Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  The Chancellor's provocative speeches did their work; as Lloyd George sharpened his stick and prodded mercilessly, cries broke out all over England. From country shires and mountain fastnesses, noblemen emerged. The Duke of Portland earnestly explained how the budget would spread unemployment through the country as great estates were forced to dismiss gardeners and gamekeepers. The Duke of Somerset announced that he would be compelled to reduce his contributions to charity. The Duke of Beaufort grimly wished that he could see Mr. Lloyd George caught in the middle of his pack of hounds. Experienced politicians were goaded by the Chancellor's speeches. Lord Lansdowne likened Lloyd George to "a swooping robber gull, particularly voracious and unscrupulous, which steals fish from other gulls." Lord Rosebery, who since formation of the Liberal government in 1906 had remained detached, describing his own speeches as "the croakings of a retired raven on a withered branch," suddenly burst into partisan flame with a speech in Glasgow. Attacking the budget, he said bitterly, "I think my friends are moving on the path that leads to Socialism. How far they are advanced on that path I will not say. But on that path, I, at any rate, cannot follow them an inch. Socialism is the end of all, the negation of Faith, of Family, of Property, of Monarchy, of Empire." Rosebery's words brought joy to the country houses of England. If this great Liberal orator and former Prime Minister was, after all, "on the side of the angels," all was not lost.

  Asquith left most of the argument at this stage to his fiery Welsh colleague, providing the Chancellor with support which Lloyd George characterized as "firm as a rock." The Prime Minister's single major speech of the autumn, an address to thirteen thousand people in Birmingham on September 17, treated passage of the budget as certain: "Amendment by the House of Lords is out of the question," he declared. "Rejection by the House of Lords is equally out of the question… That way revolution lies." Nevertheless, the unthinkable happened. On November 4, the House of Commons passed Lloyd George's budget. Debate moved to the Lords. Lord Lansdowne reminded the House that Oliver Cromwell, the greatest English republican, had said that a House of Lords was necessary to protect the people against "an omnipotent House of Commons- the horridest arbitrariness that ever existed in the world." Lord Curzon declared that never in human history had poverty been cured by taxation and that the taxes now proposed would grow from sporadic confiscation to complete and uniform confiscation. On November 30, the Lords rejected the budget by a vote of 350 to 75, the first time in 250 years that the Upper House had repudiated a finance bill. Asquith promptly moved a resolution in the Commons describing the Lords' action as "a breach of the Constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the Commons." Privately, Liberals who wished a showdown with the Lords were delighted. "If you gentlemen throw out the Budget, we shall have the time of our lives," one Cabinet minister told a Conservative friend. "We have got them at last," Lloyd George exulted.

  The way lay open for a General Election. On December 10, 1909, in the Albert Hall, Asquith announced that the Liberal Cabinet would not again submit to the rebuffs and humiliations dealt by the Lords over the preceding four years. "We shall not assume office and we shall not hold office, unless we can secure the safeguards… necessary for the legislative utility and honor of the party," he said. Surprisingly, the election held in January 1910 was dull. Both parties campaigned on the merits of the budget, but the real issue was the veto power of the House of Lords. The country voted in moderate numbers and the result was a loss for both sides. The Liberals won a majority with 275 seats, but suffered a huge shrinkage from the 377 seats they had gained four years earlier. The Unionists gained 105 seats and came back to Westminster with a total of 273, but remained a minority. Eighty-two Irish Nationalists and forty Labour members were certain to vote with the government. The Unionist defeat ensured that the budget would pass; Lord Lansdowne had promised that if the Liberals won the election the House of Lords would let it through. In order to pass the bill through the Commons, however, with a government majority of only two, the Cabinet needed the Irish-and the Irish were only available for a price. They wanted Home Rule, and the only way to pass Home Rule through the British Parliament was to annul the veto power of the House of Lords. The price of passing the "People's Budget" through the House of Commons, therefore, was Asquith's promise to make a powerful assault on the Lords. For the next year and a half the Prime Minister attempted to carry out this promise.

  When the new Parliament assembled in February 1910, Asquith immediately announced that the government intended to eliminate the veto power of the House of Lords. On April 14, he introduced a Parliament bill into the House of Commons, declaring that "if the Lords fail to accept our policy, or decline to consider it… we shall feel it our duty immediately to tender advice to the Crown as to the steps which will have to be taken…" The rumor, awful to Unionist peers, was that the Prime Minister had obtained the King's promise to create enough new peers-as many as five hundred-to carry the bill through the House of Lords. Distracted by this prospect, Unionists scarcely noticed as the Chancellor's budget, land valuation and all, passed through the Commons on April 27 and the Lords the following day. That evening, exhausted by their labors, needing a respite before they continued, members of both houses adjourned for the Easter recess.

  Ultimately, the King would have to decide. Lansdowne had averted an immediate crisis by carrying out his pledge that, if the Liberals won the General Election, the Lords would pass Lloyd George's budget. This was no longer enough. The government now was committed to Irish members and thus to stripping the power of veto from the House of Lords. King Edward agreed that some reform of the upper house was necessary; in October 1909, Lord Knollys, his private secretary (who shared and reflected the monarch's view), wrote to a friend, "I myself do not see how the House of Lords can go on as presently constituted." Yet while the cosmopolitan King did not share the tastes of all peers, particularly some of the Backwoodsmen, the exclusiveness of the aristocracy and the privilege of the House of Lords were part of the England into which he had been born. Although Asquith told Parliament in February 1910 that he had neither requested of nor received from the King any pledge to create five hundred peers to subvert the House of Lords, even the hint that such a request might someday arrive worried the monarch.

  King Edward was in poor health. For four years, his bronchitis and gout had worsened. Despite nights of coughing and a constant increase in weight, he refused to obey his doctors. "Really, it is too bad," he would complain. "There is the attack again, although I have taken the greatest care of myself"-and then sit down to a dinner of turtle soup, salmon steak, grilled chicken, saddle of mutton, snipe stuffed with foie gras, asparagus, fruit, dishes of flavored ices, and a savory, after which he would light up an enormous cigar. In addition to his physical ills, there were the obligations of constitutional monarchy: he must, in public, always be cheerful, patient, and wise.

  One burden the King found heavy was the need to be civil to his nephew the Emperor William. This made even more difficult a duty on which the British Foreign Office now insisted. King Edward had been on the throne for eight years. He had made state visits to all the major-and a number of minor-European capitals, but he had never formally visited Berlin. (His many trips to Germany to see his dying sister or to call on his nephew had all been private and informal.) The Kaiser felt this keenly, German diplomats mentioned it frequently, and the Foreign Office pressed hard. The King, ill and melancholy, agreed reluctantly and in February 1909 he went.

  The visit was plagued by mishaps. The first occurred as the King's train reached Rathenow, on the Brandenburg frontier, where a military band and a regiment of hussars were drawn up. When the royal train pulled into the station, the King was unready; the train had crossed into a different time zone and his valet, having failed to adjust his watch, had not laid out His Majesty's uniform. When the King's suite in full uniform descended from the train, the band, expecting the monarch to follow, struck up "God Save the King." For ten minutes, while King Edward
struggled into the uniform of a German field marshal, the band played "God Save the King" over and over, "till we all nearly screamed," said a member of the British suite. Eventually, King Edward appeared and, walking so briskly that he lost his breath, inspected the hussars.

  In Berlin, the Kaiser awaited his uncle at the place on the station platform where the King's railway car was to stop; the King, however, was in the Queen's carriage a hundred yards away. The Kaiser, the Kaiserin, and the rest of the welcoming party had to run down the platform and line up again to greet their guest. A long cavalcade of carriages waited to carry them to the Palace, but there was trouble with the horses. Some of the carriages were bunched together, and the footmen following one had to keep turning around to make sure they would not be bitten by the horses immediately behind them. Nearing the Palace, the horses pulling the carriage in which the Empress was riding with Queen Alexandra suddenly stopped and refused to move, and the two women had to descend and climb into another, hastily emptied carriage. Two horses in the cavalry escort became frightened, threw their riders, and galloped disruptively along the procession. The result of these misadventures was that the Kaiser and the King arrived at the Palace, looked behind them, and saw no one. William, humiliated, turned his anger on Baron von Reischach, Master of the Horse, declaring that of all the people in the world, this should not have happened in front of the English who were, to a man and woman, all experienced riders.

  The state visit, which lasted three days, included a heavy schedule of family luncheons and dinners, civic receptions, visits to regimental headquarters, a drive to Potsdam, a performance of the Berlin Opera, and a Court ball. Throughout, King Edward persevered, but he was weary, kept his remarks to a minimum, and was anxious to abbreviate each event. The question of which English decorations to bestow on German officials, normally a matter which would have occupied him for hours, interested him scarcely at all. He tolerated the Kaiser, who tried to please, but whose forced jokes and continual grunts of approval frayed King Edward's nerves.

  The King's night at the opera gave him a scare. The performance was of Sardanapalus, one of the Kaiser's favorites. The last scene was a realistic portrayal of the funeral pyre of Sardanapalus. King Edward, weary from a tiring day and nodding off during the opera, suddenly awoke. Alarmed, believing that the fire was real, he demanded to know why the fireman stationed in the wings had not taken action. The Empress, sitting beside him, convinced him that there was no danger.

  There was a moment of real danger. The King had a bronchial cough, but refused to moderate his use of cigars. After a luncheon at the British Embassy, he went into a parlor with Princess Daisy of Pless, a young Englishwoman married to one of the premier noblemen of Germany. She curtsied before him and, in Billow's words, "the head of the British Empire inspected her with all the satisfaction of an old connoisseur of female beauty." They sat together for almost an hour while the King smoked his immense cigar and tugged at the collar of his tight-fitting Prussian uniform. Suddenly, King Edward broke into a spasm of coughing, and then fell back against the sofa. The cigar fell from his fingers, and his eyes stared. "My God, he is dying!" thought Princess Daisy. She tried to undo the collar of his uniform and failed. Queen Alexandra rushed in and the two women tried together. They failed. The King revived and opened it himself. Sir James Reid, the King's doctor, hurried in and asked everyone to leave the room. Within fifteen minutes they were invited to return. The King, insisting that nothing serious had happened, would not let Princess Daisy leave his side.

  Upon his return to England, King Edward's health continued poor. He began falling asleep over luncheon and dinner, and sleeping soundly through performances at the theater and the opera. He wheezed painfully when required to climb stairs. He went to Biarritz and then on to the Mediterranean, but he could shake neither his pallor nor his cough. That winter at Sandringham he seemed in better spirits, playing bridge until midnight and up every morning to shoot. The January 1910 General Election made certain that the budget would pass, but it also ensured that the Prime Minister would call upon the sovereign to use (or at least to threaten to use) his prerogative of creating additional peers. King Edward, sympathetic to the peers' desire to maintain their dignity, saw their diehard position as suicidal. As a constitutional monarch, he could not refuse the advice of a prime minister backed by a majority of the House of Commons. What he could do and did do was to tell Mr. Asquith that before he would agree to create the swarm of Liberal peers necessary to subvert the House of Lords, the issue must be submitted again to the country in a second General Election.

  King Edward's doctors were eager to get him away from the fogs and damp of London into the sun of Biarritz. He left on March 8, 1910, stopping in Paris, where he suffered an attack of acute indigestion with shortness of breath and pain near the heart. On the Basque coast, he struggled for six weeks with severe bronchitis. Mrs. Keppel helped to distract him, and on April 26 he returned to England, apparently refreshed. That evening he felt well enough to go to the opera at Covent Garden. The following morning, he resumed his appointments, seeing Asquith and Kitchener; the next day he received Haldane, Morley, and the Russian Ambassador, Count Benckendorff. Friday night he was back at the opera for five hours of Siegfried. On Saturday he left for Sandringham and seemed in good form, telling stories at dinner and afterwards enjoying bridge. Sunday, May 1, a cold wind and showers of rain swept over Norfolk, but the King insisted on taking his regular Sunday afternoon walk to inspect his farm and pedigree animals. He caught a chill. Monday, he turned to London in a pouring rain and, by the time he was back in Buckingham Palace, he had a severe bronchial attack and was breathing with difficulty. Queen Alexandra, discreetly vacationing in Corfu while her husband was with Mrs. Keppel in Biarritz, was notified. Assuming the King's illness to be another of his recurrent attacks, she started home slowly; upon reaching Venice, she thought of spending twenty-four hours in the city.

  On Tuesday, May 3, the King saw the American Ambassador, Whitelaw Reid, to discuss the forthcoming visit to London of former President Theodore Roosevelt, whom King Edward had never met. "Our talk," said Reid, "was interrupted by spasms of coughing." That night, the King skipped dinner but smoked a huge cigar and played bridge with Mrs. Keppel. He could not sleep. Through Thursday, the King continued to receive visitors, saying of his illness, "I must fight this." When visitors begged him to rest, he replied, "No, I shall not give in. I shall go on. I shall work to the end." Ponsonby, bringing him papers to sign, found him sitting at his writing table with a rug around his legs. "His color was grey and he appeared to be unable to sit upright and was sunken. At first he had difficulty with his breathing… but this gradually got better." The King signed some papers and then looked at Ponsonby and said helplessly, "I feel wretchedly ill. I can't sleep. I can't eat. They really must do something for me." That afternoon, Queen Alexandra reached Calais and, a few hours later, London. It was the first time during their marriage that her husband, while present in the city, had not welcomed her at the station. When she reached the Palace, the sight of the King fighting for breath, his face chalky and gray, told her the truth.

  The next day, Friday, May 6, was King Edward's last. In the morning, he insisted that his valet dress him formally in a frock coat. He received his friend Sir Ernest Cassel and said, "I am very seedy but I wanted to see you." Then he collapsed. Through the afternoon, he sat hunched in his armchair as a series of heart attacks hammered at his stricken body. Five doctors declared there was no hope. Morphine was administered to dull the pain. He had moments of consciousness, during which friends appeared. One of these was Mrs. Keppel, whom the Queen, in a display of generosity, had sent for so that she might say good-bye. At five p.m., the Prince of Wales informed his father that one of the King's horses, a two-year-old named Witch of the Air, had won a race at Kempton Park. "I am very glad," said the King. Early in the evening, he sank into a coma. At eleven-thirty, he was carried to his bed and at eleven forty-five, with the Archbishop o
f Canterbury pronouncing a blessing, he died.

  Queen Alexandra, looking at her husband's body, said to Ponsonby how peaceful he looked and that it was not the cold wind at Sandringham but "that horrid Biarritz" that had killed him. She said she felt as if she had been turned to stone, unable to cry, unable to grasp the meaning of her husband's death, unable to do anything. She mentioned that she would like to go and hide in the country, but there was the state funeral, and all the arrangements that had to be made. King Edward's son, now the new King George V, wrote that night in his diary, "I have lost my best friend and the best of fathers. I never had a word with him in my life. I am heartbroken and overwhelmed with grief." Jacky Fisher, newly retired, sat for half an hour with Queen Alexandra and, at the lying in state, felt that, if he could touch the body, the King would awake. "The world [is] not the same world," he wrote. "I've lost the greatest friend I ever had… I feel so curious a sense of isolation-which I can't get over- and no longer seem to care a damn for anything…"

  Bernhard von Bülow recorded that "the death of Edward VII… was of the greatest assistance to our foreign policy. I do not think he had really wanted to fight us… But inspired by hostility to his nephew, by his fear of our economic rivalry, and the accelerated rhythm of our naval tempo, Edward VII created difficulties and, whenever he could would put a spoke in our wheel."

  The Kaiser privately hailed "the death of the 'Encircler' " and rushed immediately to London to participate in the public pageantry of a state funeral.

  H. H. Asquith was using the Easter recess to escape politics on board the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, accompanying the First Lord, Reginald McKenna, on an inspection trip to Gibraltar. Informed by radio that the King's condition was worsening, Asquith decided to turn the yacht around immediately. At three a.m. on the morning of May 7, he was handed a wireless message from the new King: "I am deeply grieved to inform you that my beloved father the King passed away peacefully at quarter to twelve tonight (the 6th). George." Asquith went up on deck and found himself surrounded by a predawn twilight dominated by the blaze of Halley's comet: "I felt bewildered and indeed stunned. At a most anxious moment in the fortunes of the State, we had lost without warning or preparation, the Sovereign whose ripe experience, trained sagacity, equitable judgement and unvarying consideration counted for so much… His successor, with all his fine and engaging qualities, was without political experience. We were nearing the verge of a crisis almost without example in our constitutional history. What was the right thing to do?"