LEAGUE OF NATIONS ËÈÃÀ ÍÀÖÈÉ SOCITE DES NATIONS
THE
COMPLAINTS
OF
memoranda,
petitions, resolutions, minutes,
letters
and documents, addressed to the
1919-1939
ÆÀËÁÈÒÅ
HA
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1979
International
documentation on
N.
PORTRAIT
OF A BRITISH DIPLOMAT:
HAROLD NICOLSON
The morning when Lloyd
George announced the Armistice from
the
steps on
great
sadness. For several months he had been working and preparing
himself/or the forthcoming Peace
Conference in the basement of the
Foreign Office, "in a
green and violet dug-out" which but a
few
weeks
before had served as a shelter from German air-raids. His
specialty was
the problem of Balkan frontiers, and on Armistice Day,
he was
planning to cut-off the Strumitsa
enclave from
order to
satisfy certain Serbian claims. Although during his stay in
Bulgarians rather well, his
feelings of contempt for the vanquished na-
tions
were strong. Today the confusion over the
interpretation of war
guilt and
the criticism addressed to entire nations appears unfounded.
But Nicolson's mind was made up. Here is what he wrote
on the
Bulgarians:
"Their
traditions, their history, their actual
obligations should
have
bound them to the cause of
have
behaved treacherously in 1913 and in the Great War they
have repeated
this act of perfidy. Inspired by the most material
motives of
acquisition they had joined with
doing
lengthened the war by two whole years. In the hour of their
victory
they have behaved in
and mthout foresight. They have joined our enemies for purely
selfish
purposes: their expectations had proved erroneous: and
they were now endeavouring to cast upon King Ferdinand the
blame for what had in
fact been a movement of national egoism. I
do not feel that
herself have been prepared, in similar circumstances,
to accord."
Harold
Nicolson had been
drawing the Balkan frontiers without
mercy. His diplomatic
style could not hide his hawkish inclinations.
He did not consider
the historical and social reality of the Bulgarian
nation and so he urged the British representatives in
Bulgarian lands and Bulgarian populations and to hand them over to
involved a complete
resettlement in the Balkans. Along the Serbo-
Bulgarian
frontier, a series of strips inhabited by
Bulgarians was taken
away from
all these districts,
without exception, was attested to by the
ethnological map of the eminent
Serbian professor Cvijic, champion
of Serbian
claims. The attribution of these
territories to
represented the third stage of
a series of Serbian encroachments on
Bulgarian
territories:
—
the first one took place in 1838 when
valley with its population
of over 100,000 Bulgarians;
—
the second one dates from 1878,
when, at the
the suggestion of
Pirot and the valley of
the Bulgarian
—
now there was the addition of the border region of Tsaribrod,
which brought the Serbian
territory dangerously close to
The
cession of territories on the western Bulgarian frontier was ad-
vocated on the basis of the
fact that the Bulgarian frontier ran too
closely to Serbian military
communication lines. This could not be
true, except perhaps as
regards Strumitsa, which was some
9 kilometres away
from the Nish-Salonika
railway.
During all this
nibbling at Bulgarian
territories
prospect of future Bulgarain aggression.
Inevitably the Bulgarian
population in
Serbians
who had been ill-treating the Bulgarian element in
point of view, one should
note that the aforementioned territorial
changes resulted in a
border running along a series of mountain tops.
By
the winter-time of 1919 the population was practically cut off from
all sources of supply
and, seeing this, the people started to hold
meetings, and address
protest telegrams to
fully a^are of the vindictive
character of the
1913, Harold Nicolson remained silent on the Macedonian
question.
This was
in harmony with the policy of
of the
Macedonian Bulgarians, for the sake of whom
fought a
series of wars and had made enormous sacrifices, was not
decided.
All human rights, all scientific testimonies and even the deci-
sions of
the great Powers, which showed that
Bulgarian territory, were ignored. The erection of an autonomous
State, or the establishment of an
international control body under the
auspices of
the
referendum be
held in
stand why
the conflict was deliberately cultivated in the Balkans.
II. DOVE OR HAWK
Painting the portrait of a
British diplomat at the
ference is
no easy task, especially when the person's
qualities, plans
and
actions are intricately interwoven. Harold Nicolson
played a
decisive part
in the decision-making process concerning most Balkan
problems.
His book "Peacemaking, 1919", a best seller, was ap-
preciated by
historians for its rich content and refined diplomatic
style,
but not everything that matters in British foreign policy is con-
tained in
this book. In order to understand Nicolson one should also
read his
confidential correspondence with the Foreign Office and the
Secretariat of the
General Eric Drummond and the Director of the Minorities
Section
Erik Colban. We cannot agree
with some professors who claim that
Nicolson did
not focus his attention on
was one
of the foremost experts on the Bulgarian question.
Yet his
comments on
the vanquished nations, including the Bulgarians, and
his
open contempt for them make one wonder how accurate his
knowledge and
comprehension of the defeated former enemies could
have
been.
The record of his career would support the
idea that he was inter-
nationally
minded. Born in
Baron Carnock,
Nicolson studied at
Embassies in
ing to
the Foreign Office in 1914, he joined the British delegation to
the
Peace Conference in 1919 as Second Secretary.
In October 1919
he
joined the
June 1920, v^hen he returned to Foreign Office. In 1925 Nicolson was
promoted as counsellor and in October of the same year he was ap-
pointed to
Her Majesty Legation in
M.
Embassy in
employed on
the editorial staff of "Evening
Standard", 1930, accom-
panied De La Warr
Educational Commission to
he
became Member of Parliament, 1935-1945, and Parliamentary
Secretary to Ministry of
Education, 1940-1941. Nicolson was a
Governor of the B.B. C. during 1941-1946. In 1947 he joined the
Labour
Party. He obtained numerous honorific titles as
Honorary
Doctor of the Universities of
Member of the
For one year Harold Nicolson
was probably the most important
agent of
the
Political Section of the Secretariat
consisted in testing the intelligence
service set
up by Sir Eric Drummond, Paul Mantoux, Jean Monnet
and
others. It is true that during this period the Foreign Off ice passed
copies of
all its secret telegrams and reports to the Head of the Inter-
national
Secretariat, but the Intelligence Service of the League of Na-
tions in
general did not function, and so Nicolson resigned in
June
1920.
In the performance of
Harold Nicolson we may observe the re-
quirements of
the intelligence-gathering process. He was collecting in-
formation, which was submitted for evaluation or analysis by
Foreign
Office and the Secretariat of the
vide
meaning and relevance to any League decision-making. Some of
this
information was used by policy and action authorities.
Nicolson's reports were
intended to assist the
Secretariat to define policy and help
operational officers in making
decisions. Yet, even now, after a lypse of 60 years, the sense of failure
is
tangible. This first conceptualization of
world Government, of a
central
control of national armies, and the creation of a central in-
telligence
service within the League of Nations, proved rapidly im-
practicable. By June 1920, the original
modus operandi of the
Secretariat of the
In order to appreciate the British sense of humour and behaviour it
is
sufficient to read Nicolson's
brilliant book on the Peace Conference
and his
diary. Even today diplomats could learn much from his
Chichele lectures, given in 1954 and
entitled 'evolution of
Diplomatic Method".
Harold
Nicolson hoped
that the actual history of the Conference
"would some day be written in an "authoritative
and readable form".
He
feared that the atmosphere of those unhappy months might re-
main unrecorded. And he
carried on his study in a sort of penumbra.
"Peacemaking, 1919" shows
the lack of lucidity of the Foreign Of"
fice: the reader marvels
at their amazing inconsistency and their com-
plete absence of any
method of negotiation. At the
ference, the pervading
element was the confusion to which Nicolson
himself contributed and
preserved for history through his brilliant
style. His duplicity was
hidden behind the protocol and the good
training of a skilled and
attractive young diplomat. The settlement of
the Balkan question made
by British diplomacy turned to be anti-
historic. In the long run
the formalist approach to problems and
social contradictions did
not pay. Nicolson's
diplomatic practice and
advice on the Balkans were fateful and History is still busy
correcting
some of his errors.
Into
which category of diplomats could we
classify Harold
Nicolson if we apply the categories proposed by Philip
Noel-Baker
*
concerning British foreign
policy-makers: doves and hawks? Lord
Robert
Cecil was a dove fighting for the cause of the League of Na-
tions. Sir Maurice Hankey was a hawk — the prototype of a hard-
liner. Philip Noel-Baker's classification applies also to British society.
But
on the international plane and vis-a-vis small States
or States out-
side the
policy towards
South-Eastern
younger men in the Foreign
Office, such as Nicolson,
Percy and Clerk
who favoured
nationalism, and the more senior men such as
Crowe,
Hardinge, Carnock and others, who favoured
the preservation of the
old empires. ** The activities of British diplomats at
Secretariat
of the
what extent the
Secretariat of the
by English diplomatic
methods.
*Cf.
Noel-Baker, Philip John. The First World Disarmament Conference, 1932-1933 and
why it failed,
**
Sharp, Alan.
Minorities in history.