Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

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honour of our Empire . . .’. Laurier matched the moment, reminding

Canadians he had:

often declared that if the mother country were ever in danger, or if

danger ever threatened, Canada would render assistance to the fullest

extent of her power.. . . When the call comes our answer goes at once,

and it goes in the classical language of the British answer to the call to

duty: Ready, aye, ready.

Canada’s leaders asked the British to advise them how to mobilize the

country for war, but with a twist. Canadian forces would come en masse,

not just Canadian volunteers for British forces. The British accepted this

and every other such offer, albeit the Admiralty placed all the King’s

navies under its operational control. Dominion forces prepared to serve

with, rather than as subunits of, British forces.

Canada’s early war effort was marred by a glaring contrast between the

organization and direction of its military forces and the political commit-

ment of its government. Borden became one of three Empire prime min-

isters whose individual contribution seriously inﬂuenced the course of the

war. From the start, he argued with conviction that the British Empire was

ﬁghting a just war, to which Canada must contribute all it could for as

long as necessary. But the deepest difference between Borden on the one

hand and Macdonald and Laurier on the other boiled down to one thing:

Borden had to do in practice what they faced only in principle. Borden set

two conditions for producing all Canada could offer, and he pressed them

hard: overseas service would be voluntary and Canada would demand a

voice in directing the war that matched its ﬁghting contribution.

Unfor-

tunately for Borden, three problems loomed. First, the expansion of the

war threatened to dwarf all early plans for mobilizing troops and produc-

ing what they needed. Second, important constituencies remained luke-

warm, especially French Canada, which produced only a small fraction of

volunteers. Finally, his minister of militia was Sam Hughes.

To call Hughes eccentric would be kind. Hughes discarded all existing

plans and arrangements and behaved like a medieval baron, calling Cana-

dians to ﬂock to the standard spontaneously. They came in great

numbers, but an entirely new base, Camp Valcartier outside Quebec City,

had to be built to house and train them. It took months to sort out the

confusion, but when they ﬁnally went overseas, they did so with an inferior

weapon: the Canadian-made Ross riﬂe, adopted before the war and pro-

moted by Hughes as an expression of national pride. This classic example

of ‘imperial nationalism’ landed Canada’s ﬁrst contingent with a weapon

so prone to misﬁre that the soldiers soon learned to trade for British riﬂes

or scavenge German ones. Worse, Hughes set up an over-elaborate

command structure, in France and the UK, which confused the Canadian

chain of command. All this made it harder for Canada’s soldiers to ﬁght

282 B.P. Farrell

effectively. When the battles of mid-1915 produced casualties far greater

than expected, this shocked Borden, the country and indeed the Empire

into confronting the fact that this was a war that would not tolerate ama-

teurism and unforced errors.

Those same battles also made it clear, the fundamental British policy,

to ﬁght the war without disturbing ‘business as usual’, could not succeed.

The ﬁghting power of the German Army, plus the ability of modern indus-

trial powers to generate tremendous resources, and the will to use them,

forced the British government to rethink its war policy. They responded

by expanding the war vertically and horizontally. Asquith reluctantly reor-

ganized his government as a coalition and accepted a Ministry of Muni-

tions, under David Lloyd George, to harness British industrial power to

meet the apparently insatiable demands of industrial war. Kitchener, now

minister for war, strove to expand the British Army tenfold – primarily to

support the main theatre of war, the Western Front in France. Meanwhile,

Allied forces launched a major offensive against Turkey, to try to outﬂank

the deadlock on that Western Front. Australian and New Zealand citizen

soldiers, merged into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

(ANZAC), were committed in force to that offensive. Their eight-month

battle at Gallipoli made less of an impact on the war than on antipodean

perceptions of themselves and their role in the Empire, then and later.

When the Allied high command called off the battle by evacuating their

forces in December, failure only magniﬁed what later became two myths –

one of nation-building, the other of British cynicism. But at the time the

hard ﬁghting and shocking casualty lists produced both pride in Domin-

ion contributions to the war effort and increased determination to make

sure those sacriﬁces produced results.

Borden led the way in person, visiting Europe in August 1915 and

inspecting his troops. He was appalled by what he found: the grinding

battles of attrition on the Western Front were chewing up Canadian and

British soldiers to no apparent effect, while the British government strug-

gled to supply them with the munitions and equipment they needed. But

Borden found it difﬁcult to prod information about grand strategy and

war production out of the British government, let alone secure real con-

sultation. This produced a testy exchange with Andrew Bonar Law, the

colonial secretary, regarding how the Dominions could express their

views about directing the war. Law was complacent: perhaps Borden

could suggest a mechanism by which the Empire’s governments could

consult on policy without compromising either military security or the

responsibility of each to its own Parliament? Borden boiled over on 4

January 1916:

It can hardly be expected that we shall put 400,000 or 500,000 men in

the ﬁeld and willingly accept the position of having no more voice

and receiving no more consideration than if we were toy automata.

Coalition of the usually willing 283

Any person cherishing such an expectation harbours an unfortunate

and even dangerous delusion. Is this war being waged by the UK

alone or is it a war waged by the whole Empire? If I am correct in sup-

posing that the second hypothesis must be accepted then why do the

statesmen of the British Isles arrogate to themselves solely the

methods by which it shall be carried on in the various spheres of

warlike activity and the steps which shall be taken to assure victory and

a lasting peace? It is for them to suggest the method and not for us. If

there is no available method and we are expected to continue in the

role of automata the whole situation must be reconsidered.

Hard on the heels of this exchange Borden received a visitor en route to

London: William ‘Billy’ Hughes, pugnacious prime minister of Australia.

Hughes shared Borden’s commitment to the war and his frustration with

British attitudes. He and Borden agreed they must publicly pressure the

British to consult the Dominions about running the war. Such rare lateral

consultation spooked Asquith into inviting Hughes to attend two Cabinet

meetings in London in March. But at those meetings, he tried to quaran-

tine Hughes, making it clear the invitations were a courtesy, not a prece-

dent. This was unwise. Hughes spent the rest of his visit making ﬁery

speeches not only rallying support for the war effort, but also pressing the

British to recognize the growing role of the Dominions.

British reluctance to share any voice in war direction was by now badly

misplaced. Borden’s bluntness was a warning they needed to take seri-

ously. He was by far the most determined supporter of total war in high

ofﬁce, never faltering, as the war expanded, from his conviction this was a

just and necessary struggle in which Canada must do its utmost. But after

more than a year and a half of war, Dominion contributions were indis-

pensable in every theatre of war and all aspects of the war effort. Borden

and Billy Hughes pressed their case relentlessly. British concerns about

the inexperience and professional shortcomings of Dominion forces,

especially at the higher command level, were not always misplaced. The

prolonged confusion in the Canadian chain of command inﬂicted by Sam

Hughes testiﬁed to that. But the monstrous growth of the war, the sheer

need for every man, penny and bullet, made such qualms seem ever more

like luxuries the Empire could no longer afford.

The need to campaign against German colonial forces in East Africa

forced the British to rely heavily on South African forces. Dominion and

colonial forces continued to support the Middle East campaign against the

Turks. Dominion naval forces and individual sailors reinforced the RN in

both its anticlimactic Battle of Jutland and the even more desperate

struggle to protect the Atlantic lifeline to the mother country. British

troops had to suppress an uprising in Dublin; the resulting punishments of

the ringleaders sparked an Irish backlash that boded ill for the future. But

above all, the great Battles of the Somme bled Kitchener’s new armies

284 B.P. Farrell

white, including Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and colonial forces

drawn into the main struggle on the Western Front. The year 1916 pushed

the Empire over the edge into total war. Dominion reactions signalled

both how much and how little this escalation affected imperial defence.

On the one hand, men ﬂocked to the colours. By the end of 1916, Canada,

Australia and New Zealand maintained ten infantry divisions, a quarter of

the strength of the British forces on the Western Front. On the other hand,

each indicated their intention to participate on their own terms. The Aus-

tralian people supported the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), but in two

national referenda rejected conscription for overseas service. Borden

ﬁnally sacked Sam Hughes and took steps to professionalize Canada’s mili-

tary direction, but the strain of battle increased domestic political pressure

to introduce conscription. Borden decided to grasp that nettle, to meet

what he regarded as a pledge of honour to the army in the ﬁeld. In return,

he made it clear Canada could only face the debate this must provoke if its

voice was clearly being heard in running the war.

The decisive breakthrough came in London in December when Lloyd

George ousted Asquith. The ‘Welsh Wizard’ formed a coalition govern-

ment dedicated to prosecuting total war. He made two other moves of

lasting importance. First, he established a permanent Cabinet Secretariat

to bring more order and system into not only directing the war, but also

governing Britain and its Empire. Second, he invited the Dominion prime

ministers to come to London to consult with his new government on how

to prosecute the war. Borden seized the invitation, and opportunity, with

both hands, crossing the Atlantic again in February 1917. After visiting his

army in the ﬁeld, the Canadian prime minister returned to London more

determined than ever to parlay the massive effort his army and nation

were making into a real voice in directing the war. This was only

underlining an established policy: Canada could only wage total war if its

voice were heard. But this time, he received a very different reception.

Lloyd George was as dedicated as Borden to total war. The jarring changes

he made in British administration, and the coalition he formed with

Conservative politicians and imperial constructionists such as Bonar Law

and Milner, were deﬁnitive repudiations of ‘business as usual’ liberalism.

But the escalation of the war not only brought him to power, but it also

made him a supplicant. The problem was the bloody stalemate on the

Western Front. American pressure for a compromise peace needed to be

resisted, and British Empire forces needed many more men and a lot

more munitions. To meet those challenges, the new British government

needed full Dominion support. This time the Canadian prime minister

saw eye to eye with his British counterpart, who made sure he was briefed

in full on British war direction and grand strategy. By the time the formal

Cabinet meetings began on 20 March, Lloyd George and Borden set the

agenda by agreeing that the Empire must ﬁght total war to total victory

and pay any price necessary to win that victory.

Coalition of the usually willing 285

Lloyd George’s summons in spring 1917 produced high drama regard-

ing imperial defence – and also generated confusion and false hopes,

then and later. To federationists such as members of the Round Table it

seemed the great day was ﬁnally at hand. Lloyd George publicly trans-

formed the discussions with Dominion leaders into what became styled

the Imperial War Cabinet. But this was misleading. There was to be sure

intimate consultation this time. Dominion leaders joined their British col-

leagues for fourteen Cabinet meetings. But it remained consultation; the

British War Cabinet retained executive direction of the war. On the other

hand, few outsiders fully grasped this at the time, especially after Lloyd

George added civilian and military advisers to the discussions and pro-

moted it to a full-blown Imperial War Conference. Through ﬁfteen formal

sessions those at the table discovered ﬁrst hand that even when the British

‘family’ lined up shoulder to shoulder to ﬁght total war, the complications

of imperial defence did not disappear. Billy Hughes did not arrive until

mid-April; he was delayed in Australia by an acrimonious general election

fought mainly over the question of conscription for overseas service. Louis

Botha was not there; he remained in South Africa to make sure that the

fractious Dominion stayed in the war. Botha was in fact glad not to be

there, sure his counterparts would be ‘a damned nuisance’ getting in the

way of a busy British government. On the other hand, he sent a minister

who soon became a central ﬁgure in directing the Empire, let alone impe-

rial defence – General Jan Christian Smuts. Joining Smuts and Borden

were William Ferguson Massey from New Zealand. Together with Lloyd

George and his new coalition they forged a strong commitment to war à

l’outrance. Indeed, as the discussions progressed, the Canadian Corps, now

four divisions strong, fought and won the gruelling battle at Vimy Ridge

that signalled Canada’s military coming of age – and later became its

counterpart to Gallipoli as a nation-building identity forming icon. This

all inspired Borden to ask Canadians to make the ultimate commitment to

total war by accepting general conscription.

The Imperial War Conference produced the commitment Lloyd

George needed, just in time for the Empire to ﬁght the grim attrition

battles of 1917. Dominion power added a vital increment to British eco-

nomic and military strength everywhere. But practical experience sparked

more movement in arrangements for imperial defence. At the spring con-

ference, Smuts posed the pivotal question: ‘How are we to keep together

this Empire’? Borden proposed what became the ofﬁcial reply, Resolution

IX. The British and Dominion governments agreed the war was too press-

ing to allow them to sit down and formally adjust ‘the constitutional rela-

tions of the component parts of the Empire’, but also agreed this must be

done as soon as the war was over. And any adjustment must start from the

agreement the Dominions were ‘autonomous nations of an Imperial Com-

monwealth . . .’ with a right to ‘an adequate voice in foreign policy’ and to

‘effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important

286 B.P. Farrell

matters of common Imperial concern . . .’. Generations of analysts

focused closely on the constitutional questions raised by this public decla-

ration. Borden’s biographer R.C. Brown credited him with drafting a reso-

lution that formally recognized what the Dominions had already won on

the battleﬁeld. Brown argued Borden saw this agreement as the culmina-

tion of his policy to develop Canada to full nationhood within the Empire.

The formal use of the term ‘Commonwealth’ sparked great attention, as

did the inclusion of India ‘as an important portion of the same’. Massey

certainly saw this as a step towards an Imperial Parliament.

But the con-

stitutional question was not so clear-cut, and cannot be separated from

other dimensions of imperial defence.

The resolution concluded that future consultation would lead to ‘such

necessary concerted action . . . as the several Governments may deter-

mine’. Smuts saw the problem: it would do more harm than good to try to

combine formal executive centralization in an Imperial Parliament with

the self-governing responsibilities of each separate Dominion Parliament.

Borden summed up the problem by what he wrote: his hope that Resolu-

tion IX would lay the foundation for more systematic direction of a new

Empire of equals had to be expressed in words that stressed the need to

consult rather than centralize. Round Table insiders such as Curtis soon

realized that cooperation in imperial defence was only being pushed

forward by sheer military necessity – and that this dynamic was promoting

Dominion nationalism and sense of identity at least as strongly as any

common imperial identity.

Resolution Nine turned out to be a promise

by the British to take more seriously Dominion demands for a voice in

return for sharing the burden – rather than any Dominion promise to

commit more closely to any formal imperial machinery. The British had to

make such a promise. They could not ﬁght what now became an all-out

war of attrition without the increment of military and economic strength

the Dominions now provided. On the other hand, Dominion leaders felt

they must provide that increment. The collapse of Russia on the Eastern

Front, the entry of an unprepared US into the war, and especially the ter-

rible clash of armies on the Western Front seemed to frame the issue

starkly: a death struggle between the British-deﬁned world order resting

on British power and a rampant German militarism.

For Borden in particular strategic necessity, not constitutional ambition,

was the driving force. Defeat would mean the destruction of British power,

which would compromise Canada in every dimension. Defeat could not be

contemplated. But to persuade Canadians to accept total war he had to

follow Lloyd George’s example and fashion a coalition. This and the ugly

election campaign that ensued polarized the country in superheated

rhetoric, which Borden did not surmount. With more passion than pru-

dence he slammed Laurier for being cautious, insisting the issue was ‘con-

scription or disgrace’. Borden won his election, but shattered his own party

in the process; anti-conscription riots in Quebec in spring 1918 had to be

Coalition of the usually willing 287

suppressed with English-speaking troops from Toronto, further poisoning

the national mood. The strain of total war was if anything greater in Aus-

tralia. Billy Hughes could not bring about general conscription despite his

election victory, resorted to heavy-handed censorship and roughly sup-

pressed growing labour discontent. Australian scholar Jeffrey Grey argued

that the Australian war effort in 1917 ‘was in danger of becoming unhinged

and the political climate bordered on the hysterical’.

At the very height of

total war, Dominion willingness to make massive commitments to imperial

defence underlined once and for all that there would always be real limits

to, and conditions for, such commitments.

This combination also surfaced at the sharp end, but here pre-war

progress in functional integration paid crucial dividends. Grey noted that

when ANZAC troops were committed to the Western Front in 1916, they

soon became ‘an integral part of the great army ﬁelded by Britain and its

Empire, with all which this might entail’. Dominion personnel played a

growing part in the new Royal Flying Corps as individuals in British units,

but on the ground the story took a very different twist. By late 1917, a four-

division Canadian Corps and a ﬁve-division Australian Corps, both led by

national commanders, stood in the British Order of Battle on the Western

Front. Increasing Dominion participation in higher command of larger

forces raised the proﬁle of their countries, in battle and at home. Suc-

cesses such as Vimy Ridge gained these forces a largely justiﬁed reputation

as divisions of high quality. Friction continued. Some senior British com-

manders carried on treating Dominion troops as forces they could direct

exactly as if they were UK formations; many believed Dominion ofﬁcers

simply could not handle higher command and should not be entrusted

with it. On the other hand, some Dominion ofﬁcers and ofﬁcials uncriti-

cally believed no British ofﬁcer at any level could lead Dominion troops as

well as their own ofﬁcers – and too readily assumed British planners were

more careless with Dominion forces than with their own. But against this

friction must be set the fact that more than one-ﬁfth of British ﬁghting

strength on the ground was provided by Dominion forces using the same

weapons, equipment, doctrine and techniques as their British counter-

parts. This simpliﬁed the problem of supplying them, a burden increas-

ingly supported by growing Dominion war production, and using them as

an integral part of larger British forces.

By pressing functional integra-

tion as effectively as he did before the war, Haldane may well have saved

the Empire, and the Allied cause, when it faced the terrible test of total

war in 1917–18 and needed every ounce of strength to prevail.

The strain of war provoked one ﬁnal crisis in 1918 that again brought

the Empire’s leaders together in consultation. The Russian collapse and

the slow American deployment in France allowed the Germans to launch

one last massive offensive to try to break the Allies while they still could.

Because the French were too drained to do much more than hold their

ground, and the Americans were not yet ready, the blow, and the burden,

288 B.P. Farrell

fell on the armies of the British Empire. They prevailed. One very import-

ant reason they did was the arrangements for imperial defence, which

helped to provide just enough strength to meet the challenge. On the

battleﬁeld, the crisis came when a German breakthrough threatened to

split the British armies and the British High Command tried to throw in

every unit to plug the breach. Lt Gen. Sir Arthur Currie, general ofﬁcer

commanding the Canadian Corps, ﬂatly refused to allow his formation to

be broken up in detachments and sent into battle under different British

commanders. The Australians went into battle, but under their own able

commander Lt Gen. Sir John Monash. Currie had his way; when British

Empire forces fought the German offensive to a stalemate, the powerful

Canadian Corps stepped forward to join their Australian counterparts to

spearhead the counteroffensive that shattered the German Army. Func-

tional integration helped create British Imperial Armies, rather than a

British Empire Army, that defeated a formidable enemy, which certainly

did threaten British power itself.

But whereas the battleﬁeld revealed

real progress in arrangements for imperial defence, the council table

more clearly underlined the limits.

The ﬁnal crisis in war direction arose not between the British and the

Dominions, but between Lloyd George and his own generals. The British

prime minister concluded after the terrible carnage at Passchendaele that

his ﬁeld commanders were squandering the Empire’s priceless manpower

in futile slogging matches in the trenches. He decided to force them to

accept a new Allied Supreme Command under Marshal Foch – and to call

in his Dominion counterparts to help him undermine their position.

Lloyd George launched a second round of Imperial War Cabinet meetings

on 11 June 1918 by painting a bleak picture of the situation, calling it ‘a

rather dark tunnel’. But by the time the Cabinet and Imperial War Con-

ference meetings wrapped up on 12 August, the German Army was

broken and in full retreat. The Dominion ministers played their role from

the start. Borden responded to Lloyd George’s ﬁrst brieﬁng by delivering

a withering cross-examination of the British High Command:

We came over to ﬁght in earnest; and Canada will ﬁght it out to the

end. But earnestness must be expressed in organization, foresight,

preparation. Let the past bury its dead but for God’s sake let us get

down to earnest endeavour and hold this line until the Americans can

come in and help us to sustain it till the end.

Borden’s passion was bolstered by the detail of his critique and much of

that derived from long conversations with Currie, his own ﬁeld comman-

der. Massey, speaking for the ‘most loyal Dominion’, chimed in support:

‘there is something wrong somewhere and we have got to ﬁnd it’. This was

all music to Lloyd George’s ears, sweetened the following week when Billy

Hughes arrived – late again – and insisted ‘He wished to feel sure that the

Coalition of the usually willing 289

sacriﬁces that were being made were not wasted for want of proper leader-

ship and strategy’.

Such criticisms produced a change in administration that as C.P. Stacey

argues ‘would have gone a good deal further than it did if the war had not

ended so soon’. Lloyd George played an important role, by rearranging

the machinery for war direction and calling in the Dominion govern-

ments. But Dominion criticism was sincere, not just the dance of puppets

on a string. And it was not just the unanimity of Dominion criticism that

mattered, it was the substance; hard experience in battle produced

Dominion commanders more willing and better able to provide informed

criticism of how the Empire’s war effort was being directed. The British

now had to work with their Dominion colleagues, as opposed to merely

keeping them informed, whether they liked what they were saying or not.

This was recognized by the man who as a result of Lloyd George’s innova-

tions emerged as the central ﬁgure in the administration of imperial

defence, a position he held for a generation: Colonel Maurice Hankey,

secretary to the war cabinet. Hankey proposed to refer Borden’s com-

plaints – and thus by implication the ultimate direction of the war – to ‘a

Committee of Prime Ministers only’. After Hughes arrived, the principals

agreed to do just that, establishing a committee with the vaguest of written

mandates to oversee the conduct of the war. While ofﬁcially this new body

was merely a subcommittee of the British War Cabinet, very soon it

became a real day-to-day executive body, for two reasons: the pace of

events on the battleﬁeld and the fact the British armies ﬁghting there

could only be directed as an integrated formation by their assembled gov-

ernments.

Nothing more clearly underlined this compulsion of circumstance than

the fact that the committee’s last formal paper in August dealt with what all

then expected to be the future course of the war in 1919. The British could

no longer revise grand strategy for an ongoing war without detailed discus-

sion in this new forum, bringing together their ‘junior but sovereign allies’

whose forces were so intimately associated with their own. Allied victories

that month made the report moot and, indeed, short-circuited the whole

arrangement of an executive Committee of Prime Ministers. But it would

be wrong to write it off merely as a reaction to the climax of the war.

Victory made it possible, and necessary, to face up to the great dilemmas of

imperial administration and defence exposed by the war – and they were

all raised that summer by the assembled company.

Hankey and Lloyd George served on both the Committee of Prime

Ministers and the British War Cabinet – but Hankey circulated all draft

copies of his reports to the latter body before the Dominion statesmen

received them. Hughes pressed for serious consideration of how to make

sure the different governments could remain ‘in direct touch with the

Prime Minister of the UK’ when the principals dispersed; he did not want

to have to ‘meander again through the indirect channels of the Colonial

290 B.P. Farrell

Ofﬁce’. But Arthur Balfour, now serving as British foreign secretary, noted

it would be difﬁcult at best to share control of a single foreign policy, yet

only such a policy could make sure that ‘the united strength of the

Empire was to be put forward for any external purpose’. This sounded

very much like full circle, returning the problem to the status quo ante

bellum. To dispel any such notion, Borden made it clear the war effort

made by the Dominions must mean real change: ‘Unless [Canada] could

have that voice in the foreign relations of the Empire as a whole, she

would before long have an independent voice in her own foreign affairs

outside the Empire’. Borden was certainly not threatening to take Canada

out of the Empire; but he was stating what the war exposed as a simple

fact. After four years of ﬁghting in a Great War at a level of violence and

commitment far beyond what anyone expected, the Dominions would no

longer provide support without full consultation.

Comparing Borden’s

request for advice in August 1914 to his pressure for a full voice in imper-

ial defence and foreign policy in August 1918 allows one to measure how

much the test of total war inﬂuenced the evolution of imperial defence.

The problem that could be postponed or talked around before the war

now had to be faced: if the British wanted to lead a military coalition of

their Dominions in the future, they must ﬁnd a way to share the all

important power of making policy decisions.

The abrupt end of the war in autumn 1918 probably made this more

rather than less complicated, but the problem was inherent. The crux of

the matter was that imperial defence remained a necessary but lopsided

partnership. The British needed Dominion help on a grand scale to win

the war; but that help came on top of a British war effort relatively, as

well as absolutely, even greater than their own.

And whatever world

order emerged from Allied victory would be one in which their security

rested on strong British power and global interests. Even when they

mobilized beyond anyone’s expectations, the Dominions remained very

much the junior partner. The Dominions wanted to stand in their own

right beside the British, not venture out on their own. The UK in 1919

was unquestionably the strongest military power in the world; the

Empire actually expanded physically as a result of the destruction of the

Turkish empire in the Middle East and the German overseas empire. But

the British now faced some uncomfortable facts, even before the peace

conference in Paris produced its controversial settlement. New York

replaced London as the strongest financial centre in the world, and the

Americans were clearly the wealthiest and thus ultimately the strongest

power left standing. Europe was physically devastated and Eastern

Europe was politically in chaos. And British public opinion looked for

peace, quiet, and reform at home, rather than more colonies abroad.

When the peace settlement established a drastically new paradigm for

directing world affairs, expressed in the League of Nations and its

Covenant, it presented another challenge to managing the defence of an

Coalition of the usually willing 291