Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T23:44:48.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The League of Nations’ Collaboration with an ‘International Public’, 1919–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2022

Emil Eiby Seidenfaden Open the ORCID record for Emil Eiby Seidenfaden [Opens in a new window]
Emil Eiby Seidenfaden*
Affiliation:
History Faculty, Oxford Centre for European History, and Linacre College, University of Oxford, George Street, Oxford OX1 2RL, United Kingdom
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyses the distinctive characteristics of how the League of Nations sought to publicly legitimise itself from 1919 to 1939. Discussing the work of the Information Section of the League Secretariat, it traces the organisational development of this section throughout the interwar years and argues that a preference of ‘collaboration’ through liaison with influential members of the public in the League's member states permeated this section's work, and that this strategy was, in the eyes of League officials, necessitated by the tight political constraints the Secretariat was subjected to rather than the result of an inherent ‘elitism’ of the officials.

Type
Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 368 - 380
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Clavin, Patricia, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazower, Mark, Governing the World – The History of an Idea 1815 to the Present (New York: Penguin Books, 2012)Google Scholar.

2 Recently, see Stöckmann, Jan, ‘The First World War and the Democratic Control of Foreign Policy’, Past & Present, 249, 1 (2020), 121–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 ‘Propaganda began acquiring derogatory connotations among Western publics after the First World War but could still be used to describe aggressive types of information policy. See Nicholas J. Cull, David Culbert and David Welch, ‘Preface’, in Cull, Culbert and Welch, eds., Propaganda and Mass Persuasion – A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present (Oxford: ABC CLIO, 2003), xvii.

4 Walter Lippmann to Raymond B. Fosdick, ‘15 Aug. 1919’, in Fosdick, Raymond, Letters on the League of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Holste, Timo, ‘Tourists at the League of Nations: Conceptions of Internationalism around the Palais des Nations, 1925–1946’, New Global Studies, 10, 3 (2016), 307–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, David, ‘International Exhibitionism: The League of Nations at the New York World's Fair, 1939–1940’, in Brendebach, Jonas, Herzer, Martin and Tworek, Heidi, eds., International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Exorbitant Expectations, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 91–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank Beyersdorf, ‘Credit or Chaos? The Austrian Stabilisation Programme of 1923 and the League of Nations’, in Daniel Laqua, ed., Internationalism Reconfigured: Transnational Ideas and Movements Between the World Wars (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 134–57.

6 Richard, Anne-Isabelle, ‘Competition and Complementarity: Civil Society Networks and the Question of Decentralizing the League of Nations’, Journal of Global History, 7, 2 (2012), 233–56, 236CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas R. Davies, ‘A Great Experiment of the League of Nations Era, International Nongovernmental Organizations, Global Governance, and Democracy Beyond the State’, Global Governance, 18, (2012), 405–23; Katharina Rietzler, ‘From Peace Advocacy to International Relations Research: The Transformation of Transatlantic Philantropic Networks, 1900–1930’, in Davide Rodogno, Berhard Struck and Jakob Vogel, eds., Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 173–95.

7 Tomoko Akami, ‘The Limits of Peace Propaganda: The Information Section of the League of Nations and its Tokyo Office’, in Jonas Brendebach, Martin Herzer and Heidi Tworek, eds., Exorbitant (New York: Routledge, 2018), 70–90.

8 Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, 1922).

9 Tomoko Akami, ‘The Emergence of International Public Opinion and the Origins of Public Diplomacy in Japan in the Interwar Period’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 3 (2008), 99–128; Taylor, Philip J., The Projection of Britain – British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Stephen Wertheim, ‘Reading the International Mind: International Public Opinion in Early Twentieth Century Anglo-American Thought’, in Daniel Bessner and Nicolas Guilhot, eds., The Decisionist Imagination – Sovereignty, Social Science and Democracy in the 20th Century (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 27–63.

11 Hucker, Daniel, Public Opinion and Twentieth Century Diplomacy: A Global Perspective (London: Bloomsbury, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Brendebach, Herzer and Tworek, ‘Introduction’, in Brendebach, Herzer and Tworek, eds., Exorbitant, 8–9.

13 Müller, Jan-Werner, ‘European Intellectual History as Contemporary History’, Journal of Contemporary History, 46, 3 (2011), 574–90, 588CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Akami, ‘The Limits’, 70.

15 Webster, Andrew, ‘The Transnational Dream: Politicians, Diplomats and Soldiers in the League of Nations’ Pursuit of International Disarmament 1920–1938’, Contemporary European History, 14, 4 (2005), 493–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Gram-Skjoldager, Karen and Ikonomou, Haakon A., ‘The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat – Formative Practices of Legitimacy in International Organizations’, The International History Review, 41, 2 (2019), 257–79, 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Ranshofen-Wertheimer, Egon, The International Secretariat – A Great Experiment in International Administration (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945), 90Google Scholar.

18 See Emil E. Seidenfaden, Nikolai Schulz and Helle Strandgaard Jensen, ‘Film-splaining the League of Nations’, in Karen Gram-Skjoldager and Haakon A. Ikonomou, eds., The League of Nations – Perspectives from the Present (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2019); Emil E. Seidenfaden, ‘Legitimizing International Bureaucracy – Press and Information Work from the League of Nations to the UN’, in Karen Gram-Sjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou and Torsten Khalert, eds., Organizing the 20th Century World – International Organizations and the Emergence of an International Public Administration, 1920–1960 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 129–44.

19 ‘Memo: Comert to Drummond’, 8 Dec. 1919, League of Nations Archives (LONA, hereafter), 2396, R1332, 8.

20 Memo: Unsigned, ‘Memorandum of Publicity by the Information Section,’ 21 July 1919, LONA, 419, R1332, 1; Drummond, Eric, ‘The Secretariat of the League of Nations’, Public Administration, 9, 2 (1931), 228–35, 231CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Note: Fosdick to Drummond, 14 July 1919, LONA, 305, R1332, 1.

22 Bruce Lannes-Smith, ‘Propaganda’, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/propaganda, 2021 (accessed 18 Jan. 2021).

23 Risso, Linda, Propaganda and Intelligence in the Cold War. The NATO Information Service (New York: Routledge, 2014), 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Emil E. Seidenfaden, ‘Message from Geneva: The Public Legitimization Strategies of the League of Nations 1919–1946’, PhD Thesis, Aarhus University, 2019, 95–96.

25 Letter: Jean Monnet to Comert, 7 July 1919, LONA, S745.

26 Sweetser, Arthur, The League of Nations at Work (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), 187Google Scholar.

27 ‘Article by M. Comert’, attached to note by Drummond, 29 Mar. 1921, LONA, Minutes of the Directors meetings MDM hereafter.

28 Sweetser, The League of Nations at Work, 187.

29 John Higley, ‘Elites’, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/elite-sociology (01 Feb. 2021).

30 Raw data of the complete staff of the League Secretariat generously provided by the LONSEA project, Heidelberg University: LONSEA – League of Nations Search Engine, a Database Developed by the Projects A3 and A13, Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, Heidelberg University, 2010–2016, since 2017 continued by the Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel (Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Madeleine Herren). LONSEA, hereafter.

31 Seidenfaden, ‘Message’, 41.

32 Memo: Sub-Committee of Technical Advisory Committee on Information, ‘Observations on Branch-Offices’, 28 Jan. 1946, Arthur Sweetser Papers, Library of Congress, (A.S.P, L.O.C, hereafter), Box 69, 2.

33 Letter: Sweetser to Pelt, 2 Dec. 1943, A.S.P, L.O.C, Box 34, 3; Ranshofen-Wertheimer, 189.

34 MDM, 13 Aug. 1919, LONA. 3.

35 Barros, James, Office without Power (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 394Google Scholar.

36 Memo: Arthur Sweetser, ‘League of Nations Publicity’, 27 May 1919, LONA, 272, R1332, 4.

37 Daniel Laqua, ‘Activism in the “Students League of Nations”: International Students Politics and the Confédération Internationale des Étudiants, 1919–1939’, English Historical Review, CXXXII, 556 (2017), 605–37; Francisca de Haan, ‘Writing Inter/Transnational History: The Case of Women's Movements and Feminisms’, in Barbara Haider-Wilson, William D. Godsey and Wolfgang Mueller, eds., International History in Theory and Practice (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017), 501–36; Glenda Sluga, ‘Women, Feminisms and Twentieth Century Internationalisms’, in P. Clavin and G. Sluga, eds., Internationalisms – A Twentieth Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

38 Pickard, Bertram, ‘The Greater League of Nations – A Brief Survey of the Nature and Development of Unofficial International Organizations’, Contemporary Review, 850, 150 (1936), 460–65, 465Google Scholar. My italics.

39 Report: Committee to Examine the Organisation of the Information Section, Annex to ‘Commission de Controle – Réorganization de la Section d'Information. Note du Secrétaire general’, 21 Sep. 1933 (Adrianus Pelt Papers), LONA, P191, 3; Davies, ‘A Great Experiment’, 408.

40 Memo: Information Section, ‘Liaison with International Organisations’, 21 Sep. 1933, LONA, P191, 3.

41 Report: ‘Report of the Information Section to the 8th Assembly, 1927’, Sep. 1926, 1927, LONA, 62097, R1354, 15–18.

42 McCarthy, Helen, The British People and the League of Nations – Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c. 1918–1948 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Davies, ‘Internationalism in a Divided World: The Experience of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies’, Peace and Change, 37, 2 (2012), 227–52, 227.

44 Davies, ‘Internationalism’, 229.

45 Circular: Secretariat, Special Circular 88, 11 Nov. 1921, LONA, 3. Translated from French.

46 LONSEA; Letter: Radziwill to Drummond, 22 Apr. 1931, LONA, S861.

47 Minutes of Information Section meeting (MIS, hereafter), 6 Feb. 1934, LONA, P191; MIS, 8 May 1934; MIS, 22 Feb. 1935.

48 Memo: Pelt, ‘Information Section – Liste des associations privée avec lesquelles la Section d'information est en rapport et analyse de chacune de ces liaisons’, nd, 1933, LONA, P191, 1–2; Table: Information Section, ‘Representation du Secretariat aux divers congress, conferences etc. auquels il a eté invite en 1924’, [sic] 8 Sep. 1924, LONA, 38568, R1600, 2.

49 Report: Radziwill, ‘Meeting of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies’, 30 July 1926, LONA, 52102, R1336, 3.

50 Theodore Ruyssen, ‘La propagande pour la Société des Nations’, in Peter Munch, ed., Les Origines et l’œuvre de la Société des Nations, vol. II (Copenhagen: Rask-Ørstedfonden/Nordisk Forlag, 1924), 237–8.

51 Ruyssen, ‘La propagande’, 239.

52 Heidi Tworek analyses these conferences as an example of League ‘moral disarmament’. Seidenfaden shows how the initiative for the conferences came from the Information Section, which camouflaged it as a proposal from a national delegation. Tworek, Heidi, ‘Peace through Truth – The Press and Moral Disarmament through the League of Nations’, Medien & Zeit, 25, 4 (2010), 16–28Google Scholar; Emil E. Seidenfaden, ‘From the Gallery to the Floor – the League of Nations and the Combating of “False Information”’, in Gram-Skjoldager and Ikonomou, The League of Nations – Perspectives (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2019), 188–200.

53 Herren, Madeleine and Löhr, Isabella, ‘Gipfeltreffen im Schatten der Weltpolitik: Arthur Sweetser und die Mediendiplomatie des Völkerbunds’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 62, 5 (2014), 411–24Google Scholar; Madeleine Herren and Isabella Löhr, ‘Being International in Times of War: Arthur Sweetser and the Shifting of the League of Nations to the United Nations’, European Review of History, 25, 3–4 (2018), 535–52; Seidenfaden, ‘Message’, 87–91.

54 Ibid.

55 Plà, note to Comert, ‘Temporary Collaborators’, 9 Dec. 1926, LONA, 53149, R1347, 2; Seidenfaden, ‘Message’, 84.

56 Plà, ‘Temporary Collaborators’, 9 Dec. 1926; the 1931 number is from LONSEA data.

57 Sweetser, ‘League of Nations publicity’, 27 May 1919, LONA, 272, R1332, 3.

58 Working paper: Information Section, ‘Draft. Questions’, 14 Aug. 1919, LONA, 743, R1332.

59 The Monnet nowadays remembered for his role in founding the European Coal and Steel Community.

60 Working paper: Information Section, ‘Draft. Questions’, 14 Aug. 1919.

61 Memo: Comert, ‘Associations nationales – Bureau de liaison, Plan general’, 20 Aug. 1919, ASP-LOC, Box 13, 1.

62 Report: ‘Information Section’, 16 Apr. 1921, 1921, LONA, Secretariat de la Société des Nations – Commission d'enquete, CE/1-27, 12.

63 Ibid., 13.

64 Report: ‘Report of the Information Section to the 8th Assembly, 1927’, Sep. 1926, LONA, 15–18.

65 Letter: George H. Mair to Drummond, 27 Jan. 1920, LONA, 2849, R1332.

66 Akami, ‘The Limits’, 74, 86.

67 Salvador de Madariaga, Morning Without Noon (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1973), 279.

68 Assembly Document: League of Nations, A.10.1933.X: Technical Concentration of the Activities of the League of Nations and Rationalisation of the Services of the Secretariat and the International Labour Office, Report by the Supervisory Commission to the Assembly July 20th, 1933, LONA, 8; See also Gram Skjoldager, ‘Taming the Bureaucrats: The Supervisory Commission and Political Control of the Secretariat’, in Gram Skjoldager and Ikonomou, The League of Nations – Perspectives, 40–50.

69 Seidenfaden argues that the news and information material released by the section in the period stuck to a 'dogma of neutrality’ to mimick the tone of a national civil service. Seidenfaden, ‘Message’, 129.

70 Potter, Pitman B., ‘League Publicity: Cause or Effect of League Failure?’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 2, 10 (1938), 399–412, 406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Ibid.

72 Standing Instructions: Secretariat Standing Instructions no. 22, 1934, LONA, Standing Instructions, 1934.

73 Memo: Pelt, ‘Memorandum on the reduction of staff and the reorganisation of the Information Section’, nd, LONA, P191, 6.

74 Report: Sub-Committee of the Technical Advisory Committee on Information, ‘Report to the Secretary-General’, 11 Feb. 1946, ASP-LOC, Box 69, 1. Giles Scott-Smith explores the ancestry of the UNDPI in the United Nations Information Office (UNIO), which arose out of the Inter-Allied Information Committee (IAIC). Scott-Smith, Giles, ‘Competing Internationalisms: The United States, Britain and the Formation of the United Nations Information Organization during World War II’, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 6, 1 (2018)Google Scholar, Sweetser was a key player in the UNIO.

75 Seidenfaden, ‘Message’, 201–2.

76 Letter: Pelt, ‘Outline of an Information Section in a Post-War League of Nations Secretariat’, attached to: Pelt to Sweetser, 10 Mar. 1943, ASP-LOC, 5.

77 Akami, ‘The Limits’, 86.

78 Ibid., 74.