by Simon Heffer
Grey claimed in his memoirs to have seen from this point that Britain’s interests demanded it back France, if France had to fight alongside Russia. ‘I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week [before war was declared] I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France.’88 He added that ‘in that event I should have to resign.’ He also saw the imperative of giving no assurance to France or Russia that Britain might decide not to fulfil. This would cause him enormous strain over the following days. It happened to be Law’s position and was shared by the Unionists, partly because A. J. Balfour and the Marquess of Lansdowne – not wishing to appear impotent as prime minister and foreign secretary at the time – had always claimed that Edward VII’s policy to conclude the entente cordiale in 1903–04 was in fact theirs. It was too late to back down now.89
At 10.30 p.m. on 25 July Grey heard that the Council of Ministers under the Tsar in St Petersburg that morning had sanctioned the drafting of the Imperial Ukase, calling up 1,100,000 men. Sasonov had assured Buchanan that the mobilisation would not happen until forced on Russia; and Buchanan had heard that ‘France had placed itself unreservedly on Russia’s side’.90 He was being pressed about British support, but assured Grey that he had done nothing more than suggest Britain would continue to act as a potential moderator. This annoyed Sasonov, who replied that if Britain did not pledge to fight with her two allies, ‘rivers of blood would flow and we would in the end be dragged into war.’ Buchanan noted that his French counterpart had said that his government ‘would want to know at once whether our fleet was prepared to play [the] part assigned to it by Anglo-French Naval Convention. He could not believe that England would not stand by her two friends, who were acting as one in this matter.’ France took unequivocally the Russian line that Austria sought a fight with Russia over influence in the Balkans, and that this was about the whole European balance of power, not just Serbia.
No sooner had Grey digested this than he received the unsurprising news, from Max Müller in Budapest, that the Serbian reply ‘was not found satisfactory’, the Austrian minister and his staff had left Belgrade, and Hungary had started to call up reservists. Rumbold told Grey that, from Berlin’s point of view, whether the crisis remained ‘local’ would ‘depend on whether, and, if so, to what extent, Russia and France think that they can reckon on active support of His Majesty’s Government in the event of a general complication.’91 It was now, effectively, up to the British to decide whether or not there would be a general war. Sir Francis Bertie, the veteran British ambassador to Paris, told the French foreign minister that no war could happen without public support; and he was sure there would be no such support in England for a war caused by Russia having ‘picked a quarrel with Austria over Austro-Servian difficulty.’92 At the time he made this comment he was echoing the foreign secretary’s view, expressly not giving the French cause to believe Britain would join any military action they undertook with Russia: but that view was about to undergo a radical change.
Crackanthorpe told Grey at 11.30 p.m. that the Serbs had ordered a mobilisation. The first news Grey received the following morning, on 26 July, was from Vienna, where, de Bunsen told him, ‘wildest enthusiasm’ prevailed, and a special guard had been put on the Russian embassy.93 Austria, too, called up its reserves and settled its mobilisation plan. The crisis now took on a new order of magnitude, in the context of which Grey’s response was astonishing. Having had a brief audience of the King the previous day, at which he left the Sovereign with the impression that ‘we were on the verge of a general European war’, he went off to Itchen Abbas in Hampshire to go fishing.94 In fact, even on the river he had no choice but to take a more active role. Acting on a suggestion of Nicolson, whom he had left in charge in London, he sent telegrams to his counterparts in Berlin, Paris and Rome to authorise their ambassadors to London to join him in a conference designed to ‘prevent complications’.95 Yet even Nicolson thought the idea had ‘a very poor chance’ of success, despite the suggestion thus far of German cooperation. He told Grey that Lichnowsky, with whom Nicolson had spent half an hour, ‘was convinced we could stand aside and remain neutral – an unfortunate conviction’, and one Nicolson had never shared.96 Prince Henry of Prussia had been in London and had had breakfast that morning with the King, his cousin. The Prince assured the King that Russia faced revolution if it went to war, and so probably would not. Nicolson called this ‘foolish procedure’ a means to persuade Britain to ‘remain quiet’. The King allegedly told Prince Henry that ‘we shall try all we can to keep out of this and shall remain neutral’, though the Prince, recognising Britain’s ties with France, had doubts about how long neutrality might last.97
That afternoon Lichnowsky wrote to Grey to say Berlin had learned of Russia calling up several classes of reserves. ‘In this case,’ he continued, ‘we would have to follow as it would mean a mobilisation also against us.’98 He urged Grey to use whatever influence he had in St Petersburg to prevent such a mobilisation; and reiterated Germany’s willingness to accept Grey’s four-power plan for mediation. Hoping to calm things down, Nicolson told Lichnowsky that although the Imperial Ukase had been drawn up it had not been issued. Rumbold wrote from Berlin on the afternoon of 26 July to say that although German public opinion remained firm behind Austria–Hungary, the consequences of a war were sinking in, and enthusiasm for that was waning. Lichnowsky, unknown to Grey, was pleading with his masters in Berlin to avoid war.
Crowe and Nicolson were dismayed that the German ambassador to Vienna had chosen to tell the Austrians that London hoped they would take a favourable view of the Serbian reply, rather than telling them straight to moderate their behaviour. Crowe found this lack of directness ‘insidious’ – he blamed Jagow, who he thought had privately ‘egged on the Austrians’ – and hoped Grey would protest about it. Rumbold told Grey that Berlin would go no further than associating itself with Britain’s sentiments.99 Germany – to the further exasperation of Grey’s officials – clung to the belief that Russia would do nothing unless Austria started to annex territory. Meanwhile, Sasonov asserted that Britain should ‘proclaim her solidarity with Russia and France’ against Austria.100 Asquith felt Austria was ‘resolved upon a complete and final humiliation.’101 He now felt it was ‘the most dangerous situation of the last forty years.’102 How Britain might become involved in that situation, however, remained unclear: in Paris and indeed elsewhere Bertie’s line on non-intervention still held.
Buchanan telegraphed Grey late on 26 July to implore him that in any statement he made in Parliament he would state it was Austria, not Russia, that was endangering the peace. ‘Russia has done her very best,’ he said, ‘to induce Servia to accept all Austria’s demands which do not conflict with her status as an independent state or with her existing laws.’103 He reiterated St Petersburg’s belief that the ‘blow struck at Servia was … really aimed at Russia.’ Buchanan warned Grey that it was believed Britain was really on Austria’s side, and the Tsar had ‘expressed great disappointment’ about Britain’s reluctance to be more belligerent.104 Britain’s position vis-à-vis Russia was now ‘a very delicate one’. Minutes later a further wire arrived from Buchanan, saying the first signs of the mobilisation were evident in St Petersburg and Moscow. That night the Admiralty, under direct guidance from Churchill, gave orders to the First and Second Fleets not to disperse from their stations, where they remained after the Spithead review.
III
In London, at last, public men and, within another day or two, the general public had no choice but to turn their attention away from Ireland and focus, as the foreign secretary and his cabinet colleagues had had to, on the European crisis, given the realisation among the political class that Britain’s own security might be affected – and, even, that Britain might have to become involved. Politicians, including ministers, had used spee
ches over the weekend of 24–26 July to share their views with the public. Sir John Simon, the Attorney General, had told Altrincham Liberals that Britain’s only role, managed by the ‘cool, calm hands of Sir Edward Grey’, would be that of ‘mediator’.105 Grey’s own under-secretary, Francis Dyke Acland, speaking in Sussex, confirmed that Britain’s influence would be expended ‘in the interests of peace’. Such views, however, did not coincide with what was actually happening.
In the succeeding days, as talk of war became concrete rather than abstract, Grey not only had to make progressively more and more urgent pleas to the chancelleries of Europe. He also found himself handicapped by having to pursue a course of action in the face of colleagues from different tribes in the Liberal tradition who disagreed with him, whether pacifists or bellicose politicians such as Churchill. The Liberal idealism of men such as Simon took no account of the realities of international treaties and obligations, and nor of what had been understood, for the preceding century, to be Britain’s interests in Europe – something men such as Crowe grasped well. Once the Liberal Party did start to see the consequences of such things, divisions within it would open up. Liberals would be tortured again and again throughout the following four years, as Britain moved from being a Gladstonian nation of laissez-faire and individual freedom to one of total war, in which every man and woman became a commodity to be exploited by a government fighting for the salvation of the country and its empire. That, by the end of the war, the Liberal Party had fallen apart and haemorrhaged support was a phenomenon that could be traced back to these last days of peace. Indeed, it could be traced back to long before that, to the coalition of Whigs and radicals that made up the party, and to the rise in the 1890s and 1900s of the labour movement, to whose overtly socialistic ideals many radicals felt themselves deeply attracted. Like many socialists, Liberal radicals found the idea of supporting the Tsar of all the Russias in any type of conflict deeply inimical to their principles. Also, the nonconformists who made up an important section of the party had a distaste for imperialism, as did all but a minority of the most Whiggish grandees left in the party. Grey was one of those grandees: but he had been a Liberal long enough to remember the divides over the Second Boer War, when the leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, had been deeply opposed, his own anti-war rhetoric exceeded in vehemence only by that of David Lloyd George, whose name as a front-rank politician was largely made by it.
Once the question of Britain’s role in the crisis came before the cabinet it excited deep divisions reminiscent of that earlier conflict. Tribunes of the people and leaders of public opinion started to offer their views. On 27 July C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian and a totemic figure in Liberal opinion, urged the government to keep out of any war.106 Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who like almost all his colleagues was still concentrating on threats of Irish and labour unrest, had a constituency in the party that was its radical, nonconformist wing, deeply opposed to wars. He told Scott there was ‘no question of our taking part in any war in the first instance.’107 Indeed, Lloyd George – who had argued for months for defence cuts – had said in the Commons on 23 July: ‘I cannot help thinking that civilisation, which is able to deal with disputes amongst individuals and small communities at home, and is able to regulate these by means of some sane and well-ordered arbitrament, should be able to extend its operations to the larger sphere of disputes amongst States.’108
Of Germany he said: ‘Our relations are very much better than they were a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see … of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling is better altogether between them. They begin to realise they can co-operate for common ends, and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more important than the points of possible controversy.’109 More remarkably, given Grey’s and Crowe’s views, Lloyd George told Scott that he ‘knew of no Minister who would be in favour of it [war]’ and doubted any officials supported the idea. However, he did suggest that if the Germans attacked French Channel ports and the French sowed the waters with mines, Britain might have a problem. The Chancellor also said he believed Austria wanted war to teach Serbia a lesson, but the Germans did not want to fight. At best, this was a deeply naive view. London had by now become aware of how virulently German newspapers were, to use Crowe’s phrase, ‘egging on’ Austria–Hungary: and the Dual Monarchy felt duly egged on, and confident of German support. Nicolson and Crowe knew where Jagow’s sympathies lay, and that Lichnowsky might have been misled, or not kept entirely in the picture, about thinking in Berlin, where opinion on a war was, as in London, divided.
The Monday-morning press on 27 July was suddenly swamped by the crisis, and public awareness of the threat to peace therefore rapidly spread outside the political class. Law saw Grey each afternoon for a private update on Privy Council terms: the Unionists, who included the keenest anti-Germans, had no desire to cause difficulties, unlike the non-interventionists and pacifists in Grey’s party. Law had, however, warned him that the Unionists were not united over the idea of joining in a European conflict on the side of France and against Germany. That afternoon Grey answered a question from Law in the Commons about the situation: this was the first time Parliament had discussed the European situation since it had condoled with Franz Josef about Franz Ferdinand’s murder four weeks earlier. He outlined the course the government had taken, repeating what he had privately said to various ambassadors: that so long as the quarrel remained localised Britain had no right to interfere, but if Russia became involved it would develop into ‘a matter that concerned us all’.110 He mentioned his four-power initiative, but said he awaited replies. Getting this out into the open reassured the press, and calmed public opinion. Grey said it was ‘obvious’ that if another great power were sucked into the Austrian–Serbian quarrel ‘it can but end in the greatest catastrophe that has ever befallen the continent of Europe at one blow: no one can say what would be the limit of the issues that might be raised by such a conflict, the consequences of it, direct and indirect, would be incalculable.’111 Thus informed, the Commons spent most of the day discussing Ireland: a catastrophe in Europe seemed less immediate.
Grey had raised the technical, but crucial, point that German violation of Belgian neutrality would create ‘unanimous’ support for war.112 Britain, along with France and Germany, was a guarantor of Belgium’s neutrality under a treaty of 1839; yet it was still concerns about upsetting the balance of power in Europe, rather than the possibility of any act that might draw Britain in, that remained Grey’s overriding concern. Germany had fought France in 1870 without violating Belgium; he at this stage seemed to assume that history would repeat itself, even if the conflict was spread more widely across the Continent. Yet Grey was increasingly clear in his own mind that Britain, and British security, could be badly affected if the clout of the Central Powers increased as the result of a European conflict. He was coming to the view – shared by senior officials such as Crowe, with their ingrained distrust of Germany, and doubtless influenced by them – that the diplomatic alliance Britain had with France and Russia meant it could not stand by as a spectator in any war they fought together. He would soon acquaint his colleagues of that view, thereby inviting them to alter the dynamic of British policy on the question.
The cabinet met that day. Viscount Morley, the Lord President of the Council and a towering moral force in liberalism, noted in a private memorandum written shortly afterwards that Grey took ‘a very important line’.113 He spoke of the Buchanan telegram about Sasonov’s hopes that Britain would declare solidarity with Russia and France, who were determined to fight Austria and Germany whether Britain joined in or not. According to Morley, Grey said ‘in his own quiet way’ that the time had come to choose between joining in with Britain’s partners in the entente, or preserving neutrality: and if the cabinet chose neutrality, he could not discharge such a policy. ‘The Cabinet seemed to
heave a sort of sigh,’ Morley recalled, ‘and a moment or two of breathless silence fell upon us.’114 It was unclear to Morley, who understood that the foreign secretary now regarded a diplomatic intervention as pointless and only the threat of an armed one as serviceable, whether the cabinet had a collective view. If Asquith’s administration were to fall it would be ‘from differences within, and not from the House of Commons.’115
Morley told a similar story to Lord Esher, Edward VII’s former consigliere, the following January, though the date he assigned to these events cannot be right. ‘On the 25th July, Grey came down to the Cabinet,’ Esher recorded, ‘and said that he thought that the time had come when the French should be told if we intended to support them; there was, he added, an alternative, which was that we should say plainly that we intended to observe a policy of neutrality; this, he said, was a policy which he personally did not feel qualified to conduct.’116 Morley indicated that he would have to resign, and according to this account Lord Beauchamp, the First Commissioner of Works; Lewis Harcourt, the colonial secretary; Simon; and John Burns, President of the Board of Trade, nodded assent. Asquith, though, showed the facility of playing for time that would, in the end, undo him. ‘Upon that, the Prime Minister said that no decision could be come to at that moment and adjourned the discussion.’
C. P. Scott, after seeing Lloyd George, had talked to Percy Illingworth, the Liberal chief whip, and made a prophetic remark: that if the Liberals took Britain into war ‘there would be the end of the existing Liberal combination and the next advance would have to be based on Radicalism and Labour.’117 After the cabinet had met, the Admiralty, War Office and Press Committee – set up in 1912 as the official channel of communication between the two departments and the press – met to inform Fleet Street that there might be substantial naval and military movements, and that secrecy would be essential. Sir George Riddell, chairman of the News of the World, told officials that ‘the Press would publish nothing detrimental if asked to be silent.’118