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

by Gerry Docherty

  Of the party leaders, only Ramsay MacDonald stood firm against the swelling tide of orchestrated ‘inevitability’. He rejected the idea that the country was in danger. He ridiculed the concept of statesmen appealing to their nation’s honour and reminded the Commons that Britain had ‘fought the Crimean War because of our honour. We rushed into South Africa because of our honour.’33 MacDonald asked what was the use of talking about going to the aid of Belgium when what was really happening meant engaging in a pan-European war that was going to alter the boundaries of many nations? He wanted to know what this would mean for Russian domination when it was over.

  Then, quite remarkably, this historic assembly, which has long considered itself the champion of free speech, was denied precisely that by the prime minister. Members wanted to discuss Grey’s statement at length. Had he not just said that the House was free to decide what the British attitude should be? Asquith responded by promising an early opportunity for discussion. ‘Today?’ shouted a number of Members of Parliament. The reply was unequivocally negative. There would be no debate that day. The Commons had listened in good order to a singularly biased statement, laced with emotional blackmail, but was refused permission to discuss these affairs at that very point where delay made any response worthless. A very fragmented Cabinet had been ground into acquiescence. The decision to go to war had already been taken by the Secret Elite, by their Cabinet agents, through the mobilisations of fleet and army, by the Northcliffe press, and all with the full knowledge of the monarch. They were not interested in alternative views.

  Asquith and his pro-war colleagues cynically abused democracy, but democracy has the capacity to express itself in unexpected ways. The prime minister had tried to close the matter to debate, but the speaker of the House of Commons was not privy to the secret machinations and made an unexpected offer. He suggested a procedural manoeuvre that would allow the House to adjourn at 4.35 p.m. and reassemble at 7 p.m. that same night. Asquith was not to have his way.

  The secretary of state for foreign affairs left the House of Commons immediately. His work was far from finished. He had, by his own admission, decisions to make, but there was one thing he knew for certain. It did not matter whether that decision was to declare war on Germany or to impose impossible conditions on her. He knew that ‘conditions meant war just as surely as a declaration of war. Respect for the neutrality of Belgium must be one of the conditions, and this Germany would not respect.’34 Yet another lie, demolished entirely by the evidence in Chapter 26, but a lie that Grey had to repeat many times to make it feel like the truth.

  Churchill caught up with him outside the Commons and asked what he intended to do next. He was eager to get started. Grey’s reply was stunning in its complicity but a masterstroke: ‘Now we will send them an ultimatum to stop the invasion of Belgium within 24 hours.’35 It was the condition to which he knew Germany could not accede. Having set the nation to focus on Belgium, to make it the point of honour, Grey immediately proceeded to lure Germany into a position where it would appear that Britain had no alternative other than go to war. That was a certainty, for he knew the German army was already on its way through Belgium.

  Meanwhile, that same afternoon Haldane summoned a War Council. Lord Kitchener, now consul general in Egypt, ‘who happened to be in London’, was present.36 What was more astonishing was that Haldane invited Lord Roberts to attend his select council: a remarkable invitation given that Roberts had retired from his post of commander-in-chief of the British Army ten years earlier.

  But Roberts had never retired. Roberts, who had shared so many platforms with his friend Alfred Milner, and was at the heart of the Secret Elite, was still the decision maker. His influence dominated military thinking through the promoted members of his Academy. It was they who liaised with the French and Belgian general staffs and prepared the detailed plans for the British Expeditionary Force. It was they who would lead the British Army to war. This was their purpose.

  When the House of Commons reconvened at 7.20 p.m. on 3 August 1914, the prime minister and foreign secretary were cheered, mainly by the opposition. Sir Edward Grey opened by announcing that he had received information from the Belgian legation in London not available to him when he made his speech earlier in the afternoon.37 It was the details of the German Note to Belgium sent the previous evening at 7 p.m., which offered friendly neutrality if the German troops were allowed safe passage. Yet again, Grey was lying to Parliament. A telegram from the French ambassador in London to French Prime Minister Vivani proved that Grey had been told about the German offer by Paul Cambon on the morning of 3 August, hours before his initial statement.38 Grey had withheld this information from the Cabinet and thereafter from Parliament so that his centrepiece on Belgian neutrality could be portrayed as an absolute condition for declaring war on Germany. Had it become known that the Germans had offered the Belgians terms for neutrality, his whole argument would have been destroyed.

  A number of prominent Liberals rose to challenge Grey’s claims and express their horror at the prospect of war being visited on Britain. Philip Morrell stressed that Germany had never refused to negotiate and had guaranteed Belgian integrity.39 He added: ‘we are going to war now because of fear and jealousy fostered by large sections of the press … the fear and jealousy of German ambition, that is the real reason’. He summed up the calamitous situation by ending: ‘I regret very much at the end of eight years of the policy which has been pursued of the Triple Entente, that it should have landed us into such a war as this.’ This theme was continued by Edmund Harvey,40 who claimed that war had been caused ‘by men in high places, by diplomatists working in secret, by bureaucrats who are out of touch with the peoples of the world …’41 Keir Hardie implored the government to consider the plight of the poor, the unemployed and ‘starving children’. Both Houses of Parliament had unanimously passed a bill for the relief of the Stock Exchange, but Hardie was more interested in a bill to compel local authorities to feed local schoolchildren. He was barracked from the Conservative benches when he added: ‘Most of the members of this House have more of a direct interest in the Stock Exchange than they have in the sufferings of the poor.’42 Little changes.

  Though this short adjournment debate ended at 8.15 p.m., a further debate on Grey’s speech began again at the insistence of angry Liberal members.43 It was a futile exercise. Most of those whose minds the anti-war Members of Parliament sought to change chose not to stay. They were off preparing for war. Lloyd George, though, was present at the start to answer a question on food supplies.

  Percy Molteno, the Liberal MP for Dumfriesshire and an outspoken critic of the Boer War, was first on his feet to detail the many assurances given to Parliament over the previous years that there were no unpublished agreements which would hamper or restrict the freedom of the government or Parliament to decide whether or not Great Britain should participate in a war.44 He felt desperately let down by the government he had long supported and asked bitterly of Asquith and Grey who had ‘informed the people that they were a government of peace, and they would seek to maintain peace’ whether they were not compelled to honour their obligations to their supporters? In a passage that would echo down the ages and still resonates a century later Mr Molteno declared:

  They have brought us to the brink of disaster without our knowing, and without our being warned. I say that at the last moment, they should give the people of this country a chance to decide. This is a continuation of that old and disastrous system where a few men in charge of the State, wielding the whole force of the State, make secret engagements and secret arrangements, carefully veiled from the knowledge of the people, who are as dumb driven cattle without a voice on the question. And nobody can tell the country what are the important considerations that ought to weigh with us in taking part in this tremendous struggle.45

  What an apt metaphor. The dumb driven cattle were being herded towards the global abattoir for reasons they would never properly know. A few men wi
elding the whole force of the state, with secret arrangements and secret agreements, had unleashed the demon war and sanctioned the slaughter. Molteno pointed an accusatory finger at the politicians who had fronted the decision, but it was the Secret Elite who hid their all-powerful influence behind the carefully veiled parliamentary screen.

  Another Liberal, W. Llewellyn Williams, accused Grey of disguising his motives and falsely arousing war fever:

  If you had asked any man in this country, whatever his politics might be, whether he would calmly contemplate the entrance of his country into this quarrel, he would have said, ‘No’ … Even today this country does not want war … Now is the only time to speak before the war fever has come to its height. I beg and implore this Government … to use every effort in their power to avert this terrible calamity, not only to our own prosperity, but to the civilisation of the world.46

  Others questioned the impact in constituencies where factories were closing down and people could hardly afford to buy bread for their family. Russian opportunism was repeatedly criticised. In his absence, Grey was berated for ‘the sinister injustice’ of seeing Germany as the enemy while ignoring that fact that Russia had mobilised her forces first. It was a basic truth. Russia had mobilised first. Russia had caused the war. The objectors could see that Britain was being railroaded into war and asked what benefit it would be if Germany were crushed by an all-conquering Russia? One Liberal Member wanted to know why Belgian neutrality was suddenly of such vital consequence to Britain’s national honour when no one suggested making war to protect the integrity of Finland, which was being suppressed by a ‘semi-civilised barbaric and brutal’ Russia?

  The warmongers sought to close the quasi-debate by shouting down speakers, but such loutish behaviour only served to spur on the North Somerset Liberal MP Joseph King. He did not hold back. Why had only one Member of Parliament voiced support for the foreign secretary, even although he apparently had the wholehearted approval of both government and the official opposition? Was the Cabinet united? Who would resign? He continued to tear apart the pretence of parliamentary unity by asking why the Conservative Members from Ireland had not given immediate assurances of their support. By the time Mr King reminded them that ‘a short time ago the Hon. Members [from Ulster] were declaring they would invite the kaiser over’,47 he was being drowned out. His views on Russia and the expediency of their mobilisation are worthy of note. King stated that because of all the internal uprisings, localised and national strikes and threats of civil war, Russia had mobilised her army and thrown the whole of Europe into war for its own sake. They had no great political or patriotic motive other than to preserve the privilege of the ruling classes. He concluded: ‘if we are fighting for Russia at the present time, we are fighting for an amount of tyranny and injustice and cruelty which it is quite impossible to think of without the deepest indignation’.48 His views were perfectly valid and completely justified, but what he could not grasp, what none of them could grasp, was the much more sinister fact that Russia, like France, was being used to a greater Secret Elite purpose.

  Joseph King’s final point was equally stunning. When Franz Ferdinand’s assassination was first announced, the prime minister had proposed a resolution ‘which was accepted in solemn silence’. Asquith had extended his tender respect to the great family of nations headed by the Austrian emperor, and he offered them ‘affectionate sympathy’. Five weeks later, that same government was proposing to wage war against them. King called it ‘tragic, bitter and cynical’. He asked if British foreign policy had become so shifting and changing that the people to whom every sympathy was offered one day were our declared foes the next. He was not given an answer. What he could not understand because of all of the confusions around him was that foreign policy had not changed one iota since the moment that the Secret Elite decided that Germany had to be crushed. The lies, the deviousness, the secrecy, the posturing and the pretence had ambushed the voices of reason raised against war.

  As each and every contributor attacked government policy, challenged every step, asked more and more telling questions, it became ever more evident that there was a very strong body of articulate opinion ranged against Sir Edward Grey. At which point, Arthur Balfour, former Conservative prime minister and a member of the Secret Elite’s inner circle, rose menacingly. He had heard enough. Balfour derided their objections as the ‘very dregs and lees of the debate, in no way representing the various views of the Members of the House’. With consummate arrogance he patronised all that had been said before his interruption, stating that what they were engaged in was a ‘relatively impotent and evil debate’.49 How could this be a serious occasion, he asked, when none of the senior government ministers were present?

  What spurious nonsense. Senior government ministers had actively chosen not to be present. If these discussions were denied the trappings of a ‘serious occasion’, it was entirely because those ministers refused to be there. Balfour betrayed his real purpose when he ‘ventured to think’ that the points which had been raised might be misunderstood in the country and would certainly be misunderstood abroad.50

  Was Balfour sent in to bring it to a halt? He said as much when he alluded to the damage these opinions might do abroad. War had not been formally declared, but Parliament was being silenced, and it took a former Conservative prime minister to bring the discussions to a close. Arthur James Balfour, member of the Society of the Elect of the Secret Elite, personal and long-term friend of Milner, Lansdowne, Curzon, Asquith, Grey and Haldane, did the job for them. The Guardian described the evening debate as ‘serious and patriotic, and its prevailing tone reflected that of sober opinion in the country’.51 Amery called the voices raised against war ‘the radical crank section’,52 and The Times dismissed the whole protest in a single sentence. 53

  When Grey forwarded that infamous ultimatum to Berlin, it required a positive reassurance that Belgian neutrality would not be violated by Germany. The deadline was set for midnight on 4 August 1914. At some stage during the day an unknown person realised that Greenwich Meantime was set one hour behind Germany, and a decision was taken to advance the deadline to match the time in Berlin. There has never been an official explanation why such a decision was made, or by whom, or at what stage in the day. This decision had to be sanctioned by Sir Edward Grey, so the question to be asked is: why? Is this the action of a man who had reputedly tried every possible diplomatic channel to protect the peace of Europe? No. The two actions do not sit together. Was Sir Edward Grey afraid of some last-minute change of heart by the German military or a timely intervention by the kaiser? Perhaps, as A.J.P. Taylor famously wrote, they just wanted to get it settled and go to bed.54 Yes, that is precisely what happened. They wanted to get this war against Germany started, and no insignificant time difference would be allowed to halt it.

  The German High Command was taken aback by Grey’s ultimatum. Chancellor Bethmann fulminated at British duplicity in a speech delivered to the Reichstag on 4 August.55 He lambasted Sir Edward Grey for secretly encouraging France and hence Russia. He argued that war would have been impossible if the British Cabinet had made it absolutely clear to all the parties that they were not prepared to allow a continental war to develop from the Austria–Serbia conflict. Britain, he claimed, sought to take advantage of the international crisis by seizing the opportunity to destroy her greatest European competitors in the markets of the world. He dismissed Belgian neutrality as a lame excuse, a mask to cover the main intent, which was to destroy German economic power, assisted by two great continental armies from Russia and France. Bethmann accused Britain of seeing herself as the ‘arbitrium mundi’, the self-appointed ombudsman on the international stage. He was correct on every point, but official histories would mock his justified rage.

  Thus the casus belli, the German invasion of Belgium, had been steamrollered through Parliament, the opposition flattened and the ‘screamers’ ignored. Once Asquith knew that war with Germany would be declared
, he urgently contacted Edward Carson to cancel Plan B. It was no longer needed. Professor Quigley revealed that the Ulster Unionist leader had a prepared coded telegram ready to be dispatched to the UVF to seize control of Belfast at his given signal.56 This ultra-secret strategy was revealed to the inner-core Round Table member Lionel Curtis by Carson himself once the war was under way.57

  If an unbiased observer was invited to take a hard look at how the British Empire in all of its manifestations went to war, they would be amazed that such a process of undemocratic decision making permitted a tiny clique of elected officials, bolstered by a larger, less visible, but overwhelmingly influential cabal, to achieve their ultimate goal: war with Germany. The Cabinet played no part whatsoever in this process once it had sanctioned the primacy of Belgian neutrality. No one, with the possible but unrecorded exception of the prime minister, was given sight of the ultimatum sent by Sir Edward Grey. Before he had even sent it, Grey was fully aware that the condition he demanded had already been violated. German troops were heading into Belgium. The Cabinet did not authorise the declaration of war. It was never asked to. Parliament itself was informed of events, belatedly, but was given neither proper time to debate nor any opportunity to vote on war or neutrality. Opposition to the war was stifled as quickly as possible. The first time that any vote could have taken place was on 6 August, when the government sought approval for the finances they imagined would sustain a war that they had entered two days earlier. Nor were governments and parliaments across the Empire consulted. Millions of subjects of the king found themselves at war against an enemy about whom they had no knowledge.58