Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  The Parliament Act of 1911 was hailed as a great victory for the Liberals and a humiliating defeat for the Conservatives and the House of Lords. Balfour was the scapegoat. Denounced by the National Review in an article headed ‘Balfour Must Go’, he took the fall, and leadership of the Conservative Party was passed to Andrew Bonar Law.49

  And what was this great victory? Had the House of Lords been crushed? Did hereditary peerage come to an end? Was there a marked reduction in the powers of the aristocracy? No, not at all. The House of Lords continued as a bastion of Conservative peers, introducing its self-promoting legislation and challenging social reform. Yet the Secret Elite had established another important bulkhead in Asquith’s Cabinet in David Lloyd George. More, much more, lay ahead for the Welsh former firebrand who had shown willing to go along with their plans. He knew very well who paid the piper, and as long as he benefited personally and was maintained in the style and comfort to which he had become addicted, he was willing to dance to their tune. His star remained in the ascendancy, but its orbit had been dramatically changed.

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 12 – CATCH A RISING STAR AND PUT IT IN YOUR POCKET

  The Secret Elite identified and nurtured malleable politicians and diplomats across Europe and continued to seek emerging talent in Britain and the Empire.

  On the face of it, Lloyd George appeared to be the least likely politician in Britain to be brought under their influence. His anti-war rhetoric and aggressive stance against the aristocracy and landed gentry marked him out as a man of the people.

  His performance as president of the Board of Trade from 1906 caught their attention because of his willingness to concede to the interests of big business.

  Lloyd George’s love of the good life and his insatiable sexual appetite rendered him vulnerable. His career could have been ended several times over had the Secret Elite chosen to destroy him. Instead, they protected his reputation, defended him against damaging allegations and saved his career.

  Although his 1909 budget was hailed as a great step forward in social reform, this masks the fact that half of the money raised was spent on preparation for eventual war with Germany.

  The House of Lords chose to reject the budget and the consequent constitutional crisis led to a general election in January 1910.

  Following King Edward VII’s death, the Secret Elite promoted the idea of a coalition government comprising all their main political agents from both major parties.

  Contrary to his supposed ‘principles’, Lloyd George produced a memorandum that revealed an astonishing willingness to promote the Secret Elite agenda. It included most of the Round Table policies on defence, Empire, trade and military service as a basis for the coalition.

  It came to nothing and a second indecisive general election was held in December 1910 with no change of government.

  What had changed was the fact that David Lloyd George was now firmly in the pocket of the Secret Elite.

  CHAPTER 13

  Moroccan Myths – Fez and Agadir

  IN THE BLAZING HOT SUMMER of 1911, at the height of the tension between Asquith’s government and the House of Lords, the Secret Elite deliberately took Europe to the brink of war by engineering a second crisis in Morocco. The reintroduction of Théophile Delcassé to the French cabinet marked a new era in their influence on French politics, as did the strategic switch of Alexander Isvolsky from St Petersburg to Paris. Within weeks, France displayed renewed aggression in Morocco by finding a pretext to send in a large military force. When it became an army of occupation, Germany objected. It was virtually 1905 revisited. The Secret Elite conjured the myth that Germany intended to build a naval base on the North African coast to threaten shipping lanes and so created an international storm. War was once more on the agenda.

  The 1906 Algeciras Act solemnly proclaimed Morocco’s integrity and independence, but secret deals had subsequently enabled bankers, concession hunters, land grabbers and speculators to slowly strangle the country. With British collusion and encouragement, the French systematically reduced the power of the sultan’s government and steadily siphoned off its wealth. Moroccan resources were placed in hock to international bankers, with the entire customs revenues mortgaged to guarantee the interest paid to European bondholders on two major loans. The interest on a 1904 loan stood at 60 (sixty!) per cent. A 1910 loan attracted interest at 40 per cent.1 Morocco, like most African countries, was bled dry by international exploitation.

  The act had placed the Moroccan tribes under the joint jurisdiction of French and Spanish police forces, who proved very willing to crush any resistance. French brutality was relentless. In July 1907, local tribesmen in Casablanca reacted violently when European workmen removed gravestones from their native cemeteries to build a new harbour. French battleships retaliated by bombarding the town. Nearly every inhabitant was killed or wounded and the death toll numbered thousands.2 It was an episode of spiteful revenge and a gross overreaction to the killing of nine European workers, including three Frenchmen. France took the opportunity to assert its ‘imperial’ control by sending in 15,000 troops with an order to enforce prompt and vigorous repression. An indemnity of two and a half million francs was imposed on the Chaouyas tribes because they had ‘made war’ against France by killing three French workmen.3 It was a fearsome reprisal. French troops occupied Casablanca and a wide area round it. Typically, after the bombardment of the city, the French extracted $12,000,000 from the Moroccan government to cover the cost of their retribution.4

  Lies about the incident were spread across the globe. The killing of nine foreign workers who had desecrated a Muslim burial ground was reported as a ‘Massacre in Morocco’.5 The Daily Mail raised the spectre of a Holy War and claimed that the ‘massacre’ had been ‘premeditated and organised’.6

  Within three weeks, the French claim was that the Moorish ports ‘must stay in the hands of civilisation’.7 Little mention was ever made of the excessive brutality of the French response. The New York Times reported that impartial observers believed that the French had gone to Casablanca to stay. ‘They are repeating the history of the Americans in Cuba and the Philippines, of the French in Indo-China, and of the English in Egypt. They all started by fighting the natives and ended by keeping the country.’8 The ‘impartial observers’ were absolutely correct.

  The French Chamber of Deputies had on nine occasions between 1906 and 1911 passed resolutions by large majorities expressing its determination to uphold the Algeciras Act and disclaiming intervention in the internal affairs of Morocco. Like the British parliamentarians, the French were completely misled and had no knowledge of secret agreements. They believed that they were in charge of foreign policy, but, as the British MP and journalist E.D. Morel revealed, policy was being pursued by ‘wire-pullers behind the scenes’.9

  The Secret Elite’s chief ‘wire-puller’ in France, the irrepressible Théophile Delcassé, was brought back into the French cabinet as minister of Marine in early March 1911. It was a greater tragedy than anyone could have imagined. The man forced to resign for taking France to the brink of war with Germany during the first Moroccan crisis was back in government and placed in charge of the French navy. The Frenchman had been described as ‘an instrument’ of the late King Edward VII, and though Delcassé was not officially involved in foreign policy, the Belgian ambassador Baron Greindl considered him ‘far too ambitious and restless a man not to try and impress his ideas upon his colleagues. He would almost seem to have been invited to do so …’10 By whom? Whose influence was used to revive the Revanchist?

  Delcassé’s impact was felt immediately. Ambassador Greindl noted that the president of the French Senate began to speak more openly of ‘Revanche’ than he had for years and that French newspapers found some cause or other for daily complaint against Germany. As soon as Delcassé returned to public office, France employed a policy of aggression in Morocco. It was not a coincidence.

  Neither was Alexander Isvolsky’s appearance in Paris as
the newly appointed Russian ambassador to France. Isvolsky, who had stirred the Balkans in 1908 and craved Russian control of Constantinople, joined Delcassé, whose life’s ambition was the return of Alsace-Lorraine. Both were inextricably linked to the Secret Elite. Isvolsky believed that he could more effectively orchestrate war against Germany from his base in Paris rather than the Foreign Office in St Petersburg.11 The day after his return to the French Cabinet, Delcassé met Isvolsky, who described him as ‘the most prominent member of the Cabinet’. He added that Delcassé saw his first task as ‘the provision of a strong fleet and would ensure that the Cabinet would redouble its efforts in regard to the army’.12 Although his given post was minister of Marine, Delcassé’s forceful and dominating personality swamped the French foreign minister, Jean Cruppi, who was ‘entirely without diplomatic experience’.13 Delcassé was back and he meant business.

  In Morocco, native discontent came to a head in the spring of 1911, when the French publicly executed Moroccan deserters. Allegedly, a revolt took place in the city of Fez. Alarming reports were generated by the French that the lives of Europeans in the almost inaccessible Moroccan capital were in danger.14 French and British newspapers flooded the public with exaggerated stories of an entire European colony living in great fear and anguish. The ultimate fate of the women and children was described in most moving terms. Rebels had allegedly encircled Fez with a ring of ‘iron and flame’.15 There was talk of an international crisis, possibly war. It read like a French Mafeking.

  Under the pretext of impending atrocities, a large French military contingent was sent to Fez. On 5 April, Jules Cambon, the French ambassador in Berlin, notified the Germans that a punitive expedition to rescue the Europeans would make it necessary for them to occupy the port of Rabat before moving into the interior of Morocco. Cambon promised that France would respect the Treaty of Algeciras and withdraw her troops as soon as order had been restored.16 General Moinier reached the Moroccan capital at the head of a French expeditionary force in early May. He found the city perfectly quiet and the Europeans unmolested.17 The rebels and their ring of ‘iron and flame’ had apparently disappeared like the morning dew. The phantom so dextrously conjured had disappeared in the night. The whole story had been concocted for devious purposes.18

  On 2 May, John Dillon, the leading Irish Home-Ruler, asked the foreign secretary in the House of Commons if the government had received any reports from British agents in Morocco

  that Europeans in Fez were in danger or were unable to escape from Fez if they desired to do so, and had the British government any information to the effect that the Emperor of Morocco had sanctioned the advance of European troops on Fez?19

  Sir Edward Grey avoided a straight answer. He retreated into a response that placed all responsibility for information about Fez on a verbal report from the French government. Keir Hardie weighed into the attack by asking about an international syndicate that was trying to gain control of Morocco’s mineral wealth.20 Sir Edward Grey ignored the question. He simply didn’t give an answer. He knew that there were only ten British citizens in Fez, including six women and two children.21 He knew there was no significant European colony. Equally, he knew that there had been no Moroccan attacks on Europeans.

  The Secret Elite encouraged the French military invasion of Morocco purely to elicit a German response and bring about the desired international crisis. And what better excuse than to challenge the mining rights that the sultan had given to a German company which conflicted with the interests of the French Union des Mines Marocaines22 in the guise of rescuing Europeans from a non-existent crisis?

  Even after the reality of the situation became commonly known, Grey persisted in lying. His memoirs recorded that Fez was in danger and France was forced to send troops there to ‘relieve the situation and prevent catastrophe’.23 Baron Greindl telegraphed Brussels on 10 May:

  Since the Act of Algeciras … little by little the French have got possession of everything, taking advantage of incidents which have arisen automatically, and creating other openings when they were needed … Can the expedition now be regarded as anything else other than an act of the same farce? Sultan Mulai Hafid has already lost his precarious hold over his subjects, because he had to submit to become a mere tool in the hands of France.24

  The perceptive Belgian diplomat was absolutely correct. France treated the Algeciras agreement like waste paper. It continued to conquer Morocco by direct military action and piecemeal occupation. It fomented internal discord and strangled the revenues of the Moorish government. The Secret Elite encouraged every step the French took while Europe was dragged nearer and nearer to the abyss. Baron Greindl observed that:

  The most interesting feature is the forbearance with which the German government pretends to ignore … the conquest of Morocco … She can choose between pretending not to see, and war, which the Emperor will not have, and which would be condemned by German public opinion.25

  There was no appetite for war in Germany. The clamour for action, the undisguised overreaction, was entirely one-sided. Indeed, Kaiser Wilhelm, who believed that life was at risk in Fez, initially welcomed the French intervention to stabilise the sultanate.26

  By the close of June, the entire country between the capital and the coast had been overrun by French troops.27 When it became clear that the French army had no intention of leaving Fez, Germany reached the end of her patience. She complained that, despite assurances to the contrary, France was ignoring the Algeciras Act and ignoring German interests in Morocco with contemptuous disrespect. A symbolic protest was required. On 1 July, a German warship on its voyage home from southern Africa was rerouted to Agadir, a hitherto unknown town on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The Panther was a gunboat of a thousand tons carrying two 10.5-calibre guns, six machine guns and one hundred and twenty-five men. In stark contrast to the wanton destruction meted out by the French navy on Casablanca, the small German gunboat anchored off the coast fired no shots and landed none of its crew.28 Yet it was the Panther that drew all the venom.

  At the same time, Germany presented a Note to the French government stating that their occupation of Fez was incompatible with the Algeciras agreement, respect for the sovereignty of the sultan and the integrity of Morocco. The German government was prepared to discuss a solution to the Moroccan question and willing to listen to any sensible proposal. Germany made it clear that she would not ask anything exorbitant of France and had neither landed men at Agadir nor had any intention of doing so.29 She was seeking clarity and compensation, not war.

  Although Britain had no territorial interest in Morocco, a wave of outraged anti-German bile filled the British press. Winston Churchill’s view was that the Panther at Agadir was part of an untimely German attempt to set up a naval base from which it could attack allied shipping en route to the Canary Islands and South Africa.30 It was an absurd suggestion, not least because the coast at Agadir had no deep-water harbour.31 Sir Edward Grey would later resurrect the old chestnut that the Panther incident was yet another German attempt to break the Entente Cordiale, intended to provoke war with France.32

  How the British and French press twisted the Agadir crisis to make the kaiser an object of derision.

  (Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk)

  The warmongers breathed ‘fire and brimstone’ against Germany.33 Edward Grey urged the French prime minister to adopt a belligerent attitude that would probably have led to war had he yielded to the advice.34 In a moment of supreme irony, Sir Arthur Nicolson, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office since 1910, complained to the German ambassador in London that in anchoring the Panther off Agadir, Germany was violating the Act of Algeciras. He made no mention of the fact that France and Spain already had 100,000 troops occupying the country.

  The Times of 20 July warned menacingly that Germany was claiming ‘absolute European predominance’,35 and Grey personally blamed Germany for creating ‘a new situation’.36 According to his
memoirs, Germany sent the gunboat to Agadir ‘suddenly’ after the French force entered Fez,37 but in truth Germany had waited for almost two months while trying her best to resolve the situation through diplomacy.

  Despite that, Sir Hew Strachan, emeritus professor of the history of war at Oxford University, and a fellow of All Souls, wrote in 2003:

  What had been a Franco-German dispute about colonial ambitions, designed to be resolved by diplomacy, now became an issue of vital national interest to Britain. Germany had deployed sea power beyond the purlieus of its immediate geographical waters; this was a direct threat to the premier navy in the world.38

  Consider, please, the outrageous nature of this statement. A small German gunboat with a crew of 125 was painted as a ‘direct threat to the premier navy in the world’ and its presence as an ‘issue of vital national interest to Britain’. Six days before the Panther dropped anchor in the Atlantic off Agadir, the entire British navy had paraded in a Coronation Review of the fleet at Spithead: 167 warships with an aggregate tonnage of over 1,000,000 tons, manned by 60,000 officers and men – the largest fleet ever assembled at that time, covering 18 square miles and arranged in 5 long main lines, with smaller lines filled with destroyers, submarines and torpedo craft, had been ceremonially inspected by the king on board HMY Victoria and Albert III.39 The Panther was barely 1,000 tons. The royal yacht was almost five times heavier itself. Seen in the light of historical reality, Strachan’s statement is absurd.