Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 35. (1982)
WILSON, Keith: Isolating the Isolator. Cartwright, Grey and the seduction of Austria-Hungary 1908–1912
ISOLATING THE ISOLATOR CARTWRIGHT, GREY AND THE SEDUCTION OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 1908-12 By Keith Wilson In the last week of July 1908 the British Minister Resident at Munich and Stuttgart, Fairfax Cartwright, was in London for discussions with the King and the Foreign Secretary which would determine what his next appointment was to be. On the eve of his meeting with Sir Edward Grey he received a note from the latter’s Private Secretary, William Tyrrell, who wrote: T wish you would make an opening, if necessary, with Edward Grey tomorrow and develop to him the idea how unwilling Austria’s support of Germany is in certain contingencies and this support may become still more unwilling under Franz Ferdinand and this makes it important that we should not get tarred with the brush the Germans would like to see us tarred with. I think we should not drift into a position of antagonism to Austria owing to the vagaries and stupidities of Aehrenthal who after all is not eternal. I should like the idea to sink into Sir Edward’ *). On the same day that he returned to Munich, Cartwright wrote a long despatch to the Foreign Secretary which was given the title, upon its receipt at the Foreign Office, of The Position of Austria-Hungary in International Politics. Cartwright’s no. 86 of 1 August 1908 was his first response on paper to Tyrrell’s prompting. It is printed below in an appendix (no. 1) to this article, the purposes of which are: to illustrate the ensuing debate sustained mainly but not entirely between Grey and Hardinge (the Permanent Under-Secretary 1906-10) in London on the one hand, and Cartwright in Vienna on the other, concerning the merits of weakening the Triple Alliance by courting Austria; and to examine the reasons why this debate, and the not quite solo bid of one particular ‘man on the spot’ to modify British foreign policy, had the outcome that they had. There can be no doubt that one of the major grievances, if not indeed the major grievance, of the British Foreign Office against Germany was the accumulation of what were seen as bids on the part of the German Government first to prolong, and then to restore, the condition of isolation in which Great Britain had found herself at the turn of the century. From before the turn of the century certain British officials would appear to have consciously col*) Northamptonshire County Record Office and Brotherton Library Leeds (Special Collections: microfilm) Cartwright MSS: Tyrrell to Cartwright 21 July 1908.
