12
The black sun
To many Liberals, the summer of 1914 seemed gloomy and forbidding. ‘I see not a patch of blue sky,’ the MP John Morley commented, alluding to the gloomy clouds over Ireland. To the east, the prospect of international strife had been growing steadily. After 1906 England had grown closer to France, with mutual fear and envy of Germany strengthening the entente. Germany, the Continent’s flourishing economic and military power, responded by investing so heavily in her navy that she almost caught up with Britain. Portions of the right-wing English press and population demanded the construction of yet more dreadnought battleships: ‘We want eight, and we won’t wait!’ was their rallying cry. Lloyd George argued that building a further four dreadnoughts would be sufficient, but the foreign secretary Edward Grey disagreed and Asquith commissioned a further eight battleships.
Germany’s allies, Austria-Hungary and Italy, also increased their spending on armaments. The Italians threatened British ascendancy in the Mediterranean by building a fleet of new battleships. England now faced an uninviting choice between falling behind in the arms race, bankrupting herself by constructing more dreadnoughts, negotiating a non-aggression pact with Germany, or agreeing to French requests for the coordination of a continental defence strategy. She chose the last option, drawing up military plans with her entente partner that included their response to aggression from an unnamed third power, which could only be Germany. Anglo-German relations, meanwhile, failed to improve even after the death of the anti-German King Edward. The problem was that most people in the English government and ruling class shared the prejudices of their former king: Grey called Germany ‘our worst enemy and our greatest danger’. The Kaiser and the German establishment had similar views of the English, and it is unsurprising that talks between the two countries broke down. Germany wanted England to agree to the expansion of its navy and to promise neutrality in the case of a continental conflict, whereas England was only prepared to offer colonial concessions.
Britain, which still thought of itself primarily as a global power, became increasingly embroiled in the European argument, in large part out of fear that her empire was overstretched. Although Britain was part of an island off the Continent, it could not remain aloof from it because of its proximity; besides, the country now lacked the military and economic resources to maintain her empire without French assistance. After the Boer War, where the British army’s strength was uncertain and its navy no longer supreme, diplomatic isolation from the Continent would be perilous.
The 1907 Anglo-Russian convention was further acknowledgement of this reality. Since Russia was, like Britain, already allied with France, the three empires now formed a Triple Alliance, a counterweight to the alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary. But the Kaiser dismissed this talk of balance as a smokescreen for a traditional anti-German Franco-British policy; in his mind, the Triple Alliance was simply another attempt to encircle Germany. Some English people questioned the anti-German premise of Britain’s balance of power strategy, and thought Grey was being too aggressive. Others regarded it as an inherently unstable tactic that might entangle Britain in a continental war.
The balance of power would only succeed, critics said, if there was a genuine equilibrium between the two sides, and if all the parties involved were committed to maintaining it. This was a remote possibility. The Ottoman Empire was crumbling; European nationalism was on the rise, particularly in the Balkans; Germany was determined to rival Britain as a naval as well as imperial power; and there was the constant possibility of international disagreements breaking out along the colonial borders of the European nations. Africa had provided a release valve for potential antagonism in the late nineteenth century, its vast lands and resources affording all the continental powers the chance to satisfy their economic and military ambitions. But Africa had been almost entirely carved up and plundered by Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Portugal, and the colonizers now stared at each other suspiciously across the continent’s internal frontiers.
The hardest test of the balance of power came on 28 June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo by a nationalist Bosnian Serb. There had been assassinations of equally powerful figures before; this time none of those involved seemed determined to resolve the situation. Austria-Hungary felt threatened by Balkan nationalism and Russian ambitions in the area. Too weak to stand alone, they asked the Germans if they would support a declaration of war against Serbia, even if Russia were to stand by its Serbian allies. The Germans, who also feared Russian influence in the Balkans, were convinced that they would have to confront Russia at some point; it would be easier to do so sooner rather than later, given Russia’s long-term rearmament plans. So Germany offered Austria-Hungary a blank cheque, and war on Serbia was declared. Now the other pieces fell into place. The Russians, calculating that France would support them, mobilized their forces against Austria-Hungary in support of Serbia; Germany responded by declaring war against Russia. France, which had been fearful of a German invasion ever since its 1871 conquest of French territory, now mobilized in support of Russia.
Britain was the only major European power yet to make a move. Germany was convinced the British would not enter the struggle, and the mood of the Liberal cabinet was, according to Churchill, ‘overwhelmingly pacific’. In contrast, Law, leader of the Unionist opposition, was in a belligerent mood. He warned Asquith that ‘it would be fatal to the honour and security’ of the country ‘to hesitate in supporting France and Russia.’ Imperceptibly, yet inevitably, the cabinet came round to Law’s view; the momentum of events seemed to be moving Britain inexorably towards continental war. ‘We are all adrift,’ Churchill commented, ‘in a kind of dull cataleptic trance.’
On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France; the following day, Germany invaded Belgium. The Liberal administration condemned the violation of the neutrality of a continental country, and declared war on Germany in support of Belgium, and in order to aid her French and Russian allies. The government now believed it had little choice but to confront the country that Britain had identified as the greatest threat to her security and prosperity. Germany had to be stopped.
The government’s declaration was made in the confidence that war would be over in a matter of weeks, an optimism shared by all the belligerents. Britain’s fleet, which stood ready in the North Sea, was still superior to that of Germany, and it was believed that the Triple Alliance troops would sandwich Germany and Austria-Hungary with quick assaults from west and east. The extensive territories of the British Empire would, it was thought, provide an almost limitless supply of soldiers. For these reasons, Grey assured the Commons: ‘we shall suffer little more in war than if we [stood] aside.’ Churchill was certain the effects of the conflict would not be felt in England itself, where it would be ‘business as usual’.
Grey and Churchill were not the only politicians buoyed up by optimism. Only weeks previously, Lansbury, Hardie and Henderson had publicly denounced all ‘capitalist’ and ‘imperialist’ wars; yet now the Labour leadership followed the government line, with the exception of MacDonald, who resigned the chairmanship of the party on pacifist principle. Law and the Unionists offered Asquith’s government unhesitating support for the declaration of war and announced the end of active opposition in the Commons, as well as in Unionist Ulster. King George was also cheered by the declaration of war, and would become strongly anti-German over the coming months, despite his numerous German titles and family ties. In fact, he would soon disguise the Teutonic ancestry of the royal family by changing its name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor.