During the decade that led to the outbreak of war in 1939, Cecil’s position as president of the League of Nations Union (LNU) became increasingly ambiguous. His personal popularity with grassroots members was generally high and his public profile continued to grow. In addition to making speeches about the League of Nations and international peace, Cecil was invited to contribute articles to contemporary publications such as the Fortnightly Review.1 This period saw the publication of a glut of books about peace and pacifism, many of which contained forwards or prefaces penned by Cecil. By the end of the decade, he had made forays into the most diverse public means of communication of the day, radio, delivering a series of six half-hour lectures on the League and contemporary events in the summer of 1939. This confident and diverse public profile was, however, at some variance with his relationship with the LNU. Indeed, there was a fundamental paradox. Cecil’s dogmatic, autocratic attitude to the Union’s executive committee was at complete variance with the liberal democratic principles that lay at the heart of his views on the League and collective security. His intellectual rigidity in his dealings with the Union adversely affected the ability of its executive committee not to appear insular and upper middle class. This detachment also occurred at the same time as the League’s faltering responses to the challenges posed to its authority by Japan and the European fascist dictators. That said, it is important to note that by 1934, as the reaction to the Peace Ballot was to show, Cecil was now remote from any significant influence within the government. Yet, at the same time, Cecil was aware of the League’s inability to deal with fast-moving international crises, and lobbied for these to be addressed. He also realised that it was important for the British government to have an alternative strategy to League diplomacy, and recognised that that would almost certainly mean a policy of rearmament.