Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/111

 War was over, and Morel began to make great progress as a Labour politician in the country, winning a Parliamentary seat, the divergence of the two leaders became so evident that, when Morel was left out of the appointments in MacDonald’s first Government, no surprise was felt by those who understood their relations. Morel as Foreign Minister, with fuller knowledge of foreign affairs than any other Labour man, might have made history by easing the peace terms and bettering our relations with Germany. But equally he might have failed through trying to carry us further and faster than we could be persuaded to go. Such speculations are not profitable. I mention them because this incident helped to bring home to me the immense part played by personal factors in those vital issues which demand disinterested consideration for their settlement.

The project of a League of Nations for the preservation of world peace took shape during the first year of the War in the discussions of a small group summoned by G. Lowes Dickinson and Richard Cross under the Chairmanship of Lord Bryce. The idea, of course, was by no means a war-product. It had a distinguished ancestry among European thinkers during several centuries, and a few years before the War was developed by Sir G. Paish and placed before statesmen in America. During the War the idea of a League of Nations to maintain world peace was in the minds of Englishmen like Sir Edward Grey and Americans like