Liberal internationalism, The League of Nations Union, and the mandates system.

Gorman, Daniel

Dans cet article, nous examinons l'emergence de l'internationalisme liberal en Grande Bretagne apres la Premiere Guerre mondiale. La Bretagne prit une part active dans les organismes internationaux de l'apres-guerre, en partie pour conserver sa position de puissance imperiale. Cette participation recevait un appui officiel et non officiel L'union de la Societe des Nations (LNU) en particulier etait un partisan serieux de l'nternationalisme liberal, surtout du systeme de mandats qui apparut avec les accords de paix. Le systeme de mandats assurait un rapport plus liberal entre les peuples europeens et ceux des colonies sous forme de curatelle et pourtant des conflits au sujet de la souverainete entre les puissances mandataires, la Commission des mandats permanents de la Ligue des Nations a Geneve et les populations autochtones menacaient l'efficacite du systeme. Nous apportons des lumieres sur le developpement des groupes d'interet non gouvernementaux du debut du vingtieme siecle; sur le role de plus en plus important des organisations internationales dans les politiques interieures de la Bretagne et la (re)construction suivie des identites nationales; de meme que sur la naissance de la communaute internationale entre les guerres.

"Do you remember the jungle?" said the elephant to his fellow animals in Leonard Woolf's Fear and Politics: A Debate at the Zoo (1925). (1) The elephant argued that life in the jungle was ruled by fear, while captivity, and the order that it brought, had led to safety for each of the species. A Debate at the Zoo was Woolf's intentionally transparent treatise on international government in the wake of the Great War. (2) Woolf believed that mankind still lived in the jungle, but that, counter to the thinking of social Darwinists and despite the evidence of the war, it was not fated to this existence. Through the constructive organization of an international system which restrained passion and rewarded civility, Woolf believed war could be, if not prevented, at least attenuated.

It is not entirely fanciful to think that the elephant's sentiments were shared by a number of Britons in the 1920s. With the war fresh in their minds, the idea of organizing for peace held great promise. As Roth Williams, a liberal proponent of the Geneva Protocol on Disarmament, wrote in 1925, "we cannot get away from the fact that the world is interdependent, and the alternative before us is, broadly, whether we are to attempt to organize peace or return to preparing for war." (3) The repository for much of this sentiment was the newly formed League of Nations, the ideological creation of Woodrow Wilson. Wilsonianism was premised on the idea that binding international institutions are the best, and perhaps only, means of managing relations between states. Wilson capitalized on his country's moral and material strength after the war to press his vision of a League on the Paris Peace Settlement. While Britain and France were less enthusiastic about the League, they nonetheless supported it with their respective national interests in mind. For France, the League was a means to defang Germany, French prime minister Georges Clemenceau's primary goal at Paris. For Britain, the League seemed a suitable replacement for the shattered Concert of Europe. It was a means of maintaining the status quo, which for Britain meant freedom from continental entanglements and the continued security of the empire. These expressions of Realpolitik were given wind by the great public support the League idea received.

The United States ultimately rejected Wilson's organization, however, and the League became a decidedly European creature in the 1920s. It was under these conditions that the victorious European powers looked to re-assemble the global empires the war had temporarily imperilled. Britain in particular attempted to reassert its imperial power under the auspices of the League, especially by means of Article XXII of its Covenant, which created imperial mandates of former German and Ottoman possessions. Britain thus saw the League as a body that could be used to prevent future war by fostering international cooperation and amity, and, through the mandates system, to maintain the old imperial order under a different guise. (4) If these goals seem to counter each other in retrospect, contemporaries thought otherwise. In fact, liberals like Woolf believed imperialism could, if properly constituted within the framework of the League, work for peace. (5) This conviction became a central tenet in the nascent liberal internationalist school of international relations, the focus of this article, and a subject which historians of the mandates system have only partially addressed.

In the wake of the Great War, internationalism and public opinion assumed a greater influence on imperial affairs, and elevated non-governmental pressure groups as important political players. The largest and the most influential such group in the 1920s was the League of Nations Union (LNU), a pressure group that sought to raise support in Britain for the League of Nations, and advocated for the mandates system. The LNU supported the idea of international sovereignty over the newly created mandates and staunchly defended this liberal internationalist position against the mandatory powers' persistent claims of national autonomy. The LNU's work thus illustrates how liberal internationalism established imperialism as an international, rather than solely national, concern in the 1920s.

The mandates system is sometimes depicted as a form of imperial adaptation. (6) Article XXII of the League Covenant instructed that</p> <pre>

to those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the

late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the states

which formerly governed them, and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization. (7) </pre> <p>In this view, Britain's adoption of new mandates and, more broadly, of a new spirit of trusteeship and indirect rule is a case of old wine for new bottles. Others see the interwar years as the beginning of the empire's end. The imperial expansion that the mandates constituted was, this view holds, the product of the war, not a goal in and of itself, and the seemingly endless line of colonial challenges of the interwar years, from Ireland to Palestine to India, mark the prelude to post-Second World War decolonization. John Darwin has argued for a middle ground, seeing the interwar years not as a period of retreat or retrenchment, nor of imperial recidivism, but rather of adaptation. If left-leaning voices at home gained electoral influence and pushed for a more egalitarian empire, there remained strong reasons to maintain the imperial status quo, not the least of which was the dominions' lingering economic dependence on Britain and the empire's unchanged importance for the defence of the realm. "If the lion had ceased to roar," Darwin concludes, "it was not yet ready to lie down with the lambs." (8)

One means through which the lion carried on was the mandates system. As Michael Callahan concludes in his comprehensive comparative study of British and French mandatory rule, "the mandates system represented an evolving internationalization and reformation of colonialism" that marked European and African alike. (9) The mandates system was created to help keep the peace, and also to diminish the international competition that characterized the old imperial system. (10) It was thus a half-way house between imperialism and internationalism. It also, however, relied more on idealism and compromise than on practical planning. Nowhere was this ambiguity more apparent than concerning the question of sovereignty. Because sovereignty over the mandated territories was never clearly spelled out, the system itself was open to interpretation. This ambiguity lent credence both to those who saw in it a vehicle for contributing to international peace and fostering "civilization" in underdeveloped societies, and to those who saw it as imperialism renewed. The LNU was one of the loudest contributors to this debate.

Though liberal in outlook, the LNU was non-partisan, drawing members from across the political spectrum. Indeed, its long-serving president and leading public figure, Lord Cecil, was a member of Britain's preeminent Conservative family. The LNU is best known for its 1935 peace ballot, in the view of the New Statesman and Nation "the most remarkable public referendum ever initiated and carried through private enterprise." However, while the ballot garnered over eleven million signatures in support of the League's right to use sanctions, and by implication of the League itself, (11) the LNU was in fact in decline by this point, its apparent numerical strength a paper tiger. The peace ballot, though it garnered great attention, was quickly nullified by the League's inability to prevent Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia. The Union had reached its peak in the early 1930s in terms of membership, after which its support and influence declined in tandem. In the 1920s, however, the LNU was able successfully to assert influence on government and the public. Its aim was "to excite very aggravated attacks of 'consciencitis,'" (12) and one of its most persistent topics was the mandate system.

The LNU was formed in October 1918, with the merger of the League of Free Nations Association and League of Nations Society. (13) Lord Grey gave a speech to over 3,000 onlookers at Central Hall in London in support of the new organization, and became its first president. Other notable early members included Viscount Bryce, Lord Robert Cecil, the philanthropist Major David Davies, Gilbert Murray, H.G. Wells, and Aneurin Williams. The Union founded branch offices throughout the British Isles, though its large size meant, ironically, that its London-based executive committee, located in Cecil's Grosvenor Court residence, came to control Union policy. The LNU boasted 987 initial paid members, had over 6,000 in March 1919, and 14,665 by the end of that year. (14) Counting unpaid members as well, the LNU boasted almost 100,000 supporters by the beginning of 1920. (15) Such exponential growth continued apace throughout the 1920s, generating political momentum. The LNU had only a modest budget through the 1920s, however, and even that was often in arrears, as paid memberships never amounted to more than a small percentage of total membership. By 1929, the LNU was 23,000 [pounds sterling] short of its 43,040 [pounds sterling] operating budget, and stayed afloat only due to corporate donors, such as Cadbury Brothers, Ltd., and Davies's personal munificence. (16) Apart from administrative costs, the largest expenditures went to publicity and paying for public speakers. The LNU also published a house journal, Headway (earlier known as The League and Today and Tomorrow), a monthly aimed at fostering "a corporate spirit among members of the Union, and to educate them to a right sense of world citizenship." Headway served as a venue for the LNU to work out policy, though it was reticent to criticize the governments of the day, whether Labour or Conservative; the executive instead favoured the Fabian modus operandi of gradual permeation. (17)

While Grey gave the LNU immediate political legitimacy, and most leading politicians were honourary members, Davies, Murray, and Cecil were the organization's most influential figures. In addition to financing much of the organization's activities, Davies, a liberal idealist who had worked for the League of Free Nations Association, was the LNU's strongest supporter of military sanctions. Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, served as the Chairman of the LNU's executive committee from 1923 until 1938. (18) He provided intellectual leadership, was a moderating influence on those members who pushed for radical causes such as total disarmament or the outlawry of war, and spearheaded much of the LNU's educational and propaganda work. Cecil was the LNU's public face. A progressive conservative amidst a membership dominated by liberals, he helped the organization remain non-partisan.

The LNU professed three objectives:

1) to secure the whole-hearted acceptance by the British People of the League of Nations as the guardian of international right, the organ of international cooperation, the final arbiter in international differences, and the supreme instrument for removing injustices which may threaten the peace of the world;

2) to foster mutual understanding, goodwill, and habits of cooperation and fait dealing between the peoples of different countries;

3) to advocate the full development of the League of Nations in accordance with the original object of the Union so as to bring about such a world organisation as will guarantee the freedom of actions, act as trustee and guardian of backward faces and undeveloped territories, maintain international order, and finally liberate mankind from the curse of war. (19)

The third object spoke most directly to the mandates question, linking the question of trusteeship to the prevention of war. The Union pursued these goals through lobbying and marketing methods which today are intimately familiar as the tools-in-trade of the non-governmental organization, but which in the 1920s were still in their infancy, less prone to cynicism and resistance, but also less developed and efficient. The LNU facilitated international contacts through educational exchanges and sporting events, developed liaisons with League societies in other countries, lobbied Members of Parliament, and wrote policy papers for public dissemination through lecture tours and placement in sympathetic newspapers. The Union's greatest asset and, ironically, its greatest detriment, was its size. As an organization devoted to generating public interest in, and support for, the League of Nations, the LNU naturally worked to attract as many members as possible. As Donald Birn notes, however, the League's very success in this endeavour partially neutered its political message, as politicians of all stripes could pledge support for the League without facing pressure to act on the issue. (20) The LNU's effectiveness as a pressure group was thus limited by the weight of mainstream electoral sentiment and the tyranny of size. Nonetheless, it reflected mainstream British attitudes on empire, peace, and the proper constitution of international relations between the wars. The Union supported the mandates system both as a new political arrangement which could to help preserve peace by attenuating imperial rivalries, and as a humanitarian endeavour to help the "development" of colonial societies. Both of these goals were consistent with the liberal internationalism that was the Union's cote ideology.

Despite its non-partisan imperative, the LNU tilted decidedly towards liberalism, assuming the political character of its two leading figures, the "civic monks," Murray and Cecil. (21) The liberal internationalism they evinced was sometimes at odds with that of other internationalists, particularly those further to the left. Woolf himself, though a vocal supporter of the mandates system and a member of several LNU committees, nonetheless split with the organization in his support for radical disarmament and the outlawry of war. H.G. Wells, a Union member in LNU's first year, became impatient with the organization's unwillingness to ruffle feathers at Whitehall. He believed the LNU should "produce its ideal scheme, irrespective of what the politicians might be doing." Wells's scheme for a world government was out of step with the measured and gradualist approach of Cecil and Murray. Wells believed that true internationalism would result only through the attenuation of nationalism, while the LNU relied upon nationalism to generate support for the League. (22)

Amongst the general membership, the LNU drew heavily from liberal groups such as church organizations, trade associations, temperance societies, co-operative societies, women's groups, and especially ex-servicemen. As one ex-gunner wrote,</p> <pre> the ex-soldier has one peculiarity which makes him very effective as a preacher of international goodwill and cooperation. He has no bitterness against our ex-enemies. The famous "fraternisation" on Christmas Day, 1914, is typical of the

ex-soldier's attitude. And if the ex-soldier bears no malice or

bitterness, who else has the right to? Nor can anyone accuse us of being cranks or pacifists. That is another advantage. People

who never knew the sound of a 5.9 crump, or who never lay in a cart-rut while a machine-gun sprayed bullets through their hair can hardly attack us on that score. (23) </pre> <p>While the Union also attracted support from pacifist organizations, including the Quakers, the executive sought to minimize their influence on LNU affairs, largely over the issue of disarmament. Pacifists, in Cecil's view, saw disarmament and the outlawry of war as ends in themselves, while the executive favoured disarmament as a tool of international politics. Nonetheless, the LNU needed the numerical support that pacifist organizations gave it, and thus underplayed the obligations of Articles XI and XVI of the League of Nations Covenant, which authorized the use of sanctions in cases of non-compliance. (24)

The LNU itself was not a pacifist organization, though it did make disarmament one of its major concerns in the 1920s. It supported the Geneva Protocol (1925), which authorized the use of sanctions, and Murray wrote frequently, if reluctantly, on the need for force to ultimately guarantee League pronouncements. The Union enjoyed cordial relations with the League Council at Geneva, even when it was critical of League decisions. (25) The League's support for the Union reflected Britain's central role at Geneva. As Salvador de Madariaga, Spanish representative at the League, observed, "when Great Britain stops, the League stops; when Great Britain goes forward, the League goes forward too." (26) Cecil also worked assiduously to bring the United States into the League's fold. He travelled over 3,000 miles in 1923 in the United States and Canada with fellow LNU members Philip Noel-Baker and Ray Strachey, including visits with President Harding and former President Wilson. (27) While Cecil's tour generated attention for the League, he was unable to persuade the United States to join, in part due to American opposition to the mandates system. Returning to Britain, Cecil made the case for the League as a moral undertaking. The international state system rested upon anarchy, he declared in The Moral Basis of the League of Nations (1923), "with justice and right dependent on the fortunes of war." States should adopt the moral behaviours of civilized individuals: "we no longer think that the man who can fence most skilfully, or shoot the straightest, is likely to be right in his quarrel. It is just the same with nations." Cecil thus envisioned the League as "a universal agreement among the nations, to which all nations shall be committed in principle, working not by force, but by the operation of the public opinion of the world as the requisite sanction." (28) The mandates system was to be an important component of a new, moral international order.

As a form of international trusteeship, as opposed to single-nation imperial rule, the mandates system was a decidedly liberal internationalist idea. (29) In their desire to reconcile the pursuit of peace and the victors' wish to partake of the spoils of war, however, the peacemakers struck a compromise on the mandates, based upon equal parts good intentions and vague language. The resulting ambiguity left the mandates' governance open to interpretation.

The inspiration for the mandates system owed much to British contributions, with Union members, notably Cecil and Murray, instrumental. The Phillimore Committee (1918), which suggested a "Conference of Allied States," provided a practical blueprint for the League idea, and Lord Bryce's Committee (1915) on Turkish abuses, especially the work of its secretary, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, provided a moral impetus. (30) Jan Smuts, the South African general and representative at Versailles, was the leading Imperial voice in support of the mandate system. In suggesting an international system of mandates over the former German and Ottoman territories, Smuts's The League of Nations, a Practical Suggestion (1918) combined a desire to prevent colonial rivalry, support for an open door policy in the mandates, and an acknowledgment of a moral duty of trusteeship for the welfare of colonial peoples. While Smuts's work directly influenced Wilson, Smuts himself had drawn on ideas emanating from the Round Table, a liberal conservative pressure group co-founded by the imperial publicist Lionel Curtis, a former member of Lord Milner's kindergarten in South Africa. Curtis believed the war had increased, not released, international tensions. Speaking to the League of Free Nations Society in October 1918, Curtis remarked that:</p> <pre>

the danger of war is not to be avoided by making arrangements to arrest people who try to break the peace at the moment of their doing so. We must go deeper than that. What are the deep causes of future war, now that the ambition of Germany is for the moment broken? They are to be found in the state of anarchy in large areas of the world. The war has greatly increased these areas. (31) </pre> <p>Curtis, who accompanied the British delegation to Versailles, believed the mandates system was one means of preventing anarchy. At home, Labour was the mandates system's strongest supporter, predicated on the principle of protection for indigenous rights. (32) The idea thus enjoyed broad political support as a means of keeping the peace by spreading more widely the benefits of "civilization."

The mandates principle was enacted by the Allied and Associated Powers in Article XXII of the League of Nations Covenant. Mandates were divided into three classes. Class "A" mandates were those nations deemed almost "ready" for independence, and would be governed at arm's length. They encompassed the Ottomans' former Middle Eastern territories, with Britain overseeing Iraq and Palestine, and France responsible for Lebanon and Syria. Class "B" mandates, largely Germany's former African holdings, were classified as presently "undeveloped," and would be governed by the mandatory power. Tanganyika and small parts of Togoland and the Cameroons became British mandates, while the French assumed mandatory power over the majority of Togoland and the Cameroons. After a successful protest, Belgium assumed mandatory status in Ruanda-Urundi. The mandatory power in "B" mandates pledged to guarantee freedom of religion and conscience, prohibit slavery, abolish the arms trade, control the liquor traffic, supervise land transactions in the interest of indigenous people, and grant open trading rights in the mandate to other League members. Class "C" mandates--those deemed the most "undeveloped," sparsely populated, or in close geographical proximity to Allied powers--were to be directly ruled by the mandatory power, becoming colonies in all but name. They were to be governed in a similar manner to class "B" mandates, except no open door trading rights were dictated. Class "C" mandates were the result of much lobbying by the antipodean dominions, whose representatives, particularly the acerbic Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, sought them as recompense for their war efforts. Australia received New Guinea and Nauru, New Zealand received the former German Samoa, and South Africa received German South-West Africa (now Namibia). Japan was also a class "C" mandatory power, assuming control over Germany's former Pacific island possessions north of the equator. Class "C" mandates were approved in December 1920, class "B" mandates came into existence in September 1921, and the terms of the "A" mandates were finally settled in July 1922, after the Turkish-Greek war concluded.

A Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) was established by the League Council on 1 December 1920, and comprised ten members, including four from the mandatory powers. A German delegate joined as one of the non-mandatory members, after that country joined the League in 1926. Major W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore was Britain's initial representative on the Commission, replaced by Lord Lugard in 1926. While the system required the mandatory powers to send the PMC a yearly report, how the mandatory powers were to govern their new charges remained unclear. The mandatory principle dictated national control under international supervision, but the authority of the PMC, the supervisory power, was vague at best, and the various mandatory powers assumed their positions as trustees with different traditions of imperial rule and conflicting national interests. Two issues in particular remained ambiguous: the question of sovereignty and the relationship of mandatory powers to Geneva.

The LNU's position on the mandates was formulated by its mandates committee, initially chaired by Ormsby-Gore, though the executive committee vetted its decisions. (33) The mandates committee drew up model mandate legislation, copies of which were forwarded to Geneva and which influenced the League's oversight of the mandates. For the class "B" Mandates, the Committee proposed that "the Mandatory should divide the territory into tribal areas and appoint administrators with powers as Mandatories of these areas with the object of developing native governments similar to that existing in Basutoland, machinery to be introduced into the terms of all sub-mandates for the due consideration of grievances and of claims to a share in the government."

The LNU was particularly concerned with improving the social and economic standing of indigenous peoples in the mandates. The influence, of temperance societies inspired calls for the suppression of the liquor trade in the mandates. The opium trade also attracted the LNU's reprobation, and the Union strongly supported the League's work in combatting the trade. (35) Alongside its humanitarian concerns, the LNU was concerned that indigenous self-government be achieved in the "B" mandates as soon as possible:</p> <pre> there shall be a gradual but steadily progressive education and training of the inhabitants of the territory with a view to the development of such a system of self-government as may be appropriate for the territory and to the development of the territory for the benefit of the inhabitants. </pre> <p>It further proposed that "native government shall be maintained or established for the administration of tribal affairs subject to the advice and veto of the mandatory power," that there should exist no colour bar in the mandates, and that all persons resident in the territory should be recognized as citizens of the mandate. The security of land tenure would be maintained, with all land not under title deemed indigenous land, to be administered by the mandatory power for the good of the local population. All revenue raised in the mandate should be expended upon it, and indigenous people should be able to direct all complaints to either the mandatory or the League itself. (36)

Influential LNU members also offered their views to the public. In his Mandates and Empire (1920), Woolf argued that Article XXII was revolutionary because it would re-order the relationship between Western and non-Western peoples. This was a key precept of the developing liberal internationalist position. Where imperialism was a diseased system, giving rise to abuse, exploitation, and war, the mandates system provided the basis for development. The key was land. Woolf condemned the policy of land appropriation carried out in most of Africa (including British East Africa) and held up Britain's West African policy of letting indigenous people retain land tenure as the best course. He highlighted the difference in export value per capita between West Africa (10s to 4 [pounds sterling] or 5 [pounds sterling] per capita) and East Africa (2-7s per capita), a large gap even given the better resource base in West Africa (cocoa, ground nuts, and rubber compared to skins, oil-seed, and cotton). He proposed a ban on alienation of land to Europeans, the assurance of land for all indigenous families even if most land was already taken by Europeans, and the end of forced or compulsory labour, which Europeans had heretofore used to run cheap economies. Woolf also stressed the need to educate indigenous people in self-government, noting that Britain's East African possessions took in 325,000 [pounds sterling] annually, yet spent only 1,200 [pounds sterling] on education for a population of nearly three million. Technical and agricultural education were needed, as were university and primary education in order to widen the base of the population able to govern. Though some PMC members supported such paternalist humanitarianism, including the first Japanese delegate, the progressive ethnologist Yanagita Kunio, Woolf's prescriptions failed because the mandatory powers resisted and resented formal interventions by the PMC into the day-to-day affairs of their mandates. (37)

Liberal internationalism also shaped debates about indigenous labour. The condition of labourers in the colonial world garnered greater attention in the 1920s, fuelled in part by the liberal internationalist spirit of groups such as the LNU and the post-war boom in colonial industry. (38) Efforts by states to rectify abuses were piecemeal. While New Zealand banned traditional indentured Chinese labour in its mandate of West Samoa, Andre Gide's 1927 description of labour conditions in the Congo, then a Belgian colony, could have equally applied to many mandates:</p> <pre> [t]he rain was streaming from the poor creatures, many of whom had babies at the breast as they worked. About every 20 meters alongside the road was a large hole, often three metres

deep from which the wretched workers, without any proper implements, had to fetch the sandy soil for the embankment. More than once, several persons told us, the pliable earth had given way, burying the women and children who were working in the trench. Generally employed too far from their villages to be able to reach home in the evening, the women had built temporary huts, leaky shelters of branches and reeds. We were told that the guards who were supervising them had made them work the whole night, to repair the damage caused by a recent storm and to enable us to pass through. (39) </pre> <p>In response to such reports, the LNU pushed the League to work with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to combat abusive indigenous labour practices.

The Union saw the alleviation of abusive labour practices as not just a humanitarian issue, but also an imperial one:</p> <pre> the admirable posters of the Empire Marketing Board, or a small boy's book of postage stamps, should suffice to bring home to us the extent and variety of the territories which go to compose the British Empire, and our individual and collective responsibility to conditions of life within our Empire and the ways they influence or are influenced by other territories. (40) </pre> <p>It convened a conference on the question in March 1929 as a prelude to the Twelfth International Labour Conference in Geneva in June 1929. In his speech to the conference, Ormsby-Gore, now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, lauded Britain's record on the issue. The last instance of forced labour in the British empire had been in Kenya in 1924, he claimed, and the poor quality of the labourers had convinced the government that volunteers would be better. Recent railway construction on the Tabora-Kwanza railway in Tanganyika had relied entirely on volunteers. The Labour MP Colonel Josiah Wedgwood condemned Ormsby-Gore's "smug self-satisfaction," however, arguing that Britain was only better than other nations because of lobbying by the Anti-Slavery Society, and that abolition had been driven by material rather than moral principles. (41)

In fact, despite Britain's good intentions and the existence of Labour Ordinances, forced labour still existed in both colonies and mandates as "tribal custom." In Kenya, the colonial government maintained a record of all males in the colony, at a cost of over 100,000 [pounds sterling], yet did not prevent forced labour as "tribal custom," and did not publish the Labour Ordinance--prohibiting forced labour--in Swahili, the language of most people. Forced labour was also permitted in the mandates for "public projects," a vague term. In the British Cameroons, "the scribe of each Native Authority keeps a roster showing the number of able-bodied men of each village. The villages are called on in turn to supply a number proportionate to the able-bodied population of the village." Porterage was also still common, though it was "only used with the greatest reluctance and never on routes which are open to motor transport.... It is always paid [and] whenever possible volunteer labour is engaged." The British tried to curtail tribal customs permitting forced labour, such as limiting the tradition of obsulu in Uganda to 52 days per year, yet labour conditions remained uneven at best across both mandates and colonies. Forced labour could also take many forms. In a speech at the LNU Conference on Forced Labour, Charles Roberts, President of the Anti-Slavery Society, argued that forced labour included the recruitment by officials for private employment; some forms of taxation, pass laws, and vagrancy ordinances; the deprivation of lands and cattle; the forced provision of products to certain companies; and peonage for debt. (42)

A further category, military service, was a problem. The LNU pressed that the mandates' resources, both economic and human, remain in the mandate. Though the ILO had no prescriptions against conscription--an irony of exclusion--the LNU viewed the raising of troops in the mandates as akin to forced labour, and further argued that it contravened the spirit in which the mandates system had been created. The Colonial Office concurred, writing in a 1927 Memorandum that "natives ... should not be accepted for enlistment within or without the boundaries of the mandated territories--for service in any military corps or body of constabulary which is not permanently quartered in the mandated territory and used solely for its defence or for the preservation of order within it." The Foreign Office, however, wished to keep this option open, especially in West Africa, where British rule was more tenuous, and conscripts from the British Cameroons mandate might prove useful. The League Council strongly disagreed with this interpretation, but could do little because the Covenant was silent on the matter. When the Second World War broke out, both France and Britain recruited soldiers from their mandates. (43)

The provisions of the mandates system that most resembled the old imperial order were economic. While the mandatory powers assumed the infrastructure of the former German colonies now under their administration, they renounced all financial responsibilities. Germany also repudiated its pre-war loans, claiming that it was only the guarantor, while the protectorate, now in Allied hands, was the actual lender. The German treasury was under severe strain after the war anyway, and the Allied nations were first in line for compensation. These decisions, upheld by an opinion of the Reparations Commission (surely a case of conflict of interest!), meant that investors, including many from Britain, lost the capital they had sunk in former German colonies. (44) Furthermore, in Tanganyika, ail German paper currency was now void, coinage was converted to sterling, and all pre-war loans were repudiated (except those municipal loans secured from German banks, rather than the German government). While many indigenous public employees kept their positions, most German public employees were replaced, losing their pensions in the process. (45) Like all mandatory powers, the British in Tanganyika set a new liability on a gold basis after the war (2 [pounds sterling]/-d), and used money obtained from old German-issued loans and a new Imperial Loan to improve Tanganyika's infrastructure, particularly the railway. (46) Since the railway mainly benefited British, rather than local, interests, the visage of imperialism remained.

Germany protested the Versailles Treaty's economic provisions and periodically lobbied for its colonies to be restored to her as mandates. The LNU believed this would be unwise. Germany could still secure raw materials in class "A" and "B" mandates due to the open door policy, and the Union felt that the well-being of indigenous people would surfer under German control. The treatment of the Herero in South West Africa was an object history lesson. (47)

The mandates system bestowed most-favoured-nation status on all members of the League for class "B" mandates, a provision insisted upon by the United States. As with the economic imperialism Western powers had long practised in China and South America, the most-favoured-nation principle allowed for economic benefits at arm's length. The mandates themselves, conversely, were "placed in a position of inferiority in their relation with almost all other countries," because they must apply without reciprocity their lowest tariffs to League members. (48) Again the Covenant's ambiguity was the culprit here. Article XXII dictated that mandates "will ... secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other Members of the League." While Britain recognized the spirit of the Covenant--"there ... can be no doubt as to the intention of the Covenant in this respect"--there was no language forcing League members to reciprocate most-favoured-nation status to the mandates. (49) Britain granted Iraq, Palestine, Ruanda-Urundi, and France's class "B" mandates most-favoured-nation status, though it was not required to under the Covenant. The issue was further complicated by Britain's return to Imperial Preference in the interwar period. Britain granted Imperial Preference to its "B" mandates in Africa, though it tried to keep this issue off the table at Geneva, for it contravened the requirements of most-favoured-nation status. (50)

The LNU's views on economic and labour issues reflected its firm belief in the international application of equality. Its opposition to forced labour, for example, mirrored its attacks on all forms of slavery, defined as "the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership exist." It supported the League Council's attempts to outlaw ail forms of slavery in member states, including the mandates, though it was frustrated at the mandatories' reluctance to supply data on their mandates. (51) Because the LNU believed in international solutions, it favoured conservative proposais to alleviate abuses, such as the creation of colonization bonds, the dividends from which would be used to better colonial working conditions. (52) It also confronted the traffic in women and children, gathering statistical information on the coerced migration of women and girls from southern and eastern Europe to North Africa and Latin America, where the laws on labour and sexual consent were weak. The LNU advocated more fervently pursuing the souteneurs--who managed the trade--and tightening passport and emigration regulations for young women. (53)

The principle of equality also drove the Union's policy on immigration in the mandates, an issue it viewed as a truly international issue. In a 1926 report on the "Equitable Treatment of Foreigners and Emigration," the Union suggested that any limitations on immigration: must be applied consistently, "should not be based on grounds of race or nationalism as such, but should have regard to the character, circumstance and conditions of the immigrants;" may only be predicated on issues of security; and should be applied with full consent of the League. The Union also publicized abuses, such as the Turkish authorities' persecution of Christians and Kurds in 1930. It was unable to offer more than moral condemnation of similar situations in the mandates, however, because the Union's support for the right of the mandatory to govern its mandates in trust meant that it was unable to sanction interference in what were, in practice, domestic affairs. (54)

Disputes over sovereignty complicated the very functioning of the mandates system. Even Britain, the system's greatest supporter, believed it should be able to govern its mandates as it saw fit. Otherwise, as Lord Cushenden, the British representative to the League wrote in 1928, referring to the Trans-Jordan, "every new law ... and every amendment of an existing law would have to be submitted to the [League] Council." (55) International decrees on humanitarian matters were thus difficult to draft and enforce because the mandatories, asserting their autonomy, often did not provide the League with full information on their mandates.

A series of colonial disturbances in the 1920s underscored the system's ambiguity. The first occurred in 1922 in South-West Africa. Only two months after the Rand Strike resulted in the declaration of martial law, the South African government sent a force to suppress a protest by the Bondelswart tribe over land boundaries. The task force put down the revoit using artillery and machine gun tire, but the Bondelswart's leader, Abraham Morris, escaped with a small group of followers. Fearful that the rebellion would spread across the Orange River into South Africa proper, with an early use of air power, the government hunted down the small group of Khoi; Morris was killed, and the Khoi surrendered in early June. (56) South Africa was criticized at Geneva for not apprising the PMC of its actions until well after the fact. This brought the question of sovereignty into the open. Which was the higher principle--the League's role as trustee or the mandatory power's role in exercising the trust? The LNU struggled with this question. South Africa was important to the LNU. (57) Due largely to Smuts's influence, South Africa had been the dominion most receptive to the League idea, and the Union enjoyed a prominent voice in the South African press. South Africa was also the only mandatory power explicitly to assert a right of sovereignty over its mandates. At the same time, the League Covenant stressed the requirement under Article XXII to file annual reports and, more generally, for full disclosure. (58) In its "Report on the Bondelswart Rebellion," the Union concluded that the South African government had acted properly, but, in the interests of transparency and to maintain public confidence in the mandates system, it advised that "save in cases of immediate necessity, no punitive expeditions should in future be undertaken in mandated territories without the prior assent of the Mandatory Commission being obtained." (59)

The next notable uprising in a mandate began in July 1925, when the Druse tribes in Syria protested French mandatory rule. Their complaints included France's implementation of martial law, an absence of civil courts, and the linkage of Syrian currency to the franc. Led by Sultan al-Atrash, the Druse put the French on the defensive until the end of 1925. The French responded with force, killing over 5,000 people in the bombing of Druse-held Damascus in 1926. The rebellion died out by mid-1927. The League rebuked France's actions and was incensed that France did not send the PMC a report on the rebellion for nine months--the PMC learned of the rebellion through the press. Lord Lugard, Britain's representative to the PMC, was especially critical, arguing that French actions hindered the development of self-government in Syria. (60)

Britain, however, was also not immune to uprisings in its mandates--notably in Palestine. As a class "A" mandate, Palestine was deemed close to independence, but what sort of independence was unclear. The Balfour Declaration (1917) had pledged Britain's support for a "national home for the Jews" that would nonetheless not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine...." This double-edged task proved almost impossible to implement, as the LNU summed up with arch understatement:</p> <pre> we must not ... disguise from ourselves that it will be a delicate task to fulfill the obligations both to the Jews and the Arabs.... We could not accept an Arab ideal of independence which would comprise the right to prevent Jewish immigration, nor a Zionist ideal which would envisage the possession

of Palestine by the Jews. (61) </pre> <p>Access to the Holy Places in Jerusalem was a particular problem. Britain was appointed their guardian under Article XIV of its mandate for Palestine, granted at the San Remo conference in 1920. Under the Ottomans, Jews were accorded limited access to the Wailing Wall, the wall itself being Muslim property and the strip of pavement facing it the property of the Waqf. The British, under Article XIII of the mandate, were obliged to preserve the status quo. As Jewish-Arab tensions escalated, access to the Wall became a flashpoint. Muslim authorities complained in 1925 when Jews brought benches and other accoutrements to the Wall on Yom Kippur. The breach became open in 1928, when, on the eve of Yom Kippur, Jews erected a large dividing screen on the pavement adjoining the Wall, and added petrol lamps, mats, and a tabernacle "much larger than was customary." The Mutawali of the Abu Madian Waqf complained to Edward Keith-Roach, the British District Commissioner for Jerusalem, touching off a direct challenge to Britain's mandatory authority. Keith-Roach asked that the screen be removed. The order was ignored, and the next morning</p>

<pre> the Police therefore removed the screen themselves. The worshippers in general, unaware of the circumstances that had gone before and seeing only the Police in the act of removing the screen which had been used to separate the men and the women, became excited and some of them endeavoured by force to prevent [its removal]. (62) </pre> <p>Jewish leaders pied their case to the League, where Dr. Victor Jacobsen, the Zionist Organization's representative to the League, told League Secretary General Eric Drummond that Jewish access to the Wall had been threatened, including by Muslims wielding iron bars. They also complained to the British, to whom Chaim Weizman alleged that Muslim authorities wished to build a mosque on the site. (63) J.C. Luke, President of the Vaad Leumi, the General Council of the Jewish Community of Palestine, demanded that the British forcibly acquire the land adjacent to the Wall to solve the issue. (64) Muslim leaders, in turn, expressed frustration with Jewish "equivocation to the Government and the World." Some even descended to base anti-Semitism: Muhammad Amin, President of the Supreme Moslem Council, believed the presence of a Jewish policeman at the Wall, one of the British suggestions, "will endanger the situation and will encourage the Jews in their covetousness and in their gradual intrusion." (65) The Palestine Zionist Executive further escalated the situation by publishing their petition to the League on 1 November, just as a large Muslim conference began in Jerusalem. (66) The new British High Commissioner, Sir John Robert Chancellor, appealed to each side for restraint. However, he was unable to find a modus vivendi, as charged by the League, and the dispute escalated. Open rioting between Arabs and Jews occurred in August 1929, and the British had to deploy force to keep order. (67)

Though it supported the imposition of order, the LNU believed this measure threatened Palestine's progress towards independence. In a letter to Sidney Webb (now Lord Passfield), the Colonial Secretary, Gilbert Murray, with Lord Lugard's support, pressed for a Special Session of the PMC, as had occurred over the Druse rebellion. Passfield, eager to keep British colonial affairs at arm's length from an inquisitorial League, rejected the proposal, noting in private marginalia that "Lord Lugard ought to know better." (68) Instead, Passfield issued a White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine, a half-measure which pleased no one. The issue came before the League in 1930, which quickly passed the problem back to the British. (69) Thus, the mandatory powers' desire to maintain sovereignty in the mandates was compounded by the League's equivocation over the very sort of difficult situation where its ostensible role as ultimate trustee dictated action.

The disturbances in South-West Africa, Syria, and Palestine highlighted the gulf between the theory of the mandates system and its practical application. Though there were some exceptions, such as New Zealand's handling of unrest in its class "C" mandate of Western Samoa in 1921-1922, (70) upon which it sent the League an immediate report, the mandatories generally kept the PMC in the dark even over serious issues such as rebellions. While most security threats in the mandates in the 1920s concerned either class "A" mandates, eager to attain the independence they had been promised, or class "C" mandates, where opposition to "annexation-in-all-but-name" was understandably high, there were also problems of disclosure relating to class "B" mandates. These concerned accurate reports of conditions in the mandates, and contributed to the problems concerning trade and labour discussed above.

The LNU believed the problem was the dual nature of the mandate system itself: the PMC performed a supervisory role, while the mandatory power (under the Colonial Office in Britain's case) assumed the administrative role. Each side sought to impinge on the other's jurisdiction, ultimately confusing the question of sovereignty and compromising the mandates system's legitimacy. Exceptions, such as the turmoil over the Wailing Wall, where both Britain and the League abrogated their ostensible roles, proved the rule. To solve these problems, the Union looked to two of the system's under-utilized mechanisms--petitions and questionnaires.

The League Council only met every six months, and the mandatories were only required to submit an annual general report to the PMC. The report was ostensibly to be a reply to a questionnaire sent by the League. Drawn up by the PMC in 1921, it contained forty-nine questions for class "B" mandates, and fifty for class "C" mandates. The questionnaire for both classes listed identical questions concerning: labour conditions (10); slavery (7); liquor control (5); military service (4); education (4); land tenure (4); public health (3); arms control (2); economic equality (2); demography (1); moral welfare (1); and public finance (1). The class "C" questionnaire had one extra question on indentured labour, which applied specifically to Western Samoa. (71) The mandatory powers tended to respond with simple yes/no answers or vague responses, and referred the PMC to their domestic reports. The British, for instance, sent only brief (sometimes one-word) answers to the questions for Tanganyika, and an executive summary for Togoland and Cameroon. The information received was thus inconsistent and often incomplete, and the reality was that the League often had little idea what was happening in its mandates, as evidenced in the series of disturbances in the 1920s.

In an effort to gather greater information, a new questionnaire was proposed in 1926, containing 118 questions. Echoing Woolf's views, the new questionnaire reflected the League's concern that customary land rights were safeguarded, that land-leases to non-indigenous people were strictly regulated, and that indigenous people had sufficient quantities of land. Where the old questionnaire merely asked general questions, the new questionnaire was more comprehensive and probing. Nonetheless, it was still designed as a guide. As Pierre Orts, the former president of the Red Cross and the Belgian delegate on the PMC, wrote, "first this document constituted a kind of inventory of the position of the territory and its legislation. Secondly, it was intended to elicit indications in regard to the general line of policy pursued." (72)

Despite the on-going Druse rebellion, the PMC's 1926 meetings were dominated by the questionnaire issue, illustrating contemporary concerns over sovereignty. The mandatories believed they should have the autonomy to administer their mandates without oversight from Geneva. As such, they saw the questionnaire, in the words of the British delegate Austen Chamberlain, as "inquisitorial." He was supported by Aristide Briand of France, Viscount Ishii of Japan, and Emile Vandervelde of Belgium. "It seems to me," Chamberlain declared to the League,</p> <pre>

and I know that this feeling is shared by other members of the League and of the British Empire who exercise mandatory authority, that there is a tendency on the part of the Commission to extend its authority to a point where the government will no longer be vested in the Mandatory Power but will be vested in the Mandates Commission. I am sure that is not the intention of the Covenant. </pre> <p>Even Sir Francis Bell of New Zealand, whose government had provided the fullest reports to the original questionnaire, was "impatient at the minute investigation by the Commission of administrative details." (73)

The mandatories also opposed allowing petitioners from the mandates to appear before the Council, a demand of activists in the mandates and a solution to which, in the interests of transparency, the League was partial. Chamberlain believed "it would be unwise, imprudent, and even dangerous for the Council to take any decision until it had before it the observations of the various Mandatory Governments." Briand, more tactfully, feared that petitions might "be channels for displaying sentiments which were not always respectable," and pointed to Syria, where "certain circles were indulging in intrigues with the object of rendering still more difficult for the Mandatory power the carrying out of its work." (74)

The Foreign Office, the body that handled Britain's relations with the League and thus the PMC, shared Chamberlain's suspicions of the PMC. Foreign Office hardliners opposed the LNU's request that Britain support the right of petition, believing that "asking for information is always the first step to interference," and expressing concern that the process might be abused by groups seeking publicity for unjustified causes. More conciliatory minds feared that an unnecessarily bellicose response to the LNU would be counterproductive, and that "a better policy at Geneva [is] to veil rather than advertize our dislike of the whole system of mandates." (75) Britain's position on sovereignty in the mandates was thus confused by a division of jurisdiction: the Colonial Office overseeing the administration of the mandates, and the Foreign Office directing Britain's mandates' policy at the PMC. With these roles somewhat at cross-purposes, it is little wonder the question of sovereignty remained ambiguous throughout the 1920s.

The irony of this contest over who held sovereignty in the mandates was that the mandatory powers themselves sat on the PMC. The LNU's H. Wilson Harris suggested that mandatories be excluded from the PMC, while Sir Walter Napier proposed that mandatory representatives at least be prevented from hearing petitions relating to their country's mandates. (76) Fridtjof Nansen, the one-time Norwegian explorer whose work on behalf of refugees had won him the Nobel Prize and who sat on the PMC, defended the mandates system at the 1927 session. He lauded the mandatories' humanitarian work, such as Britain's suppression of slavery in remote regions of Burma, Sudan, and Sierra Leone. He noted that the PMC's minutes were from 1926 publicly available, setting a standard for international accountability; that the first report from Iraq had been filed the same year, showing that communication between the PMC and the mandatories was improving; and that the relationship between the mandatory power and mandate had been clarified regarding class "C" mandates. This last success, in Nansen's view, proved that the same could be achieved for the other classes. Turning to the new questionnaire, he reiterated that it was not prescriptive, and merely served to let the PMC know how mandates were governed. Otherwise, the PMC would be in the dark. Personal petitions, Nansen concluded, would only be accepted in extraordinary cases. (77)

Lugard was less diplomatic, expressing frustration with the mandatories' intransigence on the petition issue and challenging their commitment to internationalism: "I found it difficult to reconcile an attitude of complete impartiality with a denial of audience to a petitioner while hearing the representative of the Mandatory." Lugard believed that in special cases it would be useful to hear petitions with both the petitioner and mandatory power present. "Those who have genuine cause for submitting a petition will receive satisfaction," Lugard wrote, while "agitators who seek notoriety and self-advertisement will find that they do not succeed in their object." (78) Lugard's internationalism, however, was precisely the quality which the mandatories resisted. Chamberlain probably spoke for the majority of the British establishment in arguing that the national interest was still the primary factor in international relations. The world, he declared in a speech on the League on the occasion of his installation as Lord Rector of Glasgow University, was not ready for a "Parliament of Man." Chamberlain saw the League as an association of sovereign states, not a super-state. It should not interfere, he said, in purely national affairs, and warned not to let "our zeal for good causes outrun our discretion." The League must have unanimity on issues, or its conciliation by persuasion would not work. Chamberlain pointed to the Locarno Pact, which he helped negotiate, and multi-lateralism in general, rather than internationalism, as a more immediately practical means of securing peace. (79) While the PMC wished officials responsible for the mandates to appear before it when petitions were brought, the League Council ultimately deferred to the mandatories' wishes, rejecting the right of petition to the League except in "exceptional cases," a term never clearly defined. (80)

Cecil had anticipated the conflict over sovereignty as early as 1920, (81) and it was a central concern of the LNU in the following decade. It argued at the Peace Conference that Article XXII explicitly denied sovereignty to the mandatory power. Woolf believed that the mandatory power must maintain only a trust from the League, lest the system become a sham. To do this, the Union recommended that the League dictate the form of government and maintain powers of supervision, inspection, and control. The mandate must also be a legal document enforcing the mandatory power properly to maintain the mandate or be overruled by the Council. It concluded that Article XXII created the necessary pressure for all imperial territories to be ruled under the same conditions, thus stamping out imperialism itself. (82) The historian and LNU member Arnold Toynbee suggested that the filing of reports be made compulsory, and that an international civil service, free of national government suasion, be created to administer the system. (83) Getting the system up and running, however, was the Union's "immediate duty." During the long negotiations in 1920 over the form the mandates system should take, Cecil counselled to let the Covenant work before pushing for reforms: "the British character is by nature practical, and is not apt to acclaim a new enterprise till it has seen how it works ... it is foolish to keep pulling up a plant to sec how it is growing." (84)

Reforms seemed to be called for, however, in the wake of the questionnaire debate. In "a statement as to the whole moral and material situation of the peoples under the mandate" in its 1926 annual report, the LNU's mandates committee argued that the mandates system rested on three requirements:</p> <pre> 1) an annual enquiry and report to the Council through the expert and impartial agency of the Permanent Mandates Commission; 2) recognition that the Mandates Commission is entitled to ask any questions relevant to the execution of mandatory powers; and 3) cooperation between Council, the Commission and the mandatory powers "ensuring its effective development in harmony with the conditions prevailing in the various mandated areas." (85) </pre> <p>Drawing on this statement, the Union supported the new questionnaire, arguing that it only asked for information which Britain already provided for Togoland and Cameroons, and sometimes asked for less. Indeed, the new questionnaire had no detailed questions on native customs, agriculture, communications, the practical working of the mandatory principle, or the adoption in the mandates of international conventions. The Union further believed that the PMC should draft the questionnaire, not the mandatory powers. Chamberlain's criticisms, the Union averred, were drawn from only "a brief perusal of the document itself," and framed for political interest, notably his advocacy of the multi-lateralism evident in the Locarno agreement, rather than as an attack on the mandates system per se. Regarding petitions, the LNU argued that the League Council was the best venue to hear petitions. The international scrutiny under which the Council worked would ensure that only serious claimants would bring a case, whereas the smaller PMC would be overwhelmed. (86) For his part, Murray reiterated the right of petition established in the Covenant in name if not in practise. Such a measure, he wrote in 1929, was particularly necessary when crises occurred. The League should create a procedure by which the mandatory power must immediately inform the League Council of a "serious disturbance," including armed conflict or the breakdown of civil law. Otherwise, the Council would not be apprised of disturbances for up to six months, if a report were even filed, a delay which would cause the League to "unjustly incur criticism for indifference to the welfare of peoples placed under their guardianship." (87) Indeed, the LNU executive council had advised in 1925 that any mandatory power which sought to temporarily suspend its ordinary laws must immediately notify the League. (88)

Even the Colonial Office recognized how distant the League Council was from affairs on the ground:</p> <pre> except where, as last year [the Druse rebellion] there is controversy on some question in connection with the mandated territories, the action of the Assembly is usually confined to the passing of a vague resolution endorsing the actions of the governments concerned with the administration of the Mandated territories. (89) </pre> <p>The LNU mandates committee pressed that members of the PMC periodically visit the mandates "to keep ... in touch with the actual situation in the mandated territory and to cement to the utmost possible degree that mutual understanding and practical cooperation to which several Mandatory Representatives have repeatedly paid tribute." (90) The League rejected this measure, citing the line between observation and the perception of interference, though the Union's suggestion was perhaps also designed to simply induce more action on the League's part. The inability to resolve the dispute over sovereignty illustrated by the questionnaire issue was laid apparent in the Wailing Wall controversy, where the petitions of both Jews and Muslims disappeared into a mandates system where no one was ultimately in control.

Questions of sovereignty also complicated discussion concerning the process for mandates to attain independence or for mandatory powers to include them in political or economic unions with neighbouring territories. The first issue was particularly applicable to class "A" mandates, where the timing of independence ultimately rested on the following words in Article XXII: "until such time as they are able to stand alone." The Covenant, however, did not clarify who made this decision. The LNU believed that the spirit of the Article implied that the mandatory power should bring the case for independence to the League Council with cause, which is in fact what Britain did regarding Iraq in 1932. Even so, national interests persisted. Britain's motives in Iraq were open to interpretation, as it retained oil and military concessions in Iraq as part of the bargain, while it opposed efforts by other League members to bring the question of Palestine's status to the League for reconsideration. (91)

The question of amalgamating mandates with colonies was broached regarding the incorporation of Britain's Tanganyika mandate into a broader East African Community--primarily to save money. The Ormsby-Gore Commission (1924) rejected a formal political union, but did inspire the Governors' Conference (beginning in 1926), an informal annual meeting between the governors of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika to discuss the coordination of common services such as customs, postal service, and income tax collection. In 1929, the Hilton Young Commission, considering an economic union, and the Sir Samuel Wilson Commission, considering a High Commission for the region, both rejected closer union. (92) Though the Governors' Conference continued to meet until after the Second World War, the idea of union between colonies and mandates died on the vine, due in part to LNU lobbying. (93) While the Union was guardedly supportive of the Wilson Report's call for the harmonisation of technical services, such as the railways and research work, it opposed a central legislative council for Tanganyika, Kenya, and Uganda. (94) The Union feared such a council would be a de facto political union, something the PMC explicitly forbade. It was also concerned that an economic union would indirectly and negatively affect the welfare of indigenous peoples, as indigenous labour would be used to build railway lines, indigenous people would face higher taxation, and decisions such as where the railway would go would necessarily benefit or punish different indigenous groups. The Union also opposed the political union of Britain's West African mandates, Togoland and the Cameroons, though it supported a fiscal union with adjacent territories provided that the mandatory power retained sovereignty and that "the measures adopted to that end do not infringe the provisions of this mandate." (95) The LNU realized that public scrutiny was required to ensure that the provisions of the mandates were adequately followed, and broadly publicized its opposition to East African union.

Even public scrutiny, however, was not enough to clarify the question of sovereignty over the mandates. Sovereignty remained ambiguous for three main reasons. First, Article XXII itself was ambiguous, the result of the rush to settlement at Paris. The mandatories possessed potestas, but not majestas. Second, in their eagerness to create a new world order, the "new internationalists," among whom must be counted the LNU, were perhaps willfully ignorant of the lingering power of national interests on the international stage. Finally, the system was too open-ended. Because neither the mandatories nor the League had to negotiate timetables for the achievement of independence, even in the class "A" mandates where self-government was ostensibly "near," and no issue, even one as serious as the revolts in South-West Africa, Syria, or Palestine, was considered crucial to the integrity or survival of the system itself. Thus, the question of sovereignty could always be avoided. The League suffered from a case of perpetual procrastination.

Admittedly, the mandatories' role was difficult, particularly in class "A" mandates. The colonial administrators sent to the mandates were essentially tasked with making themselves redundant. Any measures to slow the process of training for self-government were seen as an attempt to preserve their own power, while measures to quicken it were criticized for endangering public order and welfare. Furthermore, Britain's adoption of indirect rule in the mandates was itself somewhat counter-productive in that it left little administrative infrastructure for indigenous peoples to build upon or modify for self-rule. These political concerns were compounded by the patronizing racial attitudes that many Britons still held. While the mandates system rejected the overt racial overtones of formal imperial rule, it nonetheless replicated the belief that colonial peoples were not "ready" to assume the mantle of self-rule. This attitude is conveyed in the titles of period works on the mandates system, such as Lothrop Stoddard's The Rising Tide of Colour against White World Supremacy (1920), Sir H.H. Johnson's The Backward Peoples and Our Relations with Them (1920), Basil Matthews's The Clash of Colour (1924), and John Walter Gregory's The Menace of Colour (1925).

Was the mandates system, then, simply imperialism in new clothes? This was the charge against which liberal internationalists such as the League of Nations Union struggled. If, however, the system failed to live up to its idealistic purposes, it nonetheless reflected a realization that the world's nation-states and their colonial possessions were inter-related, and that this relationship must be strengthened to prevent a repetition of 1914. The mandatories also became the prisoners of their own rhetoric, to the eventual benefit of the territories they governed. By openly castigating the harshness of German colonial rule, the Allied powers made a return to the imperial status quo ante impossible. They were thus forced to promise reform. The liberal internationalism at the base of the mandates system thus went some way to bridging the gap between the rhetoric and practice of colonial development. Still, if the spirit of trusteeship may have facilitated some of the League's humanitarian successes of the 1920s, the system's ambiguity meant that life for indigenous people depended largely on the attitudes and practices of the mandatory power, a situation not much different than under imperialism proper. As Woolf later wrote in his celebrated autobiography, "the perpetual tragedy of history is that things are perpetually being done ten or twenty years too late." (96) Such was the case regarding the mandates system in the 1920s. Though the system's supporters hoped to realize Woolf's injunction to leave the jungle, the world's people were, for the time being, still segregated into cages.

Daniel Gorman

York University

(1) Research funding for this article was provided by Trent University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My thanks to Stephen Brooke, the audience at the 2005 IHR Anglo-American Conference, and this journal's anonymous reviewers for their comments.

(2) Leonard Woolf (ed. Stephen J. Stearns), Fear and Politics: A Debate at the Zoo in In Savage Times (New York, 1973), p. 23.

(3) Roth Williams (ed. Konni Zilliacus), The League, the Protocol, and the Empire (London, 1925), p. 113.

(4) Brian Digre, "Imperialism's New Clothes: the Mandate System in Tropical Africa, 1918-1919," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, 15 (1992), pp. 211-19. See also: William Roger Louis, "The United Kingdom and the Beginning of the Mandates System, 1919-1922," International Organization, 23 (1969), pp. 73-97; and Campbell Upthegrove, Empire by Mandate: A History of the Relations of Great Britain with the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations (New York, 1954).

(5) Leonard Woolf, Mandates and Empire (London, 1920), p. 7. See also Peter Wilson, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf (London, 2003), pp. 105-106.

(6) Andrew Crozier, "The Establishment of the Mandates System, 1919-1925: Some Problems Created by the Paris Peace Conference," Journal of Contemporary History, 14 (1979), p. 483.

(7) The Covenant of the League of Nations, Article XXII.

(8) John Darwin, "Imperialism in Decline? Tendencies in British Imperial Policy Between the Wars," The Historical Journal, 23 (1980), pp. 657-59, 665, 679. Bernard Porter argues in The Absent-Minded Imperialists (Oxford, 2004) that Empire had little palpable influence on domestic life, a position contested in Andrew Thompson's The Empire Strikes Back?: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, United Kingdom, 2005) and the titles in John Mackenzie's Studies in Imperialism series.

(9) Michael Callahan, Mandates and Empire: The League of Nations and Africa, 1914-1931 (Brighton, 1999), p. 7.

(10) The history of the mandates system was first set out in detail by Quincy Wright, Mandates under the League of Nations (New York, 1968 [originally published circa 1930]), and H. Duncan Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship (Washington, 1948). The most definitive recent history is Michael Callahan's two volume account, Mandates and Empire and A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations in Africa, 1929-1945 (Brighton, 2004).

(11) Cited in J.A. Thompson, "The 'Peace Ballot' and the 'Rainbow' Controversy," Journal of British Studies, 2- (1981), p. 150. Also see Donald Birn, The League of Nations Union, 1918-1945 (London, 1981), chapter 8, and George W. Egerton, "Collective Security as Political Myth: Liberal Internationalism and the League of Nations in Politics and History," The International History Review, 4 (1983), pp. 496-523.

(12) Minutes, LNU General Council, 19 December 1924, p. 10. London School of Economics, Records of the League of Nations Union [hereafter cited as LSE RLNU] F 1/1, p. 109.

(13) Minutes, Provisional Executive Committee of the League of Free Nations Association, 1918. Resolution 89, 25 Oct. 1918. LSE RLNU, F 2/1, p. 38.

(14) Minutes, Organisation Committee of the League of Free Nations Association and the LNU, 1918-1919, 25 Nov. 1918; 3 Mat. 1919; 17 Mar. 1919. LSE RLNU, F 3/1, pp. 37, 57, 68; Report to First Annual Meeting of General Council, 5 Feb. 1920. LSE RLNU, F 7/1, p. 9.

(15) Graph Showing Increase of Membership of the League of Nations Union, 1/1/1919 to 31/12/1928. LNU Annual Report, 1928, p. 11. LSE RLNU, F 2/9, p. 171.

(16) "Income and Expenditure Account for the Year Ended 31 Dec. 1929," Minutes, Finance Committee, Appeals Committee, and Welcome Committee, 1930-33 [hereafter cited as FAW], LSE RLNU, F 4/3, p. 22; LNU Annual Report, 1929 (London, 1930), p. 11.

(17) "Proposed New Monthly Journal," Minutes, Finance Committee, 1926-1929, 12 Mar. 1926. LSE RLNU, F 4/2, p. 13; Birn, pp. 133-34.

(18) See Francis West, Gilbert Murray: A Life (London, 1984), pp. 198-200.

(19) Objects and Rules of the League of Nations Union (London, 1919), pp. 3-4. LSE RLNU, F 1/1.

(20) Birn, League of Nations Union, pp. 73-75.

(21) J.A. Thompson, "Lord Cecil and the Historians," The Historical Journal, 24 (1981), p. 714; Salvador de Madariaga, "Lord Cecil, Gilbert Murray et la Societe des Nations," Revue des Travaux de l'Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques et Comptes-Rendus de ses Seances, 119 (1966), pp. 112-31.

(22) Minutes, Research Committee, 1918-1919, 19 Feb. 1919. LSE RLNU, F 5/64, p. 38; John S. Partington, "The Pen as Sword: George Orwell, H.G. Wells and Journalistic Parricide," Journal of Contemporary History, 39 (2004), pp. 49-51.

(23) "Report on the Work of the LNU to December 31, 1922, Appendix A," pp. 18-19. LSE RLNU, F 7/3, p. 157; "Report of Special Committee on Reorganization," Jul. 1919, p. 7. LSE RLNU, F 1/1, p. 14; 'An Ex-Gunner,' Finishing the Job (London, 1926), p. 8. LSE RLNU, F 7/4, p. 39.

(24) Thompson, "Lord Cecil and the Pacifists," pp. 953, 957.

(25) Eric Drummond - LNU, Minutes, Meetings of the Executive Committee of the LNU, 1918-1920, p. 237. LSE RLNU, F 2/2, p. 107; Drummond, letter 3 Nov., The Spectator, 141 (1928), p. 639.

(26) H. Wilson Harris, Geneva 1929 (London: 1930), p. 102.

(27) Janet Clemson, "Practical Idealists: The League of Nations and the 1923 American Tour of Lord Robert Cecil and Ray Strachey," Passport: The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, ii (2001), pp. 3-4; and Minutes, Executive Committee, 1925-1926, 17 Dec. 1925, p. 344. LSE RLNU, F 2/7, p. 93.

(28) Lord Cecil, The Moral Basis of the League of Nations (London, 1923), pp. 16, 19, 22.

(29) The Union was well represented at Versailles, with members visiting the French League Society and working behind the scenes in support of the League's ratification. Those present included Grey, Lord Bryce, Wells, Raymond Unwin, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Davies, Aneurin Williams, Stephen Spender, and Henry Wickham Steed.

(30) David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York, 1928), p. ii, document 1, 3-6; Gilbert Murray, The League of Nations Movement: Some Recollections of the Early Days (London, 1955), p. 4.

(31) Minutes, Research Committee, 1918-1919, 15 Oct., 1918, p. 47. LSE RLNU, F 5/64, p. 14. On Curtis, see Daniel Gorman, "Lionel Curtis, Imperial Citizenship, and the Quest for Unity," The Historian, 66 (2004), pp. 67-96.

(32) Henry Ralph Winkler, The League of Nations Movement in Great Britain, 1914-1919 (Metuchen, New Jersey, 1967; originally published 1952), pp. 206-19.

(33) Other members of the LNU mandates committee included, at various times in the 1920s, Murray, Sir Harry Johnston, Arnold Toynbee, J.H. Harris, T.E. Lawrenee, Sydney Olivier, Woolf, and the MPs Lord Islington and Captain Coote. Advisors included Lord Lugard, Marjorie Perham, Colonel C.E. Ponsonby, Lord Cranborne, and Harold Nicolson.

(34) Minutes, Various Committees, 1919-1925, p. 11, Jul. 19, 1920. LSE RLNU, F 5/38, p. 68.

(35) Minutes, Executive Committee, 1920-1921, 7 Apr. 1921 and 5 May 1921, Resolutions 433, 493. LSE RLNU, F 2/3, pp. 64, 88. The first League Conference on opium was in Geneva in 1924.

(36) Minutes, Executive Committee, 1920-1921, 13 Jan. 1921, Resolution 347. LSE RLNU, F 2/3, pp. 29-30.

(37) Woolf, Mandates and Empire, pp. 8-10, 12-13; Woolf to Sidney Webb [Lord Passfield], 24 Oct. 1929, in Frederic Sports (ed.), Letters of Leonard Woolf (New York, 1989), pp. 394-95; T.W. Burkman, "Japan and the League of Nations: An Asian Power Encounters the 'European Club'," World Affairs, 158 (1995), pp. 53-55.

(38) Metal production increased by 1100 per cent in Africa between 1913 and 1925, while rubber production increased by 800 per cent in Asia in the same period. See [Anon.], Slave or Free? Native Labour an International Problem (London, 1927), p. 5. LSE RLNU, F 7/5, p. 360.

(39) Andre Gide, Voyage au Congo (Los Angeles, 1962; originally published 1927), p. 67.

(40) Slave or Free?, p. 4.

(41) East Africa, 14 Mar., v (1929), p. 835. Public Records Office, National Archives, Colonial Office, Kew [hereafter cited as PRO CO], 323/1061/5.

(42) "Ormsby-Gore speech on Compulsory Labour prepared for LNU Conference, 6 Mar. 1929." PRO CO 323/1061/5.

(43) "Mandates: Memo Summarizing Decisions on General Mandate Questions," p. 12. PRO CO 323/988/9.

(44) Anthony Bevin to E. Saxon-Napier, 15 Dec. 1926; "Memo respecting German Protectorate Loans, so far as affected by new imperial commitments in the mandated Tanganyika Territory," 1926; Telegram, Foreign Office to Lord Crewe, 29 Jul. 1926. PRO CO 323/969/6. Sec also William Roger Louis, Great Britain and Germany "s Lost Colonies, 1914-1919 (Oxford, 1967).

(45) The sole exception was Ali bin Divani, the deposed Liwali of Tanga.

(46) Sir Donald Cameron, Governor of Tanganyika to Leopold Amery, Colonial Office, 14 Jun. 1926. PRO CO 323/969/6.

(47) "Revised note on the Movement in Germany for the Restoration of Her Former Colonies, 8/10/1926." LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 19.

(48) "Permanent Mandates Commission, Report on the Work of the Thirteenth Session of the Commission. 28 Jun. 1928," p. 2. League of Nations Documents and Publications, 1919-1946 [hereafter cited as LNDP] (New Haven, 1971-1972), Permanent Mandates Commission [hereafter cited as CPM], 765, Reel CPM-7; Memo, Colonial Office, Lord Lugard, 19 Sep. 1928. PRO CO 323/1012/10.

(49) Minutes, 51st Session of Council, Permanent Mandates Commission, 1 Sep. 1928, p. 5. PRO CO 323/1012/10.

(50) T. Lloyd, Colonial Office to F. T. B. Friis (British Mandates Section, Geneva), 26 Oct. 1928. PRO CO 323/1012/10; Sir G. Grindle to Sir J. Shuckburgh, 3 Oct., 1928. PRO CO 323.1012/10.

(51) Harris, Geneva 1926, pp. 30-31; Gilbert Murray, Uphill Work: An Address to the LNU General Council, 23 June 1927, pp. 7, 17-19. LSE RLNU, F 7/5, pp. 227, 232-33.

(52) Minutes, Economics Committee, 1928-1936, 17 Apr. 1929. LSE RLNU, F 5/19, pp. 12-14.

(53) [Anon.], Stamping out a Scourge (London: 1927), pp. 6-8. LSE RLNU, F 7/5, pp. 124-25.

(54) "Equitable Treatment of Foreigners and Emigration: Report of Sub-Committee of the Equitable Treatment of Foreigners and Emigration Committee, 15 Jan. 1926." LSE RLNU, F 5/52, p. 6; Secretary, LNU Overseas and International Policy Committee to Hy. S.L. Polak, Indians Overseas Association, 12 Jul. 1921. LSE RLNU, F 5/38, p. 107.

(55) Minutes, 51st Session of Council, Permanent Mandates Commission, 1 Sep. 1928, p. 8. PRO CO 323/1012/10.

(56) See Richard Freislich, The Last Tribal War: A History of the Bondelswart Uprising Which Took Place in South West Africa in 1922 (Cape Town, 1964).

(57) Almost forty South African newspapers published periodic bulletins on the LNU, by far the Union's largest presence in imperial periodicals. The LNU supplied much of the information. "Survey of the Publicity of the LNU, Appendix 'B': Dominion and Colonial Papers Receiving Material." LSE RLNU, F 5/21, p. 56.

(58) "In every case of mandate, the Mandatory shall render to the Council an annual report in reference to the territory committed to its charge"; "A permanent Commission shall be constituted to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates." The Covenant of the League of Nations, Article XXII. See also "'Bondelzwarts Rebellion," 14 Aug. 1923. LNDP, A.47.1923.VI[A], Reel VIA-2.

(59) "Report on the Commission of Enquiry into the Bondelswart Rebellion, 10 Jul. 1922." LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 16.

(60) "Situation in Syria," 10 Sep. 1925. LNDP, CPM 271, Reel CPM-3; Times (London), 16 Dec. 1925, p. 9c.

(61) "The Palestine Mandate. Draft Statement, 10 Jan. 1930." LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 35.

(62) "The Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Memo by the Secretary of State for the Colonies," 19 Nov. 1928, pp. 1-2. PRO CO 733/160/17.

(63) "Record of Interview, Eric Drummond and Dr. Jacobsen," in Drummond to Amery, 30 Oct. 1928. PRO CO 733/160/17; Chaim Weizman to Sir John Shuckbergh, Colonial Office, 31 Oct. 1928. PRO CO 733/160/17.

(64) J.C. Luke to Amery, 19 Oct. 1928. PRO CO 733/160/17.

(65) "Protests Signed by members of the Moslem Community," 30 Sep. 1928. PRO CO 733/160/17; Muhammad Amin--High Commissioner, Jerusalem, 4 Oct. 1928. PRO CO 733/160/17.

(66) J. C. Luke to Amery, 3 Nov. 1928. PRO CO 733/160/17; "Conflict Re. the Wailing Wall," 12 Mar. 1929. LNDP, CPM 838, Reel CPM-8.

(67) Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the Year 1929, 31 Dec. 1929, 1.3.

(68) Murray to Lord Passfield, 10 Oct. 1929; Lord Passfield to Murray, 2 Nov. 1929. PRO CO 323/104915.

(69) League of Nations, Permanent Mandates Commission, Minutes of the Seventeenth (extraordinary) Session, 3-21 June 1930. Second Meeting, 3 Jun. 1930. LNDP, C.355.M.147.1930.VI.

(70) See Albert Wendt, "Guardians and Wards: A Study of the Origins, Causes, and the First Two Years of the Mau in Western Samoa" (MA Thesis, Victoria University, Wellington, 1965), pp. 39-42; and Roger C. Thompson, "Making a Mandate: The Formation of Australia's New Guinea Policies 1919-1925," The Journal of Pacific History, 25 (1990), pp. 68-84.

(71) "Note on the Permanent Mandates Commission's Questionnaire on Mandatory Administration, and on Procedure Regarding Petitions." 8 Oct. 1926. LSE RLNU, F 8/7, p. 3.

(72) Ibid., pp. 2-3.

(73) Harris, Geneva 1926, pp. 35-36.

(74) "Memo on the Questionnaire of the Mandates Commission to the Mandates Committee by Sir Anton Bertram," no date [either 1926 or 1927], pp. 4-6. LSE RLNU, F 8/7, pp. 5-6.

(75) Reply to LNU Petition, Notes, 21 Aug. 1929. PRO Foreign Office 251X/29.

(76) "Statement of the Attitude of the Executive Committee of the LNU with regard to the Procedure for Carrying on the Mandates System," 20 Nov. 1926, p. 30. LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 23; and Times (London), 15 Dec. 1926, p. 9b.

(77) Harris, Geneva 1926, pp. 21, 35; Times (London), 11 Dec. 1926, p. 12b.

(78) "Submission of Petitions from the Inhabitants of Mandated Territories." LNDP, CPM 405 Reel CPM-4; "Notes on the Permanent Mandates Commission's Questionnaire," p. 3.

(79) "The League," speech by Austen Chamberlain, 2 Nov. 1926, Times (London), 3 Nov. 1926, p. 7d. Chamberlain continued his criticism of the League in 1927, when, speaking against the proposed Geneva Protocol on disarmament, he declared that "You are asking nothing less than the disruption of the British Empire. I yield to no one in my devotion to this great League of Nations, but not even for this League of Nations will I destroy that smaller but older league of which my own country was the birthplace and of which it remains the centre." Times (London), 16 Jun. 1927, p. 15c.

(80) "Mandates: Memo Summarizing Decisions on General Mandate Questions," pp. 14-17.

(81) Resolution 447 [of executive committee, but filed here], Draft Mandate for Mesopotamia/Syria, 29 July 1920. LSE RLNU, F 8/7, p. 13.

(82) Woolf, Mandates and Empire, pp. 17-18.

(83) A. J. Toynbee, The League in the East (London, 1920), pp. 18-20.

(84) Cecil, Policy Series No. 1: Our Immediate Duty (London, 1920), pp. 4, 5.

(85) "Statement of the Executive Committee with Regard to the Procedure for Carrying on the Mandates System," p. 5.

(86) "Memo by Sir Anton Bertram," p. 1; "Mandates Commission Questionnaire and Petition Procedure."

(87) Murray, "Petition to the League Regarding Procedure of Supervision of Mandatory Administration," Mandates. Mandatory Territories' Supervision in Times of Crisis. PRO CO 323/1049/15.

(88) Minutes, Executive Council, 1925-1926, 19 Nov. 1925. LSE RLNU, F 2/7, p. 88.

(89) "Mandates: Memo Summarizing Decisions on General Mandate Questions," [undated--but 1927]. PRO CO 323/988/9.

(90) "Annex to minutes of 7 Nov. 1926." Minutes, Mandates Committee, 1921-1938. LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 21.

(91) "Mesopotamia and 'A' Mandates," Minutes, Various Committees, 1919-1925. LSE RLNU, F 5/38, p. 138; Minutes, Mandates Committee, 1921-1938, 20 Nov. 1926, p. 9. LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 29. The suggestion was made by Argentina.

(92) Sec R.I. Rotberg, "The Federal Movement in East and Central Africa, 1889-1953," Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, 11 (1964), pp. 141-60; Ronald Hyam, "Bureaucracy and 'Trusteeship' in the Colonial Empire," Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1999), pp. 268-69; and "Report of the Commission on Closer Union for the Dependencies in East and Central Africa (Hilton Young Commission), 1929." London, HMSO, Cmd. 3234. On Tanganyika more generally, sec John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979).

(93) Minutes, Executive Council, 1928-1930, 21 Feb. 1929, p. 33. LSE RLNU, F 2/9, p. 93; Amery to LNU Executive Committee, 14 Mar. 1929. LSE RLNU, F 2/9, 99.

(94) "Draft Statement of Policy on Closer Union in East Africa," 18 Oct. 1929, Minutes, Mandates Committee, 1921-1938. LSE RLNU, F 5/44, p. 20. Wilson subsequently defended his work to Parliament. Sec "Joint Select Committee on East Africa: Minutes of Evidence," 11 Dec. 1930, esp. 3, 13-15. London School of Economics, Passfield Papers--East Africa Papers, 1929-1931, Coll.Misc.156, M 229, Vol. I File B, pp. 92, 96-98.

(95) "Draft Amendments to Mandates for Togoland and Cameroons, Article 9," Minutes, Various Committees, 1919-1925. LSE RLNU, F 5/38, p. 112.

(96) Leonard Woolf, Downhill all the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (London, 1967), p. 225.

Daniel Gorman is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of History at York University. In May 2006, he will be taking up a new position as an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Waterloo. His book, Imperial Citizenship, will be published in 2006 by Manchester University Press, and he is currently researching ideas of internationalism between the world wars.