Nationhood and neighbourhood: the Lodge-Wilson quarrel and the question of progress

Abstract

Underlying the Lodge-Wilson quarrel of 1919 was not the question of ‘isolationism’ versus ‘internationalism’ but questions on which conservatives and progressives had been divided long before Armistice Day and remain divided even now: Is history destined to culminate in a condition of perpetual peace? And is it in statesmen’s power to hasten the advent of this condition? Wilson’s optimistic answers to these questions are of a piece with that of nineteenth-century British Radical John Bright, while Lodge’s scepticism is akin to that of Bright’s contemporary Robert Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury. This essay discusses the views of these statesmen in order to show that the progressive-optimistic attitude of Bright and Wilson invites a foreign policy that dismisses the significance of nationhood and international neighbourhood.

Keywords:

• Lodge
• Wilson
• Bright
• Marquess of Salisbury, nationhood
• international neighbourhood

Notes on contributor

Mr. Clinton Condra studies international relations and political philosophy. He has taught at North Idaho College and currently teaches at Baylor University as he works on his dissertation, the subject of which is the political thought of Jonathan Swift.

Notes

1. Lloyd E. Ambrosius, ‘Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security after World War I’, The Journal of American History 59, no. 2 (Sep., 1972): 341–52.

2. That the optimistic or progressive response to these questions dates to the age of enlightenment is shown by Felix Gilbert, ‘The “New Diplomacy” of the Eighteenth Century’, World Politics 4, no. 1 (Oct., 1951): 1–38.

3. Quoted in Selected Speeches of the Rt. Hon. John Bright M.P. On Public Questions (London: J.M. Dent and Co., 1907), p.92; emphasis mine.

4. Quoted in Ibid., 12; emphasis mine.

5. Quoted in Ibid., 49; emphasis mine.

6. Quoted in Ibid., 129–31.

7. Quoted in Ibid., 131.

8. Quoted in Speeches of the Rt. Hon. John Bright M.P. On the American Question (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1865), 134.

9. Quoted in Ibid., 177.

10. Quoted in Ibid., 144.

11. Quoted in Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The Political Thought of Lord Salisbury, 1854-68 (London: Constable, 1967), 106.

12. Robert Cecil, ‘North America’ (The Quarterly Review, October 1862), 535, 538–9.

13. Ibid., 547.

14. Quoted in Pinto-Duschinsky, 111.

15. Robert Cecil, ‘France and Europe’, (Bentley’s Quarterly Review, October 1859), 6–7, 11.

16. Robert Cecil, ‘Count Bismarck’s Circular Letters to Foreign Courts’ (The Quarterly Review, October 1870), 556, 541.

17. Ibid., 541, 546.

18. Arthur S. Link, Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing Corporation, 1979), 13.

19. Quoted in Ibid., 79.

20. Ambrosius, 343.

21. Inis L. Claude, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), 75.

22. Quoted in Ibid., 85.

23. Quoted in Ibid., 96.

24. Quoted in Ibid., 97.

25. Woodrow Wilson, ‘Democracy and Efficiency’ (The Atlantic 87/521, 1901), 289–99.

26. Quoted in Claude, 134–5.

27. Quoted in Ibid., 549.

28. Quoted in Ambrosius, 342.

29. Ambriosius, 344.

30. Quoted in Ambrosius, 344–5.

31. Quoted in Ibid., 555, 561.

32. Quoted in Ibid., 546.

33. Robert Cecil, ‘Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart’ (The Quarterly Review, January 1862), 229–30.

34. Ibid., 234.

35. Quoted in Geoffrey G. Butler, The Tory Tradition (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street W., 1914), 133–4.

36. Quoted in Ibid., 136.