If the First World War had seen a change in the public diplomacy role of the Pilgrims Society compared with the banquets of the 1900s, then the decade following the end of the conflict witnessed further developments in how the Society related to more official channels of diplomacy. The war had also altered how Britain and the US related both to each other and to the rest of the world. Most obviously, Britain was now a debtor nation and the US a creditor. While Britain remained a great power and retained significant strategic influence – for instance through its prominent role in the newly created League of Nations, which gave it greater influence in Europe than that enjoyed by the US – the conflict had undermined its financial strength. By contrast, the post-war years witnessed a relative withdrawal from international interventionism on the part of the US, as shown, for instance, by its absence from the League of Nations. This isolationism paradoxically occurred alongside the increasing spread of American cultural values to Europe, partly on account of unofficial cultural and economic influences. The ‘Americanisation’ of Europe – through the appeal of jazz music, Hollywood films, technological advances, and mass consumerism – extended the US's sphere of influence in terms of what Joseph Nye would now call ‘soft power’ and in ways that brought into sharper focus the contrasting economic and commercial positions of Britain and the US.

Some of the dichotomies in the Anglo-American relationship were mirrored in the contrasting fortunes of the two branches of the Pilgrims Society. As this and the following chapter will show, the London branch was more active in the 1920s than was the New York branch. Equally, however, American ideas – in the form of American political debates over issues such as the League of Nations and their impact on Anglo-American relations – provided the principal influences on the activities of the Society.