Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  The impact of men such as Russell and the growing prominence of UDC ideas restored MacDonald’s influence, as did his making of common cause with Henderson. Henderson was adamant there would be no more coalitions for Labour, but that the new party would be a broad church, another nail in the coffin of the Liberal Party as a party of government. By 1917 the UDC had 300 affiliated organisations, and a membership of over 750,000, and the potential for civil unrest and even revolution which the organisation represented was of increasing concern to the authorities.33 Although not wholly pacifist, it had been given an extra edge of militancy by conscription, and it called for more transparency in the making of foreign policy. And pacifism grew in spite of – indeed, perhaps because of – its suppression.

  II

  Towards the end of 1917 there was one final flurry of proposals for a negotiated peace. On 8 November Lenin, whose armed followers had toppled the provisional government in Russia the previous day, called for an armistice with the Central Powers. The Bolsheviks then signed an armistice with the Germans on 2 December. This geopolitical shift helped prompt Lansdowne, now a year into his retirement, to write to The Times about his plans for peace – wishing to make public essentially the same argument about negotiation that he had put to his cabinet colleagues in the last days of the Asquith administration. However, the paper refused to publish the letter. Geoffrey Dawson (as Robinson was now known, having changed his surname to secure an inheritance), the editor, feared it would destabilise the first meeting of the Supreme War Council in Paris. Also, anyone writing, printing or distributing leaflets calling for peace talks was liable to arrest, a heavy fine and possibly a prison sentence, with heavier censorship regulations and even harsher punishments introduced in November 1917. Attempts to hold peace meetings – especially in London’s east end, where one of the main proponents was Lansbury – were routinely thwarted by bands of discharged and wounded soldiers, and irate women.

  Lansdowne wanted Balfour to read his letter, to ensure nothing in it was felt damaging to the Foreign Office or his old colleague; and a few days earlier he had sent Balfour a nine-page memorandum about the need for a negotiated peace and moderate war aims that would appeal to rational people on both sides. However, Balfour – who had tactfully told Lansdowne that ‘I don’t know that this is a very suitable time for discussing peace matters’ – was leaving for Paris, for the conference, and had no time to read the letter: so asked Lansdowne to show it to Lord Hardinge, the permanent secretary, instead.34 Hardinge was an enormously experienced diplomat – he had been the main facilitator behind Edward VII’s initiative on the entente cordiale in 1903, which had made his reputation, and had returned in 1916 from six years as Viceroy of India. ‘He observed that it was “statesmanlike” and would “do good”,’ Lansdowne recalled.35 Lansdowne then saw Lord Burnham, owner of The Daily Telegraph, in the Lords and asked whether his newspaper would take the letter instead; and Burnham agreed, even though he dissented from Lansdowne’s argument, because he assumed it was not entirely adrift from Foreign Office thinking.

  The letter quoted ministers on the apparent impossibility of a ‘lasting peace’, and reiterated some of the arguments of Lansdowne’s cabinet memorandum.36 He said a war aim of beating the Germans was ‘not an end in itself.’ He quoted Asquith in saying that the Allies sought, beyond the defeat of the Central Powers, ‘reparation and security’, though he felt no reparation could ‘undo the grievous wrong which has been done to humanity.’ That prophetic note, had it been recognised at Versailles, might have spared the world even more horror; for, as Lansdowne continued: ‘Just as this war has been more dreadful than any war in history, so we may be sure would the next war be more dreadful than this. The prostitution of science for purposes of pure destruction is not likely to stop short.’37 He called for an international arbitration arrangement to avoid ‘the repetition of such an outrage as that of 1914.’

  Lansdowne claimed some of the initial war aims, such as a ‘wholesale rearrangement of the map of South-Eastern Europe’, had ‘probably become unobtainable’, though reparation for Belgium remained ‘in the front rank’.38 His principal concern was for the war to be ended before it provoked ‘a world-wide catastrophe’; but this would happen only if both sides realised it had already lasted too long. He said he believed many Germans, Austrians and Turks felt that way, because of their grave economic difficulties; and quoted Eric Geddes, who had spoken of their ‘constant efforts’ to initiate peace talks. He wanted an official promise that the Allies did not desire Germany’s ‘annihilation’ as a great power, that they did not seek to impose a type of government upon them that they did not wish for themselves, that they did not wish to ostracise Germany internationally, that ‘freedom of the seas’ was up for discussion, and that Britain would support arbitration for future international disputes. He felt this would encourage a peace party in Germany. He claimed authority for these promises could be found in recent ministerial speeches, and the Americans had raised freedom of the seas – to Britain’s outrage. If these points could be adopted, in 1918 ‘a lasting and honourable peace’ could be obtained.39

  Northcliffe, in Paris when Lansdowne offered his letter, said that had he known about it he would have published it with a ‘stinging leader’.40 Having missed that opportunity, he had The Times attack Lansdowne in a fashion even Lloyd George thought ‘in bad taste’; and had the Mail write that ‘if Lord Lansdowne raises the white flag he is alone in his surrender.’41 (The first Lloyd George knew of the letter was when he read about it in the newspapers.) The Morning Post called the letter ‘a stab in the back’.42 The Times’s broadside included the questionable assertion that the paper had declined the letter because ‘we believed it to reflect no responsible phase of British opinion.’43 It dismissed Lansdowne as an old man – he was seventy-two – who had held no serious office since 1905. It called his quotations from statesmen ‘reckless’ and ‘hardly honest’. Its main fear was that Britain’s allies and its enemies would recall that Lansdowne had been foreign secretary and, therefore, merited being taken seriously.

  Law also attacked his fellow Tory and the Telegraph for having published it: which angered Burnham, given Hardinge’s approval of the text, a factor in his agreeing to publish it. Law had no idea Hardinge had approved the letter, and implored Burnham not to tell Lloyd George ‘as this would only occasion trouble’; and ‘begged’ Burnham not to publish a paragraph confirming the sequence of events, to protect the Telegraph’s reputation.44 After an intervention by Riddell, Burnham backed down. Milner, however, agreed with Lansdowne, and so did many leader-writers in the provincial press, the tone of whose newspapers was usually designed to address the sentiment of their readers. Asquith – who, by chance, had Lansdowne to lunch in Cavendish Square on the day of publication – told his wife: ‘it’s an excellent letter, extremely sensible and will make a great clatter and hullabaloo … I am glad he has written it.’45 Asquith’s adherents – Grey, Haldane and Esher – also warmly endorsed Lansdowne, as did MacDonald and Henderson.

  Esher observed: ‘Lansdowne has written an interesting letter to The Daily Telegraph, drawing attention to much the same point made by Robertson two nights ago, when he was dining with us at GHQ,’ he noted.46 ‘There is no “appreciating” by the FO of your peace objectives, and no co-ordinated “after war” policy.’ When Northcliffe attacked Lansdowne in the French press, Esher noted that ‘Northcliffe’s “interview” in the Matin, in which he says that Lansdowne’s utterances are those of a man stupid and senile, who has lost his self-control, has caused widespread disgust.’47

  Lansdowne told his daughter, the Duchess of Devonshire, that ‘I have been snowed under with letters from all manner of folk – a few hostile, but mostly in complete sympathy with me.’48 It was thought Cecil had put Lansdowne up to it, and Earl Percy, the King’s ADC, told Gwynne it was ‘aimed at Lloyd George whom Lansdowne has never forgiven for kicking him out.’ However, Lansdowne had left office voluntarily, witho
ut help from the Welsh Wizard’s boot. The letter went down badly in America, and Lloyd George claimed it almost wrecked the Paris conference, because no one believed Lansdowne could have acted without government approval. Within weeks, Lansdowne would tell his daughter that his one regret was that ‘I should have added a good deal of padding as to my abhorrence of anything which could be called a German Peace.’49 He failed to recognise a fundamental contradiction in his argument: that, if the Central Powers were under such economic strain, it only required an additional effort to break them altogether – which, eventually, was what happened.

  The official government line was that Lansdowne ‘spoke only for himself.’50 It added, entirely wrongly, that he had consulted no member of the government about it. Balfour washed his hands of it, a shameful act not just by an old friend of Lansdowne, but by one who professed high standards of honesty and integrity. Lansdowne, who was genuinely honourable, never embarrassed Balfour by telling the truth. Law distanced himself from Lansdowne, who endured a torrent of obloquy from Unionists and felt he suffered an ‘official excommunication’ from his party.51 His reputation took years to recover. But whatever the politicians said about Lansdowne, and however right or wrong he was, both Lloyd George and President Wilson would make public statements of war aims within weeks.

  The Labour Party too continued to diverge from the orthodox line on the war. At a special conference in December 1917 in Westminster it adopted, jointly with the TUC, a Memorandum on War Aims heavily influenced by the views of the Union of Democratic Control. It supported the idea of a League of Nations, which was also the government’s view, but condemned secret diplomacy and imperialism. It was in an attempt to stave off the acceptance of UDC views among the unions, and demonstrate that Britain was not seeking an unreasonable path to peace, that Lloyd George made a politically crucial speech on 5 January 1918 to union leaders at Caxton Hall in London. Speaking against this background of continuing dissent, he stressed that the Allies were ‘not fighting a war of aggression against the German people’, but were pursuing justice for the small nations of Europe – Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro – and for the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France as well as the liberation of occupied France, Italy and Romania.52 He also argued for an independent Poland, reparations to countries damaged by German aggression, recognition of aspirations of nationalities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for an international order in which the ‘sanctity of treaties’ was respected.

  He made the speech to the unions, not to Parliament, because with the shock of events in Russia still reverberating, he was desperate to keep working people on side. His words were almost universally applauded, although Scott turned the Manchester Guardian’s leader column on him for having refused to endorse the Bolsheviks, whom Scott thought rather wonderful. Scott also voiced a fear, on what evidence it is not clear, that Lloyd George was planning a peace deal with Germany to carve up territory for them in the east to compensate for losses in the west. The War Cabinet had discussed its aims – drawn up by Smuts, Philip Kerr and Cecil – over the previous week. Its purpose was to bolster morale and remind the public why Britain was fighting. A subsidiary purpose was to show how far the reasonable demands of the Allies were from any unreasonable proposal for peace from the Germans. The same weekend as Lloyd George spoke, a national meeting of shop stewards called for Russian peace proposals to be accepted, while engineers on the Clyde recommended strikes to force the government to negotiate a peace. Three days later President Wilson echoed Lloyd George by announcing his fourteen points for a settlement, though these were more limited in some ways than Lloyd George’s. The aims having been set out, all that remained was to win the war and implement them.

  Although those advocating peace remained a minority, the authorities were sufficiently concerned that they kept a constant eye on them. The National Anti-Conscription Fellowship was neutered. By spring 1917 over 3,000 conscientious objectors were in prison, and in total 5,000 would be locked up. On their release they could look forward to being banned from voting for five years, under the new Franchise Act.53 Simultaneously, chief constables sent the Home Office reports on pacifist activity, and kept local military commanders apprised of industrial unrest; and Basil Thomson, who oversaw criminal investigations at Scotland Yard, began to collect information on pacifist or potentially revolutionary groups and sent it to the War Cabinet. The War Cabinet urged a government statement about these seditious activities that could become the basis of a propaganda campaign.

  The police regularly raided premises thought to be producing literature aimed at undermining the war effort by promoting a negotiated peace. In November 1917 they turned over the National Council for Civil Liberties, where such seditious writings as Mill’s On Liberty and reprints of an article by Wells in the Daily News, and passed by the censor, were confiscated. It seemed as though it was now an offence to defend civil and industrial liberties; a sentiment increased by raids on the London offices of the Indian Home Rule movement, which seemed aimed at suppressing legitimate dissent. Newsprint was scarce, and left-wing groups found it harder to broadcast their message: the right-wing press had increased its prices, and Northcliffe at least once helped the Express stay in business by selling Beaverbrook enough paper to tide him over. Nonetheless, the Left’s heightened activity fed official paranoia, which the events in Russia during 1917 fed exponentially.

  In August 1917 a National War Aims Committee, funded by the various political parties but from November that year by the Treasury, was formed to counter pacifist propaganda. It took over the work of the Central Committee for National Patriotic Organisations and used their network of branches. The NWAC invited respected politicians to make speeches about what Britain was fighting for: though it seemed its concerns were not so much about maintaining the war effort as seeing that there were no nasty surprises once peace came. It produced short propaganda films for cinemas. Between September 1917 and the Armistice it held almost nine hundred meetings, including rallies, and made aerial drops of leaflets.

  III

  Official fears about pacifism were motivated by more than just a terror of simple defeatism. Because those on the left of the Labour Party were both pacifist and sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, there was a growing fear that a refusal to fight would also prove to be the progenitor of revolution, that the abandonment of war against the Germans would allow the Left to concentrate on fomenting a class war within Britain. Frances Stevenson, perhaps echoing Lloyd George, felt the unrest was ‘sinister’ and ‘simply being engineered by German agents and Pacifists who are trying to corrupt the workers.’54

  Such anxieties came to the fore when news arrived that the Tsar had abdicated on his own part and on behalf of his son, the Tsarevich, who was seriously ill, on 15 March. This created a diplomatic problem for Britain, and a personal one for the King. On the one hand the Sovereign – who noted in his diary that night: ‘I am in despair’ – was the Tsar’s cousin, and had always enjoyed close ties with him. On the other, the Tsar was immensely unpopular among the working class, who saw him as a tyrant.55 Therefore, both the Monarch and his ministers proceeded with caution. On 19 March the King sent, via the military attaché in Petrograd, a telegram that said: ‘my thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend as you know I have been in the past.’56 On 22 March Lloyd George convened a meeting in Downing Street with Law, Lord Hardinge – the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office – and Stamfordham to discuss how to handle a request from the Russian provisional government to grant the Tsar and his family asylum, even though many of the King’s loyal subjects abominated the ex-autocrat. The initial decision, conveyed via Buchanan, still in post in Petrograd, was that such a request would be granted, though it would be specified that the request came from the provisional government and not from Britain. Stamfordham emphasised, however, that the King would have to be consulted before anything happened. When Lloyd George casually suggested the King co
uld make one of his houses available to the Tsar, Stamfordham ‘reminded the Prime Minister that the King had got no houses except Balmoral, which would certainly not be a suitable residence at this time of year.’57

  Esher, watching the left wing in France in the spring of 1917, warned both Lloyd George and Stamfordham that the effects of the Russian revolution were spreading through Europe as those of the French had in 1789. Such fears became incipient, and provide the essential background to the decision, weeks later, not to allow the Tsar and his family to settle in Britain. The King was worried – or at least Stamfordham was, and persuaded the King of the correctness of his view – that organised labour in Britain might object. On 31 March George Lansbury, a future Labour leader, presided over a rally in the Albert Hall to celebrate the fall of the Tsar, an innocuous event made less so by the censor’s decision to forbid newspapers from running any story about it. It was in this climate, and amidst other calls for a wave of republicanism – including one by Wells in The Times that the newspaper said proved how ‘clever men can sometimes write very foolishly’ – that the King wrote to Balfour to ask whether he would consult Lloyd George further on the question: this despite the ‘strong personal friendship’ the King felt for his cousin.58 He was less enamoured of the Tsarina, whose behaviour he deemed a cause of Russia’s upheavals, and whom he especially did not want close by.

  The King hoped that Switzerland or Denmark might offer asylum instead. However, Balfour told him on 2 April that following discussions by the War Cabinet an invitation had been sent for the Romanovs to settle in Britain, and could not be un-sent. Concerns were nevertheless expressed about how the ex-imperial lifestyle would be sustained in British exile; Buchanan was told to ask the Russian government to send funds if they sent the Romanovs, as the Royal family lacked the resources to sustain them, and asking the taxpayer to do so was unthinkable. Nor was it just organised labour that was agitated: a friend of the King, Sir Harry Verney, a Liberal MP who had served under Asquith as an agriculture minister, wrote to Stamfordham on 21 March to warn that if the Romanovs arrived they would be ‘surrounded by a vast system of intrigue and espionage’ and would bring a huge entourage of hangers-on.59 Buchanan’s effectiveness as ambassador, and the role he was trying to play in calming matters down and keeping Russia in the war, would be ruined. Verney’s main fear, however, was that ‘our King’s position might become extremely awkward’ and he suggested: ‘Would a palace at Venice or Corfu be quite unsuitable?’ In later life Verney was twice convicted of indecent assaults on underage boys, so would become well versed in extreme awkwardness.