5. ‘Political’

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Christopher Wixson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
World War ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Government Leadership ◽  
Heartbreak House ◽  
Back To Methuselah ◽  
British Nationalism ◽  
First World

‘Political’ details a difficult time in George Bernard Shaw’s career when his views about the First World War placed him intensely at odds with public opinion. Shaw’s journalism castigates British nationalism and foreign policy, boldly assigning culpability for the conflict to failed government leadership on both sides. His major plays throughout the 1920s were also composed in the war’s long shadow and vitalized by the principles Shaw enumerated in his recent, controversial public writings. The chapter then examines Shaw’s Heartbreak House (1916–17), Back to Methuselah (1918–20), Saint Joan (1923), and Too True to Be Good (1931). The success of Saint Joan and the award of the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature solidified Shaw as Britain’s pre-eminent playwright.

Open Diplomacy at the Washington Conference of 1921–2: The British and French Experience

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald S. Birn
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
French Experience ◽  
The First World War ◽  
World Opinion ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

The widespread reaction against secret diplomacy which followed the First World War led to demands that statesmen conduct their affairs openly and be responsive to public opinion. The specific forms that Open Diplomacy might take in the post-war world were hard to envision, even for the most ardent advocates of change. At the Paris Peace Conference several hundred newsmen discovered that ‘open covenants openly arrived at’ did not mean that negotiations would be held in public. Similarly, the whole process by which governments were supposed to determine domestic or world opinion on a given issue and then formulate policies in accord with it was easier to talk about than to implement. If supporters of Open Diplomacy wanted simplicity, they were in fact getting a host of new complexities in their quest for a more democratic foreign policy.

Oil and International relations

1976 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Penrose
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
World War ◽  
Oil Reserves ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
Important Objective

Oil is a highly political commodity and has more than once taken the centre of the stage in international affairs. This is not surprising in view of its importance in industry and transportation as well as for military activities. Mesopotamian oil was a crucial consideration in a number of the political settlements in the Middle East after the First World War, with the French, British and Americans playing the leading roles, just before that war the British navy had converted to oil, and Britain considered the security of her oil supplies to be an important objective of foreign policy. She had no domestic production. In the 1920s the United States began to fear that her oil reserves were becoming dangerously depleted and she also felt that her security as well as her prosperity depended on obtaining control of oil abroad. The United States sought access to oil concessions in the Middle East, and the diplomatic skirmishes were sharp as the British and Dutch tried to keep her out, not merely from the Middle East, but from south-eastern Asia as well, where production was dominated by the Dutch. Thus oil was an important source of controversy in the foreign policy of a number of countries in the inter-war period.

Women In and Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-74
Author(s):  
Gemma Moss
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Male Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Women exerted a considerable influence on Maurice, even though admirable female characters are absent from the narrative. Before the First World War, a sexually conservative reform movement called Social Purity was bringing male sexuality under particular scrutiny, making this a difficult time for Forster to be claiming that homosexuality was not morally wrong. Interpreted against this background, Maurice can be read not as a rebellion against attenuated Victorian attitudes or against women but as a challenge to the contemporary social purity movement. In this context – the difficulty of talking about homosexuality, of which the novel explores the effects – the willingness of Forster’s friend and confidante, Florence Barger, to discuss homosexuality also needs to be seen as significant. She contributed to Forster’s ability to represent homosexuality as a valid alternative to bourgeois masculinity that equated heterosexuality with morality, health and economic success.

scholarly journals “...COMING TO COMMON PEACE TOGETHER WITH OUR ALLIES”: ROMANIA’S FOREIGN POLICY BALANCING DURING WORLD WAR I

Skhid ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 36-44
Author(s):  
Yaroslav POPENKO ◽  
Ihor SRIBNYAK ◽  
Natalia YAKOVENKO ◽  
Viktor MATVIYENKO
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
World War ◽  
National Interests ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
First World

The article covers the course of negotiations between the plenipotentiaries of Romania and the leading states of the Entente and the Quadruple Alliance during the First World War. Facing the dilemma of determining its own foreign policy orientation – by joining one of the mentioned military-political blocs, the Romanian government was hesitating for a long time to come to a final decision. At the same time, largely due to this balancing process, official Bucharest managed to preserve its sovereign right to work out and make the most important decisions, while consistently defending Romania's national interests. By taking the side of the Entente and receiving comprehensive military assistance from Russia, Romania at the same time faced enormous military and political problems due to military superiority of the allied Austrian and German forces at the Balkan theater of hostilities. Their occupation of much of Romania forced official Bucharest to seek an alternative, making it sign a separate agreement with the Central Block states. At the same time, its ratification was being delayed in every possible way, which enabled Romania to return to the camp of war winners at the right time. At the same time, official Bucharest made the most of the decline and liquidation of imperial institutions in Russia and Austria-Hungary at the final stage of the First World War, incorporating vast frontier territories into the Kingdom. Taking advantage of the revolutionary events in Russia, the Romanian government succeeded, in particular, in resolving the “Bessarabian problem” in its favor. In addition, Romania included Transylvania, Bukovina and part of Banat. An important foreign policy achievement of Romanian diplomacy was signing of the 1918 Bucharest Peace Treaty, as well as its participation in the Paris Peace Conference.

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