Sir Edward Grey and Germany

SIR EDWARD GREY AND GERMANYI EDGAR McINNIS T IME! they say, is the great leveller, not only of persons but of reputations. T~me brings weari.,. ness, and with it a measure of tolerance; it removes one' by one the active participants in events, with their passions and their partisanship and their somewhat selective memories. It leaves the controversies arising from these events to a more detached generation whose emotions, if they are enlisted at all, are at best second~ hand. One can see this process at work in the case of Sir Edward Grey. The extravagant eulogies and the bitter denunciations'are both giving way to a more sober discussion of his role in the catastrophe of 1914. In that discussion the attractiveness of Grey's personal character is emerging more and more clearly. But it is also becomirig clear that character-even such rare character as his-is not always enough. I t is hard to study Grey's policy without a feeling that some spark, some vital force, was missing from it. And ln the end it is by his policy and not by his character that he must be judged. The recent biography by Professor Trevelyan is therefore interesting as a s~mmary of the case for the defence. The author has justly stressed Grey's desire to avoid war, his constant fostering of the spirit of ~conciliation, his attempts to reconstitute the Concert of Europe in the interests of peace. "Where he failed," concludes Trevelyan , Hno one could have succeeded; where he succeeded many would have failed." lGeorge Macaulay Trevelyan, Grey oIFallodon, London, 1937. 315 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY In all this there is a great deal of truth. Unfortunately , it is not the whole tru'th. Grey's actions at times fell short of his intent_ions. His ends may have been admirable, but his judgment as to means was not always infallible. Yet even so, his sins were to a large extent those of omission. Under ordinary circumstances those omissions might have been" trivial, and Grey might have stood oU:t as the embodiment of the best liberal traditions in foreign policy. But the circumstances were not ordinary ; and the real charge against Grey is that, confronted by a situation of unusual gravity" he failed to realize that the postulates of 1894 were no longer adequate to the exigencies of 1914. In other words, Grey was no innovator-and only daring innovation could have averted the catastrophe. He accepted the world he knew and the rules with which he was familiar, unaware that the world " was in process of drastic change and the rules already outworn. He sought by traditional. , methods to assure England's security under conditions of international rivalry of which war was the accepted and the logical outcome. These methods postulated the maintaining of a constant superiority over any possible antagonist. And when Grey came to power in 1905) that antagonist was pre-eminently Germany. This was a very recent development.' When Grey had been in office a decade before, Germany still ranked as a friend, though a somewhat uncertain one. The complete change in the interval forms a study in cumula tive .effect. No single incident can be regarded as the root of the estrangement between the two countries; no individual controversy was so irreconcilable as to force them into opposite camps. But innumerable minor clashes, steadily growing in frequency, led in the end to the impression that neither could make any move without 316 SIR EDWARD GREY AND GERMANY being immediately jostled by the other. When that stage was reached, war was only a question of time. Professor Trevely·an sums up the English view of the situation. "England could not, in the interests of her own survival, suffer the Continent to become Germany's vassal. That was the one and sufficient cause of the quarrel between the two nations." He appears to forget that in 1880, and even in 1890, the domination ofGermany in Eurqpe was accepted by England with equanimity. So long as both had elbow room, they walked amicably side by side. . But when ·both were cumbered with the weight of great possessions, the world...