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Lloyd George on Sir Edward Grey's responsibility for failing to postpone WWI






Edward Grey fishing in Hampshire
(from Punch)

Extracts:

"I cannot give a fair presentaion of the events that led to the War, prolonged in its duration, and aggravated and extended in its desolation, without a candid picture of the personalities who controlled and directed these events. Their charachteristics were responsible for much that happened - for better or for worse. It is a mistaken view to assume that its episodes were entirely due to fundamental causes which could not be averted, and that they were not precipitated or postponed by the intervention of personality. The appearance of one dominating individual in a critical position at a decisive moment has often generated the course of events for years and even generations. A gifted and resolute person has often postponed for centuries a catastrophe which appeared imminent and which, but for him would have befallen. On the other hand a weak or hesitant person has invited or expidited calamity which but for him might never have happened or which at least could have been long deferred. I cannot therefore tell my tale of the great War without giving some idea of the men whose qualities either hastened or failed to avert it, or had the effect of prolonging its devastating course once it had started.

[...]

In the policy which lead up to our participation in the war, Sir Edward Grey, amongst British statesmen, played the leading part. His navegation of foreign waters was not seriously challenged. Whether he could have steered Europe clear from the rocks must always be a matter of conjecture and inference from the facts. Men who are at all times interested in that aspect of the problem will for some time draw differing cpnclusions. I am inclined to believe that the verdict of posterity willbe adverse to his handling of the situation.

[...]

Sir Edward Grey belonged to the class which, through heredity and tradition, expects to find a place on the magisterial bench to sit in judgement upon and above their fellow men, before they ever have any opportunity to make themselves acquainted with the tasks and trials of mankind -and some of them preserve their magisterial airs through life. They are remote from the hard work of the community. They take it for granted.

[...]

He was the most insular of our statesmen, and knew less of foreigners through contact than any other minister in the Government. He rarely, if ever, crossed the seas. Northumberland was good enough for him, and if he could not get there and needed a change, there was his fishing lodge in Hampshire. This was a weakness - and it was a definite weakness in a Foreign Secretary, and especially in a Foreign Secretary with no imagination - which accounted for some of his most conspicuous failures. He had no real understanding of foreigners - I am not at all sure that for this purpose he would not include Scotland, Ireland and Wales as as foreign parts.



George, Lloyd ( 1938) "Sir Edward Grey" (pp. 55-60) in The War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, Vol. 1, Odhams Press Limited

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