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This chapter examines the political economy of the Edwardian Conservative leader Arthur Balfour, and seeks to open new vistas on the complexities and nuances of the tariff reform versus free trade debate that dominated Conservative politics in the first decade of the century. It is argued that Balfour developed his own conception of tariff reform, based on his acceptance of the ideas of historical economists and his earlier espousal of bimetallism. He favoured the use of retaliation rather than the full-blown protectionism and imperial preference championed by Joseph Chamberlain that came to dominate Conservative thinking. Balfour's lack of belief in this version of tariff reform resulted in a seeming want of conviction in the debate, which led to persistent criticism of his leadership and his eventual resignation in 1911.

Soon after the outbreak of the First World War British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey began to insist that the United States would have to guarantee any peace to which it might be a party. Although this was mainly intended to block any inopportune mediation attempt by Woodrow Wilson, Grey did believe that the European settlement would be more stable if Washington were committed to its maintenance. London's failure to respond to Wilson's feelers led to a sharp deterioration in Anglo‐American relations as Lloyd George became prime minister in December 1916. However, the new Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, and his deputy Lord Robert Cecil, who had already worked out a plan intended to be more palatable to the United States by emphasizing economic rather than military sanctions, continued Grey's broadly pro‐American policy. The need for a guarantee was reaffirmed. American entry into the war would make this a practical possibility.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the purpose of this book, which is to explore aspects of the ideas, values, arguments, and beliefs that have informed Conservative thought in the 20th century. Conservative ideological debate is sampled and discussed at a number of key points in the party's history. The chapters cover the political economy of Arthur Balfour, English idealist thought, the ideas of Arthur Steel-Maitland, the end of the coalition with the Liberals in 1922, Conservative Book Clubs of the 1930s, the political economy of Harold Macmillan, the resignation of the Conservative Treasury team in 1958, the ideological origins of the Thatcherite revolution and finally, Conservative ideas concerning the role of the State in relation to social and economic policy during the 20th century.

This chapter examines the implantation of Zionism at the geographical heart of the Middle East from 1920 onwards. It discusses Arthur James Balfour's declaration of the opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925 and Theodor Herzl's formulation of the Zionist project. The chapter describes the territorial disputes of the Zionists of Israel with the neighbouring territories of Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

William James offered several resources that a moral apologist can deploy. James saw it as irrational to embrace a rule of reasoning that precludes finding truth that’s really there to be found. He argued that the category of moral regret is a bad fit with a naturalistic worldview. Like other philosophers we’ve considered, his was an expansive empiricism that included considering the evidential value of relational, aesthetic, and ethical deliverances. Arthur Balfour similarly recognized the moral deficiencies of naturalism, though, more so than James, he thought reconcilable the religious and metaphysical accounts of theism. Balfour was particularly intent on underscoring the ways in which deflationary analyses of moral values and duties are better at explaining them away than actually explaining them. He didn’t think the moral argument was best thought of as a deduction; rather, he saw it as something closer to an inductive or abductive approach.

This chapter discusses the role of industrialists as advisers to the Committee of Imperial Defence and, crucially, the information such civilian businessmen were able to glean from the government as to future defence requirements. The role of Lithgow, Weir, and Balfour is explained in the context of these developments. How this information was used is the focus of the end of this chapter and subsequent chapters.

In the midst of the strategic review discussed in chapter 5, Arthur Balfour, one of the War Lords, pointed out that selection of strategy should be governed by economic resources and expected duration of the war. Agreeing with him, many officials in the civilian departments of government urged Asquith to pay closer attention to the worstening economic problems, and he began to do so. Civilian officials worried especially over rising wheat prices and the prospect of social unrest. In an effort to solve the problem, the government began to manipulate global market prices through secret trading in the futures market, combined with the management of market intelligence concerning wheat harvests within the British Empire. Closer scrutiny of wheat prices in the third week of January revealed that the problem was both more complex and far worse than the government initially realized. A quintupling of wheat prices seemed imminent.

This chapter discusses the issues surrounding the Education Act of 1902. The bill, designed to replace Forster's Education Act of 1870, was introduced by Arthur Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury, later prime minister, into the House of Commons on 24 March 1902. It received the royal assent on 18 December and made possible the rational reorganization of England's educational system by placing primary, secondary, and technical schools under the same authorities, thus paving the way for a massive expansion of secondary education. However, the administrative and educational merits of the Act were obscured by the decision to give rate aid to denominational schools. The scheme, which aroused the fury of Nonconformists, played a key role in the overwhelming victory of the Liberals in the 1906 elections.

After decades of inconsistent involvement in the affairs of the two services, after the turn of the century the government finally intervened to try and impose a degree of coherence upon Britain’s imperial defence strategy. This was the result of two simultaneous crises—the acute challenge of the Boer War and the growing urgency of finding a solution to the defence of India. This chapter examines political attempts to reform the Army and the formation of the Committee of Imperial Defence, a body intended to concert the activities of the two services. It argues that the initial activities of the CID demonstrated the potential of the body to achieve meaningful change in the Admiralty and War Office and to co-ordinate a fledgling joint strategy.

The period 1904–6 proved to be a fateful one for the CID. The government successfully divorced the Regular Army from its defensive duties and re-orientated it towards operations overseas—the necessary first step to producing a more coherent, complementary approach to imperial defence. Yet despite this change in military policy, the CID failed to become a forum in which the two services could debate and co-operate in the interests of producing a cohesive grand strategy. Political intervention thus merely changed the parameters within which quasi-independent naval and military strategies continued to compete, intersect, and diverge—to the detriment of overall British readiness for war.

Chapter 1 considers how the idea of using referendums came onto the political agenda, and how on a number of occasions its imminent entry into use seemed plausible but did not take place. Important figures such as Albert Venn Dicey, Joseph Chamberlain, Arthur Balfour, Stanley Baldwin, Herbert Henry Asquith, and Winston Churchill played a part in events. Even without being held, the prospect of referendums had an impact on British political thought, words, and actions. There was also practical use of the device: at local level, and as part of external initiatives in which Britain played a part. The referendum could come to the forefront of political attention, recede and then return to it again. Though the extent of its prominence varied, once it appeared on the political landscape the referendum was, in some form, a continual presence.

This chapter examines the early British and French efforts to procure war materiel from the United States and the positive influence of those negotiations on the development of Anglo-American collaboration. The account first establishes the intense anti-interventionist sentiment that set the conditions for the negotiations. The narrative outlines the initial confused nature of the British and French purchasing commissions. Using the development and purchase of aircraft as the primary case study, the chapter outlines the fits, starts, and frictions that plagued the initial supply negotiations. Although shared mutual interests facilitated collaboration, the fact that Anglo-French purchase orders developed the U.S. industrial base and contributed to lowering unemployment still lingering from the Great Depression helped as well. Over time, the negotiations slowly intertwined the two powers’ industrial efforts, promoting an increasing spiral of collaboration that included war planning based on allocation decisions.