Ordeal by Battle

by Frederick Scott Oliver

As we turn over the official pages in which the British Government has set out its case, we are inclined to marvel—knowing what we now know—that our Foreign Minister should have shown so much zeal and innocence in pleading the cause of peace on high grounds of humanity, and with a faith, apparently unshaken to the last, that in principle at least, the German Government were in full agreement with his aims. The practical disadvantages of being a gentleman are that they are apt to make a man too credulous and not sufficiently inquisitive. Sir Edward Grey acted according to his nature. His miscalculation was one which his fellow-countrymen have not hesitated to forgive. But clearly he misjudged the forces which were opposed to him. He was deceived by hollow assurances. He beat hopefully, but vainly and pathetically, against a door which was already barred and bolted, and behind which (could he but have seen) the Kaiser, with his Ministers and Staff, was wholly absorbed in the study of war maps and tables of mobilisation.

Sir Edward Grey failed to prevent war, and in the circumstances it is hardly to be wondered at. But if he failed in one direction he succeeded in another. His whole procedure from first to last was so transparently disinterested and above board that, when war did actually come upon us, it found us, not merely as a nation, but also as an Empire, more united than we have ever been at any crisis, since the Great Armada was sighted off Plymouth Sound. English people felt that whatever else there might be to reproach themselves with, they at any rate went into the fight with clean hands. What is even more remarkable, the people of all neutral countries, with the possible exception of the rigid moralists of Constantinople, appeared for once to share the same opinion.

This was a great achievement; nearly, but not quite, the greatest of all. To have prevented war would have been a greater achievement still.... But was war inevitable? Or was M. Sazonof right, when he said to our Ambassador, on the morning of the day when Servia replied to the Austrian ultimatum,[[8]] that if Britain then took her stand firmly with France and Russia there would be no war; but that if we failed them then, rivers of blood would flow, and in the end we should be dragged into war?[[9]]

Sir Edward Grey refused to take this course. He judged that a pronouncement of such a character would appear in the light of a menace to the governments of Germany and Austria, and also to public opinion in those countries; that it would only stiffen their backs; that a more hopeful way of proceeding was for England to deal with Germany as a friend, letting it be understood that if our counsels of moderation were disregarded, we might be driven most reluctantly into the camp of her enemies. To this, when it was urged by our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, the Russian Minister only replied—and the words seem to have in them a note of tragedy and weariness, as if the speaker well knew that he was talking to deaf ears—that unfortunately Germany was convinced that she could count upon the neutrality of Britain.[[10]]

The alternative was to speak out as Mr. Lloyd George spoke at the time of the Agadir crisis, 'to rattle the sabre,' and to take our stand 'in shining armour' beside the other two members of the Entente.

Sir Edward Grey believed that this procedure would not have the effect desired, but the reverse. Further, it would have committed this country to a policy which had never been submitted to it, and which it had never considered, far less approved, even in principle. The Agadir precedent could be distinguished. There the danger which threatened France arose directly out of treaty engagements with ourselves. Here there was no such particular justification, but a wide general question of the safety of Europe and the British Empire.

With regard to this wider question, notwithstanding its imminence for a good many years, the British Empire had not made up its mind, nor indeed had it ever been asked to do so by those in authority. Sir Edward Grey appears to have thought that, on democratic principles, he had not the right to make such a pronouncement as M. Sazonof desired; and that even if this pathway might have led to peace, it was one which he could not tread.

The one alternative was tried, and failed. We proffered our good offices, we urged our counsels of moderation, all in vain. That, at any rate, is among the certainties. And it is also among the certainties that, although this alternative failed, it brought us two signal benefits, in the unity of our own people and the goodwill of the world.

About the other alternative, which was not tried, we cannot of course speak with the same sureness. If Sir Edward Grey had taken the step which M. Sazonof desired him to take, he would at once have been vehemently opposed and denounced by a very large body of his own fellow-countrymen, who, never having been taken frankly into the confidence of the Government with regard to the foundations of British policy, were at this early stage of the proceedings almost wholly ignorant of the motives and issues involved. This being so, if war had ensued, we should then have gone into it a divided instead of a united nation. On the other hand, if peace had ensued, it must have been a patched-up ill-natured peace; and it is not improbable that Sir Edward Grey would have been driven from office by enemies in his own household, playing the game of Germany unconsciously, as on previous occasions, and would have brought the Cabinet down with him in his fall. For at this time, owing to domestic difficulties, the Government stood in a very perilous position, and it needed only such a mutiny, as a bold departure in foreign affairs would almost certainly have provoked among the Liberal party, to bring Mr. Asquith's government to an end.