A BOOK OF THE MOMENT
LORD GREY OF FALLODON'S "TWENTY FIVE _YEARS."
Twenty-five Years. 1892-1916. By. Viscount Grey of Falltdcn, H.G. 2 Vols. (Hodder and Stoughtorf; ' 42s.)
LORD GREY OF FALLODON gives us an autobiography with a single motive : he wanted to describe with impartial exactness the events which led up to the War, and he has subordinated everything to that purpose. He does not tell us much about himself or his life, though what he does tell us is told with excellent taste and well-bred simplicity: The reader has that comfortable feeling which is experienced by anyone who is unexpectedly but in a friendly and unostentatious way taken into the confidence of one who can tell secrets if he will. Not that Lord Grey takes any liberties with Ministerial custom—as that custom used to be understood ; his narrative is just what we should have expected from him, yet it is, in our judgment, satis- factory and complete.
Ile argues—we are here only paraphrasing—that it is useless to ask the question : Who was responsible for the War?" unless you first define the limits within which you intend to use the word responsibility." He has no doubt whatever that in the last days of July and the first days of August, 1914, German militarism prevailed and that though there were several distinct opportunities of peace Germany would not make use of them. In fine, Germany could easily have had peace had she wished, notably when Lord Grey urged the summoning of a conference on the whole dispute. 'If, however, we used the word " responsibility " in a much wider sense, and make it refer to the events of several genera- tions, we must admit, with Lord Grey, that circumstances and in particular the manner in which the affairs of Europe were managed were responsible for the War. In spite of Bismarck's successful series of wars Germany became an expansive Power too late ; the places in the sun had already been taken by others. Of course she was wrong to think that we ever wanted to fence her in, but it is obvious that all the groupings and regroupings of Powers (aimed at some new balance of power when an old one was upset) were but a state of war in suspense. It will be seen that Lord Grey has not in any way changed his opinion. He has often said before what he says in this book, but we cannot withhold our admiration from the judicial manner in which he again arrives at his conclusions. We cannot remember to have seen his method employed by anybody else, but there is much to be said for it. First of all he sets down all the opinions which he formed in 1914, giving the reasons which then appealed to his mind ; next he reviews the whole body of his 1914 opinions in the light of subsequent knowledge.
If we were asked to indicate Lord Grey's characteristics as a statesman we should say, first, patience, and, second, a sort of higher indifference. These are admirable character- istics if " indifference " be understood in the right sense. Originally Lord Grey had no inclination towards politics, and it was not until he had left Oxford that he began to read serious books and to be interested in serious things. He was drawn into polities by having his attention called to the demand in 1884 that the franchise should be extended to the counties on similar terms to those on which a Con- servative Government had given it to the boroughs in 1867. The House of Lords had rejected Gladstone's proposal for this extension. Lord Grey thought the attitude of the Lords unfair and illogical, as we think it was, and thus his future was cast with the Liberal Party. But, of course, he was a Whig by temperament and he was born of a Whig family, being a cousin of the Lord Grey of the Reform Bill. Thackeray was quite right, in a social sense at least, when he pointed out how largely Whiggisn-i was a matter of birth. "I am not a Whig," he exclaimed, "but oh, how I should like to be one ! " He was, of course, contemplating the same fact which caused Beresford Hope to satirize the Whig ruling families as "the sacred circle of the great-grand- motherhood." Lord Grey, having been brought up to a country life and having developed a passion for fishing and
for natural history, regarded almost every other pursuit in life as an unwelcome interruption ; but just because he had the Whig traditions it was inconceivable to him that he could neglect a call to public service when it came.
He therefore accepted an invitation to stand for Parliament as a Liberal with as little hesitation as he accepted Lord Rosebery's invitation to become Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1892. Yet he wanted to do neither of those things. Whenever he held office he was, on his own admission, looking forward to the time when he would obtain his release. Need one- labour the fact that a man who entered and remained in public service on these terms displayed patience—not, indeed, patience with the hard lot of a Minister who had to remain in London 'while the Test was sparkling and the trout were rising away in Hampshire, but patience with any obstacles to his personal advancement ? .He always had Fallodon ; he always had the trout and the birds. The glories and labours of office might come and go—they could not make much difference to his heart or his pride, however deeply they might engage his mind. Lord Grey's friends will be able to call to mind countless occasions when his party was struggling and planning to get back to office, but he remained unperturbed, apparently almost indifferent. In that respect he was very much like the late Duke of Devonshire —another Whig. He never had the "You be damned-ness " of the Duke, but, like the Duke, he was always absolutely independent, because office was not all the world to him. Failure to be returned at the polls, or the thought of resigning a great position—if ever that should be necessary—had no terrors for him ; he would always be himself and he could always fall back upon his resources and his interests.
When, however, full allowance has been made for this self-sufficiency —to use the word in an admirable sense—it must be admitted that Lord Grey obtained a position which cannot be wholly explained by his possession of honesty and independence. A further necessary explanation is that he knew how to impress the House of Commons. Long ago • when Lord Grey was still a very young member some Liberals were discussing with Gladstone the hopes of their party. The discussion turned on the young men who were coming on. This and that man was mentioned ; clearness in thinking and brilliance in retort were attributed to one ; an unusual mastery of Parliamentary procedure was attributed to another ; and to yet . others were attributed indefatigable research and wide personal knowledge of foreign countries.
Yes," said Gladstone, "but the young man with the true Parliamentary manner is Edward Grey." The participants in the discussion were still inclined to find greater oratorical power in the men they had mentioned. Gladstone would not yield. "No, no," he repeated, "I place Grey above them— he has the true Parliamentary manner." Gladstone was right, and yet students of politics who have followed Lord Grey's career carefully may still wonder that Gladstone should have been as right as he was. One may read Lord Grey's speeches in Hansard by the hundred without lighting upon an epigram or upon any subtlety or upon any artistry. He spoke with an unvarying gravitas, and the impression he made was due to an obvious striving to reach the truth. His reputation is a wonderful tribute to the essential serious- ness of the British people, who do not want the plain facts of their political life to be presented with irrelevant decoration. Artificial excitement, turgidity, elaborate phrasing excite their mistrust. They know that it is possible to live on bread but not on savouries.
Although, as we have shown, Lord Grey is laboriously fair to Germany, he tells us how early in his career at the Foreign Office he was impressed by what he calls "the rough side" of German dealings. Germany, for instance, was willing to make things easy for us in Egypt when France was trying to make them impossible, but, as always, she demanded her price—some concession to her bagman's policy in another part of the world. As time went on the rough side became rougher, but, as Lord Grey points out, so far from wishing to hem Germany in, Great Britain went out of her way to be conciliatory. He cites as a principal example of our friendliness Joseph Chamberlain's explicit offer to Germany (which is too often forgotten) of an alliance or a full under- standing with this country. He exonerates the entente connate of any anti-German intention. He sees that it was not unnatural for Germany to misunderstand its motives, but he makes an extraordinarily true remark when he says that frequently the desire of Great Britain to accept friendship wherever she could find it has had sinister motives read into it. The present writer remembers the late Lord Cromer often speaking to the same effect. It was one of his favourite subjects. He used to say that proposals which he had made in all innocence of heart as likely to keep the peace were found by foreign critics to be diabolical machinations. He was sometimes staggered by the perverse ingenuity with which hidden purposes were discovered in simple words.
Lord Grey is particularly interesting about the military obligations which we were said to have entered into with France before the War. The criticism of those obligations amounts to this : that though we had made no promise whatever to help France against Germany, we had discussed military plans to such a point that we had prejudiced the whole situation and had made co-operation with France inevitable. Lord Grey's answer is that the need for co-opera- tion had always been a possibility and that the military staffs would have been mad if they had not discussed together every situation that could conceivably arise. He says that he does not know why Lord Morley and Mr. John Burns resigned at the beginning of the War. We suggest that they resigned just because they felt that they had not been informed sufficiently about these military discussions. Lord Grey's defence of the discussions seems to us, however, to be unanswerable. His answer to the objection that the Russian mobilization in 1914 began even before that of Germany is also excellent. We have not space to discuss this answer, but we advise everybody to read it in the book. If other examples Of Lord Grey's fairness are wanted they maybe found in the facts that he was more intimate with Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador, than with M. Paul Cambon, and that in his supreme speech to the House of Commons when the question of peace and war still hung in the balance he withheld from the House the fact that Germany, in her attempts to detach Great Britain from France, had made to this country a very dishonouring proposal. He felt that the issue must be judged on its merits ; the House must not be driven by passion.
The present writer can honestly say that when he had read this book he felt proud to be an Englishman and proud at having been represented in the great crisis by Lord Grey.
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