The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  This was not just a result of French pressure but because the British faced a dilemma: their navy could no longer meet all the challenges facing it, in particular defending British interests in the Mediterranean, where Italy, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were all building dreadnoughts, and outmatching the German navy on the high seas. If Britain could not bring the naval race with Germany under control – and by the end of 1912, with the failure of yet more talks, that looked highly unlikely – it would have to either spend a good deal more on its navy or work with the navies of friendly powers to share responsibilities for key areas. This posed a political problem for Asquith. Although the Conservatives generally supported increased naval spending, the radicals in his own party did not, and many Liberals were also wary of making further international commitments which might lead Britain into war.

  Britain’s new First Lord of the Admiralty was the ambitious, energetic and forceful young Winston Churchill, in those days a member of the Liberal Party. ‘Winston talks about nothing but the Sea and the Navy and the wonderful things he is going to do,’ his Naval Secretary noted.88 Churchill took to his new post with boundless enthusiasm and self-confidence, mastering the details of ships, shipyards, docks, and equipment as well as thinking through Britain’s strategic needs. ‘These were great days,’ he wrote in his account of the Great War. ‘From dawn to midnight, day after day, one’s whole mind was absorbed by the fascination and novelty of the problems which came crowding forward.’89 In the three years before the war he spent eight months on board the Admiralty yacht, Enchantress, visiting every key ship and naval establishment in the Mediterranean and British home waters. (‘Holiday at Govt. expense’, noted Wilson of one of these trips.)90 ‘In the end’, Churchill claimed with some exaggeration, ‘I could put my hand on anything that was wanted and knew thoroughly the current state of our naval affairs.’91 Although he infuriated many of the senior naval officers with his calm assumption that he could do their jobs better than they, he made much needed reforms. He created a proper general staff for the first time; he improved the working conditions of the ordinary sailors; and he converted the navy’s ships from coal to the more efficient and less labour-intensive fuel of oil.92 Although this last had long-term strategic implications by making oil fields in the Middle East of critical importance to Britain, it was Churchill’s decision to reorganise and reposition the Mediterranean Fleet that added yet another element to the mix that made the Great War possible.

  While the Mediterranean remained of great importance to the British, providing as it did access to the vital Suez Canal, the Atlantic especially around the British Isles was a matter of life and death, and Germany now could bring an equal number of battleships to its waters. Churchill and his naval advisers therefore decided early in 1912 to improve the odds by moving their battleships from their bases in the Mediterranean to Gibraltar at its entrance from the Atlantic and leave only a squadron of fast cruisers based at Malta. What that meant, although the implications were not recognised immediately, was that France was now primarily responsible for the security of the Mediterranean in the face of threats from the Italian and Austrian fleets and possibly, if matters turned out badly, that of the Ottoman Empire as well. To do this, the French would be obliged to move more of their own fleet from its Atlantic ports into the Mediterranean, which they soon did, and they could reasonably expect as a consequence that Britain would guarantee the safety of the French Atlantic coast and protect the vital shipping lanes of the Channel. As Churchill pointed out in a memorandum to Grey in August 1912, the French would have had to concentrate in the Mediterranean because of their North African colonies even if the British navy had not existed but the fact that the British had withdrawn their battleships left the French in a strong moral position if war came. Consider, he urged Grey, ‘how tremendous would be the weapon which France would possess to compel our intervention, if she could say, “On the advice of and by arrangement with your naval authorities we have left our Northern coasts defenceless.”’ And he concluded, perfectly correctly, ‘Every one must feel who knows the facts that we have the obligations of an alliance without its advantages, and above all without its precise definitions.’93

  An alliance and precise definitions were what, of course, Paul Cambon, the French ambassador in London, and his government wanted, and just what Grey and the British government hoped to avoid. The conversations between the French and British armies had already encouraged the French to think that they could count on British military support on land, however much Grey waved his free hands about. Naval conversations had also been going on in a desultory and inconclusive fashion for some years but in July 1912 the British Cabinet gave them greater significance by formally authorising them to continue. By the end of 1913 the British and French navies had reached several understandings to co-operate if war should come. The British navy would look after the narrowest point of the Channel, the Straits of Dover, while the British and the French would share responsibility for the rest. In the Mediterranean, the French would patrol the western half while the British, with their fleet at Malta, looked after the eastern end. The two navies would also work together against Germany in the Far East. Detailed operational plans were drawn up, especially for the Channel.94

  Cambon also pushed Grey for a written statement about Britain’s and France’s co-operation if either feared attack. He was not, he assured Grey, asking for an alliance or any binding agreement that their two nations would in fact take action together, merely for confirmation that they would consult. Grey, who would have much preferred to leave matters as they were, recognised that he had to do something to reassure the French or risk the Entente Cordiale falling to pieces. In November 1912 with approval from his Cabinet, he exchanged letters with Cambon. In his own letter, Grey referred to the conversations between the British and French military and naval experts and stressed that they did not constitute a promise to take action. He went on, though, to concede that in a crisis it might be essential for each power to know whether the other would come to its aid with armed force and that it would make sense, in such circumstances, to take into account the plans already made. ‘I agree’, he wrote, ‘that, if either Government had grave reason to expect an unprovoked attack by a third Power, or something that threatened the general peace, it should immediately discuss with the other, whether both Governments should act together to prevent aggression and to preserve peace, and if so what measures they would be prepared to take in common.’95

  Grey and his Prime Minister Asquith continued to insist right up to the outbreak of the war that Britain had kept a completely free hand as far as France was concerned. That was technically true but it was not the whole truth. The military and naval conversations had led the British and the French forces to make their arrangements in the confidence that the other would be there if war broke out. Lord Esher, courtier, defence expert and a superb backroom operator, wrote to a friend in 1913: ‘Of course there is no treaty or convention, but how we can get out of the commitments of the General Staff with honour, I cannot understand. It all seems so shifty to me.’96 The decade of naval and military conversations, the diplomatic co-operation, and the public acceptance in both countries of the Entente Cordiale created a web of links which would be difficult to ignore when the next crisis came. As Paul Cambon had reminded Grey when the latter said that there was no formal agreement between France and Britain: ‘There was nothing but a moral “Entente”, which might however be transformed into a formal “Entente” if the two Governments desired, when an occasion arose.’97

  Grey himself, as he had always done, continued to send the French mixed signals. In April 1914 he chose to demonstrate the importance he attached to the relationship with France by making his first official trip abroad (after being Foreign Secretary for nine years) to accompany George V to Paris. Neither minister nor king liked foreign travel. Grey was also gloomy because he had just learned that he was losing his eyesight. He planned to go later that su
mmer to visit a specialist in Germany.98 The British were pleased, though, by the weather, which was lovely and mild, and by the warm French welcome. Grey even managed to have a conversation with Poincaré, who did not speak English. ‘The Holy Ghost has descended upon Sir Edward Grey’, said Paul Cambon, ‘and he now speaks French!’99 Although Grey assured the Austrian and German ambassadors that he spent most of his time sightseeing and that there had been ‘nothing aggressive’ in his discussions with the French,100 he did in fact give way to French pressure and agree to start naval conversations with the Russians. When there were comments and questions in the press, Grey took the opportunity to postpone the talks until August. Although no naval agreements with the Russians had been or were ever reached, the Germans were alarmed by the possibility of co-ordinated attacks from the Baltic and the Atlantic and more persuaded than ever that Germany was encircled.101

  What made the division of Europe even more dangerous was the intensifying arms race. Although no great power except Italy fought a war between 1908 and 1914 their combined spending on defence went up by 50 per cent. (The United States was also increasing its expenditure but by much less.)102 Between 1912 and 1914 the Balkan wars helped to set off a new round of increased spending as the Balkan nations themselves and the powers expanded their armed forces and invested in the greatly improved weapons and the new ones such as submarines, machine guns, or aircraft that the wonders of European science and technology were producing. Among the great powers, Germany and Russia stood out: Germany’s defence spending leapt from £88 million in 1911 to nearly £118 million in 1913 while Russia’s went from £74 million to nearly £111 million in the same period.103 Finance Ministers and others worried that expenditure was too high, that it was accelerating too fast and was not sustainable, and that it would lead to popular unrest. Increasingly, though, they were pushed to one side by worried statesmen and generals caught by a greater fear, that of being left behind in a world of enemies who were busy increasing their forces. Army intelligence in Vienna reported early in 1914: ‘Greece is tripling, Serbia doubling, Rumania and finally even Bulgaria and Montenegro are strengthening their armies by significant amounts.’104 Austria-Hungary responded with a new army bill that increased the size of its armed forces (although by much less than Germany or Russia). The German army and navy bills, the French Three Year Law, the Russian Great Programme, and increased British naval spending were likewise responses to perceived threats, but that is not how they appeared to others. What seemed defensive from one perspective was a threat from another. And there were usually domestic lobbies and the press, sometimes backed by arms manufacturers, to raise the spectre of the nation in peril. Tirpitz, always inventive when it came to arguing for more resources for his navy, came up with a further reason for the new Navy Law of 1912: Germany must not waste its previous investments. ‘Without an adequate defensive chance against an English attack our policy must always show consideration for England and our sacrifices would have been in vain.’105

  Liberals and the left as well as the peace movement attacked the arms race and its ‘merchants of death’ at the time, and after the Great War, it was singled out as one of the main factors, perhaps indeed the key one, in bringing about the catastrophe. It was a view that had a particular resonance in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, where disillusionment about American participation in the war had grown. In 1934 Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota chaired a special Senate committee to investigate the role of the arms manufacturers in creating the Great War and promised to show ‘that war and preparation for war is not a matter of national honor and national defense, but a matter of profit for the few.’ The committee saw dozens of witnesses but not surprisingly was unable to prove its case. The Great War was not produced by a single cause but by a combination and, in the end, by human decisions. What the arms race did do was raise the level of tensions in Europe and put pressure on decision-makers to pull the trigger before the enemy did.

  Ironically, in retrospect, decision-makers at the time tended to see military preparedness as a sound deterrent. In 1913 the British ambassador to Paris had an audience with George V. ‘I suggest to the King that the best guarantee of peace between the Great Powers is that they are all afraid of each other.’106 Since deterrence only works if the other side thinks you are prepared to use force, there is always the likelihood of going too far and starting a conflict by accident – or of losing credibility by failing to follow through on a threat. And honour, as nations called it then (we might say prestige today), was a part of that calculation. The great powers were conscious of their status as much as of their interests and being too willing to make concessions or appearing timid could be damaging to that. And the events of the decade before 1914 seemed to show that deterrence worked, whether it was Britain and France forcing Germany to back down over Morocco or Russia’s mobilisation putting pressure on Austria-Hungary to leave Serbia alone during the Balkan wars. An English word which was used frequently in those days entered the German language as der Bluff. But what do you do when your bluff is called?

  The prewar arms race also brought in considerations about timing: if war was coming, it was better to fight while you had the advantage. With a few exceptions – Italy, Rumania or the Ottoman Empire perhaps – European nations knew who they would be fighting in a war, and, thanks to their spies, usually had a good idea of the strength of the enemy forces and their plans. The Germans, for example, were well aware of the growth and modernisation of Russia’s armed forces and of its railway building. The German general staff calculated that by 1917 it would not be able to fight Russia and win: Russia’s mobilisation of its greatly increased army would take only three days longer than Germany’s (unless Germany undertook major and costly railway building of its own in the east).107 In a gloomy conversation with the banker Max Warburg, the Kaiser saw a war coming with Russia as early as 1916. ‘Beset by his anxieties, the Kaiser even considered whether it would not be better to attack first instead of waiting.’108 Looking west, the Germans also knew about France’s current deficiencies such as its lack of heavy artillery even before the public criticisms by a French senator in July 1914. Finally, the Germans feared that Austria-Hungary could not survive much longer. All these considerations encouraged the key German decision-makers to think that, if they had to fight, 1914 was a good time. (The Japanese military made a similar calculation when they contemplated war with the United States in 1941.) While the Germans felt that time was running out for them, both the Russians and the French thought that things were moving in their favour and the French in particular felt they could afford to wait.109 Austria-Hungary was not so sanguine. In March 1914 Conrad, the Monarchy’s chief of staff, posed a question to a colleague, whether ‘one should wait until France and Russia were prepared to invade us jointly or if it were more desirable to settle the inevitable conflict at an earlier date’.110

  Too many Europeans, especially those like Conrad in crucial posts such as the upper ranks of the military and the governments, were now waiting for war to come. The Russian general Brusilov made haste to go with his wife to their German spa in the summer of 1914: ‘I was absolutely certain that a World War would break out in 1915. We were therefore determined not to postpone our cure and rest, so as to be able to return home for the manoeuvres.’111 While confidence in the power of the offensive still reassured many that any war would be brief, men such as Bethmann and Moltke regarded the prospect with deep pessimism. In April 1913, as Russia and Austria-Hungary faced each other in the aftermath of the First Balkan War, Bethmann warned the Reichstag: ‘No person can imagine the dimensions of a world conflagration, of the misery and destruction, which it would bring to nations.’112 Yet increasingly he, like Moltke, felt helpless to avert it. Grey on the other hand still believed on the eve of the Great War that the knowledge that a general war would be a catastrophe for all concerned must make Europe’s statesmen more cautious. ‘Was it not this that had, in the difficult years from 1905 till now,
made the Great Powers recoil from pressing anything to the point of war?’113

  As war seemed more likely, it became more important than ever to find new allies. The land forces of the two alliance systems were now so evenly balanced that even a small country such as Greece or Belgium could help to tip the balance. Although the Greeks wisely refused to commit themselves, the Kaiser was confident that its king, a member of the Hohenzollern family, would do the right thing when the time came. Belgium was another matter. All Wilhelm’s blustering attempts to win over its king had only had the effect of making the Belgians determined to defend their neutrality as best they could. In 1913 Belgium introduced conscription and increased the size of its army. It also reorganised its armed forces to strengthen its great fortress at Liège near the German border, showing clearly which of the nations guaranteeing Belgium’s neutrality it considered most likely violate it. German military planners still did not count, though, on resistance from the ‘chocolate soldiers’.

  The other key prizes still up for grabs were in the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire appeared to be tilting towards Germany. Wilhelm also placed his hopes on Rumania, another nation with a Hohenzollern ruler. King Carol had, moreover, made a secret agreement with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Perhaps the Dual Alliance should have been more suspicious that he never cared to acknowledge it publicly. Carol, whom Berchtold described as being like a ‘clever, careful, leading civil servant’, was not prepared to go against his own public opinion, which was increasingly hostile to the Monarchy because of the way the Hungarians treated the Rumanians under their rule. Tisza, the Hungarian Prime Minister, recognised the problem and tried to appease the Rumanian nationalists, who were mainly concentrated in Transylvania, by offering them autonomy in such areas as religion and education but this was not enough for the Rumanians within Hungary and negotiations broke off in February 1914. Russia in the meanwhile was laying itself out to be friendly. The tsar visited Rumania in June 1914 and there was talk of an engagement between one of his daughters and the heir to the Rumanian throne. Sazonov, who was accompanying the imperial party, travelled up to the border between Rumania and Austria-Hungary and, in a provocative act, went a few miles into Transylvania.