page_title: Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
section_title: League of Nations Union
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood / League of Nations Union
context_page_description: Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood CH PC QC, known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923, was a British lawyer, politician and diplomat. He was one of the architects of the League of Nations and a defender of it, whose service to the organisation saw him awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937.
context_section_description: Upon returning to Britain, Cecil eagerly planned the activities of the League of Nations Union. Cecil's public life from then on was almost totally devoted to the League; he was its president of the Union from 1923 to 1945. He chaired a reconstruction committee of the Union in July 1919, his primary aim being to ensure that the Union built a powerful pro-League lobby in Britain to make sure that the government put the League at the centre of its foreign policy. Cecil also sought to broaden the membership of the Union, which had largely consisted of Asquithian Liberals, by soliciting the support of Conservatives and Labour.
  Cecil was an Esperantist, and, in 1921, he proposed that the League of Nations adopt Esperanto as solution to the language problem.
  From 1920 to 1922, he represented the Dominion of South Africa in the League Assembly. In 1923, he made a five-week tour of the United States, explaining the League to American audiences.
  He believed that "the war ha[d] shattered the prestige of the European governing classes" and that their disappearance had created a vacuum that needed to be filled if disaster was to be averted. The primary solution was the construction of a European order on the basis of Christian morality, with a machinery of legal conciliation by which "Junkerism and Chauvinism" would be destroyed. The Treaty of Versailles had failed to create that.
  His belief in free trade and the League were part of his Cobdenite vision of a world where trade, self-sacrifice and international co-operation went together, along with international adjudication and mutual guarantees of peace. The League was not just a solution to war but also guaranteed that civilisation would be preserved within each member state, including in Britain where "the League point of view [ran] through all politics - Ireland, Industry, even Economy...[involving] a new way of looking at things political - or rather a reversion" to Victorian morality.
caption: Encourage Home Industries.
   Lord Robert Cecil. "I trust that after all we may secure at least your qualified support for our League of Nations?"
   U.S.A. President-elect: "Why, what's the matter with ours?"  Cartoon from Punch magazine, 10 November 1920, depicting Cecil advocating a design for the League of Nations to Warren G. Harding
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