The Making of the First World War

by Ian F W Beckett

  As for Palestine, the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Treaty of Sèvres ending the war with Ottoman Turkey on 10 August 1920. It continued to be regarded as binding, though there were fewer prepared to defend it amid the seemingly intractable problem of reconciling Jews and Palestinians. The prospects of a Jewish national home were dealt a blow by the Labour government's White Paper in 1930 aimed at restricting Jewish immigration. Weizmann, who had founded the Jewish Agency in Palestine and striven to establish viable Jewish communities there, was able to overturn it. In 1937 the Conservative government accepted a partition plan for Palestine, a programme Weizmann supported. In May 1939, however, the declaration was finally abandoned as the British opted for an independent state within ten years but with an Arab majority, a limit on Jewish immigration becoming a prohibition after five years. The Jewish Agency regarded this as a betrayal of the declaration.

  In March 1930 Weizmann went to see the dying Balfour. Balfour had left government with the fall of Lloyd George's administration in 1922 but returned as Lord President of the Council from 1925 to 1929. By this stage, he was deaf, in poor health and impoverished by a failed financial venture. According to Balfour's niece and biographer, it was ‘a brief and silent farewell’ but ‘I who saw the look with which Balfour moved his hand and touched the bowed head of the other, have no doubt at all that he realised the nature of the emotion which for the first, and only, time showed itself in his sick-room.’23 Balfour died a few days later. Weizmann's hopes had been undermined by the inter-communal violence in Palestine, and he steadily lost influence. The declaration remained his abiding achievement, for it had been his single-minded determination to harness Britain to the Zionist cause. In 1948 Weizmann's enduring contribution was recognised by his election as the first president of the state of Israel. He died in 1952.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE MORAL IMPERATIVE

  Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, 8 January 1918

  THE EVENTUAL peace settlement imposed upon Germany and her allies was to be an uneasy compromise between British pragmatism, French concerns for security and US President Woodrow Wilson's ‘progressive internationalism’. The United States was not technically an ally of Britain and France after April 1917, but an ‘associated power’. Thus, Wilson's unilateral announcement of his peace principles on 8 January 1918 posed a significant challenge to his allies when he spoke of freedom of the seas, restriction on armaments, economic cooperation and self-determination. Subsequently, the Germans were to request an armistice on the basis of an ‘American peace’ that was not to be realised. The problem was that Wilson, the idealistic former professor, was faced with two unscrupulous realists in British Prime Minister Lloyd George and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. The legacy of the fourteen points, therefore, was a bitter one.

  Passionately committed to international arbitration as a means of settling international disputes, Wilson had agonised over entering the war, especially when it might jeopardise his modest domestic social-reform programme. Publicly, he had embraced the view of many Americans that no US interests were directly threatened by war in Europe. He also understood well enough the polyglot nature of American immigrant society. Those of German, Irish, Jewish and Polish descent were not well disposed towards the Entente whatever the American cultural affinities with Britain, or the sentimental attachment to France for its role in American independence. At least 4 million Americans claimed Irish descent, and 8 million German descent. Wilson suggested on one occasion that the British made the mistake of assuming that Americans were a British people. US interests were most threatened by the Royal Navy's intention to impose an economic blockade on Germany and its allies, but Wilson knew that longer-term American interests would not be served by a German victory. As he expressed it on one occasion in June 1915, ‘England's violation of neutral rights is different from Germany's violation of the rights of humanity’.1 Wilson did not believe that neutral rights on the high seas were sufficiently important to justify an open breach with the Entente. Remonstrations at British policy were largely directed privately through the Anglophile US ambassador in London, Walter Hines Page. It was a de facto acceptance that made the United States at least complicit in the economic blockade. Wilson's first Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, a genuine neutralist, resigned in June 1915 over the strong wording of Wilson's note to the German government after the sinking of the liner, Lusitania.

  The Entente was increasingly dependent upon American raw materials and manufactured goods and, above all, upon American financial credit. By June 1917 Britain owed the J. P. Morgan Bank in New York alone some $400 billion. In theory, this gave Wilson considerable economic leverage in his efforts to compel the Entente to take seriously his mediation efforts. American investment in the Entente was such, however, that the publication of his Peace Note to the belligerents on 18 December 1916 led to the worst fall on the New York stock market for fourteen years. Nonetheless, Wilson expected to be able to use financial pressure in any post-war settlement, remarking of the allies in July 1917 that ‘when the war is over we can force them to our way of thinking, because by that time they will, among other things, be financially in our hands’.2

  The German return to unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917 compelled Wilson to break off diplomatic relations with Germany. The ineptitude of German diplomacy was further exposed by the publication of the Zimmermann telegram that same month. The German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, had instructed the German ambassador in Mexico to propose an alliance. The Mexicans were promised that, in the event of a German victory, all those territories they had lost to the United States as a result of the Mexican War of 1846–48 would be restored. The British had intercepted the telegram and handed it to the Americans. Naively Zimmermann confirmed its authenticity. The fall of the Tsarist government in March then conveniently removed any moral obstacles to the United States being seen to ally itself with Russia. The US declaration of war on Germany was passed by 82 votes to six in the Senate on 4 April 1917 and by 378 to 50 in the House of Representatives two days later.

  Wilson was prepared to accept the strategic assumptions of his new allies, but there were limitations to American attachment to the Entente. Significantly, the United States did not sign up to the 1914 Declaration of London precluding a separate peace. Thus, the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was committed to the Western Front because this was identified as the decisive theatre, in which an independent American army would make a recognisable contribution to victory. Since the British army was nearing exhaustion, the political price the Americans could extract was considerable. Once it was clear, in August 1918, that the German offensives were over, the British reduced the shipping available to convey American troops to Europe: there was little advantage either in increasing American leverage or in sacrificing British export trade to do so. Wilson had exactly the same aim as Kitchener in 1914, namely to dictate the peace.

  The nature of an American peace had already become apparent in Wilson's Peace Note of December 1916. He had called for a peace without territorial annexations and one founded on equality, self-determination, freedom of the seas, limitation of armaments and a permanent international organisation. Wilson maintained that a war fought for democracy precluded territorial gains on the part of the Entente. The Peace Note had been prompted by the German announcement on 12 December 1916 of willingness to discuss peace terms. The British rightly judged the German approach an attempt to split the Entente. They could not afford outright rejection, which might strengthen German support in the United States. In response, therefore, the British and French were forced into an indication of their own war aims. They called for the restoration of Belgium and Serbia, the evacuation of all territories occupied by Germany, indemnities for war damages, and self-determination for subject nationalities within the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. They also accepted Wilson's proposal for a post-war international organisation.

  Additional pr
essure was exerted by the collapse of the Tsarist government in Russia in March 1917, and the call by the new Provisional Government in May for a peace without annexations or indemnities. The Reichstag Peace Resolution on 19 July 1917 similarly called for a settlement based upon no annexations or indemnities. Though the German leadership ignored the resolution, the British responded by a demand for democratisation of Germany in advance of any negotiations. Although rejecting a separate Austro-Hungarian overture for peace, the British War Cabinet did resolve in August 1917 that it would negotiate if the Germans evacuated Belgium. There was a negative reaction, however, to the intervention of Pope Benedict XV in August 1917. Wilson was embarrassed by the attitude of his allies since, in speaking of freedom of the seas, restrictions on armaments, economic cooperation and a degree of self-determination, the Papal note reflected many of his own ideas. But even he could not accept the restoration of the status quo ante also implied by the Papal note.

  Growing war weariness and the revolution in Russia necessitated a remobilisation of the national will among all the belligerents during 1917, as suggested by the creation of the National War Aims Committee in Britain, the Union of Associations against Enemy Propaganda in France, and the Fatherland Party in Germany. The public enunciation of war aims was an integral part of the process, as was the denigration of perceived internal enemies such as pacifists and socialists. War aims were best left vague lest the failure to achieve them appeared as defeat, but vagueness also might suggest to domestic opinion that the gain was not worth the sacrifice.

  A number of events coincided to make it imperative that the Entente declare its hand publicly. The Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia on 7–8 November 1917 was followed by their publication of all the ‘secret treaties’ between Russia and its erstwhile allies on 22 November. Negotiations for a ceasefire then opened with Germany and Austria-Hungary at Brest Litovsk on 15 December. The Bolsheviks presented a six-point programme for peace without annexations or indemnities. The Bolsheviks included the idea that any territory in Europe or overseas that had shown nationalist discontent since the late nineteenth century should be able to settle its future by free referendum. The Bolsheviks were no more genuine than their opponents in paying such lip service to self-determination. On Christmas Day the Austro-Hungarian and German foreign ministers, Ottakar von Czernin and Richard von Kühlmann, indicated they would accept a peace without annexations if the Entente were to do the same. They knew that the Entente would not do so. The armistice talks were suspended for three days to enable the Bolsheviks to invite the Entente to send representatives to Brest Litovsk.

  In Britain, additional pressure had been placed on Lloyd George by the publication of a letter on 29 November 1917 by the former Unionist Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, calling for a moderate peace, and the declaration of non-expansionist war aims by the Labour Party on 28 December. In a speech to the Trades Union Congress at Caxton Hall on 5 January 1918, therefore, Lloyd George showed willingness to compromise. Italy's claims on Austria-Hungary would not be supported unless justified. While Belgium, Serbia and Romania should all be restored, and consideration given to an independent Poland, there should not be an automatic expansion of states in the Balkans despite the need to recognise self-determination within the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. Russia would be left to its fate. Self-determination, of course, was a two-edged sword for the British in view of the situation in Ireland. With great imperial proconsuls like Lords Milner and Curzon in the War Cabinet, and many of Milner's disciples within government, it was always evident that Turkey would be dismembered, and that British imperial interests would remain paramount. Lloyd George's speech pre-empted but did not overshadow that of Wilson on 8 January.

  Wilson had resolved that he must act unilaterally following the failure of Lloyd George and Clemenceau to respond positively to the attempt by his envoy, Colonel Edward M. House, to persuade them to adopt a general declaration on war aims between 29 November and 3 December. It was Wilson and House together who then worked on the statement Wilson would make to Congress. They were assisted by the deliberations of a wide-ranging academic study into a future peace settlement – the Inquiry – established by House at Wilson's request in September 1917. Wilson's subsequent expositions of his policy – the ‘Four Principles’ on 11 February 1918, the ‘Four Additional Points’ on 4 July 1918, and the ‘Five Particulars’ on 27 September 1918 – were also issued unilaterally. Wilson made little effort to coordinate policy with that of his allies.

  A slender figure of just under 6 feet, with a high forehead, and now greying hair, the bespectacled Wilson was sixty-two in 1918. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister of ‘Scotch-Irish’ stock and an English mother whose family had emigrated to Canada when she was a child. He was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856, though the family soon moved to Georgia. Although he lived in Staunton for only four years, Wilson's birthplace was opened as a major museum and the centre for his ‘Presidential Library’ in 1990. Not to be outdone, his boyhood home at Augusta for the ten years between 1860 and 1870 became a museum in 1991 and a ‘National Historic Landmark’ in 2008. First in the field, although just as tenuous, is Wilson's last home in Washington's Embassy Row, in which he lived for just three years after leaving the presidency in 1921: that became a ‘National Historic Landmark’ in 1964.

  Educated at Princeton and the University of Virginia, Wilson briefly practised law in Atlanta before teaching history, jurisprudence and political economy at a number of institutions, returning to Princeton as its president in 1902. Apart from a five-volume history of the American people, Wilson also penned an influential book on congressional government. At Princeton he clashed with faculty and students, resigning in 1910 to contest the governorship of New Jersey. As a new and seemingly disinterested candidate, Wilson won the nomination, triumphing over Democrat Party bosses. A successful gubernatorial term saw Wilson go on to win the party's nomination as presidential candidate in 1912, albeit it was only on the 46th ballot at the party convention. Seen as more moderate than William Jennings Bryan, who had unsuccessfully contested the presidency in the previous three elections, Wilson secured an overwhelming victory in the Electoral College. His 6.2 million popular votes, however, were fewer than the combined 7.6 million votes polled by the two former presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, who split the Republican vote. Wilson positioned himself as a progressive, breaking monopolies and restoring economic competition. He did rather better in securing re-election in 1916, winning 2.8 million more votes than four years previously, and having a clear lead in the popular vote over his Republican opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, a former governor of New York.

  A shy and diffident young man – he did not learn to read until he was twelve – Wilson was imbued from the beginning with a strong Calvinist faith that gave structure to his life and also meaning to his rather simplistic view of right and wrong. Sentimental towards the ‘Lost Cause’ of the Confederacy, Wilson took a paternal view of black Americans, whom he felt unsuited for citizenship. Nor did his sense of morality prevent him from having a brief affair with a woollen manufacturer's wife in 1909–10. Wilson's first wife, Ellen, whom he had married in 1885, died in 1914. He then married a widow, Edith Galt, in 1915.

  Lloyd George found Wilson agreeable on some occasions but also intensely suspicious on others. Wilson also struck him as humourless, stiff, unbending and uncommunicative, and a curious blend of ‘the noble visionary, the implacable and unscrupulous partisan, the exalted idealist and the man of rather petty personal rancour’. Lloyd George was astonished at Wilson's outburst of ‘acid detestation’ when Lloyd George mentioned his own sorrow at the death of Theodore Roosevelt.3 Others also found Wilson cold and impersonal. He tended to take an instant dislike to some he met. There was no doubt that Wilson bore grudges to an extraordinary degree. One who knew him at Princeton recalled, ‘If you agreed with him you were perfect, if you disagreed, you were guilty of a personal insult.’ Not sur
prisingly, Wilson's first Secretary of War, Lindley Garrison, felt Wilson ‘a man of high ideals, but no principles’.4

  Wilson believed that it was important to discern the public mood before taking major decisions. Equally, he judged that mood on the basis of his intuition, and assumed he could win the argument by the power of his not inconsiderable oratorical skills. Henry Cabot Lodge, who was to lead the campaign in the Senate against ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, rather nicely characterised the trait: ‘When the President is approaching a new subject the first thing he does is to make up his mind, and when his mind is made up the thoughts which in more ordinary mortals are apt to precede the decision or determination of a great question are excluded; information upon the new subject is looked on as a mere impertinence.’ Similarly, Robert Lansing, Bryan's successor as Secretary of State, noted in November 1921 that Wilson fitted the facts to his prejudged position: ‘His judgements were always right in his own mind, because he knew that they were right. How did he know they were right? Why he knew it, and that was the best reason in the world. No other was necessary.’5 Certainly, Wilson took poorly to Congressional scrutiny of his presidency though, paradoxically, he was usually prepared to allow his cabinet to run their own departments without excessive interference.

  Wilson had only a small personal staff to advise him, principally Colonel House. The president had met the fifty-four-year-old House, a liberally minded Texan businessman, in 1911. The title was a purely honorary one confirmed on House by a Texas governor, and calling to mind an old saying in the American Southwest that a man without a title ‘either didn't have any friends or any imagination’.6 Short, with a receding chin and large ears, House shared some of Wilson's utopian views. He did not seek preferment as such and received no salary, but set out to make himself a useful friend. Amiable and unpretentious, House was no intellectual but he was fairly shrewd. House acted primarily as a kind of gatekeeper, Harper's Weekly describing him as Assistant President House in April 1913. It suited Wilson's need for some buffer between himself and others, Wilson once admitting that ‘I have a sense of power in dealing with men collectively, which I do not feel always in dealing with them singly.’7 Wilson's secretary, Joseph Tumulty, a lawyer of Irish-American extraction, was jealous of House, while Bryan disliked House intensely. House was also to find his access to Wilson resented by Edith.