#20 Hanging on Moscow’s apron strings –
Ep 4 WWI: was it really Britain’s fault?

In 1912 a deal between War Secretary Haldane and the German chancellor Bethmann-Holweg to allow Britain to retain naval supremacy if they both remained neutral (if neither side had started the war), was rudely sabotaged. It involved lying to Cabinet that the Germans were demanding a full-scale Anglo-German alliance, which they weren’t. It meant throwing away what the majority of the Cabinet saw as the best chance to contain Russian expansion, by making common cause with Germany. Russia, allied to the French, could now call all the shots.

By 1912 a combination of covert talks between the French and British armies and the unreasoning anti-German bias of certain bureaucrats in the Foreign and War Offices had committed Britain to support the French in a war with Germany. The British cabinet loudly and angrily disapproved. But Prime Minister Asquith, Foreign Secretary Grey, War Secretary Haldane and their new recruit, First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill, just ignored them.

The Germans were understandably alarmed at the tone of British diplomacy – and of virulent anti-German reporting in the right-wing British press. In February 1912 therefore the Kaiser sent a personal invitation to the Foreign Secretary Grey to come and ‘talk things over.’

In February 1912 the Kaiser, alarmed at the anti-German drift of the British right-wing press and of a very influential clique in its Foreign Office, had personally invited Britain’s Foreign Secretary Edward Grey to Berlin. They could ‘talk things over.’ Hopefully they could establish ‘better relations’ between their two countries. So what did Grey do? Well, he rudely turned the Kaiser down of course.

Although he was Foreign Secretary, he never went abroad. He’d already turned the Germans down, three years before, in 1909. On both occasions he claimed that to talk to the Germans would upset the French. Which of course, as a way to achieve European stability and peace, and in the light of Grey’s often repeated boast that he was holding the balance of power in Europe, was an entirely circular argument. After all, all it achieved was to upset the Germans instead.

But by 1912 the pressure to do something to relax international tensions was too great even for someone of Grey’s inveterate idleness. The context was a crisis which had broken out in Morocco in 1911. School textbooks will tell you that the Germans had ambitions to establish an African empire and so sent a Gunboat to menace the French colony of Morocco. University textbooks tell you that the Germans despatched a gunboat in an attempt to break the Anglo-French entente. The reality is probably neither of these things. After a previous spat in 1905, France, Spain and Germany had agreed on a common approach to Morocco. (Gildea 414) But in May 1911 the French, under pressure from their own press and the machinations of their own anti-German clique, had broken the agreement and occupied the Moroccan city of Fez with an army. (Clark 205) According to historian Christopher Clark – who’s book The Sleepwalkers is a particularly level headed study of all this - the appearance of an antique German gunboat, which had been waiting to be scrapped for two years, was therefore a measured German response to the violation of an international agreement. It meant that the crisis was quickly defused after new negotiations.

But the Moroccan crisis of 1911 had given the right-wing British press the chance to polish up its anti-German rhetoric once more and to stoke up international tension. When the Germans again invited Grey for talks, therefore, this time he was ot able to refuse outright. Instead, he sent Richard Haldane to Berlin in his place to Berlin. Haldane, of course, was his Relugas Compact mate. He also spoke excellent German. Grey informed the Germans that Haldane would only go if the German programme for building more warships were on the table for discussion. Whatever we were all taught in school about German plans for world naval domination, the Germans quickly agreed.

Before he went, Haldane invited Grey to lunch at his house with the Colonial Secretary Loulou Harcourt. Harcourt took along a large map of Africa. They discussed an extraordinary scheme for the British and Germans to carve up the Portuguese empire. In fact, the British and Germans had actually signed a secret treaty, back in 1898, to divide the Portuguese empire between them. And it was now a real possibility because in 1910 there had been a revolution on Lisbon and Portugal’s overseas power had collapsed.

So much for not trusting the Germans. Or trying not to upset the French. As we keep saying, the British and Germans always had plenty more reasons for working together than for fighting each other’s interests. 

Haldane himself had a strong affection for Germany. As we’ve seen, he had studied his degree there and spoke fluent German. But his own advisers at the war office were loudly anti-German. He was also committed to supporting Edward Grey, who was as anti-German as any of the mandarins.  As we saw in a previous discussion, Grey, Haldane and Asquith had conspired to work together back in 1905, in what is called the Relugas Compact, after Grey’s hunting lodge in Scotland where it had been agreed. So Haldane was in an awkward position. But he was above all aware that the peace of Europe might hang on getting an agreement in Berlin. No wonder he was anxious about this mission.

A couple of days before he went, he met Harcourt again during a service at St Paul’s Cathedral. Harcourt reported that Haldane ‘feels this is the chance of his life, feels as if he had trained himself for just this opportunity.’

When Haldane reached Berlin, however, he found the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg so keen to negotiate they were quickly able to agree the outline of a deal. The Germans would limit their naval building so that the British Navy would always be significantly the larger. So much for the ‘naval race.’ In return, the British would agree to remain neutral if there were a war, so long (and these were, as we shall see, crucial caveats) as neither side had started the war and it did not conflict with their other commitments. The two men also discussed the plan to divide the Portuguese colonies between them. A deal looked relatively easy to do. It would be a major breakthrough in relaxing European tension.

Haldane’s 1912 talks remain controversial. Many historians are inclined to claim that the Germans were simply divided among themselves, or were not sincere, were secretly plotting to break up the Anglo-French entente, or that Bethmann-Hollweg had no authority to agree anything with Haldane. The problem is that this view simply reflects the documents left by the anti-German Foreign Office bureaucrats, Eyre Crowe and his associates, and are highly coloured by their anti-German sentiment. Crowe began ranting that the Germans were just trying to blackmail the British. (Otte 40)

But were the Germans being devious or insincere? At the very least this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The French, for example, were badly and bitterly divided between those who wanted a deal with Germany and those who did not. Early in 1912 the French Prime Minister was forced to resign when it was shown that, despairing of getting any agreement in Paris’s poisonous political atmosphere, he’d resorted to making the 1911 Morocco agreement with the Germans behind everyone else’s back. [Gildea 414, Clark 206].

And, of course, no bunch of politicians and bureaucrats in Europe were more divided than the British. Nor, as we shall see, so insincere.

The fact was that the Germans and the British had very good reason to strike a deal in the face of their common fear and mistrust of the Russians. War with Britain – as well as France and Russia – was the very last thing the Germans wanted to contemplate. And since there was absolutely no prospect whatever that the German Navy could make itself, at any point in the near or even distant future, anything approaching the equal of Britain’s Royal Navy, a Naval Agreement (rather than a naval race) would suit Berlin very well indeed. It’s difficult to fathom just why or about what you should imagine the Germans should contemplate ‘blackmailing’ the British in 1912 – unless, like Eyre Crowe, you objected on principal to everything the Germans did.

Churchill did his disgraceful best to scupper Haldane’s talks in Germany. He chose exactly this moment to give a speech in Glasgow roundly criticizing the Germans and promising to keep the Clydeside dockyards busy, building new ships for the Royal Navy. Harcourt complained formally to the king, George V, that it was a malicious attempt to destroy Haldane’s talks. He was right.

But Haldane returned to London with the proposals he’d hammered out with Bethmann-Holweg. He was full of hope. When he heard about the German offer, John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, argued passionately and logically for accepting an agreement with Germany. The British should recruit the Germans to help contain the Russian threat in Persia and on the Indian borders. Morley was in by far the best position to judge the issue. In his study of the talks, David Owen, himself a former Foreign Secretary, lists fourteen ministers including Harcourt who, at some point in these months, agreed with Morley and declared they were in favour of making an agreement there and then with Germany. That’s a clear majority of the Cabinet.

Owen, however, also shows that, once Haldane brought his deal home, Grey deliberately sabotaged it. Harcourt’s notes in Cabinet record that Grey was ‘very stiff: evidently afraid of losing French entente.’ The foreign secretary in fact baldly lied to Cabinet and to the press that the Germans were demanding ‘absolute neutrality’ and that Britain should stay out of a war ‘in all circumstances.’ It simply was not what Haldane and Bethmann-Holweg had agreed.

Grey went even further. He refused point blank to allow the word ‘neutrality’ anywhere in any agreement. However high sounding his rhetoric, of course, Grey was just desperate to hold on to the military agreement with the French – which had by now – and whatever the Cabinet thought - stealthily evolved into a military alliance. Grey bluntly told Haldane it was much more important to keep good relations with the French than with the Germans. In one extraordinary moment, Haldane found himself telling the Cabinet that the Kaiser had wanted nothing less than a full-scale Anglo-German alliance. It was another outright lie.

So when, at the end of March 1912 Anglo-German talks broke up without any agreement it wasn’t because of insincerity or confusion on the German side. The insincerity and confusion were on the British side. Whatever the anti-German brigade in Whitehall tried to claim, the talks collapsed because of the poisonous atmosphere toward Germany they’d created, and which had even led Grey and even Haldane barefacedly to lie to the British Cabinet.

In the end only the discussions about dividing up the Portuguese Empire continued, and were still going on when war was declared in 1914. Grey had thrown away a golden opportunity, not only to disrupt the dangerous drift of Europe into two armed factions, but also to recruit German help to solve the awkward Russian problem in Persia.

Former Foreign Secretary David Owen writes with barely concealed anger and shock about these events. He comments drily that the only thing Asquith could have done was to replace Grey with Harcourt as foreign secretary. But Asquith was, of course, committed to Grey in the Relugas Compact and was blindly unwilling to kick him out of the job.

So the British completely missed the opportunity to recruit German help to solve the mounting problem they had with Russian incursions into Persia. As we have seen, control over Persia was crucial for British overland and telegraph connections to India. And by 1912 a solution in Persia was extremely pressing because Persian oil – discovered in 1908 - had become essential to the plans of the British Navy. And that, of course, was because of what Churchill was up to.

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