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

by Robert K. Massie

  Later, in his memoirs, William claimed that he saw immediately that the "verbal note was aimed at our Naval Law and designed to delay or frustrate it." At the time he was sufficiently interested to telephone Bethmann, who came immediately. He, like the Kaiser, was astonished. Tirpitz was summoned. Cassel requested that, if possible, he be permitted to return to London that night with a preliminary reaction from the German government. The Kaiser agreed. It was decided that the German reply should be written in English "for fear of obscurity and misunderstanding if the note were translated in London." The Chancellor asked the Emperor to draw up the note, "since I knew English best," William recalled. The following scene, described in the Kaiser's words, took place:

  "I sat at the writing table in the adjutant's room, the other gentlemen stood around me. I would read a sentence from the [British] note aloud and sketch out an answer, which was, in turn, read aloud. Then criticisms were made right and left; one thought the sentence too complaisant, another too abrupt; it was thereupon remodelled, recast, improved and polished. The Chancellor particularly subjected my grammar and style to much torture, owing to his habit of probing things philosophically… After hours of work the note was finally finished and, having been passed a couple of times from hand to hand and then read aloud by me half a dozen times more, it was signed."

  When the group broke up, Bethmann asked Cassel who would come from England for the negotiations. Cassel replied that he did not know, but surmised that it would be a minister, probably Churchill. Cassel, pleased with his reception in Berlin, returned to London carrying the Kaiser's note, which expressed approval of private negotiations and invited an English Cabinet Minister to Berlin. He also carried a long statement from Bethmann-Hollweg about the new Supplementary Navy Law which, the Chancellor declared, the German government was not inclined to modify. Arriving in London, Cassel went straight to Churchill and delivered the statement. "We devoured this document all night long in the Admiralty," Churchill wrote, and in the morning he sent his analysis to Sir Edward Grey: "The spirit may be good, but the facts are grim," the First Lord declared. Britain had expected Germany to continue building two new dreadnoughts a year for the six-year period beginning in 1912, equipping the High Seas Fleet with twelve new capital ships by 1918. The new Navy Law proposed adding a third ship every other year, for a total of fifteen new dreadnoughts by 1918. Against the older formula, the Royal Navy building program had been 4-3-4-3-4-3 over the same period, so that Germany's twelve new ships would have been matched against twenty-one new British dreadnoughts. Now, if the new Navy Law was passed-and Churchill told Grey that passage seemed certain: "even the Socialists are not resisting"-England would have to up her building program to 5-4-5-4-5-4 for a total of twenty-seven new dreadnoughts against the German fifteen. Churchill also noted the creation of a third battle squadron, additions to the personnel of the German Fleet allowing "full commission of 25 battleships" and exposing Britain to "constant danger approximating war conditions." This could be met, he concluded, only by adding £3 million a year to the British Naval Estimates. "This is certainly not dropping the naval challenge." Churchill also noted the German reaction to Britain's offer of helping to promote German colonial expansion: "Cassel says they did not seem to know what they wanted in regard to colonies. They did not seem to be greatly concerned about expansion. 'There were ten large companies in Berlin importing labor into Germany.' Overpopulation was not their problem."

  When the Cabinet met, it was decided that neither Churchill nor Grey should go to Berlin. Churchill wrote later that "there never was any question of my going… nor did I at this time wish to go." Grey did not go for a number of reasons. He had been asked by Asquith to mediate between the coal-mine owners and the strikers, and those negotiations were at a critical point. If the Foreign Secretary went to Berlin, it would be impossible to keep the Anglo-German negotiations private or to downplay the significance of any failure. And, most important to Grey himself, his appearance in Berlin would arouse suspicion and distrust in Paris. The key to Grey's foreign policy, more significant than any limitation of naval building, was support of France and the Entente. The minister chosen was Haldane.

  Although the British Royal Family had been predominantly German since 1714 when George Louis, Elector of Hanover, mounted the throne as King George I, Ministers of the British Crown never learned to speak German.* The one exception was Richard Burdon Haldane, Asquith's Minister of War and subsequently Lord Chancellor. Haldane spoke German fluently, revered German philosophy, and basked in the pleasures of his long sojourns in German towns and countryside.

  There was not a drop of German blood in Richard Burdon Haldane. He was a Scot from Perthshire and Edinburgh, where his father was a solicitor and a fervent Baptist. When he reached university age, he wanted to go to Balliol but his parents fretted over rumors of the dominant influence of the Anglican Church at Oxford. Haldane, with the help of an Edinburgh professor of Greek, persuaded Haldane Senior to permit a course of study in philosophy at the University of Gottingen. At age seventeen, Haldane first arrived in Germany. His first impression on a gray dawn in Gottingen "was to see a woman and a dog drawing along the street a cart containing a man and a calf." His professors were woebegone: they "looked as if they had seen more books than soap or tailors' shops. Most of them are men of about sixty, wearing colored spectacles, broad Tyrolean hats, with dirty, badly shaven faces and their clothes almost tumbling off. They lecture, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in German." Haldane grew his own hair long, grew a mustache, and bathed in the river, which, like the entire town, reeked of tanning. He moved on to the University of Dresden, where he read Kant and Hegel.

  Returning to Scotland, Haldane was confronted with a demand by his father that he be baptized. He consented on condition that he be permitted to make a statement afterward. The ceremony concluded, "I rose dripping from the font and, facing the congregation, announced to them that I had consented to go through what had taken place only to allay the anxiety of my parents, but that… I could not accept their doctrines and that I regarded what had taken

  * If they learned a foreign language at all, it was French. In Asquith's Liberal Cabinet, none of the ministers even spoke French, except Churchill, who spoke it with a grandly atrocious accent.

  place as the merest external ceremony; and that for the future I had no connection with the church or its teaching or with any other church. I then changed my clothes and walked away from the building. There was much consternation, but nothing was said, probably because there was nothing to say."

  In 1877, at twenty-one, Haldane entered chambers in London, reading and drafting papers for a solicitor in Lincoln's Inn. Nothing in the law "seemed difficult in comparison with sifting the books of the German metaphysicians," he recorded in his Memoirs. The law became his passion, and he sat up at night in bed reading lawbooks. In 1880, he began his own practice; his fees totaled £31, 10s. In 1881, his income rose to £109; the year after, £160. In 1884, it soared to £1,100. (By 1905, the year before he became Minister of War, Haldane earned over £20,000 annually, although his political duties kept him from full application.) As a young man, he worked in his office until midnight and eschewed vacations. "Of sport and of general society I saw almost nothing in my early days in London," he wrote. "The outcome of this was a certain awkwardness. Moreover, I had no attractive presence… and I had a bad voice. These were serious deficiencies for a career at the bar. On the other hand, I could sit down and think systematically, and I had an accurate memory which let slip little of what I had read… I was active and tenacious… and was confident, probably to an undue extent, of my power to succeed in whatever I undertook."

  Haldane's reputation brought him regularly before the Privy Council and the House of Lords, sitting as judicial bodies. In 1885, at twenty-nine, he entered the House of Commons as Liberal member for East Lothian. The following year, he arranged for his friend and fellow lawyer, H. H. Asquith, to enter Parliament as the member for East F
ife.

  Haldane was shy around women. He fell in love once, in 1890, at the age of thirty-four. Engagement and "weeks of unbroken happiness" followed. Then, "suddenly, without previous warning, and as a bolt from an unclouded sky, there came to me a note saying that all was over… the decision was as irrevocable as it was rapid… Only once or twice again in the course of my life did I see her and then only momentarily and casually. My grief was overwhelming… To this hour, I treasure the memory of those five happy weeks and bless her name… She died in 1897." Haldane remained a bachelor, fond of dogs. He lived with his unmarried sister in London in a tiny house in Queen Anne's Gate and wrote to his mother every day. Beginning in 1898, he began a regular series of annual visits to Weimar during the Easter parliamentary recess. His companion was Professor Hume Brown of Edinburgh University, who was at work on a life of Goethe. Haldane relished these visits to the country of his university years, and the excursions continued even after he became War Minister and traveled incognito as "Mr. Brown."

  The purpose of Haldane's visit to Berlin was hidden by an announcement that the War Minister, who was also Chairman of the Royal Commission on the University of London, would be visiting to study developments in German technical education. He carried a message from the Cabinet declaring that "the new German program would entail serious and immediate increase of British naval expenditure… [This] would make negotiations difficult if not impossible." Haldane was instructed to suggest that the Germans slow their rate of new construction.

  The visit, which came to be called the Haldane Mission, lasted four days. On Thursday, February 8, Haldane arrived on the overnight train at Berlin's Friedrichstrasse Station. Sir Edward Goschen's car took him to the Hotel Bristol near the Embassy. At ten a.m., Goschen came to brief him: Bethmann was coming to the Embassy for lunch at noon and would remain afterward for a private talk. The Chancellor had asked about Haldane's status, public or private, saying that he could not divest himself of his own official position; he had been told that the War Minister was coming on behalf of the Cabinet, but that the talks would be exploratory and that Haldane had no power to make a firm commitment on any point.

  At two p.m., after lunch, Bethmann and Haldane met alone. They spoke mostly in German, with Haldane occasionally switching to English to clarify a delicate point and the Chancellor also speaking English to signify his understanding. The first subjects were political. Haldane described English fears over the rise of the German Navy. This was the only obstacle to good relations as "the Morocco question was now out of the way and we had no agreements with France or Russia except those that were in writing and published to the world." Interrupting, the Chancellor asked whether this was really true; Haldane solemnly promised that it was. They talked about Agadir. Bethmann complained about war preparations in the British Fleet and Army during the crisis. Haldane dismissed the complaint by saying that Britain had done only what German officers-General Moltke, for example-would consider as "matters of routine." Bethmann accepted this explanation. The Chancellor brought up the question of neutrality: could England and Germany agree to stay out of any war involving the other? Haldane pointed out that Britain could no more permit France to be crushed while she remained a spectator than Germany could allow England to seize Denmark or attack Austria. Later, speaking of Haldane, Bethmann wrote: "he really was apparently afraid that we would break loose against France if we were sure of the neutrality of England. I replied that the policy of peace which Germany had pursued for more than forty years ought to save her from such a question. If we had planned robber-like attacks, we had the best opportunity during the South African War and the Russo-Japanese War." Haldane acknowledged that England probably would accept a mutual undertaking of neutrality in case the other had to deal with an unprovoked, aggressive attack by a third Great Power. The Chancellor said that one could not easily define "aggression" or "unprovoked attack." Haldane retorted that one "could not define the number of grains it took to make a heap, but one knew a heap when one saw one."

  The conversation then turned to the matter of the German Fleet and the new Navy Law. What was the value, Haldane asked, in trying to establish better relations if Germany was going to enlarge her battle fleet and Britain had to respond by increasing hers? If the Germans created a third squadron, Britain would have to counter with five or even six squadrons, perhaps bringing ships now in the Mediterranean back to home waters. The proposal to add a new third ship every other year was even more serious. "We should certainly have to lay down two keels to each one of the newest German additions," Haldane declared. The Chancellor asked whether this would really be the case. Haldane replied that unless it did so, the government would be turned out. Nevertheless, Bethmann said, it was necessary for Germany to create the third squadron, and to do this some additional ships would have to be built. The Chancellor asked Haldane whether he saw a way out of their mutual dilemma. As instructed by the Cabinet, Haldane then proposed a spreading out of the new building program, a reduction of the "tempo." "Perhaps over eight or nine years instead of six?" the Chancellor asked. "Or twelve," said Haldane. Bethmann shook his head doubtfully. "My admirals are very difficult," he said.

  Despite obstacles, the two men had talked openly, had identified areas of trouble, and had discussed possible solutions. Bethmann, who had been attempting for two years to bring about an agreement between Germany and England, went off to give the Emperor an optimistic report. Haldane's hopes were just as high. "It was not a case of two diplomats fencing," he declared in his Memoirs. "It was two men trying to meet on common ground to accomplish the highest ideal which was possible to mortals." "The atmosphere which resulted was marvellous," he wrote to his mother that night. "The prospect for the moment is very good. I seem to have been inspired by new power."

  The Kaiser was affected by this spirit of optimism. The following day, he and Tirpitz were scheduled to sit down with Haldane and, before the British Minister arrived, William wrote to his naval aide, "There is no doubt that in large measure the fate of the Entente, and of Germany, and the whole world depends on today's conversation between Tirpitz and Haldane. It is imperative that Tirpitz realize this. He must work in an open and frank manner without any suspicion and mental reservations. If he succeeds and England and Germany come to an understanding, then I will announce it so that Germany and the whole world will be thankful to him as the man who made peace. Then he will hold a position in the world which no German minister has held since Bismarck."

  At noon on Friday, February 9, Haldane went for lunch at the Castle with the Kaiser, the Kaiserin, their daughter Princess Victoria Louise, the Chancellor, and Admiral Tirpitz. After the meal, William produced his famous pink champagne and a silver plate of excellent cigars and read from Goethe's poem "Ilmenau." He invited Haldane and Tirpitz-but not Bethmann-into his private study to discuss the competition in shipbuilding. Because of Admiral Tirpitz, the Emperor explained, the conversation would have to be largely in German. But, he said with a smile, he had found a way to adjust "the balance of power." Leading the two men to a small, narrow table, he placed Haldane in the larger chair at the head of the table, put the Admiral on the visitor's left, and himself sat down on Haldane's right. Once they were seated, the Kaiser leaned over and relit Haldane's cigar. Then began an afternoon of talk, the only occasion in the seventeen years between 1897 and 1914 when Tirpitz, the architect and builder of the High Seas Fleet, ever sat down with a Cabinet Minister of the British government.

  William began by saying that, although they were there to discuss naval questions, it was clear that an agreement would benefit both nations and the world. Haldane declared again that for England, the fundamental issue was German shipbuilding. Before any political agreement could be reached, he said, a serious modification of the German building program had to occur; any general political agreement would be "bones without flesh" if the Reich increased its shipbuilding and forced Great Britain to follow at a rate of two keels to one; the British public "would laug
h at the agreement and… think we had been befooled." Tirpitz proposed a fixed 3: 2 relationship of fleets (three British battleships for every two German battleships), declaring that Britain's insistence on a Two Power Standard was "hard" for Germany. Politely, Haldane declined, reminding him that England, as an island state, had to be equal at sea to any possible combination of enemies.

  Tirpitz pointed out that the 1912 Novelle already had been modified: originally he had planned to ask for three new ships a year and had reduced the program to a third ship every other year. These ships, he declared, were essential to creation of the third battle squadron, necessary for the defense of the Empire. "Admiral Tirpitz is a strong and difficult man-a typical Prussian-and he and I fought stiffly," Haldane reported later. "There was perfect politeness but neither of us would move from his position. Under pressure from the Emperor, I got a substantial concession."