Cylchgronau Cymru

camp. At the Annual General Meeting of the county Conservative Association in 1937, Major W. M. Dugdale, its Chairman, conveyed the feeling of local Tories towards Clement Davies's stand as a National Liberal Member: 'We have a good M.P., though not a Conservative, and a National Government which seems to be satisfactory on the whole'. When local political life became more lively during 1938, the reason for the new activity was, predictably, a dispute over the foreign policies of the National Government. The catalyst for the dispute was, perhaps equally predictably, David Davies or, as he had become in 1932, the 1st Baron Davies of Llandinam. As already noted, David Davies had become the President of the Montgomeryshire Liberal Association in March 1928, and, although he had been at best lukewarm in his support of Clement Davies's candidature during April and May 1929, had been re-elected to the position in July of the same year..111 On more than one occasion during the early 1930s. Davies resigned the Presidency of the Association only to be implored to re-con- sider and remain in office. 112 Although he no longer resided in Montgomeryshire after 1930, he remained a highly influential figure in the county, capable of mustering a great deal of support for the causes in which he believed. The cause par excellence for Davies was the furtherance of international understanding so as to avoid a repetition of the carnage of 1914-18. He had, therefore, thrown his weight behind the formation of the League of Nations Union in 1918. But during the 1920s he became unhappy with the lack of power invested in the League of Nations, and, in 1932, he broke with the League of Nations Union to form the New Commonwealth Society. Davies had come to believe that the prevention of war required as a pre-requisite the creation of permanent machinery for securing international justice, a view which he had expounded at some length in a tract published in 1930. 113 These opinions underlay the philo- sophical basis of the New Commonwealth Society. The extent of Davies's influence and support in Montgomeryshire became strikingly apparent in 1935 when the county recorded the highest percentage turnout 86.6 per cent in the whole of Britain in the National Peace Ballot organized by the League of Nations Union. The New Commonwealth Society believed passionately that the League of Nations was a failure because its membership lacked the courage and resolution to restrain an aggressor. Lord Davies summed up its philosophy in a speech at London in May 1937 — 'Our purpose is to make force the servant of right'. 114 The New Commonwealth Society attracted a large number of supporters of varying political standpoints, all of them deeply dissatisfied with the foreign policy of the National Government and particularly alarmed by its propensity for pre-1914 methods of diplomacy and the cynical lip-service paid to the League of Nations. They, therefore, became arch-opponents of appeasement, the cornerstone of the National Government's foreign policy. Thus within Montgomeryshire Lord Davies easily became the focal point for discontent among certain Liberals. He readily used his position as President of the Montgomeryshire Liberals to ensure that the association passed motions and resolutions of support for, or condemnation of, various events on the world stage. Meanwhile Clement Davies remained at least in name a member of the National Government and a supporter of its foreign policy. On the other hand, IIOMontgomeryshire Express, 5 June 1937. mJ. Graham Jones, loc. cit., p.95-6. '^Montgomeryshire Liberal Association, Newtown. Mont. Lib. Assoc. minute book. 1920-60, Executive Committee minutes, 11 August 1931 and A.G.M. Council minutes. 27 February 1932. "This was David Davies. The problem of the twentieth century (London, 1930). ^Montgomeryshire Express, 29 May 1937.