She preferred to write a journal or to tell her story in letters to her friends. Nearly all the people Emily met and mentioned in the Diary, were Members of Parliament or prominent in other fields. Many were members of the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), formed at the beginning of the war by a group of Liberal MPs and others who believed that secret diplomacy had led to the outbreak of war. Among these, in particular, were E.D. Morel, who was said to have great organising abilities and had previously sought to limit the powers of King Leopold II of Belgium over the Belgian Congo; Arthur Ponsonby, a son of Sir Henry Ponsonby Queen Victoria’s Private Secretary, a former diplomat who had considerable inside knowledge; Charles Trevelyan, who had held parliamentary office; and Charles Buxton. Other members were R.W. Outhwaite and Arnold Rowntree. J. Ramsay MacDonald, the future Prime Minister, and Norman Angel were among the founders. These people were all proponents of a negotiated peace.
