Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  Chamberlain was out of office for almost ten years, 1885–1895. As the Prime Ministership was beyond his grasp, he was resolved to make the best of second-best and use his leverage to compel the Conservative Party to take on his own Radical domestic program. He was technically still a Liberal; he and his followers remained on the Liberal benches, but gave their support on most issues to the Tories. In return, they demanded and received Tory backing for their proposals. In 1891, Lord Salisbury’s government passed a law which had been one of Chamberlain’s lifelong objectives: free education for all children in the United Kingdom. That same year, Chamberlain introduced for the first time in the British Parliament a bill establishing old-age pensions.

  During his years of political loneliness, Chamberlain’s private loneliness came to an end, a circumstance for which Lord Salisbury was indirectly responsible. In August 1887, the Prime Minister asked Chamberlain to lead a British delegation to Washington to attempt to settle a fishery dispute involving American fishing boats seized and confiscated in Canadian waters. Chamberlain, gloomy and restless, agreed on the day he was asked. He spent three months in the American capital, where he became a social favorite, dined frequently with President Cleveland, and concluded a treaty which pleased everyone. One night, at a reception in his honor at the British Embassy, the visiting Englishman was introduced to Mary Endicott, the daughter of Cleveland’s Secretary of War. Once the presentations were over, he abandoned everyone else in the room and spent the evening talking to Miss Endicott. That night in his hotel, he sat for hours by an open window, smoking his cigar. Mary Endicott was twenty-three; he was fifty-one. He reached a conclusion. Miss Endicott accepted his proposal. When he sailed for England, Chamberlain wore a red rose instead of an orchid in his buttonhole.

  The city of Birmingham greeted the young American bride: “Dear lady, welcome home.”25 Queen Victoria, after their first meeting, entered in her journal: “Mrs. Chamberlain is very pretty26 and young-looking and is very lady-like with a nice, frank, open manner.” (A few years later, the Queen wrote: “Mrs. Chamberlain looked lovely27 and was as charming as ever.”) Lord Salisbury, according to his biographer, “was always ready to discuss politics”28 with Mrs. Chamberlain. More important, the youthful stepmother captured the affection of his children. “She unlocked his heart29 and we were able to enter in as never before,” one of his children said later. “She brought my children nearer30 to me,” Chamberlain acknowledged.

  In 1892, Chamberlain’s son Austen, twenty-nine, entered the House of Commons. A year later, wearing a monocle like his father, Austen gave his maiden speech. Gladstone, Prime Minister for the last time, rose to congratulate the son of his former lieutenant and current bitter enemy, observing that the speech and its accomplished delivery “must have been dear and refreshing31 to a father’s heart.” Chamberlain bowed low to the old man and those nearby said that they had never seen Joseph Chamberlain so moved.

  Beyond politics, Chamberlain cared only for family and home. He had no interest in sports, played neither golf nor tennis, never hunted or went yachting. His days at Highbury, his house near Birmingham, were largely devoted to reading and raising orchids. He extended his greenhouses again and again and loved to pace the long glass corridors where his exotic plants stood in multicolored ranks. He experimented, crossing hues and sizes, trying always for something new and remarkable, which, when achieved, found its place in his lapel.

  The main business of Chamberlain’s life was politics. By the 1890s he had linked all the major themes of his life: Democracy, Radical Social Reform, and Empire. The package made a powerful appeal to the British people. When the new anti-Home Rule coalition of Conservatives and Radical Liberals gave itself the party label of “Unionist,” Chamberlain declared that he was “proud to call myself a Unionist32... believing it is a wider and nobler title than that either of Conservative or Liberal, since it includes both of them—since it includes all men who are determined to maintain an undivided Empire and who are ready to promote the welfare and union, not of one class, but of all classes of the community.” Chamberlain’s concept of Empire went beyond his refusal to see Ireland break the integrity of the United Kingdom. He was thinking of a global bond, linguistic, cultural, political, and commercial. This theme, addressed to a Toronto audience during his North American visit in 1887, had stirred his listeners to “frenzied enthusiasm.”33 “I am an Englishman,”34 he said. “I am proud of the old country from which I came.... But I should think our patriotism was warped and stunted indeed if it did not embrace the Greater Britain beyond the seas—the young and vigorous nations carrying everywhere a knowledge of the English tongue and English love of liberty and law. With these feelings, I refuse to speak or think of the United States as a foreign nation. They are our flesh and blood.... Our past is theirs. Their future is ours.... Their forefathers sleep in our churchyards.... It may yet be that the federation of Canada may be the lamp lighting our path to the federation of the British Empire. If it is a dream—it may be only the imagination of an enthusiast—it is a grand idea.... Let us do all in our power to promote it and enlarge the relations and goodwill which ought to exist between the sons of England throughout the world and the old folks at home.”

  Chamberlain’s interest in foreign affairs had evolved as his role in government broadened. In 1878, after only two years in the Commons, he warned his countrymen of the heavy burden of Splendid Isolation: “Already the weary Titan35 staggers under the too vast orb of her fate.” In 1883, he asked Morley for help in defining a Radical position on such matters as National Defense, the Eastern Question, and Belgium. In 1884, Chamberlain, then President of the Board of Trade, had called on Herbert Bismarck in London to express his thanks for German support of the British role in Egypt. “Prince Bismarck,”36 he had told Herbert, “has rendered us such great services that I only wish he could be convinced that towards no power are we so glad to be friendly as towards Germany. Without Germany’s attitude, we would have fallen into great difficulties.” Forwarding this message to his father, Herbert described Chamberlain as “this incarnate representative37 of the commercial class of Free Trade,” who, at that moment, was “the most influential of English ministers.” Chamberlain’s gratitude had limits. When the Chancellor’s tone turned rude, Chamberlain had bristled. “I don’t like to be cheeked38 by Bismarck or anyone else,” he had written to his friend Sir Charles Dilke, the Liberal Under Secretary at the Foreign Office. “I should let Bismarck know that if he is finally resolved to be unfriendly, we accept the position and will pay him out whenever the opportunity arises.”

  Chamberlain’s decision to accept the Colonial Office when the Unionist government took power in July 1895 was a surprise; it seemed beneath his talents as well as his claim on the Prime Minister. Chamberlain felt differently. He had told Mary in 1887 that, although he might never hold office again, if the opportunity came he would like the Colonial Office, where he “saw work to be done.”39 As Colonial Secretary, he became responsible for over 10 million square miles—one fifth of the land surface of the globe—inhabited by 50 million people. Chamberlain’s intention was to bind all these immense spaces and varied peoples closer to the crown. He thought that a good start had been made—“I believe that the British race40 is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen”—but that there was more to be done—“It is not enough to occupy41 great spaces of the world’s surface unless you can make the best of them. It is the duty of a landlord to develop his estate.”

  In the first six months of his administration, the new Colonial Secretary’s Imperial dreams were brusquely overtaken by international events. When Leander Starr Jameson launched his quixotic raid into the Transvaal and the Kaiser telegraphed his congratulations to the President of the Boer Republic, the Colonial Secretary was indignant. He urged that Britain, beset on all sides, assert itself forcibly. “My dear Salisbury,”42 he wrote four days after Kruger’s receipt of the telegram, “I think that what is called
an ‘Act of Vigor’ is required to soothe the wounded vanity of the nation. It does not much matter which of our numerous foes we defy, but we ought to defy someone.” Chamberlain suggested a “strongly worded dispatch to Germany... declaring that we will not tolerate any interference in the Transvaal” and “an ostentatious order43 to commission more ships of war.”

  When these crises had passed, Chamberlain drew a worried conclusion: Britain, when challenged, had no friends. No help had been expected from France or Russia. But the Transvaal affair had brought confrontation with a power which Britain had reckoned amiable: Germany. Speaking to the Canada Club in March 1896, Chamberlain told his audience: “The shadow of war44 did darken the horizon” in recent months. The cause, he said, was the “isolation of the United Kingdom.”

  British colonial secretaries did not normally speak authoritatively on foreign policy. Two factors made it possible in this instance: the increasing overlap of responsibility between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, and Lord Salisbury’s willingness to cede power in certain areas to his strong-minded and energetic colleague, Joseph Chamberlain. Historically, the Foreign Secretary’s task was to manage Britain’s relations with foreign powers while the Colonial Secretary’s duty was to administer Britain’s colonial empire. Now, interlocking disputes involving British colonies and foreign powers having arisen, both government departments were necessarily responsible. Questions about southern Africa, West Africa, Egypt, and the Far East arrived on the desks of both Cabinet ministers. Chamberlain, as Minister responsible for Hong Kong, was directly concerned with British policy in China. The Crown Colony handled more trade than the port of Liverpool. The impact of this trade on Britain’s economy was suggested by a letter from the Duke of Devonshire to Eckardstein in March 1898: “If the panic45 that has seized the Lancashire cotton industry as to its Chinese markets goes on in this way, we shall soon have the greater part of the mills stopped and their hands out of work.” Salisbury, despite this urgency, was little inclined to step forward in colonial disputes. His nature and experience equipped him to deal with the finely tuned Bismarckian system of quiet diplomacy and private understandings. To Salisbury, problems outside Europe were secondary; in most of these cases, he was content that Chamberlain, who had so much more vigor than he, take the lead.

  As early as May 1897, Count Hatzfeldt was reporting to Chancellor Hohenlohe that “Chamberlain has rather risen46 above Lord Salisbury’s head.” The Kaiser subsequently referred to the “two-headed administration”47 in Britain and declared that “Chamberlain has Salisbury48 completely in his pocket.” This was not true; final decisions were always the Prime Minister’s. Chamberlain’s letters to Salisbury were forceful, but always respectful. Salisbury’s replies acknowledged the strength of Chamberlain’s arguments, but wondered whether his good ideas could be achieved.

  In the weeks following the Jameson Raid and the Kruger Telegram, Chamberlain, believing that the day was past when Britain could survive alone, forcefully stated his opposition to isolation. Salisbury, fearful of the risks of entanglement, declaring England had no history of peacetime military alliances, insisted on isolation. Queen Victoria, alarmed, wrote to the Prime Minister: “Affairs now are so different49 from what they used to be that the Queen cannot help feeling that our isolation is dangerous.” Salisbury attempted to guide her back to his viewpoint. “Isolation is much less dangerous50 than the danger of being dragged into wars which do not concern us.... It is almost impossible for an English Government to enter into... an alliance... because when the crisis came, and the decision of peace or war had to be taken, the Parliament and people would not be guided... by the fact that the Government had some years before signed a secret agreement to go to war, but entirely by the cause for which it was proposed to go to war and their interests and feelings in respect to it. Their fury would be extreme when they discovered that their Ministry had tried to pledge them secretly beforehand.”

  Most Britons agreed with Lord Salisbury, and the glories of the Diamond Jubilee in 1897 seemed to confirm this viewpoint. With Dominion premiers and native princes gathering in London, with crowds flocking to Portsmouth to see the lines of anchored warships stretching into the Solent haze, the Empire seemed invulnerable. It was not until autumn of that year that events gave fresh strength to Chamberlain’s argument that—in the queen’s words—“isolation is dangerous.”

  These events occurred in China, where the Manchu Empire was in a state of decay. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Britain had controlled Hong Kong and the trade of South China and the Yangtze Valley. France had acquired Indo-China; Portugal had taken Macao. Late in 1897, China lost additional territories. A German naval squadron seized Tsingtao and the Shantung peninsula. Three weeks later, a Russian squadron appeared at Port Arthur on the other side of the Yellow Sea. Two thousand Russian marines landed and raised the Russian imperial flag. Russian pressure on Peking intensified. In March 1898, the St. Petersburg government announced that it had obtained a twenty-five-year lease on Port Arthur and the right to build a railway across Manchuria to the Pacific.

  Chamberlain watched these developments with alarm. The Russian advance into North China, threatening Britain’s traditional interest in the center and the south, coming so soon after the triumph of the Diamond Jubilee, seemed a special humiliation. Talk in Europe attributed Britain’s declining influence in China to a decay in national character. Chamberlain wrote to Salisbury that “public opinion51... [will be] expecting some sensational action on our part.” Salisbury replied, “I agree with you52 that ‘the public’ will require some territorial or cartographic consolation in China. It will not be useful and will be expensive, but as a matter of pure sentiment we shall have to do it.” As Chamberlain had predicted and Salisbury agreed, the English public—most noisily the penny press—demanded action: the Russian menace to China must be confronted; why did the government not act?

  In fact, the Cabinet, meeting at the end of March 1898, did not know what to do. Lord Salisbury was ill, recuperating at his villa on the Riviera. Arthur Balfour, substituting for his uncle at the Foreign Office, handled day-to-day problems, but was unprepared to initiate new policies. Chamberlain, determined to stop the Russians, stepped into the vacuum. “It is not the question53 of a single port in China—that is a very small matter,” he told a public meeting. “It is not the question of a single province. It is a question of the whole fate of the Chinese Empire and our interests in China are so great, our proportion of the trade so enormous... that I feel no more vital question has ever been presented for the decision of a Government.... If the policy of isolation, which has hitherto been the policy of this country, is to be maintained in the future, then the fate of the Chinese Empire may be, probably will be, hereafter decided without reference to our wishes and in defiance of our interests.” British sea power alone, he argued, could not halt Russian expansion in Asia. A concert of powers was needed, or, if a concert was impossible, then a single, powerful ally. In Chamberlain’s view, that ally was Germany, which could put pressure on the Russian frontier in Europe—indeed, this was the only power the Russians feared. That month, March, as the Cabinet wrestled with the problem of Russian encroachment on China, the Colonial Secretary resolved to try for an alliance with the German Empire.

  Chamberlain’s effort, essentially unsupported by his Cabinet colleagues, was fervently encouraged and abetted by an ally inside the German Embassy in London. During the 1890s, Baron Hermann von Eckardstein, six feet, five inches tall, was a striking figure. On ceremonial occasions, when he put on the white uniform and winged helmet of a Prussian cuirassier, he looked like a Norse god. Eckardstein had launched his career with a caper. As a lieutenant stationed at the German Ministry in Washington, D.C., he attracted the attention of Count Herbert von Bismarck. At dinner in a Washington restaurant with a group including the Chancellor’s son, Eckardstein had bet his fellow diners that he could reach the street faster than they. They leaped from their chairs
and ran down the stairs. Eckardstein calmly jumped out an open window. He sprained his ankle, but won the bet. It was the kind of flamboyant gesture to impress a Bismarck, and the young officer soon found himself posted in London. There, he met and married the daughter of Sir John Blundell Maple, a Conservative M.P. and the richest furniture manufacturer in England. A few years later, Sir John, who had no sons, made his German son-in-law heir to his fortune of two and a half million pounds. Bülow, impressed by Eckardstein’s position in English society, promoted the Baron to First Secretary of the Embassy. Eckardstein was eager to promote friendship between his German homeland and the country in which his qualities had been recognized.