On Friday afternoon, July 24, the British Cabinet met in the Prime Minister’s Room at the House of Commons. The subject was Ireland. Through the spring, Home Rule, the great cause and incubus of the Liberal Party, had once again been moving through Parliament. Debate had focussed on whether the Protestant counties of Ulster, not wishing to be ruled by a Catholic Parliament in Dublin, should be entitled to refuse participation in Home Rule. As passage of the bill became more certain, Ulstermen became more fiercely agitated. Certain they were about to be betrayed by Westminster, they had resolved to help themselves. They talked of setting up a provisional Ulster government; there were active preparations for armed resistance. By summer, 36,000 rifles and three million rounds of ammunition were in Protestant hands. In their defiance, the Orangemen had the open encouragement of the British Conservative Party and the quiet complicity of a number of officers of the British Army. These officers, many with roots in the Anglo-Irish gentry, opposed Home Rule and were unwilling to participate in any military coercion of Ulster. On March 20, the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland had addressed a large group of officers at the Curragh barracks and found himself confronted with the refusal of the majority of these officers to accept orders to take their soldiers to Ulster. Rather than fight the Protestant Orangemen, they said they would resign. This near-mutiny had shaken Parliament and the nation. Conservatives accused the Liberal government of sacrificing Ulster; Liberals accused the opposition of encouraging rebellion against the Crown. On July 21, the King had summoned representatives of the interested parties to Buckingham Palace to find a solution. Three days of argument resulted in deadlock and, on July 24, the Conference broke up. These facts, reported in detail to Berlin by German diplomats, helped convince the Wilhelmstrasse that British involvement in Ireland was so great that England need not be taken seriously as a factor in European diplomacy.
That afternoon, the Irish deadlock had been reported to the Cabinet. The meeting was ending, and most members were standing, ready to leave the room, when Sir Edward Grey asked the ministers to remain a few minutes. They resumed their seats. Grey’s description of the situation in Central Europe and the Balkans was the first discussion of foreign affairs in more than a month. As he read the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, preoccupation with Ireland began to fade. Churchill recalled: “[Grey] had been reading1 or speaking for several minutes before I could disengage my mind from the tedious and bewildering debate which had just closed.... Gradually as the phrases and sentences followed one another, impressions of a wholly different character began to form in my mind.... The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe.” Grey’s words, in his quiet, careful voice, had an impact. That night, in his report to the King, Asquith termed the Austrian ultimatum “the gravest event for many years2 past in European politics as it may be the prelude to a war in which at least four of the Great Powers may be involved.” He wrote to Venetia Stanley, “We are within measurable,3 or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon. Happily, there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.”
Asquith’s optimism, as far as England was concerned, was based on recent diplomatic history. Three times in eight years (1905, 1908, and 1911) Europe had approached the brink of war and each time diplomacy had prevailed. In the spring of 1914, the Continent appeared tranquil. Sovereigns and chiefs of state shuttled between each others’ capitals, bowing and waving to cheering crowds. Anglo-German relations had reached equilibrium; the naval issue was quiescent; a settlement of the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway dispute only awaited German signature. The German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, a partisan of improved relations, was popular in London society. On July 23, the day before Grey informed his Cabinet colleagues of the Austrian ultimatum, Lloyd George had told the House of Commons that relations with Germany were better than they had been for years and that he could predict “substantial economy4 in naval expenditure.” Expanding on this hopeful theme, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced, “I cannot help thinking5 that civilisation, which is able to deal with disputes among individuals and small communities at home, and is able to regulate these by means of some sane and well-ordered arbitrament, should be able to extend its operations to the larger sphere of disputes among states.”
Even after Sarajevo, the mood in London had not changed. People in Britain reacted as people elsewhere: with horror, with indignation toward the criminals, with sympathy for the elderly Franz Josef. Britons expected the guilty parties to be discovered and punished. Fear of international implications was dispelled by the deliberate atmosphere of calm arranged by the Austrian and German governments. Until July 24, the Foreign Secretary, responsible for monitoring the behavior of other nations, had not mentioned anything to the Cabinet. Grey’s silence had not meant ignorance. Lichnowsky returned to London from Berlin on July 6 and gave Grey a hint that, behind the façade, tempers were running high in Berlin and Vienna. The Austrians were determined to have a reckoning with Serbia, he reported, and the Imperial government felt it must support its ally. Grey was understanding. Admitting that Austria had been greatly provoked, the Foreign Secretary declared that “the merits of the dispute6 between... [Austria and Serbia] were not the concern of His Majesty’s Government.” He would consider the matter “simply and solely7 from the point of view of the peace of Europe”; here he was “very apprehensive of the view Russia would take.” Grey attempted to influence that view, working to persuade St. Petersburg to take a conciliatory attitude toward Austria, but this, he told Lichnowsky on the ninth, would depend heavily on the steps Austria was preparing to take. In general, Grey told the Ambassador, he “saw no reason8 for taking a pessimistic view of the situation.”
Grey’s hopefulness, passed along to Berlin, pleased the Wilhelmstrasse. On July 12, the Austrian Ambassador in Berlin telegraphed Vienna: “The German Government believes9 that it has proof that England would not take part in a war caused by disturbances in the Balkans even if Russia and France were involved in it.... England certainly would not expose itself to danger for Serbia or even Russia’s sake.” Grey made plain to Lichnowsky as well as to the Russians that there were limits to what Britain could approve in Austria’s punishment of Serbia. Surely, the Foreign Secretary urged, Vienna did not think of annexing any Serbian territory. Jagow understood and on July 18 telegraphed, “England will not prevent10 Austria from calling Serbia to account; it is only the destruction of the nation that she would not permit.”
Everything depended on the terms of the Austrian note. At two P.M. on July 24, Count von Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador in London, handed a copy to Grey. Grey characterized it as “brusque, sudden, and peremptory”;11 later he amplified this to “the most formidable document12 that has ever been addressed from one state to another.” He took the document with him to that day’s Cabinet meeting and, when discussion of Ireland was concluded, informed his colleagues. Returning to the Foreign Office, Grey’s first reaction was to ask for an extension of the forty-eight-hour time limit (already down to thirty-one hours by the time the Foreign Secretary received the ultimatum). Coincidentally, in St. Petersburg, Sazonov had had the same reaction and had made the same request. Austria rejected both appeals. Grey then urged the Serbs to be conciliatory and to “give [to Austria] a favorable reply13 on as many points as possible within the time limit.” The Foreign Secretary also proposed a reconvening of the Six Power Conference of London, which had successfully mediated the Balkan upheavals in 1912–1913. The same ambassadors were still in London—Lichnowsky of Germany, Mensdorff of Austria, Imperiale of Italy, Cambon of France, and Benckendorff of Russia—and could be brought together on a few hours’ notice. All were personal friends. “If our respective governments14 would only use us and trust us and give us the chance,” Grey wrote, “we could keep the peace of Europe... an honourable peace, no vaunting on one side and humiliation on another.”
The key to Grey’s proposal lay with Germany: if Berlin agreed to mediation, Vienna would have to accept. Accordingly, Grey sounded Lichnowsky first. The Foreign Secretary assumed that the Germans were anxious to calm the Balkan turbulence and prevent war. Grey’s assumption seemed to have been sustained on the morning of July 25, when the German Ambassador read him a telegram from the Wilhelmstrasse confirming that Germany had had no previous knowledge of the text of the Austrian ultimatum. Lichnowsky, deliberately left ignorant by Berlin, responded wholeheartedly to Grey’s conference proposal. “I see in it15 the only possibility of avoiding a world war,” he telegraphed to Jagow on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth. “Grey will not bestir himself again.... Once more, I urgently advise the acceptance of the English proposal.”
Hoping for a favorable response from Berlin, Grey delayed sending the proposal to other governments. July 25 was a Saturday and in the early afternoon the Foreign Secretary left London for his fishing cottage in Hampshire. The text of the proposal telegram was left in Sir Arthur Nicolson’s hands. At three P.M. Sunday, July 26, the Permanent Under Secretary decided to send out the proposal and to summon the Foreign Secretary back to London. Telegrams over Grey’s signature went immediately to the foreign ministers in Paris, Rome, and Berlin. “Ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs16 if he would be disposed to instruct ambassador here to join with the representatives [of the other invited Powers] and myself to meet in a conference to be held here.” If so, “active military operations should be suspended pending results of the conference.”
Lichnowsky, supporting Grey’s initiative, dispatched three telegrams to Jagow within six hours on the twenty-seventh. His language exhibits frustration and growing panic: “Sir E. Grey17 had me call on him just now.... [He had just read] the Serbian reply to the Austrian note. It appeared to him that Serbia had agreed to the Austrian demands to an extent such as he would never have believed possible.... Should Austria fail to be satisfied with this reply... it would then be absolutely evident that Austria was only seeking an excuse for crushing Serbia.... I found the Minister [Grey] irritated for the first time. He spoke with great seriousness and seemed absolutely to expect that we should successfully make use of our influence to settle the matter.... Everybody here is convinced... that the key to the situation is to be found in Berlin and that, if peace is seriously desired there, Austria can be restrained from prosecuting—as Sir E. Grey expressed it—a foolhardy policy.” And later: “Our entire future relations with England depend on the success of this move by Sir Edward Grey. Should the Minister succeed... I will guarantee that our relations with England will remain... intimate and confidential.... Should Austria’s intention of using the present opportunity to overthrow Serbia... become more and more apparent, England, I am certain, would place herself unconditionally by the side of France and Russia.... If it comes to war under these circumstances, we shall have England against us.”
Berlin was unmoved; three weeks of effort by the Reich government had gone into preventing other Powers from interfering by mediation. Jagow felt obliged to forward Grey’s proposal to Vienna, but he prefaced the English note with his own disclaimer: the German government declared “in the most decided way18 that it does not identify itself with these propositions; that, on the contrary, it advises [Austria] to disregard them, but that it must pass them on to satisfy the English Government.” In Berlin, Jagow told Sir Edward Goschen that the proposed conference “would practically amount19 to a court of arbitration” and could not be considered without Austrian approval. In London, Lichnowsky was instructed to give Sir Edward Grey the same explanation.
On Monday morning, July 27, news of Serbia’s submission to the Austrian ultimatum reached London. To Venetia Stanley, Asquith described his reaction: “Serbia has capitulated20 on the main point, but it is very doubtful if any reservation will be accepted by Austria which is resolved upon a complete and final humiliation. The curious thing is that on many if not most points Austria has a good and Serbia a very bad case, but the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe.... It is the most dangerous situation of the last forty years.” When the Cabinet met at eleven A.M., Grey reported that Count von Mensdorff had told him that Vienna regarded the Serbian reply as inadequate. He described the Six Power Conference proposal, announcing that France and Italy had accepted immediately; the German reply had not yet arrived. The question of Britain’s obligation to maintain Belgian neutrality was raised and the Cabinet agreed to discuss the matter in detail at a subsequent meeting. The First Sea Lord’s order not to disperse to the Fleet concentrated at Portland was approved.
When, on Tuesday, July 28, news arrived that Austria had declared war on Serbia, Haldane gave up hope. “The German General Staff21 is in the saddle,” he said. That afternoon, Grey told the House of Commons: “It must be obvious22 to any person who reflects upon the situation that from the moment the dispute ceases to be one between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and becomes one in which another Great Power is involved, it cannot but end in the greatest catastrophe that has ever befallen the Continent of Europe at one blow. No one can say what would be the limits of the issues that might be raised by such a conflict; the consequences of it, direct and indirect, would be incalculable.” Asquith was pessimistic. That night, he and Margot entertained the Churchills and Benckendorffs at dinner. After his guests left, the Prime Minister walked to the Foreign Office, where he found Grey and Haldane. Until one A.M., the three men talked. Asquith’s opinion was that “nothing but a miracle23 could avert war, but still not a British war.”
Beginning on Wednesday, July 29, the Cabinet met daily, sometimes twice a day. After the Wednesday meeting, a telegram was sent to all naval, military, and colonial stations warning that war was possible. Grey was instructed to inform the German and French ambassadors that “at this stage24 we were unable to pledge ourselves in advance, either under all conditions to stand aside, or in any conditions to join in.” The Cabinet concluded that a decision regarding a violation of Belgian neutrality, if and when it was made, “will be one of policy25 rather than of legal obligation.”
Disappointed by Berlin’s rejection of a Six Power Conference, Grey still had not given up hope of working with Germany. On the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, the Foreign Secretary called in Lichnowsky and said that, if the Wilhelmstrasse would not accept Britain’s lead in mediation, Britain would accept a German lead, following any approach Berlin thought feasible. Grey reiterated his belief that Austria had a legitimate grievance against the Serbs and even suggested that Austria might occupy Belgrade to assure compliance with her conditions. Grey believed that an Austro-Serbian war must inevitably escalate into an Austro-Russian war, but even that, he told the Ambassador, would not necessarily concern Great Britain. So long as the conflict was confined to Austria and Russia, England could stand aside, but once Germany and France became involved, the vital interests of England were threatened. Any threat to France’s role as a Great Power would bring any English government, Liberal or Conservative, into the war.
Lichnowsky hurriedly sent Grey’s remarks off to Berlin. The Ambassador’s telegram came to the Kaiser26. William’s marginalia on this dispatch were remarkable:
Once he had finished scribbling in the margins, William took more space and let his feelings flow:
“England reveals herself in her true colours at a moment when she thinks that we are caught in the toils and, so to speak, disposed of! That mean crew of shopkeepers has tried to trick us with dinners and speeches. The boldest deception, the words of the King to Henry for me: ‘We shall remain neutral and try to keep out of this as long as possible.’ Grey proves the King a liar, and his words to Lichnowsky are the outcome of a guilty conscience, because he feels that he has deceived us. At that, it is as a matter of fact a threat combined with a bluff, in order to separate us from Austria and to prevent us from mobilising, and to shift the responsibility for the war. He knows perfectly well that, if he were to say one single, serious, sharp and warning word at Paris and St Petersburg, and were to warn them to remain neutral, that [sic] both would become quiet at once. But he takes care not to speak the word, and threatens us instead! Common cur! England alone bears the responsibility for peace and war, not we any longer! That must be made clear to the world.”
Bethmann-Hollweg had a different reaction to Grey’s warning that Britain would not allow France to be eliminated as a Great Power. That night—it was still July 29—the Kaiser convened a Crown Council at Potsdam. The Chancellor explained Grey’s concern over the future of France and urged that some step be taken to calm British fears and ensure Britain’s neutrality. A course was agreed on, and Bethmann hurried back to Berlin. He summoned Sir Edward Goschen. The British Ambassador appeared at the Wilhelmstrasse at one-thirty A.M.; by now it was Thursday, July 30. He listened carefully to the Chancellor and returned to his embassy to send a telegram to London. War involving Germany, France, Austria, and Russia was now almost inevitable, the Chancellor had said. “He [Bethmann] then proceeded to make27 a strong bid for British neutrality. He said that... so far as he was able to judge, the main principle which governed British policy was that Great Britain would never stand by and allow France to be crushed.” This was not Germany’s aim, Bethmann insisted. To prove it, he promised—on condition of Britain’s neutrality—that a victorious Germany would take no territory from a defeated France. Goschen inquired whether this applied to France’s colonies in Africa and elsewhere. Bethmann declined to give that assurance. The Chancellor made a similar offer regarding German military operations on Belgian territory: “When the war was over,28 Belgian integrity would be respected if she had not sided against Germany.”
Bethmann’s proposal astounded Whitehall. It was not only that Germany was openly revealing her intention of attacking France and probably Belgium. It was the Chancellor’s naked suggestion that England cynically betray France on the basis of a German promise. Grey’s reaction mingled despair and indignation: “The document made it clear29 that Bethmann now thought war probable.... The proposal meant everlasting dishonour if we accepted it.... Did Bethmann not see that he was making an offer that would dishonour us if we agreed to it? What sort of man was it who could not see that? Or did he think so badly of us that he thought we should not see it?”
Grey immediately wrote a reply to Goschen: “His Majesty’s Government cannot30 for a moment entertain the Chancellor’s proposal.... It would be a disgrace for us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France31—a disgrace from which the good name of this country would never recover.” He walked across to 10 Downing Street with the telegram in his hand. Asquith agreed that they need not wait for Cabinet approval, and the telegram was dispatched. That afternoon, Goschen’s telegram, containing the German Chancellor’s proposal, and Grey’s reply were read to the Cabinet. Grey’s decision was approved.
Bethmann had hinted that if war came Germany meant to attack France. Jagow confirmed this to Goschen later on the thirtieth, when he told the British Ambassador that if Germany mobilized, it would be against France as well as Russia. The French government knew what was coming. France’s diplomacy since the delivery of the Austrian ultimatum had been hampered by the absence from Paris of both President Poincaré and Foreign Minister René Viviani. Returning from St. Petersburg aboard the battleship France, they had cancelled their state visit to Denmark, but arrived back in the capital only on the afternoon of July 29. While France had supported Britain’s efforts to establish mediation machinery, she had consistently reassured her Russian ally of her willingness to meet the obligations of the Dual Alliance. Secret military preparations were under way; officers and men excused for the harvest were recalled on the twenty-sixth; French battalions in Morocco were ordered home on the twenty-seventh. On July 28, the French General Staff informed the Russian Military Attaché in Paris of France’s “full and active readiness32 faithfully to execute her responsibilities as an ally.”
France, facing the overwhelming threat of the German Army, pleaded with Britain for a commitment to intervene. One of Viviani’s first moves on his return to the Quai d’Orsay was to ask Paul Cambon in London to “remind” Sir Edward Grey of the 1912 letters promising that the two Powers would take “joint steps33... in the event of tension in Europe.” On the evening of July 30, President Poincaré summoned Sir Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador to France, and urged Britain to take a stand. “He [Poincaré] is convinced34 that... if His Majesty’s Government announce that, in the event of conflict between Germany and France... England would come to the aid of France, there would be no war for Germany would at once modify her attitude,” Bertie reported. “He is convinced that preservation of peace... is in the hands of England.” Bertie was obliged to tell the President of the Republic “how difficult it would be35 for His Majesty’s Government to make such an announcement.”
Even after Austria declared war and bombarded Belgrade, few in Britain had an inkling that within seven days, England would enter a world war. The man in the street, the majority in the Cabinet and House of Commons still saw the crisis as a distant furor over “Serbian murderers.” The Liberal Party in the House of Commons felt that this was a fight between the great Continental alliances and—as Churchill recalled later—that “British participation36 in a continental struggle would... [be] criminal madness.” The Cabinet approved the use of Britain’s influence to keep the peace and unanimously endorsed Grey’s proposal for a Six Power Conference in London. At the same time, the Cabinet also approved the cautionary Admiralty decisions to keep the fleet concentrated at Portland and then to send it to sea. The Cabinet was even willing to authorize Grey’s vague warning to the Germans that they should not count absolutely on British neutrality. But it was not willing to give France the guarantee of support for which Poincaré and Cambon were pleading. Within the Cabinet there existed a strong and vocal minority who absolutely opposed British participation in any Continental war. As the probability of war in Europe loomed larger, this group became more active in its determination to keep Great Britain out: the British people wanted peace; the nation had no legal or moral commitments requiring it to go to war. Should the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary steer a course toward war, these noninterventionists, including Lloyd George, threatened to resign. Grey’s hands were tied. “It was clear to me,”37 he wrote, “that no authority would be obtained from the Cabinet to give the pledge for which France pressed more and more urgently, and that to press the Cabinet for that pledge would be fatal; it would result in the resignation of one group or another and the consequent breakup of the Cabinet altogether.”
Within the Cabinet, the burden of the crisis fell on Grey. The Foreign Secretary, fifty-two, a widower for nine years, childless, was gradually going blind. In the autumn of 1913, he had been forced to give up squash because of his trouble seeing the ball. By May 1914, his condition had worsened. He was told that he would eventually lose the power of reading. Doctors suggested six months of rest and country life. Grey, who had always worked more from a sense of duty than from love of office, refused. During the absorbing days of July and August, the climax of his career, there were Cabinet meetings once, then twice a day, lasting two or three hours apiece. It was Grey’s responsibility to meet and brief foreign ambassadors on the latest developments in British policy. As pressure from France and Germany increased, Cambon and Lichnowsky were constantly at his door, each urgently pleading his country’s case. After these interviews, Grey dictated a summary that was telegraphed to British representatives around the world. Communications poured in from British ambassadors in every capital in Europe; Grey was obliged to read and respond with special care to Buchanan in St. Petersburg, Bertie in Paris, and Goschen in Berlin. No matter how tired, Grey could not rest. He was the pivotal figure, not only in the formulation of British foreign policy within the Cabinet but in conducting the diplomacy that would make it work.
Haldane did what he could to help. Grey, at that time, was renting Churchill’s house at 33 Eccleston Square (the First Lord was living in a house provided by the Admiralty), but during the crisis he moved in temporarily with Haldane at Queen Anne’s Gate. Telegrams and dispatches for the Foreign Secretary were coming in at every hour of the night. So that Grey could get some uninterrupted sleep, Haldane kept a servant sitting up by his door with instructions to bring the dispatch boxes to his bedroom as they arrived and to awaken him. The Lord Chancellor opened the boxes, read the contents, and decided whether the matter was sufficiently urgent to awaken Grey.
Grey sympathized entirely with France and recognized that France had legitimate moral, if not legal, claims on Britain’s support. There was no treaty of alliance, but during his nine years of stewardship at the Foreign Office, the bonds between England and France had been woven ever tighter. Grey’s feelings were not based on simple Francophilia; he “felt that to stand aside38 would mean the domination of Germany, the subordination of France and Russia, the isolation of Great Britain. Ultimately, Germany would wield the whole power of the Continent. How would she use it as regards England?” The professional diplomats at the head of the Foreign Office were even more convinced that England must stand by France. Crowe’s voice was insistent: “The argument39 that there is no written bond binding us to France is strictly correct,” he wrote in a forceful memorandum for the Foreign Secretary. “There is no contractual obligation. But the Entente has been made, strengthened, put to the test and celebrated in a manner justifying the belief that a moral bond was being forged. The whole policy of the Entente can have no meaning if it does not signify that in a just quarrel England would stand by her friends. This honourable expectation has been raised. We cannot repudiate it without exposing our good name to grave criticism.... I feel confident that our duty and our interest will be seen to lie in standing by France in her hour of need. France has not sought the quarrel. It has been forced on her.”
In the week before Britain went to war, Grey structured his thoughts around four convictions: First, he believed that a great European war would be an unimaginable catastrophe in destruction of life and national wealth. Once the nations saw this, then, rationally, they must step back from the abyss. Second, he considered that Germany held the key. “Germany was so immensely strong40 and Austria so dependent on German strength that Germany would have the decisive voice.... It was therefore to Germany that we must address ourselves.” Third, if, despite everything, war came, the long-range interest of Great Britain demanded that she side with France. If a majority in the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country could not be persuaded to accept his view, then he was prepared to resign. Fourth, in the meantime, while Cabinet, Parliament, and country were coming to grips with these facts and their implications, he must make no pledges on behalf of England that the nation might not fulfill. Better to disappoint by refusing to make a commitment now, than to betray later by reneging.
This struggle came to a head on Friday, July 31. France had received the German ultimatum demanding that she turn over the fortresses of Toul and Verdun as a pledge of neutrality in the coming Russo-German war. The French government was preparing to refuse and to order mobilization.fn1 It was imperative for France to know where Britain stood. Paul Cambon went to see Sir Edward Grey. The Ambassador’s mind was focussed on the massive German troop concentrations on the eastern frontiers of France and Belgium. His task was to extract from Britain the strongest possible commitment. He was aware of the reluctance of the British Cabinet; he knew that Grey had not yet dared to inform Parliament of the existence of the 1912 letters, though the letters clearly spelled out the limited nature of the Anglo-French Entente. But Cambon held two strong cards. One was Grey’s conviction that Britain owed loyalty to France. Cambon had to be careful not to push Grey too far; if the Foreign Secretary demanded too much of the Cabinet, was repudiated, and then in consequence resigned, Cambon and France were lost. Grey had advanced in France’s direction as far as he could. Cambon’s other card was the transfer of the French Fleet to the Mediterranean in 1912, accompanied by an unwritten understanding that the British Fleet would protect France’s northern coasts. The 1912 letters specifically stated that this movement of ships was not accompanied by a guarantee of wartime cooperation, but Grey and Churchill both knew that this was what France expected.
Grey’s mind was clear; the Cabinet might retreat behind the letters and disavow responsibility, but if it did, he was resolved to resign. Meanwhile, he could only put off the desperate French Ambassador. It was a painful moment: “the very existence of his country42 as a great nation was at stake and it was vital to France to know what Britain would do,” Grey said. But the Foreign Secretary did not dare hold out hopes which might be unjustified. He did not permit himself to “go one inch beyond43 what the Cabinet had authorized.” “The Cabinet thought44 that for the moment the British Government were unable to guarantee us their intervention,” Cambon reported Grey saying. “Public opinion in Britain and the present mood of Parliament would not allow the Government to commit Britain formally at present.” Cambon permitted himself to ask whether England “would await the invasion45 of French territory before intervening”; in that case, he added dryly, “intervention would be too late.” He reminded the Foreign Secretary of what Grey already knew: that an isolated Britain, facing a victorious Germany, “would find herself in a state46 of dependence.” Grey could only repeat that the Cabinet could not make a commitment without consulting Parliament. In this respect, he added significantly, “the question of Belgian neutrality47 could become an important factor and it is probably that point which Parliament will raise first with the Cabinet.”
The rallying point for those members of the Cabinet wishing to avoid entanglement in war was that while Britain might have a moral obligation to and a strategic interest in France, the British government was not bound by treaty to come to France’s aid. Belgium was different. Since the sixteenth century, England had been unwilling to see the Low Countries in the hands of a Great Power. To keep the Channel coasts out of threatening hands, England had fought Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV, and the Emperor Napoleon. The nation of Belgium had arisen from the ruins of Bonaparte’s empire, and in 1839 its perpetual neutrality had been guaranteed by France, Britain, Prussia, and Austria. When war broke out between Prussia and France in 1870, Gladstone made certain that Bismarck understood Britain’s commitment to Belgian neutrality. The Prussian Chancellor gave assurances and the army of the elder Moltke advanced into France without trespassing on Belgium. The language of the 1839 treaty was unusual on one point: it gave the signatories the right, but not the duty, of intervention in case of violation. In 1914, as the possibility of German violation loomed, the noninterventionists in the Cabinet clung to this point. Britain, they said, had no obligation to defend Belgium, especially if Belgium itself chose not to fight. If the Belgian Army simply lined the roads while the German Army passed, British troops need not be committed. No one knew what Belgium would do. Even Churchill, keenly aware of the threat posed by a Belgium in German hands, believed that, given a German ultimatum, Belgium would protest formally and then submit.
Each day during this crisis week, the Conservative Party leader, Andrew Bonar Law, came to Grey’s room off the Commons Chamber to get the latest news. Bonar Law said that his party’s feelings had not yet jelled. He doubted that Conservatives would be overwhelmingly in favor of war unless Belgium was invaded; in that event, he said, the party would be unanimous.
In the Liberal Party, antiwar feelings ran high: “About the same time48 a very active Liberal member came up to me in the Lobby,” Grey wrote, “and told me that he wished me to understand that under no circumstances whatever ought this country to take part in the war, if it came. He spoke in a dictatorial tone, in the manner of a superior addressing a subordinate, whom he thought needed a good talking to.... I answered pretty roughly... that I hoped we should not be involved in a war, but that it was nonsense to say that there were no circumstances conceivable in which we ought to go to war. ‘Under no circumstances,’ was the [Member’s] retort. ‘Suppose Germany violates the neutrality of Belgium?” [Grey asked]. For a moment he paused, like one who, running at speed, finds himself suddenly confronted with an obstacle unexpected and unforeseen. Then he said with emphasis, ‘She won’t do it.’ ‘I don’t say she will, but supposing she does,’ [Grey persisted.] ‘She won’t do it,’ he repeated confidently, and with that assurance he left me.”
Late on the thirty-first, after Germany had issued its twelve-hour ultimatum to Russia, Grey tried to position Belgium outside the arena of war. In similar dispatches, addressed to both the French and German governments, he asked each for an assurance that Belgian neutrality would be respected provided it was not violated by another Power. France immediately agreed. The German reply was evasive. Jagow told Goschen that he would have to consult the Emperor and the Chancellor before he could answer, and “he rather doubted49 whether they could answer at all, as any reply they might give could not fail, in the event of war, to have the undesirable effect of disclosing to a certain extent part of their plan of campaign.”
Grey’s official diplomatic contacts in Berlin were with the Chancellor, Bethmann, and the State Secretary, Jagow. Although disappointed when they rejected his conference proposal, he refused to assign blame. Bethmann remained Chancellor and, said Grey, “the issues of peace and war50 seemed to depend still more on him than on anyone.” Nevertheless, as the days slipped away and no positive signal came from Berlin, Grey began to feel “there were forces51 other than Bethmann-Hollweg in the seat of authority in Germany. He was not the master of the situation.” Grey’s fear that Bethmann was losing control was far more justified than the Foreign Secretary could know. The German General Staff was in command; nothing the Chancellor could do, even pleading certain knowledge that violation of Belgium’s neutrality would bring England into the war, made any difference. At stake, in the eyes of the generals, was victory or defeat. Only adherence to the carefully sculpted, immensely detailed Schlieffen war plan could guarantee victory. The Schlieffen plan meant attacking France by way of Belgium.
The interlocking gears of the European alliance systems gave events a grim inevitability. Germany was obliged by the terms of her alliance with Austria to support her ally in a war with Russia. France was obliged by the terms of her alliance with Russia to enter any conflict involving Russia and Germany. Germany, thus, had known for twenty years that if she went to war, it would be on two fronts: against Russia and France. Observing the principle of concentration of forces, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1906, decreed that, in a two-front war, “the whole of Germany52 must throw itself upon one enemy, the strongest, most powerful, most dangerous enemy, and that can only be France.” The Russian Army, though larger, was ponderous and ill equipped; Russia could always frustrate victory by retreating, as Kutuzov had done when facing Napoleon. France, the first victim, was to be overwhelmed by the suddenness and power of the German lunge; in 1906, before retiring, Schlieffen allocated seven eighths of the German Army to the west, while one eighth was to fend off the Russians in the east. The French campaign, he estimated, would take six weeks.
The French Army was inferior to the German in numbers, but not in equipment, patriotism, or courage. Dug in behind the massive fortress system constructed along the Franco-German frontier, its flanks anchored in the neutral territory of Belgium in the north and Switzerland in the south, France’s army felt confident of holding the Teutons until the Slav steamroller began to crunch down upon the German rear. Schlieffen assessed this and came to an inescapable conclusion: to guarantee speedy victory in the west, he could not allow Belgium to remain neutral. By travelling through Belgium, he could avoid a frontal assault on the French fortresses, envelop the French left flank, rush down on Paris, and destroy the French Army. Accordingly, he allocated sixteen army corps (700,000 men in thirty-four divisions) to the massive right wing of the German Army in the west. This juggernaut was to roll through Belgium. Schlieffen hoped that the Belgian Army of six divisions would not resist and, especially, that it would not destroy the railways and bridges he needed to maintain his tight schedule. If Belgium did fight, she would be annihilated. Schlieffen’s plan was never seriously questioned by the Kaiser or the civilian leaders of the Reich. It was adopted and fine-tuned by his successor, Helmuth von Moltke, nephew of the victor of the Franco-Prussian War. Moltke had no qualms: “We must put aside53 all commonplaces as to the responsibility of the aggressor,” he said. “Success alone justifies war.”
The average Englishman in the street, the House of Commons, or the Cabinet had no inkling of the Schlieffen plan. To him, the neutrality of Belgium was fixed and immutable. A breaking of the 1839 treaty and a violation of Belgian neutrality were the only Continental events which might bestir such an Englishman to war. The German generals knew this and did not care. Expecting a short, victorious Continental war, they had taken the likelihood of British belligerency into account and estimated it to be of minimal significance. The size of the British Expeditionary Force—four or six divisions—was well known; should the English choose to place these men in the path of the German juggernaut, they would be ground under along with any Frenchmen or Belgians who got in the way. “The more English the better,”54 Moltke said to Tirpitz, meaning that if the British Army were disposed of in Belgium, he wouldn’t have to worry about it turning up elsewhere.fn2 Bethmann abjectly surrendered to the General Staff on invading Belgium. “Military opinion55 held that a condition of success was passage through Belgium,” he wrote after the war. “The offense against Belgium was obvious and the general political consequences of such an offense [i.e., England’s reaction] were in no way obscure.... General von Moltke was not blind to this consideration, but declared that it was a case of absolute military necessity. I had to accommodate my view to his.... It would have been too heavy a burden of responsibility for a civilian authority to have thwarted a military plan that had been elaborated in every detail and declared to be essential.”
Moltke remained at his spa in Karlsbad while Austria prepared and delivered her ultimatum. The General was not needed in Berlin because every soldier, bullet, soup kitchen, and railway car had been assigned; meanwhile, his absence from the capital helped create the image of calm which the Wilhelmstrasse was promoting. Once Moltke returned, he began sending memoranda to Jagow and Bethmann. On July 26, he sent Jagow a draft of a German ultimatum, demanding free passage of German troops through Belgium. The demand was excused by saying that Germany had “reliable information”56 of “France’s intention to advance against Germany through Belgian territory.” If Belgium did not resist, she was to be offered restoration of independence after the war and possible territorial aggrandizement at the expense of France. If Belgium resisted, she would be treated as an enemy. Jagow prettied up the ultimatum with cushioning phrases (“...with the deepest regret”;57 “...with the best of good will”) and on July 29 sent it to the German Ambassador in Brussels, instructing him to keep it in his office safe until further notice.
On Sunday, August 2, Moltke sent “some suggestions58 of a military-political nature” to Jagow. Moltke revealed that he had already drafted a treaty of alliance with Switzerland and sent a copy to the Chief of the Swiss General Staff; all the Wilhelmstrasse had to do, he said, was to ratify the documents. Moltke suggested instigating uprisings against the British in India, Egypt, and South Africa; he urged that Sweden be persuaded to attack Russia in Finland; he proposed that Japan be urged to attack Russia in the Far East. By August 3, Moltke’s tone with Jagow became peremptory: “The Belgian Government must be informed59 on Tuesday, 4 August... that to our regret, we shall be forced... to put into execution the measures of self-protection against the French menace which we have already described.... This communication is a necessity, inasmuch as our troops will already be entering upon Belgian territory early tomorrow morning.” On August 4, Moltke ordered the State Secretary to tell Great Britain that “Germany’s procedure in Belgium60 was compelled.... This war... is a question for Germany not only of her whole national existence and of the continuation of the German Empire created through so many bloody sacrifices, but also of the preservation and maintenance of German civilization and principles as against uncivilized Slavdom. Germany is unable to believe that England will be willing to assist, by becoming an enemy of Germany, in destroying this civilization—a civilization in which English spiritual culture has for ages had so large a share. The decision... lies in England’s hands.” To ensure that everyone in London read his words, Count von Moltke instructed Jagow to send the message “uncoded.”61
On Saturday morning, August 1, when Asquith met the Cabinet, Russia had mobilized; Germany and France were on the brink. The Cabinet was deeply divided on the question of British intervention: some were opposed no matter what the provocation; most were willing to consider it only if Belgian neutrality was threatened. Grey, torn between his sympathies for France and his loyalty to the principle of Cabinet responsibility, wished to move the ministers as far as he could in the direction of France without forcing resignations. Asquith privately supported Grey and was resolved to resign if the Foreign Secretary departed, but in public he temporized, trying to hold his government together. “Winston very bellicose62 and demanding immediate mobilization, occupied at least half the time,” he wrote to Venetia after the meeting. “Resignations were threatened. Morley declared, ‘We should declare now and at once that in no circumstances will we take a hand.’ The main controversy pivots upon Belgium and its neutrality. We parted in a fairly amicable mood and are to sit again at 11 tomorrow, Sunday.... If we go to war, we shall have a split in the Cabinet. Of course, if Grey went, I should go and then the whole thing would break up.”
Maneuvering within the Cabinet, Grey had two goals: maximum support for France and an unconditional guarantee of Belgian neutrality. On Saturday morning, the strength of the antiwar group precluded both. On Saturday afternoon, Cambon reminded Grey through Nicolson that “it was at our request63 that France had moved her fleets to the Mediterranean, on the understanding that we undertook the protection of her northern and western coasts.” Now, failing the protection of the British Fleet, France’s Channel and Atlantic coasts lay naked to the High Seas Fleet. Grey promised that he would present the problem to the Cabinet on Sunday morning.
Belgian neutrality was the single issue which created a Cabinet majority, but Germany had not yet directly threatened Belgium. Further, Britain could not be sure that the Belgians would resist a German invasion. Britain could not compel Belgium to fight; neither could Britain go to war to defend a passive Belgium. Indeed, it was the position of the peace group in the British Cabinet that a “simple traverse”64 of Belgian territory by German troops would not be a cause for British intervention.
On Saturday morning, while the Cabinet was meeting, the men of the City, the managers of British capital and finance, awoke in panic to war’s proximity. The Governor of the Bank of England called on Lloyd George to let him know that the City was vehemently opposed to British intervention. Lloyd George later used this episode to refute the accusation that “this was a war intrigued65 and organized and dictated by financiers for their own purpose.” “I saw Money66 before the war,” the Chancellor wrote. “I lived with it for days and did my best to study its nerve, for I knew how much depended on restoring its confidence; and I say that Money was a frightened and trembling thing: Money shivered at the prospect. It is a foolish and ignorant libel to call this a financier’s war.” Asquith received the same message, not only from bankers and financiers but from cotton men, steel men, and coal men from the north of England. All were “aghast at the bare idea67 of our plunging into a European conflict, how it would break down the whole system of credit with London at its center, how it would cut up commerce and manufacture...” The Prime Minister hit hard at these critics. The men of the City, he said, “are the greatest ninnies68 I ever had to tackle. I found them all in a state of funk like old women chattering over teacups in a cathedral town.”
Asquith’s foresight was as flawed as that of his countrymen. When the crisis arose, he saw no reason why Britain should be more than a spectator to the Continental Armageddon. On July 26, when a visitor mentioned Belgium, Asquith declared, “We have made no pledges69 to them.” As the crisis evolved and magnified within the Cabinet, it became clear that, whatever he did, Asquith would suffer losses. If he supported Grey, then Morley, Burns, and others would go; without Grey, he would go. The key lay with a middle group, who clung to Britain’s lack of treaty obligation to France and assumptions that moral obligation could not dictate intervention in a war which was a struggle between the two Continental alliance systems. These men reflected the views of the vast majority of Liberals in the House, the Liberal press, and Liberal voters in the country. Asquith begged his colleagues to compromise; he asked ministers to sleep on their views, to see where adjustments were possible. Meanwhile, he went on with his life. He attended small dinner parties, played bridge, golfed and motored on weekends. His mind was still on Ireland; and on July 30, after the Fleet had gone to Scapa Flow and Grey had rejected the German bid for British neutrality, Asquith still was sitting in the Cabinet Room, a large map of Ulster spread across his lap, trying to make sense of the statistics of population and religion in the six counties. He wrote to Venetia Stanley several times a day, complaining that events were conspiring to keep them apart, and confiding in her every twist of Cabinet argument. It was Venetia he told about getting the King out of bed after midnight on Friday, July 31: Late that evening, Asquith learned that the Kaiser was complaining that his peace efforts were being frustrated by the Tsar’s decree of general mobilization. Asquith drafted a personal appeal on the subject from King George to Nicholas II, and at 12:45 A.M. took a taxi to Buckingham Palace to obtain the sovereign’s approval. The King awakened, pulled a brown dressing gown over his nightshirt, and came to the Audience Room to meet the Prime Minister and read and sign the proposed appeal. His only change was to begin with “My dear Nicky”70 and close with “Georgie.”fn3
In the end, Asquith permitted events on the Continent to outpace and influence decisions of the British government. The German ultimatum demanding submission by Belgium within twelve hours forced Britain to choose. Asquith’s achievement was that, when the choice was made, Government, Party, and country were united behind him.
On Saturday evening, August 1, Churchill sat in his room at the Admiralty. He still thought that peace had a chance. Not a shot had been fired between the Great Powers; personal telegrams were humming back and forth between the Kaiser and the Tsar. Then came the news that Germany had declared war on Russia:
“I walked across the Horse Guards Parade72 and entered 10 Downing Street by the garden gate. I found the Prime Minister upstairs in his drawing room; with him were Sir Edward Grey [and] Lord Haldane.... I said that I intended instantly to mobilize the Fleet... and that I would take full personal responsibility to the Cabinet the next morning. The Prime Minister, who felt himself bound to the Cabinet, said not a single word, but I was clear from his look that he was quite content. As I walked down the steps of Downing Street with Sir Edward Grey, he said to me, ‘You should know I have just... told Cambon that we shall not allow the German fleet to come into the Channel.”
Grey was ahead of himself in making this commitment. On Sunday morning, Grey brought the Cabinet along, urging that “we could not stand73 the sight of the German Fleet coming down the Channel and, within sight and sound of our shores, bombing the French coast.” The majority agreed and Grey was authorized to tell Cambon officially what he had already said the night before: the High Seas Fleet would be held at bay. This was too much for John Burns, who promptly resigned.
Asquith’s day had begun when, while he was still at breakfast, Lichnowsky was announced. “He was very emotional,”74 Asquith recorded, “and implored me not to side with France. He said that Germany, with her army cut in two between France and Russia, was far more likely to be crushed than France. He was very agitated, poor man, and wept. I told him that we had no desire to intervene and that it rested largely with Germany to make intervention impossible if she would 1) not invade Belgium, and 2) not send her fleet into the Channel to attack the unprotected north coast of France. He was bitter about the policy of his government in not restraining Austria and seemed quite broken-hearted.”
There were two Cabinet meetings on Sunday, August 2, from eleven A.M. to two P.M. and again from six-thirty P.M. to eight-thirty P.M. At the second, the majority of the Cabinet agreed that if Belgian neutrality was violated and Belgium resisted, Britain would enter the war. Ministers could not imagine Belgium fighting valiantly against the invader while appealing in vain to Great Britain. Sunday evening, Grey and Haldane dined together at the Lord Chancellor’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate. It was evident, Haldane wrote later, “that the country would... be unable75 to keep out of the war. We had arrived at this same conclusion on different grounds. He felt what we owed to France and that our national interest was bound up with her preservation. I thought from my study of the German General Staff that once the German war party had got into the saddle and the sword had been drawn from the scabbard, it would be a war not merely for the overthrow of France and Russia but for the domination of the world. I knew that if we kept out and allowed Germany to get possession even for a time of the northeastern shores of France, our turn would come later and that we should be in the greatest peril, our Navy notwithstanding, and that we might go down without a friend in the world, under a tremendous combination against us.” While the two friends talked, a box was brought in to the Foreign Secretary announcing the German ultimatum to Belgium. “Grey asked me76 what my prescription was,” Haldane said. “My answer: Immediate mobilization. He agreed. We decided to go without delay to see the Prime Minister. We found him with some company and took him into another room.... Asquith agreed at once. I said to the Prime Minister, who was also War Minister, that as on the next day he would be occupied overwhelmingly with Cabinets and communications to Parliament, he had better write a letter entrusting to me the business91 of going over to the War Office and in his name, mobilizing my old organization. He agreed.”
Within thirty-six hours, the mood in London was transformed. On Saturday morning, a majority of Britons had been resolved that Britain must not become involved in a Continental war. Tens of thousands of Londoners planned to attend a great antiwar demonstration scheduled on Sunday for Trafalgar Square. Then came the news of the threatened German invasion of Belgium. A wave of indignation rolled over the nation, sweeping up the mass of Britons who, although reluctant to fight for France, sprang to the side of neutral Belgium. The Trafalgar Square demonstration evaporated, and on Sunday afternoon, crowds shouting for war with Germany poured into Whitehall, jamming Downing Street. The next morning, Monday, August 3, a Bank Holiday, was a beautiful, cloudless English summer day. The city was packed with excited holiday crowds wanting to participate in the rapidly unfolding historic events. By noon, a dense mass filled Whitehall from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament; hundreds were buying and waving small Union Jacks, and groups of young men attempted to sing the “Marseillaise.”
At eleven A.M. the Cabinet met. During the night, King George had received an appeal from King Albert of the Belgians asking Great Britain to uphold her treaty obligation to defend his nation’s neutrality. The German ultimatum and Belgium’s decision to oppose the passage of Alexander von Kluck’s thirty-four divisions still were unreported in London, but enough was known to galvanize the British Cabinet. Before the meeting, two ministers, Sir John Simon and Lord Beauchamp, resigned, joining Morley and Burns, but there the defections stopped. Lloyd George, the key figure, was moving toward Asquith and Grey. The Cabinet sanctioned mobilization of the British Fleet and Army, although no decision to send the Expeditionary Force to France was made. Discussion of Grey’s speech to the Commons that afternoon absorbed the session; the Foreign Secretary reviewed the points he intended to make; the Cabinet assented. As the Cabinet was meeting, Haldane had gone to the War Office. He returned to his old room as Minister of War and summoned the Army Council. “Their breath was somewhat77 taken away,” he wrote, “when I told them that I had come with authority to direct immediate mobilization of the Expeditionary and Territorial forces.... I told the generals that the question of whether the Expeditionary Force would actually be dispatched... would not be decided until the issue of peace or war had been disposed of by the Cabinet, the Sovereign, and Parliament, but they must be ready.”
Grey had begun making notes for his speech to the Commons after the Cabinet meeting on Sunday evening. He did not finish before falling asleep. On Monday morning he was overwhelmed by telegrams. From eleven to two he was with the Cabinet and at two he returned to his room at the Foreign Office. He had one hour before he was to rise in the House. He hoped to use the time to slip away for lunch at Queen Anne’s Gate and then work on his notes. It was not to be. Immediately upon returning to the Foreign Office, he was informed that the German Ambassador was waiting to see him. Grey felt he had no choice—“time must be made78 to see him.” “Lichnowsky’s first words told me that he had brought nothing from Berlin,” but the Ambassador must report to Berlin what was happening in London. What had the Cabinet decided? What was Grey going to say to the House? Would it be a declaration of war? The Foreign Secretary replied that he would not propose a declaration of war but would offer a statement of conditions. What conditions? Lichnowsky asked. Would the neutrality of Belgium be one of them? The Foreign Secretary answered that, much though he wished to satisfy Lichnowsky—“for no man had worked harder79 to avert war... or more genuinely hated this coming war”—he could give no information in advance of his speech. Lichnowsky begged that Belgium neutrality not be named as a casus belli. He knew nothing of the plans of the German General Staff, he said, and he could not believe that they included “a serious violation” of Belgian neutrality. But it might be that Moltke’s soldiers would “go through one small corner of Belgium.” Grey was convinced that the German Ambassador was telling the truth in his disclaimer of personal knowledge of German military plans. Immensely saddened, hard pressed for time, unable to arrest the onrushing tide of war, Grey spoke to Lichnowsky for half an hour, standing in front of his door. The Ambassador departed. It was the last time the two men saw each other officially.
Just before three, Grey left the Foreign Office to walk to the Houses of Parliament. The crowd in Whitehall was so dense that police had to open a path. Grey found the House of Commons80 overflowing: the green benches packed with members, shoulder to shoulder; other members sitting in rows of chairs placed four abreast in the Gangway. In the Peers’ Gallery, Lord Lansdowne was wedged next to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Lord Curzon, unable to find a seat, stood behind in a doorway. Every seat in the Diplomatic Gallery was taken except two, which attracted attention as if they had been painted orange; they belonged to the German and Austrian ambassadors. Despite the packed hall, the crowd was silent and members were startled when the Chaplain, backing away from the Speaker, stumbled noisily over chairs unexpectedly placed in the aisle behind him.
Grey came onto the floor of the House, wearing a light summer suit and carrying two worn red Foreign Office dispatch boxes. His entry was unobtrusive; he had taken his seat on the Treasury Bench before he was noticed and cheered. From the Press Gallery, his face seemed “extraordinarily pale, with a curious redness, of nights without sleep, too much reading and writing, around the eyes.” Lloyd George and Churchill came in together, the Chancellor with dishevelled hair and a face drained of color, the First Lord with his eyes on the floor and a cone of paper twisting perpetually in his hands. The House cheered them both, but the louder acclaim was for Churchill, no longer the Tory renegade, now the man responsible for the British Navy. Asquith came in, his face pink, his hair brilliantly white, and, to further cheers, took his seat before the Dispatch Box.
As he sat waiting to deliver the most important speech of his life, Grey’s thoughts went back twenty-eight years to April 1886, when, as a new Member and a new bridegroom, he had watched Gladstone introduce his first Home Rule bill to a crowded House. At the thought of all that had happened in the interim—the death of his wife, the present imminence of war—Grey (he confessed later to a friend) almost broke down. Yet when the Speaker called his name, he remembered later that “I do not recall feeling nervous. At such a moment there could be neither hope of personal success nor fear of personal failure. In a great crisis, a man who has to act or speak stands bare and stripped of choice. He has to do what is in him to do.”
At three-ten P.M., Grey rose and began to speak. His words were “grave,” “dignified,” “clear,” and “unadorned,” although behind the quiet voice, correspondents noted “suppressed fire” and “a certain terrible indignation.” He began with the simple, dreadful truth:
“Mr. Speaker, last week I stated that we were working for peace, not only for this country, but to preserve the peace of Europe. Today it is clear that the peace of Europe cannot be preserved.” He asked the House to approach the crisis from the point of view of “British interests, British honour, and British obligations.” He gave the history of the military conversations with France. He reminded his listeners that he had always promised that he “would have no secret engagement to spring upon the House” and declared this still to be true. France had a treaty with Russia which was dragging her into war, but “we are not parties to the Franco-Russian alliance and we do not even know the terms of that alliance.” Nevertheless, Britain was bound to France, if not by obligation, then by honor and interest. He revealed the naval arrangement by which the French Fleet had been transferred to the Mediterranean, leaving “the northern and western coasts of France absolutely undefended.” He reiterated that Britain had made no commitment to defend those coasts. Nevertheless, he said, “my own feeling is that if a foreign fleet, engaged in a war which France had not sought and in which she had not been the aggressor, came down the English Channel and bombarded and battered the unprotected coasts of France, we could not stand aside [cheers broke out in the House] and see the thing going on practically within sight of our eyes, with our arms folded [the cheering mounted in volume], looking on dispassionately, doing nothing!”
Grey clenched his right fist, raised it, and at the word “nothing,” slammed it down on the Dispatch Box. The House, observing this unique display of emotion by the Foreign Secretary, exploded with a roar. When the noise subsided, Grey added quietly, “And I believe that would be the feeling of this country.”
In the greater roar that followed, Grey knew that he had won the House’s approval for the Cabinet’s Sunday decision to bar the German Fleet from the English Channel.
If defending the Channel and the coast of France was a matter primarily of honour, defending the independence of Belgium—to which Grey turned next—was a matter of treaty obligation, interest, and honor, all wrapped together. The Foreign Secretary cited the language of those treaties. He addressed the temptations of neutrality: “It may be said, I suppose, that we might stand aside, husband our strength, and that, whatever happened in the course of the war, at the end of it, intervene with effect to put things right and to adjust them to our point of view.” This course, Grey warned, would sacrifice both British honor and British interests: “If in a crisis like this we ran away from those obligations of honour and interest as regards the Belgian Treaty, I doubt whether whatever material force we might have at the end of the war would be of very much value in the face of the respect that we should have lost.” The theme which had guided Grey’s diplomacy during the eight years of his ministry then came to the fore: Britain must not permit “the whole of the west of Europe opposite us... falling under the domination of a single power.” “Now, Sir, I ask the House from the point of view of British interests, to consider what may be at stake. If France is beaten in a struggle of life and death, beaten to her knees, loses her position as a Great Power, becomes subordinate to the will and power of one greater than herself... and if Belgium fell under the same dominating influence, and then Holland and then Denmark...” Grey concluded by noting that “the most awful responsibility is resting upon the Government in deciding... what to do.” He asked for support “not only by the House of Commons, but by the determination and the resolution, the courage and the endurance of the whole country.”
Grey’s speech achieved its purpose: he prepared a divided British Parliament and public for war. He had spoken for an hour and fifteen minutes, his words punctuated and interrupted often by fervent, hoarse cheers from the Unionist opposition. His own party had been more subdued, reacting with “brooding anxiety” and “sombre acquiescence.” Asquith, describing the speech to Venetia Stanley, was only moderately generous: “For the most part conversational81 in tone with some of Grey’s usual ragged ends, but extraordinarily well-reasoned and tactful and really cogent.” Lord Hugh Cecil was more acute and more admiring: “Grey’s speech was very wonderful82—I think in the circumstances one may say the greatest speech delivered in our time.... Taking the importance of the occasion, the necessity of persuading many doubtful persons, the extraordinary success it had in that direction, its great dignity, warm emotion, and perfect taste... [it was] the greatest example of the art of persuasion that I have ever listened to.”
When Grey sat down, speakers arose whose divergent messages evoked contrasting reactions. Bonar Law officially confirmed Unionist support of the government’s policy; this was foreknown and the House’s approval was warm but predictable. Then came something wholly unexpected: John Redmond, leader of the Irish Nationalists, announced that Ireland was no longer an issue. “I say to the Government that they may withdraw every one of their soldiers from Ireland. The coasts of Ireland will be defended by her armed sons... the armed Nationalist Catholics in the South will be only too glad to join the armed Protestant Ulstermen in the North.” Members, shouting with joy, leaped to their feet and waved their handkerchiefs. As Redmond later left the hall, Unionist M.P.’s, his implacable foes of a week before, reached to shake his hand. Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Labour Party, struck a dissident note. Grey’s speech, he said, would send “echoes down through history.” But, said MacDonald, “I think he is wrong. I think the Government... is wrong.” Grey had not persuaded him that the country was truly in danger. “There has been no crime committed by statesmen of this character without those statesmen appealing to their nation’s honour. We fought the Crimean War because of our honour. We rushed to South Africa because of our honour.” The House did not like MacDonald’s speech, and showed its displeasure; next morning, the Daily Mail called the speech “incomprehensible.”fn4
The debate was suspended for dinner. When it resumed, Grey, still on the Front Bench, was handed a message from the Belgian Ambassador in London. It announced the German ultimatum to Belgium. The Belgian Council of State had been given twelve hours to make its decision. The Council required only nine hours. Declaring that to accept the German demand would “sacrifice the honor83 of the nation,” Belgium declared itself “firmly resolved to repel by all means in its power every attack upon its rights.”
Grey passed the dispatch to the Prime Minister and then to others on the Front Bench. Leaving the House with Grey, Churchill asked the Foreign Secretary, “What happens now?”84 “Now,” replied Grey, “we shall send them an ultimatum to stop the invasion of Belgium within 24 hours.” Back in his room, he received the American Ambassador, Walter Page. Did Britain expect Germany to bow to her ultimatum? Page asked. Grey shook his head. “No, of course everybody knows85 there will be a war.” He stopped for a moment, struggling for words. When he resumed, his eyes were filled with tears. “Thus, the efforts of a lifetime86 go for nothing. I feel like a man who has wasted his life.” At dusk that evening, Grey stood with a friend at his window in the Foreign Office, looking down at the lamps being lit in St. James’s Park. It was then that the unpoetic Sir Edward Grey uttered the lines which memorably signalled the coming of the First World War. “The lamps are going out87 all over Europe,” he said. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
At this hour, Germany declared war on France. Excusing the blow that Moltke was about to deliver, Bethmann told the Reichstag that France was at fault. He cited several violations of the German frontier and German airspace: eighty French officers in Prussian uniforms had tried to cross the frontier in twelve motorcars; French aviators had thrown “bombs on the railway88 at Karlsruhe and Nuremberg.” (A subsequent check of German newspapers published in the allegedly bombed areas revealed that both planes and bombs had gone unnoticed.) Jagow, hoping to influence foreign opinion, telegraphed the German ambassadors in London and Rome that “a French physician89 with the aid of two disguised officers attempted to infect the wells of... Metz with cholera bacilli. He [the physician] was shot.”
On Tuesday morning, August 4, the German Army crossed the Belgian frontier. The British Cabinet met at eleven o’clock to hold what Asquith dryly described as an “interesting” session: “We got the news90 that the Germans had entered Belgium and had announced... that if necessary they would push their way through by force of arms. This simplifies matters, so we sent the Germans an ultimatum to expire at midnight.” At two o’clock, Asquith walked to the House to announce the sending of the ultimatum. Again, Whitehall was filled with excited crowds wildly cheering every person going in or out of 10 Downing Street. The Commons took the news of the ultimatum “very calmly and with a good deal of dignity,” Asquith reported. This dispassionate style belied the emotions churning beneath. “This whole thing92 fills me with sadness,” he confessed to Venetia Stanley. “We are on the eve of horrible things.” Margot saw her husband immediately after his speech when she went to visit him in the Prime Minister’s room at the House of Commons:
“‘So it is all up,’93 I [Margot] said.
“He answered without looking at me:
“‘Yes, it’s all up.’
“I sat down beside him with a feeling of numbness in my limbs.... Henry sat at his writing table leaning back.... What was he thinking of?... His sons?... would they all have to fight?... I got up and leaned my head against his; we could not speak for tears.”
Asquith went for an hour’s drive by himself. He returned to Downing Street to wait for the expiration of the British ultimatum. The hours passed. Margot looked in on her sleeping children, then joined her husband, who was sitting around the green table in the Cabinet Room with Grey, Haldane, and others, smoking cigarettes. At nine o’clock Lloyd George arrived. No one spoke. Eyes wandered back and forth from the clock to the telephone which linked the Cabinet Room to the Foreign Office. Through the windows, open to the warm night air, came the sound of an immense crowd singing “God Save the King.” Against the anthem, the chimes of Big Ben intruded, signalling the approach of the hour. Then—“Boom!”—the first stroke sounded. Every face in the Cabinet Room was white. “Boom! Boom! Boom!”—eleven times the clapper fell against the great bell. When the last stroke fell, Great Britain was at war with Germany.
fn1 An English appreciation of France’s courage came after the war, from Churchill:
“There was never any chance41 of France being allowed to escape her ordeal. Even cowardice and dishonour would not have saved her. The Germans had resolved that if war came from any cause, they would take and break France forthwith as its first operation. The German military chiefs burned to give the signal, and were sure of the result. She would have begged for mercy in vain. She did not beg.”
fn2 Indeed, so confident was the German General Staff of the minimal impact of the British Expeditionary Force that Moltke advised Tirpitz not to risk any ships trying to prevent the transfer of the BEF to the Continent.
fn3 The Tsar replied to King George’s telegram that he “would gladly71 have accepted your proposals had not the German ambassador this afternoon presented a note to my government declaring war.”
fn4 In 1924, Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain.
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