King and Country debate

It became one of the most controversial topics held within the Union, driving debate between the older and younger generations about patriotism and pacifism, and whether this motion would actually help or hurt war prevention efforts.

Prior to the debate, a similar motion had been proposed at the Cambridge Union by Arthur Ponsonby in March 1927: "That lasting peace can only be secured by the people of England adopting an uncompromising attitude of pacifism".

Digby found some difficulty obtaining a noted speaker to support the motion: Norman Angell, Bertrand Russell, Beverley Nichols and John Strachey were all unable to attend.

Joad and David Maurice Graham of Balliol, the Union's Librarian at the time and the original drafter of the motion, argued in favour at the debate.

Isis, a student magazine of the University of Oxford, reported that Digby had a "tub-thumping style of oratory which would be more appreciated in Hyde Park than in the Union".

[3] The Daily Express wrote: "There is no question but that the woozy-minded Communists, the practical jokers, and the sexual indeterminates of Oxford have scored a great success in the publicity that has followed this victory....

The Manchester Guardian responded differently: "The obvious meaning of this resolution [is] youth's deep disgust with the way in which past wars for 'King and Country' have been made, and in which, they suspect, future wars may be made; disgust at the national hypocrisy which can fling over the timidities and follies of politicians, over base greeds and communal jealousies and jobbery, the cloak of an emotional symbol they did not deserve".

[5] Winston Churchill condemned the motion in a speech on 17 February 1933 to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union, in the knowledge that ten days beforehand Adolf Hitler had become chancellor of Germany: "That abject, squalid, shameless avowal...

I think of Germany, with its splendid clear-eyed youths marching forward on all the roads of the Reich singing their ancient songs, demanding to be conscripted into an army; eagerly seeking the most terrible weapons of war; burning to suffer and die for their fatherland.

[1] It has been claimed by Joseph Alsop that the resolution made a tremendous impression upon Adolf Hitler and that he regularly cited it when his general staff protested against his military decisions.

[12] Churchill would, after the war, write on how Japan and Germany too took note of the Joad resolution, which altered their way of thinking about Britain as "decadent, degenerate... and swayed many [of their] calculations".

[13] While he would emphasize that the outcome of the debate would encourage some of the actions that Adolf Hitler would take, these were most likely to draw away from the Conservative Party's support of Neville Chamberlain's acts of appeasement.

[19] McCallum recalled at the outbreak of war two students, "men of light and leading in their college and with a good academic record" visited him to say goodbye before leaving to join their units.

[20] Telford Taylor, chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, wrote "the 'King and Country' debate was a colorful reflection of the British temper between the two great wars.

Exhausted and disgusted by the prolonged bloodbath in Flanders Fields, wracked by internal economic strains and already tiring of the burdens of empire, neither the people nor their leaders were in any mood to embark on new crusades".

[21]The 18-year-old Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was walking across Europe in 1934, "dreaded" being asked in Germany about the resolution, and tried to explain it: "A kind of joke, really...I could detect a kindling glint of scornful pity and triumph in the surrounding eyes which declared quite plainly their certainty that, were I right, England was too far gone in degeneracy and frivolity to present a problem".

[22] Benito Mussolini was particularly struck by the sentiment expressed by the undergraduates and became convinced that the Joad declaration proved that Britain was a "frightened, flabby old woman".

[12] Martin Ceadel, reviewing the German coverage of the "King and Country Debate", notes that although it was widely covered in Germany, the Nazis did not seem to have made political capital out of it: "indeed, the London correspondent of the Völkischer Beobachter was in 1933 stressing rather the militarism of British youth".

"[14]On 12 April 1935, 60,000 college students signed a United States equivalent of the resolution, calling it the Oxford Oath, swearing never to take up arms on behalf of king or country.

[26] At Columbia University, 3,000 students took the Oath that day during a rally featuring Roger Baldwin, Reinhold Niebuhr and James Wechsler as speakers.