit
- Anderson, Perry (2011). The New Old World. Verso. ISBN 9781844677214.
- Ashkenazi, Ofer (2018). "Transnational Anti-war Activity in the Third Reich: The Nazi Branch of the New Commonwealth Society*". German History. 36 (2): 207–228. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghy004. ISSN 0266-3554.
- Ploß, Christoph Johannes (2017). Die "New Commonwealth Society". Ein Ideen-Laboratorium für den supranationalen europäischen Integrationsprozess [The New Commonwealth Society. A laboratory of ideas for the supranational European integration process] (in German). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 978-3-515-11799-9.
- Porter, Brian (2003) [1995]. "David Davies and the Enforcement of Peace". In Long, David; Wilson, Peter (eds.). Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed. Clarendon Press. pp. 58–78. ISBN 0-19-8278551.
- Pugh, Michael C. (1988). "An International Police Force: Lord Davies and the British Debate in the 1930s". International Relations. 9 (4): 335–351. doi:10.1177/004711788800900405. ISSN 0047-1178.
- Pugh, Michael (2002). "Policing the World: Lord Davies and the Quest for Order in the 1930s". International Relations. 16 (1): 97–115. doi:10.1177/0047117802016001007. ISSN 0047-1178.
- Rich, Paul (2002). "Reinventing Peace: David Davies, Alfred Zimmern and Liberal Internationalism in Interwar Britain". International Relations. 16 (1): 117–133. doi:10.1177/0047117802016001008. ISSN 0047-1178.
- Warren, Spencer (1999). "A Philosophy of International Politics". In Muller, James W. (ed.). Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech fifty years later. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0826212476.
- Wilson, Peter (2003) [1995]. "Introduction: The Twenty Years' Crisis and the Category of 'Idealism' in International Relations". In Long, David; Wilson, Peter (eds.). Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed. Clarendon Press. pp. 1–24. ISBN 0-19-8278551.