Agent of Peace

by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme

  Dr Diane Clements Kaminski* in her PhD thesis Emily Hobhouse – The Radicalization of a Ministering Angel says that since Grey had not answered her wire of 28 June, Emily wrote to him the next day, requesting a brief interview with him or Lord Crewe. She wanted to see one of them before she went to Scotland Yard and stressed that she would ‘not feel happy until I have told you all I have learnt,’ and that ‘it was only in the interests of our distracted world that she asked for this favour …’4

  But the Foreign Office was in no hurry. It was waiting for the Scotland Yard report.

  Thomson was aware of Evelyn Grant Duff’s comments, had seen the copy of Emily’s letter to Aletta Jacobs, the original of which, still unsigned, had been forwarded to Aletta Jacobs in Holland. The full text of the letter is as follows:

  24th June /16

  Dear Friend,

  I hope, all being well, to leave Switzerland and go home on the wings of the wind, and ere leaving must write you once more freely because from England that will not be possible.

  Listen – to business; I returned last night from a trip through Belgium and Germany. I have been to Berlin and seen von Jagow, whom I knew in old days. From this, much I hope may develop. I am to keep open a line of communication with him. Will you help? – saying nothing.

  If you have a letter from me (or a card) from home, beginning as above ‘Dear Friend’ and signed by me – but either elusive or with not much meaning for you, will you put it into an envelope, but do not post it – take it to the Ambassador at the Hague, to forward urgently. If, through the same hand, any word or letter should come back to be forwarded to me, will you re-write it, if necessary in your own hand and sign it with your name, unless it should reach you from the Legation in a form in which it could be forwarded. But a postcard is better.

  Gertrude Woker has been such a dear. I am too exhausted to write, but want you to know that Frau Ragaz and Mlle Gobat have returned from Stockholm very disgusted with affairs there – and say Rosika has gone home, for which they are sorry, since she has such a capacity. Dr. Aked seems a firebrand. Emily Balch is there and I hope she may pull the thing together.*

  Everything is at its worst and this great battle is preparing. Thousands on both sides have to meet Death in July – or sooner.

  Too tired to write.

  I am establishing here also a line of communication, but posts are so uncertain across France that I think a duplicate line necessary.

  With best love.5

  Grant Duff had said he believed that this letter was the key to an international pacifist intrigue. He said that Emily had been staying in Berne with Gertrude Woker (which she hadn’t actually – but used her address), and said Gertrude Woker was ‘a militant pacifist well known to me as one of the most aggressive women in Switzerland’6 and that the letter showed that Emily had arranged a code with the Germans. Further he believed Emily’s pacifist activity to be subversive. One undersecretary at the Foreign Office agreed and said: ‘This (letter) seems quite sufficient to justify interning Miss Hobhouse; and that even more drastic action might be taken.’7

  Basil Thomson reported to his chief at the Metropolitan Police, C.F. Dormer, that Emily had given him a ‘pretty clear picture’ of her movements in Germany and Belgium, where she ‘formed the opinion that the blockade was responsible for heavy infant mortality etc., exactly the sort of conclusions the Germans desired her to form’. She thought the prisoners, whom she interviewed at Ruhleben, were generally well treated though a number of them were suffering mental strain:

  Her conclusions, of course, are quite immaterial, but I gathered in conversation that her talk with von Jagow included the usual discussion about Peace terms, and in that respect I think it probable that the Germans regard her as an unofficial peace emissary, from whose visit some results may be expected. I did not press her on the subject of the conversation, because she evidently preferred to communicate this to Sir Edward himself, or to someone delegated by him.

  Up to a point she was evidently speaking the truth. I am expecting today or tomorrow a draft of a letter that she wrote to von Jagow from Switzerland, in her handwriting, which has come into our agent’s hands but what she did omit to tell me (a fact that came into my hands after the interview) is that she was given an address in Amsterdam** to which she is to communicate when she wishes to write to von Jagow. Probably it will be possible to intercept the letter, but one cannot be sure, and therefore she ought to be treated with great reserve. At the same time I do think that it might be well for her to see the Foreign Office.’8

  When Emily returned from New Scotland Yard she found a reply from Sir Edward Grey’s Private Secretary dated 29 June, to inform her that he would not be able to see her on the 30th. He said: ‘Sir Edward will be glad if Miss Hobhouse will communicate in writing the tenour of the information which she desires to give.’9

  So she wrote on 1 July 1916:

  Dear Sir Edward Grey,10

  I only received today the kind note of your Private Secretary of June 29. I write to assure you that I bear no message from von Jagow and am in no way an Emissary of the German Government, a thing which I am sure would not be acceptable to you. It is simply that owing to the chance of old acquaintanceship I had a long and intimate conversation with him, easy and devoid of all official character – of the kind that gives one deep glimpses.

  Afterwards it came to me a certainty that it was my duty – if you permit – to convey to you the gist of that talk for the day might come when it might be of great use to you.

  One cannot convey such things by letter, therefore I have ventured to beg the honour of an interview.

  I have the honour to be

  Yrs Obediently

  Emily Hobhouse

  While she waited for Grey’s reply to this letter, the Foreign Office had received Thomson’s summary of his 30 June interview. Thomson now added: ‘she has mentioned our offensive’. He was alarmed at her general lament about continuing war deaths.11 (The names of the dead were printed daily in The Times. The Battle of the Somme was about to start. There were 57,000 British and Commonwealth casualties on the very first day – 1 July 1916 – so these lists could be very long.)

  Thomson’s position further changed when he received the copy of Emily’s letter to Jagow (this letter is not preserved in British Foreign Office files but is available from German Foreign Office records). As Emily kept drafts or copies of many of her more important letters, this was likely to have been obtained by the British agent from Emily’s maid – which would, of course, have been classic.

  Bern, Schweiz

  June 25 /16

  To His Excellency

  Dear Herr von Jagow,12

  Grant Duff was very angry but I soothed him as one does a child and I think he will let me go. Under the new French regulations the fact of my visit had to come out – otherwise he had no idea of it.

  The post is so uncertain now via France, that I think it wise to arrange a duplicate line of communication via Holland. I have a reliable friend there whom I have instructed to deliver any letter or postcard she receives from me worded allusively, to the German Minister at The Hague to be forwarded to you. If this postcard spoke of Edward or Edward’s brother, you would know it meant Grey or one of his colleagues. Should you wish to send me any word in reply, she could send it to me instructed by your Minister.

  Most important matters have nowadays to be written in duplicate for so much is lost.

  She is absolutely reliable (but of course I have told her nothing).

  Dr Aletta Jacobs, 158 Koninginneweg, Amsterdam

  Though it may be true that men as a whole keep secrets better than women, yet some women can keep a secret better than any man.

  Very sincerely Yours

  Emily Hobhouse

  Dormer now told the Foreign Office that ‘the Police are now asking the Home Office to intern her, as being in communication with enemy subjects, and in the circumstances he [Thomson] thinks the FO should not se
e her’.13 But at the Home Office, where Sir John Simon had been succeeded by another distinguished politician, Herbert Samuel, it was not thought necessary to intern Emily nor to take other measures.

  Notes

  * I am grateful to Dr Diane Clements Kaminski for introducing me to the government side of events, which she included in her PhD Thesis at the University of Connecticut. Kaminski did far more work in sifting through the Foreign Office files than I have been able to do.

  * Clara Ragaz and Marguerite Gobat were Swiss pacifists. Rosika Schwimmer, Dr Aked and Emily Greene Balch had all travelled to Sweden on Henry Ford’s Peace Ship. Rosika was a vice chair of the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace. Emily Greene Balch, a future Nobel Prize winner, was also associated with it. Dr Aked was a Baptist minister.

  ** Thomson’s facts were not correct or he would have seen that it was Emily who provided the address for Dr Jacobs, not Jagow, nor the German Foreign Office.

  1. Cecil, All the Way p. 128

  2. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 p. 65

  3. FO 372/894

  4. Kaminski p. 311

  5. EH to Aletta Jacobs, Aletta Jacobs correspondence, Amsterdam. The letter arrived unsigned.

  6. Kaminski p. 311

  7. Ibid.

  8. Kaminski p. 312

  9. JHB Collection

  10. Ibid.

  11. Kaminski p. 313

  12. GFO D959717-8

  13. Kaminski p. 313

  11

  DIARY, JULY 1916

  F or just sixteen days Emily kept a diary, something she was never keen to do. She preferred to write a journal or to tell her story in letters to her friends.

  Nearly all the people Emily met and mentioned in the Diary, were Members of Parliament or prominent in other fields. Many were members of the Union of Democratic Control (UDC), formed at the beginning of the war by a group of Liberal MPs and others who believed that secret diplomacy had led to the outbreak of war. Among these, in particular, were E.D. Morel, who was said to have great organising abilities and had previously sought to limit the powers of King Leopold II of Belgium over the Belgian Congo; Arthur Ponsonby, a son of Sir Henry Ponsonby Queen Victoria’s Private Secretary, a former diplomat who had considerable inside knowledge; Charles Trevelyan, who had held parliamentary office; and Charles Buxton. Other members were R.W. Outhwaite and Arnold Rowntree. J. Ramsay MacDonald, the future Prime Minister, and Norman Angel were among the founders. These people were all proponents of a negotiated peace. Lord Courtney was a sympathiser. Emily’s brother, Leonard Hobhouse, who had been such a support to her in the Anglo-Boer War, was not a member of the group.

  The first two pages of the Diary are missing. Perhaps Emily tore them out herself as she waited in the Westminster Palace Hotel for an answer to her wire to Sir Edward Grey. She said she felt very shaken by her visit to New Scotland Yard. One can imagine that her heart was playing her up:

  Saturday, July 1st I was strangely relieved after my examination at New Scotland [Yard] was over, and the terrible palpitations of my heart subsided. Mr Ponsonby was unfortunately out of town. Still I could not shake off the impression of Martial Law and the idea of being watched. I called on the Devonports* but found they had just left for the weekend. Called also on Lord Courtney and had a fairly satisfactory talk with him, urging secrecy for the present. He looked very thin and ill, and seemed too weak for me to tell him all I wished.

  In the evening I walked across to Mrs J.R. Green** and told her the position. As regards Ruhleben Camp she suggested I should lunch with her next day to meet Mrs Pope Hennessy who is on a Government Commission connected with the Red Cross for the care of our prisoners in Germany. Accepted gratefully. I urged Secrecy – she replied she was ‘loaded up with Secrets’ and promised. [So the weekend was not yet over and Emily was already pursuing her second objective – to obtain the release of civilian prisoners of war.]

  Sunday, July 2nd Part of Abbey Service – tiring to my back. To lunch with Mrs Green. Found on arrival Mrs Pope Hennessey and her husband the Major – both already in full possession of my Secret. (Oh Mrs Green!) Found her very bitter and antagonistic. He very nice – Just off for Mesopotamia. She suggested I should go and visit their office in 18 Carlton House Gardens and we fixed Wednesday morning. I found her very difficult to talk to, but we agreed that the trouble in the Civilian Camp was mental primarily, and from her I first learned what I suspected, that a similar state of things obtained among the German prisoners in our Civilian Camps of Knockaloe, Alexandra Palace, etc. We agreed that the only sensible policy was the complete break up of the Camps – she of course imagined that only Germany was to blame for hindering this. I, on the other hand could assure her that in the Foreign Office at Berlin it was asserted that our government put difficulties in the way.

  Coming home looked at my little old house in Cowley Street – empty again. A fatality rests on that house.

  Monday, July 3rd Mr Ponsonby called early. His visit was a great relief to me. I told him much but not the crème de la crème – upon which, however, he advised me how to act in regard to the Foreign Office. He was sympathetic and encouraging and asked to be allowed to tell the UDC Executive and arrange for me to meet them for a talk. In the evening Mr Outhwaite came and we had a good long chat.

  Tuesday, July 4th Phoebe left. Her departure a true relief. She left everything in very bad condition. At 2 p.m. came Mr Charles Trevelyan, who had meantime, however, heard my news from Arthur Ponsonby. Still, we had a nice talk.

  Wednesday, July 5th The Abbey – then to 18 Carlton House Gardens to Mrs Pope Hennessy. Saw also Mrs Livingstone and Sir Lewis Mallet. Found Mrs Hennessy as before, very brusque and ‘difficile’. Mrs Livingstone more sympathetic and urged I should go with her on a tour to see the English Camps, Knockaloe and Alexandra Palace. Mrs H proposed arranging for me to see Lord Newton at once and telephoned there and then. The answer came he could see me at once, therefore I broke away, took a taxi and drove to the Foreign Office. Lord Newton was very nice, unofficial in mind and manner – open – agreed with me about the Camps – acknowledged same state of affairs here in England – desired complete exchange – was aware Germany had proposed this a year ago – said Kitchener had stood in the way.* ‘These naval and military fellows,’ he said, ‘always make difficulties; they are narrow and one-ideaed and know nothing’. He thought (as I suggested) that the matter could be arranged easily enough by unofficial hands, and proposed that I should myself write to von Jagow and get the thing done. He said he could get it sent via USA Embassy, but it would have to be submitted to the Cabinet. I said I was quite agreeable to that. He said this must be kept quite private. I went home and wrote the letter and sent to him for this purpose.

  At 3.30 that afternoon Mr Buxton came to see me – a very charming personality. He was busy about a Memorial for Negotiations, and I signed his paper. He arranged for his wife to come and see me later.

  At 6.30 p.m. came Captain Bennett who was delightful and told me he had just completed translation of the German White Book on Belgium Atrocities. Asked me to lunch to meet his wife – counselled speaking to Lord Northcliffe who he said was pessimistic about the war.

  At the Red Cross Headquarters Sir Lewis Mallet ran off a letter (5 July) to Sir Horace Rumbold** at the Foreign Office. It started with a flourish: ‘Miss Hobhouse, pro-Boer and pro-German, called upon me this morning to my horror.’1 (It is interesting that even though fourteen years had lapsed since the end of the Anglo-Boer War the term ‘pro-Boer’ was still used against Emily in a derogatory sense, regardless of what she had done to help the people, and that responsible diplomats should feel free to use name-calling in this way. As Emily had explained much earlier, being pro-Boer – having sympathy for them – certainly did not mean that one was anti-British. The same could be said of ‘pro-German’. )

  Guy Locock an assistant undersecretary at the Foreign Office, was intrigued by it and wrote to Sir Lewis Mallet: ‘What else did the m
ischievous Miss Hobhouse say?’2 In reply Mallet told Rumbold on 10 July that Miss Hobhouse was careful to speak favourably of the material conditions at Ruhleben and stressed that, though Germans had intended no mistreatment, the captivity was having a depressing, even maddening, effect on many men.

  At that time Emily had apparently produced her plan for the exchange of all British and German civilians over military age who wished to go and for sending the remainder to a neutral country where normal life could be resumed. (This would have been the plan agreed with Stumm in the German Foreign Office.)

  Lord Newton noted in his diary:

  Miss E. Hobhouse, who has been lately at Ruhleben and gives very bad account. Wants to write to Jagow and propose exchange: told her to w[rite] and send letter for me to see, and that I would ask if it might go. Afterwards sent it to me; showed it to R. Cecil and Drummond, who thought it would not do …

  Afternoon, debate on Ruhleben. Just before making statement heard that reply had just arrived and that it was not categorical refusal … Am being denounced in Harmsworth press as being too pro(?) Germany. Germans in note say they want whole of 26,000 here for our 4,000! According to Miss H. condition of Ruhleben people horrible … 3

  The difference in numbers was because there were, according to the 1911 census, over 50,000 Germans living in Britain. Some had been there for generations. Not all were interned.4

  It was on another matter that Lord Newton sent Emily a formal and private note the next day. Emily had asked him about her third objective – better food for Belgium:

  Foreign Office

  Private

  July 6 1916

  Dear Miss Hobhouse,5

  I have nothing personally to do with Belgium, and perhaps you had better write to Lord Robert yourself. I will tell him, when I next see him, that you wish to speak to him.