by Max Hastings
Yet from 1905 to 1916 he ran Britain’s foreign policy as a private bailiwick. Lloyd George wrote: ‘During the eight years that preceded the war, the Cabinet devoted a ridiculously small percentage of its time to a consideration of foreign affairs.’ The Asquith government’s attitude to such matters, and to the other European powers, reflected an epic moral conceit, manifested in a condescension which especially upset the Germans. The French ambassador in London, Paul Cambon, observed sardonically that nothing gave greater pleasure to an Englishman than to discover that the interests of England matched those of mankind at large: ‘and where such a confluence does not exist, he does his best to create it’. At a dinner party where several members of the government were present, Lord Northcliffe asserted contemptuously that Britain’s newspaper editors were better informed about foreign affairs than any cabinet minister. The chancellor said of the foreign secretary: ‘Sir Edward Grey belongs to the class which, through heredity and tradition, expects to find a place on the magisterial bench to sit in judgement upon and above their fellow men, before they ever have any opportunity to make themselves acquainted with the tasks and trials of mankind.’
This was a characteristically nasty jibe, but Henry Wilson wrote after his own 1911 conversations with ministers about conflict scenarios that he was not impressed by ‘the grasp of the situation possessed by Grey and Haldane [then secretary for war], Grey being much the most ignorant & careless of the two, he not only had no idea of what war means but he struck me as not wanting to know … an ignorant, vain & weak man quite unfit to be the Foreign Minister of any country larger than Portugal’. Bernard Shaw hated Grey as ‘a Junker from his topmost hair to the tips of his toes … [with] a personal taste for mendacity’, a charge that related to a brutal British response to a 1906 Egyptian village dispute about officers’ pigeon-shooting rights.
If this was Shavian hyperbole, Grey’s secret diplomacy was certainly high-handed – as was all British conduct of foreign affairs in that era. In August 1904 Lord Percy, for the then-Conservative government, responded with patrician magnificence to a Commons question about the newly concluded Anglo-French Agreement: ‘Speculation and conjecture as to the existence or non-existence of secret clauses in international treaties is a public privilege, the maintenance of which depends upon official reticence.’ But Asquith wrote to Grey on 5 September 1911, warning about the perils of the dialogue the foreign secretary had authorised between the British and French general staffs: ‘My dear Grey, Conversations such as that between Gen. Joffre and Col. Fairholme seem to me rather dangerous; especially the part which refers to possible British assistance. The French ought not to be encouraged, in present circumstances, to make their plans on any assumptions of this kind. Yours always, H.H.A.’
Yet amid the prime minister’s huge difficulties at home, by default he allowed Grey almost a free hand abroad. The foreign secretary felt able to give assurances to France about likely British support in the event of war, without reference to the full cabinet or the House of Commons, in a manner incompatible with modern or even contemporary notions of democratic governance, and arguably unmatched until the far less defensible 1956 Anglo-French collusion to invade Egypt. Grey acted in secrecy because he knew he could secure no parliamentary mandate. During the July crisis, his personal willingness for Britain to fight beside France ran well ahead of that of most of his government colleagues or the public.
But it is hard to sustain the argument that Grey thus bears a large responsibility for war because of his failure either to speak frankly to the British people during the last years of peace, or explicitly to warn Berlin that Britain would not remain neutral. The Germans, in pursuing their course in 1914, had discounted British intervention and were unimpressed by the potential involvement of an army they despised. They were un-deterred by the economic perils posed by Britain’s absolute dominance of the world’s merchant shipping and capability for imposing a blockade, because they intended to win quickly. It is unlikely that any course of action adopted by Asquith’s government could have averted a European war in 1914, though another foreign secretary might have adopted a different view about British participation.
The planned British Expeditionary Force was well-equipped for its size, but its inadequate mass reflected reluctance to spend big money on soldiers when the Royal Navy was absorbing a quarter of state expenditure. Henry Wilson, as director of military operations between 1910 and 1914, spoke of ‘our funny little army’, and said contemptuously that there was no military problem on the continent to which the appropriate British answer was a mere six divisions. But these were all the government would stand for, and its policy reflected popular sentiment. Sailors were what the British loved and cherished; by contrast both the regular and the Territorial forces were under-recruited, with enthusiasm for military service especially low among country-dwellers and the Welsh.
Wilson played a critical role in promoting a military relationship with France much closer than most British soldiers wanted, or the cabinet knew. A brilliantly fluent speaker, of erratic and often reckless convictions, he failed the military academy entrance exams five times. He was a long-time advocate of conscription, describing the part-time volunteers of the Territorial Force as ‘the best & most patriotic men in England because they are trying to do something’. In 1910, as commandant of the Staff College, he asserted the likelihood of a European war, and argued that Britain’s only prudent option was to ally itself with France against the Germans. A student ventured to disagree, saying that only ‘inconceivable stupidity on the part of statesmen’ could precipitate a general conflagration. This provoked Wilson’s derision: ‘Haw! Haw! Haw!!! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you’re going to get.’ Lord Esher wrote later that Wilson returned his pupils to their formations ‘with a sense of [war’s] cataclysmic imminence’. Wilson was described by the prime minister to Venetia Stanley as ‘that poisonous tho’ clever ruffian’, which seems about right. He was a shameless intriguer who meddled in everything, including offering support to the Ulster Protestants’ threatened rebellion. But it was almost entirely his doing that the British Army had plans prepared to send a force to the continent – what was known as the ‘W.F.’ or ‘With France’ scheme.
In 1911, Wilson secured Grey’s agreement that he should liaise with Britain’s railway companies about a schedule for moving units to the ports in the event of war, and appropriate timetables were drawn up. At the end of July that year, Lloyd George made a speech at the Mansion House, placing Britain firmly beside France in any dispute with Germany, and Wilson became the foremost British instrument in preparing to implement such a commitment. In 1913 he visited France seven times, and in conversations with Joffre and his staff promised 150,000 men for the thirteenth day after mobilisation, to concentrate between Arras–Saint-Quentin and Cambrai ready for operations. This was fanciful, but a senior British officer thus created a military convention. Wilson argued that, though a BEF would be small, its moral contribution could be critical. He grossly underestimated prospective German strength. But, though then still only a brigadier-general, he exercised an extraordinary influence towards persuading Asquith to contemplate, though emphatically not to confirm, a continental military commitment. This seems to reflect a sense of statesmanlike prudence, rather than any taste for warmongering.
Meanwhile, at 1914 Anglo-Russian naval staff talks the British discussed providing support for a Russian landing in Pomerania. This was the sort of war-gaming all armed forces indulge in, but when news of it was leaked to Berlin by a Russian diplomat, German paranoia about the Entente was intensified. Unfortunately, the Pomeranian scheme lacked plausibility. The Royal Navy’s preparation for Armageddon focused chiefly upon a blockade of which the diplomatic complications had been inadequately considered. Like all British war planning, it was limited in scale and incoherent in substance, lacking the political impetus to make it anything more. The continental nations expected to clash in arms sooner or later, which helped to en
sure that they did so. The offshore islanders, however, thought it more plausible that they would soon be fighting each other.
2
The Descent to War
1 THE AUSTRIANS THREATEN
If the Hapsburg Empire witnessed little sincere mourning for Franz Ferdinand following his assassination, Austrian rage towards its perpetrators was manifest. Joven Avakumović, a well-known Serbian lawyer and liberal opposition politician, was being shown his room at the Tyrolean hotel where he and his family were starting a holiday when the porter handed him a newspaper announcing the murders in Sarajevo. Gravely, Avakumović told his wife and daughter that these tidings were bound to have important implications for their own country. That evening after dinner, in the lounge he listened to the speculations of fellow guests, who insisted Serbia was involved in the killings, and must be called to account: ‘I noticed especially one well-dressed, well-mannered man who spoke very harshly, and sat with three others at the next table to our own. He declared loudly: “Serbia is guilty; she must be punished,” and the other three affirmed: “That is right!” I … later learnt from the porter that the man was a foreign ministry official.’
In Vienna, the Sarajevo assassins were first branded ‘Bosniacs’, then simply ‘Serbs’. Violent anti-Serbian demonstrations took place across the empire. In Sarajevo the Serb-owned Hotel Europa was wrecked, together with a Serb school; the German consul wrote that the city was living through ‘its own St Bartholomew’s Eve’. In Vienna on 30 June, a crowd of some two hundred students demonstrated in front of the Serbian embassy. They yelled: ‘Down with Serbia! Long live Austria! Hail the Hapsburgs!’ and burnt the hated flag. Such scenes were repeated through the days that followed.
The Austrian chargé in Belgrade, Wilhelm von Stork, reported angrily to Vienna on 30 June: ‘There is exultation in the streets and cafés on account of our tragedy, and it is described as the finger of God and a justified punishment for everything bad Austria-Hungary has ever done to Serbia.’ The Serbian opposition press, with stunning indifference to its country’s interests and reputation, applauded the Archduke’s killing. When student Jovan Dinić hurried to Belgrade’s main square to discuss the news with friends, he was surprised to find them holding forth not in shocked whispers, but in strident exultation. A famously bright young aspiring lawyer proclaimed that Austrian military manoeuvres in Bosnia had been an intolerable provocation and a direct threat to all Serbs; that the Serbs of Bosnia would now ‘leap through fire’ alongside the Serbian nation. Misunderstandings intensified rancour: on that same 30 June, the Montenegrin border town of Metalka was bedecked with flags, causing the outraged Austrians to suppose that their neighbours were celebrating Franz Ferdinand’s murder. Only a week later did they learn that Metalka had been marking the birthday of Montenegro’s Crown Prince. Austria embraced such petty fantasy provocations alongside the large and real one of the archducal murder.
Participants in all conflicts with more than two belligerents have different motivations for deciding to fight, and this was emphatically true in 1914. The decision-making of seven governments was influenced by widely diverse ambitions and fears. Though struggles ensued in many parts of the world, and especially in Europe, and warring nations professed common allegiances, they were certainly not impelled by a common logic. Austria made an almost immediate decision to respond to Franz Ferdinand’s assassination by invading Serbia, not because its leaders cared a fig for the persons of the slain Archduke and his embarrassing wife, but because the murders represented the best justification they would ever have for settling accounts with a mortally troublesome neighbour.
The rulers of the Hapsburg Empire convinced themselves that military action was the only way out of their difficulties, not merely with Serbia, but with their own restless peoples. Finance minister Ritter von Bilinski said later: ‘We decided on war quite early.’ Vienna’s military attaché in Belgrade reported that the killings had been planned and organised by the head of Serbian intelligence. Austria’s rulers agreed that they thus represented a declaration of war, though Vienna had no more evidence to link them to the Serbs’ monarchy or elected government than do modern historians. The war minister, Alexander von Krobatin, and Gen. Oskar Potiorek, commander-in-chief in Bosnia-Herzegovina, alike urged military action. Berchtold, often scorned by his peers as a ditherer, displayed an untimely resolution. On 30 June he spoke privately of the need for a ‘final and fundamental reckoning’ with Serbia.
Berchtold was surrounded by a group of young diplomats – Janós, Count Forgách; Alexander, Baron von Musulin; Alexander, Count Hoyos – who were convinced that an assertive and expansionist foreign policy was the best cure for the Empire’s domestic ills. Forgách was a prime mover in the commitment to crush Serbia. Hoyos became responsible for ensuring Germany’s support; he emphasised the recklessness prevailing in Vienna when he said: ‘it is immaterial to us whether world war comes out of all this’. Musulin drafted the critical communications: an ‘impetuous chatterbox’, he later took pride in calling himself ‘the man who caused the war’.
The Emperor Franz Joseph wrote personally to Kaiser Wilhelm saying: ‘You too will be convinced after the latest terrible events in Bosnia that a [peaceful] reconciliation of the conflict between ourselves and Serbia is unthinkable.’ On 4 July Berchtold dispatched Hoyos to Berlin, where the diplomat thereafter held a series of meetings with Wilhelm and his advisers, at which he was promised Germany’s unconditional support for any course of action Austria chose to adopt – what later became notorious as ‘the blank cheque’, central plank of the case for German responsibility for the First World War. On the evening of 5 July, the Austrian envoy reported the Kaiser saying that ‘if we really saw the necessity for military action against Serbia, he would think it regrettable if we did not take advantage of the present moment, which is favourable from our point of view’.
The Germans urged the Austrians to force the pace, denying the Serbians time to marshal diplomatic or military support; they wanted Vienna to confront St Petersburg with a swift fait accompli – Hapsburg troops occupying the Serb capital. When Hoyos went home, Arthur Zimmerman, the German under-secretary of state, estimated a 90 per cent probability of hostilities between Austria and Serbia. During the weeks that followed before Vienna’s ultimatum was finally delivered, the Germans fumed at Austrian dilatoriness. Bethmann, the chancellor, showed himself vulnerable to moments of panic. Kurt Riezler, his confidential secretary and principal counsellor, wrote in his diary on 6 July, expressing dismay about a scenario somewhat troubling his master: ‘an action against Serbia can lead to a world war. From a war, regardless of the outcome, the chancellor expects a revolution of everything that exists … Generally delusion all round, a thick fog over the people. The same in all of Europe. The future belongs to Russia, which … thrusts itself on us as a heavier and heavier nightmare.’
Riezler sought to reassure Bethmann by suggesting that it might be possible to achieve a triumph over Serbia by diplomacy alone, then added encouragingly: ‘if war should come and the veil [of amity which masks the fundamental enmity between peoples] should fall, then the entire Volk will follow, driven by a sense of emergency and danger. Victory is liberation.’ Amid such Wagnerian reflections and fantasies did Germany’s political leaders enter the July crisis. At that stage, Bethmann and the Kaiser were doing almost all the talking for their country. Though Moltke assured Wilhelm that the army was ready to fight at any time, some historians claim that he was not directly consulted before the critical assurances were given to Austria.
After Hoyos returned to Vienna, Germany’s leaders behaved with a nonchalance that conspiracists believe to have been theatrical. Bethmann spent most of the rest of the month on his estate at Hohenfinow on the Oder, though he paid several discreet visits to Berlin during which he consulted with the military. Moltke departed for a cure at Karlsbad – his second of the year – from which he returned only on 25 July, just in time for the showdown between Vienna and Belgra
de. The Kaiser sailed on 6 July for his annual summer yachting trip in the North Sea, which continued until the 27th. Senior officers including Prussian war minister Erich von Falkenhayn went on leave; newspapers were urged to avoid wilful provocation of the French.
While some scholars regard all this as evidence of orchestrated deception, it is more plausible that the Germans at this stage sincerely believed that the Austro-Serbian war they had mandated could be localised, though they were fatalistic about the huge risk that this might not be so. Rear-Admiral Albert Hopman, a shrewd and informed observer, wrote in his diary on 6 July: ‘In my opinion the situation is quite favourable for us, so favourable that a big and resolute statesman would exploit it to the uttermost.’ Throughout the weeks that followed, Hopman persisted in his opinion, widely shared in Berlin, that Germany could gain important diplomatic capital from the Balkan crisis, at small cost. He wrote on 16 July: ‘personally, I do not believe in war entanglement’, and again on the 21st: ‘Europe will not brawl because of Serbia.’
