Agent of Peace

by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme

  Mr Hoover came and I dismissed Mr Outhwaite and went to receive him. Very nice – talked facts for one and a half hours a great strain on my ears and brain. Very clear and neutral.14 Advised that I, an English woman, should write to help Belgium something to arouse the English Conscience. Left Reports …

  Said peasantry better off – good harvest and fruit and veg – high prices. Said babies up to 3 yrs better and mortality reduced for well looked after. Said rich classes in good trim for various reasons. Burden falling on 5 millions of intermediate ‘petite bourgeoisie’, and artizans [sic] and factory hands – especially on children from 5–16 and age of adolescence.

  Confirmed what I had learned – Vital Statistics carefully tabulated tubercular trouble 600 per cent above normal.

  They are now spending 1.6 million a month and only the 1 million is from the Belgian Government. Fears he won’t be able to maintain the rest more than two or three months.

  Can’t get Allied Govts to let in more fats – need 10,000 tons a month, only allowed about 2,500 but hopes 3,200 next month. Has arranged at cost of £200,000 a month to give meals to school children in all the towns a good midday meal. Wants Sanatorium for tuberculosis – will try Rockefeller.

  Said Germans kept letter of law often broke spirit – took fish of artificial ponds, took wool but left sheep – took half sugar produced at 35 cy (only 60,000) and sold in Germany for 3 frs. Left Belgium with half supply but this not under guarantee at the time.

  No Belgian would work on the railways. Out of 80,000 employees to whom the Belgian Govent sent 30 frs a week thro’ the Relief, only 250 would work for the Germans. Co-erced Labour not success. About five men a week shot in Brussels for Espionage technically correct because treason.

  Spoke well of Captain Bruhn, a fine man. And well, but not so well, of von Lancken etc. Visé and Tirlmin quite destroyed. 800,000 cattle left in Belgium.

  157 districts to which Relief Commission distribute supplies and then leave to Belgians. This necessary as they are not always fair to each other. People get 60 per cent of minimum necessity.

  Spoke of difficulties with Belgian Government. Grey and Cecil humane – Kitchener impossible. Better now with Lloyd George.

  Hard to find ships. Scrape up anywhere. Enormous prices for voyage to Rotterdam worst there is. Pay the cost of the vessel in two trips. Not ships enough and much much more. Feed on the basis of 5 frs per capita [a week?]. Had all the cereal harvest last year and again this …’

  When Theodor Kocher received Emily’s message, 23 August, he answered with an eye to the censor:15

  Today I got your message. We were so glad, my wife and I – as we had not heard from you such a long time. We found it very hot here in coming back from the mountains ten days ago. I did not hear from Henry since our return. But still I can not think he would have been able to go away being hard at work. I shall try and see him tomorrow. This would be a very fine scheme to go to your sea altogether. I hope your stay shall give you much benefit. I am happy to think you are not absolutely disappointed and send best wishes, which my wife joins. She sends her love to you. The holidays did much good to the children.

  Yours T K.

  Dr Kocher sent a little formal note off via Romberg to Jagow in the German Foreign Office [undated on file]:16

  Miss Emily Hobhouse says: The moment was inauspicious but the door was not entirely shut in her face. The matter was rather postponed awhile.

  She asks: Is it possible to withdraw the prohibition made by Hr v. J. in writing and release her promise to respect it. If so she has reason to believe that something may be done very soon.

  Sadly, for Emily the answer was ‘Nein’ [No].17 In the German Foreign Office they were probably well aware of the difficulties Emily was having.

  And there was another disappointment. If Emily thought she had made some headway with Tom Newton her doubts were raised once again on 23 August when in answer to a question in the House from Sir Henry Dalziel, Liberal MP for Kilcaldy Burghs, Cecil said:

  In the first place the Rt Hon. gentleman asked me whether any overtures for peace had been made to the British Government. I can say quite definitely and explicitly that no such overtures have been made. There is only one way in which overtures of peace can be made and that is by communication of the enemy governments to this Government. If any such communication had taken place the first thing we would have had to do would be to consult our Allies. No such overture has taken place of any kind …

  Emily wrote hurriedly to Tom Newton:

  Draft Confidential

  Aug 24/16

  Dear Lord Newton,18

  When I read Lord Robert’s reply to Sir H Dalziel in the Times today I felt very uncomfortable.

  I feel so sure that what von Jagow said to me was an indirect overture for peace but perhaps in my blundering way I did not make it clear to you. He said that as Germany has (and she believes she has) made two open pronouncements of her desire for peace and her readiness to enter into negotiations to arrange it – and has received only insults in reply (for this is her view) – therefore it is impossible for her to make another public move, it must come from our side now, but on the other hand she is ready and more than ready and desirous for peace – and, it is obvious would be very moderate in her terms.

  Also he expressly answered Viscount Grey’s remark when he said the first step towards peace would be when Germany recognized and acknowledged that the Allies are not beaten – von Jagow said that ‘they fully recognized that England was not defeated.’

  It seems to me so horrible this massacre and misery when all the time the right hand of fellowship is ready for our grasp.

  If only you could meet him privately I feel more and more sure you would together find a basis for public negotiation.

  Forgive me for writing this but it is prompted by a feeling of responsibility as if I had not clearly conveyed what I believe undoubtedly was an indirect word of great import as regards their willingness.

  Newton answered privately 27 August: ‘I think you must realise that, in view of my holding an official position, it is quite impossible for me to act as you suggest.’19

  To return to Ruhleben. Lord Newton recorded in his diary: ‘August 15: Hear that Asquith is in favour of letting all German civilians go, personally, and that Robertson [Army] is difficulty.’

  In the following week Newton had interviews with both Asquith and Grey, Asquith claiming he knew nothing about the subject but was quite surprised to hear there was any opposition: ‘seemed sensible enough and in favour of it.’

  Grey also promised support to let all prisoners over the age of 45 go free. Newton had pointed out that this was the only chance of getting anything done and noted in his diary that it remained to be seen if he, Grey, would ‘stick to it’.

  About two months later Lord Newton gained complete control of his Prisoners of War Department. In the House of Lords he said he was of a very conciliatory nature and would like to send home all civilians over military age, who wanted to go.

  On 15 November the Archbishop of Canterbury asked in the Lords what progress had been made in the exchange of civilian prisoners, and Lord Devonport talked of the numbers to be exchanged. He said he understood it had been agreed in Germany on an all-for-all basis – with the proviso that those of military age would not be permitted to serve in the army or navy.20

  The question of numbers – whether it was for those over military age, 400 British for 6,000 Germans, or all for all, about 4,000 British for about 26,000 of the enemy – must have provided a moral dilemma for the government, over and above objections from the military. It is to the credit of the Government, to Lord Newton and to Emily, that the needs of humanity were chosen over those of fair play. Emily had done what she could.

  The question of the actual exchange was to linger on.

  Notes

  * Possibly a reprisal.

  1. JHB collection

  2. Ibid., letter from German Section of the US Emb
assy, 5 August 1916, signature unclear

  3. JHB collection

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid., 11 December 1916. Literally ‘As for Stephen I’ve no patience with him at all … Other people think their bodies of great value and their souls of little and are quite willing to give up the former and I don’t see why if he holds the converse views, he shouldn’t be willing to sacrifice his [?] soul.’

  9. JHB collection

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. GFO D959720

  16. From German files, verbal information

  17. Ibid.

  18. JHB collection

  19. Hansard 15 November 1916

  14

  BELGIUM, PEACE AND THE

  PUSH BACK

  E mily wrote to Isabella Steyn on 3 September.1

  We pacifists dare not pause – far less than those who make destructive munitions of war … Fancy our beloved country, fancy France, fancy beautiful Italy and Germany, all given up to making death-dealing instruments, girls and boys hard at it night and day* in all our countries. It is ghastly, and 28 millions of men hurling these things at each other, each seeing who can kill the most …You have no idea of the state of affairs.

  She said Leonard Courtney had taken a house near her (in Bude) and they talked daily. And she told Isabella, in confidence, that she had been to Belgium and Germany.

  On 28 August Arthur Ponsonby had sent Emily the depressing news that he did not think she could do anything further:

  They won’t listen. They don’t want to hear of any approaches. They are determined to ignore any indirect overtures because they are under the impression that in time they will be able to force Germany into submission. What is worse is that they [meaning the Foreign Office] haven’t an idea of what they want or how these huge problems are to be solved and what sort of settlement is going to leave Europe in a better condition in the future. Nothing you can say to Grey or anyone else will alter this state of mind. But in the Autumn I trust we shall be able to speak out. At present it is very desperate and one’s incompetence in the face of such a hideous calamity is sometimes almost unbearable.2

  ‘Haven’t an idea …’ Unfortunately, looking at just a small portion of the Foreign Office files this seems to be the situation. A plaintive remark I found somewhere said: ‘It is Mesopotamia we are fighting about isn’t it’, which suggests there was no direct policy. Asquith did canvas for opinions in the autumn of 1916. Most seemed to favour Lloyd George’s ‘knock-out blow’ though they had no idea how they were going to get it.

  The opinion of the ordinary man and woman was not canvassed: the fighting spirit, and a feeling of optimism fanned by the press, prevailed.

  As we will see, Emily had ideas and was busy.

  Arthur Ponsonby, Leonard Courtney and Ramsay Macdonald, were prominent members of the Peace Negotiation Committee of which Emily was also a member. Members were speaking up and down the country hoping to gain support. In August Emily was able to get 5,000 leaflets printed for them from an unidentified source – probably K.E. Markel who said, at the time, he would prefer to remain anonymous but, if it would help, would let his name be known.3 (If he was responsible, the money may have come from German sources, a matter which would have interested Scotland Yard.)

  Besides this, always thorough, Emily had been round to see the Honorary Secretary of the National Committee for Relief in Belgium and had had his blessing on the article she was contemplating entitled ‘In Belgium’.4 This 3,000-word article was published under her name in UDC, the Union of Democratic Control paper, and Sylvia Pankhurst’s The Woman’s Dreadnought.5 It was also picked up by The [London] Herald. Emily wanted to be sure what was published was what she had written and that the meaning was not lost in the editing. A typed copy of this article, sent from the Union of Democratic Control reached the German Foreign Office in Berlin and was circulated. In it, it was stated that the article was written at the request of the UDC.6

  However, Emily told C.E. Maurice, the Honorary Secretary of her old South African Women and Children Distress Fund: ‘It was written at the express desire of the American Commission and the English Belgium Relief Fund and was not intended to ask for private charity – but to call public attention to the very serious outbreak of tuberculosis in Belgium’ – which in fact this particular article does not mention.7

  The article chronicled at length the structural damage done to the towns Emily visited. As the damage was considerably less than that generally reported in the press, this could have been comforting to some of the many refugees in Britain, which was her intention. She blamed food shortages on the blockade and felt that, when the war ended, the Germans would leave Belgium with more thankfulness than the Belgians ‘who watch them go’.

  She said she hoped her observations would bring exaggerated stories of destruction into perspective and also convince the people of the futility of war.

  She also said that she felt Belgium had escaped fairly well from the ‘talons’ of war compared with South Africa in the Anglo-Boer War, where 30,000 farms had been burnt, to say nothing of towns and villages razed to the ground. (The policy in South Africa was to destroy the farm houses so that food and shelter would not be available to the Afrikaner farmers conducting a guerilla war. Farm burning started early in 1901 and continued to war’s end in May 1902 whereas the damage in Belgium was done over a comparatively short period in 1914.)

  She said that ‘if only for the sake of the Belgians’ she wished peace could be negotiated to protect the country from further destruction ‘through air raids’. For she said that, ‘since writing, a Reuters telegram published in The Times, 29 September, said that during a recent bombing raid on Brussels, fifteen houses were destroyed, thirteen Belgians killed and twenty-eight injured.’ (The object of this air raid was unexplained.)

  Emily’s references to bombing, and to South Africa, must have made for uncomfortable reading. People thought, erroneously, that she had been deliberately shown only the undamaged parts of the towns she visited. Those wiser, but still distrusting her, commented that her accounts could not be verified until the end of the war. For The Herald it provided another reason for negotiated peace ‘to save Belgium from the utter destruction which would inevitably ensue from the clash of huge contending armies on her soil’.8

  For us who stand outside events and are living 100 years later, one can be sad that in the article Emily did not discuss the psychological problems for people living under German rule – even in so far as she was able to observe them. In this she missed an opportunity for service, for it has been suggested that if these problems had been better known and understood there would have been a better informed opposition and protest to Adolf Hitler’s acquisitions in the 1930s.9

  She also did not feel able to give an account of the restrictions under which she was placed – especially that she was forbidden to talk to the non-combatants – and though she said the fact that she saw Belgians and German soldiers kneeling side by side in prayer gave her the hope that ‘the possibility of universal brotherhood still lives’, she made herself open to being called pro-German, and as a result what she wrote was called into question.

  One concludes that one of her objects was to placate the ‘war party’ in England. This is important but unfortunately her article may not have reached the right people.

  On 15 October Lord Newton wrote from home:10

  I have only this evening returned from a visit to France, and do not know yet whether any fresh developments have taken place, but as we have offered about 7,000 Germans in exchange for about 600 British civilians, we can scarcely be charged with driving a hard bargain.

  Nearly two years later, in July 1918, while Newton was in Holland still trying to get prisoners exchanged, it came to his attention that the Germans ‘were acutely, almost passi
onately anxious to enter upon peace negotiations’.11 He was very surprised as the Germans seemed well entrenched in France and were causing enormous damage at sea. He said ‘it was intimated [to him] that they were willing to evacuate Belgium and to pay an indemnity and that there was no intention of retaining territory in Alsace and Lorraine,’ thus supporting what Emily had said when she returned from Germany.

  E.D. Morel of the Union of Democratic Control wrote to Emily on 16 October 1916 asking her to convey to her good friend Signora Chiaraviglio, the daughter of the former Italian Prime Minister Giovani Giolitti, his thanks for all she was doing for UDC.12 He was immensely impressed as well as personally glad that Chiaraviglio was now translating his book Truth and the War into Italian. He enclosed various leaflets for Emily to send on. As we have observed, the wheels of government work slowly and about ten months later Morel was arrested and imprisoned for six months on a similar case where he sent leaflets abroad.13 We do not know if Morel’s correspondence with Emily was intercepted but Emily and her friends had a poor view of the censorship arrangements and were not apparently overly worried if they avoided the censor to get their point of view across.

  Emily had a letter published in The Times, 18 October which was a comment on its article on Louvain of 3 October:

  In it, you mention the ‘destruction of Louvain’ … During my recent visit to see our civilians in Ruhleben and our non-combatant Belgian friends, I spent a day in Louvain and was somewhat astounded to find that, contrary to Press assertions, it is not destroyed. Indeed, out of a normal population of 44,000, 38,000 are living there today. It is computed that only an eighth part of the town suffered. The exquisite town hall is unscathed, the roof of the cathedral caught fire, the bells melting and crashing into the nave, but the flames were extinguished before too great damage was done to the main structure …The library is, of course, a sad sight, for in spite of great efforts, only the walls remain …