Theorist of the mass workers' party: the argument that lost to Lenin's vanguard
Trotsky recalled: 'An atmosphere of simplicity and sincere comradely participation reigned in the Akselrod household.'
A former narodnik, he co-founded the Emancipation of Labour group (1883) with Plekhanov and Zasulich, the first Russian Marxist organisation. As an Iskra editor (1900) and, after the 1903 RSDLP split, the central theoretician of Menshevism, he argued for a mass, democratic workers' party against Lenin's vanguard model. He served on the Petrograd Soviet executive in 1917 but opposed the October Revolution and spent his final decade in exile, active in the Second International.
Career timeline
1872–1874Narodnik in the Chaikovsky circle, Kiev; joins the 'Going to the People'
1876–1879Land and Liberty, then Black Repartition leadership
1881–1883Converts to Marxism in exile; works with German SPD leaders
1883Co-founds Emancipation of Labour in Geneva
1900–1903Editorial board member of Iskra and Zarya
1903–1905Key Menshevik theorist; first to warn Lenin's vanguard risks Jacobin degeneration
1906–1914Active in Second International; defends liquidationism; elected to OK Foreign Secretariat
The philosopher-president who organized the Czechoslovak Legion from exile and signed the Penza Agreement with the Bolsheviks
On 7 March 1918, his 68th birthday, Masaryk boarded a train from Moscow to Vladivostok to prove to his Legion in person that the crossing of Siberia was possible.
Masaryk, a philosophy professor and Reichsrat deputy from Moravia, went into exile at the outbreak of the First World War and became the political leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement. In 1917 he travelled to Russia, where he organized Czech and Slovak prisoners of war into the Czechoslovak Legion and negotiated the Penza Agreement with the Bolsheviks, securing the Legion's transfer to France via Vladivostok. Elected the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918, he presided over Central Europe's most stable parliamentary democracy for 17 years, a success built on the contradiction of his Legion being drawn into the Russian Civil War against the very Bolsheviks with whom he had bargained.
Career timeline
1882–1914Professor of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague
1891–1893Deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat (Young Czech Party)
1907–1914Deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat (Czech Progressive Party)
1915–1918Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council (in exile)
1917–1918Organized the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia
The Narodnaya Volya leader who organized the assassination of Alexander II and declared his party's creed to the court that condemned him
"I have served the cause of the people's liberation. This is my sole occupation, to which I have devoted my entire being for many years" — at the preliminary investigation, 1881.
Born a serf, Zhelyabov became the de facto leader of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee. He masterminded the assassination of Alexander II. Arrested two days before, the attack succeeded without him. At trial he declared his sole occupation was the people's liberation, and he was hanged in April 1881.
Career timeline
1869–1871Entered Novorossiysk University law faculty, Odessa; expelled for leading student unrest
1873–1877Joined the Chaikovtsy circle; 'Going to the People' propaganda; acquitted at the Trial of the 193
1879.06Attended the Lipetsk Congress; founding member of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee
1879.11Attempted to blow up the imperial train at Alexandrovsk
Founder and leader of Austrian Social Democracy who could not stop the war in 1914 and backed it
In January 1918 he urged strikers in Lower Austria and Vienna to return to work. Elected foreign minister by German Austria’s provisional assembly on 30 October, he oversaw the end of hostilities with the Entente and died on 11 November.
Born to a Jewish family in Prague, a physician turned socialist by the misery of Vienna’s workers, he united the Austrian Social Democratic Workers’ Party at the Hainfeld congress of 1889 and led it as a “little International” inside a multinational empire. At the Brussels Bureau meeting of July 1914 he confessed that “the war is already with us” and that his party was powerless, and despite private misgivings backed the government’s war. He became foreign minister of the provisional government in October 1918 but died on 11 November, a day before the republic was proclaimed.
Career timeline
1880sLed efforts to unite the divided factions of Austrian Social Democracy.
1889Founded the socialist newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung.
1914At the Second International’s emergency meeting, he said the war could no longer be stopped and defended Austria-Hungary’s entry into the war and the party leadership’s pro-war position.
1918Elected foreign minister by German Austria’s provisional National Assembly, he served for eleven days.
Kadet orator who branded the gallows 'Stolypin's necktie'
What Mr. Purishkevich calls the Muravyov collar, his descendants will perhaps call the Stolypin necktie…
A Russian liberal politician who began as a progressive zemstvo activist in Tver province, helped found the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party, and served in all four State Dumas. One of the Duma's finest orators, on 17 November 1907 he denounced Stolypin's field courts-martial from the rostrum as 'Stolypin's necktie,' a phrase that became emblematic of the repression; an enraged Stolypin challenged him to a duel, and Rodichev had to apologize. After the February Revolution he served as the Provisional Government's Commissar for Finnish Affairs, opposed the October Revolution by joining the White camp, and died in exile in Lausanne.
Career timeline
1876Volunteered in the Serbo-Turkish War
1877–1895Zemstvo activist, Tver province; marshal of nobility, Vesegonsk district (1879–1891)
1898–1904Sworn attorney in St. Petersburg; exiled for signing protest over student beatings
1904–1905Co-organizer of zemstvo congresses and the Banquet Campaign; co-founder of the Kadet Party
1906–1917Kadet deputy to I–IV State Dumas; Central Committee member
1917.03–05Provisional Government Commissar for Finnish Affairs
1918–1920Joined the White movement; representative in Serbia and Poland
1920–1933In emigration: Paris, then Lausanne until his death
Former miner who founded the British Labour Party and opposed the First World War to the end, urging an anti-war general strike
Elected to Parliament in 1892 after organising miners, Hardie helped lead the Independent Labour Party and the new Labour movement. At the outbreak of the First World War, he campaigned against the conflict.
Born into poverty in Scotland and working in the pits from about the age of ten, he rose as a miners’ organiser to become in 1892 the first working-class member of parliament. He founded the Independent Labour Party in 1893 and became Labour’s first parliamentary leader in 1906, supporting women’s suffrage and Indian self-rule. At Copenhagen in 1910 he proposed a general strike in the arms industries to prevent war. He attended the Brussels Bureau meeting of July 1914 and opposed the war until his death in 1915.
Career timeline
1881Led the first strike of Lanarkshire miners.
1892Elected for West Ham as an Independent Labour candidate and entered Parliament.
1893Helped form the Independent Labour Party and was elected its first chairman and leader.
1906Elected Labour leader in the House of Commons; resigned in 1908.
1914–1915Campaigned as a pacifist against the First World War.
The father of Russian Marxism: against his own pupils’ revolution
After the October 1917 seizure of power, Plekhanov said: "Russian history has not yet ground the flour from which the wheat pie of socialism will be baked."
He began as a Populist and transplanted Marxism into Russia: Lenin’s whole generation learned from his books. But returning in 1917 after thirty-seven years abroad, he condemned the October rising as premature, a violation of history’s stages. He died of tuberculosis under the regime his pupils had built, and his funeral became a half-opposition demonstration.
Career timeline
1876–1880Land and Liberty populist; emigrates
1883Founds the Emancipation of Labour group in Geneva
1889–1914Russia’s leading theorist in the Second International
1903Drifts to the Mensheviks after the 1903 split
1917Returns after thirty-seven years; opposes October
Founder of Bulgarian socialism who organized Russia's first Marxist circle
In August 1891, with political assemblies banned, Blagoev secretly gathered some twenty socialists on Buzludzha Peak in the Balkan Mountains and founded Bulgaria's first Social Democratic Party.
While a student at St. Petersburg University, he organized Russia's first Marxist circle (the 'Party of Russian Social Democrats') in 1883 and published the illegal newspaper Rabochii (Worker). Arrested and deported to Bulgaria, he founded the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party at the 1891 Buzludzha Congress, led the revolutionary 'Narrow' (Tesnyaki) wing after the 1903 split, edited the theoretical journal Novo Vreme for 25 years, and translated Marx's Capital into Bulgarian. He opposed the Balkan Wars and World War I, advocated a Balkan Federation, and after the October Revolution aligned with the Bolsheviks, transforming the party into the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1919 and becoming its first leader. An independent revolutionary who never fully accepted Lenin's worker-peasant alliance, he laid the theoretical foundations of Bulgarian Marxism.
Career timeline
1883–1885Organized Russia's first Marxist circle, published Rabochii
1891Founded Bulgarian Social Democratic Party at Buzludzha Congress
1897–1923Editor-in-chief of theoretical journal Novo Vreme
1903–1919Leader of Narrow Socialists (Tesnyaki)
1905Translated Marx's Capital, Vol. I into Bulgarian
1919–1923First Chairman of Bulgarian Communist Party
US president whose Fourteen Points and League of Nations failed to win the Senate’s ratification
Born in Virginia, he was president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey before winning the presidency in 1912, and in his first year imposed racial segregation across the federal bureaucracy. In April 1917 he asked Congress to declare war over unrestricted submarine warfare, and in January 1918 set out the Fourteen Points, with a League of Nations and self-determination. At the Paris Peace Conference he presided over the drafting of the League Covenant but conceded much to the other powers to get it. A stroke in October 1919 incapacitated him, and his refusal of a compromise sank the Senate’s ratification of the treaty. The Palmer Raids of the Red Scare came in the same years. He received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize and died in 1924.
Career timeline
1902–1910President of Princeton University
1911–1913Governor of New Jersey
1913–1921President of the United States
1918Announced the Fourteen Points
1919Paris Peace Conference; chaired the League Covenant committee
Founding leader of the Wafd whose deportation to Malta in 1919 set off the Egyptian Revolution
Born in a village in the Nile Delta, he studied at al-Azhar and at a law school in Cairo and became a lawyer. Under the British occupation he served as a judge, minister of education (1906–1908) and minister of justice (1910–1912), and in 1913 became vice-president of the Legislative Assembly. In November 1918 he led the Wafd in demanding the end of the protectorate and a seat at the peace negotiations. When the British deported him to Malta in March 1919, the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 broke out. Exiled again to the Seychelles, he was allowed to return in 1923. After the Wafd’s landslide in the 1924 elections he formed the first Wafdist government, but resigned in November after the assassination of Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of the Sudan, and the British demands that followed. He died in Cairo in 1927.
Career timeline
1906–1908Minister of education
1910–1912Minister of justice
1913Vice-president of the Legislative Assembly
1918Founding leader of the Wafd
1919.03Deported to Malta; Egyptian Revolution of 1919
Creator of International Women's Day, she set women's liberation at the heart of class struggle
Six months before Hitler took power, she opened the Reichstag as its oldest member with a call for a united front against Nazism (1932)
Founder of Marxist feminism, she saw women's liberation as inseparable from class struggle and proposed International Women's Day in 1910. From anti-war resistance to co-founding the KPD, she opened the Reichstag at seventy-five with a call for a united front against Nazism.
Career timeline
1878–1917Leads the SPD women's movement; edits Die Gleichheit (1892–1917)
1910Proposes International Women's Day at Copenhagen
1915–1919Anti-war work; in at the founding of the Spartacus League and the KPD
1920–1933Reichstag deputy; Comintern executive
1925Published the memoir Lenin on the Women’s Question
1932Opens the Reichstag as its oldest member, calling for a united front against Nazism
1933Exile to the USSR; dies in June, buried in the Kremlin Wall
French socialist leader who united the left, founded L'Humanité, and was assassinated fighting to prevent the Great War
"In the vat of the Republic, prepare the wine of the Social Revolution!" — to winegrowers at the Maraussan cooperative, 1 May 1905
Jean Jaurès was the central figure in the unification of French socialism, leading the French Socialist Party from 1902 and merging it with Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France in 1905 to create the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Through L'Humanité, the daily he founded in 1904, he championed reformist social democracy, while during the Dreyfus Affair he stood as the republican conscience against anti-Semitism and militarism. His Marxist class analysis in the multi-volume Socialist History of the French Revolution (1900–1903) left a lasting mark on French revolutionary historiography. In July 1914, he fought to prevent world war through an international general strike with the German Social Democrats, but was assassinated by nationalist Raoul Villain three days before France entered the conflict.
Career timeline
1885Elected to Chamber of Deputies as Opportunist Republican for Tarn
1892–1893Supported Carmaux miners' strike; re-elected as Independent Socialist deputy
1898–1902Leading Dreyfusard voice; edited La Petite République
1902Founded and led the French Socialist Party
1904Founded L'Humanité
1905Unified French socialist parties into SFIO
1900–1903Published Socialist History of the French Revolution
1914Assassinated while leading international anti-war general strike campaign
The Beiyang strongman who took over the 1911 revolution and tried to make himself emperor
Recalled after the 1911 Wuchang Uprising, he pressed both the Qing court and the revolutionaries, winning the emperor's abdication and the provisional presidency in 1912. He proclaimed a monarchy in December 1915, abdicated in March 1916, and died that June.
A soldier-official who built the Beiyang New Army in the late Qing. When the 1911 revolution broke out he pressed both the court and the revolutionaries, securing the Qing emperor’s abdication and his own installation as provisional president of the Republic in 1912. He then hollowed out parliament, dissolved the Kuomintang and, in late 1915, proclaimed himself emperor; provincial revolts forced him to cancel the monarchy in 1916, and he died months later. His death fractured the Beiyang army and opened the warlord era.
Career timeline
1901–1907Viceroy of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang
1912–1916President of the Republic of China
1915.12–1916.03Self-proclaimed emperor of the “Empire of China”
The parliamentarian the Tsar called 'fat-bellied': last chairman of the Imperial Duma
In February 1917, Rodzianko telegraphed the Stavka: "The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralysed. Any delay is fatal. The last hour has struck." Nicholas II read it and told his court minister: "That fat-bellied Rodzianko has sent me some more nonsense."
Of Ukrainian noble stock, Rodzianko co-founded the Octobrist Party in 1905, pursuing constitutional reform of the Tsarist system through parliamentarism. As chairman of the Third and Fourth Dumas (1911–1917), he openly denounced Rasputin and confronted the wartime government's paralysis. During the February Revolution he led the Provisional Committee of the Duma and drove the negotiations for Nicholas II's abdication, but his constitutional-monarchy project collapsed when Grand Duke Michael refused the throne. He emigrated to Yugoslavia in 1920, dying in poverty after completing his memoir The Reign of Rasputin. Reviled by monarchist émigrés as a traitor and dismissed by the left, Rodzianko embodied the brief, thwarted experiment of Russian parliamentary politics.
Career timeline
1905Co-founds the Octobrist Party on a constitutional-monarchist platform
1907–1911Deputy, Third State Duma; vice-chairman from 1909
1911–1912Chairman, Third Duma (succeeding Guchkov)
1912–1917Chairman, Fourth Duma; participates in the Progressive Bloc
1917.02–03Heads Provisional Committee of the Duma; leads abdication talks with Nicholas II
summer 1917Founds Liberal Republican Party with Guchkov
1917.10–1920Anti-Bolshevik activity in Don and Crimea under Denikin and Wrangel
1920–1924Exile in Yugoslavia; writes The Reign of Rasputin: an Empire's Collapse
Conservative viceroy of India and foreign secretary who gave his name to the Curzon Line and led the Allies at Lausanne
Born into an aristocratic Derbyshire family and educated at Eton and Oxford, he entered Parliament in 1885 and wrote travel books warning of a Russian threat to India. As Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 he pursued administrative reform, but his 1905 partition of Bengal was criticised as an attempt to divide Bengali nationalism, and a major famine coincided with his tenure. In the First World War he served in Lloyd George’s war cabinet; appointed Foreign Secretary in October 1919, he gave his name to the proposed Soviet-Polish boundary, the Curzon Line. He designed the Treaty of Sèvres and, as chief Allied negotiator at Lausanne in 1922, settled the borders of Turkey. Passed over for prime minister in 1923, he died in 1925.
Japanese communist founder who shook Plekhanov's hand and shaped Comintern East Asia strategy
Amsterdam, 1904. When the chair announced that the vice-chairs were the delegates of the two warring powers — Plekhanov and Katayama — the two rose and clasped hands in silence. The hall answered with a standing ovation.
Father of Japanese communism. Born in Okayama, he studied in the United States and founded Japan's first trade union and Social Democratic Party. As a Comintern Executive Committee member he shaped anti-imperialist strategy for East Asia, and was buried in the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1884–1896Studied in US; Grinnell College and Yale Divinity; became Christian and socialist
1896–1901Returned; founded Iron Workers' Union, Labour World, Social Democratic Party
1904Amsterdam Second International; anti-war handshake with Plekhanov
1911–1912Led Tokyo streetcar strike; 9 months imprisonment
1914–1921Exiled to US; joined CPUSA; communist groups among Japanese workers
1921–1922Via Mexico to Soviet Russia; led founding of Japanese Communist Party
1922–1933ECCI member and Presidium; anti-imperialist and anti-war congresses
At the Duma tribune in November 1916, he listed the government's failures one by one and after each asked the same refrain — and the chamber roared back: "Treason!"
Historian and leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). His 1916 'Stupidity or Treason?' speech shook the Tsarist regime, and as Foreign Minister he triggered the April Crisis of 1917. In exile he edited a newspaper in Paris; during the Nazi-Soviet war he backed the USSR.
Career timeline
1905Founded the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)
1906Drafted the Vyborg Manifesto — called for passive resistance to Duma dissolution
1907–1917Deputy in the Third and Fourth Duma, leader of the Kadet faction
1915Led formation of the Progressive Bloc
1916.11'Stupidity or treason?' speech — devastating attack on the Stürmer government
1917.03–05Foreign Minister of Provisional Government — April Crisis forced resignation over Milyukov Note
1917.08Kornilov affair — further chaos amid Kerensky-Kornilov conflict
1920–1940Edited émigré newspaper Poslednie novosti in Paris
1941–1943Supported USSR against Nazi Germany — rejoiced at the victory at Stalingrad
Italian prime minister who led the country to victory after Caporetto but failed to win its territorial claims at the peace conference
Born in Palermo, he became a renowned law professor and from 1897 sat in the Chamber of Deputies as a Liberal. When the government fell after the defeat at Caporetto in October 1917 he became prime minister, dismissed Cadorna and rebuilt the army, and the victory of Vittorio Veneto in 1918 earned him the name “Premier of Victory”. At the peace conference he demanded Dalmatia, promised by the Treaty of London, and Fiume, obtained neither, walked out in April 1919 and resigned in June. The “mutilated victory” helped Mussolini’s rise. He at first supported Mussolini but broke with him after the murder of Matteotti in 1924. He died in Rome in 1952.
Career timeline
1897–1925Deputy for Partinico
1907–1909Minister of Justice
1916Minister of the Interior
1917–1919Prime minister of Italy
1919One of the Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference
Defender of the Dual Monarchy who was Hungary’s wartime prime minister and was killed by soldiers on the day of the Aster Revolution
The son of Kálmán Tisza, prime minister from 1875 to 1890, he grew up in a Calvinist family of untitled lower nobility and studied in Budapest, Heidelberg and Berlin. He entered parliament for the Liberal Party in 1886, was prime minister of Hungary twice, in 1903–1905 and 1913–1917, and Speaker of the House in 1912–1913. The most zealous adherent of the Dual Monarchy with Austria, he opposed universal suffrage and the break-up of the great estates. In July 1914 he alone at first opposed war with Serbia, but in the end supported it. Asked to resign by the reforming King Charles, he stepped down in May 1917. On 31 October 1918, during the Aster Revolution, he was killed by soldiers who broke into his home in Budapest.
German trade-union leader who signed the 1918 agreement with Stinnes and met the Kapp Putsch of 1920 with a general strike
Born in Marienburg, he grew up in an orphanage and became a wood turner. He joined the Social Democrats in 1885, chaired the General Commission of the German Trade Unions from 1890, and sat in the Reichstag in 1893–1898 and 1903–1920. In 1913 he became the first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. He led the SPD’s right wing, and in the First World War supported the civil truce and the renunciation of strikes. On 15 November 1918 he signed an agreement with Hugo Stinnes under which employers for the first time accepted the unions as workers’ representatives, with the eight-hour day and works councils, while the unions rejected the radical socialists’ demands. In 1919 he became chairman of the new General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), and in March 1920 he organised the general strike against the Kapp Putsch. He died in Berlin later that year.
Career timeline
1885Joined the SPD
1890Chairman of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions
1893Elected to the Reichstag
1913First President of the International Federation of Trade Unions
French Socialist deputy who joined the Union sacrée government as Minister of Public Works in 1914
Born in Bonnières-sur-Seine in Seine-et-Oise, he took a doctorate in law and practised as a lawyer, and as a journalist edited La Petite République. He joined the Blanquist-leaning Central Revolutionary Committee and followed its successor parties into the SFIO in 1905. From 1893 until his death he was re-elected as a Socialist deputy for a working-class district in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. Author of the 1911 pacifist pamphlet Faites un roi, sinon faites la paix, he nevertheless entered Viviani’s Union sacrée government in August 1914 as Minister of Public Works, and kept the post under Briand until December 1916. At the Congress of Tours in 1920 he voted against joining the Third International. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in Chamonix in 1922.
Career timeline
1890–1897Editor of La Petite République
1893Elected deputy for the Seine
1905Joined the SFIO
1914–1916Minister of Public Works (Union sacrée government)
1920Voted against joining the Third International at Tours
Octobrist leader who received the Tsar's abdication: Boer War volunteer turned Provisional Government minister
On 2 March 1917, Guchkov boarded the imperial train at Pskov with Shulgin and received the act of abdication from Nicholas II. Three centuries of Romanov rule ended in that carriage.
Alexander Guchkov led the Union of 17 October (Octobrists), championing constitutional monarchy and Stolypin's reforms as a conservative liberal. As Chairman of the Third Duma, he denounced Rasputin and the court, becoming an enemy of Nicholas II. On 2 March 1917 he and Vasily Shulgin received the Tsar's abdication at Pskov; he became War Minister but resigned during the April Crisis. He later backed Kornilov and the White movement. A Boer War volunteer, Tibet traveler, and serial duellist, he died in Paris in 1936.
Lawyer who founded the USPD against the war and co-chaired the Council of People’s Deputies with Ebert in 1918
After Ebert’s government bloodily suppressed the revolutionary Volksmarinedivision in December 1918, Haase and fellow USPD delegates resigned from the Council of the People’s Deputies in protest.
Born to a Jewish family in East Prussia, he made his name as a lawyer defending socialists and in 1911 became SPD co-chairman alongside Bebel. In August 1914 he opposed war credits but had to read the party’s statement in their favour in the Reichstag. In 1917 he founded the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) with the war’s opponents. In November 1918 he co-chaired the Council of People’s Deputies with Ebert, leaving the government after the Christmas crisis. Shot outside the Reichstag in October 1919, he died in November.
Career timeline
1888Established himself as a lawyer, defending workers, peasants, and socialist activists.
1911Became co-chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with August Bebel.
1914Opposed war credits but, following party discipline, voted for them in the Reichstag and defended the party’s support.
1917Helped found the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and became its chairman.
1918From November, co-chaired the Council of the People’s Deputies with Ebert; resigned in December to protest the government’s suppression of the sailors’ division.
1919Was shot while entering the Reichstag on 8 October and died of blood poisoning from the wound on 7 November.
British Labour organizer and politician who led the international disarmament effort.
Henderson worked as an iron foundryman and became active in the trade-union movement. He helped establish the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, chaired the conference that formed the Labour Party in 1906, and served as party secretary from 1911 to 1934, building its organization and broadening its base. He was president of the Board of Education in 1915–16, home secretary in 1924, and foreign secretary from 1929 to 1931. Elected president of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference in 1932, he pursued international negotiations even as the conference ultimately failed; his work for peace and disarmament earned him the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
1900Helped establish the Labour Representation Committee
1906Chaired the conference that formed the Labour Party
1911–1934Served as Labour Party secretary
1915–1916Served as president of the Board of Education
1924Served as home secretary
1929–1931Served as foreign secretary
1932Was elected president of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference
