A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

This want of penetration accounts for the greatest and most calamitous mistake into which the Kaiser and his numerous “eyes” in this country fell. They watched the surface manifestations of public life here, and drew their inferences as though there were no other, no more decisive, elements to be reckoned with. Herr von Kuhlmann, in particular, had made a complete survey of the situation in Ireland, and his exhaustive report was corroborated by emphatic statements of a like tenor received from independent witnesses whose duty it was to collect data on the spot. Utterances of public men and influential private individuals in this country were reported in full. Plans, dates, numbers were set down with scrupulous care. Local colour was deftly worked in, and the general conclusions bore the marks of unquestionable truths. Even the suffragette movement was included in this comprehensive survey, and was classed among the fetters which must handicap the British Cabinet, should it display any velleity to join hands with France and Russia. Every possible factor except the one just mentioned was calculated with the nicety of an apothecary compounding a prescription. Nothing, apparently, was left to chance.

Summaries of these interesting documents were transmitted to Vienna, where they served merely to confirm the conviction, harboured from the beginning, that whatever conflicts might rage on the Continent, Great Britain would stick to her own business, which was bound to prove uncommonly engrossing in the near future. Not the faintest trace of doubt or misgiving was anywhere perceptible among Germans or Austrians down to July 30th. On the previous day the German Ambassador in London had had a conversation with Sir Edward Grey, which appears to have made a far deeper impression on him than the words uttered by the British Foreign Secretary would necessarily convey. He had been told that the situation was very grave, but that, so long as it was restricted to the issues then actually involved, Great Britain had no thought of identifying herself with any Continental Power. If, however, Germany took a hand in it and were followed by France, all European interests would be affected, and “I did not wish him to be misled by the friendly tone of our conversation—which I hoped would continue—into thinking that we should stand aside.” Characteristic is the remark which these words elicited from Prince Lichnowsky. “He said that he quite understood this.” And yet he could not have understood it. Evidently he interpreted it as he would have interpreted a similar announcement made by his own chief. To his thinking it was but a face-saving phrase, not a declaration of position meant to be taken seriously. Otherwise he would not have asked the further question which he at once put. “He said that he quite understood, but he asked whether I meant that we should, under certain circumstances, intervene.”

I replied (continues Sir Edward Grey) that I did not wish to say that, or to use anything that was like a threat, or attempt to apply pressure by saying that, if things became worse, we should intervene. There would be no question of our intervening if Germany was not involved, or even if France was not involved. But we knew very well that if the issue did become such that we thought British interests required us to intervene, we must intervene at once, and the decision would have to be very rapid, just as the decisions of other Powers had to be. I hoped that the friendly tone of our conversations would continue as at present, and that I should be able to keep as closely in touch with the German Government when working for peace. But if we failed in our efforts to keep the peace, and if the issue spread so that it involved practically every European interest, I do not wish to be open to any reproach from him that the friendly tone of all our conversations had misled him or his Government into supposing that we should not take action, and to the reproach that if they had not been so misled, the course of things might have been different.

The German Ambassador took no exception to what I had said; indeed, he told me that it accorded with what he had already given in Berlin as his view of the situation.

Not so much this plain statement of the British case as the impressive way in which it was delivered startled the Kaiser’s representative and flashed a blinding light on the dark ways of German diplomacy. That same evening the Prince made known the personal effect upon himself of what he had seen and heard, and it was that Great Britain’s neutrality “could not be relied upon.” This “subjective impression,” as they termed it, was telegraphed to Vienna, where it was anxiously discussed. And, curiously enough, it sufficed to shatter the hopes which Austrian statesmen had cherished that nothing was to be feared from Great Britain. Psychologically, this tragic way of taking the news is difficult to explain. Whether it was that the Austrians, having less faith in the solidarity of their Empire and the staying powers of their mixed population, and greater misgivings about the issue of the war, were naturally more pessimistic and more apt to magnify than to underrate the dangers with which a European conflict threatened them, or that they had received unwelcome tidings of a like nature from an independent source, I am unable to determine. I know, however, that Prince Lichnowsky’s own mind was made up during that colloquy with Sir Edward Grey. And he made no mystery of it. To a statesman who brought up the topic in the course of an ordinary conversation he remarked:

It is my solid conviction that England will not only throw in her lot with France and Russia, but will be first in the arena. There is not the shadow of a doubt about it. Nothing can stop her now.

That view was also adopted by the statesmen of Austria-Hungary, who communicated it to me on the following day.[28] It was on July 29th that the German Chancellor had tendered the “strong bid” for British neutrality from which the wished-for result was anticipated. And to this “infamous proposal” the answer was not telegraphed until July 30th. In Vienna we had cognizance of it on the following day. But I was informed on Saturday that, however unpromising the outlook, further exertions would be put forth to persuade Great Britain not to relinquish her rôle of mediatrix, but to reserve her beneficent influence on the Powers until they had tried issues in a land campaign and were ready for peace negociations. Then she could play to good purpose the congenial part of peacemaker and make her moderating influence felt by both parties, who, exhausted by the campaign, would be willing to accept a compromise.

These efforts were ingeniously planned, the German statesmen using British ideas, aims, and traditions as weapons of combat against the intentions—still wavering, it was believed—of the Liberal Government to resort to force if suasion and argument should fail, in order to redeem the nation’s plighted word and uphold Belgian neutrality. Among these aims which our Government had especially at heart was a general understanding with Germany, and the perspective of realizing this was dangled before the eyes of our Government by the Chancellor. But the plan had one capital defect. It ignored the view taken in this country of the sanctity of treaties. The course taken by the conversations, which were now carried on with rapidity to the accompaniment of the march of armed men and the clatter of horses’ hoofs, is worth considering. Down to the last moment the British Government kept its hands free. M. Sazonoff’s appeals to our Ambassador to move his Government to take sides fell on deaf ears. The endeavours of the Government of the French Republic were equally infructuous. “In the present case,” Sir Edward Grey told the French Ambassador in London, “the dispute between Austria and Servia was not one in which we felt called on to take a hand.” That was the position consistently taken up by the British Government in every Balkan crisis that had broken out since Aehrenthal incorporated Bosnia and Herzegovina. And it was also one of the postulates of the German conspiracy, which undertook to prove that whatever complications might arise out of Austria’s action, the crucial question and the one issue was the crime of Sarajevo.

But Sir Edward Grey did not stop here. He went much further and destroyed the illusions of those who imagined the British Empire would be so materially affected by an Austrian campaign against Russia that it would proffer assistance to the Slav Empire. In fact, he consistently withheld encouragement from all would-be belligerents.

Even if the question became one between Austria and Russia (Sir Edward Grey went on to say), we should not feel called upon to take a hand in it. It would then be a question of the supremacy of Teuton or Slav—a struggle for supremacy in the Balkans; and our idea has always been to avoid being drawn into a war over a Balkan question.