Nationhood and neighbourhood: The lodge-wilson quarrel and the question of progress

Underlying the Lodge-Wilson quarrel of 1919 was not the question of ‘isolationism’ versus ‘internationalism’ but questions on which conservatives and progressives had been divided long before Armistice Day and remain divided even now: Is history destined to culminate in a condition of perpetual peace? And is it in statesmen’s power to hasten the advent of this condition? Wilson’s optimistic answers to these questions are of a piece with that of nineteenth-century British Radical John Bright, while Lodge’s scepticism is akin to that of Bright’s contemporary Robert Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury. This essay discusses the views of these statesmen in order to show that the progressive-optimistic attitude of Bright and Wilson invites a foreign policy that dismisses the significance of nationhood and international neighbourhood. © 2018 Board of Transatlantic Studies.