Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Author:Francesca Wade [Francesca Wade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571330676
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2020-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

Power was not only concerned with an overhaul of domestic policy. Her trip to the Far East in 1920 had expanded her horizons at a time when Europe was in deep aporia about its own survival. The First World War – ‘the war to end all wars’ – had ended two years before Power set sail from Dover, but the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles had left national boundaries in disarray and pacifists distraught over the punitive measures meted out to Germany. Most on the left believed that the treaty would weaken Germany so disastrously that a second war – fuelled by newly developed destructive weapons – would be inevitable; hopes now rested on the prospect of a new, transparent system of world government, which could override the divisions entrenched by the sanctions, promote a common system of law and settle future disputes without recourse to arms.

At Girton, Power had volunteered as treasurer of the Cambridge branch of the Union of Democratic Control, a pacifist organisation also supported by Jane Harrison. Along with her friend Margery – later a founding member of the National Birth Control Association and author of the pioneering social study Working-Class Wives: Their Health and Conditions – she also joined the League of Nations Society, established in 1915 following a report, commissioned by Sidney Webb for the Fabian Society and written by Leonard Woolf, which argued that the first step towards a peaceful future must be the creation of ‘an international authority to prevent war’, based on cooperation, moral pressure and shared values. Power organised informal meetings in Cambridge to discuss the society’s work, and made copious notes analysing the possible difficulties such a league might face in practice. She lectured on its platform about the Congress of Vienna of 1814–15 – a meeting of European ambassadors to negotiate a peace plan for Europe following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars – and the subsequent, flawed attempt at government by a European confederation. ‘The parallel with the present is simply amazing,’ she wrote. ‘It is exceedingly important as propaganda because it broke down for reasons which will wreck the League of Nations after the Congress at the end of this war, if its mistakes aren’t avoided.’

The Peace Conference of 1919 resulted in the foundation of the League of Nations, the first international organisation with the declared aim of maintaining world peace. The previous October, the League of Nations Society had merged with the League of Free Nations Association, chaired by Jane Harrison’s friend Gilbert Murray, to form the League of Nations Union (LNU), a campaign group designed to promote public understanding of the work of the League. Over the interwar period, the LNU would be the most influential organ of the peace movement in Britain, with local branches up and down the country organising meetings, writing letters and hosting parties and study circles. Leaflets proclaiming the League ‘the greatest ideal that the world has seen since the founding of Christendom’ were distributed to homes all

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