of plans with one Power for war against another, involving dispositions for concerted action elaborated in the minutest details, involving a redistribution of fleets which amounted to a revolution in accepted British naval strategy, involving the increase and perfecting of a large force for operations on the Continent of Europe, which steps, in combination, had bound us by a thousand threads, invisible, to the public, but of the consistency of steel bands, to France—and not to France alone. Of these secret commitments—direct product of the secret Morocco-Egyptian deal negotiated by the Unionist Cabinet in 1904 and endorsed by a section of the Liberal Cabinet in 1906—the people of Britain were in profound ignorance. Political Liberalism and political Labour were equally in ignorance. Even many Ministers in the Liberal Government were not informed.[1]
These liabilities hung like a millstone round the necks of those who laboured for international peace. Some strides were made along the road, but they were halting. Efforts which no doubt were genuine enough were put forward by the Liberal Government to reach an accommodation; but they were genuine only within the limits of an unavowed relationship with France and Russia.
......
And now the colossus of the North began to move. Tsarist Russia had determined to force the Balkan issue and to reach the long coveted goal—Constantinople and the Straits. It was its only chance of survival, for its feet were of clay. Revolution thundered at its gates. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1913 the internal situation of Russia, grew steadily in gravity. The prestige of the Court and army had never recovered from the blow inflicted by Japan. The sole hope of Tsardom was a successful war which should restore its moral ascendancy and swamp popular discontent through a military triumph crowned by the halo of mystical romanticism that, should surround the Tsar as he entered the portals of St. Sophia. For Tsardom the times spelt Constantinople or collapse.
- ↑ Lord Loreburn's "How the War Came" may be usefully consulted. It will, of course, be remembered that many—as many as seven, I believe—members of the Government resigned when Sir E. Grey disclosed to the House his long-withheld secret political, military and naval arrangements with France, and that Lord Morley, Mr. John Burns and Mr. Charles Trevelyan persisted in their resignations, which the invasion of Belgium by the German armies caused the others to withdraw.
