The 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace sought to shape a liberal international public sphere, through encouragement of empathetic and neighborly broadcasts to other nations and prohibitions on international broadcast of hostile speech and false claims. It expressed 1920s liberal hopes that adding protocols and rules to international communications would foster peace. How was it then that by the late 1930s these same hopes for an international public sphere of civil and peace-fostering international discourse appeared to many liberals in national contexts as not only fantastical, but illiberal, a clear threat to the emerging core liberal value of free speech? Analysis of the making and early implementation of the Convention facilitates understanding of the rapid change in the valency of these ideas and illuminates the historical contours of the always-contested line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications history. That line is difficult to discern clearly in this case for two main reasons: removing offensive criticism of other nations from international broadcasting was perceived as illiberal censorship by some and as laudable self-restraint and international good manners by others; positive liberal internationalist content was perceived as educational by liberal internationalists and as potentially illiberal propaganda by nationalists. Viewing the making of the Convention through the lens of the contest about what constituted liberal and illiberal internationalism helps us better understand both its high ambition and some of the reasons why it was so quickly labelled a failure. [End Page 165]

中文翻译：

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国际联盟和平广播公约制定过程中的自由与非自由国际主义

1936 年国际联盟关于在和平事业中使用广播的公约试图通过鼓励向其他国家进行善意和睦邻的广播以及禁止敌对言论和虚假声明的国际广播来塑造一个自由的国际公共领域。它表达了 1920 年代的自由派希望，为国际通信增加协议和规则将促进和平。到了 1930 年代后期，对于促进公民与和平的国际话语的国际公共领域的这些同样的希望是如何在国家背景下在许多自由主义者看来不仅是空想的，而且是不自由的，对新兴的言论自由核心自由价值的明显威胁？对公约的制定和早期实施的分析有助于理解这些想法的效价的快速变化，并阐明了传播史上自由政策和非自由政策之间始终存在争议的界限的历史轮廓。在这种情况下，这条线很难清楚地辨别，主要有两个原因：从国际广播中删除对其他国家的冒犯性批评被一些人认为是不自由的审查制度，而另一些人则认为这是值得称赞的自我克制和国际礼貌；积极的自由国际主义内容被自由国际主义者视为具有教育意义，而被民族主义者视为潜在的不自由宣传。通过关于自由和非自由国际主义构成的竞赛的视角来看待公约的制定，有助于我们更好地理解其雄心勃勃的雄心以及它如此迅速地被贴上失败标签的一些原因。[第165页结束]