Europe: A History (179 page)

Unfortunately, Sir Edward’s memoirs did not entirely confirm the story:

My recollection of those three days, August 1,2 and 3, is one of almost continuous cabinets and of immense strain; but of what passed in discussion very little remains in my mind… There was little for me to do; circumstances and events were compelling decision…

A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of the last week—he thinks it was on Monday, August 3rd. We were standing at a window of my room in the Foreign Office. It was getting dusk, and the lamps were being lit in the space below… My friend recalls that I remarked on this with the words, ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’
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What exactly transpired is rather puzzling. It is strange that a metaphor about lamps being extinguished should have been prompted by the sight of lamps being lit. Grey’s most meticulous political biographer makes no mention of the scene.
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What is more, on the very eve of war, when diplomacy was supposedly at its most intense, the man at the eye of the storm had ‘little to do’. He had time to receive a friend, and to have a conversation of such little consequence that he could not remember the details.

That same evening, Berlin was facing the realization that its diplomats had just committed Germany to a war on two fronts and with no committed allies. In the Reichstag the Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, had blamed it all on Russia: ‘Russia has thrown a firebrand into our house,’ he declared. In St Petersburg, where Germany’s declaration of war had been received two days previously, the Tsar and his generals had already set the steamroller in motion. In Paris the French were reeling under Bethmann’s unlikely accusation that a French plane had bombed Nuremberg. In Vienna, where the Austrian Government had been pursuing its attack on Serbia for the past week, the Emperor-King and his ministers were in no hurry to join another war against Russia. In Rome the third partner of the Triple Alliance was lying low. Only in Belgrade could one actually hear the sound of the guns.

Map 23.
Europe, 1914

In the interminable debates about the causes of the Great War, the diplomatic system of the early twentieth century has often been made a prime culprit. It has been frequently asserted that the dice were weighted in favour of war through the logic of the two opposing blocs, the Alliance and the
Entente
. Vast political and economic forces had supposedly created a ‘geopolitical consensus’ in which both sides agreed about the necessity of supporting their allies and the dire consequences of inaction. This consensus allegedly tied the diplomats’ hands, driving them inexorably along the fatal road from a minor Balkan incident to a global conflagration. This contention needs to be examined. The Central Powers were bound in advance by the Triple Alliance. Germany was indeed obliged to assist its Austrian ally, if Austria had been attacked. But Austria had not been attacked, and Vienna was not able to invoke the terms of the existing treaties. The assassination at Sarajevo could not be construed as an act of war against Austria, especially after Belgrade’s conciliatory response to the Austrian ultimatum. What is more, Germany was painfully aware that her third ally, Italy, would never take up arms in defence of Austria unless absolutely forced to do so. Austria’s determination to punish Serbia, therefore, and her request for German approval cannot be attributed to the requirements of the Triple Alliance.

In the case of the Triple
Entente
, the chain of obligations was still looser. The
Entente
was not an Alliance. Russia and France were indeed obliged by treaty to assist each other if attacked; but they were painfully aware that the third member of the
Entente
, Great Britain, was not formally obliged to take up arms in their defence. What is more, since none of the
Entente
Powers was formally allied to Belgrade, an Austrian attack on Serbia could not be construed as a
casus belli
. In particular, there was no Russo-Serbian treaty in force.
⁸⁰
By the Treaty of 1839, Britain was committed to uphold the independence of Belgium. But that was an old obligation which long preceded the undertakings of the
Entente
. Despite appearances, therefore, the diplomatic system of 1914 left the governments considerable room for manoeuvre. It did not oblige Germany to support Austria in all circumstances, or Russia to support Serbia, or Britain to support Russia and France. Almost all the key decisions were justified in terms of’honour’ or ‘friendship’ or ‘fear’ or ‘expediency’, not of treaties. In which case it is appropriate to look less at the diplomatic system and more at the diplomats.

Sir Edward Grey (1862–1933), later Earl Grey of Fallodon, was a quintessential English gentleman. Handsome, modest, and retiring, he was imbued with the spirit of patriotic service. G. B. Shaw mischievously called him a ‘typical British Junker’. He was descended from a county family in Northumberland which came to prominence first through the exploits of a soldier forebear on the battlefield of Minden in 1759, and later through the whiggish 2nd Earl, a sponsor of the Great
Reform Bill of 1832. The family was best known from the perfumed brand of Indian tea which was named in the 2nd Earl’s honour. Sir Edward himself was just old enough to remember the Franco-Prussian war. When at the age of 8 he asked his father which side Britain favoured, he was told: ‘The Germans’. He was sent with his two brothers to board at Winchester, before proceeding via Balliol College, Oxford, to an impeccable career as Liberal MP for North Berwick, Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office 1892–5, and Foreign Secretary in Asquith’s Liberal Government from 1906 to 1916.
⁸¹

Grey’s lifestyle was simplicity itself. He was deeply devoted to his wife, Dorothy, with whom he shared a passion for nature and to wfibm he corresponded, when separated, on every single day of their marriage. With her he remodelled the estate at Fallodon, creating an extensive wildfowl reserve. He was an habitual angler and bird-watcher, and an accomplished poetical scholar. When working in London, it was part of his sacred routine to catch the 6 o’clock train from Waterloo every Saturday morning, and to spend a weekend’s fishing near his cottage at Itchen Abbas in Hampshire. ‘He would much rather catch a 3 lb trout on the dry fly than make a highly successful speech in the House of Commons.’
⁸²

Grey was destined to write at length about these simple joys. He published books on fly-fishing, on the waterfowl at Fallodon, and on Wordsworth’s
Prelude
.

That serene and blessed mood
In which …
… we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.
With an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

As a guest lecturer in America, he once chose the subject of ‘Recreation’. He recounted the story how, as Foreign Secretary, he had entertained the ex-President, Theodore Roosevelt, whom he had taken on a twenty-hour trip through the Hampshire countryside. The visitor was a keen ornithologist with a fine ear for birdsong. Grey was greatly impressed when Roosevelt unhesitatingly picked out the call of a gold-crested wren—the only member of the species that is common to England and America. ‘We are listening today’, he had said, ‘to songs which must have been familiar to races of men of which history has no record.’
⁸³

Grey was not the typical imperialist or globe-trotting diplomat. Unlike his two brothers, one of whom was killed in Africa by a lion and the other by a buffalo, he saw little of the British Empire. Though he read French, he spoke no foreign languages; and, with the exception of Continental vacations, he knew no foreign countries well. He was deeply imbued with the spirit of the ‘splendid isolation’ of the 1890s, when he had first entered foreign relations. He saw no reason why Britain should become unduly involved in Europe’s affairs. His watchwords were ‘No commitments’ and ‘Our hands must be free’. In 1914, at 52, Grey’s personal
life was blighted. His wife had been killed in a carriage accident eight years before. He communed with nature alone, and with failing eyesight. He could not read papers easily: he had cataracts and deteriorating damage to the retina. But for the pressure of business, he would have gone in the summer of 1914 to consult an oculist in Germany.

Grey’s views on Germany were not hostile. He was not really hostile towards anything. But he felt uneasy about German ambitions. Contrary to talk of colonial rivalry, and of Germany’s desire for ‘a place in the sun’, he judged that the Kaiser’s ambitions were directed elsewhere. ‘What Germany really wanted’, he wrote after the war, ‘was a place in a temperate climate and a fertile land which could be peopled by her white population… under the German flag. We had no such place to offer.’
⁸⁴
He did not approve; on the other hand, German designs on Eastern Europe did not pose a threat to the British Empire.

Most of the news in the month following Sarajevo had little to do with the European crisis. On the afternoon that the Archduke was shot, Baron de Rothschild’s Sardanapale won the Grand Prix de Paris by a neck. Britain’s calendar for July 1914 was filled with the usual summer announcements:

2 Death of Joseph Chamberlain.

3 At Christie’s, Corot’s
Le Rond des Nymphes
realized 6,600 guineas.

4 Harvard won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley Regatta.

7 A statue to Victor Hugo unveiled at Candide Park, Guernsey.

9 The Anglican Church admitted women to parochial councils.

10 London-Paris-London Air Race won in 7 hrs 13 mins 6 sec.

12 Diventis, Switzerland: 1,300th anniversary of St Sigisbert.

16 Gravesend Parish Church: the US Ambassador unveils stained-glass windows commemorating the Indian princess Pocahontas.
Georges Carpentier (France) defeats ‘Gunboat’ Smith (America) in the White Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World.

24 Failure of the Conference on Irish Home Rule.

26 The Scottish Borderers’ Regiment fires on a crowd at Howth following an Irish gun-running incident.

31 Jean Jaurès, French socialist leader, was murdered in Paris. On 1 August Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Expedition sailed for Antarctica.
⁸⁵

The first sign of real trouble in London came on 31 July, when the Stock Exchange was closed and the bank rate raised to 8 per cent. On Sunday, 2 August, ‘prayers for the nation’ were ofFered in all churches and chapels of the United Kingdom. Ominously, on 3 August Cowes Regatta was cancelled.

Grey’s performance during the crisis of 1914 attracted both praise and scorn. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, was an admirer:

[Grey] plunged into his immense double struggle a) to prevent war, and b) not to desert France should war come. I watched… his cool skill… with admiration. He had to make the Germans realise we were to be reckoned with, without making France or Russia feel that we were in their pocket.
⁸⁶

The
Manchester Guardian
, Britain’s leading Liberal paper, strongly disagreed. Having expected Britain to stay neutral, it was horrified when war was declared. ‘For years’, it cried, ‘[Grey] has been holding back the whole truth.’
⁸⁷

David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was also very critical. At the start of 1914 he had argued for a reduction in arms expenditure, believing that Anglo-German relations were ‘far more friendly than for years past’. ‘Grey was the most insular of our statesmen,’ he later wrote. ‘Northumberland was good enough for him…’ And he pointed to what he considered the fatal flaw: ‘Had he [Grey] warned Germany in time of the point at which Britain would declare war … the issue would have been different.’
⁸⁸

In Germany, similar criticisms were expressed in harsher language. Many believed that Grey was ‘the bungler’, ‘the wily hypocrite’, ‘the chief architect of the war’, who dragged Germany down. Even those Germans who appreciated Grey’s goodwill judged him severely. ‘[Sir Edward] imagined that he was steering his ship with a sure hand, unaware that other hands were on the wheel.’ He was ‘a man with two sets of human values … a double morality’.
⁸⁹

After the war Grey did not mention collective guilt, still less the faults of the diplomats. Instead, he recounted an anecdote about Japan. ‘We used to be a nation of artists,’ a Japanese diplomat once told him; ‘but now… we have learned to kill, you say that we are civilized.’
⁹⁰

Sir Edward’s road to war began very late—in the last week of July. On the 25th he travelled as usual for a weekend’s fishing at Itchen Abbas—’with unflappable sangfroid … or with culpable disregard of duty’.
⁹¹
At that stage, ‘he had no thoughts of war.’ His initial sympathies had lain with Austria, and to him things only seemed to slide when Austria spurned Serbia’s conciliatory stance. He was convinced that the powers would ‘recoil from the abyss’; that Britain was bound to support France if war came; that Britain, however, should give no pledge it could not fulfil; and, therefore, that we (the British Government) ‘must address ourselves to Germany’. On the 26th, after dining with Viscount Haldane, he talked with an informal German emissary, Ballin, who reported back that Britain would stay neutral unless Belgium was completely ‘swallowed’. On the 27th he proposed an international conference, but found that the proposal was not taken up.