Ebook: Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact

On August 27, 1928, in the Salle de 'Horloge at the Quai d'Orsay the foreign ministers of the nations of the world solemnly, or with their tongues in their cheeks, signed a treaty denouncing war as an instrument of national policy. The event celebrated over the world in resounding editorials and speeches as a last milestone on the road to the abolition of war had a lively and curious history, told here for the first time.

Originally proposed by French foreign minister Aristide Briand as a kind of negative alliance between his country and the United States, it became the center of a politique involving pacifists, upholders of collective security who saw it as a side entrance to the League of Nations, practical politicians basking in editorials on their farsightedness, and plain people who hoped that the treaty might actually do something to get rid of war.

Behind the scenes of the foreign chancelleries (unimpressed by the excitement of the amateurs; hopeful of usable American support) and of the State Department (whose experts quickly analyzed the real import of Briand's proposal) there were bustling trips by feuding peace advocates, and behind them the eager petition-filling organizations devoted to the public weal.

This is a history of guile and innocence and man's hope; it is worthy of the closest attention in the harsher atmosphere of today's two worlds.