Editing Stanley Bruce (section)

===League of Nations===
[[File:Bruce presiding over the League of Nations Council.png|right|thumb|Bruce chairing the League of Nations Council in 1936. [[Joachim von Ribbentrop]] is addressing the council.]]
Bruce represented Australia at the League of Nations and successfully lobbied for Australia to participate as a member of the League Council from 1933 to 1936. He opposed action against [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] following the [[Japanese invasion of Manchuria|invasion of Manchuria]] in 1933, concerned as to [[Australia–Japan relations|Australia's trading relationship with Japan]] and the potential future threat it posed to peace in the Pacific.{{sfn|Hudson|pp=67–70}}  He also attempted to steer the League away from sanctioning member nations, believing it yet lacked the military or economic sway to do so effectively and feared the breakdown of the League{{spaced ndash}} a prospect that loomed after [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] and Japan departed the body in 1933.{{sfn|Hudson|pp=74–77}} During the [[Abyssinia Crisis]], Bruce again counselled against partial sanctions, believing them the worst option as they would not stop the [[Second Italo-Ethiopian War|Ethiopian invasion]] and yet would alienate Italy{{spaced ndash}} then a [[Stresa Front|potential ally]] against a rearming Nazi Germany.{{sfn|Hudson|pp=74–77}} He further argued for much greater rearmament efforts in the United Kingdom and France to provide greater military capacity to enforce future decisions by the League. Bruce assumed the presidency of the League of Nations Council in 1936 at the height of the crisis and after the failure of the [[Hoare–Laval Pact]] between France, Italy and Britain, but further attempts to forestall the invasion failed. He presided as League Council President during the [[Rhineland Crisis]], although once again attempts to respond to fascist aggression failed. Although this did not shake his conviction in the potential of the League, he saw it doomed to failure without fundamental reforms to its structure and system of sanctions.{{sfn|Cumpston|pp=128–129}} He was nominated by Turkey to chair the 1936 [[Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits|Montreux Conference]], which was far more successful in negotiating international agreement on passage through the [[Turkish Straits]]{{spaced ndash}} an issue of particular relevance to Bruce as a veteran of the Gallipoli campaign.{{sfn|Cumpston|pp=129–130}} Despite the turmoil of his presidency, the League historian F.P. Walters would later describe Bruce as "the best, perhaps, of the many first-rate chairmen who presided over the Council, Conferences, or Committees of the League".<ref>F.P. Walters, ''A History of the League of Nations'', 1952, 833 pages, freely available on the site of the United Nations Office in Geneva [https://libraryresources.unog.ch/c.php?g=462663&p=3163196 online]</ref>

By 1937 Bruce's attention had shifted to social and economic co-operation, which he believed had far greater potential for success and was of greater importance to humanity at large.{{sfn|Cumpston|pp=129–130}} He had taken a leading role in promoting agriculture, nutrition and economic co-operation through the League of Nations, working intensively with [[Frank L. McDougall]] and [[John Boyd Orr]] throughout the decade.{{sfn|Lee|pp=112–113}} In 1937 he presented a plan of "economic appeasement", which built on this work and aimed to ease international tensions by reviving international trade and improving living standards in Europe through better working conditions, lower food prices, rural credits and housing assistance. Barriers to trade would gradually be reduced while European nations still recovering from the depression would be reintegrated into the international economy.{{sfn|Lee|pp=122–123}} In doing so he made a firm link between international trade and international peace, believing it key to unlocking world economic potential. Foreshadowing the logic of the [[Marshall Plan]], Bruce argued that unrelieved economic and social hardship threatened to push other nations towards fascism or communism.<ref>{{cite speech |title=Speech to the Second Committee of the League of Nations |author=Bruce, Stanley |date=19 September 1935 |location=Geneva}}</ref> [[File:Bruce chairing the Montreaux Conference.jpg|thumb|Bruce as Chairman of the Montreux Conference, 1938]]

<blockquote>I feel very strongly that it will be impossible to find a solution to the political problems of Europe and remove the present nightmare conditions unless something is done to improve the economic position&nbsp;... it is vital for the prestige and future wellbeing of the League that it should afford active leadership towards bringing about economic appeasement.{{sfn|Cumpston|p=150}}</blockquote>

The plan was supported by Secretary-General [[Joseph Louis Anne Avenol]], who like Bruce recognised that the League was rapidly becoming moribund and that a major change of direction was needed, although neither was successful in convincing key states in contributing to the plan.{{sfn|Stirling|p=131}}{{sfn|Hudson|pp=172–173}} Critically, new British Prime Minister [[Neville Chamberlain]] could not be convinced by Bruce to invest further into the development of the League, and the body began to lose its political impetus as war loomed. He would continue to press for League reform in the lead up to the war. The Bruce committee to advise on League reform was formed in 1939 in the aftermath of the [[German occupation of Czechoslovakia|partition of Czechoslovakia]] by Nazi Germany and the apparent failure of Chamberlain's [[appeasement]] policy. This committee, which met in July and August 1939, proposed a significant expansion of Bruce's earlier ideas to the League, bringing a wide range of economic and social programs under its purview as a means of fostering international co-operation. Their work, however, would be rendered moot by the outbreak of World War II.<ref>{{cite book|last=Clavin|first=Patricia|author-link=Patricia Clavin|title=Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946|year=2013|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford, UK|isbn=978-0-19-957793-4|pages=233–251}}</ref>