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

by Gerry Docherty

  So, who declared war?

  Technically, it was King George V who, as a matter of royal prerogative, had to sanction the proclamation of a state of war from 11 p.m. on that fateful night. A Privy Council meeting was held late on in Buckingham Palace. It began at 10.30 p.m. in the presence of His Majesty, one Lord of the Realm59 and two court officials; it ended with the royal assent. It was a dark deed done by a lesser monarch in the presence of men whose names are long forgotten. The act was purely symbolic but ultimately catastrophic. It was as if some medieval right cursed the twentieth century. The will of the Secret Elite was sanctioned by a pliant monarch whose pen unleashed the hounds of hell.

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 27 – THE SPEECH THAT COST A MILLION DEAD

  Sir Edward Grey’s statement on 3 August 1914 was not a debate, so he was not challenged on the issues he put before the House of Commons when he sat down.

  He began by stressing the utter lie that he and his Foreign Office colleagues had done everything possible to preserve peace in Europe.

  While he reiterated, yet again, that Parliament was free to decide what British attitudes should be, he never at any point sought its opinion.

  He deliberately gave the false impression that the ‘conversations’ with France that had been ongoing since 1905 made no commitment to go to war by omitting to tell Parliament that these included plans agreed by both general staffs.

  He introduced the imaginary scenario whereby the German fleet might bombard the undefended French Channel coast without explaining that the disposition of the French and British fleets had been arranged at Britain’s behest in 1912 and on the understanding that the British fleet would protect the French coast.

  The whole issue of neutrality, of the ‘violation’ of Belgian neutrality and its consequences, was the central argument in Sir Edward Grey’s cause for war. Appeals for help from the Belgian king to King George were introduced as a means of indicating support for action from the monarchy.

  Grey’s language became increasingly excited. Talk of the ‘direst crime that ever stained the pages of history’, and the claim that Britain would suffer equally badly whether she was involved directly or not, was pure nonsense.

  At the end of Grey’s speech, Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, rose in pre-planned approval to voice total and unconditional support for the government’s action.

  John Redmond spoke for the Irish Home-Rulers and most surprisingly promised their support too. What deals had been done?

  The only party leader to speak out immediately against the tone and the content of Grey’s speech was the Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald.

  Members of the House of Commons asked for an immediate debate but were rebuffed by Prime Minister Asquith. However, to the chagrin of the Secret Elite, the speaker of the House of Commons agreed to find time to discuss the issues later that night.

  Grey immediately left Parliament to send the fateful ultimatum to Germany, knowing full well that the invasion of Belgium, which was the central British condition, was already under way. It was a declaration of war.

  When the House of Commons reconvened, there was an outpouring of bitter objections to Sir Edward Grey’s statement, especially from Liberal MPs who felt personally betrayed by what they had heard. Grey’s statement was ripped apart. Pointed and unanswered questions were raised about Russia, the lies previously told in Parliament and the fearful consequences of war.

  The clamour against any proposed war was stopped in its tracks by one of the most senior Secret Elite agents in Parliament, A.J. Balfour. He rose to demand an end to the proceedings because the debate was unrepresentative and would give a poor impression to the public. (That could only have happened if the ‘debate’ had been reported in the newspapers.)

  Once the casus belli of Belgium was achieved, Plan B became redundant.

  War was formally proclaimed by King George V at Buckingham Palace on 4 August 1914.

  CONCLUSION

  Lies, Myths and Stolen History

  IN AUGUST 1914, THE SECRET ELITE began the war they so coveted. In Britain, Liberal, Labour and Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament were in shock, stunned by the fait accompli Sir Edward Grey presented on 3 August 1914. They had been ambushed and betrayed. Cast adrift by the excited jingoism, democracy looked on in impotent disbelief. And it was all predicated on a myth: the myth of Belgian neutrality. From 1906 onwards, Britain’s military link with Belgium was one of the most tightly guarded secrets, even within privileged circles.

  Documents found in the Department of Foreign Affairs in Brussels shortly after the war began proved Anglo-Belgian collusion at the highest levels, including the direct involvement of the Belgian foreign secretary, had been going on for years.1 Like the ‘conversations’ with French military commanders, the Belgian ‘relationship’ was never put in writing or adopted as official policy by Britain, since that would have risked exposure to Parliament and the press.2 Indeed, because Belgium’s behaviour violated the duties of a neutral state, the Secret Elite could not entertain any move to openly include them in the entente. That act alone would have put an end to neutrality and with it their best cause for war. Professor Albert Geouffre de Lapradelle, the renowned French specialist on international law, explained: ‘The perpetually neutral state renounces the right to make war, and, in consequence, the right to contract alliances, even purely defensive ones, because they would drag it into a war …’3

  The American journalist and writer, Albert J. Nock, completely destroyed the lie of Belgian ‘neutrality’. In his words:

  To pretend any longer that the Belgian government was surprised by the action of Germany, or unprepared to meet it; to picture Germany and Belgium as cat and mouse, to understand the position of Belgium otherwise than that she was one of four solid allies under definite agreement worked out in complete detail, is sheer absurdity.4

  And yet this absurd notion was used to take Britain into war and has been propagated ever since by British historians. Belgium posed as a neutral country in 1914 like a siren on the rocks, set there to lure Germany into a trap, whimpering a pretence of innocence.

  Every ruse was used to vilify Germany and the kaiser. The carnage was barely under way before blame was heaped on them. German responsibility was allegedly based on the official ‘books’ of diplomatic documents published by each government. The British Blue Book, which contained the diplomatic exchanges from just before the start of the war, was presented to Parliament on 6 August. Arranged in chronological order, the ‘evidence’ appeared to be complete, candid and convincing: a studied confirmation of Sir Edward Grey’s ‘determined efforts to preserve peace’.5 Later evidence released from Moscow in the wake of the Russian Revolution clearly showed that three of the telegrams Grey had presented to Parliament as proof of his attempts to prevent war had never even been sent. The claim by the British ambassador in St Petersburg, Sir George Buchanan, that, with one exception, all of the diplomatic exchanges between him and the Foreign Office were included in the Blue Book was a scandalous lie.6 Professor Sydney Fay of Harvard found that ‘more than a score’ had not been included and that important passages from telegrams and letters had been judiciously cut.7

  The Russian Orange Book contained 79 documents that emphasised her efforts for peace, but it concealed the truth about Russia’s mobilisation and blamed the Central Powers.8 The Orange Book omitted the conciliatory proposals that had been made by Germany during the July crisis and all evidence of the aggressive Franco-Russian policies.9 The long-delayed French Yellow Book likewise suppressed some telegrams altogether and altered others to imply the French desire for peace and German guilt for the war.10

  The Secret Elite were ruthless in their manipulation of official documents. The French Yellow, British Blue and Russian Orange Books were riddled with omissions and misinformation to conceal the truth and were faithfully portrayed by their propaganda machines as evidence of German guilt.

  The German White Book11 was presented to the Reichstag on
3 August, and its brevity (it contained only 27 telegrams and letters) gave rise to the myth that Germany had only printed selections that suited her cause. A great mass of telegrams had been exchanged between Germany and Austria in the days and hours before publication of the White Book, and, even had they been published, it would have been impossible to read and digest their contents in such a short time.12 In 1919, Karl Kautsky, the German socialist leader (and no lover of the kaiser’s regime), released volumes of evidence on the origins of the war. The Kautsky documents comprised 1,123 records which proved absolutely that Germany made every effort to avoid the war and that evidence to the contrary was a pure myth.13

  The Secret Elite control over four years of mindless slaughter will be explained in detail in our next book in the Hidden History series. On 11 November 1918, the armistice with Germany was signed in General Foch’s railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne, north of Paris. It was claimed that the kaiser waged war to expand the German empire and tyrannise Europe, while Britain, France and Russia had made every possible effort to prevent it. The jaundiced analysis was that ‘Germany deliberately worked to defeat all of the many conciliatory proposals made by the Entente Powers and their repeated efforts to avoid war’.14 Germany was ‘guilty of the greatest crime against humanity and freedom that any nation calling itself civilized had ever committed’. The terrible responsibility for millions of war dead was placed firmly at Germany’s door because ‘she saw fit to gratify her lust for tyranny by resort to war’.15 These lies were presented as ‘truth’.

  The Secret Elite mobilised all the resources at their command, including universities, the press, the pulpit and the whole machinery of government to preach this false gospel of guilt. The kaiser and Germany were vilified. The Allied Powers were glorified. Their men, after all, had fought and died for ‘civilisation’.

  Treaty negotiations in Paris were crammed with representatives from Britain, France and the US who were closely linked to the Secret Elite. The few German delegates permitted to attend Versailles asked for proof of Germany’s alleged guilt but were denied it. In truth, none existed. They asked for an independent investigation into the responsibility for war but were denied it. They asked for a non-partisan commission to examine the archives of all the warring nations and to question the principal leaders but were denied. No defence was permissible. On 28 June 1919, the formal peace treaty was signed in the Palace of Versailles. It had taken the Secret Elite exactly five years from the murders in Sarajevo to achieve their aim. The German delegates were obliged to sign Article 231, accepting all blame:

  The Allied and Associated Governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of herself and her allies, for causing the loss and damage to which the Allied and associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.16

  By signing, Germany acquiesced and accepted sole responsibility for the First World War. A starving, desperate nation had been confronted with the choice of admitting her ‘guilt’ at once or suffering an Allied occupation with every likelihood that an admission of guilt would ultimately be extorted in any case. Professor H.E. Barnes stated:

  Germany occupied the situation of a prisoner at the bar, where the prosecuting attorney was given full leeway as to time and presentation of evidence, while the defendant was denied counsel or the opportunity to produce either evidence or witnesses.17

  The lies, vindictive reparation schemes and headline-grabbing assertions continued long after 1918 in order to protect the real culprits in this crime against humanity and conceal the truth from the world. In his groundbreaking book The Anglo-American Establishment, Professor Carroll Quigley dared to reveal how the Secret Elite continued their malicious influence and controlled and manipulated the truth through their triple-front penetration of politics, the press and education:

  No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner group accomplished – that is, that a small number of men would be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.18

  The Rhodes secret society, expanded as it was by Alfred Milner and his acolytes into the Secret Elite, had achieved stage two of their great plan: war with Germany. The combination of money power, intellectual conviction and ruling-class mentality, the All Souls, Oxford, power base and the aristocratic heritage harnessed to the Northcliffe stables had ambushed Germany into a war in 1914 and now ambushed the truth about their complicity in the war’s origins.

  From the conception of the secret society, members of the Secret Elite took exceptional care to remove all traces of their conspiracy. Letters to and from Alfred Milner were culled, removed, burned or otherwise destroyed.19 Milner’s remaining papers, held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, bear witness to the zeal with which much evidence of wrongdoing has been obliterated. Secret dispatches that he sent to his friend Lord Selborne have disappeared. Milner burned private and personal telegrams20 and what remains of the cull undertaken by Lady Violet Milner after his death represents only the bare rump of his voluminous correspondence. Incriminating letters sent by King Edward were subject to an order that on his death they must be destroyed immediately. Admiral Jacky Fisher noted in his Memories that he had been advised by Lord Knollys, the king’s private secretary, to burn all letters sent to him by the king. Fisher consequently burned much of his royal correspondence but couldn’t bear to part with it all.21 Lord Nathaniel Rothschild likewise ordered that his papers and correspondence be burned posthumously lest his political influence and connections became known. As his recent biographer commented, one can but ‘wonder how much of the Rothschilds’ political role remains irrevocably hidden from posterity’.22 That is exactly what they tried to do: hide their role in causing the First World War from posterity.

  If anything, the systematic conspiracy of the British government to cover all traces of its own devious machinations was far worse and utterly inexcusable. Even if we assume that the surviving records of the Committee of Imperial Defence were accurate, what remains tells us more about what is missing. Cabinet records for July 1914, covering the 4th to the 21st, relate almost exclusively to Ireland.23 Discussion about the Balkans? None. Belgium? None. No paper appeared that weighed concerns and consequences of a German invasion of Belgium. It had to appear that this conundrum had suddenly been sprung on Britain.

  While the official notice in the Public Record Office List of Cabinet Papers warns that ‘the papers listed … are certainly not the whole of those collectively considered by Cabinet Ministers’, the gap is breathtaking, and no effort has been made to explain why crucial records are missing or what happened to them. Nothing is included from 14 July until 20 August, by which time the First World War had entered its third week. It beggars belief that so much has disappeared, been destroyed, burned or ‘not been kept for whatever reason’.24 In fairness to the librarians and custodians of the Public Record Office, they could only catalogue what was passed to them from the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the War Office and the Colonial Office. The British public has a right to know the full extent of what has been secretly retained, hidden or gone ‘missing’.

  In the early 1970s, the Canadian historian Nicholas D’Ombrain began researching War Office records. He noted:

  The Registry Files were in a deplorable condition, having suffered the periodic ravages of the policy of ‘weeding’. One such clearance was in progress during my foray into these files, and I found that my material was being systematically reduced by as much as five-sixths.25

  Astonishingly, a large amount of ‘sensitive’ material was actually removed as the researcher went about his business. Where did it go? Who authorised i
ts removal? In addition, D’Ombrain noted that minutes of the Committee of Imperial Defence and ‘circulation and invitation lists’ together with much ‘routine’ correspondence had been destroyed.26 What still required to be hidden from historians and researchers in 1970? That D’Ombrain found five-sixths of the total files melting away in front of him demonstrated clearly that others still retained a vested interest in keeping the evidence of history hidden.

  Official memoirs covering the origins of the First World War were carefully scrutinised and censored before being released. Sir Edward Grey’s Twenty-Five Years is an appalling excuse for a record of fact, and the convenience of his failing memory rings hollow. Lloyd George’s War Memoirs naturally centre on himself but contain pieces that suggest a censor’s pen. Instead of detailing the help he received from Lord Rothschild at the very start of the war, Lloyd George restrained his comment to ‘it was done’,27 leaving the reader to wonder precisely what ‘it’ was. Ambassador Sir George Buchanan’s memoirs, My Mission to Russia and other Diplomatic Memories, contained information too revealing for publication. His daughter Meriel stated that he was obliged to omit passages from his book on pain of losing his pension.28

  Utterly unacceptable as this is, in the light of the lies that have been purveyed as history, it is surely of even greater concern that Carroll Quigley pointed an accusing finger at those who monopolised ‘so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period’. There is no ambivalence in his accusation. The Secret Elite controlled the writing and teaching of history through numerous avenues, including the Northcliffe stables, but none more effectively than Oxford University. Almost every important member of the Milner Group was a fellow of one of three colleges – Balliol, New College or All Souls. The Milner Group largely dominated these colleges, and they, in turn, largely dominated the intellectual life of Oxford in the field of history.29 The influence of the Milner Group at Oxford was so powerful that it controlled the Dictionary of National Biography, which meant that the Secret Elite wrote the biographies of its own members.30 They created their own official history of key members for public consumption, striking out any incriminating evidence and portraying the best public-spirited image that could be safely manufactured.