12 J.-A. PEMBERTON
the stabilisation of peace in Europe.^35 Also notable in this regard was an
inaugural address delivered at that session by Allen W. Dulles, partner in
the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, legal adviser to the American delega-
tion to the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments
in Geneva in 1932 and 1933 and chair of a committee on collective
security that had been appointed by the CFR prior to the conference in
London for the purpose of organising American submissions to it. In his
address, Dulles, who served as chair of the conference’s study meetings,
advised that one of the reasons why many of his compatriots wanted the
United States to more completely isolate itself from European problems
was the ‘apprehension’ that American assistance was being sought in
order to ‘to help maintain a particular status quo rather than to maintain
the peace’ and warned that the majority of them were not ‘sufficiently
convinced’ that the American ‘national interest and possibly national
safety may depend upon keeping other people from going to war.’^36
united beHind tHe leAgue?
Hoare’s speech at the Sixteenth Assembly had caused a sensation
because of its affirmation of ‘the interest of the British people in col-
lective security.’ This affirmation caused a sensation because many had
long doubted, and with good reason, the strength of the British com-
mitment to the security system of the LON. As Hoare acknowledged in
his speech, even Britain’s ‘kinder critics’ felt that Britons held themselves
‘remote’ from questions which were of ‘vital interest’ to other countries.
As for the country’s harsher critics, Hoare observed that the British ‘atti-
tude has given a pretext for more bitter charges.’^37
Yet is important to note that Hoare qualified His Majesty’s
Government’s commitment to the maintenance of the covenant in
two ways even if only as a matter of inference. Firstly, in what was an
(^35) Philip C. Jessup, The United States and the Stabilization of Peace: A Study of Collective
Security (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1935), 148, 152.
(^36) ‘Addresses Delivered at the Inaugural Meeting,’ in Maurice Bourquin, ed., Collective
Security: A Record of the Seventh and Eighth International Studies Conference, Paris
1934 —London 1935 (Paris: International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, 1936),
43–4.
(^37) League of Nations [hereafter LON], special supplement, Official Journal [hereafter
OJ], no. 138 (1935), 43.