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David Davies: a hunter after peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Brian Porter
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Extract

David Davies, or Lord Davies as he became in 1932, was a remarkable man who achieved some remarkable things. In the academic sphere he is perhaps best remembered for his founding of the Chair and Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth, but establishing a new university discipline was only part of a larger vision and concern: that of securing, no less, the peace of the world. Lord Davies was not alone in this, nor in the inter-war period did such an endeavour appear as farfetched and quixotic as it does when viewed from the more sceptical and worldly-wise perspective of the late twentieth century. There were many who harboured similar ideas and ideals, but few had the energy, time and money to do what he did in attempting to translate thoughts and hopes into schemes of positive action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 27 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

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References

1. For accounts of the founding and subsequent history of the Chair and Department at Aberystwyth, see Ellis, E. L., The University College of Wales, Aberystwyrth, 1872–1972 (Cardiff, 1972), pp. 187–188, 197–8Google Scholar; and Porter, Brian (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London, 1972), chapter 4 and Appendix IGoogle Scholar.

2. David Davies, Major, MP, A suggestion concerning thefirst meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations (London, n.d.)Google Scholar. Another version is entitled Constantinople as the G.H.Q. of Peace (London, n.d.). Additional reasons given in favour of Constantinople were that the League would be able to keep a close watch on the troublesome Balkans and also be favourably placed for protecting newly independent Armenia.

3. Davies, Gwilym, ‘The Gregynog Conferences on International Education 1922–1937’, The Welsh Anvil, Vol. IV, 1952, pp. 49–50Google Scholar. Gwilym Davies, a Baptist minister and unrelated to David Davies, was the founder of the Annual Peace Message broadcast from the youth of Wales to the youth of the world, was the originator of the 1924 appeal of the Welsh women to the American women, and was influential in the planning for UNESCO. He was made a CBE in 1948. For an account of his life and work, see Gwynedd Jones, leuan (ed.), Gwilym Davies 1879–1955: A Tribute (Llandysul, 1972)Google Scholar.

4. Lewis, Peter, Biographical Sketch of David Davies (Topsawyer) 1818–1890 and his grandson David Davies (1st Baron Davies) 1880–1944 (Newtown, n.d.), p. 37Google Scholar. I have been indebted throughout this paper to this little compilation.

5. Ibid., p. 39.

6. House of Lords Debates, Vol. 91, Col. 530 (11 April 1934).

7. Ibid., Vol. 97, Col. 950 (27 June 1935).

8. Lewis, Peter, op. cit., p. 41Google Scholar.

9. For a detailed account of the whole affair, see Jenkins, Gwyn, ‘Lord Davies, Howard Hughes and “The Quinine Proposition”: The Plan to set up an International Air Force to defend Chinese Cities from Japanese Air Raids, 1938’, The National Library of Wales Journal, Vol. XXI, 1979–80, pp. 414–422Google Scholar.

10. A transcript of ‘Close Up’: the broadcast in which Lord Davies, in an interview with Mr Leslie Mitchell on 12 March 1943, gave a brief exposition of the New Commonwealth Programme. Published by the New Commonwealth Society.

11. Lewis, Peter, op. cit., pp. 42–43Google Scholar.

12. I for Evans, L., Lord Davies, The Wilson Chair, and the Presidency of the College, 02 1941, pp. 28–29. University College of Wales Archives, International PoliticsGoogle Scholar.

13. Ellis, E. L., op. cit., p. 246Google Scholar.

14. For full accounts of this imbroglio, see I for Evans, L., op. cit., passimGoogle Scholar, and Ellis, E. L., op. cit., chapter 8Google Scholar.

15. Ellis, E. L., op. cit., p. 259Google Scholar.

16. Ibid.

17. Davies, Lord, A Federated Europe (London, 1940), p. 46Google Scholar.

18. Ibid., p. 139. A reference to Locksley Hall, published in 1842. The lines:

‘Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.’

Although they follow a prediction of aerial warfare, helped establish Tennyson's reputation as a poet of unexampled progress. The next couplet in the poem may be said to encapsulate Lord Davies's philosophy:

‘There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.’

19. Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939 (London, 1946), p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his Inaugural Lecture, ‘Public Opinion as a Safeguard of Peace’, delivered at Aberystwyth, 14 October 1936 and published in International Affairs, Vol. XV, No. 6, November-December 1936, Carr gently mocked the whole idea of institutional, coercive peace-keeping championed by Lord Davies and the New Commonwealth Society. Borrowing an analogy used by Professor C. A. W. Manning, he remarked that a showman who proposes to put on a display of elephants flying in formation should not be so engrossed in planning the aerobatics that he overlooks the limited capacity of the animals for aviation (pp. 853–4).

20. Davies, David, The Problem of the Twentieth Century (London, 1930), pp. 433–441, 465–6Google Scholar. Palestine was to be a ‘freehold territory’ of the international authority, a ‘new District of Columbia’ where the International Police Force was to have its headquarters. To give the Force greater security it was also o t control the exists and entrances to the Mediterranean—the Bosphorus, Suez and Gibraltar—with Panama into the bargain.