Between Empire and Continent: British Foreign Policy before the First World War 9781785335792

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Between Empire and Continent

Studies in British and Imperial History Published for the German Historical Institute, London Editor: Andreas Gestrich, Director of the German Historical Institute, London Volume 1 The Rise of Market Society in England, 1066–1800 Christiane Eisenberg Translated by Deborah Cohen Volume 2 Sacral Kingship between Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: The French and English Monarchies 1587–1688 Ronald G. Asch Volume 3 The Forgotten Majority: German Merchants in London, Naturalization and Global Trade, 1660–1815 Margit Schulte Beerbühl Translated by Cynthia Klohr Volume 4 Crown, Church and Constitution Popular Conservatism in England, 1815–1867 Jörg Neuheiser Translated by Jennifer Walcoff Neuheiser Volume 5 Between Empire and Continent British Foreign Policy before the First World War Andreas Rose Translated by Rona Johnston

Between Empire and Continent British Foreign Policy before the First World War

? Andreas Rose Translated by Rona Johnston

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2017, 2019 Berghahn Books First paperback edition published in 2019 Originally published in German as Zwischen Empire und Kontinent, © 2011 Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH München. All rights reserved. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association). All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-578-5 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-507-7 paperback ISBN 978-1-78533-579-2 ebook

Contents

List of Illustrations vi List of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgements x Foreword by Sir Christopher Clark xiii

Introduction 1

1 The Public Sphere in Edwardian London

11

2 The Policy of Drift? Balance of Power, Concert of Europe, or Political Power Blocs?

72

3 Safety First: The Politics of Defence and the Realities behind Diplomacy 129 4 Imperial Defence or Continental Commitment?

182

5 Foreign Policy under Lansdowne and Balfour

216

6 The Myth of Continuity: Foreign Policy under Edward Grey

273

7 The Committee of Four: The German Peril Revisited

306

8 At the Cost of Stability: The Anglo-Russian Convention and its European Implications

344

9 ‘More Russian than the Russians’? British Balkan Diplomacy and the Annexation of Bosnia 1908/9

401



462

Conclusion and Perspectives: The Triad of British Foreign Politics

Bibliography 483 Index 521

Illustrations

Tables 3.1  Naval planning for the period 1900 to 1920 3.2  Fleet strength (September 1903) 7.1  ‘Effective Fighting Fleets of the Nations’ (31 March 1906) 7.2  ‘British Fighting Fleet Compared’ (31 March 1909) Figure 1.1  The invasion of 1910

136 152 309 325 53

Abbreviations

AA Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office) ADM Admiralty AP Accounts and Papers APS Die Auswärtige Politik Serbiens, 1903–1914 BA-MA Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg BD British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914 BDFA British Documents on Foreign Affairs BDS Graf Benckendorffs Diplomatischer Schriftwechsel, ed. by Benno von Siebert, Leipzig 1921. BelD Die Belgischen Dokumente zur Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges, 1905–1914 BelZ Die Belgischen Zirkulare BL British Library, London BLPES British Library of Political and Economic Science, London BMH Berliner Monatshefte BOD Bodleian Library, Oxford BUL Birmingham University Library, Birmingham CC Churchill College Archive Centre, Cambridge Cd. Command Papers (HCPP) CO Colonial Office CR Contemporary Review CUL Cambridge University Library, Cambridge DA Diplomatische Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der Ententepolitik DDF Documents Diplomatiques Français, 2ième Series, 1871–1914 DDS Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz, 1848–1945 DNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2nd Edition, London 1908-9. DNI Director of Naval Intelligence EHR English Historical Review ER Edinburgh Review FDSF From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Ed. Arthur Marder, London 1961 FGDN Fear God and Dread Nought, Ed. Arthur Marder, London 1952–1959 FO Foreign Office FR Fortnightly Review

viii | Abbreviations

FRUS GL GP GStA HCPP HH HHStA HJ HLRO HMM HoT III IHR IOL IWM JBS JCH JICH JL

Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States Guildhall Library, London Die Große Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871–1914 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Hatfield House, Hertfordshire Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna Historical Journal House of Lords Record Office, London Harper’s Monthly Magazine History of The Times, Vol. III, London 1947 International History Review India Office Library, London Imperial War Museum, London Journal of British Studies Journal of Contemporary History Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Brett, Maurice V., and Viscount Esher (Eds.), Journals and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher, 4 Vols., London 1938. JMH Journal of Modern History JRSA Journal of the Royal Society of Arts JRUSI Journal of the Royal United Services Institute JSS Journal of Strategic Studies KA Krasnyiarchiv, Moskau, Bde. 69–70 LHCMA Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London LoC Library of Congress, Washington MÖSTA Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs MR Monthly Review NA National Archives, Kew NAM National Army Museum, London NAR North American Review NAS National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh NC Nineteenth Century and After NIA News International Archives (Times Archive), London NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh NMM National Maritime Museum, London NR National Review NRAS National Register of Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh NRO Norfolk Record Office NRS Naval Records Society ÖUA Österreich-Ungarns Außenpolitik von der Bosnischen Krise 1908 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1914

Abbreviations | ix

PA PA-AA PD QR RL RR USL USM WO WSRO

Parliamentary Archives, London Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates Quarterly Review The Letters of Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court Repington The Review of Reviews University of Southampton, Hartley Library, Southampton United Service Magazine War Office West Sussex Record Office, Chichester

Acknowledgements

At the end of a long project, it is time to take a deep breath, to pause for a moment and to remember all those without whom this project never would have been completed. A book is always a product of many people’s inspiration, assistance, collegiality and support. I am especially grateful to my doctoral supervisor Professor Guenther Kronenbitter who has been a role model of support, inspiration, and encouragement. I can never thank Guenther enough for all his support and open ears over the last decade. Very special thanks are also due to my co-supervisor Professor Andreas Wirsching. Moreover I am especially grateful to Professor Dominik Geppert, who has given me a new academic home at the University of Bonn, for his keen interest in the project, his judgment and experience but even more for his friendship over the years that have past. My special thanks also go to Dr Ulrich Janiesch without whom I never would have studied Modern History at all and onto whose advice I can built on now for nearly 30 years and Dr Jürgen Luh who has always been not only an inspiration for me as a historian but also the best friend one could imagine during a lengthy research project with all its ups and downs and the uncertainties of todays academic careers in Germany. Many thanks also go to Professor Juergen Angelow and Professor Konrad Canis for numerous thought-provoking seminars at the University of Potsdam and the Humboldt-University at Berlin. Both have set me on the path of Anglo-German relations when I was an undergraduate. For inspiration, assistance, collegiality and enduring support, I have been privileged to have met many outstanding scholars who have fostered my interests not only in Anglo-German relations but especially into the backgrounds of British politics, diplomacy, military and naval policies and the British Empire as a whole. I am therefore indebted to Professor Andrew N. Porter, my supervisor at King’s College London, who was the first who has greatly enhanced my continental perspective by the imperial mindset of the Victorian age; to Professor Miles Taylor who has ignited my interest in British party politics and to Professor Michael L. Dockrill for his great knowledge of the sources. I have greatly benefited from innumerable discussions over the years and my special thanks go to John T. Sumida, Andrew Lambert, Nicholas A. Lambert, Katherine Epstein and Patrick Kelly whom I met at the “Woodstock for Naval Historians” at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis; Professor Hagen Schulze (†), Professor Andreas Gestrich, Professor Lothar Kettenacker,

Acknowledgements | xi

Dr  Markus Mößlang, Dr Karsten Plöger at the German Historical Institute London; and Dr Tanja Bührer, Professor Magnus Brechtken, Professor John Charmley, Professor Sir Christopher Clark, Professor Niall Ferguson, Professor Stig Förster, Professor Lothar Höbelt, Professor Peter Hoeres, Dr Christian Hoyer, Professor Friedrich Kießling, Professor Hans-Christof Kraus, Professor Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock, Professor Frank Müller, Dr William Mulligan, Professor Keith Neilson (†), Professor Sönke Neitzel, Professor Thomas Otte, Professor Matthew Seligmann, Dr Markus Pöhlmann, Professor Rainer F. Schmidt, Professor Zara Steiner, Professor Hew Strachan, Professor Karina Urbach, and Professor Thomas Weber. I particularly thankful to my colleagues at the University of Bonn: Juliane Clegg, Ben Behschnitt, Peter Beule, Dr Thomas Freiberger, Jonas Klein, Dr Kristof Niese, Dr Philip Rosin, Dr Jürgen P. Schmied, Dr Christoph Studt and last but by no means least Gaby Nohr, the invaluable kind soul of the Chair for Modern History at Bonn. I am also extremely grateful to Marion Berghahn for giving my book a home at Berghahn books, as well as Chris Chappell and Caroline Kuhtz for so ably seeing my book through the publication process and Anke Simon from the Börsenverein especially for her patience during the long process of translation. I have also incurred debts to audiences who listened patiently to me and generously offered constructive criticism at seminars and conferences at Augsburg University, Bern University, Bonn University, Glasgow University, Mainz University, Oxford University, Potsdam University, Würzburg University as well as at conferences of the US Naval Academy Annapolis, the German Historical Institute London, the German Historical Institute Paris, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at Gießen or the Southern History Association at Baltimore. In the course of my work I was greatly assisted by innumerous archivists and librarians without whom historians would be helpless. In place of so many helping hands I would like to thank particularly the staff of the National Archives at Kew Gardens, of the Churchill College Archive Center in Cambridge, Colin Harris and the whole staff of the Bodleian Library, Dr William Frame of the British Library, Frances Lansley from the West Sussex Record Office, Mike Bevan from the National Maritime Museum, and Eamon Dyas from the News International Archive of The Times. International research would be impossible without financial support and therefore I would like to thank especially the German Scholarship Foundation, the German Historical Institute London, and last but not least the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels and the German Foreign Office for awarding me the price ‘Geisteswissenschaften International’ for the translation into English. I am deeply grateful to Rona Johnston who ventures on such an onerous task of a translation from my lengthy German sentences into readable English.

xii | Acknowledgements

Finally, my biggest thank goes to my family, to my parents and my sister Carina, my wife Anne-Katrin for their continuous and loving support and to our son Felix who enriches our lives every day and who constantly reminds me what really is of importance in life. It is to him this book is dedicated.

Foreword by Sir Christopher Clark

‘If you get an exam question on the origins of the First World War’, our history teacher told us on a hot Sydney afternoon in 1977, ‘just remember the five German provocations!’ Raising his right hand with the thumb and fingers splayed, he counted off the German transgressions: First, German naval expansion unsettled the British. Then, in 1905, Berlin challenged France in Africa, provoking the Moroccan Crisis. Three years later, the Germans backed Austria against Russia in the Bosnian Annexation Crisis of 1908. In 1911 they provoked France again in Morocco. Finally, as if all this were not bad enough, Germany’s leaders decided, in the midst of the crisis triggered by the a­ssassinations at Sarajevo in June 1914, to supply Austria with the unconditional assurance of military support that came to be known as the ‘blank cheque’. This memorable five-point analysis, simplified for pedagogical effect, conveyed the essence of the consensus that emerged in the aftermath of the Fischer controversy of the 1960s and 1970s. The case for German culpability in the outbreak of war advanced by the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer, his collaborator Imanuel Geiss and a growing band of historiographical disciples and allies triggered bitter contention in Germany. But Fischer’s view soon established itself as the new orthodoxy in Anglophone academia. The disruptive presence in the pre-war European system of states, so the argument ran, was Germany. From this it followed that the foreign ministries of the other European states were preoccupied with the task of containing Germany and countering German provocations. Upon Britain above all fell the task of balancing the system to ensure that German misbehaviour did not endanger the general peace. The picture that resulted was strikingly unipolar: prior to 1914, Germany was the sun in the European solar system, in whose gravitational field the other powers were trapped like helpless planets. Andreas Rose’s powerfully argued book presents a very different view. In Between Empire and Continent, Britain emerges not as the peacekeeper and umpire reacting to German initiatives, but as a shrewd and powerful player in its own right. British naval expansion in the pre-war years was not a panicked reaction to the noxious designs of Admiral Tirpitz, but a complex and self-assured programme drawn up by strategists confident of their superiority and determined to defend Britain’s global power share against a plurality of potential threats. The British decision to seek closer relations with Russia and France was not

xiv | Foreword

driven by fear of Germany, but by the conviction that Germany was too weak to offer meaningful help against the global heft of the Franco-Russian alliance. The German war-scares that periodically crackled across the British press had less to do with objective dangers than with inter-service rivalries and the battle for resources between the Army and the Navy. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was not the neutral observer of European affairs depicted in many accounts, but a partisan participant in continental geopolitics who, having decided early on to throw in his lot with Paris and St. Petersburg, soon lost control of these unpredictable partners. Far from keeping the peace, Grey’s increasingly pro-Russian and anti-Austrian management of the pre-war Balkan crises amplified existing risks. In developing these arguments, Rose builds in part, as all historians must, on recent trends in the historiography. He expands the arguments of the ‘naval revisionists’ Jon T. Sumida and Nicholas Lambert, and of Keith Wilson and Keith Neilson, who have stressed the continuing importance of Britain’s rivalry with Russia as a factor driving Foreign Office thinking. Rose counters those who have seen introversion and inertia as core features of the British foreign policy establishment. But he also advances new and original lines of argument about the impact of British policy on Balkan geopolitics, the relationship between the global and the imperial, and the continental imperatives in British strategy and the internal structural tensions that shaped the formulation of British policy in an era when issues arising from external relations tended to generate division rather than consensus. The book’s power derives not just from the way in which these arguments have been woven together to produce a new picture of Britain’s place in the events that brought war to Europe, but also from the fact that it draws on a wide range of sources culled from 28 archives, a source base that allows Rose to set his account of decision-making in a deep political, cultural and institutional context. Yet this is not a crude work of ‘revisionism’ – a point worth emphasising in light of the politicised climate of the current 1914 debate. Rose makes no attempt to rehabilitate German policy before 1914. Nor does he attempt to shift culpability for the outbreak of war from Berlin to London. On the other hand, this book does break with what Samuel Williamson has called the ‘German paradigm’. It places to one side the question of culpability in order to examine the actions and processes that generated risk within the system. It insists on the proactive agency of all state actors and the complexity of the threats perceived by all decision-makers. The Britain depicted in this book is not the lonely voice for peace depicted in many older accounts, but a great power among great powers. British policy-makers were focused, as they had to be, on securing strategic and tactical advantages, and in pursuing what they took to be Britain’s best interests, they fuelled the volatility of the international system in the last pre-war years, just as their continental partners and opponents did.

Introduction

? This book investigates international failures that were instrumental for the ‘great seminal catastrophe’ of the First World War.1 But it does not examine the July Crisis, or talk of immediate causes and short fuses. It is founded on the awareness that while the outbreak of war in 1914 was neither irresistible nor improbable, many contemporaries always reckoned it possible. Its principal characters are gamblers rather than ‘sleepwalkers’.2 It investigates the return of imperial tensions, diverted to the periphery during the Bismarckian era, to the European centre and explores the growing fragility of the international states system. And Great Britain, traditionally deemed a ‘spectator of events’ forced to respond to external aggression, now takes up its rightful place centre stage in this story. The book attacks a long-held orthodoxy that has seen the Central Powers as the gravitational centre, whose pull meant all other powers, and Great Britain in particular, were forced to act to safeguard international stability by means of balance of power politics and a general realignment. Instead, this study argues, the British Empire – part of the traditional Vienna settlement and the largest empire the world had ever seen, credited with the greatest bargaining power but preoccupied with its countless interests beyond the continent – failed to act on its responsibilities for that balance of power and thus fuelled the volatility and instability of the international system. The story begins at the end of the nineteenth century. Great Power relations were undergoing a fundamental reworking of which the most visible expression was the Franco-Russian Dual Alliance of 1892/94, which posed a challenge to both the European Central Powers and the global possessions of Great Britain.3 Yet rather than respond with immediate countermeasures and above all with closer Anglo-German relations,4 London and Berlin even loosened their indirect ties generated by the Mediterranean Agreements, designed to safeguard the status Notes for this chapter begin on page 7.

2 | Between Empire and Continent

quo in south-eastern Europe. ‘Isolation’, wrote Lord Salisbury confidently to a noticeably troubled Queen Victoria, ‘is a much less danger than the danger of being dragged into wars which do not concern us’.5 By avoiding alliances, and the entanglements that they signified, the prime minister explicitly conveyed to Germany and Austria-Hungary alike that he wished ‘to lean to the Triple Alliance without belonging to it’.6 At the same time, he rebuffed Russia by informing the tsar that Britain would ‘not abandon the allies by whom we stayed so long’.7 However much Salisbury hoped for better relations with the Russian Empire, he was evidently too well acquainted with the mechanisms of the Great Power system to ignore the potential repercussions. In 1901, towards the end of his term, he warned against the systemic consequences of an alignment between the two least vulnerable powers when he explained to Malcolm MacColl, publicist and his intellectual correspondent, ‘Other statesmen are acutely watching the ChessBoard of Europe, and they perfectly know that a real sympathy between Russia and England would place the other Great Powers in a very inferior position’.8 Only four years later, liberal Foreign Secretary Edward Grey declared real sympathies with France and Russia to be the ‘cardinal points’ of his foreign policy.9 Leap forward another four years and we find Great Britain behaving ‘more Russian than the Russians’ in supporting Serbia against Austria-Hungary during the annexation of Bosnia.10 And in October 1912, at the start of the Balkan Wars, not only did Great Britain accept responsibility for the French Atlantic coast,11 but Grey also insisted on informing Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov of an Anglo-French agreement to send British expeditionary forces to the continent in case of an attack by the Central Powers.12 Historians have proposed that responsibility for what they have identified as the end of Britain’s isolation, its new alignments with revisionist France and Russia, which had been its arch-rivals, and the general transformation of Great Power relations before the Great War be ascribed principally to the Kaiserreich.13 The established interpretation runs thus: by the end of the 1890s, Germany had embarked on the construction of a battle fleet, as a result of which Great Britain had no choice but to react to this ‘unique German threat’ found ‘at her own front door’ by regrouping the fleets of the Royal Navy and starting an unprecedented ship-building programme.14 The narrative continues: the German peril at sea made clear to London’s political and diplomatic elites that the policy of avoiding entanglements altogether must be abandoned. One eminent political historian has summarized the causal nexus of naval race and pre-war diplomacy: ‘The fundamental change in the states system originated from the German Reich and depended on the British reaction. In other words: It was without doubt the construction of the German battle fleet’ that forced Britain’s hand and ‘contributed significantly to the revolution of the states system before 1914’.15 In countering this widely held paradigm of German action and British reaction by placing Britain at the heart of the international process of change, this

Introduction | 3

study reveals a much more complex truth. It turns its gaze on the role generally attributed to Britain as an arbitrator and mediator within the states system and on London’s contribution to the consolidation of alliance structures before 1914, focusing not only on the still-controversial question of the continuity of Lansdowne’s and Grey’s diplomacy,16 but also on the interaction of imperial and continental interests, and especially on the hitherto much-neglected interaction on the domestic side of London’s foreign policy of party politics, press politics and public debate, defence politics that involved home and imperial defence, and inter-departmental conflict. Against the background of shifting risk assessment and developing self-perception after the mid 1890s and the emergence of a new generation of decision makers,17 the study looks specifically at the complex connections between threat perception and self-assertion. Noting critical and alternative responses to foreign policy along with the growing influence of the public on parliament and press, as well as public debate on security and armament policy, the book describes a public arena that determined the atmosphere in which foreign policy was intensely debated, and in which decisions were taken.18 Its aim is to unpick the interweaving of foreign policy and security policy for a Britain that was both a ‘world power in Europe’ and supposedly the epitome of a parliamentary state.19 Unlike the majority of previous studies, its focus is not on the remaining years of peace after the second Moroccan Crisis (1911) but on the frequently neglected yet widely identified ‘crucial’ formative years between the South African War and the first test of Anglo-Russian cooperation on the continent, with the Bosnian Annexation Crisis of 1908/9.20 The starting point for this study is a historiographical observation. The implications of decades of searching for a guilty party and disputing the theses of the Fritz Fischer school and Germany’s major share in European developments before 191421 have meant, but not been limited to, the significant relativization of German foreign policy as an embodiment of permanent failure. Historians are now more likely to emphasize the constraints the Central Powers faced, rather than their possible options, and are also more likely to bring other players onto the field.22 Additionally, the notion that British diplomacy was overwhelmingly reactive has been one casualty in this new game. Most notably, historical examination of the continuity of Edwardian diplomacy and the continental bias of existing interpretation has been promoted not only by the debates surrounding Niall Ferguson’s intriguing if controversial The Pity of War but also by John Charmley’s less promoted but by no means less brilliant Splendid Isolation?23 Both Ferguson and Charmley follow Keith Wilson’s earlier, often neglected but always inspirational essays on British entente diplomacy after 190424 and Keith Neilson’s brilliant study of Britain’s policy towards Russia.25 Wilson and Neilson challenge the Eurocentric and Germany-focused perspective on the pre-war years and convincingly contend that London’s alignments first with

4 | Between Empire and Continent

France and later with Russia were conceived as a stratagem that would secure the Empire and not primarily as a balancing act intended to contain Germany.26 All of these works share an imperial perspective on British foreign policy and thus shed new light on the string of established milestones that led up to the July Crisis.27 Too often, as Neilson pointed out at the outset of his outstanding study Britain and the Last Tsar, pre-war history was interpreted in reverse, and thus teleologically, while the Russian threat on India’s north-western frontier was neglected.28 For Wilson and Neilson, London had no choice but to seek an Anglo-Russian agreement.29 Although the global perspective adds a long-overdue approach to interpretation of British foreign policy and British overall strategy, global thinking only formed one of the numerous parameters of decision making at Whitehall. As Zara Steiner has pointed out, the focus on London and St Petersburg’s bilateral relations, which has joined Eurocentric and Germany-focused perspectives, is too one-dimensional for a fundamental re-evaluation of London’s pre-war policy.30 And indeed, isolated analysis of London’s policy towards Berlin and towards St Petersburg distorts the contemporary picture, which was shaped, as the journalist Emile Dillon noted, by viewing Germany and Russia as ‘two seeming bits of threats wholly disconnected in appearance but one and the same threat, not cut at all’.31 Dillon thus describes a fundamental premise of this book – Edwardian decision makers saw imperial challenges and continental challenges as two sides of the same medal; imperial or continental interests were only ever given additional weight temporarily. That judgement makes the search for alternative opportunities, examination of public controversies surrounding the rapprochement with St Petersburg, and analysis of the rising antagonism towards Germany all the more stimulating. Although deeply concerned with the British perception of Russia, Neilson misses the connection with the simultaneously evolving Germanophobia, while his general assumptions about continuity seem to work in reverse, with 1907 as their starting point – Salisbury and Lansdowne had already sought agreement with Russia, with Grey following the guidelines set by his predecessors. Differences between the approaches and goals of unionist foreign policy and liberal imperialist foreign policy – whether the traditional anti-Russian bias of radical liberals influenced the overall course, for example – remained blurred, while systemic repercussions in the Balkans were overlooked or even deliberately ignored. The Anglo-Russian convention put the south-eastern European periphery, a safety valve for pan-Slav expansionism and where Russia and Austria-Hungary gambled for the highest stakes, back on the agenda, yet London’s Balkan diplomacy has certainly not been given the attention it merits,32 which is all the more surprising as Lord Salisbury had understood the Central Asian and the Near Eastern question as ‘two halves of one problem’.33 A serious re-evaluation of London’s pre-war diplomacy, especially with regards

Introduction | 5

to its old Austrian and new Russian friends, must explore whether ultimately Whitehall used Anglo-Russian rapprochement as a ‘tool’ to manage international tensions or as a ‘weapon of power’.34 The second historiographical observation on which the book is based concerns naval history, which still has a surprisingly long way to go if it is to move beyond bibliographies and take up the analytical reflection found in modern diplomatic histories. In recent years, however, naval historians have challenged the commonly held notion of German action and inevitable British reaction.35 Instead of focusing on Germany and extrapolating Great Britain’s naval policy from German aims,36 they have highlighted the complex British context formed by financial pressure after the Boer War, naval thinking, technological innovation and grand strategy. Thus, their results have proven in more than one way Paul W. Schroeder, that it is still ‘one thing to show that Germany blundered and had dangerous aims; quite another to prove that these really caused the outcome, or that, had Germany not made them, the overall outcome would have been drastically changed‘.37 Yet political and particularly diplomatic historians have largely turned a deaf ear to the four driving forces behind British naval policy that have been identified by revisionist historians such as Jon Sumida and Nicholas Lambert: first, the heavy financial burden of naval armament at the beginning of the twentieth century, which drove home a need to cut costs and improve efficiency;38 secondly, the technological revolution marked by telegraphic communication, greater speed, and inventions such as the torpedo, submarine and battle-cruiser;39 thirdly, a grand strategy that did not focus only on Germany or on the over-rated two-power standard – an instrument used to placate parliament – but was aimed at sustaining overall supremacy over all modern fleets, especially over the French and US navies, not through numbers but through quality and mobility (the designation of Gibraltar as a new major station, thirty hours’ steaming from the North Sea, must, for example, be seen in light of this global strategy);40 and fourthly, a more nuanced vision of sea power that – unlike the approach of new and less experienced naval powers such as Japan, the United States or Germany – was profoundly different from the concepts found in the popular writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan,41 whose emphasis on capital ships, tonnage, command of the sea and decisive battles was criticized by First Sealord John Fisher, Lord Selborne, Julian Corbett and others.42 However persuasive the case made by the revisionists, we are still left with the question of why pre-war British public opinion was so emotionally charged when it came to the German navy, far more so than for any other foreign navy. Jan Rüger’s study of naval celebrations – his innovative integration of naval and cultural history allowed Rüger to demonstrate how sea power was constructed – shows us how we might account for the public’s obsession with German power at sea. He defines the cult of the naval race as part of what can be called the theatre of diplomatic relations before the First World War, where demonstration of

6 | Between Empire and Continent

power and deterrence counted for more than the facts themselves.43 By combining naval history with modern media history, the study of party and propaganda politics and consideration of departmental rivalries, we can also investigate the growing public hysteria’s associations with political decision making. This leads to the third observation and premise this book is built on. It refers to the still neglected public dimension of foreign and defence politics. Shortly before Salisbury handed over to his nephew Arthur J. Balfour he not only warned against the repercussions of an Anglo-Russian rapprochement but he also emphasized structural changes within the public sphere of policy making: ‘Another insuperable difficulty lies in the attitude of what is called public opinion here. The diplomacy of nations is now conducted quite as much in the letters of special correspondents as in the despatches of the Foreign Office’.44 The book takes up this insight and conceives political journalists, special correspondents and certain publishers as influential political actors of their own right within the policy process in London. Traditionally, the emotional build-up among the British and German publics has been interpreted in contrasting ways: while German public opinion has always been explained by cynical manipulation of the press bureau or a dangerous self-mobilization,45 the influence of public opinion in Britain has usually been interpreted as something positive and useful.46 However, recent research on the press as a rising political actor in both Germany and Britain has stressed that the ‘similarities between the two countries’ are more striking than the differences and that ‘the political and cultural liberalism’ in pre-war Britain has often been ‘overestimated’.47 The press should not be used as an expression of unfiltered perception. Moreover it should be understood that it followed its own rules and political agendas.48 Analytically satisfying conclusions require a combination of approaches and the identification of links between the cultural sphere and decision making. That method is applied, for example, when the emotional public debate on science-fiction stories, invasion and spy stories, theatre plays and press campaigns is contrasted with naval and military experts’ viewpoints – revealing surprising differences between the latter’s risk assessment of the German battle fleet and the public scares.49 This study tries to combine Eurocentric as well as global and domestic approaches to British foreign policy and builds on Sumida’s and Lambert’s research, broadening their arguments along such lines. Its central cause is that we have to take the complex domestic realities behind British foreign politics more seriously than has hitherto been the case.50 The most striking paradox of the general consensus on British policy before 1914 is that while all major studies agree that Great Britain represented the epitome of a parliamentarian system before the Great War, it has been taken for granted that its diplomacy was directed somewhat autocratically by a caste of diplomats and a few politicians and was conducted in a strange vacuum, independent of influences beyond

Introduction | 7

the corridors of Whitehall.51 A modern analysis of foreign politics in the late Victorian and Edwardian era must question this contradiction. It must scrutinize assumptions about above-party continuity in British foreign policy and about an official thinking that was untouched by public interests, influences and pressures. It must consider interest groups, financial and trade concerns, tradition, ad hoc contingencies, imperial issues alongside continental or British issues, personal and institutional interests, institutional frameworks, the public and party dimensions manifest in foreign policy debates, military issues, risk assessments and so on and so forth. In short, it must bear in mind that Great Britain was not only an empire or a continental Great Power, it was also a very modern state, with all that comes with that designation.

Notes  1. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order, 12.   2. For Wilfrid Scawen Blunt especially Edward Grey ventured a gambler’s game. Blunt, Diaries, Vol. 2, 420; See Clark, Sleepwalkers.   3. Beaumont (DNI), ‘Memorandum on Naval Policy Viewed under the Existing Conditions’, 28 Oct. 1896, NA, ADM 116/866B; see also Marder, Anatomy, 578–80.   4. Salisbury, Memorandum, 29 May 1901, NA, CAB 37/57/52.   5. Salisbury to Victoria, 12 Jan. 1896, cited in Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol. 3, 21; see Howard, Splendid Isolation. For the label ‘splendid isolation’, see The Times, 22 Jan. 1896; Howard, Splendid Isolation, 14–15. For Salisbury’s alleged isolationism, see Roberts, Salisbury – Victorian Titan, 628–31.   6. Salisbury to Lascelles, 10 March 1896, NA, FO 800/9; Salisbury to Rumbold, 20 Jan. 1897, NA, FO 120/730; compare this with Salisbury’s convictions about Britain’s European responsibility. Salisbury to Rosebery, 18 Aug. 1892, cited in Bourne, Foreign Policy, No. 119, 432–33.   7. Salisbury, Report on his audience with the Tsar at Balmoral, 27 and 29 Sept. 1896, NA, CAB 37/42/35.   8. Salisbury to MacColl, 6 Sept. 1901, cited in Russell, Malcolm MacColl, 282–83.   9. Grey (City), The Times, 21 Oct. 1905. 10. Dillon to Spring Rice, 28 Aug. 1909, CC, CASR 1/33. 11. Grey to Cambon, 22 Nov. 1912, BD X/2, No. 416, 614–15. 12. Sazonov to Nicholas II, Oct. 1912, cited in Stieve, Schriftwechsel Iswolskis, Vol. 2, No. 508, 291; see Wilson, Memorandum, ‘The Necessity for Co-operation with France in the Event of War between It and Germany’, 11 Aug. 1911, NA, WO 106/47/23. On the impact of such open-heartedness by Grey on Franco-Russian decision making in July 1914, see Schmidt, ‘Révanche pour Sedan’, in Historische Zeitschrift 381 (2016), 393–425. 13. See Kennedy, Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, esp. 223–90; Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins, 264; Mombauer, Origins, 223–24; Hewitson, Germany, passim. 14. Marder, Anatomy, 489–93, 496; Fischer, Krieg der Illusionen, 102–3; Seligmann, Royal Navy and the German Threat; Seligmann and Epkenhans, Abyss. 15. Hildebrand, ‘Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk’, 28. ‘It was the foreign policy of Germany that caused the Anglo-Russian rapprochement’ [trans. A.R.], Hildebrand, Das vergangene

8 | Between Empire and Continent

Reich, 203; see also Brechtken, Scharnierzeit, 58; Ivo N. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 290; as concerns the inevitability of the Dreadnought, see Marder, Anatomy, 457–67; more doubtful, especially on Marder’s sources, is Fairbanks, ‘The Dreadnought Revolution’; Mackay, Fisher, 273–349; Sumida, In Defence, passim; Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution, passim. 16. See Monger, End of Isolation; Grenville, Lord Salisbury; Nish, Anglo-Japanese Alliance; Rolo, Entente; Williamson, Politics of Grand Strategy. 17. See the definition of the ‘Edwardian generation’ by Keith Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 3–50; Wohl, Generation of 1914, 1–4; Rose, Zwischen Empire und Kontinent, 27–40. 18. See Rose, ‘Der politische Raum Londons’, 95–121 (chaps. 1 and 2). 19. See Low, Governance of England. 20. See Adams, Brothers; Schroeder, ‘Embedded Counterfactuals’, 170. For Charmley, Lansdowne is the least studied of British twentieth-century foreign secretaries. Charmley, Splendid Isolation, 279; see Newton, Lord Lansdowne; Monger, End of Isolation. 21. Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht; Ritter, ‘Kriegsschuldthese’, 646–48; Schöllgen, ‘Griff nach der Weltmacht’. 22. On Germany, see Canis, Weg in den Abgrund; on France, see Schmidt, Frankreichs Außenpolitik; on Russia, see McMeekin, Russian Origins and Lieven, Towards the Flame; on Austria, see Kronenbitter, Krieg im Frieden and Canis, Die bedrängte Großmacht. 23. Ferguson, Pity of War; see also Winkler, ‘Der falsche Krieg’; Michalka, ‘Blick voraus’; Mommsen, Weltkrieg; Charmley, Splendid Isolation; Kennedy, ‘Why Britain Went to War’; Harris, Britain, 298. 24. Wilson, Policy of the Entente. 25. Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, passim; Neilson, ‘My Beloved Russians’, 551–54; Neilson, ‘Greatly Exaggerated’. 26. Wilson, Policy of the Entente, passim; idem., Limits of Eurocentricity, esp. 7–21; Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, passim. 27. See also Otte, China Question, esp. 4–5. 28. Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, xi–xv. 29. Ibid., esp. 110–47; Wilson, ‘Anglo-Japanese Alliance’; Ferguson, Pity of War, 39–45; see Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins, 84–99. 30. Steiner, ‘Review of Keith Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar’ 223–25. 31. Dillon to Spring Rice, 9 Oct. 1909, CC, CASR. 32. Neilson does not pay much attention to the Balkans. See Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar. 33. Cited in Hoyer, Salisbury und Deutschland, 318. 34. Schroeder, ‘Alliances, 1815–1945’, 195–223. 35. Mackay, Fisher; Sumida, In Defence; Sumida, ‘Sir John Fisher and the Dreadnought’; Fairbanks, ‘The Dreadnought Revolution’, 263; Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution. On the historiographical debate in the wake of the Fischer controversy, see Rose, Zwischen Empire und Kontinent, 171–76. For a plea to combine naval history with political and diplomatic history, see Rose and Geppert, ‘Machtpolitik und Flottenbau’. Most recently, Christopher Clark has seized on these ideas. Clark, Sleepwalkers, 148–50. 36. A typical example of a study that merely extrapolates Britain’s naval policy from German sources is Brechtken, Scharnierzeit. 37. Schroeder, ‘International Politics’, 196.

Introduction | 9

38. An example is the harbour at Rosyth: Maconochie (M.P.) to Selborne, 30 Dec. 1904; Reply, 31 Dec. 1904, The Times, 3 Jan. 1905; Kerr to Selborne, 11 March 1902, cited in Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution, 34; Archibald S. Hurd, ‘The Navy First’, in United Service Magazine 148 (1903), 117–26; Mackay, Fisher, 337–38. 39. Sumida, In Defence; Sumida, ‘British Naval Administration’; Sumida, ‘Sir John Fisher and the Dreadnought’. 40. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution; Lambert, ‘Admiral Sir John Fisher’. 41. Ropp, Development of a Modern Navy; Hobson, Maritimer Imperialismus. Older studies, but also recent works, largely extrapolate the British way of thinking from the Kaiser’s belief in Mahan: Kennedy, ‘Mahan vs. Mackinder’, 39; Kennedy, Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 237, 420–21; Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol. I, 344, 364–68; Langer, Diplomacy of Imperialism, 423; Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins, 52; Steinberg, ‘The German Background to Anglo-German Relations’, 193–215. For Japan, see Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, and Schencking, Making Waves, 128–29. For the United States, see Proksch, Alfred Thayer Mahan. 42. Tonnage was viewed as a ‘worthless’ measure: Selborne to Lansdowne, 7 Dec. 1901, BL, MSS Lansdowne, LANS/PL 1; Balfour to Lansdowne, 1904, BL, MSS Balfour, Add. 49698; Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution, 17–21; Herbert W. Wilson, ‘The New German Navy’, in Harper’s Monthly Magazine 103/2 (1901), 529–37, 534; Excubitor (Archibald S. Hurd), ‘Our Position of Naval Peril’, in Fortnightly Review 82 (1907), 241–52, 247; Bellairs, 6 Dec. 1906, cited in ‘The Standard of Naval Strength’, in The Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 51/1 (1907), 123–83, 128; White, 6 Dec. 1906, cited in ibid., 168. Far more important than tonnage or the concentration on capital ships seemed to be the modern mix of ships and their technology: White, The Times, 22 Jan. 1903; White, 19 Feb. 1906, Cantor Lectures, ‘Modern Warships’, in Journal of the Society of Arts 54 (1905/1906), 866–71, 868; Fisher to Tweedmouth, 5 Oct. 1906, cited in Marder, FGDN, Vol. 2, No. 51, 95–97; Balfour to Mahan, 20 Dec. 1899, BL, MSS Balfour, Add. 49742; Thursfield to Sydenham, 11 Aug. 1898, NIA, MSS Thursfield, TT/NAVAL/JRT/2/190; Lambert, ‘Admiral Sir John Fisher’, 646; Hobson, ‘Maritimer Imperialismus’, 170–71. Mahan’s seminal work was The Influence of SeaPower upon History 1660–1783, published in 1890. 43. Rüger, The Great Naval Game. 44. Salisbury to MacColl, 6 Sept. 1901, cited in Russell, Malcolm MacColl, 282–83. 45. Eley, Reshaping the Right, 27–54; Eley, ‘Sammlungspolitik’, 110–53. 46. Marder, Anatomy, 465; Kennedy, Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 251. 47. Bösch, Öffentliche Geheimnisse, 470; Geppert, Pressekriege, 1–27, 421–438 48. Niedhart, ‘Selektive Wahrnehmung und politisches Handeln’, 141–58. For a plea for a multidimensional approach, see Rose and Geppert, ‘Machtpolitik und Flottenbau’. 49. See Geppert, Pressekriege. 50. For Fischer’s thesis about the primacy of domestic affairs, see Fischer, Krieg der Illusionen. For comparison, see Kennedy, The Realities behind Diplomacy, which, despite its promising title, due to its scope of 135 years can provide nothing more than a start. A closer comparison with Fritz Fischer’s primacy of the domestic is provided by Keith Wilson’s stimulating essays, which unfortunately so far have not led to a comprehensive analysis of Edwardian diplomacy. Wilson, Policy of the Entente. 51. Steiner, The Foreign Office.

Chapter 1

The Public Sphere in Edwardian London

? Much can be learned from British public opinion in the years after the mid 1890s. We hear about British preoccupation with the country’s future role as a world power operating within international power structures, about political options and the principal issues involved, about depictions of the enemy and possible responses to that enemy, and we also see how growing insecurity in the face of the Dual Alliance developed into a downright pathological fear of Germany. Both the principal decision makers and those lower down the chain of government found themselves confronted by an increasingly politicized public, its ability to influence events dramatically extended by the communications revolution of the late nineteenth century. But we also see that contemporaries were divided on how to respond to this newfound influence. For example, while the Conservative leadership looked on with much scepticism at the London media and its regular campaigns,1 and to some extent sought to sidestep, ignore or counter its influence, younger liberal forces were far less inhibited in their dealings with the various organs of the press.2 Richard Haldane or David Lloyd George were very open about their contacts with journalists such as William Thomas Stead.3 Herbert Asquith even considered bringing on board someone such as Leopold Maxse with whom he would work exclusively.4 While a young opposition politician, Edward Grey developed a close relationship with John Spender of the Westminster Gazette,5 and later, as foreign secretary, he repeatedly stressed the importance of public opinion.6 As numerous of his statements make evident, from the very start he sought to ensure that his politics were expressly in tune with public opinion.7 As a young man, Lord Robert Salisbury had written regularly for the Quarterly Review, but as prime minister and foreign secretary he, unlike Grey, distanced Notes for this chapter begin on page 58.

12 | Between Empire and Continent

himself from that world, in effect deliberately maintaining an aura of d ­ etachment. Contact with important organs such as the Times or the Daily Mail was the responsibility of his private secretary, Sir Schomberg Kerr McDonnell. Salisbury expressly warned his longstanding friend Thomas Sanderson not to have dealings with Valentine Chirol or George Buckle.8 Although Arthur Balfour, his nephew and successor, boasted of never reading the papers, he was certainly aware of their increased relevance. Balfour similarly delegated his contact with the press, and in particular with Ernest Bruce Iwan-Müller of the Daily Telegraph, to his private secretary, in his case to John S. Sandars.9 By contrast, Lord Lansdowne felt himself permanently patronized by the press and at times complained very greatly about their unqualified meddling in his politics.10 We know of no regular direct or indirect contact by Lansdowne with the press, and such an association cannot be reconstructed from his papers. The situation was very different for Joseph Chamberlain, Admiral John Fisher and his rival Admiral Charles Beresford. All three men were in frequent and direct contact with journalists, who included Arnold White, Archibald Hurd, John Spender and Richard Thursfield; they also proposed articles or more substantial press campaigns, and even took up the pen themselves on occasion.11 Other contemporaries confirmed that the growing relevance of the press would be a seminal trait of their age. Wilhelm II, also known as the ‘media kaiser’, was far from indifferent to the views of the fourth estate.12 And his cousin in St Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas II, raised the issue of the negative impact of the press on foreign relations with British military attaché Herbert Napier.13 Investigation of public opinion and its political ramifications, as Zara Steiner and Keith Neilson in their brilliant analysis of the British origins of the war state, remains without question ‘one of the richest veins in current historiography’.14 Given the profound political impact of English publishing and its close links to political developments, a study of the influences on and by Fleet Street15 therefore would seem well worth the effort. Also productive, however, is consideration of a far less known phenomenon of political publishing: novels about invasion and espionage, which found a very substantial readership.16 There was good reason for British decision makers to be well-nigh ‘obsessed with the idea of public opinion’.17 But this study is very specifically not another impressionistic attempt to understand political events through the lens of the press,18 nor does it seek to revisit the theoretical concept of public opinion, a term that was certainly much used by contemporaries but does not lend itself methodologically to empirical definition. The intention here is to raise the profile of journalism and publishing as political protagonists. The presentation and discussion of political options by journalists enabled decision makers to determine how those options might be received within the public sphere. And the role of journalists as political actors was not limited to conveying what was possible, for they also commented on political decisions and actions, providing a first source of interpretation. Journalists

The Public Sphere in Edwardian London | 13

thereby exerted considerable influence, and their writings provide historians with much more than simply a mirror of events. Furthermore, this study also looks behind the scenes by drawing on the correspondence and contacts of leading journalists and commentators. The goal, then, is to map the flow of information and gain a sense of the very possibilities inherent in contemporary forms of international politics, with that information and those politics then examined together as historical phenomena.19 Political journalism and political fiction highlight particular themes, but their contribution to historical understanding goes further, for they allow us to explore the atmosphere within the London political scene, a space inhabited by the political elite of government officials and by politicians, writers and journalists in the City, in which daily discussions of political matters took place and from which political action emanated. The established concept of the official mind20 is deliberately expanded in this study to become the public mind, a term that has already been deployed by Norman Angell and here encompasses journalists who wrote about foreign policy, commentators and communicators such as Valentine Chirol (Times), Henry Spenser Wilkinson (Morning Post), Emile J. Dillon (Daily Telegraph/Contemporary Review) and James L. Garvin (Observer), figures who exercised a great influence on decision making in Whitehall.21 Contemporaries were themselves increasingly likely to note the connections between the media and diplomacy and to talk of two established forms of diplomacy, with correspondents recognized as unofficial ‘ambassadors’22 or ‘amateur diplomatists’.23 The breadth of this perspective holds out the possibility of revealing additional fundamental structures within which British foreign policy was formulated and possible influences on that policy, including its immediate circumstances.24 Representatives of the media knew that they were now held in greater esteem. In light of his ability to make sound political judgements, John Spender was expressly valued as a ‘colleague’ by Grey,25 and had good reason to record that ‘it is impossible to write a chapter upon any aspect of public life without at some point having to consider the activities of the newspapers’.26 Further, Spender continued, it would be ‘scarcely an exaggeration to say that about six proprietors and a score of writers and editors between them make the entire opinion of the Metropolitan Press that counts’.27 William T. Stead, publisher of the Review of Reviews and the pacifist ‘enfant terrible’28 of writers in London, ruminated more deeply on the blessings of modern journalism. In April 1898, he commented with largely positive intent that the newspaper correspondent was the ‘ambassador of democracy’, noting that ‘he manufactures the opinion to which it is the function of the regular ambassador to give effect. It is difficult to overestimate his importance or to measure his influence for weal or for woe’.29 Elsewhere that same year, however, he criticized the press’s potential impact on international relations:

14 | Between Empire and Continent

The fact is that the intervention of the Press in international disputes tends daily to become more and more hostile to peace and civilization. … [M]uch of our modern journalism is the most potent weapon yet invented by the devil for banishing peace and goodwill from the earth. Sooner or later the nations will in self-defence have to provide some means of silencing newspaper comment when international questions are in debate…30

When it came to the development and consolidation of democratic structures, the press seems to have been identified as a valuable tool, yet it could be also unpredictable and hard to control. Stead knew only too well what he was talking about. During the Boer War, he had organized an invasion hysteria in the press, the effect of which lingered through the whole pre-war period. The rumour he had planted in the Review of Reviews about anti-British collaboration instigated by Berlin and an imminent invasion of the British Isles proved long-lived.31 As one of the most vehement critics of the war, Stead had sought to dramatize its consequences in order to win over as many readers as possible for an anti-war campaign. Instead, however, his actions only ensured that whenever rumours of a Napoleon-like threat again raised their head, the focus was increasingly likely to be on Germany, even though during the Boer War Germany had successfully opposed the creation of the continental alliance desired by France and Russia.32 Stead’s use of the threat of invasion for impact had a profound effect when that possibility was picked up by political decision makers. Despite the Foreign Office’s better knowledge, this supposed danger was still deployed to counter a possible Anglo-German rapprochement, while also cited in the War Office and the Admiralty as grounds for additional reforms and investment in armaments.33 A further frame of reference is provided by the focus on the English capital. Without doubt, public life was concentrated on London. The political and the intellectual had a closely interwoven existence on the banks of the Thames. This centralization meant that almost every professional journalist felt compelled to be based in the capital, unlike in Germany, for example,34 a reality that corresponded fully with a contemporary self-perception that placed the writer in the midst of the political process. In 1899, Fleet Street, set between the Strand and Ludgate Hill and barely 500 metres long, was home to the editorial offices of over thirty-four of the most important daily newspapers and magazines in the Empire.35 The political sphere in the capital encompassed not only visible institutions such as parliament, Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the individual ministries, but also places where the groundwork was laid for subsequent political positions and decisions: the political parties, gentlemen’s clubs, the lobby, and debating institutions such as the royal societies, the Commission on Oriental Studies at the University of London, and the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI), and other associations where people who came together might exchange political ideas. Unsurprisingly, the most significant clubs were to be

The Public Sphere in Edwardian London | 15

found in London’s exclusive West End, in Pall Mall, St James’s Street, Piccadilly and Whitehall, hence in close proximity not only to the government quarter but also to the press district.36 As loci for informal discussions and the free-and-easy exchange of often momentous ideas, these clubs were essential to the very nature of the British political press, and indeed indispensable for politics as a whole. Here politicians, diplomats and journalists met to lunch or dine together, discussed the problems of the day, and reached agreement on political strategies and possibilities and on the ground rules for the discussion of disputed issues.37 Tories liked to meet in the Carlton Club and Liberals at the Reform Club, while army and navy officers preferred the Army and Navy Club. And here too were found the launching pads for various journalistic alliances and campaigns – the editors associated with the Northcliffe Press met the editors of the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator and the National Review at the Garrick Club in Covent Garden, for example.38 Not only were leading authors and journalists known to one another, but as they participated in the obligatory social life, they also inevitably intersected with the circles that set the political tone, especially since the publishing elite self-recruited for the most part from the political ruling class and were likewise the product of renowned public schools and universities. The constant contact between these two worlds proved an ideal scenario for the exchange of ideas, for long-term mutual assistance and for the exertion of influence. That interaction suggests that political processes did not develop within a vacuum,39 but were rather a concrete component of contemporary realities. The intensive exchange of information and ideas between political writings and public life in England principally concerned issues that were essentially either, on one hand, social or religious or cultural in character or, on the other, concerned with political or economic problems. A picture emerges of a debating elite and a practice whereby such ongoing political debate produced shared positions that then became recommendations. At a time when international relations was not part of the canon studied at Oxbridge or other universities, and when ideas were not yet being forged at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the forum created by such elite political debate, and above all by the London press in all its forms, had a particular status. That prominence was all the greater because the first decades of the twentieth century would prove to be a golden age of the English popular press. In no other country had the professionalization and spatial concentration of the media already advanced so far. And technological developments such as the rotary printing press, the telegraph and, later, the telephone intensified and accelerated the press’s international links. Between 1888 and 1906, the telegraph network grew by almost 60 per cent. In 1906, 93.8 million messages were transmitted through 56,600 miles of cable in Great Britain. The expansion of the telephone network was even more breathtaking. In Germany in only five years, from 1901 to 1906,

16 | Between Empire and Continent

the length of the telephone cable increased by 54 per cent, from 59,000 miles to 91,300 miles, with the number of messages sent in the same period increasing from 766 million to 1,352 million, while in Great Britain more than 550 million messages were transmitted in 1905 alone.40 The rise of press agencies such as Reuters, Havas, and Wolffs Telegraphisches Büro (WTB) would have been unthinkable without these developments. In 1894, Reuters, the largest British press agency, had thirty-four offices spread throughout the world; by 1906, that number had grown to forty-seven.41 Viewed in comparison with Great Britain’s forty-eight official diplomatic missions, with four alone in the German Reich, this information network was impressive. And it would prove invaluable to the Foreign Office.42 Against the background of such speedy developments, Alfred Harmsworth was already dreaming of a ‘simultaneous press’, that is to say, a coordinated press whose political power would lie, he proposed, in bringing about ‘unity of thought and action’. For this press baron, the influence of the media lay not necessarily in the plausibility of its arguments but came from its ‘literation of an idea until it becomes familiar, by the reading matter selected and by the quotation of opinions as news’. He continued: ‘And this influence is all the more potent because it is indirect, and not perceived by the reader’.43 While there was no question of the political elite losing control over military and diplomatic relations, international relations could not remain unaffected. The downside of this influence was noted by John Hobson for one, who recorded that ‘the popularization of the power to read has made the Press the chief instrument of brutality’, a development that, he noted, could be felt especially in foreign affairs.44 By the turn of the century, publishers and journalists alike were enjoying previously unknown political influence and were now considered ‘His Majesty’s Public Councillors’. Whereas Victorian attitudes had identified a clear distinction between politicians and journalists according to which ‘the politician did things, and the journalist commented on them’,45 at the beginning of the twentieth century that gulf was gradually disappearing. Politicians increasingly wooed publishers and journalists, enticing them with the bait of social advancement and entry into exclusive gentlemen’s clubs in the City, some of which were centuries old. The London communication space was becoming increasingly dense. Suddenly, publishers such as the Harmsworth brothers or Owen Seaman of Punch had access to exclusive circles, were knighted, and might themselves strive to go into politics – although in the case of Harmsworth, alias Lord Northcliffe, with only modest success. Shortly after the Boer War, the membership of the House of Commons included no fewer than thirty newspaper owners and journalists, and the journalist’s profession was being held in ever-higher esteem.46 In 1906, journalists formed the third largest professional grouping in the Commons, after officers and lawyers.47 Oxbridge colleges were now producing not only politicians, diplomats and professors, but also the leader writers of the major daily and

The Public Sphere in Edwardian London | 17

weekly papers. These men organized political campaigns, as we see in the press wars and the battles over protective tariffs and military reforms; they were also increasingly likely to appear in person as speakers at political events.48 Unlike the continental Great Powers, the British government had no official press office, but the London press was hardly independent and often had distinct party loyalties.49 Unofficial personal contacts were very much part and parcel of England’s parliamentary system, and both politics and press were covered by the highly productive old boys’ network. Since Gladstone’s two Midlothian campaigns (1879/80) at the latest, politicians had made use of friends in publishing to help spread their ideas and programmes to a wider audience, and capable and ambitious journalists were in turn able to use that service to their own advantage, requiring compensation in the form of political influence. Charismatic and ambitious journalis