Swords Reluctant: Max Pemberton’s roman-à-clef about the Early-Twentieth- Century Peace Movement (1912)

Abstract

One of the first organisations campaigning for a united Europe, grown out of concern about the early-twentieth-century armaments race between Imperial Germany and Britain in particular, came from the UK. In 1906, Sir Max Waechter (1836–1924), an Anglo-German industrialist who had made a fortune as a shipbroker and sole British agent of the Nobel Brothers’ petroleum business in Russia, had presented a manifesto to King Edward VII, in which he suggested a Federation of European states as a means to prevent war and advance prosperity across the continent. Touring the capitals of Europe between 1907 and 1913 he managed to discuss his scheme, under the title European Unity League, with almost all ruling heads of state at the time and secure endorsing statements by many of them.1 His campaign, for which he usually travelled on the former Austrian archducal steamyacht S. Y. Rovenska, on board of which he hosted numerous monarchs, politicians and diplomats, was also regularly reported in the British and European press.2 In May 1909 he financed and co-organised one of the first large manifestations of the European movement, the international Congress for European Federation,3 in the presence of William Thomas Stead and Jacques