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“Arno Mayer and the British Decision for War: 1914”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Donald Lammers
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , May 1973 , pp. 137 - 165
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1973

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References

1. See Mayer, Arno, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy 1917-1918 (New Haven, 1959Google Scholar) [a paperbound edition was published in 1964 with the title Wilson vs. Lenin]; and Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles 1918-1919 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

2. Mayer, Arno, ”Domestic Causes of the First World War,” in The Responsibility of Power: Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn ed. Krieger, L. and Stern, F. (New York, 1969 ed.), pp. 308–24Google Scholar; Mayer, Arno, ”Internal Causes and Purposes of War in Europe, 1870-1956: A Research Assignment,” Journal of Modern History, 41/3 (1969), 291–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter essay is reprinted, along with other expressions of Mayer's general views, in his Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870-1956: An Analytic Framework (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.

3. Loewenberg, Peter, ”Arno Mayer's ‘Internal Causes and Purposes of War in Europe, 1870-1956’ — An Inadequate Model of Human Behavior, National Conflict and Historical Change,” Journal of Modern History, 42/4 (1970), 628–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. In the strictest sense there was no formal Cabinet decision to go to war — though of course the Ministers defined their attitudes to Belgium in a way which made war a distinctly possible outcome; see Churchill, Winston S., The World Crisis (New York, 1923), I, 234Google Scholar; and Taylor, A. J. P., War by Time-Table: How the First World War Began (London, 1969), pp. 109–10Google Scholar.

5. See Mayer, , Dynamics, p. 2Google Scholar; and his ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 298Google Scholar.

6. Mario Toscano offers some shrewd comments on this subject in The History of Treaties and International Politics (Baltimore, 1966), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

7. These and similar phrases are scattered throughout Mayer, Dynamics; Mayer, , ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3Google Scholar; and Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of PowerGoogle Scholar. Mayer has promised to develop and clarify the position in a forthcoming book on the general history of Europe between 1870 and 1956.

For some unorthodox comment on the “violent” character of the recent age, see Hinsley, F. H., Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge, 1964), chap. 12Google Scholar.

8. Mayer, , ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 296–999Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 299.

10. Ibid., p. 298.

11. SirButterfield, Herbert ”Sir Edward Grey in July 1914,” Historical Studies, V (1965), 2Google Scholar.

12. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, pp. 308–09Google Scholar; and Mayer, , ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 294Google Scholar. “Security” and “latitude” are, of course, relative terms, not absolutes, and Mayer has not so far addressed the problem of determining when they begin to become their opposites.

13. Mayer, , ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 301–02Google Scholar. At 293-94, Mayer writes that foreign policy actors “are moved — if not consciously, certainly unconsciously — by a mixture of external and internal considerations. With each actor the blend of these two components depends not only on the overall context of power and politics in which he operates, but also his functional position, his habitual political preferences, and his formal political associations.” This surely sounds reasonable on its face, but unless it is stated more precisely it will be hard to prove or disprove.

14. Mayer's vocabulary of causation (or linkage) varies throughout the works under discussion, and particularly in his ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 294-95, 298, and 301–02Google Scholar. In Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, p. 310Google Scholar, he speaks of interacting dysfunctions in the internal and external systems; in his ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 298Google Scholar, he states that researchers may “usefully hypothesize the primacy of domestic politics in international relations.” Nowhere, however, does he furnish a sure guide to the judgment which historians will want to make as between the two categories of causes (assuming that they are distinguishable, as Mayer tabes them to be).

15. Mayer, , ”Internal Causes,” J.M.H., 41/3, 293Google Scholar. The work of Watt, D. C., Personalities and Policies (London, 1965Google Scholar) and his numerous essays and of Beloff, Max, Imperial Sunset, I: Britain's Liberal Empire 1898-1921 (London, 1969Google Scholar) and his articles on the Anglo-American relationship, to name only two, suggests that Mayer's complaint about the disjunction of domestic and diplomatic history is exaggerated — though it must be admitted that the conclusions of these historians do not agree very well with Mayer's own.

16. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, p. 313Google Scholar.

17. Jenkins, Roy, Asquith (London, 1964), p. 275Google Scholar.

18. First published in 1935, and many times reprinted.

Elie Halévy anticipated Dangerfield's diagnosis of the ailments of prewar English society in his chapter on “Domestic Anarchy” in volume VI of his History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century (1961 ed.; London, 1934), 441–566Google Scholar.

For what may have been the original formulation of the so-called “Dangerfield thesis,” see Wells, H. G., Mr. Britling Sees It Through (New York, 1916), especially pp. 46–47Google Scholar: “[Mr. Britling is speaking] The psychology of all this recent insubordination and violence is—curious. Exasperating too … I don't quite grasp it … It's the same thing whether you look at the suffrage business or the labour people or the Irish muddle. People may be too safe. You see we live at the end of a series of secure generations in which none of the great things of life have changed materially. We've grown up with no sense of danger — that is to say, with no sense of responsibility. None of us, none of us — for though I talk my actions belie me — really believe that life can change very fundamentally any more forever. All this … looks as though it was bound to go on steadily forever. It seems incredible that the system could be smashed. It seems incredible that anything we can do will ever smash the system. — Old Asquith thinks that we always have got along, and that we shall always get along by being quietly artful and saying, ‘Wait and see.’ And it's just because we are convinced that we are so safe against a general breakdown that we are able to be so recklessly violent in our special cases. Why shouldn't the women have the vote? they argue. What does it matter. And bang goes a bomb in Westminster Abbey. Why shouldn't Ulster create some impossible position? And off goes some demented Carsonite to Germany to play at treason on some half word of the German Emperor's and buy half a million rifles.”

The persistence of this view of the relationship between deeply felt security and the indulgence of violence may be illustrated by these words of Richard Mayne: “A world of port wine and waistcoats, of voluminous dresses and ample bathing costumes, it [the prewar British world] was secure enough to breed rebels and self-satisfied enough to need them”; ”Wyndham Lewis,” Encounter (February 1972), p. 46.

19. Most general accounts of English history after 1900 embody some variant of the view that social distempers were accumulating fast after 1910 and that the War cut across internal developments freighted with menace for customary liberal ways; see, for instance, Somervell, D. C., British Politics since 1900 (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, chap. 4, which calls the years 1911-14 an “Unfinished Melodrama”; Cole, G. D. H. and Postgate, Raymond, The British Common People 1746-1946 (London, 1949), pp. 471–80Google Scholar; Havighurst, A. F., Twentieth-Century Britain (Evanston, 1962), pp. 108–16Google Scholar, which deal with this “very un-English period”; Briggs, Asa, ”The Political Scene,” in Edwardian England 1901-1914, ed. Nowell-Smith, Simon (Oxford, 1964), pp. 96–99Google Scholar; Pelling, Henry, Modern Britain 1885-1955 (London, 1960), pp. 53 ff.Google Scholar; Thomson, David, England in the Twentieth Century (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 31–33Google Scholar; Jarman, T. L., A Short History of England in the 20th Century 1868-1962 (New York, 1963), pp. 113 ff.Google Scholar; Seaman, L. C. B., Post-Victorian Britain 1902-1951 (London, 1967), pp. 37–45Google Scholar; and McCallum, R. B., The Liberal Party from Earl Grey to Asquith (London, 1963), pp. 164 ffGoogle Scholar. In The Liberals in Power 1905-1914 (London, 1963), p. 171Google Scholar, Colin Cross writes as though anarchy and eventual dictatorship, from the right or the left, were imminent in 1914; but at pp. 188-89 he writes, somewhat inconsistently, to deny that the Liberals were at the point of inevitable collapse. The latter conclusion is repeated, with emphasis, by Douglas, Roy in The History of the Liberal Party 1895-1970 (London, 1971)Google Scholar.

Marwick, Arthur, British Society in the Century of Total War: War, Peace and Social Change 1900-1967 (Boston, 1968), pp. 40–51Google Scholar, agrees in general with Dangerfield's diagnosis but argues that it was not “democracy” that was under siege — England had not yet become a democratic society.

For recent, significantly more optimistic estimates of the outlook for English parliamentary government, see Lloyd, T. O., Empire to Welfare State (New York, 1970), pp. 38–54Google Scholar; and Peter, Rowland, The Last Liberal Governments: II, Unfinished Business 1911-1914 (London, 1971), 340–41Google Scholar.

20. Dangerfield, , Strange Death, pp. 382–87Google Scholar.

21. See Fulford's, Roger reflective conclusions in Votes for Women: The Story of a Struggle (London, 1957), chap. 34Google Scholar; and also Cole, and Postgate, , British Common People, pp. 492–93Google Scholar.

22. Pelling, Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 142Google Scholar. Pelling has deepened and elaborated his analysis in the essay on ”The Labour Unrest, 1911-14,” in Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (New York, 1968), pp. 147–64Google Scholar.

23. Cole, and Postgate, , British Common People, pp. 494–95Google Scholar; Miliband, Ralph, Parliamentary Socialism (London, 1961), p. 36Google Scholar. Although Sidney and Beatrice Webb wrote that Labor was “working up to an almost revolutionary outburst” in 1914 (quoted in Hazlehurst, Cameron, Politicians at War, July 1914 to May 1915: A Prologue to the Triumph of Lloyd George [London, 1971], pp. 27–28)Google Scholar, Kendall, W., in his The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-1921 (London, 1969)Google Scholar, passes over the events of 1914 in silence. G. A. Phillips, in a recent review of this issue, has concluded that, “The ‘general strike of 1914’ is, it seems, a mirage of historians treading the infertile deserts of British labour history in search of a révolution manquée”; ”The Triple Industrial Alliance in 1914,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 24/1 (1971), 55–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Hamer, D. A., John Morley: Liberal Intellectual in Politics (London, 1968), pp. 353–55Google Scholar. Halévy concluded that England was hastening “‘towards social democracy’” in these years, and that both traditional parties were “yielding with a unanimity that was resigned rather than enthusiastic to the pressure of the working masses”; English People, VI, viiGoogle Scholar.

25. Most recently, Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 25–32Google Scholar, who contends that “even if civil war or electoral disaster had been averted, Asquith and the Liberal Government could scarcely have extricated themselves from the Irish situation without discredit” (p. 30).

26. See, especially, Colvin, Ian, The Life of Lord Carson (London, 1935), II, chaps. 26-28Google Scholar; Blake, Robert, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law (London, 1955), chaps. 9-13Google Scholar; Gollin, A. M., Proconsul in Politics: A Study of Lord Milner in Opposition and in Power (London, 1964), pp. 172–222Google Scholar (by late July, “all prospects for a compromise now seemed hopeless”); and McCallum, , Liberal Party, pp. 179–83Google Scholar.

27. Jenkins, Asquith, chaps. 18-19, discusses the “Irish Imbroglio” at length but refrains from an explicit judgment of Asquith's efforts; Seaman, , Post-Victorian Britain, pp. 42–45Google Scholar, is unusually severe. On Redmond see Gwynn, Denis, The Life of John Redmond (London, 1932)Google Scholar, chaps. 5-9, where stress falls (pp. 352-53) on the parliamentary leader's loss of effective control of the younger radicals after the shooting in Bachelor's Walk on the 26th.

28. Gollin, A. M., ”Asquith: A New View,” in A Century of Conflict 1850-1950 Essays for A. J. P. Taylor, ed. Gilbert, Martin (London, 1966), pp. 107–13Google Scholar.

29. Earl of Oxford and Asquith, , Memories and Reflections 1852-1927 (Boston, 1928), II, 7–8Google Scholar. According to Blake, , Bonar Law, p. 214Google Scholar, Asquith offered on 17 July to renounce the time limit, but the concession did not sway the Conservative leader.

30. According to SirFitzroy, Almeric, [Memoirs (London, n.d.), II, 557Google Scholar], Morley told him on 16 July that “the time limit is gone, and with a statutory Ulster which it is believed Carson would in the last resort accept, the [county] option disappears also.” Fitzroy also concluded (ibid.) that the Buckingham Palace Conference had better effects than its “ostensible failure” would indicate — it had brought “to light the exact limits of pretension on either side, and if the Government, as they well may, proceed to insert amendments in the Bill giving effect to points whereon in the interests of peace concession is demanded, the malcontent elements in Parliament will hardly prove strong enough to frustrate their intentions.”

Asquith wrote (Memories, II, 8) that Redmond and Dillon “reluctantly agreed” when he told them of the need to drop the time limit, a point which is corroborated in Churchill's letter of 24 July to his wife: “We are to go ahead with the Amending Bill, abolishing the time limit & letting any Ulster county vote itself out if it chooses. The Irish acquiesced in this reluctantly.

We must judge further events in Ulster when they occur. No one seems much alarmed.” Churchill, Randolph S., Winston S. Churchill, II/3 (1969), 1988.

Gwynn (Redmond, p. 343) mentions the meeting but omits the point about the time limit; Lyons, F. S. L. says nothing about the interview in either John Dillon: A Biography (London, 1968)Google Scholar, or Ireland since the Famine (London, 1971), where the account is otherwise very full and judicious.

After the gun-running at Howth, Dillon told C. P. Scott that the position was now “impossible” as regards the Amending Bill, and added that Asquith felt that the Government would be “in peril” if the Nationalists abstained from voting, as they now threatened to do; Wilson, Trevor (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott 1911-1928 (Ithaca, 1970), pp. 90–91Google Scholar.

Yet Dr. Clifford (later Viscount) Addison noted on 28 July that “[t]he latest phase of the Irish business seems to be making towards a settlement”; Four-and-a-Half Years (London, 1934), I, 27–31Google Scholar. And Fitzroy wrote on the next day (Memoirs, II, 557–58), “The action of the Government in postponing the consideration of the Amending Bill seems regarded in some quarters as fraught with opportunities for concord and reconciliation in Ireland.” One of Redmond's correspondents wrote from Deny City on the 31st to say, inter alia, that “[t]here is a peaceful tendency here, I think, on both sides”; Gwynn, Redmond, p. 353; and Grey remembered later (ibid., p. 355), anent his 3 August speech: “My impression is that at the moment when I spoke the prospect of a peaceful settlement in Ireland was better than it had been” — small hints, if nothing more, that the immediate surge of feeling produced by the Dublin shootings was passing.

31. Churchill's graphic account of this moment is in World Crisis, I, 205Google Scholar; for subsequent activity see Asquith, , Memories, II, 8Google Scholar.

32. Spender, J. A. and Asquith, Cyril, Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith (London, 1932), II, 54–56Google Scholar, stress the Prime Minister's strong belief that the Irish issue could not possibly explode if the public understood that it had been fined down to determining the boundaries of those areas where the two religions were intermixed and nearly equal in numbers.

There is some confirmation for the notion that the English public, including Conservatives, was apathetic on the Ulster question in Hazlehurst, Politicians, pp. 29-30. General Sir Nevile Macready, commander of British forces in Ireland, told Asquith that the Army was ready1 to enforce any orders it received; Annals of an Active Life (London, 1924), I, 196–98Google Scholar. Rowland reviews the evidence and concludes that as of late July the Irish Question, “in short, had been more or less solved”; Last Liberal Governments, II, 345.

At least one major figure of the Opposition had deep fears in mid-July that Asquith's strategy would succeed. On the 15th Lord Milner wrote to Bonar Law to discuss at length the situation in Ireland and his own anxieties about the temper of the Conservatives (Beaverbrook Library, Bonar Law Papers, 33/1/28; Blake, Gollin and Hazlehurst have left this exceptionally interesting letter uncited and undiscussed in their work on this period). Milner claimed to know from reliable informants (1) that the Prime Minister and his entourage did not believe that Ulster would do anything serious if the current Home Rule bill were enacted, and (2) that they would not themselves take any serious steps to meet a rising should one occur. After expressing his usual withering contempt for Asquith's tactics he went on to explore the possible outcomes of the current crisis. The intrinsic interest of his remarks warrants extended quotation:

either there will be a settlement or there won't: A) if there is a settlement, which must be a disaster for the Unionist party, but might be necessary of acceptance on higher patriotic grounds, it cannot come too quickly, for the utter disgust and disgruntlement of all our stoutest people, which is inevitable if there is any settlement, will be intensified by delay. The longer we go on proclaiming that we have said our last word … the more complete will be the demoralisation when we unsay it.

N.B. I am assuming that in any case we can't accept less than the abolition of the time-limit and a greatly extended area, if not the whole province, and this now and without reservations.

B) if there is no settlement, and Ulster takes action, it seems [to] make an immense difference whether she takes it soon or waits till the close of the Session or just after it. The Asquithian game of doing nothing but letting Ulster “stew in her own juice,” could not possibly be carried on for weeks with the House of Commons sitting. Between our people pressing the Govt. to say what they meant to do, and their own … extremists clamouring for drastic action, their position would be quite untenable. They must either make some move, which would be bound to fail, or confess their impotence. And either would be fatal to them.

Besides, how could they ask the King to sanction a law, which was already being openly defied and which they admitted themselves unwilling and unable to enforce?

But once let them get their Bill on the Statute Book in peace and get safely away till December, and their position is much easier. Any move on the part of Ulster then will be much less effective in itself and much less embarrassing to the Govt. than it would be now. Immune from parliamentary criticism, and able to take its time and choose its methods deliberately, it will be able to put a tremendous screw on the Ulstermen, who will have great difficulty with their “provisional” system if they are obliged to carry it out for months under great discomfort, and in comparative obscurity. For unless the Govt. attack them, which they don't mean to do, the whole thing will be a “nine days wonder” over here. Everybody arguwill get used to the idea and be making holiday, while they will have the greatest difficulty in keeping up a most uncomfortable state of affairs, fatal to business and full of small hitches and troubles, probably leading to dissensions among themselves.

In other words, I don't believe the Ulster coup will be a coup at all, if it is much longer deferred. In fact, I doubt whether it will be attempted. If they think — and after all it is their business — that it is too great a risk to run now, I can't conceive why they should run it later when there will be much less to gain by it.”

33. McCallum, , Liberal Party, p. 184Google Scholar.

34. On Lloyd George's position at this time see Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 104–07Google Scholar; Owen, Frank, Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George, His Life and Times (London, 1955), p. 247Google Scholar; Halévy, , English People, VI, 671–72Google Scholar, which stresses LG's recent failures, his current vacillations, and his need to find his bearings in the developing crisis; McCormick, Donald, The Mask of Merlin: A Critical Study of Lloyd George (London, 1963), pp. 78–84Google Scholar, which gives a hostile and cynical picture of LG and emphasizes his alarmism on financial matters; and the full recent discussion by Emy, H. V., ”The Land Campaign: Lloyd George as a Social Reformer, 1906-1914,” in Lloyd George: Twelve Essays, ed. Taylor, A. J. P. (London, 1971), pp. 35–68Google Scholar. Emy notes that LG received many intimations in 1914 that his Land Campaign was attracting widespread popular support, and that it “confirmed the arrival of the ‘New Liberalism’ which had been forecast ever since 1906 (pp. 66-68).”

35. Clarke, P. F., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Brand, Carl F., The British Labour Party: A Short History (Stanford, 1964), p. 26Google Scholar. For evidence of low morale within the party, see Cole, M. I. (ed.), Beatrice Webb's Diaries 1912-1924 (London, 1952), p. 23Google Scholar.

In his essay ”Labour and the Downfall of Liberalism” (in Popular Politics, pp. 82–100), Pelling argues persuasively for the view that Labor, as an independent political force, was destined in the long run to displace the Liberals as the (class-based) party of the left — but as of 1914 this hardly seemed imminent, as he himself has stated in British Electoral Geography 1885-1910 (London and New York, 1967), pp. 434–37Google Scholar.

37. Wilson, Trevor, The Downfall of the Liberal Party 1914-1935 (London, 1966), pp. 15–19Google Scholar; and Beer, S., British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York, 1965), pp. 109–13 and passimGoogle Scholar. Thompson, J. A. has collected a useful set of readings on this subject in The Collapse of the British Liberal Party (Lexington, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar.

38. Seaman, , Post-Victorian Britain, esp. pp. 66–67Google Scholar (and this looks ahead, of course, to the “Butskellism” of the post-World War II era).

39. Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914-1945 (London, 1965), pp. 163, 245-51, 265-66, 325Google Scholar and passim.

40. Bullock, Alan and Shock, Maurice (eds.), The Liberal Tradition: From Fox to Keynes (London, 1956), xlix–lvGoogle Scholar.

41. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, p. 322Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., pp. 323-24.

43. Ibid., p. 321.

44. On this see Robbins, Keith, Sir Edward Grey (London, 1971), chaps. 7-13Google Scholar; and Trevelyan, G. M., Grey of Fallodon (London, 1937), pp. 245–51Google Scholar; though these should be read in conjunction with Butterfield's shrewd observations in ”Sir Edward Grey,” Historical Studies, V, 17–21Google Scholar.

45. Robbins, , Grey, pp. 288–94Google Scholar; Butterfield, , ”Sir Edward Grey,” Historical Studies, V, 14Google Scholar, writes: “The beauty of Grey's diplomacy in the next fateful week sprang from the fact that he was compelled to walk a dangerous tight-rope …. He was able to turn his political weakness at home into a diplomatic asset — able genuinely to say to both partners that the attitude of Great Britain would depend on the way they behaved.” On Grey's attitude toward the supposed divisions among Germany's leaders, see Ekstein, Michael, ”Sir Edward Grey and Imperial Germany in 1914,” Journal of Contemporary History, 6/3 (1971), 121–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Robbins, , Grey, p. 293Google Scholar. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 51–52Google Scholar, notes that after 29 July, Grey devoted most of his efforts to bracing the Cabinet to face the imminence of war.

47. The work of Fritz Fischer and Imanuel Geiss has aroused an extended, important and sometimes acerbic discussion. On the subject of German readiness to cope with British military participation from the outset it tends to affirm the views long held by English historians; see, e.g., Trevelyan, , Grey, pp. 245–51Google Scholar; Taylor, A.J.P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918 (Oxford, 1954), p. 525Google Scholar; and Ensor, R. C. K., England 1870-1914 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 483 and 491–92Google Scholar.

48. Williamson, Samuel R. Jr., The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War 1904-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), p. 346Google Scholar. For some particularly sharp comments on Grey's methods, see pp. 338-39.

Such “blunders” as Grey may have made occurred much earlier, when he concluded that Germany's deepest aims were more likely than those of France to conflict with British interests, when he decided that Russia could better be contained within the framework of an entente than otherwise, and (somewhat more dubiously) when he permitted both the Cabinet and the public to entertain an incomplete understanding of the implications of his policy toward France.

49. Mayer's short account gives a misleading impression of the extent to which the so-called interventionists shared common views; see Robbins, , Grey, pp. 288–89Google Scholar; and especially Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1898-1914 (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 153–64Google Scholar.

50. Steiner's measured conclusions are that the permanent officials “were of little importance” and that the divisions within the Foreign Office “made little difference” to the development of Grey's policies at this juncture; the decision to intervene, when it came, was a Cabinet decision (ibid., pp. 162-63).

51. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 58-60 and 70–75Google Scholar, gives a full recent discussion of the Cabinet in relation to the issues of Belgian neutrality and independence. In War by Time-Table, pp. 105-06, Taylor dissents vigorously from the view that “many people [in England] forsaw the invasion of Belgium” and awaited the issue with confidence. Instead he contends, following Morley, John Viscount, Memorandum on Resignation, August 1914 (London, 1928), p. 3Google Scholar, that the Belgian matter was always secondary to the entente, and further, that “[t]he full-scale invasion of Belgium was inconceivable until it happened,” and that neither the British nor the French staff foresaw or planned for such an event. There may be fragments of technical truth in these contentions, but the weight of the evidence is far heavier on the other side; see, e.g., Williamson, , Politics of Grand Strategy, pp. 174–82Google Scholar and passim, where it emerges very clearly that British and French military planners, separately and together, had taken a sustained interest in the military problem of Belgium since 1906; and Gooch, G. P., Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy (London, 1930), pp. clxxxix–cxciiiGoogle Scholar, where Lloyd George, Beauchamp and Sir Herbert Samuel are quoted in rebuttal of Morley.

52. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 60–61Google Scholar, praises Asquith for his “unerring touch” in the handling of Lloyd George, the most important of the waverers. On Lloyd George's foreign policy ideas in general, see M. L. Dockrill, “David Lloyd George and Foreign Policy before 1914,” in Taylor, , Lloyd George, pp. 3–31 (esp. pp. 26-31)Google Scholar.

53. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, p. 31Google Scholar, quoting Edwin Montagu; on 31 July the Prime Minister appeared to be “remarkably placid”; Ibid., pp. 85-86. His wife, however, wrote that he was “deeply anxious,” but she did not say plainly whether his anxiety grew from national or party issues; The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (London, 1922), II, 162Google Scholar.

54. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 31, 33Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., pp. 37-38, 45, 62-63, 74-75 and 84. And see the vigorous summing up of the case against the existence of a formed “peace party” in Steiner, , Foreign Office, p. 162, n. 7Google Scholar.

56. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, p. 45Google Scholar. Williamson, , Politics of Grand Strategy, pp. 357–60Google Scholar, reaches the same conclusion after a careful weighing of Grey's words.

57. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, pp. 322–23Google Scholar; Mayer follows Blake, , Bonar Law, pp. 222–23Google Scholar, on this, but does not accept the latter's conclusion, that the letter had no significant influence on the Cabinet

58. See, for instance, Halévy, , English People, VI, 655Google Scholar; Flournoy, F. R., Parliament and War (London, 1927), p. 229 and n. 2Google Scholar; and Maccoby, S., English Radicalism: The End? (London, 1961), p. 115, n. 7Google Scholar. Churchill mentions receiving neutralist letters from several leading Conservatives in World Crisis, I, 229Google Scholar. In Down the Years (London, 1935), pp. 97–98Google Scholar, Sir Austen Chamberlain offers some words of explanation; see also Dugdale, Blanche E. C., Arthur James Balfour (London, 1936), II, 114–15Google Scholar; and Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 41–42Google Scholar.

59. Churchill, , World Crisis, I, 229–30Google Scholar.

60. Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-five Years 1892-1916, (New York, 1925), I, 326–27Google Scholar.

61. See Hazlehurst, , Politicians, p. 74Google Scholar.

62. Oxford, and Asquith, , Memories, II, 24Google Scholar; neither Blake nor Mayer mentions this information.

63. Blake, , Bonar Law, pp. 219–25Google Scholar; Jenkins, , Asquith, pp. 324–31Google Scholar; Robbins, , Grey, pp. 289–97Google Scholar; Williamson, , Politics of Grand Strategy, pp. 344–61Google Scholar; and Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 25–117Google Scholar.

64. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, p. 73 and passimGoogle Scholar.

65. Ibid., pp. 86-91.

66. Oxford, and Asquith, , Memories, II, 12Google Scholar, amended this language afterwards to read, “with some difficulty.”

67. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 92–96Google Scholar.

68. Ibid., p. 68.

69. See, for example, LordNewton, , Lord Lansdowne: A Biography (London, 1929), p. 440Google Scholar; Colvin, , Carson, III, 19–20Google Scholar; Halévy, , English People, VI, 670–71Google Scholar; Renouvin, Pierre, The Immediate Origins of the War (New Haven, 1928), pp. 292–93Google Scholar; Flournoy, , Parliament and War, pp. 244–45Google Scholar.

70. Oxford, and Asquith, , Memories, II, 12Google Scholar; Spender, and Asquith, , Asquith, II, 85Google Scholar, offer no additional details; Asquith himself did not mention the letter in The Genesis of the War (New York, 1926)Google Scholar.

71. Grey, , Twenty-five Years, II, 10–11Google Scholar.

72. Churchill, , World Crisis, I, 232Google Scholar. Dugdale, , Balfour, II, 114Google Scholar, gives a fuller account in which Balfour is reported to have said that leading Conservatives would be “quite prepared to join a Coalition Government” in the event of numerous Liberal resignations. Dugdale speculates that he “probably” had Bonar Law's and Lansdowne's warrant for this offer, though no corroboration has come to light.

73. Quoted in Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 92–93Google Scholar.

74. McKenna, Stephen, Reginald McKenna 1863-1943 (London, 1948), p. 192Google Scholar.

75. ViscountSimon, , Retrospect (London, 1952), pp. 94–97Google Scholar; ViscountSamuel, , Memoirs (London, 1945), pp. 97–105Google Scholar; George, David Lloyd, War Memoirs (London, 1938), I, 32–42Google Scholar; ViscountHaldane, , An Autobiography (New York, 1929), pp. 288–301Google Scholar; and Morley, Memorandum.

76. Ibid., vii-viii.

77. Quoted in Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 93–96Google Scholar. For a somewhat different reconstruction of Samuel's role, see Lowe, C. J. and Dockrill, M. L., The Mirage of Power. British Foreign Policy 1902-14 (London, 1972), I, 150–51Google Scholar.

78. Ibid., p. 98; Robbins, , Grey, p. 296Google Scholar; Williamson, , Politics of Grand Strategy, p. 357Google Scholar.

79. Ibid., pp. 356-57.

80. Oxford, and Asquith, , Memories, II, 24Google Scholar; and SirPetrie, Charles, The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain (London, 1939), I, 374–77Google Scholar.

81. Morley, , Memorandum, pp. 23–27Google Scholar.

82. Ibid., pp. 24-25.

83. Ibid., p. 24. Spender, and Asquith, (Asquith, II, 95Google Scholar) quote Crewe as saying later that the Prime Minister “realised that the break-up of the Cabinet, involving his own resignation, would mean a war conducted By a Conservative Government, the time being in no way ripe for a Coalition.” This is admittedly after the fact, and it implies a willingness to resign which cannot be inferred directly from Morky's account, but it does suggest yet again that Asquith's object was to keep the ministry together by persuasion rather than by threats.

84. Morley, , Memorandum, p. 26Google Scholar.

85. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 98–100Google Scholar.

86. Ibid., pp. 107-111, for a careful review of Lloyd George's position and conduct at this time. Asquith, Margot (Autobiography, II, 167Google Scholar), writing much later, implies very strongly that she (and her husband?) suspected even on the night of 2 August that Lloyd George might be intriguing with “the Pacifists,” but this speculation should be set against the details furnished in Lord Riddell's War Diary 1914-1918 (London, 1933), PP. 3–7Google Scholar; and Wilson, , ed., Scott Diaries, pp. 91–94Google Scholar and passim.

87. Colvin, , Carson, III, 19–20Google Scholar, insists that Asquith meant to threaten the Peace Party with a loss of place — but he does not say that the Conservatives were ready to serve in a coalition government. For Bonar Law's “clear and unalterable view” that the Conservatives should not enter a coalition, see Lord, , Politicians and the War 1914-1916 (London, 1960), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

88. Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 98–99Google Scholar.

89. Simon, , Retrospect, p. 95Google Scholar; and see Wilson, , ed., Scott Diaries, pp. 96–98Google Scholar, for a contemporary record of Simon's travail.

90. Fitzroy, , Memoirs, II, 557Google Scholar; Butterfield, , ”Sir Edward Grey,” Historical Studies, V, 1Google Scholar; and Riddell, , War Diary, p. 5Google Scholar, where Simon is quoted as saying, “We have always been wrong when we have intervened,” and is described as looking “very gloomy” when he said it.

91. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, p. 316Google Scholar. Estimates of Morley's work at the India Office (1905-1910) differ markedly. Das, M. N., India Under Minto and Morley (London, 1964)Google Scholar, criticizes him for accepting the Government of India position on electoral arrangements (communalism, in effect) in order to sustain British rule a while longer. Wolpert, Stanley, Morley and India 1906-1910 (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar, presents him as a creative statesman who really intended India to have parliamentary self-government. Koss, Stephen, John Morley at the India Office 1905-1910 (New Haven and London, 1969)Google Scholar, describes the reforms as Morley's “saddest failure,” the consequence of applying an outworn Gladstonian philosophy to a situation on which it had little tearing.

92. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, p. 316Google Scholar.

93. Halévy, , English People, VI, 665 and n. 2, 667Google Scholar; Morley, , Memorandum, p. 5Google Scholar; Spender, and Asquith, , Asquith, II, 102Google Scholar; and Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 108–9Google Scholar. On the state of military expectations, see Tuchman, Barbara, The Guns of August (New York, 1962), pp. 118–20Google Scholar.

94. Samuel, , Memoirs, p. 94Google Scholar; Wilson, , ed., Scott Diaries, p. 98Google Scholar; Hazlehurst, , Politicians, pp. 111–17Google Scholar.

95. Ibid., p. 29.

96. At least Bonar Law rebuffed all “unofficial” overtures, which came chiefly through Churchill; how he would have responded to a direct request from Asquith himself is another question.

97. Mayer, , ”Domestic Causes,” Responsibility of Power, p. 323Google Scholar.

98. See above, n. 3. Two other recent essays which make passing reference to Mayer's views are Jarausch, Konrad H., ”World Power or Tragic Fate? The Kriegsschuldfrage as Historical Neurosis,” Central European History, 5/1 (1972), 90–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schroeder, Paul W., ”World War I as Galloping Gertie: A Reply to Joachim Remak,” Journal of Modern History, 44/3 (1972), 319 and 323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.