The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (102 page)

When the Cabinet met again on the morning of 1 August, Poincaré said they could no longer delay a general mobilisation of French troops and his colleagues, some reluctantly, agreed. The telegrams, which were already prepared, went out that afternoon and in cities and towns around France people gathered to read the little blue notices that were posted in shop windows. In Paris a huge crowd filled the Place de la Concorde. Some rushed to the statue representing Strasbourg, the capital of the lost province of Alsace, and tore off the black mourning it had worn since 1871. In a message to the French people which called for national unity, Poincaré assured them that the French government continued to bend all its efforts towards maintaining the peace. He promised that mobilisation did not mean war. ‘To tell the truth,’ said an astute observer, ‘no one believed him. If it was not war, it was certainly something terribly near to it.’
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In the following days trains rumbled across the country gathering up France’s young men to take them to the frontiers. The general staff had feared that perhaps as many as 10 per cent of the reserves would refuse the mobilisation orders; less than 1.5 per cent failed to show up.
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By Sunday 2 August, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and France had all mobilised; Russia and Germany were officially at war with each other; and Austria-Hungary was at war with Serbia. That day Russian cavalry troops crossed the border into Germany and German troops had moved into Luxembourg, just to the south of Belgium, although the neutrality of the tiny duchy had been guaranteed by the great powers, Germany among them. Italy, it was increasingly clear, intended to proclaim its neutrality. From across the Atlantic, where the Americans watched with a mixture of amazement and horror, President Wilson, who was spending much of his time at the bedside of his dying wife, sent offers through his ambassadors of mediation but it was too late and the Europeans were not prepared to listen. One major last step remained before Europe’s path to war was finished: Britain’s entry.

That Sunday morning a tearful Lichnowsky, his hopes of a British–German rapprochement in ruins, visited Asquith while he was having breakfast to beg that Britain not side with France, but it was now nearly too late. British public opinion was hardening against Germany. As Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India and one of those in the Cabinet most firmly opposed to a war, wrote that day to a friend, ‘the high-handed action of Germany was weakening the efforts of the peacemakers in the Cabinet’.
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More importantly the unfolding threat to Belgium was swaying opinion in the Cabinet in a way which German war preparations against France or Russia had not. Geography meant that, down through the centuries, Britain could never stand by unconcerned while another power took over the Low Countries with their crucial waterways by which goods (and often armies) funnelled back and forth from the Continent to Britain. The Conservative Party now brought its own pressure to bear on Asquith in the form of a letter from the Conservative leader Bonar Law which argued that it would be ‘fatal to the honour and security of the United Kingdom to hesitate in support for France and Russia’ and promised the party’s full support to the government.
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At 11 a.m. the Cabinet broke all precedent by meeting on a Sunday. It was a difficult session and showed how deeply the ministers were still divided. A majority was starting to form, however, of those for whom a German violation of Belgian neutrality would be a cause for war. All that was agreed that morning, though, was that Grey could tell Cambon that Britain would not allow the German fleet to attack the northern French
coast. The Cabinet also ratified Churchill’s decision, taken the previous evening, to mobilise the naval reserves and it was agreed to hold another meeting at 6.30 p.m. Several of the pacifists as well as Lloyd George, who was still uncommitted, had lunch together. Grey went to the London zoo for an hour to look at birds while Asquith snatched a moment to write to Venetia Stanley. ‘I got no letter from you this morning,’ he complained, ‘which is the saddest blank in my day.’
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The British Cabinet met again at 6.30 p.m. as arranged. Although Morley and the Board of Trade’s John Burns, both of whom would subsequently resign, still opposed war outright, Lloyd George was now swinging round to support for Belgium. He was also well aware of British strategic interests in keeping the Continent free from German domination. A tentative majority now existed for intervention if there were a ‘substantial’ violation of Belgian neutrality. What would solidify that majority was if Belgium decided to resist Germany and appeal for help.
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At 7 p.m. British time, while the British were still debating what to do about the European crisis, the German ambassador in Brussels called on the Belgian Foreign Minister with an ultimatum which had been sitting in his office since 29 July. It had been drafted by Moltke, rather than Bethmann, yet another indication of how the military were taking charge of German policy. Germany, the document claimed, had ‘reliable information’ that the French were planning to advance into Belgium en route to attacking Germany. (In fact the French government had expressly told Joffre that he could not go into Belgium before the Germans invaded.) The German government could not help but be concerned that Belgium would not be able to defend itself, leaving Germany at the mercy of the French. In self-preservation Germany might be obliged to take action against this French aggression. ‘It would therefore’, the document went on, ‘fill the German government with the deepest regret, should Belgium view as an act of hostility to herself the entrance of Germany upon Belgian soil, should she be forced by the measures of her opponents to do so in self-protection’. Germany demanded of Belgium ‘benevolent neutrality’ and free passage for German troops through its territory. In return, Germany would guarantee Belgium’s integrity and independence after the war. The Belgian government was given twelve hours to answer.
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Belgium had always guarded its neutrality with determination,
refusing to consider military alliances with its neighbours but preparing itself to fight any if necessary. Even in 1914, as German troops were advancing into the country, some Belgian troops were still stationed in the south and along the coast to show that Belgium intended to defend its neutrality against all enemies, even an unlikely attack from France or Britain. Belgian public opinion, at least until 1914, had fixed on no single enemy, or friend. There was a long-standing resentment of Britain for leading the international campaign at the turn of the century against the hideous abuses of their avaricious king, Leopold II, in the Congo. The Belgian Foreign Office and conservative and Catholic circles tended to be pro-German but France exerted the greatest cultural influence.
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The Belgians were proud of their independence and cherished their freedom. The military reforms and increased spending of 1913 were intended to protect these. As the likelihood of war between France and Germany grew ever closer, the Belgian government called up more conscripts on 29 July and instructed the commander at Liège to strengthen the defences of the great fortress and to sabotage its approaches on the east side, in the direction of Germany. On 31 July the government ordered full mobilisation of the Belgian army.

When the ultimatum had been translated from German into French, the Belgian government took very little time to make up its mind. The Prime Minister, Baron Charles de Broqueville, and the king, Albert I, decided immediately that the German demands must be rejected. The government ministers who were assembled hastily in the middle of the night agreed unanimously. Perhaps to their own surprise, the Belgians also decided without hesitation that they would offer as much resistance as they could to the German advance. ‘Oh, the poor fools!’ said a German diplomat in Brussels when he heard. ‘Why don’t they get out of the way of the steamroller?’ When the news of the rejection of the ultimatum, leaked to the papers by a French diplomat, appeared on the morning of 3 August, the Belgian public showed its approval. The Belgian flag flew everywhere and there was much talk of Belgium’s national pride. As the king himself said in his proclamation to the nation, ‘We refused to forfeit our honour.’
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It helped that Albert was widely respected. He was unlike his uncle, the late, unlamented, Leopold, in almost every respect: the new king was honest, lived modestly in domestic bliss with his German wife and three children, and loved reading and mountain
climbing rather than teenage mistresses. When the king and queen left the palace the following day, for a special session of parliament, they were cheered by huge crowds. In the chamber the royal couple received a standing ovation; all the measures proposed by the government including war credits passed unanimously. The Socialist Party issued a statement to say that their members were defending themselves against ‘militarist barbarism’ and fighting for liberty and democracy.
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On the morning of Monday 3 August, the British Cabinet met to consider what Grey should say to Parliament that afternoon, and it also decided to mobilise the army. Although the details were not yet available, word of the German ultimatum to Belgium had arrived as well as a telegram from Albert to George V asking for British help. From the British point of view, as Asquith later wrote to Venetia Stanley, Germany’s aggression against Belgium ‘simplifies matters’.
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Lloyd George, whose support was essential to keep the left wing of the Liberal Party with the government, was now firmly in the camp advocating intervention in support of Belgian neutrality and on the side of France. Grey went back to the Foreign Office around 2 p.m., hoping to take a hasty lunch and work on his speech. He found the German ambassador waiting for him to ask what the Cabinet had decided. ‘Was it a declaration of war?’ Grey said that it was rather a ‘statement of conditions’. He could not tell Lichnowsky what these were until he had informed Parliament. Lichnowsky begged Grey not to make Belgian neutrality one of the conditions. Grey merely repeated that he could not say anything.
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At 4 p.m. a pale and tired Grey stood up before the House of Commons. ‘His voice was clear,’ said one observer, ‘with no warm tones in it, his language wholly unadorned, precise, simple, accurate, austerely dignified.’
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The benches and gangways were jammed and the galleries were filled with onlookers including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Russian ambassador. Grey claimed, as he always did, that he had kept Britain’s hands completely free. Yet its friendship with France (‘and with Germany’, shouted one member) and its pledge to respect Belgium’s neutrality had created ‘obligations of honour and interest’. France, he said, had so trusted in Britain that it had left its Atlantic shores defenceless. ‘Let every man look into his own heart and his own feelings’, he went on, ‘and construe the extent of the obligation for himself. I construe it myself as I feel it, but I do not wish to urge upon any one
else more than their feelings dictate as to what they should feel about the obligation.’ He knew where he stood. Britain was now in a position, he said, where it had either to accept its obligations of honour and interest or run away. And even if Britain stood aside from the war, it would come out the worse with its vital lifelines of trade and commerce with the Continent and its own shores menaced by the rise of a dominant power in Europe. ‘I am quite sure’, he concluded, ‘that our moral position would be such as to have lost us all respect.’ His last words were drowned out by loud cheers. Bonar Law for the Conservatives and John Redmond for the Irish nationalists pledged their support. Ramsay MacDonald, speaking for the small Labour Party, said that Britain should have remained neutral. There was no vote that day or later that Britain should declare war on Germany but it was clear that the government now had overwhelming support if it decided to intervene.

When Nicolson later came into Grey’s office to congratulate him on the success of his speech a miserable Grey did not reply but only banged his fists on a table, saying, ‘I hate war … I hate war.’ Sometime later that evening Grey made the remark which for so many Europeans came to sum up what the war meant. As he looked out the window into St James’s Park where the lamplighters were lighting up the gas lamps, he said, ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.’
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Although Grey later said modestly that he was ‘only the mouthpiece of England’, he had done much to bring Britain to intervention in the war.
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Lloyd George, who had played such a key role in swinging the Cabinet towards war, wrote to his wife in North Wales: ‘I am moving through a nightmare world these days. I have fought hard for peace & succeeded so far in keeping the Cabinet out of it but I am driven to the conclusion that if the small nationality of Belgium is attacked by Germany all my traditions & even prejudices will be engaged on the side of war. I am filled with horror at the prospect.’ Asquith was more prosaic; at his customary bridge game he said that ‘the one bright spot in this hateful war, upon which we were about to enter, was the settlement of Irish strife and the cordial union of forces in Ireland in aiding the Government to maintain our supreme National interests’.
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It is possible, or so many thought at the time, that the Great War saved Britain from a civil war.

In Paris that same Monday evening Wilhelm Schoen, the German
ambassador, was struggling to decipher a badly mangled telegram from Bethmann. He made out enough to be able to go immediately to the French Prime Minister with Germany’s declaration of war. The German government claimed that it had been driven to this measure by French advances across the border into Alsace and by vicious attacks by French aviators. One, it said, had even thrown a bomb on a German railway line. (Hitler was to use a similar excuse with as little basis in the truth when he attacked Poland in 1939.) Schoen had a last request – that Germans remaining in Paris be placed under the protection of the American ambassador – and a complaint – that a man using threatening language had jumped into his car on his way to the meeting. The two men parted courteously and in a sombre mood.
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Poincaré later wrote in his diary: