472. The Road to The Great War: Britain's Fateful Choice (Part 4)
2024-07-21 00:50:47
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The discussion had reached its inconclusive end, and the cabinet was about to separate when the quiet, grave tones of Sir Edward Grey's voice were heard, reading a document which had just been brought to him from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia. We were all very tired, but gradually, as the phrases and sentences followed one another, impressions of a wholly different character began to form. in my mind. This note was clearly an ultimatum, but it was an ultimatum such as had never been penned in modern times.
As the reading proceeded, it seemed absolutely impossible that any state in the world could accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the aggressor. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and to grow upon the map of Europe. So that, Dominic, was Winston Churchill writing in The World Crisis, which is a book largely about himself, I think, isn't it? It is indeed. On the cabinet meeting held in London, the capital of the United Kingdom and of the British Empire, on the 24th of July, 1914..
Churchill there is describing the moment that the British Foreign Secretary, and absolutely a personal hero of mine, Sir Edward Gray, reads the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, to his colleagues in the Liberal government. And people who heard our last episode, we ended with the world literally holding its breath. Literally, as it waited for Serbia's reply to this very, very kind of strict and stern Austrian ultimatum. And with the French having pledged that they will hold firm against any sense of uppityness from Austria, and more particularly from Germany. But I think we've had far too much focus on continental powers so far.
Right. And I think it's excellent that at last we come to Britain.
At last, Tom. At last. So hello, everybody. Yes, we've kept Britain deliberately off stage, because Britain was off stage, actually. Britain hasn't really featured in the deliberations of the various powers, certainly not in the Austrian and German deliberations, and not really.
The French, and the Russians have talked about binding Britain more closely to them, but how Britain will react is still very ambiguous. And of course, it really, really matters. Britain in 1914 has a much smaller population than it does now, so about 40, 42 million people.
And that's even though it has Ireland.
Yes, but it is the world's, you know, it's the top nation, still just about. It obviously was the world's first industrial nation, and it's still in the top two or three in most sort of indices. It has the world's largest empire, 400 million people, a quarter of the globe. And it has the world's greatest Navy by far, but, crucially, only a very, very small army. So, although the British army have fought battles in the previous decades, they have generally been against, you know, Zulus, Burs, Afghans, Sudanese, and so on.
But they have picked up khaki, haven't they, as a result of their wars against the Burs. And there's a sense in which, actually, the British probably have fought more wars than those continental powers.
They have, but they've been little wars. They've been police actions. They've involved quite small numbers of people.
Custer-esque operations.
Exactly, Custer-esque. Now, Britain historically had had alliances. It's not quite right to say that Britain had always stood alone. So, you know, the Napoleonic Wars, for example, Britain had been part of lots of different coalitions. And the way that British foreign policy had usually worked was that Britain relied on its Navy.
It had a small army, and it basically paid other people to do the fighting. So, obviously, the Prussians, for example, against Napoleon.
And in the Seven Years' War as well.
Exactly, in the Seven Years' War. But recently, Britain has had this policy of so-called splendid isolation. So, Lord Salisbury, who was prime minister at the turn of the 20th century, had said our policy was to float lazily downstream, putting out the occasional diplomatic boat hook.
Great days, Dominic. Great days.
Yeah. I like the sort of wind in the willows analogy.
Yeah, with a picnic hamper.
Exactly. But actually, round about the time of the Bur War, which didn't go terribly well for Britain. at first, there was a sort of sense, well, actually, we've missed a trick here. We're fighting fires on lots of different fronts in the colonies, and we don't really have any friends. So, Joseph Chamberlain, colonial secretary, had said, we have no allies, we have no friends, we stand alone.
And he had wanted an alliance with Germany and had got no joy out of it. So, in the end, Britain had signed or agreed the Entente Cordiale with France in 1904..
Which is a seismic change, isn't it?
A massive change.
Because we've said how previously, basically, all these wars are being fought against France, and Britain's continental ally is Prussia, a German state. Yeah. And now it's kind of veering around the other way.
And now Britain has switched horses.
But, Dominic, is that because Britain has a sense that you should always ally with a lesser power against the most threatening power on the continent? And is there a sense now that Germany has become what France used to be, and so the roles have switched?
I think that's a huge part of it, that Britain has always wanted to ensure that the continent is not dominated by a single power. So, it makes sense that you ally with somebody, a tear down, as it were, against the top power on the continent. But also, as with the subsequent convention that we signed with Russia in 1907, there is an argument among a lot of historians that actually what these are, are Britain looking at the map and looking at where the big flashpoints are and saying, we will ally with those countries with whom we are most likely to have friction, to basically dampen down the friction on our colonial frontiers. So, with France, for example, there had been a war scare as recently as 1898 in the Sudan, the so-called Fashoda, or Fashoda, I don't know how you pronounce it actually, because I've never been and never spoken to any Sudanese person about this incident. So, this is a mystery to me.
Anyway.
Well, if we have any Sudanese listeners, let us know.
Yeah. So, Kitchener and a French guy had basically marched from different directions, arrived at this place. The French had been completely outnumbered and had been slightly humiliated. It was a big deal. And they want to avoid that happening again.
And of course, they really want to avoid it with Russia. So, for example, in his book, The Sleepwalkers, great historian, Christopher Clarke, Regis professor at Cambridge, he says, in a way, you could argue it's a kind of appeasement, that Russia is a big threat to our empire in Asia. We've had a great game with Russia.
With India, isn't it? The jewel in the crown. Yeah. And the fear that Russian forces will push down into India.
Right. That this is a great way of managing that. That if you actually sign an alliance with them, then that's fine. India is protected. Same with France in Africa or Southeast Asia or wherever it might be.
And actually, the foreign office bigwigs say this quite explicitly. There's a guy called Charles Harding in 1909.. And he writes a memo and he says, well, why are we allied with Russia, which doesn't seem a natural fit for us at all, rather than say Germany, which a lot of people think would be a natural fit, great ties of kind of the royal families, culture. At this point, the late 19th, 30th, 20th century, there's all this stuff about kind of racial kindred, kith and kin, all of that kind of stuff.
So Saxons.
Saxons. Exactly. And so Charles Harding says, it's because we don't really have any issues with Germany. The only one is the naval race, which we are winning. But he says our whole future in Asia is bound up with maintaining the best and most friendly relations with Russia.
And the bigger and more powerful that Russia becomes, the more it industrializes, the more railways they build, all of that stuff. The more that people in the foreign office say, look, we absolutely have to keep the Russians on side. So Harding's successor, who's a guy called Sir Arthur Nicholson, he's very explicit about this. He says it is much more disadvantageous to us to have an unfriendly France and Russia than to have an unfriendly Germany.
And so what that implies is that the empire is actually a bit of a millstone, that it is kind of pulling British foreign policy off courses that it would otherwise be taking.
Yeah. Isn't that interesting? That the sole priority really is the protection of the empire. And because of the protection of the empire, we have had to ally with people that maybe is a tiny bit distasteful. I mean, certainly with Russia.
So remember, this is a liberal government. So there are lots of kind of do-gooders in this government. And they look at Russia and they say, really? Russia? The most autocratic country in Europe?
Yeah. Against Germany.
Germany, science, high culture.
Social democracy.
Big trade unions, all that. Really, we're going with the Russians? And the foreign office. people say, look, hey, we've got to be realistic. It's all about protecting the empire.
This is what makes most sense.
So that doesn't necessarily translate into anti-German feeling, does it? And yet, as we've often talked on this podcast, there is a kind of anti-German mood abroad in England at the time. There are all those kind of books about the Battle of the Dorking Gap and when William came. It's kind of scare stories about a German conquest of Britain.
Yes. Uniquely after the Franco-Prussian War. So those hadn't existed really before. But after Germany is created in 1870, you're absolutely right, Tom. You get this sort of growing anxiety about Germany.
And it really, really starts to kick in, I think, round about the very late end of the 1890s. The Boer War. We're fighting Boers who are not so dissimilar from Germans.
Well, the Germans, I mean, the Kaiser famously sends supportive telegrams, doesn't he?
He does, the Kaiser. And in fact, lots of Germans and frankly, lots of other people around the world, say that plucky Boer underdogs and these bullying shopkeeper, you know, they're British.
With a butcher's apron.
Exactly. So there's a lot of stuff about that. There are all those, as you said, I mean, I love all that invasion, scare stuff. It'd be brilliant subjects actually for a podcast. Really whipped up by the Northcliffe newspapers.
So my old stamping grounds, the Daily Mail, very prominent in that.
Because basically they would publish scare stories in places where the circulation was low.
Yeah. Well, then what they did was the key battles took place in places where they had lots of readers because, to terrify, you know, Watford sacked by the Prussians or whatever. And then the other thing is the naval race. Once the German empire was established, and then, once it sort of got going, they decided they'd like a fleet. A fleet is seen in the 1890s as really the supreme badge.
It's like having nuclear weapons or something. This is your ticket to the top table. The British were offended by this. They start building dreadnoughts, and this creates a lot of antagonism, but actually Britain wins that naval race hands down. By 1913, the Germans have unilaterally declared it's over.
We can't compete. We're not going to carry on building dreadnoughts at the same rate. You know, fine, have your naval advantage. So that actually means that as you get to 1914, the temperature is a little bit lower than it had been.
Yeah. So we've already mentioned it, that trip to Berlin by Haldane, Richard, Haldane.
Yeah. The war minister.
The war minister to try and kind of form a German equivalent of the Entente Cordiale. I mean, it fails, but presumably it's a sign that actually relations between them are thawing.
Yes, I think so.
I mean, because on the kind of personal level, there are lots of people in the British upper classes who are very, very keen on Germany, to a degree that is, you know, is not comparable today. No. People have been massively influenced by German culture for an entire century, going back to the time of Coleridge, you know, George Eliot, all those kind of intellectuals, hugely influenced by Germany in a way that would be inconceivable today.
I mean, I think you could reasonably argue that if there was a point in recent, in modern British history, when people were most keen on Germany and German culture, it was actually in the 1900s and 1910s.
Yeah. So ironic, isn't it?
And it went both ways. So the man who had masterminded the naval race for the Germans, Grand Admiral Tirpitz, he had an English governess for his daughters, and then he sent his daughters to Cheltenham Aiders College because he wanted them to have an English education.
That's amazing.
So, even in that cabinet, in that meeting that you described so beautifully with your Churchill voice, Sir John Simon, who's one of the Liberal cabinet ministers, he had said publicly, the fellow countrymen of Shakespeare and Milton cannot look askance on the fellow countrymen of Goethe and Schiller, and those with the tradition of Wycliffe and Wesley have no ground of quarrel with the descendants of Luther.
Yeah. There's the famous German joke about Shakespeare, isn't it? That the English translation of Shakespeare isn't bad.
Yeah. Well, the Germans absolutely adore and look up to British high culture. There's no question about that. So you have that. Now, you do have people in the foreign office who are very down on Germany, and we'll get into one of them a little bit later in the story.
But Christopher Clarke talks about this. in The Sleepwalk. He says there's a steady stream of memos and minutes arcing about the threat posed by Berlin. And he has a lovely analogy, which I think could be developed even further. He says, all of these people, they read those kind of Edwardian stories in which there's a new boy at the school.
He's maybe a bit vulgar.
New money.
Yeah, new money. He's coming from new money, and he's a bit of a braggart, and he's a blusterer, and the older boys sort of punish him and tame him.
Yeah. He's not familiar with the traditional rules of the school.
I mean, he says, this is how foreign office mandarins talked about Germany. And of course, this, by the way, is how Kaiser Wilhelm's relatives talk about him.
The Kaiser undoubtedly has a feeling that he's being treated a bit like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
The new boy who's not being made to feel welcome in the dorm.
And, of course, what gives that an extra charge is that Germany is doing so well. So that Germany, by the outbreak of the First World War, has overtaken Britain in industrial production. It is right behind Britain in its share of world trade. People are aware of these figures. They have a real sense of it.
People make jokes in the early 20th century about products that are stamped, made in Germany. And they find that as unsettling as Americans did in the 1980s and 1990s when it was made in Japan or something.
Yeah. So kind of what the Americans would call the Thucydides trap.
Yes. The Thucydides trap, exactly. The rising power must, by definition, challenge.
But do you think that's right? Do you think that it's inevitable that, for instance, Britain would see Germany as an enemy rather than as a potential ally?
No, I don't think it's inevitable.
Because the implication of what you're saying is that that's not the case at all.
I don't think it is inevitable. We've already mentioned two different, very, very influential British politicians, Joseph Chamberlain and Richard Haldane, huge figures in their day, not maybe household names today, but huge figures in the 1890s, 1900s, who really, really wanted an alliance with Germany. And I think the general sense, certainly by 1914, is, yeah, we've had spats and arguments and things, but actually things are now getting much better. So Arthur Nicholson, who's running the foreign office, the top civil servant, says the Germans have been making great efforts to be on the best possible terms with us. And to some extent, they've succeeded.
David Lloyd George, the chancellor, gave an interview on New Year's Day in 1914 to the Daily News. And he said, our relations with Germany are infinitely more friendly now than they have been for years. Now, there'll be some people who believed that point that you make, sort of distract, some people in the foreign office who would say, realistically, Germany is going to challenge us and we should gird our loins for that.
Right. Which is exactly like the German attitude to Russia. Yeah. Sooner, better, rather than later.
But it is much less charged in Britain and much less paranoid.
Well, also because Britain in 1914, I mean, we know this because we did a series on the Easter Rising, that Britain in 1914 is pretty inward looking because it's wracked by all kinds of crises, of which the Irish debate over home rule is the major one. But you've got the suffragettes, haven't you? You've got kind of strikes. So the sense we tend to have of it being a kind of golden summer bank holiday, suddenly that turns to mud and rain, isn't entirely true. There are crises everywhere.
And I always remember that incredible comment that Asquith makes to the effect that, you know, he says, well, at least the war will distract us from, you know, the horrors of potential civil war in Ireland.
Exactly. Yeah. The very day after Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo, Sir Henry Wilson from the British army told Asquith, he said, we're going to have to send the entire army to Ireland to deal with the consequences of home rule. So the British do not have their eyes on the Balkans at all at this point. Of course, the Sarajevo assassinations were extensively reported in Britain.
The Times ran seven different stories on the assassinations the next day.
And the tone is sympathetic.
Totally sympathetic. I mean, they're all, gosh, the poor old emperor, Franz Joseph, you know, he's endured so many trials, the death of his wife, the death of his son.
And Franz Ferdinand and Sophie had been visitors in Britain just the year before, hadn't they?
And everyone said they were such tremendous people. I'd actually liked them. So Buckingham Palace is in mourning. There's a big service of remembrance at Westminster Cathedral, the Catholic Cathedral. And quite a lot of the cabinet went to that service to express their condolences.
So there's a natural sympathy. And then there's a sense, well, it's actually not that big a deal, you know, in the grand scheme of things. So there's a very famous...
The Guardian kicks in with very prescient editorial.
Yeah. The murders will have no immediate or salient effect on the politics of Europe. Not the last time the Guardian would comically misjudge world affairs, I think is fair to say, Tom. And in fact, in the foreign office, the general sense is this will blow over. You know, this will not be a massive deal.
Now, the one person who is worried straight away, you've already described him and said he is a great hero of yours, is the foreign secretary, the man who basically runs foreign policy as a private fiefdom and has done for a decade. And that is Sir Edward Grey. So, Tom, you love Sir Edward Grey. And what is it about him that appeals to you?
He is the embodiment of a certain language superiority that I would dearly like to possess.
That you associate with yourself.
No, I don't, but I aspire to it. So Sir Edward Grey remains to this day an absolutely fated fly fisherman. His book on fly fishing is very, very highly regarded. And you'll know that I'm in the process of trying to take it up. And I'd like to give a big shout out to Jeff, who I know is a regular listener who's doing his best to teach me.
So thank you, Jeff, for all your struggles. And basically, when I stand there trying to cast a fly, if I think that it's me who's doing it, it all goes wrong. I get the hook in my finger, or the line gets tangled in a tree, or I spear a duck or something. But if I imagine myself to be Sir Edward Grey, in fact, I have a Sir Edward Grey hat, which I wear.
You're going to wear it now?
Well, yeah. So people who are watching this on YouTube, I'm now going to put it on and it's absolutely brilliant.
Oh, it's a wonderful hat. Yeah.
I got it from Sir Edward Grey's outfitter. So it's exactly the same one. And I imagine myself as Sir Edward Grey in the summer of 1914 casting, and then I can do it perfectly. So I think that's the measure of the man.
Lesson for aspiring fishermen there. So Sir Edward Grey came from a Whig family.
I mean, you say that, I mean, he doesn't just come from a Whig family. It's a Whig dynasty, isn't it?
Yeah, Whig dynasty.
He's the great-grandnephew of the Earl Grey who introduces the Great Reform Act in 1832, but much more significantly. And the reason why he's remembered gives his name to the eponymous T.
Is that named after the Earl Grey? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. I'm not a massive fan of, I don't like a scented tea.
But it's very liberal, isn't it?
It's too liberal. So Edward Grey, highborn, goes to Winchester College, one of the great schools that we talked about in our The Real Hogwarts podcasts. Then he went to Balliol College, Oxford, like his great friend, Herbert Henry Asquith.
And indeed you, Dominic.
And indeed me, yes. And unlike me, he had a life of pure pleasure. I was a bookworm, Tom, I'm sorry to say.
Didn't you play football for Balliol? I did. Grey played football for Balliol. Did he?
Yeah. Probably at a higher level than I did, Tom.
Maybe, but I mean, yeah.
Yet another resonance with this podcast, right? Yeah. So he was actually sent down, which I wasn't. He was sent down for not doing any work. The college minute book said he'd been admonished for idleness and shown himself entirely ignorant of the work set for him in the vacation.
So that's bad form.
But that doesn't stop him becoming Liberal MP for a place very close to my heart, for Berwick, where I have my Scottish estate. Yeah. So, you know, it has excellent fishing, obviously on the Tweed. Yes. And also a lot of squirrels.
That's nice.
A lot of red squirrels. So we've seen red squirrels up near our Scottish estate.
This is really spiraling off now, this story of the first world war.
I know, I know. But so his base is north of Northumbria, a place called Faladon. Yes. And he's so devoted to squirrels that Lloyd George suggested that if the Germans invaded and were marching on the Northeast.
Yes, I remember that.
Then he could be made to yield by, you know, a German captain who threatened to exterminate the squirrels around his house at Faladon. Well. I really liked that.
So he spends a lot of time in these country pursuits. I think, partly because his private life is a bit of a mess, not a mess. It's just a bit of a wasteland. So he married a young woman called Dorothy from a big Northumberland landowning family. They went on honeymoon and Dorothy said to him at the end of the honeymoon, I actually find the physical side of marriage repulsive, which is no one wants to hear that.
You don't want to hear that from your new bride. So that side of the marriage was then dead. And his biographer, Thomas Ottey, says he took up competitive, real tennis for greater energy.
Well, that's the solution. Royal tennis is the one where you have a kind of very heavy ball, don't you? And it's kind of modeled on a medieval monastery or something.
It's quite dangerous.
But he's really good at it. Brilliant. I think he got a blue.
Yeah. I think he was exceptionally good and he played squash and all these kinds of things.
Yeah. He won all kinds of national championships.
Yeah. So he's doing that and he spends all his weekends fly fishing and stuff. And in fact, somebody at the foreign office said he's never been abroad, or hardly ever.
Doesn't speak French, does he?
Doesn't speak a word of any foreign languages. It would be advisable for him to spare some time from his ducks to learn French. But Grey obviously thinks that's not suitable for a balial man to do that kind of thing.
I just love the idea of him, you know, of a weekend, Friday evening, he gets on the train, goes down and fishes. Yeah. That for me, I mean, basically. that's how I like to imagine the Edwardian period. Yeah.
And I know all about, you know, strikes and Ireland and everything. But the image of a man in tweed with a hat fly fishing on a lazy June afternoon.
Having just spent the day settling the affairs of Montenegro. All that kind of thing. Yeah. Or whatever he's been doing. Yeah.
But the thing is he fishes in a very melancholy way, Tom. Dorothy died in 1906 in a riding accident. And Grey, he always reminds me of Thomas Hardy in this regard, who obviously is living at the same time. Thomas Hardy, when he lost his first wife, wrote all these sort of poems saying, you know, we didn't really get on, and I feel so guilty. The clouds have gathered and all this kind of thing.
And Grey, absolutely. He is ravaged by a sort of strange guilt. after her death. He would have tea laid in her room when he was in your neck of the woods in Northumberland. And he would just sit there silently on his own, staring at the tea set.
And he said to people, I wish I could be dead. I wish I could join her in death.
I also like that melancholy strain. Yeah.
Well, that's very Edwardian. The worst state of all is to feel dead and to have to go on being alive. That is my difficulty now. And then his brother is killed by a lion in Africa. That's very imperial.
Very Edwardian. And then he starts to lose his sight. And for a man who basically spends all his time playing real tennis and birdwatching.
There's a wonderful photo of him wearing his fisherman's hat with a robin on top of it. Yes. Yeah. And another one, he's sitting on a bench surrounded by ducks. Yeah.
He's a very proficient birdwatcher.
Now, all of this makes him sound, especially to our overseas listeners, as if a sort of muscular Australian listener to the rest is history. This will confirm all their stereotypes of the English, right? This sort of languid, useless, don't speak a word of the foreign language, just interested in birdwatching. Actually, he's a very serious politician. He is what's called a liberal imperialist.
There was him, there was Haldane, and there was their friend, Asquith, who was the sort of the alpha male of the three. And they're liberals. They believe in being kind to people and, you know, using the power of the state. But they're also, they believe in smiting the burrs and carrying a big stick abroad and all that sort of thing.
Faintly Blairite.
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. I can absolutely see that. So Gray took over the foreign office at the end of 1905 and he was there for 11 years. It was his domain. He's in charge of Britain's foreign policy.
Nobody, I think, has ever run it for as long as he did. Certainly not in modern history. Some of the liberal MPs say, I don't like the way he just does it all secretively. And actually, it's not very liberal. So they're kind of ethical foreign policy people.
And they say, why are we pally with the Tsar? Why are we pally with Europe's most autocratic monarchy? With, you know, people being dragged off to prison in Siberia and stuff.
And, as you've said, it's realpolitik. Yeah, exactly. It's to protect the empire.
And they don't like that. Now, the other thing is, nobody really knows what Gray has agreed with some of these foreign countries. So the classic example of that is France. We have had the Entente Cordiale since 1904.. Something that is still, people are still quite sentimental about, aren't they?
Whenever, you know, the British prime minister goes to visit Macron, they will make reference to the Entente Cordiale, how brilliant it is. But actually, when you dig it out and you look at what, it was actually all about, fishing rights in Newfoundland.
And about Edward VII going to Paris and hanging out with courtesans.
There's that, but actually the text of the stuff. Of course, Edward VII is going around and like, smiling at his old mistresses and stuff and waving to the crowds in Paris. But the details of it, they're all about the ownership of towns in Senegal.
So there is no public, written, stated agreement between France and Britain about what they would do in the event of, say, a German attack on France or indeed a German attack on Britain.
No. And here is the crucial thing, right? So in public, people are always asking Gray this. You know, are we in an alliance with France and Russia that will require us to fight on their side if there was ever a continental war? And he says, absolutely not.
No, nothing. We can do whatever we like. We don't have to get involved. But in private, when the French ask him, he says to them, we'll always stand with you, you know. Now there's a fatal ambiguity there, because in 1914, the top Mandarin, Sir Arthur Nicholson, said to him, you have promised their ambassador, Monsieur Cambon, that if Germany is ever the aggressor, you will stand by France.
And Gray gives the ultimate Edwardian British response. He says, yes, but he has nothing in writing. I imagine Roger Moore would give that line very, very nicely.
Arching his eyebrow.
Which is the perfidious albium. So there is a real uncertainty about what Britain will do. Nobody outside Gray's office can be sure. In fact, I'm not even sure that he really knows himself what he would do if it came to the crunch and what Britain will do. I guess we'll find out after the break.
Hello, welcome back to. The Rest is History. And in this part, we're looking at basically how Sir Edward Gray and the British government respond to the assassination in Sarajevo and the gathering war clouds of the July crisis. But it's also an episode that will feature two absolutely top ambassadors. Isn't it, Dominic?
Two of my favorite ambassadors in the whole of history. Wow. And the first of these is the German ambassador, Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky, who is genuinely, I think, a very admirable man. Yeah. Wonderful guy.
Great wife.
Yeah. He's Silesian.
He's from Silesia. His wife, Mac Tilda, is from Bohemia and she's very, very glamorous. And their house, which is on Calton House Terrace, becomes a kind of great center for all kinds of British luminary to go there. So Kipling goes there, and Shaw and members of the Bloomsbury group.
Yeah.
And he has excellent coats. He's great. I love him. Absolutely love him.
He's very famous for his parties, isn't he? Yeah. So he's one of the richest men in Germany. He's a very suave aristocrat. He loves Britain.
Everybody in high society in London says, oh, he's a jolly good fellow. Prince Lichnowsky, oh, they're wonderful people. Now, actually, the problem that I think he has, and that actually Britain has, and Germany has in this crisis, is he loves Britain rather too much and he hates conflict. He's actually quite a sort of nervous person behind the sort of debonair urbanity.
So he loves Britain and he hates conflict. Again, he's like me.
Right. Very good. All these people seem to turn out to be like you, Tom.
The Kaiser? Yeah. Yes.
Edward Grey. Extraordinary. It's like being in your troubled psyche, different versions of yourself. Yeah. So, I mean, Thomas Ottey, makes this point in his book, July Crisis.
Prince Lichnowsky has a habit of telling Sir Edward Grey what they both want to believe.
Right.
As in, things will all be fine. We'll be able to sort this out. It'll all be fine.
Ah, don't worry.
Exactly. So. on the 6th of July, Lichnowsky says to Grey, this is the first time they've discussed it. So it's now over a week since the assassination. Lichnowsky says, the Austrians are planning something, but I do not know what it is.
And Grey interestingly says, well, we have to be careful not for the conflict to spread. But he says, listen, I can understand they would be planning something, because it's kind of unreasonable to expect them not to react at all to the heir to their throne being murdered. And that is Grey's position for quite a long time. You know, he's not quite like the French or the Russians. He's not, as it were, stubbornly anti-Austrian.
He wants to manage this. Let's get through this. We can sort this out.
And when it becomes apparent that various great powers are starting to square off over it, he sees Britain's role as a kind of mediating one, doesn't he? Yes.
So there are some historians who say, right from the beginning, he should have said, oh, well, if there is a conflict, Britain will back France and Russia. So you, Germany and Austria should stand down because you don't want to be fighting us. And they say, well, what a fool Grey was. Why didn't he do that? That would have deterred them.
And the reason he doesn't do that is actually, it's completely understandable. He thinks somebody piling in like a bull in the china shop, kind of Kaiser style, with sort of threats and menaces, is the last thing you need. What you need is somebody to say, we will be the honest broker. We will mediate. You know, we're not going to pick a side.
We won't threaten the Germans. We will work with them. They will probably be the people we end up working with to calm all this down.
But I suppose the problem with that is that Britain does have an entente cordiale with France. It is in a kind of alliance with Russia.
Yeah.
And Austria presumably would not be part of this, because Austria and Serbia are the two who have to be, you know, the mediation has to operate. So that means that Germany essentially is outnumbered three to one, or would feel that it's outnumbered three to one.
Yes, I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right.
Because Britain actually isn't an honest broker in this. I mean, it has skin in the game, really.
This is the ambiguity of Grey's position, because actually, Grey is also meeting other ambassadors. For example, he meets the Russian ambassador, Count von Benckendorf. Everybody has the wrong name. Likovsky and Benckendorf should have swapped surnames. Bizarrely, I mean, or not bizarrely, given how Edwardian diplomatic politics works, Benckendorf, the Russian ambassador, and Likovsky, the German ambassador, are cousins.
Of course they are.
So he meets him and he says to him, what we should perhaps do is reassure the Germans. We don't want the Germans to be too isolated. We want to reassure them. You know, he still thinks the Russians, the French, the Germans, indeed the Austrians, they're all solid chaps. They can all be brought to see sense.
Of course there are differences between them. But if I show myself to be a man of good faith, they will all agree to some sort of mediation. And as you said, Tom, that's slightly missing the point that he's already promised the French that when it comes to the crunch, he will be on their side. So they can kind of ignore him if they want. They don't have to go with his kind of mediation proposals.
So, right up to the point when the Austrians issue their ultimatum, he is still pretty sympathetic to Austria. So the 22nd of July, he meets the Austrian ambassador. Like all Austrian ambassadors, he has an enormous name. Count Albert, Victor, Julius, Josef, Michael, Graf von Mensdorff, Puyli, Dietrich Stein.
Crazy name, crazy guy.
We call him Count Mensdorff. And Mensdorff reports to Vienna. He says, Grey is not without sympathy for us. He's very cool. He's very friendly.
He is worried about what will happen. And actually the ambassador says to Vienna, I am anxious that when Grey sees our ultimatum, he will be really shocked.
And he is, isn't he?
And he is. So that meeting that you described in your Churchill voice, Tom, 24th of July, Grey, reads that out to those cabinet colleagues. And he says, this is the most formidable declaration I've ever seen addressed by one state to another. And they all say, well, the one thing we don't want to do is to get involved in a world war. They're absolutely adamant about that.
And they say to him, the thing to do is you go to the Germans and you go to the French, and the three of you together should be able to persuade the Austrians and the Russians not to fall out about this. Now, of course, what that completely misses, they do not realise how committed the decision makers in Paris and Berlin already are.
So it's a failure of intelligence.
I think it is a little bit. It's amazing to me that until such a late stage, Grey, perhaps misled actually by some of those ambassadors in London who have gone a bit native. He doesn't get that. actually the partners for his various mediation proposals just don't actually exist.
But there is, of course an ambassador in London who has not gone native. And that is the French ambassador, Paul Cambon, who we've already mentioned. Yes. Who has been in London since 1898 as ambassador.
16 years.
But just as Grey does not speak a word of French, Paul Cambon does not speak a word of English, despite having been in the country for 16 years. And I hugely admire that. That is what I want from a French ambassador.
I mean, the amazing thing, I can't remember where I've got this from. I think it's from Chris Clark.
It is. He's very funny about Cambon.
During his meetings, Cambon insisted that every single utterance be translated into French, including easily recognised words such as, yes.
Yeah.
So when Grey said to him, yes, this little man at the side would say, oui.
And also his opposition to there being French schools in England, on the grounds that anyone who goes to such schools are likely to grow up intellectually stunted. Yes.
And can you think of anybody, Tom? Can you think of anybody, a Frenchman who went to a school in England and possibly, you know, there are question marks about his acumen and maybe his life choices? Theo. Poor, old Theo.
And also the weird thing is that Cambon's brother, Jules, is the ambassador to Germany. So again, it's all a kind of family affair, isn't it? Yeah.
So they met, Grey and Cambon, after that cabinet meeting on the 24th of July. And Grey said, I've dreamed up a solution to this crisis. It's a four power mediation. So there'll be four mediators. There'll be Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.
And between us, we can sort this out. Now, there are massive problems with this idea that Grey doesn't realize. Number one is France, and Germany don't even want to do it, really. They're not signed up to the idea of mediation because they are both already signed up to the idea of calling your opponents bluff and not backing down and being firm and all that business. But also that lineup that he's described would inevitably vote 3-1 against Austria because Britain and France are kind of allies with Russia and Serbia.
Germany, obviously, with Austria. And Italy, nominally with Germany and Austria, but actually hates the Austrians. So that is a problem. Grey doesn't realize it, of course.
And neither does Asquith, does he? Because on the 24th of July, the same day that Grey is talking to Cambon, Asquith is writing in his journal, we are within measurable or imaginable distance of real Armageddon. And the we. there is Europe. Happily, there seems to be no reason why we, meaning Britain, should be anything more than spectators.
Yes. So just on Asquith, Asquith, a great friend of the rest of history, much loved prime ministerial figure, much maligned, I think, by some people at Goldhanger. Tom, very, very cruelly. So Asquith, famously the kind of incarnation of the effortless superiority of the Baleal man. We know a lot about what he's thinking during this period, because he's slightly letting himself down, isn't he?
By, he's got a bit of a crush on his daughter's best friend. So his daughter's Violet and her best friend is called Venetia Stanley. She's 26 years old. Asquith.
Is 62.
62.
. So I'm not defending it, Tom. It is what it is. So he's sending her all these love letters and he will often write to her. I mean, he actually writes to her during cabinet meetings, which I think is probably not, not ideal.
You can't imagine Theresa May doing that.
No, I absolutely not. There is one recent prime minister. I can imagine doing that, but let's not bring.
him into it.
So he says to Venetia that evening, I'm worried that Russia is trying to drag us into the war. And he actually then goes on to say, and I think this absolutely captures the British attitude. Asquith says, the curious thing is that on many, if not most, of the points, Austria has a good and Serbia a very bad case. But the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe. And there was a brutality of their mode of procedure, which will make most people think it's a case of a big power wantonly bullying a little one.
And another point. actually, he writes to her and he says, what the Serbs need is a damn good thrashing. So the British are not Serbophile by any means, and they're not Austrophobic, but all they want to do is they want to see Serbia get a bit of a slap on the wrist from the Austrians. So the Austrians are happy and then it all calmed down and they can go back to their fishing. and he can play bridge and think about Venetia, Stanley.
That's basically Asquith's dream scenario. And Grey's do actually, I mean, Grey.
unbelievably, he goes off fishing, doesn't he?
He actually goes fishing the next day. Yeah.
Tremendous behavior.
This is the day, the 25th of July, Saturday, Tom, that the ultimatum expires and Grey, who you might expect to stay at least in London, says, no, I'm going to go fishing. And actually he goes off to his country cottage, which is on the river Itchen. I've seen it. Well, this is where the most controversial person in this whole story makes his appearance, right? Because not only have you seen it, you went there with the Fox murdering anti-Brexit lawyer, Jolion Morm.
He's a charming man.
Well, I don't want to lose all our listeners, our British listeners.
I went there with Fergal Sharkey, who's Undertone's lead singer, but is also now campaigning basically against poo being dumped in our beloved rivers.
Yeah. Sewage, sewage is his thing.
And we walked the Itchen and he brought Jolion Morm, who was delightful.
Really? Yeah.
I liked him very much.
Oh, my word, Tom.
But Dominic, I like everyone.
You do, you do. I mean, to our overseas listeners, this is just mad babble, but, uh, British listeners can make their own minds up as they can about other controversial characters, such as the Kaiser. Other such people, right? This is all a massive red herring. Meanwhile, the Germans are thinking about Gray's mediation proposal.
So that has got back to the Kaiser, the ambassador's supporter. The Kaiser does not like it at all. The Kaiser scribbles on it, on the piece of paper, he says, it's useless. It's nonsense. It's complete waste of time.
And he says, why would we betray our one friend in Europe, Austria, who we've promised that we would back? Why would we suddenly say, well, actually, I think we should all have a bit of a mediation. You know, it's that classic thing of, I don't know, it's people who've fallen out. and one friend says, I'll stand by you, no matter what. Never give into those miscreants down the road or whatever.
And then the next day he says, um, actually, I was thinking I might organize a meeting in a cafe and we can all talk about what you're my side or not. The Kaiser thinks you can't do that to your friend.
I think you're, you're revealing details about your school days here, Dominic.
Really? I'm a hold firm man, Tom, what could possibly go wrong? What's the worst that could happen?
Just a shame that your hand wasn't on the tiller of the ship of state in 1914.
Exactly. Exactly. Well, I wouldn't be off fishing. That's for sure. Like some people wouldn't be fishing with Fox murdering lawyers.
To be fair. Yeah. So Edward Gray wasn't either.
You know, he wasn't, he was on his own. Wasn't he? melancholy thinking about his, his wife and real tennis. So the Germans at this point were on the, um, Saturday. The Germans still do not think that there will be a world war.
And we know this. We can be pretty certain. as people in the foreign office are giving off the record interviews to Berlin newspapers. Gottlieb van Jagoff, who is the foreign minister, is talking to the editor of the Berliner Tageblatt. And he is saying maybe war will come one day with Russia and we must be firm, but it probably won't be today.
His political director says the same thing. The Russians will, they'll just shout loudly and hot days will follow, but that.
will be it.
And if you're going to be critical of the Germans, a lot of historians are, you would say at this point, they are just being willfully reckless and self deluding. Again, it's the intelligence failure. They just don't understand how seriously the Russians are taking all this. Now there are some people, particularly, I mean, there are people in the foreign office in London, some of Gray's mandarins, who are a little bit more hard nosed about this. And the classic example of this is a man, an absolutely bizarre man.
could, he has a ridiculous name? actually. What would you even call him? Tom's air crow.
Yeah. So air crow.
Yeah. Now he is the chief Germanophobe at the.
British foreign office. Despite basically being German.
Despite being German himself, which is bonkers. So he was born in Leipzig, educated in Dusseldorf and Berlin. He first came to Britain when he was 17 to cram for the foreign office exam. And he spoke with a German accent. One of his parents was British, which is how he qualified.
And he is fanatically anti-German. You've got to believe there's some strange psychological. Yeah.
Kind of Oedipal complex or something.
Yeah, exactly. And he has been saying since 1907, oh, Germany is a bully and a brat. It's the new boy. It's the bullying boy at school. Bullies, only respect strength.
It's reminiscent of Kipling's poem on Dengeld, isn't it? Yes. You know, you mustn't pay it.
You'll never get rid of the Dane.
Yeah. We never pay anyone Dengeld.
Yeah. So this weekend, Saturday, the 25th of July, he writes a memo to Gray that you will see cited in every single book about this, because it really does sum up the dilemma for Britain. He says, if there's war, he thinks there will be a war, because he says, I think the Germans really do want to take over the world because he hates Germany so much. And he says, if we stay out of this war, there are two alternatives. Number one is the Germans and the Austrians win.
And in that case, they will dominate Europe. They will dominate the channel ports, all of that kind of thing. Our allies would have been crushed and we'll be left alone and friendless at the mercy of the Prussians. That's number one. And he says, number two is the other possibility, probably less likely, the French and the Russians win.
And he says, what would they make of us then? Because they would have won without us and they would despise us for not having helped them. And then they would turn on us. They would drive us out of the Mediterranean. They would drive us out of India.
We would lose everything. And so Crow says to Gray, stop deluding yourself about your mediation and all.
that rubbish.
You know, we should get stuck in. We have no choice. Our own policy has left us the logic of our policy. There is no debate to be had. We should get cracking on on fighting, which is obviously not what Gray wants to do.
So presumably Gray is hoping that the Serbs will maybe back down and that the whole crisis will go away?
Yeah, maybe. Or that they will respond to the ultimatum in such a way that there'll be a fudge, maybe. Now, actually, let's move the focus back to Serbia. So Saturday is the day the ultimatum expires. What have they been up to?
First of all, they've been making some limited military preparations. They've put the army in charge of their railways. They've started to bomb some of the bridges.
Well, let's just remind people Belgrade is next to the river that constitutes the frontier with Austro-Hungarian empire.
There's two rivers, actually, because the border was so different in those days, that affected the frontier, the Danube and the river Sava. So they are making preparations there. All day. they've been working on a reply to the ultimatum. It's one of the most famous diplomatic documents in history, and it is covered with crossings out and scribbles, because they keep changing their mind about what exactly to say, and they're in a terrible panic.
The typewriter is jammed, so they're having to adjust it by hand. It's all a total shambles. One of the key men who's drafting the reply is the trade minister, who's called Velizar Jankovic. And on his mind all that day is the fact that, I mean, this tells you everything, I guess, about that kind of globalized pre-1914 world. His wife and children are on holiday in Austria-Hungary.
They're on the Adriatic coast. They're in Croatia. So many people go to Croatia every year. Well, they're there.
Because it's famous, this is an age where you don't need passports, right? Unless you're going to Russia, you can just go anywhere.
Right, exactly. Exactly. And if you're in Serbia, the Dalmatian coast is exactly where you would go, you know, sunning yourself in Dubrovnik or whatever. And he says, oh my God, if the ultimatum expires and war comes, they will be trapped. And he decides, this is an amazing story, he decides, I have to go to the German ambassador, ask him for help to get my family out.
And he says to his coachman, take me to the German embassy. But in the general air of panic, and of course Austria is on everybody's minds, the coachman goes to the wrong embassy. So he arrives at the Austrian embassy at five o'clock, the ultimatum expires at six. So the Austrian ambassador is waiting for a Serbian visitor.
So he assumes this guy has come with the ultimatum.
Yeah, Jankovic gets out and he's like, oh, they've sent the trade minister. And Jankovic, there's a terrible realisation. he's come to the wrong place. And the Austrian ambassador is right there by the carriage saying, please step inside. So he steps in and then he said, I've actually come about a very embarrassing and awkward situation.
And he explains, you know, if our countries are at war, my wife and children are on the wrong side of the border.
Well, he's basically giving away what the Serbs are going to do by saying that, isn't he?
Yes, exactly. And Baron Giesel responds splendidly. He says, again, I think the voice you're looking for here is an Austrian, Roger Moore or sort of George Sanders.
Christopher Plummer in the Sound of Music.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly. He says, it will be my pleasure as a gentleman to see to it that your family have special passports to take them to Venice and our government will give them 10 gold, Napoleon. so they are not out of pocket.
Do you know, Dominic, I know that this is the most disastrous failure of diplomacy in global history. Yeah. But weirdly, I think diplomats are coming out very well from this story.
They're making lots of mistakes. It's fair to say.
Yeah, but they're all tremendous chaps.
They're all tremendous fellows. Yeah. You'd love to have a dinner party with them, wouldn't you? You really would. Baron Giesel, Prince Lichnowsky, all these characters, probably not the French guy, because, you know, I don't want to see his translator.
So as Jankovic leaves, it occurs to him, the Baron is in his traveling clothes. He's wearing plus fours. Everything is packed up, ready to go, ready for war. And he realizes, you know, there is no way, the Austrians are not going to fight. And indeed, with five minutes to go until the deadline, 555, the Prime Minister, Nikola Pasich, arrives at the Austrian legation.
Giesel throws him into the study and Pasich says, part of your demands we have accepted. For the rest, we place our hope in the loyalty and chivalry of an Austrian general. And he gives him the reply to the note. And to cut a long story short, the reply to the note, it's often misconstrued. People say the Serbs accepted all the demands except the most inflammatory, number six.
That's actually not right.
And that's the one where the Habsburgs demand the right to join the investigation on Serbian soil.
But that's not right. They accepted all the demands in theory, but not in practice.
With caveats.
There were always caveats. They said, well, we don't think this nationalist organization even exists, but if you can prove it exists, we'll help you to shut it down. Or they say, yes, we will do this in so far as it is commensurate with international law. So when Giesel looks at the document, he says, I mean, he wrote later, nearly all our demands were twisted, robbed of their meaning and purpose, and their fulfillment, if not directly refused, was so hedged in reservations that it was in practice useless. And all diplomatic historians, by the way, this isn't an anti-Serbian thing.
All diplomatic historians have said it was a brilliantly, brilliantly written reply that basically gave. the Austrians, seemed to give them almost everything, but in reality gave them absolutely nothing. And Giesel reads it and he says, fine, it's absolutely clear. He said, I had nothing to weigh, nothing to decide. All there was to do was to leave.
So he burns ciphers. He literally locks the embassy and gives the key to the Germans. Please look after the embassy. And then he goes to the station. and you were saying about diplomats, Tom, all the other diplomats, all the other ambassadors have assembled at the station to see him off, waving their top, hats and stuff, except for the Russians.
I suppose you'd say understandably, the French. I think they could have tried. And the Romanians, who are trying to get into bed with the Russians and the French, I think they could have made a showing as well. I think that was poor.
Well, I'm afraid that reflects badly on all three.
All three. Exactly. You were saying how close it is. It took him 10 minutes to get the train and then to cross the bridge into Austrian territory. That's how close they are.
The news reaches Vienna very quickly, of course. And there are huge crowds outside the war ministry. There are people singing patriotic songs. They're singing this famous anthem about the siege of Belgrade in 1717.. They're waving flags, great crowds of students.
You know, we should sacrifice everything for our emperor. There is genuine excitement in Austria.
And this is what gives people the sense that everyone greeted the war with great enthusiasm. Yeah. But it's kind of surface froth to a degree, isn't it?
It's surface. And, of course, don't forget the Austrians, they think they're only fighting Serbia. I mean, as it happens, that campaign of Serbia is a total disaster. But it's a slightly different issue, a small Balkan war, and they're not celebrating a world war. They're celebrating revenge for their archduke, as they say it.
However, there is one person who doesn't react in quite that way. The emperor Franz Joseph is in Bad Ischl, on the lakeside, at his summer house, with Count Berchtold, the foreign minister, and they're waiting for the news. And an aide comes in to tell Franz Joseph the news and says, the ultimatum expired, you know, relations have been severed, whatever. And Franz Joseph just is totally quiet and still. And he just says, well, then there it is.
And there it is. The states of Europe, tethered together by a mountaineer's rope, getting ready to vanish over the precipice into the abyss Dominic of war. So, if you want to follow that, we have two more episodes of this series to go, and they'll be out in due course. But if you want to hear them straight away, you can, of course, get those last two episodes right now by joining the Restless History Club at therestlesshistory.com or accessing it immediately if you're already a member of the Restless History Club. Either way, we'll be back with the final two episodes in the series very soon.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
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