fn3 “Grey’s apprehension about Germany and her ambitions regarding Continental and world hegemony received continual, powerful stimulus from the senior Foreign Office clerk supervising the Western (European) Department. Eyre Crowe, the son of an English father and a German mother, lived in Germany until he was seventeen. His wife and many of his friends, including Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, Commander of the High Seas Fleet from 1909 to 1913, were German. Crowe’s intimate knowledge of Germany led him to deep suspicions of German militarism. On January 1, 1907 he submitted a lengthy memorandum on Anglo-German relations which was to exercise a strong influence on Foreign Office thinking in the years before the war. Germany, he argued, had achieved massive national power through a policy of “blood and iron.” It was natural that she now would wish to find her “place in the sun” as a world power. Finding Great Britain and the British Navy across her path, it was also natural that German policy toward England would be dominated by hostility. Britain should react to this challenge, Crowe advised, with “the most unbending determination40 to uphold British rights and interest in every part of the globe. There will be no surer or quicker way to win the respect of the German government and of the German nation.” Grey, impressed, forwarded Crowe’s analysis to Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Haldane, and Morley.
Chapter 32
The Anglo-Russian Entente and the Bosnian Crisis
For a generation the Triple Alliance had dominated Europe. German military power had smashed Denmark, Austria, and France, and then, with the passage of time, increased. The addition of Austria and Italy to this potentially formidable war machine simply tipped the balance further in Germany’s favor. When France and Russia formed the Dual Alliance, the Wilhelmstrasse did not feel seriously threatened. Britain’s first attempt to abandon isolation and enter the Continental alliance system on Germany’s side would, if successful, have given the Reich absolute supremacy in Europe. But Chamberlain’s overtures were spurned and Britain reached out to France. The Anglo-French Entente surmounted the German challenge in Morocco. At Algeciras, observers noted that the primary agent of Germany’s defeat was a British diplomat, Sir Arthur Nicolson. Those seeking the source of Sir Arthur’s authority had only to lift their eyes from the negotiating table at Algeciras and look across the bay to Gibraltar where, under the frowning mass of the great Rock, lay the ships of the British Fleet. A Russian representative, Count Cassini, who had been present at Algeciras, reported the firmness and skill with which the Englishman wielded British diplomacy and power on behalf of France. It registered in St. Petersburg that for Russia, which needed years of peace to recuperate from the war with Japan and the 1905 revolution, Great Britain could be a useful ally.
The chance of an agreement between Britain and Russia seemed remote. Antagonism ran deep; German statesmen assumed it was permanent. In private, Queen Victoria described Tsar Alexander III as “barbaric, Asiatic, and tyrannical.”1 Conservatives feared Russia thrusting towards the Dardanelles, into the Far East, against the frontiers of India, through Persia towards the Gulf. Liberals rejected the Russian autocracy as antidemocratic. Britain’s first step away from Splendid Isolation had been the alliance with Japan, a treaty specifically aimed at containing Imperial Russia.
In Russia, distaste for Britain was equally deep-rooted. The aristocracy and government bureaucracy despised British constitutionalism and were suspicious of British diplomacy. Japan, they felt, would never have dared challenge Russia had she not been supported by her English ally. Liberals welcomed closer ties with England’s parliamentary democracy, while conservatives feared opening further doors to political contamination. Already they disliked the principles of their ally, France, governed by Republicans, Catholics, and atheists. The country conservative Russians admired was Germany. In Berlin, at least, there was strength, order, religion, and efficiency. “My own opinion,”2 Sir Arthur Nicolson was to write from St. Petersburg, “is that if the Emperor and the Russian Government were free from any other political ties, they would gladly form an intimate alliance with Germany. German influence today is predominant both in court and Government circles.” The reason, Nicolson noted, was that in addition to a common conservative tradition, German handling of Russia was surprisingly civilized and sophisticated. “The alternate hectoring and cajolery3 which are a distinctive feature of German diplomacy in other countries are not employed here,” Nicolson wrote to Grey. “A suave, conciliatory attitude and a gentle solicitude are characteristics of German diplomacy in this capital.”
Despite this array of obstacles, the appeal of an Anglo-Russian rapprochement continued to grow. King Edward, visiting his father-in-law, King Christian, in Copenhagen, met Alexander Isvolsky, the Russian Minister to the Danish court. Isvolsky had trained under Prince Gorchakov, and served as Minister to the Vatican, where he became friendly with Bülow, then German Minister to Italy. From Rome, Isvolsky went to Tokyo, then Copenhagen. When he met the King in the spring of 1904, he was fifty, plumpish, and costumed in Savile Row suits with a white waistcoat, white spats, and a pearl tie-pin. Strutting through diplomatic gatherings “on little lacquered feet,”4 he peered at the world through a lorgnette and then passed by, trailing the scent of violet eau de cologne. Isvolsky was a commoner and had seen the need to make a good marriage. He courted the young widow of a distinguished general; she rejected him. Later, when Isvolsky became Minister of Foreign Affairs, she was asked whether she did not regret having lost such a good match. “Every day,” she replied, “I regret it,5 but every night I congratulate myself.” In the end, Isvolsky married the sister of Peter Stolypin, who became Premier of Imperial Russia.
Isvolsky spoke fluent English and was familiar with English literature and history. His words, carefully chosen, always deferential, pleased King Edward. The King told Isvolsky that he hoped that England and Russia might smooth out their differences as England and France had done; the Minister replied that this was his own dearest wish. After this conversation, the King wrote to the Tsar, declaring his “great pleasure” in talking with M. Isvolsky. “In him,” the King continued, “you have a man6 of remarkable intelligence who is, I am sure, one of your ablest and most devoted public servants.” This endorsement did no harm to Isvolsky’s career and in May 1906, when the Russian Foreign Minister, Count Vladimir Lamsdorff, exhausted by the war and revolution, begged to retire, Nicholas selected Isvolsky to replace him.fn1
In the meantime, events in the Far East and their European repercussions had damaged the prospects of Anglo-Russian rapprochement. The surprise attack on the Russian Fleet in the harbor of Port Arthur by Japan, England’s ally, angered Russians. Admiral Rozhdestvensky’s sinking of British fishing trawlers on the Dogger Bank outraged Britons. Nicholas II, with one disastrous war on his hands and no desire to begin a second, quickly wrote a letter of regret to King Edward. The Russian Ambassador in London, Count Alexander Benckendorff, as anxious as Isvolsky to better relations with Britain, proposed that the matter go before the International Commission of Inquiry at The Hague. Great Britain agreed, and the Russian government paid £65,000 in damages.
Russia’s problems multiplied. Admiral Rozhdestvensky’s fleet was destroyed in the Strait of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, and a peace treaty with Japan was made at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, under the eye of President Theodore Roosevelt. Protests against the mismanagement of the war swept across the country. Troops fired on a crowd marching to the Winter Palace with a petition for the Tsar; by mid-October, the nation was paralyzed by a general strike. On October 30, Nicholas II issued an Imperial Manifesto, transforming Russia from an absolute autocracy into a semiconstitutional monarchy. The principal embodiment of change was to be an elected parliament, the Duma.
These events occurred in Russia in the final weeks of the Balfour Unionist government. Although Benckendorff already had spoken to Lord Lansdowne about the possibility of an Anglo-Russian understanding, by December 5 Lansdowne was out of office. On December 13, two days after becoming Foreign S
ecretary, Sir Edward Grey received Count Benckendorff to promise that the foreign policy of the Liberal government would follow the lines drawn by its Unionist predecessor; as Lord Lansdowne had achieved a settlement with France, so the new government hoped for a resolution of difficulties with Russia. A few days later, in his first speech as Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman told a capacity audience in the Albert Hall that the new government had “nothing but good feelings7 for the people of Russia.”
Once the Algeciras Conference concluded on April 2, 1906, the two countries moved quickly. The new British ambassador to Russia—appointed before his triumph at Algeciras—was Sir Arthur Nicolson. Reporting to London to receive instructions, he went to dinner at Grey’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate with Asquith, Haldane, and Morley, the Secretary for India. They talked for four hours about Anglo-Russian relations. Two objectives were set. The longer-range was to establish a better overall relationship with Russia, a temporarily weakened but potentially formidable state. The second, more immediate purpose was to secure the Indian frontier from the threat of Russian invasion. For more than thirty years, British statesmen had feared that Russia might march into Afghanistan and seize the Khyber Pass, the gateway to India. The method would be to strengthen the buffer states of Tibet and Afghanistan and to seal off Russia penetration to the Persian Gulf by propping up the crumbling political structure of the Persian monarchy.
On May 12, 1906, Isvolsky succeeded Lamsdorff as Russian Foreign Minister. On June 6, he sat down to begin negotiating with Nicolson. As a backdrop to their conversations, the First Imperial Duma had been received by the Tsar in the Winter Palace on May 9, and then gone off to meet in the Tauride Palace and begin the first parliamentary session in Russian history. The Duma’s first act was to formulate a sweepingly aggressive “Address to the Throne” demanding universal suffrage, universal primary education, absolute freedom of speech and assembly, expropriation and redistribution of large landed estates, release of all political prisoners, and dismissal of all ministers appointed by the Tsar, to be replaced by ministers acceptable to the Duma. The Imperial government refused. Ministers attempting to address the Duma were howled into silence. Nicholas II, appalled by the Duma’s behavior, appointed as Prime Minister Peter Stolypin, who, on July 22, locked the doors of the Tauride Palace and posted an Imperial decree suspending the Duma.
London’s reaction to these events made the diplomats’ task more difficult. The Duma had sent a delegation to participate in an interparliamentary meeting scheduled to gather in London in July. The Prime Minister was to open the proceedings and welcome the delegates. On the morning Campbell-Bannerman was scheduled to speak, news reached London that the Tsar had suspended the Duma. Attempting to reassure the shocked and crestfallen Russian delegation, the Prime Minister said, “New institutions8 often have a disturbed if not a stormy youth. The Duma will revive in one form or another. We can say with all sincerity, ‘La Duma est morte. Vive la Duma!’” This phrase, reported to St. Petersburg, hindered the British Ambassador. The more abusive the British press became, the more “Isvolsky’s former eagerness9 has been replaced by silence and indifference,” Nicolson noted in his diary. “When I mentioned... that I should like to have some outline of his views on Persia, he looked blankly at me and said that he had no views at all.”
Isvolsky’s slow pace stemmed also from his anxiety about German reaction to these negotiations. Much as he wished an agreement with Britain, he wished also to avoid offending Prince von Bülow. As Nicolson explained to Grey: “He fears, I think,10 that we are weaving webs and foreign rings around Germany and he will not allow himself to be drawn into any combinations, or place his signature to any document which might in his opinion be aimed, however indirectly, at Germany.... He has always as a warning before him the fate of M. Delcassé.” In October, Isvolsky went to Berlin to explain his intentions to Bülow and to ask for German approval. The German Chancellor replied that Berlin would welcome an Anglo-Russian agreement as long as it did not adversely affect German interests. Isvolsky also faced opposition within the Russian Council of Ministers and from the Russian General Staff, which was reluctant to give up its ability to menace Britain’s huge Indian empire.
Patience was required, and Grey did not push. “I do not wish11 the negotiations to go to sleep,” he wrote to Nicolson. “But on the other hand, we must avoid raising in M. Isvolsky’s mind the suspicion that we wish to force the pace in order to take advantage of Russia’s present situation.” In November, with Grey’s permission, Nicolson hinted that once agreement was reached, Britain might be willing to discuss proposals for improving Russia’s position on the Dardanelles. This suggestion set Isvolsky to “beaming with pleasure”12 and restored momentum to the talks. Nicolson’s technique, as described by his son and biographer, Harold Nicolson, was to adopt “the methods of a humane and highly skilled dentist13 dealing with three painful teeth. He would work a bit on Afghanistan, proceeding delicately and firmly; at the first wince of pain, he would close the cavity with anodynes, cotton wools and gutta-percha, and proceed, at the next sitting, with Tibet. He was enabled by these methods to win the entire confidence of M. Isvolsky and gradually bring his three tasks to a simultaneous state of readiness without at any moment jabbing the nerve.” Early in February 1907, the Russian Council of Ministers approved. In March, a Russian naval squadron visited Portsmouth and the officers and men were cheered in the streets of London. On August 31, 1907, Nicolson and Isvolsky signed the convention at the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 was similar to the Anglo-French Entente of 1904. It was not a treaty of alliance; there were no military clauses; the words “war,” “aggression,” and “defense” did not appear. Its professed purpose was to eliminate friction between two empires at three points in the Middle East and Central Asia where their territories rubbed abrasively. Tibet and Afghanistan were left as buffer states, their territorial integrity guaranteed. China’s nominal sovereignty over Tibet was recognized. Russia agreed that Afghanistan was “outside the Russian sphere14 of influence” and that Russian officials and agents could “only enter into political relations with that country through the intermediary of His Majesty’s Government.” Britain agreed to share the Afghan trade with Russian companies and entrepreneurs. The agreement over Persia was more complicated. The Shah’s kingdom was divided into three zones or spheres of interest, the Russian in the north, the British in the south, and a neutral zone in the center. In the northern zone, Russia was to have exclusive political and commercial concessions. Britons would have similar exclusivity in the south; both empires could scramble for whatever they could get in the center. This de facto partition was masked by a declaration that the two governments were “mutually agreed to respect the integrity and independence of Persia.” In fact, the St. Petersburg negotiations had been conducted without the knowledge of the Persian government. When the Shah complained that his country’s future had been settled without its knowledge or consent, the Foreign Office replied stiffly that the convention15 was specifically intended “to preserve the integrity and independence of Persia.”
Grey, presenting the convention to the House of Commons, argued that it banished the old nightmare of a Russian invasion of India and relieved the government of the burden of spending large sums for defense of the subcontinent. The larger benefit, he declared, was the transformation of an antagonist into, if not an ally, at least a friend. Most Conservatives (including Balfour) welcomed the agreement. Labour and Radical members denounced the signing of any agreement with a morally abhorrent autocracy and declared that Persia had been sacrificed to “that foul idol, the Balance of Power.”
German official reaction was muted. Bülow, consulted throughout by Isvolsky, reacted as he had originally to the Anglo-French convention: he accepted the agreement as a settlement of specific colonial differences which did not affect German interests. “We watch the end of the negotiations16 without anxiety,” he declared at
the end of April 1907. “I may be told that I take the Anglo-Russian rapprochement too calmly. I take it for what it is—an attempt to remove difficulties... the antagonism of the whale and the elephant was not unalterable. That we are surrounded by difficulties and dangers no one is aware better than myself. They are the result of our exposed position. We need not be alarmed by ententes in regard to matters which do not directly concern us. We cannot live on the enmities of other nations. Let us grant to others the freedom of movement which we claim for ourselves.”
The German Chancellor and the Wilhelmstrasse had failed to realize the convention’s deeper significance. A cardinal point of German diplomacy had been that England and Russia must always remain hostile. First Bismarck, then Holstein, had poured scorn on the idea that England and Russia could ever find common ground. The Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 removed from the armory of German diplomacy the weapon of exploiting Anglo-Russian differences that had been used effectively for almost half a century. Not every German was deceived. The German ambassador in St. Petersburg reported: “No one will reproach England17 for such a policy; one can only admire the skill with which she has carried out her plans. These plans need not necessarily be ascribed to any anti-German tendency, yet Germany is the country most affected by this agreement.” The Kaiser agreed. “Yes, when taken all round,18 it is aimed at us,” he wrote in the margin of this dispatch.
Nicolson attempted to defend the convention. “There was no question19 of ‘encircling’ Germany,” he said later. “In dealing with both France and Russia we had honestly no other object than to place our relations on a safer and more secure basis in the general interests of peace.” But in his next sentence, Nicolson admitted: “...yet the subconscious feeling did exist that thereby we were securing some defensive guarantees against the overbearing domination of one Power....” Great Britain had decided not to tolerate German hegemony on the Continent. From this vague but powerful instinct flowed the entente with France, the rebuilding of the Royal Navy, and the entente with Russia. The result was a restoration of the balance of power in Europe. Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the future German Chancellor, understood: “You may call it ‘encirclement,’20 ‘Balance of Power’ or what you will, but the object aimed at and eventually obtained was no other than the welding of a serried and supreme combination of states for obstructing Germany, by diplomatic means at least, in the full development of her growing power,” he said.
Dreadnought Page 80