The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  After many hints and allusions I found out – what I always feared – that the Anglo-French agreement had the one main effect, viz.: to stop the French from helping you! Il va sans dire, that if France had been under the obligation of helping you with her Fleet or Army I would of course not have budged a finger to harm her; for that would have been most illogical on the part of the Author of the Picture ‘Yellow Peril’! [Wilhelm had given Nicholas this painting which was done to his instructions by his favourite artist.]

  Wilhelm rather undercut these kind sentiments by ending his letter with a heavy-handed hint to his cousin that it was an opportune moment for Russia to sign a commercial treaty with Germany.80 That autumn, as Russia’s losses in the Far East mounted up, Wilhelm and Bülow secretly offered an alliance against an unspecified European power. Wilhelm wrote privately to Nicholas: ‘Of course the alliance would be purely defensive, exclusively directed against European aggressor or aggressors, in the form of a mutual fire insurance company against incendiarism.’ He was dismayed – ‘my first personal defeat’ – when Nicholas turned him down.81

  Wilhelm liked to believe that he could manage Nicholas, who was some ten years younger and a less forceful personality. ‘A charming, agreeable and dear boy,’ Wilhelm wrote to Queen Victoria after one of their early meetings.82 In fact Nicholas found Wilhelm exhausting in person and resented the stream of letters with their unsolicited advice. Witte discovered that a good way to get his master to agree to something was to tell him the Kaiser opposed it.83 Wilhelm’s gifts of what he described as his own paintings were typically tactless. The ‘Yellow Peril’ allegory, for example, showed a manly German warrior defending the swooning Russian beauty. Bülow had his own candidate for the most embarrassing: ‘Kaiser William, in magnificent attitude and shining armour, was standing in front of the tsar, with a huge crucifix in his raised right hand, while the tsar looked up admiringly at him in humble, almost ridiculous position, clad in a Byzantine garment, rather like a dressing gown.’84 As he did so often, the tsar retreated into polite disengagement. Wilhelm for his part was exasperated with what he saw as Nicholas’s lack of spine. When during the Russo-Japanese War he urged the tsar to go all out, Bülow warned him not to encourage Russia too openly lest Germany get dragged in. ‘From the point of view of the statesman you may be right,’ replied Wilhelm. ‘But I feel as a sovereign and as a sovereign I am sickened by the way Nicholas lets himself down through his flabby behavior. This sort of thing compromises all sovereigns.’85

  In the summer of 1905, as Russia was suing for peace with Japan and the country was in turmoil, Wilhelm made another concerted effort to lure Nicholas away from the French alliance. The two rulers made a rendezvous with their yachts off the Finnish island of Björkö. Wilhelm sympathised with Nicholas over Russia’s predicament and joined him in railing against the perfidy of France and Britain. On 23 July Bülow received a delighted telegram from Wilhelm to say that Russia and Germany had made a treaty on board the tsar’s yacht. ‘I have received many strange telegrams from the Kaiser,’ Bülow later said, ‘but never one so filled with enthusiasm as this one from Björkö.’ Wilhelm described the scene at length. The tsar had said again how hurt he was by France’s failing to support Russia; in response Wilhelm had said why did not the two of them there and then make a ‘little agreement’. He pulled out a copy of the treaty Nicholas had turned down the previous winter. Nicholas read it through while Wilhelm stood silently by, making, he told, a short prayer and gazing out at his own yacht with its flags flying in the morning breeze. Suddenly he heard Nicholas say: ‘That is excellent. I quite agree.’ Wilhelm forced himself to be casual and handed a pen to Nicholas. Wilhelm then signed in turn. A representative of the Foreign Office, who had been sent along to keep an eye on Wilhelm, countersigned for Germany and a Russian admiral, who was not allowed by Nicholas to read the text, obediently did the same for Russia. ‘Tears of joy stood in my eyes’, Wilhelm went on in his description for Bülow, ‘– to be sure, drops of perspiration were trickling down my back – and I thought, Frederick William III, Queen Louisa, Grandpapa, and Nicholas I must surely be near at the moment. At any rate they must have been looking down full of joy.’86 A month later he wrote to Nicholas to exult in their new alliance which would allow their two nations to be the centre of power and a force for peace in Europe. The other members of the Triple Alliance, Austria-Hungary and Italy, would of course support them and the smaller powers such as the Scandinavian countries would inevitably see that their interests lay in swimming into the orbit of the new power bloc. Japan might even join, which would serve to cool down ‘English self-assertion and impertinence’. And, the Kaiser went on, Nicholas need not worry about his other chief European ally: ‘“Marianne” [France] must remember that she is wedded to you & that she is obliged to lie and bed with you, & eventually to give a hug or a kiss now & then to me, but not to sneak into the bedroom of the ever intriguing touche-à-tout on the Island.’87 (This last was a dig at Edward VII, whose love affairs were notorious.)

  When Bülow saw the treaty joy was the last thing he felt. He was annoyed that Wilhelm had acted without consulting him first, something the Kaiser had taken to doing rather too frequently, and dismayed when he saw that Wilhelm had made a change, limiting the scope of the treaty to Europe. One of Russia’s great advantages as an ally was that it could threaten India and so keep Britain in check in Europe. After consulting his colleagues in the Foreign Office, who shared his views, Bülow submitted his resignation, perhaps less in earnest than to teach his master a lesson.88 The Kaiser’s dreams fell to pieces and so did he. ‘To be treated like this by the best and most intimate friend I have had’, he wrote in a highly emotional letter to Bülow, ‘without any reasonable ground being given, has dealt me such a terrible blow that I have completely collapsed and fear that a serious nervous trouble may result from it.’89 The reaction of the Russian Foreign Minister, Lamsdorff, was less dramatic but equally damning. He suggested politely to the tsar that the Kaiser had taken advantage of him and pointed out that the treaty was incompatible with Russia’s obligations towards France. In October, Nicholas wrote to Wilhelm to say that the treaty would need France’s approval. Since this was never going to happen, the Björkö agreement was effectively void.

  When Wilhelm and Nicholas met on their yachts again in the summer of 1907 both Bülow – who had graciously given way to Wilhelm’s plea to remain in office – and the new Russian Foreign Minister, Alexander Izvolsky, were in attendance. The visit went off with no difficulties beyond an unfortunate impromptu speech by the Kaiser in which he boasted of his mighty navy and hoped that the tsar would soon build a new one. ‘Now the only thing missing’, said a Russian aide sourly about the Kaiser to one of his German counterparts, ‘is for him to slap him in the face.’90 Björkö was the last significant episode of personal diplomacy between two monarchs, which would have seemed quite normal in the nineteenth century but was out of place in the twentieth when the increasing complexities of modern societies gave greater authority to officials even in absolute monarchies. An unfortunate consequence was to deepen suspicion of Germany and Wilhelm himself, both in Russian official circles and among the general public. The government found that it was increasingly handicapped when it tried to improve relations with its western neighbour. The British ambassador reported on a conversation with the tsar in 1908:

  The Emperor admitted that from the point of view of the relations of Russia to Germany, the liberty of the press had caused him and his government considerable embarrassment since every incident that occurred in any distant province of the empire, such as an earthquake or thunderstorm, was at once put down to Germany’s account, and serious complaints had recently been made to him and the government of the unfriendly tone of the Russian press.91

  At the start of 1906 Witte, who had inclined towards an alliance with Germany, had something of a change of heart, perhaps as a result of the Björkö affair, and told the British embassy in St Petersburg
that what Russia needed at this critical juncture in its history was the sympathy and support of a great liberal power. It also helped that Britain was a great financial power capable of making the loans that Russia so desperately required. If Britain could give tangible proof of its friendship, Witte felt, an overall understanding would soon follow.92 Loan negotiations were in fact going on between the Russian government and Barings Bank with the encouragement of the British Foreign Office, but because of political upheavals in both countries they were not concluded until the spring of 1906.93 Under pressure from Witte, Lamsdorff agreed to opening discussions on Persia and Afghanistan. These moved slowly; Lamsdorff was unenthusiastic and both countries were preoccupied by a crisis over Morocco which threatened to bring a major European conflict.

  In the spring of 1906 the situation suddenly became more favourable to an understanding. Witte was dismissed and Lamsdorff asked the tsar to accept his resignation because he could not face the prospect of dealing with the new Duma. ‘You would have to wait a long time,’ he told Taube, ‘before I would deign to speak to those people there.’94 The new Prime Minister, Stolypin, was much more open to the idea of a détente with Britain, partly because of Russia’s weakness and partly because Britain had successfully hemmed Russia in along its eastern and southern frontiers by renewing its treaty with Japan in 1905, signing a convention with Tibet, and moving more aggressively into Persia. Izvolsky, Lamsdorff’s successor, was even more convinced that Russia’s interests lay in Europe and that the key to rebuilding its status as a power lay in maintaining the French alliance and coming to some sort of understanding with the British. Both men also agreed in the years after 1906 that, given the developments in Russia’s internal politics, the Duma and public opinion had to be involved in foreign policy.

  Izvolsky and Taube had a long discussion shortly before he took up office. His goals, the new Foreign Minister told Taube, were to put relations with Japan on a solid and friendly footing and ‘liquidate the inheritance of Count Lamsdorff in Asia’. Then, he went on, ‘Russia could turn afresh, after an interval of many years, towards Europe, where its traditional and historic interests have been practically abandoned for the sake of these ephemeral dreams about the Far East for which we have paid too dearly …’95 Izvolsky was one of those Russians who saw Europe as the club they wanted most in the world to join. As he said in 1911 after he had left office, the policy of closer relations with France and Britain was ‘perhaps less secure but worthier of Russia’s past and of her greatness’.96 He was more of a gambler than Stolypin but, unfortunately for Russian foreign policy, he also tended to lose his nerve at inopportune moments.

  Izvolsky, almost everyone agreed, was charming, ambitious and intelligent as well as vain and easily flattered. He was also highly sensitive to criticism. He had Lamsdorff’s capacity for hard work and attention to detail but unlike his predecessor he was a liberal and had considerably more experience of the world outside Russia. In appearance, in the words of the future Austrian Foreign Secretary Leopold von Berchtold, he was of ‘middle height, blond hair parted and with a ruddy face, broad forehead, cloudy eyes, compressed nose, protruding brow, a monocle, and a faultless suit’.97 Although he was generally considered to be ugly, Izvolsky took great pride in his appearance, wearing well-cut suits from Savile Row in London and cramming his feet into shoes that were too small with the result, said one observer, that he walked like a pigeon.98

  His family were minor nobility of modest means but they had managed to send Izvolsky to the best school in St Petersburg, the Imperiale Alexandre Lycée, where he had mixed with much grander and much richer young men. It had made him, Taube felt, snobbish, egotistical and materialistic. As a young man Izvolsky was desperate to marry well. One well-connected widow who turned him down was later asked if she regretted having missed the chance to marry someone who had done so well. ‘I have regretted it every day’, she replied, ‘but congratulated myself every night.’99 He eventually married the daughter of another Russian diplomat but there was never enough money for him to live in the grand style to which he aspired and there was always gossip in St Petersburg about the way in which rich men got their promotions under him.100 Taube, who worked with him closely over the years, always felt that there were two men with quite different values warring inside Izvolsky: the statesman and the greedy courtier.101

  The British were initially apprehensive about Izvolsky’s appointment. The British ambassador in Copenhagen reported to London on a conversation with his French counterpart, who knew Izvolsky well; the new Russian Foreign Minister, it appeared, was lukewarm about the French alliance and inclined to be pro-German.102 This, fortunately for the future of Anglo-Russian relations, was misleading. Izvolsky was determined to negotiate an understanding with Britain and the tsar, although he made a face at the idea, was now ready to give his approval.103 The situation in Russia was starting to improve and it looked as though a revolution had been averted so the British had a party with which to negotiate. On the British side, there was a new Liberal government and a new Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who were determined to pursue the opportunity. One of Grey’s first meetings after he took office in December 1905 was with Benckendorff to assure the Russian ambassador that he wanted an agreement with Russia. In May 1906 Sir Arthur Nicolson arrived as British ambassador in St Petersburg with authority from the Cabinet to sort out with Izvolsky the three main irritants in the relationship: Tibet, Persia and Afghanistan. The locals were not, of course, consulted while their fate was decided thousands of miles away.

  The negotiations were long and tedious as might be expected between two parties, ‘each of which thought the other was a liar and a thief’, as one British diplomat put it.104 And there were moments when the talks were nearly broken off, when, for example, Izvolsky got worried that Germany was going to object, or when the British Prime Minister, Henry Campbell Bannerman, tactlessly made a speech saying ‘Vive la Douma’. Tibet, where part of the Great Game had been played out between British and Russian agents, was the easiest to settle. Both sides agreed not to try to get concessions out of the weak Tibetan government or to establish political relations with the Dalai Lama and, in a clause that would cast a shadow over Tibet’s future, Russia agreed to recognise China’s suzerainty over the country.

  Afghanistan took longer and was not finally settled until the late summer of 1907. The Russians made the greatest concessions, accepting that Afghanistan was in the British sphere of influence and that Russia was only to deal with the Emir through Britain. In return Britain promised only that it would not occupy or annex Afghanistan – as long as the Emir kept to his treaty agreements with them. The most difficult issue of all to settle was Persia, although news of a German railway loan to the Shah helped to keep both sides focussed. It also helped that Izvolsky was prepared to go to considerable lengths to get an agreement. In the summer of 1906, when there was discussion in St Petersburg of promoting a Russian–Persian bank in Teheran (which would have alarmed the British), he said firmly: ‘We are trying to conclude an alliance with England and, as a result, our policy in Persia must conform to that fact.’105 After much debate over demarcation lines, it was agreed that Persia would have a Russian zone of influence in the north, a British one in the south to protect the Gulf and the routes to India, and a neutral zone between them. The British ambassador in Teheran warned that the Persian government had heard rumours about the negotiations and would be seriously concerned and angry. With the insouciance towards the non-European world typical of the time, the British Foreign Office replied that the Persians should understand that the agreement was in fact respecting the integrity of their country.106 The Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, which had caused so much trouble in the nineteenth century, were left out on the grounds that the convention only dealt with Asia but Grey gave Benckendorff to understand that the British would not make difficulties for the Russians in the future over their access to the Straits.107 On 31 August 1907 the
Anglo-Russian Convention ‘containing arrangements on the subject of Persia, Afghanistan and Thibet [sic]’ was signed in the Russian Foreign Office.

  Everyone understood that more was involved than the ‘arrangements’. Although Germany publicly welcomed the news on the grounds that it furthered peace, Bülow told the Kaiser that Germany was now the chief object of British anxieties and jealousy. Rumours of war went round Berlin and the German press carried stories about how the country was now encircled. The following summer Wilhelm made a belligerent speech at a military review: ‘We must be guided by the example of Frederick the Great who, when hemmed in on all sides by foes, had beaten them one after another.’108 He also gave an interview to an American journalist from the New York Times in which he talked bitterly about Britain’s ‘perfidy’ and how war was now inevitable. In an attempt to win over American opinion, he accused the British of betraying the white race by allying with Japan and said that one day Germany and the United States would have to fight shoulder to shoulder against the Yellow Peril. German officials were appalled when they saw the finished article. Fortunately, so were President Theodore Roosevelt and the editors at the New York Times and the article was never published. Its contents, however, reached the British Foreign Office and eventually the French and the Japanese.109 The British saw the interview as more evidence of the Kaiser’s volatility and failed to take the underlying German concerns seriously. As so often happens in international relations, they could not understand that what looked like a defensive move on their part could look different from another perspective.

  The British government, despite its many critics, remained pleased about the entente with Russia. Grey later wrote in his memoirs: ‘The gain to us was great. We were freed from an anxiety that had often preoccupied British Governments; a frequent source of friction and a possible cause of war was removed; the prospect of peace was made more secure.’110 Some friction remained, especially over Persia, where tensions continued to flare up until the Great War. The French were delighted and had hopes of building the Triple Entente into a strong military alliance. Both Britain and Russia were much more cautious and steered away even from using the term Triple Entente. Indeed, in 1912 Izvolsky’s successor, Sergei Sazonov, said firmly that he would never use it.111