Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 35. (1982)

WILSON, Keith: Isolating the Isolator. Cartwright, Grey and the seduction of Austria-Hungary 1908–1912

Isolating the Isolator

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Even John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, who before long was to deplore the tendency of the Foreign Office to see ‘the finger of the German in every pie’, and to complain of the ‘anti-German bias, prejudice and suspicion’ that he thought he observed, declared in August 1906 that ‘the key to German diplomacy is to prevent anything like a triple entente of England, France and Russia’8). The new Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, also wrote at the end of his first year in office that ‘it is in German diplomacy alone that one meets with deliberate attempts to make mischief between other countries by saying poisoned things to one about another’9). What Crowe called the ‘absurd proposition’ that unless the powers of Europe continued to quarrel amongst themselves they committed an offence against Germany10), which was the burden of those extracts from the German press which were selected for translation and comment in London, continued to be a source of anxiety to the British Foreign Secretary. He had, after all, made it a point of honour as early as February 1906 to maintain the entente with France, and was engaged in trying to complement it by negotiating a rapprochement with Russia. Above all, like many of his staff, he doubted his country’s ability to pass safely through another period of isolation, which the German efforts, if successful, would necessitate11). This was a risk he was not prepared to run12).

In the House of Commons on 1 June 1904 the Anglo-French Agreement of the preceding April was interpreted and welcomed by one Member of Parliament as marking a return to the system of the balance of power in Europe. Gibson-Bowles went on to say: ‘The business of the balance of power is to isolate the isolator, to put the isolation on the side of the aggressors . . ,’13). As even by this time Germany was thoroughly identified, in a large segment of the Foreign Office mind, as the isolator, or would-be isolator, of Great Britain, the traditional defender of the balance of power, it was only to be expected that there would be calls from that quarter for the application of Gibson-Bowles’ formula. Indeed, on the day following the debate on the Anglo-French Agreement, Mallet wrote to his close friend Sir Francis Bertie, who was then in Rome: ‘It seems to me that a close understanding with France is a great safeguard for us - and that our object ought

8) India Office Library London Eur. D 573/1, 573/3: Morley to Minto (Viceroy of India) 29 August 1906, 10 January, 4 March 1908.

9) George Macauley Trevelyan Grey of Faltodon (London 1937) 114f.

10) PRO FO 371/80/38804: Minute by Crowe 19 November 1906.

n) BD 4 (1929) no. 544: Minute by Grey on Nicolson to Grey 21 October 1907; on the same despatch Mallet minuted: ‘The possibility of Great Britain’s isolation before a European coalition seems to be a new idea to Baron Motono [Japanese Minister in St Petersburg], The French Entente, the Russian rapprochement and our alliance with his own country do not appear to have impressed him’.

12) See PRO FO 800/13 (Lascelles MSS): Grey to Lascelles 18 September 1907.

13) Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 4th Series, vol. 135 col. 535: 1 June 1904.