The Cecils

The third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903) was Prime Minister throughout Buchan’s Oxford years and until after he had gone to South Africa. A sincere Christian, he persistently discouraged ‘religious speculation, especially with regard to Anglican tenets.’ His ‘powerful mind depended upon unquestioning belief. He took the attitude that the Anglican faith, like Christianity in general, was not basically a rational matter.’ He had five sons who ‘despite their highly intellectual upbringing, themselves never seriously questioned the validity of the Anglican faith.’406 Two of them particularly became Buchan’s close friends for life, the third son, Robert, who was later Lord Cecil of Chelwood (1864-1958), and the fifth, Hugh, who became Lord Quickswood (1869-1956).407 Of an age to have been his older brothers, they are included here as members of their father’s family.

Perhaps too little remembered now, Lord Robert Cecil was a colossus on the British, and even the World stage in the years between the wars. Too old to fight in 1914, he joined the Red Cross, and being appalled at the suffering resulting from war, became among the great advocates for peace whose collective endeavours led to the founding of the League of Nations (January 1920). Buchan also avidly embraced this enterprise, as did Gilbert Murray. Cecil worked tirelessly in this cause throughout all the dismal years finally engulfed by the second world-wide war, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace (1937) and later becoming a foundational Life President of the United Nations Association.

Yet behind all this powerful motivation was the bedrock of his Christian faith. Among the many tributes to Cecil came one from Salvador de Madariaga, the Spanish advocate for European integration and Anglophile, who had been a delegate at the League of Nations. Perhaps having known him during his years as Professor of Spanish at Oxford (1928-1931), Buchan quoted him with approval on the folly of democracy going to war, prefacing this with his own view that ‘force is democracy’s eternal foe.’408 _{The Spaniard said of Cecil: ‘The gaunt,}

stooping, clerical figure of Robert Cecil seemed ever drawn forward by an eager zest.’ The ‘cross hanging from his waistcoat pocket witnessed to the religious basis of his political faith,’

406 _{Mackay, Balfour, 14.}

407 _{The others were James, Salisbury’s heir, William, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, and Edward, whose widow} married Milner.

but ‘proud towards men if humble before God, […] in that tall figure striding through the thronged corridors of the League, the levels of Christian charity were kept high above the plane of fools.’409

Both Cecil and Buchan publically summarised their Christian faith, the former at a conference in Edinburgh (1936), where he spoke at the request of Archbishop Temple410 _{and the}

latter as a Presbyterian in Montreal a year later.411 Here again there was much common ground including belief in an established church, though nothing should deter its main task of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ.

There is similarity between the Christian upbringing of the two men. Though in different denominations, Cecil believed that every Christian’s allegiance to the worldwide Catholic (universal) Church took priority over membership of any one part of it. Though his parents were sympathetic to the Tractarian Movement they were totally opposed to auricular confession and anything like ‘ritualism was regarded as dangerously near insincerity.’ Again, ‘“modernism”, with its attribution of infallibility to scientific theory or to the so-called “higher criticism” was extremely repugnant.’ He saw three positive features in his religious nurturing. Within the assumed acceptance of the ‘distinctive doctrines of Christianity’ there was ‘an evangelical insistence on personal and individual responsibility to God,’ and ‘liberty of thought was in principle regarded as absolute.’ No books were banned and though a high standard of Christian conduct and belief were ‘commended and encouraged […] rejection or acceptance were from a very early age left to the individual conscience.’ The other two features had to do with observance. Taught to read the Bible regularly and particularly the New Testament, no objection was raised to neglecting sermons. Once confirmed, ‘the utmost importance was attached to the weekly reception of the Eucharist.’412

Saving the regularity of this and their different denominational backgrounds, there is little here to distinguish the views of the Cecils’ father who had a ‘robust and intellectually non- conformist temperament’ from those of Mr Buchan. In addition to any correspondence, Buchan had ample opportunity to keep up with the Cecils in later years in London. Robert was a

409 _{Smith, Gilbert Murray, 178-79; Murray was ‘a candid friend.’ Rose, The Later Cecils, 182-83.} 410 _{Cecil, All the Way, 226-33,’Some Religious Topics’, esp. 230-33.}

411 _{Presbyterianism (Pres).} 412 _{Cecil, All the Way, 230-31.}

godfather to the Buchans’ eldest son, and he and his wife came to dinner early in their married life.413 They had in common The Athenaeum and Buchan was in the Commons with Hugh, and member of the exclusive fellowship of The Club with him from 1918, while Robert was in the Commons and then the Lords from 1923. The month before he died, Buchan’s last letter to Robert was on a memorandum for a peace conference.414