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

by Gerry Docherty

4. Dunlop, Edward VII, p. 220.

  5. Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 68.

  6. Grant and Temperley, Europe, p. 452.

  7. Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914–1917, p. 188.

  8. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. I, p. 242.

  9. Morel, Diplomacy Revealed, p. xvi.

  10. E.D. Morel, Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy, p. 71.

  11. Ibid., p. 58.

  12. Ibid., pp. 58–9.

  13. Grant and Temperley, Europe, p. 425 footnote.

  14. Ibid., p. 426.

  15. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, pp. 768–9.

  16. Kaiser William II, My Memoirs, p. 104.

  17. New York Times, 1 April 1905.

  18. Morel, Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy, p. 61.

  19. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, pp. 773–4.

  20. Ibid., p. 775.

  21. Morel, Diplomacy Revealed, p. 3.

  22. Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War, p. 101.

  23. Morel, Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy, p. 63.

  24. Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, vol. III, p. 343.

  25. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 801.

  26. Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, vol. III, pp. 483–4.

  27. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 778.

  28. Morel, Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy, p. 78.

  29. Dunlop, Edward VII, p. 237.

  30. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 188.

  31. Morel, Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy, pp. 84–5.

  32. Ibid., pp. 42–3.

  33. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 188.

  34. Sidney Lee, King Edward VII: A Biography, p. 344.

  35. Ibid., p. 360.

  36. The idea of a British invasion of Schleswig-Holstein was first mooted by Admiral Sir John Fisher, who argued that in the event of a war in Europe against Germany this action would have the immediate effect of drawing a million German soldiers from the front in France. While it was rejected by the Committee of Imperial Defence, the plan was known in diplomatic circles and reached the kaiser’s ear in 1905.

  37. Lee, King Edward VII, p. 360.

  38. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 786.

  39. Lee, King Edward VII, p. 361.

  40. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 5 – TAMING THE BEAR

  1. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 725.

  2. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 22 January 1902, vol. 101, cc574–628.

  3. Grant and Temperley, Europe, p. 415.

  4. A.L. Kennedy, Old Diplomacy and New: From Salisbury to Lloyd George, 1866–1922, p. 98.

  5. George Kennan, The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia and the Coming of the First World War, p. 76.

  6. Ferguson, House of Rothschild. p. 382.

  7. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 93.

  8. Sir Claude MacDonald presided over the Tokyo Legation in years of harmony between Britain and Japan (1900–12). MacDonald was in Tokyo when the alliance was renewed in 1905 and 1911. He became Britain’s first ambassador to Japan and was made a privy councillor in 1906.

  9. Ferguson, Pity of War, p. 495.

  10. For detailed information see http://www.clydesite.co.uk/viewship.asp?id=5173

  11. The Mikasa was the flagship of Admiral Togo at the Battle of Tsushima. Built in Barrow, England, she was the last of four battleships ordered under the 1896 Japanese Naval plan.

  12. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 726.

  13. Kennedy, Old Diplomacy and New, p. 97.

  14. Grant and Temperley, Europe, p. 419.

  15. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 762.

  16. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 13 February 1902, vol. 102, cc1272–313.

  17. Ian Nish, The Anglo-Japanese: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires 1894–1907, pp. 23–50.

  18. Kurt Kulhman, ‘The Renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1905’, academic paper, Department of History, Duke University, 9 January 1992, p. 3.

  19. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 13 February 1902, vol. 102, cc1272–313.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 3 July 1902, vol. 110, cc702–59.

  22. Scarborough Evening News, 24 October 1904.

  23. B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the World War, p. 9.

  24. Recorded in a special cable from Paris to New York Times, 27 October 1904.

  25. New York Times, 25 October 1904.

  26. Ibid.

  27. New York Times, 26 October 1904.

  28. The Times, 28 October 1904.

  29. New York Times, 31 October 1904.

  30. In 1908, an international committee of enquiry concluded that the fishing fleet was entirely blameless, and the majority of the commissioners (not the Russian representative) agreed that there were no torpedo boats among the trawlers nor anywhere near them. The Dogger Bank Case (Great Britain v Russia), 1908 2 Am. J. Int’L. 931–936 (I.C.I. Report of 26 February 1905).

  31. The Imperial Russian Fleet sailed from the Baltic and thus left it at the mercy of the Imperial German Fleet. Without the generous support of Kaiser Wilhelm in providing coaling facilities and supplies, the Russian Baltic Fleet could never have reached the Far East, as the kaiser was later to remind the czar. (Herman Bernstein, Willy–Nicky Correspondence, pp. 68–75.)

  32. Ibid., pp. 68–9.

  33. New York Times, 19 April 1905.

  34. The Times, 8 May 1905.

  35. Article IV of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1905, as detailed in the New York Times, 27 September 1905.

  36. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 22 January 1902, vol. 101, cc574–628.

  37. Vladimir Semenoff, The Battle of Tsushima, translated by Captain A.B. Lindsay at http://archive.org/stream/battleoftsushima01seme/battleoftsushima01seme_djvu.txt

  38. Takahashi Korekiyo, The Rothschilds and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–06, pp. 20–1.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 197 and footnote.

  41. Bernstein, Willy–Nicky Correspondence, telegram no. 13, p. 69.

  42. Willy–Nicky letters, 22 August 1905, and Kaiser–Bulow letter quoted in Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 175 and footnote.

  43. Bernstein, Willy–Nicky Correspondence, telegram 49, p. 139.

  44. Willy–Nicky letters, 22 August 1905, in Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 175 and footnote.

  45. Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p. 398.

  46. Bernstein, Willy–Nicky Correspondence, telegram 46, p. 131.

  47. Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p. 398.

  48. Bernstein, Willy–Nicky Correspondence, telegram 46, pp. 130–2.

  49. Morel, Diplomacy Revealed, p. 68.

  50. Ferguson, Pity of War, pp. 60–1.

  51. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. I, p. 41.

  52. Sir Arthur Nicolson’s career blossomed under the patronage of Secret Elite approval. He was ambassador at St Petersburg from 1906 to 1910, where he dealt regularly with Isvolsky. Nicolson was promoted to the top diplomatic post in the Foreign Office in 1910 and advised Sir Edward Grey on all his crucial decisions up to 1916, when both ‘retired’. Some believed that he was the ‘man who made the war’. Lord Carnock, as Nicolson became, was a member of The Club, along with Asquith, Grey and Haldane.

  53. Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice. p. 17.

  54. Friedrich Stieve, Isvolsky and the World War. p. 13.

  55. Hansard, House of Lords, Debate, 6 February 1908, vol. 183, cc999–1047.

  56. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 6 – THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  1. Representation of the People Act 1884 (48 and 49 Vict. c. 3); The Third Reform Act.

  2. Neilson, How Diplomats Make War, p. 99.

  3. Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘The Structure of Pay in Britain, 1710–1911’, Research in Economic Histo
ry, vol. 7, 1982, p. 22.

  4. Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 15.

  5. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 471–2.

  6. Terence H. O’Brien, Milner, p. 187.

  7. Milner Papers, Haldane to Milner, Bodleian Library, Ms.Eng.Hist. c.687.

  8. Milner Papers, Haldane to Milner, 13 May 1902, Bodleian Library, Ms.Eng.Hist. c.688.

  9. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 482.

  10. Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 30.

  11. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 475.

  12. Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 31.

  13. Ibid., p. 30.

  14. Ibid., p. 140.

  15. Sir Frederick Maurice, Haldane 1856–1915, pp. 49–50.

  16. Ibid., p. 69.

  17. Richard Burdon Haldane, An Autobiography, p. 162.

  18. Maurice, Haldane, p. 94.

  19. John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, p. 318.

  20. Maurice, Haldane, p. 111.

  21. Haldane, An Autobiography, p, 142. This was undoubtedly a personal gift from King Edward VII, who, between 1901 and 1902, made Alfred Milner, Nathaniel Rothschild, Edward Grey, Richard Haldane, George Wyndham and Sir Edward Cassel members of his Privy Council.

  22. Maurice, Haldane, p. 116.

  23. Lees-Milne, Enigmatic Edwardian, p. 158.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Haldane, An Autobiography, p. 159.

  26. K.M. Wilson, ‘The Making and Putative Implementation of a British Foreign Policy of Gesture, December 1905–August 1914: The Anglo-French Entente Revisited’, Canadian Journal of History, no. XXXI, August 1996, pp. 227–55.

  27. Asquith MSS, Haldane to Asquith, 6 October 1905, Bodleian Library, vol. 10.

  28. Lees-Milne, Enigmatic Edwardian, p. 155.

  29. Minutes of the Committee of Imperial Defence, CAB 38/9/1905, no. 65.

  30. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 203.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 8–9.

  33. Ibid., pp. 101–15.

  34. In fact, the War Office presented a paper on this action to the Committee of Imperial Defence in September 1905. CAB 38/10/ 1905, no. 73.

  35. CAB 38/9/ 1905, no. 65.

  36. CAB 38/10/ 1905, no. 67, p. 6.

  37. Maurice, Haldane, p. 175.

  38. Confidential report of General Ducarne to the Belgian minister of war, 10 April 1906, as quoted by Dr Bernhard Demburg in The International Monthly, New York, at http://libcudl.colorado.edu/wwi/pdf/i73726928.pdf

  39. Ibid.

  40. Maurice, Haldane, p. 176.

  41. Alexander Fuehr, The Neutrality of Belgium, p. 72.

  42. Sir George Clarke was governor of Victoria but returned to Britain in 1903 to be part of the three-man Esher Committee with Admiral Jacky Fisher. He was appointed first secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Later elevated to peerage as Lord Sydenham.

  43. Sir George Clarke to Lord Esher, 9 January 1906, Esher papers, ESHR 10/38.

  44. Grey to Haldane, quoted in Maurice, Haldane, pp. 172–3.

  45. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 202.

  46. Neilson, How Diplomats Make War, p. 87.

  47. The Times, 22 December 1905, p. 7.

  48. John W. Coogan and Peter F. Coogan, ‘The British Cabinet and the Anglo-French Staff Talks, 1905–1914: Who Knew What and When Did He Know It?’, Journal of British Studies, no. 24, January 1985, p. 112.

  49. Wilson, C.B., pp. 527–8.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Charles Repington, The First World War, p. 13.

  52. Wilson, C.B., p. 528.

  53. Haldane Papers, NLS, M.S. 200058, Memorandum of Events between 1906–15, p. 34.

  54. Wilson, C.B., p. 524.

  55. J.A. Spender, The Life of the Right Honourable Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, p. 251.

  56. Roy Hattersley, Campbell-Bannerman, p. 100.

  57. Wilson, C.B., p. 531.

  58. Grey, Twenty-Five Years, vol. I, p. 153.

  59. Haldane, An Autobiography, p. 191.

  CHAPTER 7 – 1906 – LANDSLIDE TO CONTINUITY

  1. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 27.

  2. T.P. O’Connor, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, pp. 125–6.

  3. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 28.

  4. Kennedy, Old Diplomacy and New, p. 141.

  5. E. & D. Grey, Cottage Book, Ichen Abbas, 1894–1905.

  6. Alfred F. Havinghurst, Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century, p. 84.

  7. Spender, Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, vol. II, p. 194.

  8. Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 25.

  9. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp. 56–7.

  10. Ferguson, Pity of War, pp. 85–9.

  11. Susan Hansen, ‘The Identification of Radicals in the British Parliament, 1906–1914: Some Attitudes to Foreign Policy’, The Meijo Review, vol. 6, no. 4, p. 6.

  12. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 59.

  13. Lees-Milne, Enigmatic Edwardian, pp. 157–8.

  14. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 12 July 1906, vol. 160, cc1074–171.

  15. Maurice, Haldane, p. 204.

  16. Ibid., p. 176.

  17. Ibid., p. 228.

  18. Ibid., p. 243.

  19. Ibid., pp. 174–5.

  20. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 682.

  21. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, p. 423.

  22. Ibid., p. 403.

  23. Baron John Arbuthnot Fisher, Memories and Records, vol. II, pp. 134–5.

  24. Ibid. pp. 184–96 gives Fisher’s arguments and calculations in favour of oil.

  25. Keith Middlemas, Pursuit of Pleasure: High Society in the 1900s, p. 107.

  26. Minutes of the Committee of Imperial Defence, CAB/ 38/9/1905, no. 32.

  27. Swain, Beginning the Twentieth Century, p. 271.

  28. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 778.

  29. Wilson, C.B., p. 621.

  30. Richard Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness, p. 46.

  31. Esher Diaries, 20 March 1908, as quoted in Toye above.

  32. Quoted in Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill., p. 46.

  33. Milner Papers, Churchill to Milner, 31 December 1900, Bodleian Library, Ms.Eng.Hist. c.687.

  34. Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill, p. 13.

  35. Ibid., p. 17.

  36. Ibid., p. 20.

  37. Edward David, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet: From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse, p. 73.

  38. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (eds), Diary of Beatrice Webb, Vol. III: The Power to Alter Things, 1905–1924, p. 94.

  CHAPTER 8 – ALEXANDER ISVOLSKY – HERO AND VILLAIN

  1. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 26 May 1908, vol. 189, cc963–5.

  2. Herman Bernstein, ‘The Czar of Russia, From a Study at Close Range’ New York Times, 13 Sept 1908.

  3. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 28 May 1908, vol. 189, cc11261–2.

  4. J.A. Farrer, England Under Edward VII, p. 217.

  5. Edward Legge, King Edward in his True Colours, p. 173.

  6. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 1 June 1908, vol. 89, cc11570–2.

  7. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 28 May 1908, vol. 89, cc11290–1.

  8. Lee, King Edward VII, part II, p. 594.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Committee of Imperial Defence, CAB 38/13/1907.

  11. Farrer, England Under Edward VII, p. 218.

  12. Fisher, Memories, p. 230–3.

  13. Farrer, England Under Edward VII, p. 218.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Morel, Diplomacy Revealed, p. 138.

  16. Farrer, England Under Edward VII, p. 218.

  17. Morel, Diplomacy Revealed, pp. 127–8.

  18. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 27 July 1908, vol. 193, cc939–88.

  19. Alexander Spiridovich, Les Dernières Années de la Cour de Tzarskoi
e Selo, vol. 1, chapter 16.

  20. New York Times, 3 August 1908.

  21. Stieve, Isvolsky and the World War, p. 12.

  22. Ibid., p. 113.

  23. Stevenson, 1914–18, p. 11.

  24. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 928.

  25. Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p. 83.

  26. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 927.

  27. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 12 October 1908, vol. 194, cc38–9.

  28. Luigi Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, vol. 1, pp. 222–3.

  29. James Joll and Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War, p. 69.

  30. Ewart, The Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. II, p. 913.

  31. Ibid., p. 930.

  32. Ibid., p. 936.

  33. Eugenii Nikolaevich Shelking, and L.W. Mavoski, Recollections of a Russian Diplomat: The Suicide of Monarchies, p. 183.

  34. Middlemas, Life and Times of Edward VII, p. 170.

  35. Stieve, Isvolsky and the World War, p. 16.

  36. Ibid., p. 17.

  37. Ibid., p. 13.

  CHAPTER 9 – SCAMS AND SCANDALS

  1. Macdonald, J. Ramsay, ‘Why We Are at War,’ The Open Court, vol. 1915, issue 4, article 4, p. 246. Available at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/ocj/vol1915/iss4/4. It is a reproduction in America of MacDonald’s article in the Continental Times of 4 December 1914.

  2. Francis Neilson, The Makers of War, p. 21.

  3. Strachan, The First World War, p. 45.

  4. Ferguson, Pity of War, p. 86.

  5. Anver Offer, First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation, p. 232.

  6. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, pp. 202–3.

  7. Hansard, House of Commons, Debate, 5 March 1912, vol. 35, cc205–76.

  8. Ferguson, Pity of War, pp. 63.

  9. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 213.

  10. Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, pp. 36–7.

  11. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol. I, p. 211.

  12. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 145.

  13. Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 153–4.

  14. Cabinet Papers, CAB/ 38/113/1907, p. 12.

  15. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. I, p. 512.

  16. Morel, Truth and the War, p. 157.

  17. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars, vol. I, pp. 510–13.

  18. H.A.L. Fisher, A History of Europe, p. 1083.

  19. Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice, pp. 18–19.