In March 1914 the crisis took an even more serious turn. The House of Commons had passed the Home Rule Bill twice and the House of Lords, dominated as it was by Unionist peers, rejected it each time. Asquith suggested a compromise – keeping the six counties of Ulster out of the area for Home Rule for the time being – but his opponents refused to consider it. Indeed, there was a move in the Lords to put pressure on the government by rejecting the bill to authorise the existence of the army, which had been passed without debate every year since 1688, and Law certainly toyed with the idea of supporting the ‘Die-Hard peers’, as they came to be known. (There is a parallel in recent American politics with the refusal of the Republicans to allow the customary approval of an increased debt ceiling for the government so that it can carry on borrowing the funds it needs for its operations.) That same month there then came the most worrying incident of all, the so-called Curragh Mutiny among British army officers stationed in the south of Ireland. As a result of stupidity, muddle and perhaps malevolence on the part of the Secretary of State for War, the incompetent Sir John Seely, and the commander-in-chief in Ireland, Sir Arthur Paget, officers at the base of Curragh were warned that they might be ordered to take military action against the Ulster Volunteers and that, if they did not want to, they could absent themselves or resign. Some dozens of officers made it clear that they would resign, at which point Seely allowed himself to be persuaded to send them an assurance that they would not be asked to force Home Rule on Ulster. Asquith preferred not to push the issue but he eased Seely out and took over the War Office himself.
As spring turned to summer in 1914, the Liberals and Conservatives remained as far apart as ever and on the ground, in Ireland, the arms continued to flow in to both sides and the drilling went on. In July, in a last attempt to get a compromise, the king called a conference at Buckingham Palace of the main leaders from both sides. The British ruling classes, the British public, and the British press were almost completely preoccupied by the Irish question and paid little attention to what was happening on the Continent, even when Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June. Asquith, who had now fallen in love with the much younger Venetia Stanley, only mentioned the growing crisis on the Continent for the first time in his daily letters to her on 24 July, the day the Buckingham Palace conference ended in yet another failure. If the British were not noticing their neighbours, though, the European powers were for their part transfixed by the spectacle of British society apparently trembling on the edge of civil war. He found the situation in Britain difficult to understand, the tsar told the British ambassador, and he hoped it would not affect Britain’s international position.68 Germany and Austria-Hungary had a different view; with any luck Britain would be too divided internally to fight if war should come.69
At the start of 1914 that seemed to most Europeans no more or less likely than it had done for the past decade. Of course, there were the familiar tensions: Britain and Germany were still engaged in their naval race; France and Germany were no closer to being friendly; and Russia and Austria-Hungary still manoeuvred against each other in the Balkans. By 1914 Russian nationalists were also busily stirring up trouble among the Ruthenians in Austrian Galicia, something which both irritated and worried Vienna.70 (It cut both ways; the Monarchy was also encouraging Catholic priests to go over the border to proselytise among Russia’s own Ruthenians.) And there were strains as well within the alliances. After the Balkan wars, relations between Germany and Austria-Hungary worsened; the Germans felt that their allies had recklessly risked war with Russia while in Austria-Hungary there was resentment that Germany had been a poor friend. The Monarchy also deeply resented growing German investment and influence in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. Despite the Triple Alliance, Italy and Austria-Hungary continued to vie for influence in Albania and Italian public opinion continued to concern itself with the rights of Italian speakers within the Dual Monarchy. Relations between the two powers had reached such a low point by the summer of 1914 that neither the Italian king nor an official representative attended Franz Ferdinand’s funeral.71 In 1912 Germany and Austria-Hungary agreed to renew the Triple Alliance early, perhaps to reassure each other of their reliability, but also to try to keep Italy tied in.
‘The Triple Entente’, said the Russian ambassador in Germany, ‘always are in agreement with themselves, on the other hand, the Triple Alliance is usually the complete opposite. If Austria-Hungary thinks of something, it hurries to carry out its thought. Italy sometimes takes the other side, and Germany, which announces its intentions in the last moment, is mostly forced to support its allies for better or worse.’72 Within the Triple Entente, though, the rivalry between Britain and Russia over Central Asia and Persia had never really gone away and by the spring of 1914 Grey and his chief advisers were afraid that the deal where Russia had a sphere of influence in the north of Persia with Britain having the same in the south was about to break down.
The anticipated disintegration of the Ottoman Empire offered its own temptations to outside powers to vie with each other, over the Straits and Constantinople as well as in the largely Turkish-speaking Asia Minor and its vast Arab territories which included today’s Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and most of the Saudi peninsula. The Russian government may have recognised how limited its capacity to seize the Straits was, but Russian nationalists continued to agitate for Russia to take what they saw as its rightful heritage. Austria-Hungary, which had largely stayed out of the scramble for colonies, now showed an interest in establishing a presence in Asia Minor, partly to compensate for its recent string of disasters in the Balkans. That caused trouble with both of its allies; Germany and Italy had their own dreams of creating colonies in the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire vanished.73 And the invalid itself showed some surprising signs of life. The Young Turks, by now firmly back in control, were trying to centralise and rein-vigorate the government. They were strengthening their military and were buying three dreadnoughts from Britain which, once they were delivered, would shift the balance of power decisively against the Russian navy. Russia responded by starting to build its own dreadnoughts but the Ottoman Empire would have an advantage between 1913 and 1915.74
At the end of 1913 there was a ripple of concern among the Entente powers when news leaked out that the Germans were increasing their military mission to the Ottoman Empire and had sent as commander a senior general, Otto Liman von Sanders. Since he was to have extensive powers over training and promotion in the Ottoman forces as well as direct command of an army corps based in Constantinople, this would sharply increase German influence in the Ottoman Empire. Wilhelm, who had drawn up the plans in secret with his closest military advisers, told Liman dramatically: ‘Either the German flag will soon fly over the fortifications on the Bosphorus or I shall share the sad fate of the great exile on St Helena.’75 Yet again the German civilian leadership found themselves dealing with the unwelcome fallout from the actions of an irresponsible and independent emperor.
Up to this point Russia and Germany had in fact been co-operating fairly successfully in the Ottoman Empire. In November 1910 Tsar Nicholas had visited Wilhelm at Potsdam and the two had signed an agreement on the Ottoman Empire which removed at least one source of tension: Russia promised not to undermine the new Young Turk government and Germany undertook to support reforms in the Ottoman Empire. The Germans also recognised Russia’s sphere of influence in the north of Persia and assuaged Russian apprehensions by moving the projected Berlin-to-Baghdad railway further south. Bethmann was pleased: ‘The Russian visit went better than expected. Both sovereigns treated each other openly and relaxedly, in best, almost gay spirits.’76 The two rulers met again on their yachts in the summer of 1912 at Russia’s Baltic Port (today Paldiski in Estonia) just before the crisis in the Balkans blew up. Alexandra, according to Sazonov, ‘displayed nothing but weariness, as she did on such occasions’, but the meetings had ‘a peaceful and friendly tone�
�. Kokovtsov and Bethmann, who were also in attendance, complained quietly to each other about how hard it was to resist pressures from the public for increased defence spending. Wilhelm told endless loud jokes. ‘I must confess’, said Sazonov, ‘that not all of them were to my taste.’ The Kaiser also advised the tsar to look eastwards and build up his strength against Japan. Nicholas listened with his usual reserve. ‘Thank heaven!’ he said to Kokovtsov after the meeting was over. ‘Now one does not have to watch one’s every word lest it be construed in a way one had not even dreamed.’ Nicholas was relieved, though, because Wilhelm had repeatedly said he would not let the situation in the Balkans lead to a world war.77
The Liman von Sanders affair, as it rapidly became known, destroyed the co-operation between Germany and Russia in the Ottoman Empire and the reactions to it showed how jittery Europe’s capitals had become by this point. The Russians, who were furious at the appointment, urged their French allies and the British to put pressure on the Young Turks to limit Liman’s powers. Sazonov talked about seizing Ottoman ports to press the point home and yet again talk of a general war was in the air. The Russian Prime Minister, Kokovtsov, urged moderation and so did the French and the British, who did not want to be dragged into a war over the Ottoman Empire. (The British government was also embarrassed when it discovered that the admiral who headed a British naval mission in Constantinople had the same powers as Liman.) As before, though, they recognised – especially the French – the need to stand by Russia. Izvolsky reported to St Petersburg that Poincaré showed ‘a calm determination not to dodge away from the duties which the alliance with us has imposed on them and Delcassé, the French ambassador there, assured the Russian government of unconditional support’.78
Fortunately Europe had a reprieve this time: the Russians and the Germans were unwilling to force the matter to a showdown and the Young Turks, who were becoming alarmed at the furore, were anxious for a settlement as well. In January, in a face-saving move, Liman was raised in rank so that he was now too senior to command a corps. (He was to stay in the Ottoman Empire until its defeat in 1918; one of his lasting legacies was to further the career of a promising Turkish officer, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.) The affair served to heighten still more the Entente’s suspicions of Germany and drove Russia and Germany even further apart. Within the Russian government, especially after Kokovtsov fell January 1914, it became accepted that Germany was planning a war. In an audience that month with Delcassé Nicholas talked calmly with the French ambassador about the coming conflict. ‘We will not let them tread on our toes and, this time, it will not be like the war in the Far East: the national mood will support us.’79 In February 1914, the Russian general staff gave to the government two secret German memoranda which its spies had gained in which the Germans talked of a two-front war and how German public opinion must be prepared well in advance. The same month the tsar approved preparations for an attack on the Ottoman Empire in the event of a general war.80
Nevertheless, the successful conclusion of the Liman von Sanders affair and the international management of the crises in the Balkans in 1912 and 1913 seemed to show that Europe could still keep its peace, that something of the old Concert of Europe where the great powers came together to broker and enforce settlements lingered on. In fact many observers felt that the mood in Europe by 1914 was better than it had been for some time. Churchill in his history of the Great War talked about the ‘exceptional tranquillity’ of those last months of the peace and Grey, again looking back, wrote: ‘In the early months of 1914 the international sky seemed clearer than it had been. The Balkan clouds had disappeared. After the threatening periods of 1911, 1912, and 1913 a little calm was probable, and, it would seem, due.’81 In June 1914 Oxford University awarded honorary degrees to Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador, and the composer Richard Strauss.
Europe was, it is true, divided into two alliance systems and after the Great War this was seen as one of the main causes of the war since a conflict between any two powers ran the risk of bringing their allies in. It could be argued, though, as it was at the time and has been since, that defensive alliances, which these were, act as a deterrent to aggression and can be a force for stability. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact after all brought a balance, which was in the end a peaceful one, to Europe during the Cold War. As Grey said approvingly in the House of Commons in 1912, the powers were divided into ‘separate groups not opposite’ and many Europeans, Poincaré among them, agreed with him. In his memoirs, written after the Great War, Grey continued to insist on the value of the alliances: ‘We wanted the Entente and Germany’s Triple Alliance to live side by side in amity. That was the best that was practicable.’82 And while France and Russia in the former and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy in the latter had signed military alliances, Britain still refused to do so, to keep, as Grey insisted, its free hand. Indeed, in 1911 Arthur Nicolson, now Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, complained that Britain had still not committed itself sufficiently to the Triple Entente: ‘I do not think that people quite recognise that, if we are to assist in preserving the peace and the status quo, it is necessary for us to acknowledge our responsibilities, and to be prepared to afford our friends or our allies, in case of necessity, some assistance of a more material and efficient kind than we are at present in a position to offer them.’83
In reality, defensive though the alliances might have been and as much as Britain felt it was free to steer its own course, over the years the division of Europe had become an accepted fact. That was reflected even in the language of those statesmen who had always been cautious identifying too clearly with one side. By 1913 Sazonov, who only the year before had told the German ambassador in St Petersburg that he refused to use the term, was talking of the Triple Entente. Grey, who had shared Sazonov’s reluctance, conceded the following year that there was no more hope of avoiding its use than of getting rid of split infinitives. In any case, he argued, the entente was good for Britain: ‘The alternatives are either a policy of complete isolation in Europe, or a policy of definite alliance with one or the other group of European powers …’84
Inevitably expectations and understandings of mutual support accumulated within the two alliances as diplomats and the military grew accustomed to working with each other. The partners also found that they needed to reassure each other or run the risk of losing an ally. Even though Germany had no vital interests at stake in the Balkans, it found it increasingly difficult not to support Austria-Hungary there. For France, the Russian alliance was crucial to its great-power status yet the French always feared that once Russia had grown strong again it would not need France and that it might revert to an older alliance, the one with Germany.85 That led the French to support Russian aims even when they felt they were dangerous; Poincaré apparently gave Russia the impression that France would enter a war between Russia and Austria-Hungary even over Serbia. ‘The bottom line is’, he told Izvolsky in Paris in 1912, ‘that all this amounts to the same thing, that is to say that if Russia enters a war, France will also enter it as we know that in this question Germany will stand behind Austria.’86 Although France’s treaty with Russia was a defensive one, coming into effect only if either party was attacked, Poincaré went beyond its terms to suggest that France would feel obliged to enter a war even if Germany merely mobilised. By 1914, the alliances, rather than acting as brakes on their members, were too often pushing the accelerators.
The Triple Entente, despite Britain’s caution, developed greater cohesion and depth than the Triple Alliance as the ties binding it together, whether financial, especially in the case of France and Russia, military, diplomatic, or even improved wireless and telegraph communications grew more numerous and stronger. The French not only encouraged Britain and Russia to enter into military discussions but themselves pressed Britain for a clearer commitment than it had yet been willing to give. Although the British Cabinet remained divided on the issue and Gr
ey himself preferred to occupy the foggy ground between reassuring the French of his support and refusing to specify what that might consist of, France had a willing and active collaborator in Henry Wilson, who visited the country seven times alone in 1913 for discussions with his French counterparts.87 By 1912, as well, the British and French navies were moving towards closer co-operation in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Far East.
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