Scandinavian internationalist divergence: unofficial peace discussions, 1914–1917

From the last decades of the nineteenth century the Scandinavian states were, roughly speaking, divided into three main political ‘camps’: conservatives, liberals and social democrats. When war broke out only Sweden, the strongest of the three states in terms of both military and economic power, and with a population as big as the two other countries combined, had not yet introduced a parliamentary system of government. The change came in 1917 when the conservatives lost power to a majority coalition government of liberals and social democrats. In Norway and Denmark, where parliamentarian government had been introduced in 1884 and 1901 respectively, liberal governments were in power in 1914. In Norway, Venstre – the Liberal Left – was in office, while in Denmark it was Det radikale Venstre – the Radical Liberal Left – a social liberal party representing smallholders and academics and with a strong anti-militarist profile.

Since their founding years in the 1880s, Scandinavian peace organisations were dominated by liberal democrats, and Scandinavian liberal internationalism developed in close interaction with the parliamentary political settings and the formulation of national foreign policy aims. Contrary to the peace movements in the United Kingdom and the United States, where Quakers and other religious denominations played an important part, the leading Scandinavian peace workers represented an internationalism that was first and foremost a foreign policy ideology. All three Scandinavian states were small states surrounded by great powers, and the aims of the international peace movement – neutrality, arbitration in international disputes, free trade and international disarmament – were promoted not only for moral and religious reasons, but also because they were seen as means of securing the survival of the three small countries.Footnote ⁸ During the war, when all the Scandinavian states pursued rather defensive national policies of neutrality, the liberal peace advocates, most of whom also belonged to the political establishment at home, engaged in more ‘offensive’ kinds of unofficial international discussions aimed at establishing a lasting peace after the war.

The institutional framework for these discussions was the Nordic Inter-Parliamentary Union (NIU), a regional branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which was set up in 1907 as a common meeting place for peace advocates among the members of the three Scandinavian parliaments. Following the outbreak of war in 1914 it became significant as a discussion arena where parliamentarians, frequently assisted by scholars, discussed the conditions of a future international peace, free from the present-day foreign-policy concerns of governments. Through the pre-war activities of the IPU, Scandinavian peace activists belonged to a transnational network of internationalists from a range of European countries as well as countries outside Europe – most significantly the United States.Footnote ⁹ The politicians and diplomats who were to shape the foreign policies of the Scandinavian states and their involvement in the League of Nations were to a high degree personalities with a common commitment to that internationalist network.

The Norwegian Christian Lous Lange, secretary-general of the IPU since 1909, was an important organiser and liaison in the network.Footnote ¹⁰ In August 1914 he hastily moved the IPU office from Brussels, in occupied Belgium, to Kristiania (Oslo). During the following months he managed to sustain correspondence with the leading figures within the union and the national IPU groups. Even though all national groups expressed their intention to maintain their own and thereby the Union's existence, it was a common understanding that normal activity, such as committee work, international conferences and meetings of the executive committee, would have to stop when half the national groups belonged to countries at war with each other. At the same time there was a discussion among the IPU groups of the neutral countries as to whether or not they could organise consultations of their own. The question was first raised by the Swiss IPU group and subsequently forwarded to other groups by the secretary-general. The answer from the single most important of the ‘neutral groups’, that consisting of US senators and congressmen, was a clear ‘no’ and the Swiss initiative came to nothing, since the council of the NIU at a meeting on 15 November 1914 made US participation a condition of their own support.Footnote ¹¹

That particular NIU meeting was significant for three reasons. First, the NIU assumed an important international role as the only grouping of IPU members with open channels of information to national IPU branches in both neutral and belligerent countries. Second, the NIU was made a more important channel for information and consultations among Scandinavian parliamentarians. Annual NIU conferences during the war discussed not only international affairs, but also questions related, for instance, to economic co-operation among the three states and the harmonisation of social legislation. Combined with increased intergovernmental co-operation, the broadening of the scope of NIU discussions contributed to the general improvement in intra-Scandinavian relations.Footnote ¹² Third, the NIU council made a decision of principle regarding their wartime internationalist agenda, which was subsequently distributed confidentially among the IPU groups. The Inter-Parliamentarians should avoid action that might be considered politically controversial among other IPU members. Mediation in the ongoing war was out of the question. Instead, members should concentrate on mobilising popular, and eventually government, support for establishing a foundation for a lasting peace after the war, based on the international rule of law. The nine members of the council, with the aid of Lange, outlined a peace programme based on the following principles: (i) a continuation of the Hague process, which should institutionalise peaceful and legal means of solving conflicts and include a permanent court of international justice; (ii) the introduction of effective limitations on armaments; (iii) institutionalised, democratic control over the foreign policies of all states; (iv) respect for the principle of national sovereignty; and (v) the general ‘open door’ principle (‘la porte ouverte’), a principle of particular importance to Scandinavians depending on foreign trade.Footnote ¹³

After the war, Lange concluded that the NIU decisions of 15 November 1914 had been very important for subsequent developments in the international peace movement. Their significance was not due to the content of the five points – they were all in line with pre-war IPU resolutions as well as contemporary statements from peace advocates outside Scandinavia. But the NIU, according to Lange, stressed the importance of concentrating on a limited number of vital reforms, and not wasting time and energy on a ‘more or less academic discussion of an infinite chain of questions’.Footnote ¹⁴

In autumn 1914 and increasingly throughout 1915, IPU members in several countries, including Scandinavia, got involved in various peace initiatives outside the union. For both practical and political reasons, most of those initiatives were taken nationally, with little international co-ordination apart from the secretary-general's pooling of information. One significant exception was the CODP, established at an international meeting in The Hague on 7–10 April 1915 of specially invited people. The invitations came from the Netherlands, where several Dutch peace organisations had set up the Nederlandsche Anti-Oorlog-Raad (NAOR – Dutch Anti-War Council). There were thirty who attended the meeting, coming from ten different countries – five at war and five that were neutral.Footnote ¹⁵ Sixteen were ‘representatives’ of the small European neutral states: Switzerland (four), Sweden (four), Norway (one) and the Netherlands (seven). Apart from parliamentarians, several held positions in international organisations – the Institute of International Law, the International Socialist Bureau, the Union of International Associations, the International Peace Bureau and the IPU.Footnote ¹⁶ The thirty persons concerned may easily be characterised as intellectuals rather than politicians; on the list of participants twelve bore the honorific ‘doctor’, and in his opening speech the chairman of the NAOR, H. C. Dresselhuys, described all the invitees as persons of ‘high quality’ – ‘non comme représentants officiels des pays ou d'organisations, mais seulement comme femmes et hommes de savoir et de la science’.Footnote ¹⁷

As they were intellectuals who were not to be held accountable by their respective states, and since the meeting was completely private, they were able to discuss freely and develop a common internationalist agenda without regard to power interests or other national considerations. However, they were themselves aware of the limitations of their position. At the opening it was emphasised that certain topics were strictly forbidden in the discussions, namely when the war should end and how and by whom the coming peace should be introduced.Footnote ¹⁸ In line with the resolution from the Scandinavians in the NIU five months earlier, the discussions were to be exclusively about the general principles of a new international order of peace and how popular and political support could be mobilised behind those principles.

Of the Scandinavians present at the Hague meeting, Lange, himself a historian working on his dissertation, later published under the title L'Histoire de l'Internationalisme,Footnote ¹⁹ was the most active in the discussions. It seems clear that he played a dominant role in the making of the five-point Minimum Programme for a Durable Peace that resulted from the meeting. Later, he wrote an elaborate comment on the programme in French, English and German that (with the consent of other key CODP figures) was distributed internationally by the new organisation. Lange's influence was in no small part due to the fact that his political views were generally acceptable to most European and US internationalists and, not least, that his command of foreign languages was exceptionally good.Footnote ²⁰

The first point of the Minimum Programme concerned the principle of national self-determination; the second, free trade or equal terms of trade in colonies, protectorates or spheres of influence; the third, institutionalisation of an international legal order; the fourth, arms reduction and freedom of the seas; the fifth point concerned the introduction of democratic control of foreign policy and a ban on secret international treaties.Footnote ²¹ National self-determination was to become a core principle behind several of President Wilson's fourteen points of 8 January 1918. In a world in which colonial empires still mattered and in which multinational states were common, that principle was highly controversial. But when the Minimum Programme was made known to Scandinavians in summer 1915, it caused little discussion. The third point of the programme, however, which pointed towards the establishment of a league or society of nations, included a principle that was new to organised liberal internationalism: the principle of ‘collective security’. The point introduced this idea as follows:

The idea that an international legal order would have to be enforced in the last resort had not previously been a matter of serious discussion by the IPU or other international peace organisations, and certainly not among Scandinavians, who were based in a foreign political tradition centred on the concept of neutrality. However, at the Hague meeting it seems to have been accepted without objections. Apart from Lange, who notes rather incidentally that the question of international sanctions was ‘extremely difficult’, no Scandinavian was quoted in the minutes from the session concerning the third point.Footnote ²³ But there were no Danes among the intellectuals assembled at The Hague. Things would look different when Lange and the four Swedes presented the Minimum Programme to a broader audience in Scandinavia.

From summer 1915 the CODP had an international office in The Hague, in addition to an executive committee of fourteen, an international council of about 230, and several national ‘committees for a durable peace’.Footnote ²⁴ The national committees were to carry out propaganda – and hopefully create a consensus of international public opinion in favour of the programme well before the end of the war. The Dutch initiators also wanted to organise a big international congress, and those present at meeting at The Hague partly agreed, against the advice of Lange. But attempts to this effect became stranded on practical and political grounds. International travel was generally difficult and – more importantly – it was difficult to avoid a congress being regarded as biased by representatives from the belligerent countries without draining it of political substance. Probably the most significant results of the work of the CODP came from nine study commissions designed to discuss problems related to the minimum programme. Commission reports and a large number of papers and articles collected by the commissions were published in four volumes in 1916–18.Footnote ²⁵

There were three Scandinavians on the executive committee, and there were Scandinavians in all the study commissions. Lange chaired a commission in charge of discussing how the Hague conferences should be developed into a permanent international institution; his fellow Norwegian historian, Halvdan Koht, who was later to become his country's foreign minister, ran a commission in charge of ‘the problem of nationalities’; a former Swedish finance minister, Baron Theodor Adelswärd, presided over a commission that discussed the principle of non-annexation and referenda; and, finally, a Danish university professor, L. V. Birch, led discussions on the principles of international free trade. There was, however, a marked difference in the support for the CODP between the three Scandinavian states. When the secretariat in The Hague, with the assistance of Lange and others, asked prominent members of the peace movement to accept a position on the executive committee, it was easy to get a ‘yes’ from Norway and Sweden, but much harder to find a willing Dane, the relatively unknown K. M. Klausen finally being chosen as their representative. The Swedes and Norwegians founded active national committees. By November 1917, 1,074 organisations and almost 110,000 individuals in Sweden had signed a manifesto based on the Minimum Programme. In Norway, about the same number of organisations and 378 of 674 local councils signed up.Footnote ²⁶ In Denmark, no national committee was established and the Minimum Programme attracted little support among traditional peace workers. This marked difference owed itself to a fundamental difference in liberal internationalist thinking between the internationalist elite in Denmark on the one hand and those in the other two Scandinavian states on the other.

Since the turn of the twentieth century radical liberals had gained dominance over the Danish internationalist agenda with an anti-militaristic internationalist ideology which regarded neutrality as a morally superior principle of non-violence in international politics and viewed education and democratisation as the primary means of creating a lasting peace.Footnote ²⁷ The maintenance of an international legal order was, they believed, to be based on the common international interest; it should not have to be enforced.Footnote ²⁸ From this point of view, the Minimum Programme with its provisions for a system of collective security was highly problematic. The president of the Danish Peace Association (Dansk Fredsforening), Niels Petersen, first made this point clear in 1916 in his comments on the Minimum Programme in a report to the CODP.Footnote ²⁹ After Petersen had repeated his argument at the meeting of the NIU in 1916,Footnote ³⁰ it was presented as the official Danish position by the radical Danish minister of defence, Peter Munch, at the NIU meeting of 1917. This position was maintained by the Danish government throughout the war. The Danish view on collective security was based on a general argument as well as one that focused specifically on the position of small states within a system of collective security. The general argument consisted of two components. First, there was an anti-militaristic claim that the presence of military power – even when intended for enforcing international law – would in itself create conflicts in the international system. Second, a domestic analogy contended that law enforcement would have to await the establishment of a rule of law, as had been the case in domestic politics. The point of the small-state argument was that participation in sanctions would involve much greater risk for small states than for great powers, and as a matter of consequence it would be unwise of the small states to promote this idea.

The Danish position in the NIU prompted Lange to develop his argument in favour of international sanctions. For Lange, accepting the principle of international sanctions was essentially a question of accepting the realities of international politics. ‘Basically’, he commented in the NIU in 1916, ‘this [the Danish standpoint] is the old Quaker standpoint. Its weakness is its neglect of the actual state of international affairs.’ To him, power politics would have to be accepted as a fact of international life. In his opinion an international legal order would have to be enforced – if necessary by military means. He did not, however, speak in favour of a strong international police force, let alone ‘world government’. What he envisioned was a system of collective security based on sovereign states that was strictly limited, at least initially: ‘I would ask for international action only against a state that refuses to submit a dispute to an international council of investigation and conciliation.’Footnote ³¹

At the NIU delegates’ meeting in June 1917, Lange developed his argument in favour of international sanctions, with considerable backing from the Norwegian and Swedish Inter-Parliamentary groups. The speech he gave was delivered on behalf of a committee appointed by the Norwegian Inter-Parliamentary Group a few months earlier. The committee had discussed what the position of Norway should be if, at the end of the war, a proposition aimed at establishing an association of states to secure world peace by the potential use of force was put forward by one or more great powers. The committee majority concluded that Norway should regard such a proposition positively. One reason was ‘a matter of opportunism’. It would be in Norway's own interest to take part in international negotiations as early as possible. Therefore the Norwegian government should support the idea in order to increase the chances of being accepted as a party to negotiations. From correspondence with groups and individuals in the IPU and CODP networks, as well as personal conversations with leading government officials in European great powers, Lange knew that questions of military security would be of vital importance in the coming discussions of a peace settlement. Participation, not isolation and alienation, should be the strategy of small states in order to obtain some measure of political influence. In other words, the difference between Lange and his peers on the one hand and the Danish internationalists on the other was also rooted in different views on whether the national interest of small states was best safeguarded by active international engagement or by keeping a remote position with respect to all potential battlegrounds in international politics. Taking into consideration the different geostrategic positions of the two countries, with Denmark practically situated on the battlefield and Norway at a safe distance, it is understandable that Norwegian and Danish internationalists held different views as to whether decoupling from international politics or participation and engagement should be the leading principles of small-state policy.

Lange's support of international sanctions was also rooted in an increasingly critical stance on neutrality as a political ideal: ‘From a purely moral–political point of view it is questionable whether a policy of neutrality in all circumstances may be regarded as acceptable.’Footnote ³² Thus he confirmed in principle the general, international wartime development towards a new kind of internationalism in the peace movement, based on international diplomatic, economic and, if necessary, military solidarity. In Scandinavia, this transition materialised as a nationally defined difference between Danish internationalists who defended the old concept on the one hand and Swedish and Norwegian ‘new internationalists’ on the other.

These national positions were never clear-cut. Even though the liberal and conservative parties in Denmark supported Danish neutrality, they had never bought into the principled view of neutrality characteristic of the radical strand of internationalism. During the war Niels Neergaard, the liberal leader of the Danish Inter-Parliamentary Group, together with other liberal politicians, expressed some sympathy towards the concept of collective security.Footnote ³³ Conversely, the conservative Francis Hagerup from the Norwegian foreign ministry sided with the Danish radicals in their rejection of any ideas of international sanctions.Footnote ³⁴

As central actors in the IPU discussions later obtained official political roles, this core difference materialised again in late 1917 and early 1918, when Scandinavian internationalist co-operation moved to the intergovernmental level. Before examining how this difference affected official Scandinavian co-operation, a different, truly transnational, strand of internationalism in Scandinavia must first be examined. During the war the labour movement, which was to become dominant in Scandinavian politics, made headway and entered the national centres of power in both Denmark and Sweden, where the social-democratic parties became part of the parliamentary basis of their national governments. This was not the case in Norway, however. The Norwegian Labour Party, which had strong factions of revolutionary socialists, came under their control in 1918. As it strongly opposed the existing social order, doubted the legitimacy of the national parliamentary democracy and believed in ‘proletarian internationalism’, the Norwegian Labour Party was not accepted as the political partner of any other party. It also became less influential in the Scandinavian labour movement. Both in terms of ideology and national political position it deviated from the main line of development in Scandinavia. As part of their integration into the national political sphere during the war, the social democrats had abolished socialist proletarian cosmopolitanism and developed a new social-democratic peace ideology which included a new and positive view of the state. In this process, socialist and liberal versions of internationalism were made compatible and political consensus about peace politics broadened.

In parallel with the activities of liberal internationalist circles, Scandinavian social democrats entered into co-ordinated discussions of the peace question immediately after the outbreak of war. Despite social-democratic representation in the NIU and the CODP, however, Scandinavian social democrats carried out their own peace discussions outside these liberally inspired institutional settings. Like many liberal internationalists, the Scandinavian social democrats viewed the neutral countries (and the Scandinavian countries in particular) as the international breeding ground for peace.Footnote ³⁵ The socialist perception of the international workers’ movement as an international guarantor of peace had suffered a fatal blow with the opening of hostilities and the social-democratic votes for war credits in the belligerent countries. Against this backdrop it became a main concern of the social democrats of the neutral states to make an effort to bring the war to an end. Thus when the joint consultative committee of the three Scandinavian social-democratic parties addressed the question of peace in November 1914 and announced a peace conference of the neutral social-democratic parties in December of the same year, it was with the triple aim of ensuring that the socialist movement was still seen as an active promoter of peace, strengthening public opinion in favour of ending the war and urging the neutral governments to explore the possibilities for mediating between the contending parties.Footnote ³⁶

In contrast to the theoretical and principled deliberations of the CODP and the NIU, the Scandinavian social-democratic committee scarcely discussed the nature of a future peace. A circular letter of 11 November 1914 that informed other social-democratic parties of the Scandinavian peace initiative merely stated that mediation should be aimed at a peace settlement ‘in which no border revisions were made without recognition of the right of national self determination, the limitations of armament and mandatory international arbitration’.Footnote ³⁷

The contents of the circular letter were in accordance with established principles within the Second International. The International Socialist Congress that met in Copenhagen in 1910 had stressed precisely these three points.Footnote ³⁸ Like the 1910 conference, however, the circular note of 1914 lacked any reflections on the status of the peace programme in relation to general socialist theory. This was due to the ideological split within the Second International. From an orthodox Marxist viewpoint, permanent peace was a post-revolutionary category, and the peace strategies of the 1910 programme could only be regarded as short-term strategies which would delay, but not prevent, war. In the growing reformist part of the International, however, a new and positive view of the state as a framework for improving and safeguarding working-class rights and interests had developed, which also involved a new, positive evaluation of the regulation of interstate relations mentioned in the 1910 and 1914 peace programmes. During the war this reformist wing of the International, to which the Danish and Swedish social-democratic parties belonged, substituted the international proletariat with the nation-state as the operational unit in the struggle against militarism and war, and developed a coherent, curative peace programme based on the regulation of interstate relations and the gradual economic and political transformation of the existing states.Footnote ³⁹ The split between the two factions therefore widened during the war, and proved to be impossible to bridge.

A programme along these lines was part of a second Scandinavian social-democratic peace initiative that was launched in spring 1917. The 1914 peace initiative had failed due to hostility from practically all European sister parties, but the Russian Revolution in spring 1917 had inspired hope among the Scandinavian social democrats that under the new circumstances created by the revolution they were in a position where they could launch a peace offensive. A Scandinavian committee called a conference in Stockholm in summer 1917, headed by the leader of the strong Swedish social-democratic party, Hjalmar Branting, and organised in co-operation with the Dutch social-democratic party. The idea behind the conference was to bring together socialist representatives of the countries at war and of different ideological strands within the International and let them present their views on the war and the preconditions for peace.Footnote ⁴⁰ Although this initiative proved to be in vain, the committee drafted a comprehensive social-democratic peace programme in the wake of a preliminary conference held in Stockholm in May 1917.

This social-democratic internationalism was distinct from classic liberal inter-nationalism, as it assumed that the basic precondition for creating permanent peace was the improvement of social conditions for the working class, carried out nationally and guaranteed internationally. The Stockholm programme contained a range of provisions for social reforms of the states and the establishment of an international organisation which could facilitate these reforms. Nonetheless, this new conception still contained some of the key principles of liberal internationalism. International arbitration, disarmament and free trade, as well as the principles of national self-determination, democratic control over foreign policy and the establishment of a League of Nations with the authority to enforce compliance with international law through international sanctions were all issues included in the programme of the neutral social-democratic parties.Footnote ⁴¹

However, as Lange pointed out after the war, the programme had an idealistic and radical character that distinguished it from most other internationalist projects of the wartime era.Footnote ⁴² For instance, and in marked opposition to the moderate peace programme of the CODP, it demanded the obligatory settlement of all international disputes by arbitration, absolute disarmament and free trade, as opposed to the more limited demand for an open-door policy. What Lange failed to acknowledge, however, was that, viewed against the background of revolutionary Marxism, the neutral social-democratic parties had undergone an ideological development of a remarkable kind and scale. It was by no means insignificant that the national integration of the social-democratic parties in Denmark and Sweden, in marked opposition to the social-democratic parties of the belligerent powers, had caused them to actively engage in peace efforts and to adopt a peace ideology based on and aimed at securing the survival of the existing states. Norway, however, stood out in this context. Due to the revolutionary, partly syndicalist, ideology of the Norwegian labour party, only a few marginal members of that party were engaged in the Scandinavian social-democratic peace efforts. Thus Norwegians held a position within the labour movement not very different from that of Danes among the liberal internationalists.

Scandinavian intergovernmental co-operation, 1917–1918

The annual meeting of the Nordic Inter-Parliamentary Union in June 1917 marked an important step forward in the direction of intergovernmental internationalist co-operation in the region. The question of international sanctions was an important item on the agenda, and the participating parliamentarians passed a resolution in accordance with a resolution of the 1916 meeting urging the Scandinavian governments to open preliminary discussions with the other neutral states ‘on the position to be taken on questions relating to an international legal organisation aimed at the prevention of war which are likely to be raised after the war’.Footnote ⁴³ This time, the three Scandinavian governments responded favourably to the request; in November 1917 it was decided at a meeting of the Scandinavian prime ministers and foreign ministers in Kristiania to set up study committees in co-operation with the inter-parliamentary groups so as to prepare the initiative suggested by the parliamentarians.Footnote ⁴⁴

Unlike the social-democratic Stockholm initiative a few months earlier, this initiative does not seem to having been inspired by the political upheaval in Russia. The Bolshevik takeover in November had a strong influence on parts of the Scandinavian labour movement, the Norwegian Labour Party in particular. There is, however, little evidence that worries about a possible revolutionary wave from the east influenced decisions among the political establishment of the Scandinavian states. For parliamentarians and governments alike, liberal internationalism was primarily a foreign policy ideology suited to safeguard the security and interests of the small Scandinavian states, and their main concern was to secure a role for the Scandinavian and other neutral small states in a post-war settlement.

With the setting up of the committees, members of the private transnational peace networks entered the realm of official foreign policy and joined government officials and prominent members of government in the development of an official Scandinavian peace programme. The Norwegian committee was comprised of Lange, shipbroker and former liberal parliamentarian Joachim Grieg and the former Conservative prime minister Francis C. Hagerup, an expert on international law and Norwegian envoy to Stockholm who had also been involved in inter-parliamentary activities. All three of them had been on the Norwegian delegation to the Hague Conference in 1907. The Swedish committee consisted of Oscar Ewerlöf from the Swedish foreign ministry, the liberal Theodor Adelswärd, who was the spokesman of the Swedish inter-parliamentary group, and Baron Marks von Würtemberg, a legal expert with a strong interest and involvement in foreign policy and international law. The Danish committee consisted of Niels Neergaard, a member of the liberal party and chairman of the Danish inter-parliamentarian group, Herluf Zahle, head of department in the foreign ministry, and Georg Cohn, the ministry's expert on international law.Footnote ⁴⁵ In autumn 1918 Hjalmar Branting from Sweden, Johan Ludwig Mowinkel from Norway and Munch from Denmark entered the committees.Footnote ⁴⁶ The bringing together of Scandinavian parliamentarians, members of government and government officials with a special interest in or knowledge of internationalist issues marked a decisive leap forward in the ‘Scandinavianisation’ and democratisation of the foreign policies of the three Scandinavian countries and a significant uprating of the peace cause in their foreign policies.

The shift in internationalist discussions at the intergovernmental level caused Scandinavian internationalist activities to take a narrow and divisive form. The Scandinavian committees entered the peace discussion at an inopportune time. With the US entry into the war in April 1917, the centre of internationalist activities had moved to the Western great powers, and neutral internationalist activities were reduced to a small-state phenomenon. At the same time the new prospect of the liberal internationalist programme actually being realised as part of the peace settlement imposed severe limitations on the discussions of a peace policy carried out by the Scandinavian governments. Neutral governments could hardly deal with issues which had direct implications for the peace settlement. Thus issues such as national self-determination, democratic control over foreign policies and free trade, which had been central elements of all three strands of Scandinavian internationalism, were not touched upon after the Scandinavian governments entered into the peace discussions. The Danish foreign ministry in particular was keen on keeping the negotiations strictly apolitical and also opposed suggestions by the Swedish foreign ministry and the Norwegian prime minister, Gunnar Knudsen, to include the question of disarmament in the negotiations.Footnote ⁴⁷

At the same time the Danish government stood by its staunch opposition to the idea of collective security. Due to the differences in opinion regarding this point, the Scandinavian foreign ministers had not decided on any particular mandate for the work of the Scandinavian committees at the meeting in November 1917. The differences on the question of collective security were noted again at the first meeting of the three Scandinavian committees in Copenhagen in May 1918. Against this backdrop, the three committees decided to limit discussions to the lowest common denominator: an international legal organisation in accordance with the preparations of the Hague conferences.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, the disagreement erupted again at the meeting of the Nordic ministers on 26–28 June, when Knudsen suggested that the discussions should include the question of a League of Nations based on the principle of international sanctions. The records of the meeting reveal that the Danish foreign minister, Erik Scavenius, turned down that suggestion: ‘The idea of a “League of Nations” was undoubtedly a beautiful world ideal, but the Foreign Minister was highly sceptical as to whether this was really in the true interest of the smaller states . . . [He] was of the opinion that it was altogether doubtful whether a coercive institution like this would not in itself carry the seeds of a future war.’Footnote ⁴⁹

Co-operation between the three countries was also impaired by the position of the Swedish government. Although they represented a coalition of liberals and social democrats, the Swedish foreign minister and members of the Swedish committee did not speak strongly in favour of any internationalist programme. Rather, they continued the policy of the previous conservative government, which had worked actively to safeguard the military, commercial and economic rights of the neutral states through concerted neutral action. They viewed the convention of a neutral conference as paramount and considered it a question of secondary importance as to which internationalist programme was presented as the basis of discussion at the conference. Instead they focused on mobilising Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain in favour of a neutral conference. These initiatives were met with suspicion by the Norwegian representatives, who were still wary of any perceived or real Swedish attempts at a lead position for themselves in international politics, but under a Scandinavian label, and from Denmark, where concerns were raised that this neutral activism might unnecessarily provoke the great powers.Footnote ⁵⁰

The Scandinavian division of roles was indicative of Scandinavian internationalist co-operation until the Second World War. Norway was the highly principled internationalist, Denmark the passive and adaptive Scandinavian, and Sweden the activist player in more traditional power politics. These differences are by no means surprising. Rather, they mirror the fundamentally different challenges which the three countries, for geographical and economic reasons, met in their overall relations with the outside world, and which became particularly pronounced during the First World War. The strategic position of Denmark as one of Germany's small neighbours, controlling the strait to the Baltic Sea, was extremely exposed, and extensive Danish commerce with both of the two belligerent blocs demanded international discretion. Military threats to Norway were much less intense due to Norway's remote position. In terms of commercial interests, however, its situation was as difficult, or even worse, than that of Denmark. Sweden was, as mentioned above, the strongest of the three countries, but as it was bordered by Finland, at the time a part of Russia, the main threat to its territorial integrity lay in the east. Although foreign political co-ordination took place, in the main each of the three governments carried out their own national foreign policies, aimed at maintaining neutrality while securing their commercial interests.

As a result of the international strains and the intra-Scandinavian differences, official Scandinavian internationalist discussions did not move significantly beyond the preparatory work for the third Hague Peace Conference. When the war ended and the other neutral states proved uninterested in a neutral conference, a Scandinavian internationalist programme was presented in the form of a ‘Draft Convention Regarding an International Legal Order’. It consisted of three main points: a permanent organisation of the Hague Conferences, the international conferences for peace and international law; the obligation of states to settle international disputes peacefully through either international arbitration or mediation; and a permanent international court of justice.Footnote ⁵¹

Viewed from the perspective of the victorious powers, the Scandinavian draft treaty must have seemed an inappropriate and outdated proposal. When it was presented in January 1919, the Western powers had already engaged in the much more far-reaching plans for the League of Nations. And viewed from the perspective of Lange and the other ambitious private peace entrepreneurs who had attempted to make the neutral Scandinavian countries spearheads of the transition towards this new peace system, the draft treaty was proof of the fact that the closely knit Scandinavian internationalist network was not always to their advantage, as they risked being tied to narrow and pragmatic political compromises which they could not fully support. However, the Scandinavian treaty proposal may also be evaluated more positively. The formulation and publication of a common position in international politics based on liberal principles was by no means unimportant at a time when revolutionary socialist forces and conservative reaction were gaining strength in Europe. The Scandinavian internationalist programme expressed a community of values and ideals with the Western powers. In committing the Scandinavian states to work for the promotion of liberal principles after the war, it also served as a stepping stone for Scandinavian membership of the League of Nations.

Moreover, the draft convention was also ascribed tactical importance, at least by the Danish government, as a platform for articulating discontent with the international disregard for the small neutral states in the creation of the new international legal organisation.Footnote ⁵² When Erik Scavenius met the Swedish envoy to Copenhagen the day after the draft convention had been published, he stated that it had been presented to the belligerent powers ‘to indicate that the neutral countries ought to be shown consideration and that they demand to be ranked equally with the Great Powers within the “League of Nations”. A kind of demonstration to mark that Norden apparently is not going to be consulted before the actual decision about the “League of Nations” is made.’Footnote ⁵³ Judging from the final negotiations of the three committees in November 1918, the Norwegian and Swedish representatives did not share these Danish concerns. While the Danish representatives and Munch in particular voiced discontent that the draft convention did not unconditionally assert the principles of the legal equality of states and mandatory international arbitration, the Swedish and Norwegian representatives viewed it as an attempt at constructing a practically feasible international legal framework.Footnote ⁵⁴ This difference of opinion with Denmark, and the Danish Radical Party in particular, defending an ideal small-state position with a focus on the legal equality of states and the establishment of an unconditional international legal order, and with Norway and Sweden accepting as a matter of fact the preliminary right of the great powers to set the terms for international co-operation, was an enduring feature of Scandinavian internationalism. However, when the plans for the League of Nations were introduced, Scandinavian internationalist disputes ended and the Scandinavian internationalist elites united in criticism of the new international organisation.

Scandinavian unity: the Scandinavian states and the League of Nations, 1919–1921

The draft covenant for the League of Nations, which was presented on 14 February 1919, was an immense disappointment to Scandinavian internationalists. The exclusion of the vanquished powers, the vague and limited provisions for disarmament and the legal settlement of international disputes, the dominant position of the great powers within the League, and the fact that the new organisation would have to safeguard the settlement of Versailles, with its harsh peace conditions, through a system of collective security all ran counter to the ideals of the Scandinavian internationalists. Scandinavian internationalist activities entered a new phase characterised by the formal accession of the Scandinavian states to the League in 1920 and Scandinavian co-operation on amendments to the covenant. These amendments, which were put forward from 1919 to 1921, ran along two lines: developing the League in the direction of a universal legal organisation, and strengthening the independence and influence of small states within the organisation.Footnote ⁵⁵ Although the principled differences among Scandinavian internationalist elites still existed and found expression in different levels of importance being attached to different aspects of this policy, they were now subordinated to this common doctrine.

Despite the fact that the Scandinavian states faced an organisation over which they had had no influence, the three countries joined the League in March 1920. However, it seems that they were merely making a virtue of necessity. The argument for joining the League – which ran along the same lines in all three countries – essentially contended that there was no realistic alternative to League membership. Staying outside the League would only bring the small neutral states into a situation where they would have to comply with League decisions without any possibility of influencing them. This argument was coupled with a positive expectation that, despite its shortcomings, the League would become a platform for the promotion of peace and that League membership would enable the Scandinavian states to pursue their internationalist goals more actively and efficiently than previously.Footnote ⁵⁶

Opposition to League membership came from some political quarters. In Sweden the main bulk of opposition came from the political right, and in Norway it was primarily the revolutionary socialists who opposed accession to the League. Their arguments were, however, quite similar. They both objected to what they considered a new alliance of the Western powers and they both claimed that League membership was incompatible with the principles of national self-determination and neutrality. The revolutionary socialists further claimed that the League was a reactionary construction that inhibited the immediate and absolute disarmament that was generally desired among all nations after the war.Footnote ⁵⁷

In this context Denmark stood out as the only Scandinavian country that joined the League with unanimous political support. In view of the strong Danish opposition to the idea of collective security and the fact that Denmark was the Scandinavian country most immediately threatened by Germany's exclusion from the League, this position seems at first surprising. However, several factors may explain it. The Danish right did not sympathise with Germany but was oriented towards the Western powers; no left-wing socialists were members of parliament. After the German defeat in the war, the foreign political agenda in Denmark was focused almost solely on the German handover of North Schleswig to Denmark. The handover was part of the Versailles settlement and created a shared interest with the Allied powers in safeguarding the territorial status quo after the war and a strong, cross-party gratitude towards the allied powers. Finally, and most importantly, no one in the political establishment believed that the drawbacks of League membership could be avoided by staying outside it. Evidently the weakest of the three Scandinavian states was also the most prone to adapt to the new facts of international life.

The Scandinavian attempts at pushing through amendments to the covenant began before the Scandinavian countries had formally decided to join the League. The co-operation of the three states in this field started during the unofficial negotiations with the allied powers about the draft covenant at the Hotel Crillon in Paris on 20 and 21 March 1919. The disappointment and resentment created by the draft covenant in February 1919 caused the Scandinavian representatives to propose far-reaching amendments to the covenant, including provisions for permanent neutrality within the League and the obligatory settlement of all international disputes by arbitration.Footnote ⁵⁸

When these efforts proved unsuccessful – and particularly after the Scandinavian states had entered the League – the Scandinavian governments scaled back their ambitions significantly and moved towards proposals that seemed practically feasible. As Adelswärd put it at the Nordic inter-parliamentary meeting in 1920, ‘Naturally, it is wisest not to act prematurely in regard to amendments or additions of a more or less political character which could trigger disputes within the League due to significant conflicting interests among its member states.^’Footnote ⁵⁹

The Scandinavian proposals regarding amendments to the covenant were drawn up in the period from August 1919 to October 1920. Four amendments were proposed at the First Assembly: a provision ensuring that the assembly should meet annually; a clarification of the electoral conditions for the four non-permanent members of the Council; a change in Article 13 regarding international arbitration, to the effect that violations of international law should not only ‘generally’ but under all circumstances be the subject of international arbitration; and a proposal for a relaxation in the obligation under Article 16 to partake in economic sanctions.Footnote ⁶⁰ Although technical in character, the first two proposals mirrored the ambition of the Scandinavian states to establish the authority of the Assembly vis-à-vis the Council (and thereby the position of the small states vis-à-vis the great powers), and the fourth proposal sought to create a possibility for future neutrality in the event of great power conflicts. The third proposal was a weakened attempt at strengthening the obligations of member states to settle international disputes by peaceful means. Although none of the Scandinavian proposals was integrated into the covenant, most of the Scandinavian wishes were accommodated. The first two proposals were incorporated into the League's rules of procedure at the first Assembly, and the fourth suggestion was in 1921 declared by the Assembly to be a constituting rule for the guidance of the League in relation to the application of Article 16.Footnote ⁶¹ This last declaration was of cardinal importance to radical internationalists in Denmark, who regarded it as an argument in favour of their interpretation of the covenant as a legal construction, which allowed continued Danish neutrality.Footnote ⁶²

When the proposals were discussed in the League's commission on amendments from 1920 to 1921,Footnote ⁶³ the Scandinavian representative, Herluf Zahle, who was the Danish envoy to Stockholm, spoke strongly and successfully against more far-reaching amendments proposed by other states, and after 1921 the Scandinavian states let the question of amendments rest.Footnote ⁶⁴ This scaling back of Scandinavian ambitions on amendments mirrored a change in the overall Scandinavian attitude towards the League of Nations. By 1921 the Scandinavian states had moved away from the initial oppositional stance and taken a position in favour of safeguarding and strengthening the new international organisation – despite its perceived limitations and weaknesses. This smooth transition from staunch opposition to wholehearted support for the League mirrored the fundamental community of internationalist ideals that existed between the Scandinavian internationalist elites and leading circles within the League.

Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the Scandinavian internationalist elites were actively engaged in the League's attempts to promote international disarmament, arbitration and conciliation, in the codification and development of international law and international intellectual co-operation, in the humanitarian work of the League and in the transformation of the League into a universal organisation, as well as the democratisation and streamlining of the League organisation.

The level and character of Scandinavian activities within the League changed over time in accordance with changes in the international political environment and the general fluctuations in the League's activities. Thus in the period from 1920 to 1923, when wartime antagonisms hampered international political progress, emphasis was on internal organisational matters. The détente of the mid-1920s and the high tide for international arbitration created by the Geneva Protocol and Locarno Treaty formed the basis for a Scandinavian offensive from 1924 to 1929 to promote the pacific settlement of international disputes. From 1930 attention was centred on the question of international disarmament and the pending international disarmament conference which convened in 1932 and adjourned in 1934.Footnote ⁶⁵ Until the Abyssinian crisis dealt the League its fatal blow in 1935, Scandinavian League activities were consistently based on the belief that the question of disarmament should be kept at the forefront of the League's activities and that it was not in the interests of the Scandinavian states to take on further obligations to take part in international sanctions.Footnote ⁶⁶ It was against this background of the Scandinavian attitude to the League that international observers in Geneva came to view the Scandinavian countries as an internationalist bloc from the beginning of the League's activities in 1920.Footnote ⁶⁷

Some of the wartime differences within the Scandinavian internationalist elites survived into the interwar period. While internationalist sections in the three countries agreed that no additional obligations to take part in international sanctions should be accepted, Danish radical liberal internationalists based this view on a principled, anti-militaristic faith which was not shared by the other internationalist elites. The Danish idea that a system of collective security in itself created conflict and hampered détente and disarmament was articulated on several occasions, most energetically in 1922–3 in connection with the Treaty of Mutual Assistance and in 1924–5 in connection with the Geneva Protocol.

Denmark's strong support for mandatory international arbitration and the Danish radical liberal belief that an international rule of law had to precede international law enforcement also manifested itself in an ambitious legalistic Danish policy within the League, which included the promotion of mandatory arbitration, the outlawry of war and the introduction of international legal principles declaring territorial expansion and the collection of war reparations to be unlawful.Footnote ⁶⁸ Furthermore, Denmark also eagerly promoted what Munch denoted as ‘intellectual disarmament’; together with the Norwegian historian and later foreign minister Halvdan Koht, he was deeply involved in furthering international intellectual co-operation and education aimed at bringing about international reconciliation and mutual understanding.Footnote ⁶⁹ Sweden, the most highly industrialised Scandinavian country and at the same time a social-democratic stronghold, was the most eager to support the International Labour Organisation, which was set up to further the reformist socialist idea of promoting peace through the improvement of working-class conditions.Footnote ⁷⁰ Thus the three strands of Scandinavian internationalism still existed, and the creation of new coercive international political structures was complemented by radical and social-democratic attempts to develop the intellectual and social basis for peace. However, these internationalist differences no longer created a negative dynamic that undermined and limited the possibilities for co-ordinated Scandinavian international action. After the League had been set up, a partially complementary structure developed in which the different ideological internationalist profiles of the three Scandinavian countries supplemented and mutually supported each other. In this sense, the divergence and differences in Scandinavian internationalism strengthened the international image of Scandinavia as an island of peace.