Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

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Lord Robert Cecil

Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood , Robert Cecil for short (born September 14, 1864 in Salisbury , † November 24, 1958 in Tunbridge Wells , Kent ) was a British politician and diplomat. As the founder and president of the International Peace Campaign , he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937 .

Life

Early years

Robert Cecil was born in 1864, the third son of statesman and three-time Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury . As the younger son of a marquess , from 1868 he used the courtesy address "Lord" Robert Cecil. He was part of the British elite from birth and mainly attended private schools for training. At Eton College in Eton and Oxford , he studied law . After graduating, he worked for his father for some time and then embarked on a career as a lawyer .

Political career

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, 1931

In the general election of 1906 Robert Cecil won a constituency, became a member of parliament for the Conservative Party and held this position with brief interruptions until 1923. Like his brother Hugh Cecil , he opposed his cousin in the years after the parliamentary election of 1906, which was clearly lost for the Conservatives , the party chairman Arthur Balfour , until he finally resigned in November 1911 . During the First World War he worked as Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Ministry and from 1916 to 1918 as Blockade Minister. In 1916 he spoke out in favor of a League of Nations (in the same year as American President Thomas Woodrow Wilson ) and published a "memorandum on proposals as to how the opportunities for future wars could be reduced". In 1918 Robert Cecil became head of the British League of Nations Department and developed the "Cecil Plan", on the basis of which he worked out a statute for the League of Nations in Paris in 1919 and chaired the meetings of the British League of Nations Department at the Peace Conference.

The League of Nations was brought into being with the Treaty of Versailles on January 10, 1920, with the victorious powers of World War I, with the exception of the United States, playing the leading role after the treaty was rejected by the American Senate. On December 28, 1923, Robert Cecil was the hereditary title Viscount Cecil of Chelwood , of East Grinstead in the County of Sussex, bestowed on him, making him a member of the British House of Lords . In 1923 and 1924 he was Lord Seal Keeper , from 1924 to 1927 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and active in the Disarmament Commission.

Also in 1923 Robert Cecil became President of the League of Nations and remained in this post until its dissolution on April 18, 1946. In the successor organization, the United Nations , he was appointed Honorary President for life. Robert Cecil founded the League of Nations Union in 1923 and was its president from 1923 to 1945. In 1936 he founded the Rassemblement universel pour la paix (International Peace Campaign) with the Frenchman Pierre Cot and became its president. For this he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. In 1938 Robert Cecil spoke out against the Munich Agreement and the cession of the Sudetenland to the German Reich .

The Rassemblement universel pour la paix (International Peace Campaign) supported a campaign against the Japanese attack on China in early 1938 and to help this country.

The statement that the League of Nations had not proven itself as an instrument of peacekeeping was countered by Cecil until the end of his life in 1958: “It is not that it has been tried and found to be unsuitable, but it has been found uncomfortable and has not been tried. "

family

In 1889 he married Lady Eleanor Lambton (1868-1959), daughter of George Lambton, 2nd Earl of Durham . Since the marriage remained childless, his title of nobility expired on his death in 1958.

Web links

Commons : Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 32892, HMSO, London, December 28, 1923, p. 9107 ( PDF , English).
  2. ^ "China": from World Conference for the boycott of Japan and aid to China, London 1938, February 12-13 , Collected records 1936-1942 ; This was preceded by a personal letter from Mao Zedong and Zhu Des to Labor leader Clement Attlee on November 1, 1937, asking for support against Japan
  3. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig, Robert Cecil, Tireless advocate of the League of Nations. Deutschlandfunk , format: calendar sheet, September 14, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Cecil, Robert, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gascoyne-Cecil, Edgar Algernon Robert, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood; Cecil, Lord Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician and diplomat, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Salisbury
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1958
Place of death Tunbridge Wells , Kent