International studies

The lectureship at Woodbrooke was part of a widespread concern, extending well beyond the Society of Friends, to promote the study of international relations. In The International Anarchy (1926) Lowes Dickinson was to record his dismay at the failure of policy-makers to learn the lessons of the world war, but he was none the less encouraged by an awareness of ‘currents below the surface which do not find expression in policy’. Dickinson himself saw this ‘new world fermenting underneath’ as manifesting itself in a great work of education. ‘Internationalists’, he insisted in Causes of International War, ‘must contend with imperialists for the mind and soul of the peoples’. Against a background of the chaos and confusion in central and eastern Europe that erupted after 1918, the need for a better understanding of human conflict was a matter of urgency. At the same time as Alexander was starting his courses, a chair of international politics was being established in Aberystwyth by David Davies, formerly a secretary to Lloyd George. The post there was first held by Alfred Zimmern, who later worked for the League Secretariat in Geneva, and then moved to a similar chair in Oxford. Davies and Zimmern agreed with Theodore Roosevelt and the American ‘League to Enforce Peace’ that military power was essential to a successful international order. Such an order would owe more to ‘the living experience of Versailles’ than it would to the academic dreams coming out of The Hague.