Cecil, << SEHS uhl, >> Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne (1864-1958), Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, was a British lawyer and politician. He was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize for peace for promoting the League of Nations and for working with other organizations within the peace movement. Cecil was one of the principal founders of the League of Nations and supported it from its beginnings in 1919 until 1946, when it was replaced by the United Nations. See League of Nations .
Cecil’s concern for the prevention of war began in 1916 when, appalled by the destruction caused by World War I (1914-1918), he circulated a document calling for the foundation of an international system of ensuring peace. Cecil later claimed that this was “the first document from which sprang British advocacy of the League of Nations.” Cecil described his work in support of the League of Nations in the books The Way of Peace (1928) and A Great Experiment (1941).
Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne Cecil was born in London. He studied law at Oxford and, in 1887, became a barrister (lawyer who can argue cases in any court). In 1906, he turned from law to politics. In 1911, he was elected to Parliament as an Independent Conservative. He remained a member of the House of Commons until 1923. At the outbreak of World War I, he went to work for the Red Cross, but, in 1915, he was called back to Parliament to become under secretary for foreign affairs. At the end of the war, he represented the United Kingdom at the Paris Peace Conference and began his work for the League of Nations. He was created first Viscount of Chelwood in 1923. He was chancellor of Birmingham University from 1918 to 1944.
