Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  And what of Asquith? Although he appeared to have played little part in this particular aspect of the conspiracy, he had been kept fully informed, according to Haldane.59 Asquith had never openly undermined Campbell-Bannerman, who trusted him both as a political ally and a friend, but there can be no doubt about his treachery towards the ageing prime minister. The Relugas Three were constantly in cahoots, and Asquith operated as a buffer between them and Campbell-Bannerman, keeping his focus on domestic matters. Asquith’s only contribution to the debate was denial.

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 6 – THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  British politics was dominated by half a dozen families from the ruling elite. They tended to inter-marry, but fresh blood was recruited predominantly from Balliol and New College, Oxford.

  Faced with an imminent change of government, Asquith, Haldane and Grey were selected in order to ensure a seamless foreign policy. Each was closely associated with members of the Secret Elite and all were close to and admirers of Alfred Milner, with whom they were in regular contact.

  The three met at Relugas in September 1905, where they conspired to usurp the Liberal Party leader Campbell-Bannerman.

  Haldane confirmed their conspiracy with King Edward at Balmoral, in the company of Arthur Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, their political opponents.

  The king stressed the importance of their taking office in the new government even if Campbell-Bannerman refused to go to the Lords.

  Towards the end of the Conservative government, Balfour and Lansdowne created a secret sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, which began secret military ‘conversations’ with France and Belgium over the actions to be jointly taken in a war with Germany.

  The commitments made by Belgium and secretly continued thereafter nullified her status of neutrality.

  On taking office, Haldane and Grey approved the continuation of these secret agreements without first getting approval from the prime minister. They later claimed that he was informed, but there is no reliable evidence to confirm exactly what was said.

  They deliberately kept all knowledge of this from the Liberal Cabinet, because it was a step to war with Germany.

  CHAPTER 7

  1906 – Landslide to Continuity

  THE LIBERAL PARTY WON THE 1906 general election with a resounding victory. Having taken only 183 seats in 1900, they emerged with 397 Members of Parliament. The public had spoken. It was an overwhelming endorsement of ‘Peace and Retrenchment’. The country was poised for reform. Former prime minister Arthur Balfour lost his Manchester seat but was quickly found another in the City of London. As leader of the opposition, he protected Asquith, Grey and Haldane from attacks by the Conservatives in matters of foreign policy.

  Campbell-Bannerman’s first Cabinet brought a very vocal and popular Liberal into Government, David Lloyd George. This young Welsh firebrand clearly stood out as a parliamentarian of considerable potential. So too did Winston Churchill, who had crossed from the Conservative Party two years before and been re-elected as a Liberal. Here was a Parliament bristling with new faces, keen to bring much-needed reform to Britain, yet even before the oath of office had been taken, the internal arrangements devised through King Edward, Lord Esher, Balfour, Haldane, Grey and Asquith ensured that foreign policy remained the preserve of the Secret Elite. Lloyd George reflected later that during the eight years that preceded the war, the Cabinet devoted a ‘ridiculously small’ percentage of its time to foreign affairs.1

  Anti-imperialists in the eighteen-strong Liberal Cabinet comprised Campbell-Bannerman himself, Lloyd George and at least five other radicals. It may legitimately be asked how the Relugas clique could proceed with such a complex war conspiracy when faced with an anti-war prime minister and Cabinet. The straightforward answer is that they kept everyone else completely in the dark about their activities. Although Cabinet members and backbenchers frequently questioned foreign policy, Grey and Haldane repeatedly lied to them. It would be many years before the other Cabinet members learned of the dangerous military compact that had been secretly rubber-stamped.

  Campbell-Bannerman left the all-important foreign policy to Sir Edward Grey, concentrating instead on issues such as Irish Home Rule and the alleviation of poverty. He was highly popular in the country at large but endured the double-whammy of having his authority undermined by the Relugas Three and suffering a personal tragedy. Shortly after Campbell-Bannerman became prime minister, his wife and inseparable companion, Lady Charlotte, took ill and died. It was an inestimable blow. Campbell-Bannerman’s mental anguish unnerved him. The love and affection that had bound the couple together tortured him in his loss. Drained by the demands of office and his personal agonies, he cut a sad and lonely figure. The Irish MP T.P. O’Connor wrote of him:

  The Prime Minister, in 10 Downing Street, was less happy than the cottager that tramps home to his cabin … He was visibly perishing, looked terribly old, and some days almost seemed to be dying himself; and there was little doubt in the mind of anybody who watched him that if the double strain were prolonged, he would either die or resign.2

  Campbell-Bannerman was a broken man, and the Relugas Three in the top Cabinet posts of Foreign Office, Exchequer and War Office pursued their cause without interference. One measure of how successfully they functioned was Lloyd George’s revelation that every aspect of Britain’s relations with France, Russia and Germany was met with an air of ‘hush-hush’. He possibly did not realise how accurately he summed up Grey’s dictatorial control of foreign policy in Cabinet when he confessed that he was made to feel that he had no right to ask questions ‘since this was the reserve of the elect’.3 How right he was. The information given to Cabinet was carefully filtered, and facts that would have enabled sound judgement were deliberately withheld.

  Sir Edward Grey retained a tight personal grip on foreign policy within the Cabinet, but he never wielded real power inside the Foreign Office. Grey was the figurehead behind which the real power operated. The Secret Elite placed him in the Foreign Office not for his capabilities or knowledge of foreign affairs but because he was loyal and did as they advised. Grey was never Campbell-Bannerman’s choice for foreign secretary. At least four other major politicians had better credentials, but Campbell-Bannerman had effectively been given little choice in the appointment. The Relugas Three came as a package.

  Grey was a staunch imperialist on the extreme right wing of the Liberal Party and possessed no conspicuous intellectual talents.4 He had idled his way through Balliol College, from where he was sent down for his indolence before being awarded an inglorious third-class degree. His outlook was utterly parochial. Northumberland was the centre of Edward Grey’s world, and he knew more about its rivers and streams than the business of running an empire. His lack of interest in politics at university was clear to all, yet he became an MP at the age of 23. Although his family connections secured him a ministerial post as under-secretary at the Foreign Office from 1892 to 1895, his inept performance almost led to conflict with France. On leaving, he wrote in his diary: ‘I shall never be in office again and the days of my stay in the House of Commons are probably numbered.’5 A legion of observers would now add, if only …

  Paradoxically, in the years when Britain was increasingly committed to a continental policy, her affairs were directed by ‘one who seldom travelled outside the British Isles, and who had little first-hand knowledge of Europe and spoke no French’.6 His very appointment was a paradox. Grey was unpardonably rude to Campbell-Bannerman, telling him point-blank that ‘unless he took a peerage and transferred his leadership from the Commons to the Lords … he [Grey] would not take any part in the Government’.7 Grey did not want to serve under a man whose contempt for Alfred Milner he resented and with whose espoused pacifism he was completely at odds, but the Secret Elite insisted. Grey’s points of reference came not from Cabinet debate or House of Commons motions, nor from his own independent judgement, but from Grillion’s and The Club, and from weekend collusio
n with the Milner Group in select stately homes. Is it conceivable that one man, one modestly educated man who, despite all of his advantages, never crossed the sea until 1914, nor spoke any foreign language, had the capacity to single-handedly control the foreign policy of the Empire? And control it so well that his judgement was held in great esteem?

  No. Grey was surrounded in the Foreign Office by seasoned permanent secretaries like Sir Charles Hardinge and Sir Arthur Nicolson, who were proven Establishment men and associated with the Secret Elite. Hardinge was one of the most significant figures in the formation of British foreign policy in the early twentieth century. As a close confidant of King Edward, he travelled widely with him and played an important role in both the entente and the understanding with Russia.8 Sir Arthur Nicolson, later Lord Carnock, who played a similar role in guiding Grey in the Foreign Office, was always at the centre at critical moments in Morocco, St Petersburg and eventually as permanent secretary in London. They controlled Britain’s diplomatic reach across the world, while Grey fronted and deflected questions in Parliament.

  Grey’s presumed gravitas, his ‘magisterial airs’, as Lloyd George bitterly described them, his advantage in society, his ‘correctitude of phrase and demeanour which passes for diplomacy’9 invested in him a sense of the untouchable. He seemed to be above reproach. He appeared to know what other mortals did not know. It was rarely his place to have to explain himself to Parliament. He did not consider himself answerable to the large radical wing of the Liberal Party. In truth, as Niall Ferguson observed: ‘There was more agreement between Grey and the opposition front bench than within the Cabinet itself, to say nothing of the Liberal Party as a whole.’10 His contemporaries found him daunting, aloof and all too prepared to keep his own counsel. Grey did not argue his case but gave a judgement to which even Cabinet ministers felt there was no appeal, and few ever made one.11 On the odd occasion that his policy was questioned, he would ‘twist and turn’ at each set of objections, voicing dire consequences for the nation’s security or threatening resignation if crossed. With no strong centre of opposition to him within the Liberal Party, Grey had little problem operating above Cabinet scrutiny.

  He had none of Haldane’s brilliance, Asquith’s capabilities or Lloyd George’s eloquence, but he had credibility built on a myth. Promoted by a supportive right-wing press, Sir Edward Grey was above reproach. The industrial magnate Sir Hugh Bell, who worked for a time with Grey on the running of the North Eastern Railway, said: ‘Grey is a good colleague because he never takes any risks; and he is a thoroughly bad colleague for the same reason.’12

  Such a description hardly resonates with that of a key decision maker in charge of the most prestigious department of government in the British Empire. The Foreign Office was the hub of the imperial spider’s web, linked through diplomatic and commercial channels to every part of the globe. Its incumbents plotted and planned ceaselessly for the ‘good’ of the Empire and the benefit of the Secret Elite. Grey was the perfect figurehead, but it was Hardinge and Nicolson who turned Secret Elite policy into practice.

  In the War Office, Richard Haldane required no minders. He had the vigour, determination and intellect to tackle the mammoth task of reorganising a military set-up that was soaked in historic tradition and riddled with vested interest. The British Army still offered commissions to the sons of the noble and wealthy. Rank and its privilege were available at a price. Haldane approached his new job in the confident knowledge that he had the complete backing of King Edward, Lord Esher13 and Alfred Milner. He told the House of Commons on 12 July 1906 that he intended to remould the army ‘in such a fashion that it shall be an army shaped for the only purpose for which an army is needed … for the purpose of war’.14 His main problem came not from the Army Council but from within his own party, burning with a zeal for social reform. Haldane knew he had to cut army expenditure to win the support of his own MPs and at the same time find the resources to invest in a different kind of fighting force.

  He did this by dismantling coastal defence batteries with obsolete guns, closing a number of forts around London, reducing artillery and systematically reviewing all the constituent parts of the army with one question in mind: ‘What is your function in war?’15 Where Haldane did run into objections from traditionalists over the changing role of the militia and volunteers, he was able to call on support from King Edward, who summoned a conference of lords lieutenant from every shire and county of the British Isles to make clear his expectation that Haldane’s reforms would have their active endorsement. The Secret Elite could not have made their aim clearer. They would have a modern army fit for the coming war.

  Reforms included the creation of a general staff and, most crucially, the concept of an expeditionary force. Haldane had faith in the premise that the fleet would defend Britain’s coast while the first purpose of the army was for overseas war. He built a dedicated expeditionary force of one cavalry and six regular divisions, which comprised 5,546 officers and 154,074 men. Haldane introduced an imperial general staff, including the military leaders from Britain’s overseas dominions, and promoted officer-training corps in universities and public schools, which marginally extended opportunities to lead from the aristocracy to the wealthy upper-middle classes.

  Few would have expected such an achievement in barely two years, but Haldane’s extraordinary success was backed by the most powerful of Secret Elite allies, including the monarchy, senior military officers and The Times. He also gained the parliamentary support of a Liberal Party that had no understanding of his real purpose. Their minds were focused on the millions he cut from unnecessary spending.

  One of the lessons Haldane learned was that a great deal of future coordination would be required to get the expeditionary force mobilised and transported to France in good time. When he took office, Sir Edward Grey informed the British ambassador to Paris, Sir Francis Bertie, that it would take two months to mobilise 80,000 men.16 The French were mightily under-impressed. Prime Minister Clemenceau visited Britain in April 1907 and tried to persuade Haldane and Asquith to introduce conscription and create a great army that would ‘take the field’ along with France against Germany.17 This French agitation was met with polite refusal. However, two points are worth noting. First, at the highest level of parliamentary government both countries discussed war against Germany. Second, Clemenceau must have been very badly briefed if he imagined that the Liberal Party would for a moment contemplate compulsory military service. But the conversations continued apace.

  Haldane’s biggest problem lay with the Senior Service, as the Royal Navy styled itself. Preparation for an expeditionary force required joint naval and military planning, but the navy did not take kindly to the idea of providing a ferry service for the army or playing a subordinate role to it. It had, after all, been for centuries the most formidable naval fighting force in the world and at the forefront of British empire-building. Haldane quickly realised that there was no semblance of cooperation, or even understanding, between the Admiralty and the War Office. The past experience of wartime cooperation between the army and the navy was one long record of virtually unbroken misunderstandings and failure, mistrust and blame. In an attempt to bridge the gulf, Haldane used the Committee of Imperial Defence to promote the concept of a naval war staff. Sir Charles Ottley, then secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, wrote to him in some exasperation: ‘Not one naval officer out of fifty has any knowledge of what the British Fleet will have to do in a war, or how it will do it.’18

  The navy had a great and historic tradition, but the Secret Elite needed to ensure control from the inside, in the same way as they had with the army. Haldane did all he could to instigate change from the War Office, but knew in his heart that the navy could only be properly reformed from within the Admiralty. The man to whom they looked for help was Admiral Sir John (Jacky) Fisher, but the first sea lord was a man who had been allowed to plough his own passage and dictate his own policy. Fisher was ill dispos
ed to tolerate any military, or worse, French interference. He was perfectly agreeable to the Secret Elite’s coming war but did not believe in an expeditionary force being sent to Belgium. His preference was a joint naval and military attack on Schleswig-Holstein at the northernmost tip of Germany. It was a venture dismissed by both the British and French general staffs as impractical.19

  The son of an army officer serving in India, Fisher had joined the navy as a 13 year old in 1854 and quickly rose through the officer ranks. In the early 1880s, when his duties as captain of HMS Inflexible brought him into close contact with the royal family, Prince Albert Edward befriended him.20 Fisher contracted malaria in 1883 and during his recuperation Queen Victoria invited the dashing captain to stay with her at Osborne House for a fortnight.21 Five years later, on his promotion to Rear Admiral, the queen appointed him her aide-de-camp. Thereafter, she knighted him in her birthday honours of 1894. Like Richard Haldane, Jacky Fisher did not belong to the Establishment. He boasted: ‘I entered the navy penniless, friendless and forlorn. I had to fight like hell, and fighting like hell has made me what I am.’22 He had progressed through the ranks and by the fates of fortune had been drawn into the elite circles surrounding the monarchy. Like Haldane, he was an able man. Both were tasked with bringing the country’s armed services into the twentieth century. In October 1904, Fisher had breakfast with his good friend King Edward at Buckingham Palace and thereafter was sworn in as first sea lord. Both the army and the Royal Navy were, at that point, in the hands of loyal servants of the Secret Elite.

  While friends in high places were undoubtedly a factor in elevating Fisher to the navy’s top job, he was a man of vision who didn’t hesitate to instigate revolutionary reforms that made the Royal Navy more effective for the job in hand. He valued ships for their fighting worth, and in 1904, with the German navy still in its infancy, he began a ‘Ruthless, Relentless, and Remorseless’ reorganisation of the British fleet. The navy was purged of 160 ships that, in his own words, could ‘neither fight nor run away’ and Fisher replaced them with fast, modern vessels ready ‘for instant war’.23