Primary sources*
This book relies heavily on unpublished documents on the Speyer case located in the Home Office and Treasury Solicitor’s files in the National Archives at Kew.† The report of Mr Justice Salter’s Committee of Enquiry (submitted to the Home Secretary on 28 November 1921) was published as a 14-page Parliamentary White Paper: Report made to the Secretary of State for the Home Department by the Certificates of Naturalisation (Revocation) Committee in the case of Sir Edgar Speyer. Parliamentary Papers cmd 1569 (H M S O, London: 1922).
Apart from correspondence in the National Archives, I have cited unpublished letters from four other sources: from Leonora Speyer to Robert Falcon Scott (1906) in the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, from ES to Edward Elgar (October 1914) in the Worcester Record Office (of which I was supplied a copy from Southampton University Library); from ES to Lord Reading (November 1914) in the British Library and from William Orpen to the Secretary of the Royal Academy (November 1914) in the Royal Academy Archives.
Margot Asquith’s diaries in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, provide first-hand evidence of wartime anti-German pressures both on ES and on the Asquiths. Of published letters, I have quoted four: two letters (of 1910 and 1912) from Robert Falcon Scott to ES in, respectively, L Huxley (ed), Scott’s Last Expedition. In Two Volumes. Being the Journals of Captain Scott, vol 1 (Smith Elder, London: 1912) and David Crane, Scott of the Antarctic. A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South (Harper Collins, London: 2005), a letter from ES to Bernard Shaw (June 1915) in Leanne Langley, ‘Building an Orchestra, Creating an Audience. Robert Newman and the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts, 1895–1926’, in The Proms. A New History, (ed) Jenny Doctor and D Wright (Thames and Hudson, London: 2007) and from ES to Mathilde Verne (c.1926) in her Chords of Remembrance (Hutchinson, London: 1936).
ES’s essay, ‘Germany and England as Citizens of the World’, in England and Germany by Leaders of Public Opinion in Both Empires, ed L Stein (Williams & Norgate, London: 1913) pp 35–39 and James Speyer, ‘International Finance as a Power for Peace’, Saturday Evening Post, 18 November 1905, exemplify the brothers’ pre- 1914 optimism. These essays may be compared with Norman Angel’s pre-war classic, The Great Illusion. A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (Heinemann, London: 1913) and with ‘Europe before the War’, chapter 2 of John Maynard Keynes’s postwar classic, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (The Labour Research Department, London: 1920). T S Dugdale (ed), German Diplomatic Documents 1871–1914, vols 2–3 (Methuen, London: 1930) contains references to ES as an unofficial Anglo-German diplomatic go-between in London and Berlin. On James Speyer and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s grant of a title to Eduard Beit, see Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd. The Great Jewish Families of New York (Harper & Row, New York: 1967). Claud Cockburn, In Time of Trouble. An Autobiography (Rupert Hart-Davis, London: 1956) includes a description of ES in New York in 1929.
Charles M Mount, John Singer Sargent. A Biography (Cresset Press, London: 1969), to which Leonora Speyer contributed information, affords glimpses of the Speyers’ pre-war London life. Desmond F Croome and Alan A Jackson, Rails Through the Clay. A History of London’s Tube Railways (Capital Transport Publishing, Harrow Weald, Middlesex: 1993), Stephen Halliday, Underground to Everywhere. London’s Underground Railway in the Life of the Capital (Sutton Publishing, London: 2001) and Hugh Douglas, The Underground Story (Hale, London: 1963) all throw light on ES as chairman of the UERL, the company which founded today’s London Underground.
Henry Wood describes life with the Speyers in My Life of Music (Gollancz, London: 1938). For Grieg’s impressions of that life in 1906 see F Benestad and W H Halverson (eds), Edvard Grieg, Diaries, Articles, Speeches (Peer Gynt Press, Columbus, Ohio: 2001) and Lionel Carley, Edvard Grieg in England (Boydell, Woodbridge: 2006). William Boosey’s Fifty Years of Music (Ernest Benn, London: 1931) contains venomous comment on ES.
Winston S Churchill’s classic The World Crisis 1911– 1918, vol 1, (Odhams, London: n d) and Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill. The Biography of a Marriage (Doubleday, London: 2003) describe the Churchills as neighbours of ES at Overstrand during the last days of peace in 1914, to which add Edward Marsh on ES, ‘Before the Axe Fell’, Sunday Times, 5 February 1939.
Sir Almeric Fitzroy, clerk to the Privy Council, did not conceal his vendetta against ES in his Memoirs, vols 1–2 (Hutchinson, London: 1925). For Kipling’s suspicions of ES in August 1914 see Michael Brock, ‘”Outside His Art”: Rudyard Kipling in Politics’, Kipling Journal, No 245 (March 1988) pp 9–32. Debate between George S Viereck, editor of ‘The Fatherland’, New York, and Cecil Chesterton, editor of ‘The New Witness’, London, on ‘Whether the cause of Germany or that of the Allied Powers is just’, 17 January 1915 (The Fatherland Corporation, New York: 1915) reveals a vicious attack on ES by Cecil Chesterton. On the anti-German temper in England 1914–18, six diaries are illuminating: John Vincent (ed), The Crawford Papers. The Journals of David Lindsay, twenty-seventh Earl of Crawford and tenth Earl of Balcarres 1871–1940 during the years 1871–1940 (Manchester University Press, Manchester: 1984), Viscount Sandhurst, From Day to Day 1914–1915 (Edward Arnold, London: 1928), J M McEwen (ed), The Riddell Diaries. A Selection (Athlone Press, London: 1986), Michael Mac- Donagh, In London During the Great War. The Diary of a Journalist (Eyre & Spottiswoode, London: 1935) Keith Wilson (ed), The Rasp of War. The Letters of H A Gwynne to the Countess Bathurst 1914–18 (Sidgwick & Jackson, London: 1988) and Trevor Wilson (ed), The Political Diaries of C P Scott 1911–1928 (Collins, London: 1970).
Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst. Germans in Britain during the First World War (Berg, Oxford: 1991) cites hostile comment on ES and is in general the definitive authority on its subject. Paul Cohen-Portheim gives a first-hand account of life for enemy aliens in England in Time Stood Still: My Internment in England 1914–1918 (Kemp Hall Press, Oxford: 1931). Cameron Hazelhurst, Politicians at War. July 1914 to May 1915. A Prologue to the triumph of Lloyd George (Cape, London: 1971) cites Lord Northcliffe on German suspects in England. On Sir George Makgill’s Anti-German Union, see Panikos Panayi, ‘The British Empire Union in the First World War’, Immigrants & Minorities, vol 8, Nos 1–2, March 1989, pp 113–28. Lord Charles Beresford’s attack on Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1914 is quoted in Alan Clark (ed), ‘A Good Innings’. The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham (John Murray, London: 1974). For George V’s attitude to Germanophobia see Kenneth Rose, King George V (Macmillan, London: 1984). Edward David (ed), Inside Asquith’s Cabinet. From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse (John Murray, London: 1977) records Cabinet opinion in May 1915. Contemporary comment on Haldane is reproduced in Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party 1914–1935 (Collins, London: 1966) and R V F Heuston, Lives of the Lord Chancellors 1885–1940 (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1987). For Lloyd George’s exploitation of the anti-German temper in 1918 and during the ‘coupon election’ campaign, there is useful information in Robert E Bunselmeyer, The Cost of the War 1914–1919. British Economic War Aims and the Origins of Reparations (Archon Books, Hamden, Conn: 1975), Stephen E Koss, Asquith (Hamish Hamilton, 1985) and A Lentin, Guilt at Versailles. Lloyd George and the Pre-History of Appeasement, (Methuen, London: 1985). For Karl Muck and a sceptical view of his alleged activities in America, see Sheldon S Kagan, ‘Trial By Newspaper: The Strange Case of Dr Karl Muck’, New Jersey Journal of Communication, 1 (Spring 1993) pp 50–62.
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates and contemporary newspaper and periodical reports are invaluable. A Moreton Mandeville, The House of Speyer. A Candid Criticism of Speyer Flotations (London: 1915) is a collection of critical articles on Speyer Bros from the Financial Mail. Other publications cited in this book are: the Altoona Mirror, Boston Sunday Globe, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, English Review, Evening Standard, Frankfurter Zeitung, Irish Times, John Bull, Manchester Guardian, Morning Post, Musical Times, National Review, New Zealand Truth, Nottingham Evening Post, Observer, Pall Mall Gazette, Providence Daily Journal, Saturday Review, Scotsman, Sunday Times, The Times and the Washington Post.
Secondary sources
Media accounts in 1997 of expulsion from the Privy Council contain erroneous and misleading references to ES: see ‘Queen Accepts Aitken’s Resignation’, British Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/ news/06/0626/aitken.shtml and the Independent, 23 June 1997. ‘Speyer, Sir Edgar, baronet (1862–1932)’, the entry by Herbert Grimsditch in the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, London: 1949) pp 828–9, is essentially reproduced by Theodore Barker in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2004) pp 932–3. A sympathetic summary of the background to the Speyer case appears in E F Benson’s As We Are. A Modern Review (Hogarth Press, London: 1932) pp 57, 247–51. A succinct but comprehensive r.sum. of ES’s life may be found in the excellent entry published in Wikipedia at the time of writing (of which the principle author is David Cane): ‘Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet’, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Speyer. Leanne Langley hints at a revisionist view of ES in ‘Points of departure: Orchestral Concerts, Urban Transport and Sir Edgar Speyer in Edwardian London (abstract)’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2007/abouttheproms/conference/conference_ abstract.pdf) and enlarges on it in her stimulating piece, ‘Banker, Baronet, Savior, “Spy”: Sir Edgar Speyer and the Queen’s Hall Proms, 1902–14’. Paper given at ‘The Proms and British Musical Life’ Conference, The British Library, 23 April 2007. (http://www. leannelangley.co.uk/documents/BankerBaronetSaviour- Spy.pdf [accessed date 2011] (I have borrowed from Dr Langley’s irresistible precedent for the title of the present account). There is an entry on Leonora Speyer in the American Dictionary of National Biography, vol 20 (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1999) pp 472–3 and the Oxford Companion to American Literature.
A brief history of the house of Speyer is provided by Alexander Dietz in Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, vol 2 (Frankfurt am Main: 1925) section 81. ES’s influential cousin, the banker Arthur von Gwinner is described in Frederic W Wile, Men around the Kaiser: The Makers of Modern Germany (Heinemann, London: 1913). For the German-Jewish context in England, see Gerhard Hirschfeld, Aubrey Newman, Arnold Paucker, Peter Pulzer (eds), Second chance: Two centuries of German-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom (J C B Mohr, London: 1991) and C C Aronsfeld, ‘Jewish enemy aliens in England during the First World War’, Jewish Social Studies, 18 (4) (October 1956) pp 275–83. On the pre-war Right in England, see J A Thompson and Arthur Media (eds), Edwardian Conservatism: Five Studies in Adaptation (Croom Helm, London: 1988), A J A Morris, The Scaremongers. The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896– 1914 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London: 1986) and John A Hutcheson, Leopold Maxse and the National Review, 1893–1914: right-wing politics and journalism in the Edwardian era (Garland Publishing, New York: 1989). On the wartime press, see Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain, vol 2, The 20th Century (Hamish Hamilton, London: 1984) and J Lee Thompson, Politicians, the Press and Propaganda. Lord Northcliffe and the Great War 1914–1919 (Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio: 1999).
For James Speyer, Count Bernstorff and the supposed German peace initiative of September 1914, see Reinhard R Doerries, Imperial Challenge. Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations, 1908– 1917, tr Christa D Shannon (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: 1989). John N. Horne and Alan Kramer demonstrate the reality of German atrocities in Belgium in German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, New Haven: 2001). On the Lusitania see Thomas A Bailey and Paul B Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster. An Episode in Modern Warfare and Diplomacy (The Free Press, New York: 1975) and on the maltreatment of prisoners, Heather Jones, Violence against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany, 1914–1920 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge: 2011).
The definitive account of the counter-espionage services is Christopher Andrews, The Defence of the Realm. The Authorised History of MI5 (Allen Lane, London: 2009). John McDermott is helpful on clandestine British trade with Germany, ‘Trading with the Enemy: British Business and the Law During the First World War’, Canadian Journal of History, 32, (August, 1997) pp 201– 220 and see too Marc Ferro, The Great War 1914–1918 (Routledge, London: 1991) pp 130–2.
Stephen E Koss’s concise and reliable Asquith (Hamish Hamilton, 1985) may be supplemented by George H Cassar’s measured reassessment, Asquith as War Leader (Hambledon Press, London: 1994) and Roy Jenkins, Asquith (Collins, London: 1988). A critical view of Asquith’s relations with ES is taken in Michael and Eleanor Brock (eds), Asquith’s Letters to Venetia Stanley, (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1982) and in G R Searle, Corruption in British Politics 1895–1930 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987) and A New England? Peace and War 1886–1918 (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2005). On Haldane, Stephen E Koss, Lord Haldane. Scapegoat for Liberalism (Columbia University Press: New York: 1969) is definitive. Daphne Bennett, Margot. A Life of the Countess of Oxford and Asquith (Arena, London: 1986) remains the standard biography pending publication of Margot Asquith’s diaries.
On Lord Reading, see A Lentin, ‘Isaacs, Rufus Daniel, first marquess of Reading (1860–1935)’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol 29 (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2004) pp 404–11. Mr Justice Salter is mentioned in Alan Hyman, The Rise and Fall of Horatio Bottomley, The Biographer of a Swindler (Cassell, London: 1955). There is a concise account of Sir John Simon in R F V Heuston’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors 1940–1970 (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1987) which may be supplemented by David Dutton, Simon. A Political Biography of Sir John Simon (Aurum Press, London: 1992). The critical entry by Robert Stevens on Sir Gordon Hewart in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is revealing.
In the context of the death of two nephews of ES in the war, Tim Grady, The German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool: 2011) is relevant, or see his ‘German Jews in World War I’, History Today, vol 61, November 2011.
On German deportees from England and their reactions, in addition to Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst. Germans in Britain during the First World War (Berg, Oxford: 1991), see Nicoletta F Gullace, ‘Friends, Aliens and Enemies, Journal of Social History (39) 2 (2005) pp 345–67. Philip Hoare, Wilde’s Last Stand: Scandal, Decadence and Conspiracy During the Great War (Duckworth Overlook, London and New York, 1997), 2nd ed, 2011 places Pemberton Billing’s notorious ‘Black Book’ in context.
For the wider context of the war, Sir Ernest Llewellyn Woodward, Great Britain and the War of 1914–1918 (Methuen, London: 1967) and Arthur Marwick, The Deluge. British Society and the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, London: 2006) are authoritative studies. The following can all be recommended: Norman Stone, World War One: A Short History (Allen Lane, London: 2007) for an introductory conspectus; and the masterly analysis by James Joll and Gorden Martel, The Origins of the First World War (Pearson Education, Harlow: 2007); for a valuable narrative of total war, Hew Strachan, The First World War (Simon & Schuster, London: 2003); for detailed accounts, Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War. Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Polity Press, Cambridge: 1986) and Martin Gilbert, First World War (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London: 1994). For a series of 42 essays on the war and its significance, George A Panichas, (ed) Promise of Greatness. The War of 1914– 1918 (Cassell, London: 1968). The following anthologies are highly readable: Guy Chapman (ed) Vain Glory. A miscellany of the Great War 1914–1918 written by those who fought in it on each side and on all fronts (Cassell, London: 1937), Peter Vansittart, (ed), Voices from the Great War (Jonathan Cape, London: 1981) and Dominic Hibberd (ed), The First World War (Macmillan, London: 1990).