"There is a very general belief," said Lord Hugh Cecil, on March 10th, 1913, "that this country is under an obligation, not a treaty obligation, but an obligation arising owing to an assurance given by the Ministry, in the course of diplomatic negotiations, to send a very large armed force out of this country to operate in Europe. That is the general belief."
To this Mr. Asquith replied:
"I ought to say that is not true."
A fortnight later he amplified his assurance by stating that this country was not under any obligation, not public and known to parliament, which compelled it to take part in any war. In other words, if war arose between European powers, there were no unpublished agreements, which would restrict or hamper the freedom of the government, or of parliament, to decide whether or not Great Britain should participate in a war. The use that would be made of the naval and military forces, if the government and parliament decided to take part in any war was, for obvious reasons, not a matter about which public statements could be made.
If the House of Commons had received any assurance less unequivocal, it is more than possible that the ministerial party would have split and that the government would have fallen. Though heavily reduced in numbers, the liberal majority was identical in spirit with that which had been returned to support Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman; it was strongly radical, straitly nonconformist and essentially pacific, knowing little of history and nothing of foreign policy, neither understanding nor liking continental adventures and occasionally resisting vehemently a quarter-comprehended drifting which demonstrably absorbed in armaments a revenue which might have been devoted to social reform. It disliked Mr. Churchill's activities at the Admiralty, it distrusted the liberal-imperialist elements which had risen to the top of the cabinet in the persons of Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey and Lord Haldane; it had no quarrel with any one and, if its fears had not been lulled by the prime minister's explicit assurances, it would have taken steps to dissipate that danger of a European war in which Great Britain began to be involved on the day when she involved herself in continental politics. If the "obligation of honour," disclosed in 1914, had been made public any time in the three years preceding, if the government had fallen, if the commons of Great Britain had shewn themselves to the pacific minorities and majorities in every country of Europe as backing their peace-talk with deeds, there would have been reality in the professions of the foreign secretary; the naval holiday and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's hopes for proportional disarmament might have had a hearing.
Perhaps there would have been no war.
When there was no obligation to participate, there was no cause for uneasiness. It was not until August Bank Holiday, 1914, that the House of Commons and the country discovered that "no obligation" was the same as "an obligation of honour." Sir Edward Grey, in guiding the House to war, used the words:
"For many years we have had a long-standing friendship with France ... how far that friendship entails
... an obligation, let every man look into his own heart,
and his own feelings, and construe the extent of the obligation for himself."
There was no "obligation," as stated by Mr. Asquith; there was "a debt of honour," as implied by Sir Edward Grey. "I ought to say that is not true," Mr. Asquith had replied in reference to an alleged "assurance given by the Ministry, in the course of diplomatic negotiations, to send a very large armed force out of this country to operate in Europe"; yet, to judge from another passage in Sir Edward Grey's same speech, there was so much telepathic harmony between the naval staffs of Great Britain and France that the French fleet had already withdrawn to protect their joint trade routes in the Mediterranean and was leaving the northern and western coast of France to the hypothetical protection of the British navy. An Irishman, unversed in the niceties of parliamentary good faith, has to pause for thought. Bishop Thirlwall, when challenged to say whether he did not prefer compulsory religion to no religion at all, is reported to have confessed that the difference was too subtile for his comprehension; any one of sensitive conscience must confess that his comprehension is not subtile enough to detect any other difference between an "obligation" and a "debt of honour" than that the debt of honour, unbacked by such sanction as is purchasable by a sixpenny contract-stamp, is the more strongly binding. Because there had been no exchange of signed notes, it is arguable that Mr. Asquith was justified by legal training and usage in denying that an obligation existed; Sir Edward Grey appealed to the chivalry of the House of Commons and defied it to say that there existed no obligation of honour.
Chivalry was stronger than resentment; the pacific majority, which, in its innocence of legalism, had kept the government in power on the assurance that no continental commitments existed, voted the country into war on the assurance that its honour was involved. It only remains to put on record the impression left by this hazy obligation on the mind of one party to it: