53.Hirst feared ‘the damage which an inevitable Liberal defeat would do to the free-trade cause’. He unsuccessfully stood elsewhere in 1910 and 1929. Anthony Howe, ‘The Liberals and the City 1900–1931’, in The British Government and the City of London, ed. Ronald Michie et al., Cambridge 2004, p. 142–43; Youssef Cassis, City Bankers, 1890–1914, Cambridge 1994, p. 21.
54.12 December 1908.
55.1 February 1913; 10 May 1913. ‘I first knew them at the time she was a suffragette; and far from being suppressed by him, he seemed to be a little afraid of her breaking loose on the subject, and asked us not to refer to it at a dinner he was giving.’ Charles C. Burlingham to Henry L. Stimson, 6 December 1939, in George Martin, CCB: The Life and Times of Charles C. Burlingham, First Citizen of New York, New York 2005, pp. 639–40. On Hirst’s parting of ways with the Hammonds, Hobhouses, and Murrays on female suffrage, see Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats, pp. 80–81. For conflict between Liberalism and ‘early feminism’, despite ‘ideological affinities’, see Martin Pugh, ‘The Limits of Liberalism: Liberals and Women’s Suffrage, 1867–1914’, in Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–31, ed. Eugenio F. Biagini, Cambridge 1996, pp. 45–65. Helena may have been inspired by her prominent suffragette relations, Jane Catherine Cobden Unwin and Anne Cobden-Sanderson.
56.Hamilton, Good Friends, p. 82. Hirst circulated a letter to oppose attempts ‘by certain persons belonging principally to the Independent Labour Party to convert us into a Committee for promoting Women Suffrage’. Hobson returned it to Hirst with a ‘No’ to mark this sentence, and a note that began, ‘you make too much of this’, 23 January 1906, Hirst Papers, BLOU, Box 13.
57.Reductions would avoid the kind of ‘war crisis’ likely to further damage trade and employment. Hirst to Campbell-Bannerman, 9 November 1907, Campbell-Bannerman Papers, BL, Add. MSS 41238–41240.
58.Hirst to Asquith, 30 January 1906; Asquith to Hirst, 9 May 1908, in Howe, British Government and the City, pp. 139–40.
59.Lead articles often did both. Hirst praised Asquith for reducing the naval budget, while noting it remained over double the pre–Boer War figure. Still: ‘We tremble to think what might have happened to the banking and mercantile houses of London and the provinces had the prodigal system of his predecessors continued a little longer, and if there had been no purchases of Consols by the Government broker.’ Although a majority of the rich were, ‘for social reasons’, Conservative, ‘we have reason to know that very many of the most intelligent and influential persons in the City recognize, and frankly own in private, what a tower of strength the Government’s financial policy has been to them … The contrast between the British Sinking Fund and the German Loan marks and explains a great part of the difference between the financial security of London and the financial disquiet of Berlin,’ 16 May 1908.
60.Even if Britain’s naval superiority over Germany had not been so complete, building such big ships was a blunder, given the advent of submarines, torpedoes and mines. ‘The Dreadnought will be marked down by the recording angel as a double offence against the British nation and against the human race. But for this “invention” most of the slums in our great towns could have been cleared away without any addition to rates or taxes.’ Francis Hirst, The Six Panics, London 1913, pp. 61, 65–68, 72, 91.
61.In ten years, Britain had spent £300 million to Germany’s £108; in 1909, £34 million to its £17–18; with total tonnage at 1,852,000 to its 628,000. ‘The German Navy and the British Navy’, ‘The Political Fog’, 6 February 1909.
62.Hirst to Brunner, 15 July 1912, in Stephen Koss, Asquith, London 1976, pp. 149–50. Hirst took this step after he and Brunner failed to get even a list of Liberal Federation officers in England, Scotland and Wales from the Whips. ‘Fancy refusing the request of the President. It is a regular caucus for the pulling of wires and not for the translation of principles into practice’. Hirst to Brunner, 29 December 1911, in Morris, Abolition of War, p. 304. For possible placement of the leak, see ‘The Naval Scare of 1909’, 8 June 1912; ‘The Orgy of Armaments’, 6 July 1912.
63.‘The Political Fog’, 9 February 1909.
64.A National Liberal Club send-off included representatives from the Liverpool Post, Yorkshire Observer, Sheffield Independent, Darlington Echo, South Wales Daily News, Aberdeen Free Press, Dundee Advertiser – with Hirst hoping to sign up the Western Daily Mercury, Eastern Morning News, Manchester Guardian, Daily News and Daily Chronicle. Hirst to Brunner, 5 December 1911 in Koss, Sir John Brunner, Radical Plutocrat, London 1970, p. 247.
65.Murray, People’s Budget, pp. 129–30. Churchill outdid them after being made First Lord of the Admiralty. At a meeting of the Committee for the Reduction of Expenditure on Armaments on 16 January 1914, Hirst compared him to Dryden’s Zimri: ‘A man so various that he seem’d to be; Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:/ Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;/ Was everything by starts and nothing long.’ Koss, Brunner, p. 267.
66.‘In Aid of Turkey’, 21 March 1908.
67.‘The Colonies and the Empire’, 13 April 1907. The ‘invisible’ income from commercial and financial services in the City was making up for a growing trade deficit in commodities. Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, pp. 39, 51.
68.Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform, New York 1968, pp. 89–90, 147
69.As an authoritative source only the Statist under Paish came close, making a major case for unrestricted capital export in part to reverse the rise in food prices to which he attributed working class unrest: Offer, Empire and Social Reform, p. 125. Giffen, who founded the Statist in 1878, was in contrast, attacking Liberals as socialists by 1909, and favoured an ‘expansive imperialism’. R. S. Mason, ‘Robert Giffen and the Tariff Reform Campaign, 1865–1910’, Journal of European Economic History, Spring 1996, p.176; ‘Sir Robert Giffen’, Economist, 16 April 1910.
70.Still listed separately, the Transvaal and Orange River, Cape Colony, and Natal together took £338 million. Its estimate of £79,560,116 of total interest received was surely too low, given the ‘natural disinclination of British investors to disclose the extent of their foreign and colonial investments’ – a tacit acknowledgement that investing abroad was also a means to widespread tax evasion. ‘Our Investments Abroad’, 20 February 1909.
71.‘The reservoir would not overflow unless it were full’: ‘Free Trade in Being’, 13 March 1909.
72.‘When a profitable opportunity for investment occurs in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow … the last thing that the people think of is to go to London.’ It did not consider if this was itself a problem. ‘British Capital at Home and Abroad’, 20 November 1909.
73.‘Lord Revelstoke’s Maiden Speech’, 27 November 1909; J. A. Hobson, ‘Do Foreign Investments Benefit the Working Classes?’, Financial Review of Reviews, March 1909, pp. 22–31; George Paish, ‘The Export of Capital and the Cost of Living’, Statist, 14 September 1914, quoted in Offer, Empire and Social Reform, p. 126. It was ‘the old system of Protection and colonial preference’, before repeal of the Corn Laws that had sent British capitalists scrambling to set up textile mills on the continent. ‘British Capital At Home and Abroad’, 20 November 1909.
74.‘Bagehot’s Lombard Street’, 23 July 1910.
75.London was ‘the capital city of banking and investment’, Wall Street ‘the home of speculation’: Francis Hirst, The Stock Exchange: A Short Study of Investment and Speculation, London 1911, p. 243. He was ebullient on a trip to the US at the turn of 1911, writing a glowing prospectus of Liberal England in the New York Times, where Unionists were cowed over tariffs, industry was flourishing, and capital export soaring to new heights: ‘British Finance in 1910’, 11 January 1911.
76.Hirst, Stock Exchange, Ibid., pp. 15–17.
77.For Radicals’ ‘whistling in the dark’, see A. Morris, Radicalism Against War, 1906–1914: The Advocacy of Peace and Retrenchment, London 1972, pass
im.
78.It hoped in future for a ‘satisfactory and permanent settlement of the native question’. Blacks showed ‘aptitude for education’, trade and the professions, and as the majority, ‘cannot be safely excluded from all share in government’. Holding up Cuba and the US as extremes of race feeling, ‘we imagine that in South Africa a tolerable compromise will be found’. ‘Union of South Africa’, 31 July 1909.
79.Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge 2001, pp. 155–62. Morley had no time for either ‘the bureaucratic illusion that all troubles can be easily disposed of by the suppression of a few newspapers and demagogues … or the more dangerous illusion of certain Liberals that India is now ripe for self-government.’ For the Economist, a ‘philosopher and statesman’, democrat and Irish Home Ruler, Morley ‘cannot be accused of any lack of sympathy with popular aspirations’. ‘Unsettlement in India’, 25 May 1907; ‘Constitutional Reform’, 14 November 1908.
80.For those who regarded the Empire ‘with the critical and anxious eye of a true patriotism, there has been one great event’ – Morley’s arrival in India. ‘We are there to keep the peace among these peoples, to remove the grinding poverty which became chronic under native rule, to save them from internecine warfare, from the oppression of Eastern conquerors, and from the rivalries of other Western nations, who, however little we may know the native mind, assuredly know much less. We must persevere with our burden, maintain order, providing as many safety-valves for discontent as is consistent with that aim: ‘Empire of India’, 29 May 1909; ‘Indian Reforms’, 29 November 1909.
81.In 1907, imperial preference would hurt India if ‘retaliatory tariffs excluded the staple products of India from the markets of continental Europe’. By 1909, it would hurt Britain, since ‘the moment protection is applied to England … it will be the duty of the India Office to protect India against Lancashire.’ ‘Unsettlement in India’, 25 May 1907; ‘Empire of India’, 29 May 1909.
82.Hamer, John Morley, p. 346.
83.Keith Wilson, ‘The Agadir Crisis, the Mansion House Speech, and the Double-Edgedness of Agreements’, Historical Journal, September 1972, p. 520.
84.‘This language naturally caused alarm, and evoked from the Press of both London and Berlin a warlike chorus, which shows that the Fleet Streets of Europe are full of inflammable material.’ The majority of the speech was about peace and finance, the rest a ‘passing mood’. ‘British Interests and the Moroccan Dispute’, 29 July 1911. Wilson in part agrees, but shows it was sanctioned by the Cabinet: Germans, wrote Churchill, ‘sent their Panther to Agadir and we sent our little Panther to the Mansion House’. Wilson, ‘Agadir Crisis’, pp. 519–21.
85.‘British Interests and the Moroccan Dispute’, 29 July 1911; ‘Morocco and the Powers’, 21 July 1911.
86.Jonathan Kirshner, Currency and Coercion: The Political Economy of International Monetary Power, Princeton 1995, pp. 83–85.
87.‘The Financial Influence of Paris in Berlin’, 29 July 1911.
88.‘German Securities and the Paris Bourse’, 5 August 1911.
89.The concessions Grey had made to Russia in Persia also came to light, inspiring a similar reaction. ‘It would not be difficult to smash Grey if there were a Cobden or a Bright in the House’, Hirst wrote, before adding ‘I’m not sure we want to … if pressure is steadily applied we may get what we want.’ Hirst to Brunner, 5 December 1911, in Koss, Brunner, p. 249. Grey, undeterred, sealed a secret pact with France the next year, releasing the French navy to patrol the Mediterranean while the British fleet guarded the Channel. For Hirst’s criticisms of Grey, and the need for a ‘business understanding with Germany’, putting ‘an end to all our financial troubles’, see ‘What Is Our Foreign Policy?’, 4 November 1911; ‘Morocco Settlement and Anglo-German Relations’, 11 November 1911; ‘New Chapter’, 25 November 1911; ‘Debates’, 2 December 1911.
90.‘Rejection of the Budget’, 4 December 1909; ‘Ireland and the Constitution’, 15 July 1911.
91.A Conservative government had initiated this land repurchase scheme in Ireland. ‘The Third Home Rule Bill’, 13 April 1912.
92.Ex-Liberal MP Samuel Storey, a champion of Home Rule before Gladstone, mocked the ‘fancy picture’ Hirst had painted of Liberals’ steadfast commitment to the issue since 1886. ‘In 1894 the new Liberal leader, Lord Rosebery, announced that Home Rule must cease to be a living part of the Liberal policy’, a stance Asquith, Grey, and Haldane ‘not merely acquiesced in, but actively assented to’. ‘All that the pages of history can truly record of them [the Liberals] seems to be this: for eight years, under the impulsion of a great and resolute leader, they fought for Home Rule; that then for 11 years, under his punier successors, they shirked Home Rule; that not until 1910 when they were dependent upon the Irish party for power and place, did they re-discover the principle.’ ‘Letters’, 6 June 1914.
93.‘Moral Issues of Home Rule’, 30 May 1914. As the crisis finally hit, the paper called the suspension of Home Rule for the duration of war ‘a wise course of action’. ‘The Dublin Affray’, 1 August 1914; ‘Home Rule Bill’, 14 September 1914.
94.Mary Agnes Hamilton, Remembering My Good Friends, London 1944, 65.
95.‘The War and the Panic’, 1 August 1914.
96.Hirst served on several committees for the Carnegie Endowment, including one devoted to publicity chaired by Norman Angell. Hirst was among the senators, professors and journalists who composed a Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (1914). At Lucerne he was to meet with the Economic History and Research Division, whose eminent members ranged from Paul Reinsch, former US ambassador to China, to the ex-Japanese finance minister and Tokyo mayor, Baron Sakatani, to the likes of Hirst and Paish. Those who made it spent the first days of the war in a surreal atmosphere, drawing up study plans on how to prevent it: the laws of capture at sea and on land since Grotius, the effects of the Hundred Years War on Panama, the feasibility of an international chamber of commerce. Above all, it called for studies into the influence of stock exchanges, bankers, financiers, and concessions to foreign corporations – on the presumption that all of the above tended to promote peace. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Year Book 1915, Washington 1915, pp. 60, 64, 73, 92–96.
97.‘The War and the Panic’, 1 August 1914.
98.Douglas Newton, Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, London 2014, passim.
99.Hirst, Golden Days, 238.
100.Morley to Hirst, 5 August 1914 and 7 August 1914, Hirst papers, BLOU, Box 36.
101.Cabinet Memorandum, 27 July 1914, quoted in Newton, Darkest Days, pp. 194–97, 279–80.
102.Ibid., pp. 279–80.
103.‘The Germans, both in Austria and the Empire, are a brave and resolute people. They are now surrounded and outnumbered, but they will fight with a desperate energy which forbids us to be certain of success.’ ‘The War’, 8 August 1914.
104.‘The Moratorium’, 8 August 1914; ‘Some Effects of the War at Home and Abroad’, 15 August 1914.
105.‘Cabinet Crisis and Perplexities of Faith’, 1 July 1916.
106.‘Atrocity and Chivalry’, 5 September 1914; ‘The Progress of the War and the Prospects of Peace’, 12 December 1914.
107.Unionists had offered a coalition to the Liberals in 1914, before ‘the question of Belgium arose’. ‘Why, then, should they not come in now and conduct the war as responsible ministers?’ ‘The War and the Coalition’, 15 May 1915; ‘Coalition Government and Progress of the War’, 29 May 1915; ‘Mr Lloyd George and the War’, 5 June 1915.
108.Hirst to Scott, 21 May 1915, in The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott, 1911–1928, ed. Trevor Wilson, London 1970, pp 124–25.
109.Hirst to Scott, 28 May 1915, Ibid., p. 126.
110.‘Liberal Principles and the Composition of the Government’, 22 January 1916; ‘The Economics of Compulsion and the Irish Disturbances’, 29 April 1916; ‘Ireland and Pe
ace’, 13 May 1916. If Asquith introduced compulsion, Hirst wrote privately, it would be a ‘landmark’ and ‘culmination of Liberal imperialism – the furthest point in reaction to which imperialism can drag liberalism’. As for his leading warmonger colleague: ‘Lloyd George is not exactly a Liberal imperialist. He is really a politician who has conducted operations upon the principle of serving out a judicious mixture of socialism and jingoism.’ 29 December 1915, Hirst Papers, BLOU, Box 13.
111.‘The Cabinet Crisis and Perplexities of Faith’, 1 July 1916.
112.Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats, pp. 166–69, 173–74.
113.‘Possible Guarantees of Peace’, 12 December 1914. For Russell’s praise of the Carnegie Endowment inquiry into the Balkans, on which Hirst worked, see Bertrand Russell to Ottoline Morrell, 14 October 1914, in Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914–1970, ed. Nicholas Griffin, London 2001, p. 15. The New Statesmen refused to publish Russell’s article about the inquiry, which in light of the onset of the war linked peace to socialism: Sidney and Beatrice Webb wished to avoid all mention of the war, which they called ‘one of those huge catastrophes when evil thoughts prevail’. Bertrand Russell, Prophecy and Dissent, 1914–1916, ed. Richard A. Rempel, London 2000, pp. 105–12; Bertrand Russell, Pacifism and Revolution, 1916–1918, ed. Richard A. Rempel, London 1995, pp. 393–94.
114.‘An Apology for Peace Makers’, 5 March 1919, Hirst Papers, BLOU, Box 13; Catherine Merridale, Lenin on a Train, New York 2017, p. 84.
115.‘Service for All’, The Times, 31 May 1915.
116.‘Through German Eyes’, The Times, 16 March 1916.
117.‘Through German Eyes: The British Radical Press’, The Times, 2 June 1916.
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