The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  Delcassé was delighted with the visit and convinced that the British government was now ready for a sweeping agreement, in part because Edward in private conversations seems to have gone well beyond what a constitutional monarch should do. The king had expressed full support for France’s sway over Morocco and warned Delcassé against the ‘mad and malicious’ Kaiser.57 Two months later, President Loubet and Delcassé paid a return visit to London. There was a minor contretemps beforehand when the king made it clear that he expected French officials to wear the official court dress which included knee breeches, culottes in French. This, for a nation which remembered the sans-culottes, the lower-class republicans who led the Revolution of 1789, would have caused an uproar in France. Edward gave way and the visit went off splendidly. That autumn delegations from the French and British parliaments exchanged visits, something that was both unprecedented and a sign that the entente went deeper than the top levels of government.

  In the course of Loubet’s visit, Delcassé told Lansdowne that he was in favour ‘of a comprehensive settlement’ and the two men agreed that Morocco, Egypt, and Newfoundland were the outstanding problems. For the next nine months negotiations, difficult at times, took place in London between Cambon and Lansdowne. Siam was divided into spheres of influence and competing claims and grievances in Madagascar and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) were sorted out relatively easily. Newfoundland nearly wrecked the whole agreement, as the smallest issues so often do. What was ostensibly at stake were the fishing rights that French fishermen had enjoyed alone off the coast of the island since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Whether a lobster was a fish or not also caused considerable debate. If they were to give up their rights, the French demanded compensation elsewhere, preferably the British colony of Gambia in West Africa. The French were stubborn partly because they were under pressure from their own fishermen and chambers of commerce in French ports, partly because the rights in Newfoundland were one of the last remnants of the French Empire in North America.58 In the end both sides gave way; the British offered territory to the north of Nigeria, a small slice of Gambia, and some islands off the coast of the West African French colony of Guinea and the French settled for less than they had wanted. The centrepiece of the agreement was the deal over Egypt and Morocco: France accepted British suzerainty in Egypt while Britain effectively gave Morocco over to France’s influence. Although the French promised not to change the political status quo there, France was conveniently to be responsible for maintaining order. In order to ensure that Britain’s sea route into the Mediterranean remained secure, there were to be no fortifications on the nearby part of the Moroccan coast which at its closest was fourteen miles to the south of the British naval base at Gibraltar. Secret clauses made it clear that both sides did not expect Morocco to remain independent for long.59

  On 8 April 1904, less than six years after the Fashoda crisis, Cambon came to Lansdowne’s room in the Foreign Office to sign the agreements. Delcassé was waiting anxiously in Paris and Cambon rushed to the French embassy to use the new and unfamiliar telephone which had just been installed. ‘It’s Signed!’ he shouted at the top of his lungs.60 Although there was some criticism in France that Delcassé had given away too much, the agreement was approved in the French parliament. In Britain, the news was received with enthusiasm. France would be much more useful as an ally against Germany than Japan. Imperialists were also pleased because Britain was confirmed in its control of Egypt while opponents of empire welcomed an end to imperialist rivalries. The Manchester Guardian spoke for liberals and the left when it said: ‘The value of the new friendship lies not in the avoidance of disputes, but in the chance that it affords a genuine alliance between the democracies in both countries for the furtherance of the democratic cause.’61

  In Germany, where the leadership had never taken the possibility of a friendship between Britain and France seriously, the reaction was one of shock and dismay. The Kaiser told Bülow that the new situation was troubling; with England and France no longer at odds, ‘the need to take account of our position becomes ever less pressing’.62 The well-connected Baroness Spitzemberg wrote in her diary: ‘There is profound gloom at the Foreign Ministry over the Franco-British agreement on Morocco, one of the worst defeats of German policy since the Dual Alliance.’ The rabidly nationalist Pan-German League passed a resolution to say that the agreement on Morocco showed a ‘humiliating disregard’ of Germany, which had been treated like a third-rate power. The National Liberals, a conservative party which usually supported the government, demanded a statement from the Chancellor while the Kaiser made speeches saying that the new world situation might oblige Germany to intervene and pointed out that the German armed forces were ready and strong.63

  Britain and Germany had already drifted apart and public opinion in both countries was speeding the process but the Entente Cordiale, as it came to be known, helped to solidify the gulf between them. And while British statesmen such as Lansdowne may have believed that they were only settling colonial disputes, in reality the new friendship between two European powers had significance for the balance of power in Europe. France, with its existing Russian alliance, was now in a stronger position as regards Germany, although how much stronger remained to be seen. Britain would soon face choices over whether to back France in moments of crisis or risk losing its friendship. As Sir Francis Bertie said in 1907 when he was ambassador in Paris: ‘The danger for us to avoid will be to make the French lose confidence in our support and drive them into some arrangement with Germany, detrimental to us while not being harmful to the French. At the same time we must not encourage the French to rely on our material support to the extent of encouraging them to beard the Germans.’64 Like it or not, Britain was likely to become involved with France’s disputes in Europe, in particular ones arising because of Morocco. Germany also had interests there and, with justification, felt that these had been ignored and it was not going to be long before Germany made its displeasure known.

  Lloyd George recalled in his war memoirs that he went visit to the Liberal elder statesman, Lord Rosebery, on the day the entente was announced. ‘His first greeting to me was: “Well, I suppose you are just as pleased as the rest of them with this French agreement?” I assured him that I was delighted that our snarling and scratching relations with France had come to an end at last. He replied: “You are all wrong. It means war with Germany in the end!”’65

  CHAPTER 7

  The Bear and the Whale: Russia and Great Britain

  In the North Sea on the night of Friday 21 October 1904 the moon was nearly full but there were patches of mist. Some fifty British trawlers from Hull were spread out over seven or eight miles on the fishing ground of Dogger Bank midway between the north of England and the coast of Germany as the Russian Baltic Fleet sailed past. It was heading for the Channel and then onwards on a doomed voyage to the Far East. The trawlers had their nets out and on deck, under acetylene lights, their crews were gutting the catch. For the fishermen it was a welcome change from routine: they joked and laughed as they saw the lights marking out the battleships and their searchlights playing on the water. It was light enough that they could see the faces of the Russian sailors. ‘I called all hands on deck’, said Captain Whelpton, a trawler skipper, ‘to witness what I thought was going to be a brilliant spectacle.’ Suddenly a bugle sounded and there was a rattle of artillery and machine guns. ‘Good god!’ exclaimed Whelpton. ‘This is not blank, lie down lads and look after yourself.’1 The trawlers did not have time to haul in their heavy nets and so they sat there immobilised on the sea while the firing went on for perhaps twenty minutes. The Russian fleet then steamed on, leaving two men dead, others wounded and a trawler on its way to the bottom of the ocean. Shortly afterwards one of the Russian ships mistook another in the fleet for a Japanese warship and fired on it as well. The whole episode was indicative of the confusion and muddle that marked the Russian war effort.

  British public opinion was enraged a
t the Russian fleet – ‘Drunk as Usual’ said the Daily Mail – and so was the government. It demanded a full apology from the Russian government and complete reparations for the damage. The Russians refused at first to admit that their fleet had done anything wrong, arguing that they had good reason to suspect that Japanese torpedo boats had made their way to European waters to attack the Russian Baltic Fleet. Lansdowne rejected this and demanded on 26 October that the Russian fleet put in at Vigo, on the Atlantic coast of Spain, until the matter was sorted out. ‘If it were allowed to continue its journey without calling at Vigo,’ he told the Russian ambassador, ‘we might find ourselves at war before the week was over.’ The Russians responded the following day with belligerence; they had ‘indisputable proof’ that the Japanese were planning to attack the fleet. In any case it was the fault of the trawlers that they got attacked, added Admiral Rozhdestvensky, commander of the Baltic Fleet, for they had got in his way. That evening, Lansdowne felt ‘as if the betting was about even as between peace & war’.2 Although war was averted on this occasion, the Dogger Bank episode was yet another of what were becoming frequent war scares in Europe. It also worsened, if that were possible, relations between Britain and Russia. And for Russia it was part of the unfolding catastrophe of its war with Japan.

  Russia had stumbled into war with Japan in the Far East through a mixture of incompetence, unfounded optimism about its own abilities, and contempt, much of it racialist, for the Japanese. Russian ambitions to build its influence in Manchuria and Korea, and perhaps eventually to absorb them into the growing Russian Empire, had led it into conflict with other European powers, especially the British, and most dangerously of all with Japan, which was rapidly modernising and becoming a significant player in Asia. In 1894–5 Japan had fought a war with the moribund Chinese Empire, partly over who was to control Korea, and had won a decisive victory. In the peace, China recognised the independence of Korea, thus paving the way for Japan to move in. (Korea was to become part of the Japanese Empire in 1910.) Japan also got possession of Taiwan and some nearby islands as well concessions to build railways and ports in the Chinese territory of Manchuria. That last was too much for Russia, which led the other European powers in a concerted action to force Japan to back away from Manchuria. The Japanese had reason to feel aggrieved when Russia promptly extracted its own concessions there, including the right to build a southern spur of the Trans-Siberian Railway across the north of Manchuria as well as a north–south railway, and a lease on territory at its southern tip including the ports of Port Arthur (today Lushun) and Dairen (Dalian). China was too weak to do anything about this move into its territory but the other powers were alarmed at Russia’s aggressive policies. The Boxer Rebellion brought further tensions when Russia used it as an excuse to send its troops to occupy key points along the course of the north–south railway line which it was building through Manchuria from Harbin (Heilongjiang) in the north to the leased territories in the south. By the time the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904, Russia had found itself dangerously isolated. Even its ally France made it quite clear that their alliance only covered Europe.

  7. The wounded Russian bear turns on its own ruler. The country nearly had a revolution in 1905 when it suffered a crushing military defeat in the Far East at the hands of Japan. Although Tsar Nicholas’ regime survived, and even made some reforms, another war and a second revolution were to sweep the old order away for good in 1917.

  On the night of 8 February 1904 Japanese torpedo boats attacked Russian ships lying at anchor at Port Arthur without warning. One Japanese force landed north of Port Arthur to cut the railway line and attack the port and another landed in nearby Korea at Inchon (famous almost half a century later as the site of the American landing in the Korean War) to move northwards to the Yalu River, the border with Russia. The folly of provoking a war with Japan when Russian supplies and reinforcements had to come from thousands of miles away along the single-track and still unfinished line of the Trans-Siberian Railway rapidly became apparent. Russia suffered a string of defeats over the next eighteen months. Port Arthur was besieged and the Russian Far Eastern Fleet was bottled up. Attempts to break the siege by land or sea only led to heavy Russian losses. Port Arthur surrendered at the start of January 1905 and by then most of the Russian Pacific Fleet lay at the bottom of the sea.

  The news reached the Baltic Fleet at Madagascar as it was making its way around the world to relieve the siege. (The fleet had been obliged to go around the tip of Africa because the British would not allow it to pass through the Suez Canal.) The admiral in command decided to make a run for the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok. On 27 May 1905, as the fleet went into the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan, the Japanese fleet was waiting for it. The subsequent battle was one of the most stunning naval victories in history. The Russian Baltic Fleet was annihilated and over 4,000 men drowned and even more captured. Japanese losses amounted to 116 men and a few torpedo boats.

  Russia was forced to accept President Theodore Roosevelt’s offer to mediate and the Japanese, who were reaching the limit of their resources, were prepared to talk as well. That August Russian and Japanese representatives met in a navy yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Roosevelt’s motives were mixed: he genuinely felt that the United States had a moral obligation as one of the world’s civilised nations to foster peace but he also loved the opportunity for the United States, and himself, to be in the centre of great events. As far as the belligerents were concerned, he disapproved, as did many Americans, of Russian autocracy and he had initially been sympathetic to Japan, a ‘desirable addition’ to the international order, even going so far as to admire the way the Japanese had started hostilities with a surprise attack on Russia without bothering with formality of declaring war. As Japan crushed Russia, though, he became concerned for the American position in Asia and worried that the Japanese might turn their attentions to China. Having brought the two sides together, Roosevelt did not himself take part in the discussions but watched at a distance from his estate on Long Island, trying to contain himself as both sides dragged out the negotiations. ‘What I really want to do’, he complained, ‘is give utterance to whoops of rage and jump up and knock their heads together.’3 In September Russia and Japan finally signed the Treaty of Portsmouth. Japan got half of the Russian island of Sakhalin and the Russian concessions at the southern tip of Manchuria. The following year Roosevelt won the newly instituted Nobel Peace Prize.

  The war cost Russia more than territory: it had 400,000 casualties, a large part of its navy was destroyed, and it spent 2.5 million roubles it could ill afford. ‘A war with Japan would be extremely unpopular’, General Aleksei Kuropatkin, the Minister of War, had warned the tsar in November 1903 shortly before hostilities broke out, ‘and would increase the feeling of dissatisfaction with the ruling authorities.’ The governor-general of the Caucasus went even further. ‘War must not be allowed,’ he told Kuropatkin. ‘The question of a war could become “dynastic”.’4 Both men were right. There had been little enthusiasm among the public for the war, right from the start, and by 1904 there already existed considerable dissatisfaction with the government among the intellectuals, the growing middle classes, and the more enlightened landowners who were active in the new local governments.

  Periods of extraordinarily rapid development such as Russia had been experiencing especially since the 1890s are not easy to accommodate. Russia’s boom brought promise of a better future but it had also unsettled an already divided society. The magnates in Moscow and St Petersburg lived in magnificent mansions and assembled great collections of art and furniture while their workers lived in squalor and laboured long hours in appalling conditions. While in the poorer villages, peasants rarely ate meat and lived close to starvation, especially in the long winter months, the great landowners lived in the same style as their counterparts in richer European countries. Even the extravagant Prince Yusupov (later to be the assassin of Rasputin) could not run through h
is fortune which included well over half a million acres of land as well as mines and factories, not to mention the silver vases which he liked to fill with uncut gems and pearls. In 1914 Countess Kleinmichel, one of the leaders of society in St Petersburg, gave what she thought of as a small fancy-dress ball for her nieces: ‘I sent over three hundred invitations, for my house could not hold a greater number, and as the Russian custom is to give a supper at little tables, it was also as much as my kitchen could undertake.’5

  In spite of censorship and repression, demands for an end to autocracy and for representative government and civil liberties were coming from all sides. Balts, Poles, Finns, Ukrainians, among Russia’s many subject peoples, were also pushing for greater autonomy. A small but fanatical minority had long since given up hope of reform and were instead committed to overthrowing the old order violently through acts of terrorism or armed insurrection. Between 1905 and 1909 nearly 1,500 provincial governors and officials were assassinated. Industrial workers, their numbers growing too as Russia’s industrialisation charged ahead, showed an increasing militancy. In 1894, the year that Nicholas II became tsar, there were sixty-eight strikes; ten years later there were over five hundred.6 Although the radical socialist parties on the left were still banned and their leaders in exile, they were beginning to assume leadership in the emerging workers’ organisations. By 1914 the best-organised party, the Bolsheviks, dominated most of the unions and held the majority of the seats for workers in the Duma, the new Russian parliament.

  In the years before 1914 Russia was a giant organism moving in several directions at once and it was not clear what its final shape might be. Parts especially out in the remoter countryside looked much as they had done for centuries while the big cities with their electric lights, trams, and modern shops, looked like Paris or Berlin or London. Yet the impression of an eternal unchanging rural Russia – as the tsar and many conservatives as well as later observers thought – was highly misleading. The end of serfdom in 1861, the spread of communications, the growth of literacy, the movement of peasants into the cities to work (and their return to see their families), were shaking village life and undermining its institutions. Elders, priests, traditions, and the once all-powerful village commune no longer had the power over village life that they once had.