‘“Postponing the Evil Day”: Sir Edward Grey and British Foreign Policy.’

T.G. Otte

In the early summer of 1934, some nine months after Edward Grey’s death, the

committee established to organise a memorial to honour the late statesman ran up

against an unexpected obstacle. Plans to put up a tablet with a portrait medallion in

Westminster Abbey, it transpired, fell foul of a recent Ordinance ‘that in future no

memorial at the Abbey should be considered until 10 years after the death of the

person’. It was unfortunate, noted the committee’s chairman, that Grey’s was the first

case to fall under this resolution.1

Unfortunate or not, it was symptomatic of Grey’s treatment by posterity. To

the historically literate, Grey is best known today as Britain’s Foreign Secretary when

‘the lamps [were] going out all over Europe’.2 His record in office remains contested,

though the voices of his detractors drown out all others. To them he was the epitome

of the upper-class ‘amateur’ statesman, a civilian version of the ‘donkeys’ that

supposedly led the British army into the Great War, a gentleman no doubt, certainly

well-meaning, but ultimately unsuited to high office - a priggish Wykehamist who,

through incompetence and obstinacy, made Great Power politics more rigid. To the

public at large Grey is presented as ‘a b***dy awful Foreign Secretary’.3

The market for political reputations is volatile at the best of times, of course,

but in Grey’s case it has been rigged. As David Reynolds has argued in his incisive

study of Winston Churchill’s wartime memoirs, electoral defeat in 1945 paved the

way for Churchill’s later literary triumph. It meant that his version of events before

and during the Second World War came to prevail for half a century afterwards, as it

arguably still does.4 What Churchill did to the history of the 1930s and 1940s, his

predecessor David Lloyd George did to the reputation of Grey and other leading

1

Liberals. He dished them. Ejected from office in 1922, he turned to writing his war

memoirs, in which he insinuated that Grey’s ‘personality was distinctly one of the

elements that contributed to the great catastrophe’, and in which he portrayed him as

‘not made for prompt action’ and as ‘the most insular of our statesmen, who knew less

of foreigners through contact than any minister of the government.’5

It was not the first deception practised by Lloyd George, nor was it his last.

History, according to Toqueville, resembles a picture gallery, with the difference,

however, that on its walls there hangs only a handful of original old masters among a

multitude of copies. Indeed, many historians have copied the Lloyd Georgian original.

Recent revisionist writers have sought, with perhaps more vigour than reasoned

exposition of the evidence, to blame Grey for the outbreak of the war.6 His aloof

personality may help to explain why such criticism somehow stuck. As Keith Robbins

has observed, ‘neither his admirers nor his critics know quite what they should say

about him.’7 To the latter it somehow appeared unbecoming in a statesman to find

solace in country pursuits, while the former viewed with incomprehension mixed with

dismay their fellow fly-fisher’s and foul-fancier’s straying, by accident or absent-

mindedness, into the pell-mell of Westminster.

And yet, Grey’s political longevity was remarkable. He sat in the House of

Commons for thirty one years, for eleven of which he was the irreplaceable Foreign

Secretary, central also to the inner workings of Britain’s last Liberal government. No

doubt, his own reticence, reinforced by his increasingly incapacitating blindness and

compounded by the loss of his private papers in the fire at Fallodon in 1917, left him

an invitingly blank canvass onto which historians and others have projected an image

of their own choice. It is time, then, to let the original Grey shine through the splashes

of Lloyd Georgian and later colours.

2

***

The history of Great Power politics is ‘saturated with agency’.8 Some thought, then,

needs to be given to Grey’s character and background. Here his favourite pastime

offers an insight into the man and politician. Certainly, the qualities needed to excel at

fly-fishing would stand any politician and diplomat in good stead. Both have to be

alert to ‘the untoward tricks’ of wind and currents. These could not be overcome ‘by

sheer strength’, but had to to be ‘dodge[d] and defeat[ed] unobtrusively’. For this

‘[q]uiet, steady, intelligent effort’ was needed; and the sportsman ‘should make guesses

founded upon something which he has noticed, and be ever on the watch for some

further indications to turn the guess into a conclusion. [...] But there is a third which

seems to me important. It is self-control.’9

Grey was an aristocrat, a scion of the border Greys, a landed family from

Northumberland where even the landscape seems to be Whiggish. This branch of the

family had risen to political prominence only fairly recently, but it had produced one

Prime Minister, his great-uncle, the 2nd Earl Grey of 1832 fame, and his grandfather, Sir

George Grey, the long-serving, mid-Victorian Home Secretary, from whom he inherited

his patrician sense of duty. At Balliol he had not exactly displayed the habits of

‘effortless superiority’ which that institution prided itself on inculcating into its students.

Effortless he had certainly been, but hardly superior. His unimpressive academic record

– he scraped a third – and his rustication for idleness are often cited in evidence against

him. But this rather misses an important point. In 1884-5, under the guidance of Mandell

Creighton, then the vicar of neighbouring Embleton, later Dixie Professor of

Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge and Bishop of Peterborough and then London, he

3

educated himself, reading widely especially in politico-philosophical works, and

throughout his life he would count books and reading as his chief pleasures.10

In his outlook, Grey was strongly influenced by J.R. Seeley’s Expansion of

England (1883), which emphasised the imperial theme in Britain’s recent history rather

than the traditional Whig themes of the advance of liberty and constitutional

government.11 In domestic affairs, however, Grey was very much a Radical. With others

of the 1885/6 intake he formed a progressive caucus under the tutelage of John Morley,

who ‘may be said to have been our [political] foster parent’.12 Grey was driven by a

1 Foxley Norris [Dean of Westminster] to Buxton, 22 June 1934, and Cottesloe to Buxon, 24 June 1934, Buxton MSS, British Library, Add. MSS. 87084. I am grateful to Erik Goldstein for the reference. Apart from the blue plaque at 3 Queen Anne’s Gate, and a small, now entirely hidden and somewhat weatherworn medallion at the Downing Street entrance of the Foreign Office, there is no memorial to Grey. My thanks to Richard Smith and Patrick Salmon for reminding me of the latter.

2 As quoted in H.W. Harris, J.A. Spender (London, 1946), 159. Grey’s recollection was less clear, [E.] Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years (2 vols., New York, 1925) ii, 20.

3 M. Parris, The Spectator, 22 Feb. 1997.

4 D. Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London, 2004).

5 D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs (2 vols., London, new ed. 1938) i, 56, 58 and 60. 6 Most recently M. Hastings, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War (London, 2013). Grey’s most persistent scholarly critics is Keith Wilson, see Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904-1914 (Cambridge, 1985); 'Grey' in id. (ed.), British Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Policy: From Crimean War to First World War (London, 1987), 172-97; and ‘The Making and Putative Implementation of a British Foreign Policy of Gesture, December 1905 to August 1914: The Anglo-French Entente Revisited’, Canadian Journal of History xxxi, 2 (1996), 227-55.

7 K. Robbins, Sir Edward Grey: A Biography of Lord Grey of Fallodon (London, 1971), 13. The best appraisal of Grey’s policy is offered by K. Neilson, ‘“Control the Whirlwind”: Sir Edward Grey as Foreign Secretary, 1906-1916’, in T.G. Otte (eds.), The Makers of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt to Thatcher (Basingstoke and New York, 2002), 128-49.

8 C. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London, 2012), xxvii.

9.[E.] Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Fly Fishing (London, rev. ed. repr. 1947 [1st ed. 1899]), 18-20. Interestingly, the book was translated into French, see John Keiger’s article in this collection. One wonders whether a German edition might have prevented later misunderstandings.

10 Grey to Haldane, 8 Nov. 1890, Haldane MSS, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, MS 5903; L. Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton (2 vols., London, 1906) i, 209-10.

4

strong sense of the growing ‘democratisation’ of British society and politics. The age of

the ‘common man’ was approaching, and it behoved the old elites to smooth his passage;

and Grey supported schemes to this effect because he thought them to be right and

necessary. He was ‘a curious combination of the old-fashioned Whig and the Socialist’.13

This combination of principle and pragmatism also characterised Grey’s

approach to foreign policy. Here it is necessary to keep in view the global nature of

British power. A European as much as an Asian power, Britain’s security paradigm was

global, linking her strategic interests on the two continents. Positing a continental against

a ‘Blue Water’ paradigm is thus a false dichotomy, one that few amongst Grey’s

contemporaries were ready to accept. The only other Power straddling both continents,

and so affecting British interests, was Russia. The Russian factor was nothing new. It

had been a constant in Britain’s foreign policy equation since at least the 1820s.14 During

Grey’s foreign secretaryship, however, Britain’s strategic calculus was complicated by,

first, the steep decline of Russia’s power and then its resurgence after 1912. Both

produced significant shifts in the international landscape, and these presented Grey with

challenges of a kind that none of his predecessors had to face.Interwoven with the

consideration of the Russian factor was the experience of Grey’s political generation of

Britain’s international isolation in the 1890s. In 1901, responding to prompts by the

editor of the National Review, Leopold Maxse, Grey encouraged him to trigger a

11 G.M. Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon (London, 1934), 28; Robbins, Grey, 20. 12 S. Buxton, ‘Notes on Asquith’, n.d., Buxton MSS, Add. MSS. 87045; also Grey to Morley, 19 July 1895, Morley MSS, Bodleian Library, Ms.Eng.d.3573.

13 A.J. Balfour, as quoted in R. Jenkins, Mr. Balfour’s Poodle: Peers v. People (London repr. 1989 (pb)), 71.

14 See K. Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy towards Russia, 1894-1917 (Oxford, 1995); also ‘“A Very Internecine Policy”: Anglo-Russian Cold Wars before the Cold War, 1743-1940’, in C. Baxter, M.L. Dockrill and K. Hamilton (eds.), Britain in Global Politics, vol. i, From Gladstone to Churchill (Basingstoke and New York, 2013), 17-49.

5

debate on a ‘new course’ in foreign policy, largely in reaction to the bilious

pronouncements that kept pouring forth from the pages of the semi-official papers at

Berlin. Britain, Grey ruminated, ought to improve relations with Russia ‘& to

eliminate in that quarter the German broker, who keeps England & Russia apart and

levies a constant commission upon us.’15 This was no latter-day ‘diplomatic

revolution’. The operative word was ‘eliminat[ing] the German broker’. An internal

minute by Grey from early 1909 throws a revealing light on his thinking. In the 1880s

and 1890s, he reflected, London ‘used “to lean on Germany”. ... [W]e were kept on

bad terms with France & Russia. We were sometimes on the brink of war with one or

the other; & Germany took toll of us when it suited her.’16

Leaning on Germany, then, came at a price, but breaking this Bismarckian

brokering nexus proved an elusive goal while Russia was in a position of strength. For

the first six years of Grey’s tenure of the Foreign Office, however, Russia was weak.

The double crisis of Russian power, caused by defeat abroad and domestic disruption,

proffered a strategic opportunity, but also entailed grave risks. Not the least of these

was that it unhinged the continental balance of power. Freed from the incubus of a

two-front war, Germany was at liberty to make her weight felt. It was this that was at

the root of disturbances in Europe after 1905, and it also shaped Britain’s dealings

with France.

Grey inherited the Anglo-French convention of April 1904 from his

predecessor, Lord Lansdowne, but he had welcomed this act of imperial consolidation

at the time, because a colonial compromise with France would end London’s

15 Grey to Maxse (private), 24 Nov. 1901, Maxse MSS, West Sussex Record Office, Chichester, Maxse 448; see also W. Mulligan, ‘From Case to Narrative: The Marquess of Lansdowne, Sir Edward Grey and the Threat from Germany, 1900-1906’, International History Review xxx, 2 (2008), 272-302.

16 Min. Grey, n.d., on Goschen to Grey (no. 141), 16 Apr. 1909, The National Archive (Public Record Office), FO 371/673/14511.

6

dependence on the services of the not always honest broker in Berlin.17 It was a

‘cardinal point in our foreign policy’, he affirmed, and ‘the spirit of the agreement is

more important than the letter of the agreement.’18 A number of writers have taken

Grey to task on account of his preoccupation with the ‘spirit’ of the convention and

the implied neglect of Britain’s true interests.19

But Grey had not nailed his colours, let alone his trousers, to the French mast.

He pursued a policy of constructive ambiguity. When, in 1906, Paul Cambon ‘put the

question ... directly & formally’ of British support in the event of a Franco-German

war, he promised no more than ‘benevolent neutrality’, but hinted that ‘public opinion

would be strongly moved in favour of France’ if the latter were not the aggressor.20 It

was a policy of carefully dosed assurances, and it extended to the controversial

military talks, which Grey authorised to continue in January 1906. The obvious

practical advantages of learning the details of French military planning aside,21 the

discussions were to reassure Paris of Britain’s support, provided that France acted

with restraint, and without binding Britain to a definite course of action.

One had to take the French as they were, the ambassador at Paris confirmed:

‘They have an instinctive dread of Germany and an hereditary distrust of England,

17 Grey to Spender, 19 Oct. 1905, Spender MSS, BL, Add. MSS. 46389. This was what Grey had in mind when he emphasised the fact that the convention ‘marks a change of policy’, to Maxse (private), 21 June 1904, Maxse MSS, Maxse 452.

18 Grey, Cannon Hotel speech, 20 Oct. 1905, The Times, 21 Oct. 1905; partially reproduced in Trevelyan, Grey, 90-2.

19 J. Charmley, Splendid Isolation?: Britain, the Balance of Power and the Origins of the First World War, 1874-1914 (London, 1999), 332, echoing Wilson, Policy of the Ententes, 86-99.

20 Memo. Grey, 10 Jan. 1906, Campbell-Bannerman MSS, BL, Add. MSS. 41218; T.G. Otte, ‘“Almost a Law of Nature”: Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Office and the Balance of Power, 1905-1912’, E. Goldstein and B.J.C. McKercher (eds.), Power and Stability: British Foreign Policy, 1865-1965 (London, 2003), 77-118.

21 Grey made much of this later on, Grey to Morley (private), 3 Nov. 1911, Morley MSS, Ms. Eng. d. 3574.

7

and with these characteristics they are easily led to believe that they may be deserted

by England and fallen upon by Germany.’22 France, then, had to be prevented from

yielding under German pressure. In such an event, the 1904 colonial agreement, and

with it Britain’s position in Egypt, might unravel. At the same time, whatever

assurances were given, these had to be conditional so as to dissuade France from

provoking Germany into an act of aggression. Paris was not to take ‘independent

action’ without prior consultation of Britain. There could therefore be no question of a

British guarantee: ‘[A] promise in advance committing this country to take part in a

continental war is ... a very serious [matter] ... it changes the Entente into an Alliance

– and Alliances, especially continental Alliances, are not in accordance with our

traditions.’23

Such assurances were complemented by equally carefully phrased

communications addressed to Germany. These combined assurances that Britain ‘did

not wish to make trouble’ with a strong suggestion that, in the event of a German

onslaught on France, ‘it would be impossible to remain neutral.’24 In this manner, both

France and Germany had to act with restraint, the former not to lose British support,

the latter in order not to bring Britain into any continental conflict. This was not

traditional balance-of-power politics, impossible at any rate given Russia’s weakness.

It was a form of British neo-Bismarckianism, to which the Edwardian generation was

inclined, and it gave London a degree of leverage over France.25

22 Bertie to Grey (private), 15 Mar. 1906, Bertie MSS, TNA (PRO), FO 800/160; K.A. Hamilton, Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador (Woodbridge, 1990), 117.

23 Grey to Bertie (private), 15 Jan. 1906, Bertie MSS, BL, Add. MSS. 63018.

24 Grey to Lascelles (no. 11), 9 Jan. 1906, G.P. Gooch and H.W.V. Temperley (eds.), British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (11 vols., London, 1928-38) iii, no. 229 [hereafter BD].

25 See T.G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865-1914 (Cambridge, 2011), 298-302.

8

To an extent, the 1912 naval arrangement with France continued this policy. It

allowed for the redistribution of the two navies, the Royal Navy concentrating now in

home waters and the French marine nationale in the Mediterranean. But, more so, it

was an exercise in entente management and in containing Germany. The 1912

redistribution was a reaction to recent increases in the naval construction programmes of

the Triple Alliance Powers and the technological advances in naval warfare.

Significantly, Britain had the strength and flexibility to fashion a policy commensurate

with her regional interests. She ‘was faced with alternatives, not necessities.'26

Indeed, Admiralty forward planning envisaged a continued, unrestricted

Mediterranean policy, quite independent of France.27 The Anglo-French notes of

November 1912, and the 'division of labour' between the navies of the two countries, did

not alter that situation. The arrangement had all the advantages of a naval defence pact,

without any of its attendant diplomatic drawbacks. It neither entailed a commitment to

France nor scuttling out of the Mediterranean.28 While the arrangements of 1912-13

entailed a compromise, it was a compromise entered into from a position of relative

strength. Above all, it implied no 'moral commitment' to France, even though, of course,

French diplomats sought to argue the exact opposite.29 An unlikely source bears

eloquent testimony to Britain’s degree of leverage over France – Raymond Poincaré’s

diary. As the July crisis moved to its conclusion, the French president prefaced his

26.K. Neilson, '"Greatly Exaggerated": The Myth of the Decline of Great Britain before 1914’, International History Review xiii, 4 (1991), 704.

27.Memo. Troubridge (secret), 28 Oct. 1912, TNA (PRO), ADM 116/3098; see also T.G. Otte, ‘Grey Ambassador: The Dreadnought and British Foreign Policy’, R.J. Blyth, A. Lambert and J. Rüger (eds.), The Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age (Farnham, 2011), 69-72.

28.Memo. Churchill, 17 July 1912, and Grey to Cambon (private), 22 Nov. 1912, BD x/2, nos. 399 and 416. For a full discussion see P.G. Halpern, The Mediterranean Situation, 1908-1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 90-109.

29.The notion of a binding commitment has been effectively refuted by T. Wilson, 'Britain's "Moral Commitment" to France in August 1914', History lxiv, 212 (1979), 380-90.

9

summary of the instructions to St. Petersburg with the words 'On account of the

ambiguous attitude of England, we let it be known at St. Petersburg ... .'30 Although not

altogether free of duplicity, advising Russia not to precipitate matters was dictated by the

perceived necessity of having to carry Britain with the Franco-Russian group.

Grey appreciated the broader ramifications of Russia's weakness. On taking

office, he expressed his hope that the domestic turmoil in the Russian empire ‘won’t last

too long. I want to see Russia re-established in the councils of Europe & I hope on better

terms with us than she has yet been.’31 Grey was not at all especially sympathetic to

Russia. As any Liberal, he viewed with disdain her autocratic regime. In the spring of

1917, he ‘rejoice[d] at seeing Russia purge her Gov[ernmen]t & strike out for

freedom.’32 In 1905, however, he understood that the waning of Russian power disrupted

the European equilibrium, and that, conversely, that same development allowed for

settling matters with St. Petersburg. Here was an opportunity to accomplish what had

eluded Salisbury and Lansdowne, both of whom had sought to conclude a modus vivendi

with St. Petersburg. Such an arrangement, Grey hoped, would help to consolidate the

security glacis around India, including the Persian Gulf: ‘And if we don’t make an

agreement, we shall be worried into occupying Seistan and I know not how much

besides.’33 There was no hiding the fact that Britain's ability to defend India was limited:

'That is our fundamental argument for the Convention, for we have not got the men to

spare, and that's the plain truth of it.'34

While the 1907 Anglo-Russian convention allowed for further imperial

consolidation, Grey remained wary of Russia. No doubt, the ideological hostility of

many Radicals on the Liberal backbenches made any moves towards further cooperation

with Russia impossible. But Grey’s Russian policy after 1907 was suggestive of a deeper

30.Poincaré, notes journalières, 30 July 1914, Papiers de Poincaré, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Bnfr 16027, fo. 125 r.; for the importance see also S. Schmidt, Frankreichs Aussenpolitik in der Julikrise 1914: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Ausbruchs des Ersten Weltkrieges (Munich, 2009), 322.

10

understanding that the Central Asian compromise was no more than a temporary

arrangement. He could not control Russia35, but nor did he yield to attempts, in 1908-9,

to commit to Russia. As with Franco-German relations, Grey had to perform a delicate

balancing act to ensure that his Russian and Turkish policies did not collide, and that,

more menacingly, Austria-Hungary and Russia did not come to blows.36 The first

objective he achieved, the latter he did not. Indeed, it was to be a constant challenge. An

understanding between the two Eastern monarchies would solve one of the most serious

problems of Great Power politics, as Grey observed in early 1912: ‘[A] war between

them would be very inconvenient. I do not think that we could take part in it, and

intervene on the Russian side in a Balkan War, and yet our absenteeism would prove a

danger to the present grouping of European Powers.’37

In the confused state of affairs during the two Balkan wars Grey sought to

continue his evenhanded policy by supporting joint action by the Powers. Maintaining

the Concert of Europe was the best means of preventing an open Austro-Russian split.38

Lack of influence over Russia, however, always posed a problem. Grey did not privilege

31 Grey to Spring Rice (private), 22 Dec. 1905, Spring Rice MSS, TNA (PRO), FO 800/241; Neilson, ‘“Control the Whirlwind”’, 129-30.

32 Grey to Haldane, 25 Mar. 1917, Haldane MSS, MS 5913.

33 Grey to Fitzmaurice, 24 Sept. 1906, Fitzmaurice MSS, Bowood House, EFm 20. I am grateful to The Most Hon. The Marquess of Lansdowne for granting access to this collection. For the strategic background, see B.J. Williams, 'The Revolution of 1905 and Russian Foreign Policy', in C. Abramsky (ed.), Essays in Honour of E.H. Carr (London, 1974), 101-25.

34.Morley to Minto (private), 19 Sept. 1907, Minto MSS, NLS, MS 12737; see also K. Neilson, ‘Watching the “Steamroller”: British Observers and the Russian Army before 1914’, Journal of Strategic Studies viii, 2 (1985), 199-217.

35 Min. Grey, 15 Apr. 1912, FO 371/1493; also Neilson, ‘“Control the Whirlwind”’, 134.

36 Grey to Lowther (no. 434), 15 Oct. 1908, BD v, no. 383; Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 300.

37 Grey to Bertie (private), 9 Jan. 1912, Grey MSS, TNA (PRO), FO 800/53.

38 Tel. Grey to Bertie (no. 445), 25 Sept. 1912, BD ix/1, no. 745; Asquith to George V, 2 July 1913, CAB 41/34/24.

11

preserving the entente combination over maintaining the unity of the Powers. These two

objects were, in fact, linked for, without coordination with France and Russia, there was

no prospect of moderating St. Petersburg’s moves; and without that, Germany was not

likely to restrain Austria-Hungary. The challenge, and the key to Grey’s relative success

in the Balkan conflicts, was to balance these competing demands. Ultimately, he hoped

to be able to avoid having to choose between them. That he was aware of the tension

between the two and of the inherent risks of this policy, cannot be doubted. Indeed, by

1913-4 Grey understood that the kaleidoscope of Great Power politics was about to turn

once more; and it was better to stay one’s hand until the pieces had settled into a new

pattern:

The best course ... is to let things go on as they are without any new declaration of policy. The alternatives are either a policy of complete isolation in Europe, or a policy of definite alliance with one or the other group of European Powers.

My own desire has been to avoid bringing the choice between these two alternatives to an issue; and I think we have been fortunate in being able to go on for so long as we are.39

The more Russia recovered from her defeat in 1905, the more difficult Anglo-

Russian relations became. Greater Russian assertiveness in Persia and elsewhere in

Central Asia as well as in the Balkans raised doubts about the future viability of the 1907

convention.40 There were various ‘déclarations habituelles’ on the need to continue

cooperation, but renegotiating the compact, it was agreed in London, would raise a host

of ‘awkward questions.’41 For this reason, Grey did not welcome a Franco-Russian

initiative in the spring of 1914 to forge closer Anglo-Russian ties in the shape of a naval

agreement: 'It is a very delicate matter.’42 Indeed, during his talks in Paris, he sought to 39 Grey to Harcourt (private), 10 Jan. 1914, Harcourt MSS, Bod., Ms. Harcourt dep. 442.

40 Grey to Spender (private), 24 Sept. 1912, Spender MSS, Add. MSS. 46389.

41 Quotes from N. Schebeko, Souvenirs: Essai historique sur les origines de la guerre de 1914 (Paris, 1936), 175, and Buchanan to Nicolson, 21 Jan. 1914, Nicolson MSS, TNA (PRO), FO 800/372; J. Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London, 2002), 175-96, gives a flavour of the problems.

42.Min. Grey, n.d., on memo. Nicolson (secret), 17 Apr. 1914, FO 371/2092/17370.

12

smother the scheme under a blanket of technical and practical difficulties. Privately,

however, Grey was adamant that active naval cooperation with Russia was out of the

question.43 Rumours of Anglo-Russian naval exchanges, which had begun to circulate,

he warned the Russian ambassador in late June 1914, 'would do great harm in

Germany ... and might impair our good relations with Germany, which had improved

very much during the last Balkan crisis, and which I wished to maintain.'44

To a large degree, then, Anglo-German relations were a function of Anglo-

Russian relations. Before turning to Germany, one further point is worth noting. The

object of imperial consolidation also guided Grey’s attitude towards Britain’s only

proper ally, Japan. When in opposition, he had been sceptical of the merits of the 1902/5

alliances.45 In office, he appreciated the utility of the combination with the Asian island

power. He actively encouraged a rapprochement between the United States and Japan

1908, and therefore welcomed the Root-Takahira agreement of November 1908 as a de

facto extension of the alliance, calculated to maintain the status quo in the Pacific region.

To the same end, he backed the arrangement between Russia and Japan two years later.46

As for Germany, much ink has been spilled on the antagonism between her and

Britain. It would be a perverse piece of revisionist contrarianism to suggest that this

‘cold war’ between the two countries had not existed. But it needs to be seen in its

proper context. The link between Anglo-German and Anglo-Russian relations has

already been touched upon. In his dealings with Germany, Grey strove for that

43.Grey to Bertie (no. 249, secret), 1 May 1914, FO 371/2092/19288. For German (mis-) perceptions, based on intelligence obtained from the Russian embassy in London, see M. Rauh, 'Die britisch-russische Marinekonvention von 1914 und der Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs', Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen xli, 1 (1987), 37-62.

44.Grey to Buchanan (no. 213), 25 June 1914, FO 371/2092/29293; see also M. Soroka, Britain, Russia and the Road to the First World War: The Fateful Embassy of Count Aleksandr Benckendorff (1903-1916) (Farnborough and Burlington, VT, 2011), 246-48.

45 Grey to Maxse (private), 20 Feb. 1902 and 21 June 1904, Maxse MSS, Maxse 450 and 452; see also I.H. Nish, ‘Edward Grey (1862-1933)’, H. Cortazzi (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits (Leiden and Boston, 2013) viii, 73-84.

46 Grey to Bryce (no. 359, secret), 23 Nov. 1908, and to Rumbold (no. 112), 29 June 1909, BD viii, nos. 357 and 367.

13

evenhandedness which characterised his policy towards France and Russia. ‘Real

isolation of Germany would mean war’, he reflected in the aftermath of the Bosnian

crisis, but ‘so would the domination of Germany in Europe. There is a fairly wide course

between the two extremes in which European politics should steer.’47

This ambition was more easily proclaimed than accomplished in practice. In part,

Grey and his senior diplomats found it difficult to read Germany. Far from inventing the

‘German threat’, their real difficulty lay in the uncertainty about Germany’s motivations

and ambitions. The colourful persona of Germany’s mercurial monarch was one

obstacle, as Grey confessed: ‘I am tired of the Emperor – he is like a great battleship

with steam up and the screws going but no rudder and you cannot tell what he will run

into or what catastrophe he will cause.’48

But matters went beyond the Kaiser’s egregious personality. His role in German

decision-making was, at any rate, increasingly marginal after 1909. If anything, British

uncertainty about Germany mirrored the strategic confusion at Berlin. As Zara Steiner

has argued, ‘[a]s the Germans themselves were divided, no foreign secretary, however

acute, could have accurately read the German riddle’.49 Germany was an enigma

wrapped in the apparently blatant truth of unbridled Weltpolitik rhetoric.

Grey’s policy towards Germany sought to combine accommodation with

compellance. He was ready to make concessions to remove legitimate German

grievances, but was adamant that British naval supremacy could not be compromised or

relations with other Powers be sacrificed, and Berlin had to be compelled to accept this.

In his willingness to accommodate Germany, he not only responded to the ideological

fissures within the Liberal party which pitted ‘economists’ against ‘navalists’. It also

reflected his own conviction that the various European arms races conjured up a new

47 Min. Grey, n.d., on Rodd to Grey (no. 47), 10 Feb. 1909, FO 371/599/6296.

48 Grey to Katherine Lyttelton, 8 Nov. 1908, Lyttelton MSS, Queen Mary College, PP5.

49 Z.S. Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1977), 255-6. Privately Gottlieb von Jagow confirmed that ‘the difficulty is our never having been able to know what Germany really wants’, Rodd to Grey (private), 6 Jan. 1913, Rodd MSS, Bod., box 15.

14

danger, ‘greater ... than that of war – the danger of bleeding to death in times of peace’ in

consequence of increased armaments-related expenditure.50 Any Anglo-German naval

agreement – or for that matter a multilateral arms limitation agreement - had to be based

on reciprocity, however.51 And this proved to be the nub of the problem.

Twice, in 1909 and 1913, Grey’s diplomacy appeared to be close to succeeding.

Berlin’s interest in a ‘scheme for a general good understanding’ with a fixed ratio of

capital ships seemed to vindicate Grey's policy of compellance tempered by

conciliation.52 However, if Grey and the Foreign Office thought that mounting financial

pressure had brought the Germans to their senses, the German chancellor took much the

same view of Grey, whom he considered to be under the cosh of Radicals clamouring for

retrenchment. In the end Berlin overplayed its weak hand. The chancellor’s demand for a

political agreement to accompany a naval convention, pledging British neutrality in the

event of a continental war, was a step too far. In effect, it was tantamount to issuing

Germany with a blank cheque.53

Neither Viscount Haldane in early 1912 nor later Winston Churchill was able to

surmount this obstacle. And yet, by 1913, the Anglo-German naval race was over.

German defence spending had come up against a fiscal ceiling. Lifting it raised the

spectre of a constitutional crisis with enhanced powers for the Reichstag as its most

likely outcome – and that was anathema to the Kaiser’s government. This was

compounded by a shift in the military balance of power in consequence of Russia's

economic and military revival. Spending significant sums on the army and the navy was

a luxury that Germany could no longer afford. The 1913 Army Bill amounted to a

unilateral declaration of naval arms limitation on Berlin's part. Grey was in no doubt 50 Parliamentary Debates (5) xxii (13 Mar. 1911), cols. 1977-91; also Grey to Goschen (no. 89), 14 Mar. 1911, FO 371/1123/9827. The locus classicus for the concept of ‘compellance’ remains T.C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT, 1966).

51.Min. Grey, n.d., on Dumas to Whitehead (NA Report no. 20), 4 July 1906, FO 371/78/23178.

52.’Aufzeichnung’ Bethmann Hollweg, 13 Aug. 1909, J. Lepsius, A. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and F. Thimme (eds.), Die Grosse Politik der europäischen Kabinette (40 vols., Berlin, 1922-7) xxviii, no. 10325; Goschen to Grey (no. 93), 21 Aug. 1909, BD vi, no. 186.

53.Min. Hardinge, 10 Nov. 1909, on Goschen to Grey (no. 371, secret), 4 Nov. 1909, BD vi, no. 205.

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about the reasons behind the more emollient tone now emanating from the

Wilhelmstrasse: 'it is not the love of our beautiful eyes, but the extra 50 million required

for increasing the German Army.'54 He was nevertheless reluctant to exploit German

financial difficulties for political gain. If anything, it seemed sensible to let matters run

their natural course. An end to the naval race was in sight. Any attempt to formalize it

would only prolong it. For this reason, Grey prevented Churchill from travelling to Kiel

for discussions with the Kaiser in June 1914. Of course, the prospect of two such volatile

characters, apt to be carried away by their own rhetoric, trying to settle such delicate

matters had little to recommend itself to the Foreign Secretary.55

On the eve of the war, the naval race was no longer a central issue in Anglo-

German relations. On the contrary, there was a growing sense of détente between the

two countries. It was reflected in press commentary on both sides of the Channel, and

foreign diplomats, too, noted signs of a rapprochement. The indications were for ‘une

détente et … un rapprochement’, observed Jules Cambon, the French ambassador at

Berlin. The two governments were anxious to settle ‘des conflits d’intérêts en matière

coloniale et économique.’56 And in this, the French diplomat was entirely correct. A

fortnight before Sarajevo, London and Berlin brought five years of often fraught

negotiations on Near Eastern matters to an end. As the preamble of the Anglo-German

agreement of 15 June attested, it aimed ‘to prevent all causes of misunderstandings

between Germany and Britain’ and was to furnish the basis of further arrangements.57

This was a considerable achievement, and Grey was determined to build on it:

'we are on good terms with Germany now and we desire to avoid a revival of friction 54.Grey to Goschen (private), 5 Mar. 1913, BD x/2, no. 465.

55.Memo. Grey, 25 May 1914, BD x/2, no. 512; for a Churchillian interpretation see J.H. Maurer, ‘Averting the Great War?: Churchill’s Naval Holiday’, US Naval War College Review lxvii, 3 (2014), 25-42.

56 J. Cambon to Doumergue (no. 51), 4 Feb. 1914, DDF (3) ix, no. 220, and (no. 332), 8 June 1914, ibid. (3) x, no. 341. For contemporary press commentary see inter alia, ‘Arms and the Nation’, Daily News, 1 Jan. 1914; T. Schiemann, Deutschland und die grosse Politik anno 1913 (Berlin, 1914), 96 and 372.

57 ‘German-British Convention’, 15 June 1914, BD x/2, no. 249; Otte, July Crisis, 149-50.

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with her, and we wish to discourage the French from provoking Germany.' In his

estimation, Berlin reciprocated his friendly sentiments. This did not mean abrogating

Britain’s existing ties with other Powers. Grey wished to ‘continue the intimate

conventions and consultations with France and to a lesser degree with Russia and consult

with Germany so far as it might be expedient so as to be the connecting link between

Germany and the Triple Entente and a restraint on the hastiness of Austria and Italy.'58

As France and Russia were gaining in strength, so Britain could revert to her

traditional balancing role. But Grey was prepared to go further. There is a strong body of

evidence to suggest that he was ready to send his private secretary on a secret mission to

Germany in the summer of 1914 for an incognito meeting with the German state

secretary to explore the possibility of a rapprochement. It was a curious parallel with

Lord Salisbury’s approach to Bismarck in 1885, albeit with the difference that Salisbury

operated from a position of weakness while Grey’s hand was relatively strong.

Ultimately, the encounter, planned for July, never took place – by then another matter

preoccupied Downing Street and the Wilhelmstrasse.59

The episode, however, has profound implications for analyses of pre-1914

foreign policy. It underscores the degree to which Grey and his officials expected

there to be another shift in the international landscape in the near future. The surge in

Russia’s power left Germany in a diminished position, while Anglo-Russian relations

faced an uncertain future. Détente with Germany had the potential of enabling Britain

more safely to navigate the anticipated churning of the international waters, and this

seemed an option worth exploring.

The policy deliberations of the spring and early summer of 1914 are significant

also on two further counts. They force one to reconsider Grey’s policy towards France

and Russia, and they set the scene for July 1914. As for the former, Grey was not

irrevocably ‘ententiste’. Support for France was the correct policy response in 1905 and

58.Memo. Bertie (on conversation with Grey), 25 June 1914, Bertie MSS, Add. MSS. 63033.

59 For a detailed account see my, ‘Detente 1914: Sir William Tyrrell’s Mission to Germany’, Historical Journal lvi, 1 (2013), 175-204.

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1911. Mending fences with Russia in Asia was possible after 1905; and seeing to it that

the fence was kept in good condition after 1907 served Britain’s wider interests. But

Grey was not prepared to cleave to both arrangements beyond the point at which they

ceased to be useful instruments. On the other hand, Grey was ‘ententiste’ in the sense

that the Anglo-German agreement of June 1914 was fully in line with the calculations

that had led to the 1904 and 1907 arrangements. It, too, aimed at consolidating Britain’s

international position by accommodating legitimate demands of an imperial rival

without sacrificing vital interests. This calls into question the descriptive accuracy and

analytical value of the notion of a ‘policy of the ententes’. No such policy existed if it

was meant to commit Britain unconditionally to France and Russia. What did exist was a

policy of imperial consolidation by making targeted and limited concessions to actual or

potential competitors; and this was in a line of continuity with much of post-Crimean

foreign policy.

As for Grey’s role in Europe’s last summer, here – as in the wider debate on

1914 - ‘the blame game has never lost its appeal.’60 Pace Lloyd George and those who

took a leaf out of his memoirs, Grey was fully alert to the potential of escalation.

Britain’s ambassador at Berlin, who was then on home-leave, found him ‘rather nervous

as regards Austria & Servia.’61 Grey was not passive, but his room for manoeuvre was

limited. His conversations with the German and Russian ambassadors on 6 and 8 July

constituted a form of early intervention. As during the two previous Balkan conflicts, he

reasoned, the peaceful outcome of this latest crisis in the region depended on Anglo-

German cooperation. Balance of power principles remained axiomatic, but he ‘did not

wish to see the groups of Powers draw apart', and he 'would use all the influence [he]

could do mitigate difficulties.'62 Grey emphasized the necessity of ‘bring[ing] the two

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groups [of the Powers] closer together so as to prevent European complications and to

facilitate an understanding about all emerging question.'63

Grey made similar observations to the Russian ambassador. It was imperative

that St. Petersburg reassured Germany, ‘and convince her that no coup was being

prepared against her.'64 This was vital to finding a diplomatic solution. Given the recent

shift in the military balance, 'the more valuable will be the Austrian alliance for

Germany, and the more leverage Austria will have over Germany.' The Foreign

Secretary was not at all complacent: 'The idea that this terrible crime might unexpectedly

produce a general war with all its attendant catastrophes - after all the great efforts in

recent years to avoid it ... "made his hair stand on edge".'65

Grey’s conversations with the foreign ambassadors in the week after Sarajevo

are key to understanding his moves in July 1914. They signalled to the Powers London’s

concerns about escalation, but also reminded them that, in such an event, Britain could

not be sidelined. In light of recent experiences, his suggestion of some form of Anglo-

German crisis management made good practical sense, as did his appeal to Russia to

calm German concerns about Russian designs and to France to moderate her ally’s

stance.

The problem, however, was not what Grey did or did not do. The problem was

that Paris and St. Petersburg were not to be swayed and that Berlin did not listen to its

60 Clark, Sleepwalkers, 560.

61 Goschen to Rumbold, 11 July 1914, Rumbold MSS, Bod., Ms. Rumbold dep. 16; Otte, July Crisis, 142-3.

62.Grey to Rumbold (no. 214, secret), 6 July 1914, BD xi, no. 32.

63.Lichnowsky to Bethmann Hollweg (secret), 6 July 1914, K. Kautsky, M. Montgelas and W. Schücking (eds.), Die Deutschen Dokumente zum Kriegsausbruch (4 vols., Berlin, 1919) i, no. 20.

64.Quotes from Benckendorff to Sazonov, 26 June/9 July 1914, O. Hoetzsch (ed.), Die Internationalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus, 1st ser. (5 vols., Berlin, 1931-6) iv, no. 146, and Grey to Buchanan (no. 264), 8 July 1914, BD xi, no. 39.

65.Benckendorff to Sazonov (private), 26 June/9 July 1914, IBZI iv, no. 146; see also tel. Cambon to Viviani (no. 122), 8 July 1914, Ministère des Affaires Étrangère (ed.), Documents Diplomatiques Française, 3rd ser., 1911-1914 (11 vols., Paris, 1929-36) x, no. 483.

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own ambassador. For Grey’s part there were sound reasons for pursuing the course he

had chosen. Anglo-German cooperation had been a key ingredient of international crisis

diplomacy during the Balkan conflicts; and, in 1914, all available evidence indicated that

Berlin was anxious to continue along this line. Any explicit threat risked closing the door

to further cooperation, and, worse, encouraging the German leadership to seek salvation

in a preventive war – precisely what Grey wished to avoid.66

Contemporary and later criticism of Grey’s policy in July 1914 flowed to no

small degree from a Lloyd Georgeian fabrication. But it also reflects a strategic fallacy,

based on an assumed dichotomy between a continental security strategy and a ‘blue

water’ school of thought. In reality, no such dichotomy existed, and there was no real

choice between the Russian and German factors. The two were connected because

Britain was both a European and an overseas Power. Her security paradigm was of

necessity global.67 The British government did not decide to enter the war in August

1914 simply to uphold Britain’s interest in the independence of the Low Countries; nor

did they opt for war in Europe as the lesser evil as compared with the recrudescence of a

Russian threat in Asia. Ultimately, a majority of ministers, swayed by Asquith and Grey,

concluded that aloofness was not a practicable proposition. Any outcome would leave

Britain’s position as a Great Power diminished. If the conflict ended in a victory of the

Central Powers, they would reorder Europe; and Germany, now in possession of

France’s fleet and part of her colonial empire, was likely to challenge British interests

once more. Conversely, if the Franco-Russian group triumphed, they would destroy the

two Germanic Powers and they were not likely to show much respect to British interests

in the Mediterranean and in the East.68 Even a negotiated peace would leave the

66 This consideration gives context to the exchanges on 1 Aug. 1914, tels. Grey to Goschen (nos. 250 and 252), 1 Aug. 1914, BD xi, no. 411 and 417; for a fresh interpretation of the ‘misunderstanding’ see Otte, July Crisis, 480-5.

67 For further thoughts on this see the ‘twin’ pieces by K. Neilson, ‘The Russo-Japanese War and British Strategic Foreign Policy’, R. Kowner (ed.), Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5 (2 vols., Folkestone, 2007) i, 307-17, and T.G. Otte, ‘The Fragmenting of the Old World Order: Britain, the Great Powers and the War’, R. Kowner (ed.), The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (London, 2007), 91-108. 68.Min. Crowe, 25 July 1914, on tel. Buchanan to Grey (no. 166, urgent), 24 July 1914, BD xi, no. 101.

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belligerents united in hostility to Britain. Whatever the outcome of the war, she would

have no influence on the peace settlement, and her ability to defend her global interests

would be curtailed. The inherent logic of Britain’s geopolitical position meant that,

under the given circumstances, Britain had to enter the war and do so against Germany

and Austria-Hungary.69

Grey nevertheless made mistakes. His suggestion of mediation by the quartet of

Powers not directly interested in the Serbian crisis marked a deviation from the previous

model of involving all the Great Powers. This slimmed down version of the classic

European concert was not without its own internal logic. Even so, Grey never explained

why he gave up on the full concert, and this gave Austria-Hungary room to pursue her

bellicose course. Grey also misread Habsburg diplomacy, assuming that the

Ballhausplatz could only be reached through the Wilhelmstrasse telephone exchange. It

might have been prudent to have a more direct channel of communication with the

monarchy. A decade after the war, Grey reflected on whether more could have been

done to rein in Russia. But, in practice, British diplomacy influence at St. Petersburg was

limited. As Grey concluded, putting pressure on Russia would have led to demands for a

binding commitment in return for Russian restraint: ‘And to that question he [Grey]

could not have given an affirmative answer.’70 Indeed, Russia’s foreign minister

assumed that Britain would remain aloof from any conflict, and yet this did not deter

him from pressing, however incompetently, for the mobilization of Russia’s armed

forces. It is scarcely credible, then, that British moderating advice forced him to

disengage. If anything, it was French and Russian recalcitrance that forced Grey to utter

his explicit warning of a world war on 29 July.

The events during the final days of peace nevertheless troubled Grey’s

conscience:

69 Otte, July Crisis, 495-500; see also J.C.G. Röhl, ‘Goodbye to all that (again)?: The Fischer Thesis, the New Revisionism and the Meaning of the First World War’, International Affairs xci, 1 (2015), 164-5.

70 Temperley interview with Grey, 1929, Temperley MSS, private.

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I can’t tell you how much I feel the horror of the great catastrophe. The whole time is like a great scourge; something inexorable & inevitable. I have searched my heart continuously as to whether we could have kept out of it & I am sure the consequences of staying out would have been worse than being in, but it is awful.71

It seems, indeed, that he suffered a mental breakdown later in August 1914.72

The war marked the end of an era, and although Grey soldiered on until the

Asquith government collapsed in December 1916, he gave the impression of a man out

of his time: ‘I took things as I found them and for 30 years spoke of progress as an

enlargement of the Victorian industrial age: as if anything could be good that led to

telephones and cinematographs and large cities and the Daily Mail.’73

***

Historians would do well not to let their analysis sink to the level of that organ, and to

strip away the thickly encrusted layers of garish colours splashed by Lloyd George and

others onto the Grey canvass. Edward Grey was a shrewd and subtle operator. With

great skill and sound common sense he steered the boat of British diplomacy through the

shallows and eddies of Great Power politics before 1914. Ultimately, the problem was

that the other Powers had the same sense as he that there were rapids ahead after the

next bend in the river. Unlike him, when faced with that prospect, they were prepared to

risk collisions.

To that extent one might argue that Grey’s policy had run its course. More

pertinently, it is a reminder that no country is an island entire of itself. It seems a

peculiarly British, or rather English, delusion to think that this country could (or can)

71 Grey to Louise Creighton, 28 Aug. 1914, Creighton MSS, Bodl., Ms. Eng. lett. e. 73/2. 72 Crowe to Clema Crowe, 6 Aug. 1914, Crowe MSS, Bodl., Ms.Eng.e.3020.

73 Grey to Katherine Lyttelton, 16 Jan. 1918, Lyttelton MSS, PP5.

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determine the policies pursued by others. To that extent, all too often, criticism of Grey’s

handling of foreign affairs is a form of latter-day ‘Little Englanderism’, clad in the

heavy armour of a scholarly apparatus, studded with footnotes and wielding the heavy

sword of documentary evidence. Grey himself had a shrewder sense of the limits of

British power, and the range of practical options available to any British government.

This raises the wider issue of agency. Whatever British interests might have

demanded and whatever Grey’s personal preferences, once Vienna and Berlin, the one

with intent and the other with recklessness, had embarked on a course of escalation, the

Foreign Secretary had no power to halt the descent into war. As one diplomat and writer

on diplomacy wrote some years before Europe’s descent into war, ‘[t]he utmost

attainable by [diplomacy] ... is the postponement of the evil day. That delay may be

longer or shorter ... owing to the incalculable effect of individual speech or action.’74

Ultimately, the evil day could only be postponed if all the chancelleries of Europe

wished it - and that was no longer the case in July 1914.

74 Sir E. Satow, An Austrian Diplomat in the ‘Fifties: The Rede Lecture for 1908 (Cambridge, 1908), 57.

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