The question of possible British treaty obligations concerning Belgium had come up at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday July 29. The 1839 treaty did not require Britain to act belligerently against any power that might violate Belgian neutrality - that was a requirement of the 1870 treaties with France and Prussia, which had lapsed after a year following peace in the Franco-Prussian War. The “radicals” seized on this, but the cabinet decided that “the matter if it arises will be rather one of policy than of legal obligation” (p59).
However, at this meeting Grey threatened to resign if the cabinet opted in advance for declaring neutrality. Churchill insisted that if the Channel ports fell into German hands that would be a disaster - this preoccupation with the ports was indeed the reason why Britain supported the creation of a Belgian state in 1830.
...The crucial cabinet meeting then began on Sunday August 2 at 11am. The Conservatives weighed in with a letter to Asquith, pushing for government support for France and Russia, and offering to support his government in that course. There was no mention of Belgium at all.
Sir Edward Grey had apparently made up his mind. He told the cabinet it was “vital” that he should assure the French ambassador that if the German fleet attacked the French coast - the French fleet was concentrated in the Mediterranean - Britain would use her naval power to intercept it, and that he must announce this in parliament on Monday August 3. He threatened to resign unless the German navy were confined to the Baltic by virtue of this policy. There was a distinct possibility that other Liberal hardliners, including Asquith, Haldane, Churchill and maybe McKenna, would have followed suit, and the Liberal administration, in that case, would have been in grave danger of collapse - to be succeeded by an interventionist Tory-Liberal coalition. Indeed Churchill said, if Germany violated Belgian neutrality and the British government failed to declare war, he would resign.
But again, it needs emphasising that Belgium was not the crucial factor: it only came in as part of the broader picture - as set out in the memorandum by Sir Eyre Crowe, which emphasised the danger to the British empire posed by a victorious German empire, leaving Britain isolated - combined with the opprobrium earned by a neutral Britain if she failed to aid the Franco-Russian combination and they were victorious.
...The list swung the cabinet - but only just - behind Grey’s advocacy of a guarantee of naval support for the French: the foreign secretary was authorised to tell the French ambassador that if France faced a German naval attack then “the British fleet will give all the protection in its power” (p183). So, even before it became clear just what the German government would actually do as regards Belgium, if France and Germany went to war Britain would intervene.
The French ambassador called at the foreign office and informed Sir Edward Grey that the French premier was planning to reveal Britain’s pledge of naval support in Paris. Grey thereupon extended the terms of the pledge, which ambassador Cambon then cabled to Paris:
In case the German fleet came into the Channel or entered the North Sea in order to go round the British Isles with the object of attacking the French coasts or the French navy and of harassing French merchant shipping, the British fleet would intervene in order to give to French shipping its complete protection, in such a way that from that moment Great Britain and Germany would be in a state of war” (Newton’s emphasis, quoted on p203).
This put an end to British neutrality, and committed the state to war before the Commons had any chance to debate the matter. The cabinet met again at 10 am. Faced with a total of four resignations, Asquith in turn threatened his own resignation, which would, of course, have brought the government down (Grey, Churchill and Haldane would have resigned too), with the only realistic prospect of majority support in the House of Commons to be picked up by a Conservative-Liberal coalition. It would have been led by Lloyd George (who did indeed take over as PM in 1916), but Lloyd George at this point only asked the would-be dissidents “not to resign now or at least not to announce it today”. They reluctantly agreed. Burns was not at the cabinet meeting, but agreed to follow suit.
...The German declaration of war on France was yet to come - it was not announced in Berlin until 6.45pm that evening. Grey claimed he had a free hand to preserve peace “till yesterday” (p216). He went on to explain what had been decided between the British and French governments following the 1911 Moroccan crisis: the French fleet was now concentrated in the Mediterranean - from which the British navy had withdrawn - but French northern and western coasts were totally exposed to attack as a result. Therefore, if a foreign fleet were to attack through the Channel, Britain could not stand aside, given her diplomatic ties with (albeit not treaty obligations to) France. He claimed the country would feel that too, especially if the French fleet withdrew from the Mediterranean to defend their coasts, leaving an opening for Italy (which was still allied with Germany and Austria) to threaten vital British trade routes.
...In the light of subsequent military developments, it is now possible to see the reasoning behind John Maclean’s action around the time that hostilities were about to commence in painting on a road the words, “Sir Edward Grey is a liar”.4 The darkest days shows that Britain’s government was already poised to strike, before Germany actually invaded Belgium.
...The darkest days is a valuable contribution to the debate and current fixation with the 1914-18 war in these islands, in that it focuses on decision-making in Britain in a crucial eight-day period from Monday July 28 to Tuesday August 4 1914: ie, from Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia to Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. But let Douglas Newton himself have the last words here:
The descent into war revealed the ignominious collapse of essential elements of the old order. The New Imperialism, the great cheap labour scam run to enrich fragments of the economy at the expense of the rest, had landed everyone in a bloodbath. The ‘old diplomacy’ - under which men from a half-dozen public schools presumed to manage competitive imperialism against a combustible backdrop of vast armaments and rival alliances - had failed to safeguard peace. The scramble for Dreadnoughts had failed to deter war. None of this could be admitted, so German evil was depicted as a new immoral element that had upset the good old system (p306).
[source : WWI: How did it all happen?, Weekly Worker, http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1029/wwi-how-did-it-all-happen/, 9th October 2014]
The BBC docudrama 37 Days shows this manipulation by Grey of withholding the terms of the treaty with France until was was just about to break out.
And I have related how Grey was told by the British military attache in Berlin on 28th July 1914 that Germany was getting ready to violate Belgian neutrality.
The truth is that a series of treaties to encircle Germany was engineered decades before WW1, first agreed by King Edward VII and completed by Grey after Edward had died. This treaty with France was one of those treaties, which Grey kept secret from the cabinet until very late.
So why did Grey keep that treaty secret?
Would Germany have backed down early if Grey had revealed that 'secret' treaty with France?
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