Thus a minister, to whom national intrigue and duplicity were essentially foreign, who was trusted by his country and who wanted peace, was brought by the methods of secret diplomacy into a position where he had actually incurred the moral obligation to assist another country without having the power for peace which the ability to avow that relationship openly, to take the responsibility, and to confront Germany therewith, would have given him.
As early as November, 1911, Lord Lansdowne, one of the founders of the Entente, in speaking of the secret agreement of 1904 concerning Morocco, which had then just become known to the public, had admitted that in such a case the promise of purely diplomatic support might easily bring on the obligation to assist in other ways; that an entente cordiale creates close relationships between two countries; and that, should one of them get into difficulties without its guilt, it would expect to receive support.
The moral responsibilities in which the Foreign Minister had involved the British Government were not simple, nor did they exist against France alone. Because of the Franco-Russian alliance the relationship established between Great Britain and France virtually involved sharing in the defense of France against the consequences of her alliance with Russia, as the subsequent events showed; any serious situation arising in the Balkans and affecting Russian interests would thereafter involve France, and through her, Great Britain. Accordingly, the effect of this policy was to make the peace of Great Britain depend upon, and to involve it with, the complex struggle for influence in the Balkans.
After Sir Edward Grey’s speech of August 3rd, Mr. T. Edmund Harvey, M.P., said: “I am convinced that this war for the great masses of the countries of Europe is no peoples’ war. It is a war that has been made by men in high places, by diplomatists working in secret, by bureaucrats out of touch with the people, by men who are a remnant of an older evil civilization.”
Lord Loreburn sums up his indictment of secret diplomacy in the following language: “Secret diplomacy has undergone its ‘acid test’ in this country. It had every chance. The voice of party was silent. The Foreign Minister was an English gentleman whom the country trusted and admired, who was wholly free from personal enmities of every kind, and who wanted peace. And secret diplomacy utterly failed. It prevented us from finding some alternative for war, and it prevented us from being prepared for war, because secret diplomacy means diplomacy aloof from Parliament.” The issue is here quite clearly stated. Those who see in the methods and spirit of the old diplomacy the chief cause of war, do not hold, on the one hand, that secret diplomacy involves at all times and in all cases unscrupulous plotting. But they believe that the method of dealing with foreign affairs as a mysterious matter, fit to be handled only by the select, and the reliance on a policy of bargains and compensations, with the aim thus artificially to maintain a balance of power, may be blamed for this great catastrophe; for they stood in the way of dealing with great public affairs in a sounder manner, that is, with more regard of the actual public interest and of the underlying racial and popular factors.
Those British critics who have attacked this method as practised in their own country before and during the war, do not thereby mean to impute to British statesmen a major share in the responsibility for the war. The high-mindedness and public spirit of the responsible statesmen is recognized by all fair critics, and most of them imply that Great Britain has far less to fear from this system than have nations with less responsible governments and a less sound tradition of statesmanship. They attack the system as a whole as it exists throughout European diplomacy, and as it has been used by the British Government.
From the point of view of historic evidence, and of strict reasoning from cause to effect, a great deal of doubt still remains as to how far secret diplomacy in itself,—that is, the failure to publish to parliament and the people, details of the situation as it developed,—could properly be considered the specific cause of the war; no matter how definite may be our judgment and belief that the secrecy and tortuousness of foreign policy are bound to generate an air of uncertainty and suspicion which will so greatly favor militarist intrigues and influence as to render the making of wars far more easy than they would otherwise be, were time and opportunity given to the public to consider the details of a critical situation. Yet it might be difficult to prove by historic evidence, the specific proposition that the war of 1914 was directly due to the fact that the development of international affairs was quite generally kept from the knowledge of the public. Nevertheless, unquestionably the atmosphere of secret diplomacy is a medium exactly suited to the most baneful influences.
Viscount Haldane has made a strong defense of the policy of Sir Edward Grey. He asserts that “the failure of those who had to make the effort to keep the peace, does not show that they would have done better had they discussed delicate details in public.” He continues: “There are topics and conjunctures in the almost daily changing relations between Governments as to which silence is golden. For however proper it may be in point of broad principle that the people should be fully informed of what concerns them vitally, the most important thing is that those to whom they have confided their concerns should be given the best chance of success in averting danger to their interests. To have said more in Parliament and on the platform in the years in question, or to have said it otherwise, would have been to run grave risks of more than one sort.” This defense, however, also makes certain assumptions, particularly the underlying one that the war was not to be avoided by any method. It is based on the traditional concept of foreign affairs which considers that it is best to leave them at the discretion of a few initiated and responsible officials. There can be no question that from the highest plane conceivable under the older ideas and norms of diplomacy, the conduct of foreign relations by Sir Edward Grey must be considered as a model of sagacity and caution. But when Lord Cromer describes the secret arrangements concerning Morocco as “a wise measure of preventive diplomacy,” it is not easy to follow him.