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The Career of Sir Eyre Crowe: A Reassessment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Richard A. Cosgrove
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Extract

Among the myths of the origins of World War I is that of the ability of obscure bureaucrats to influence the foreign policy of their country through intrigue and deceit. The foremost example in the volumious literature involved the unlimited capacity for evil attributed to Friedrich von Holstein of the German Foreign Office. One of his contemporaries left the. following portrait: “His life was devoted to poisoning human and international relationships. Holstein's diplomacy by intrigue, his vicious disloyalties, and the way he placed his own revengeful purposes before his country's good contributed largely towards the outbreak of the First World War.” Labeled the Grey Eminence of the Wilhelmstrasse in the aftermath of defeat, Holstein became the scapegoat for the disasters of German diplomacy in 1914.

Other bureaucrats of the pre-war era whose careers followed a similar pattern have received like treatment. On the British side, it was asserted, there operated a civil servant whose anti-German animus steered Britain into conflict with Germany. Allegedly possessing a fatal fascination for Sir Edward Grey, Sir Eyre Crowe was credited by historians with enormous surreptitious influence. The hostility toward Germany manifested by Great Britain in the decade prior to 1914, the argument runs, reflected Crowe's personal hatred and suspicion of German power. “The vast influence exercised by Sir Eyre Crowe upon British policy between 1908 and 1914,” wrote the distinguished Austrian historian A. F. Pribram in 1951, “only became generally known outside the Foreign Office, and especially abroad, in recent years.” Apologists for Germany cited Crowe as the prime mover of British policy, and one German historian termed him the ‘böse Geist’ [evil spirit] of the British Foreign Office.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , Winter 1972 , pp. 193 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1972

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read, in a different form, at the Pacific Coast meeting of the Conference on British Studies at Portland, Oregon, in September 1970.

References

Notes

1 Meinertzhagen, Colonel Richard, Diary of a Black Sheep (Edinburgh, 1964), p. 315.Google Scholar

2 Pribram, Alfred F., Austria-Hungary and Great Britain 1908-1914 (London, 1951), p. 86.Google Scholar

3 Lutz, Hermann, Eyre Crowe Der Böse Geist des Foreign Office (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1931).Google Scholar

4 Fay, Sidney Bradshaw, The Origins of the World War, 2nd ed., two vols. (New York, 1930), I, 557.Google Scholar

5 Lutz, Hermann, Lord Grey and the World War (New York, 1928), p. 109.Google Scholar

6 Lutz, , Grey and the World War, p. 253.Google Scholar

7 Ritter, Gerhard, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (New York, 1958), p. 116.Google Scholar

8 Rich, Norman and Fisher, M. H., eds., The Holstein Papers, 4 vols. (Cambridge, England, 1955–1963).Google Scholar

9 Rich, Norman, Friedrich Von Holstein: Politics and Diplomacy in the Era of Bismarck and Wilhelm II, 2 vols. (Cambridge, England, 1965), especially II. 849.Google Scholar

10 See the review article by Röhl, J. C. G., “Friedrich Von Holstein,” Historical Journal, IX (1966), 379–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 For the details of Crowe's life, see Wilkinson, Spenser, Thirty-Five Years 1874-1909 (London, 1933), 220–221Google Scholar; Gregory, John D., On the Edge of Diplomacy: Rambles and Reflections 1902-1928 (London, 1928), pp. 255–261Google Scholar; Vansittart, Lord, The Mist Procession (London, 1958), pp. 45–46Google Scholar; and Steiner, Zara S., The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914 (Cambridge, England, 1969), pp. 109–118.Google Scholar

12 Reginald Lister to Sir Francis Bertie, December 12, 1905, Bertie MSS., Series A, Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office (hereafter cited as F.O.) 800/163.

13 Sir Charles Hardinge to Sir Arthur Nicolson, June 8, 1913, Hardinge MSS., vol. 93, no. 34. By permission of the Cambridge University Library.

14 Oppenheimer, Francis, Stranger Within: Autobiographical Pages (London, 1960), p. 347.Google Scholar

15 An examination of the correspondence among these officials reveals few exchanges with Crowe, and then usually on routine business.

16 SirO'Malley, Owen, The Phantom Caravan (London, 1954), p. 46Google Scholar, recounts the story of Crowe's refusal to subscribe to Foreign Office standards of dress; Vansittart, Lord, Lessons of My Life (London, n.d.), p. 152Google Scholar, tells of the following parody which illustrates the vigor of Crowe's unconventional views on religion:

Crowe has informed us till we nod

That he does not believe in God

But what we really want to know

Is whether God believes in Crowe.

17 His Lesebuch reveals Crowe to have been a sensitive explorer of modern politics, philosophy and literature. He thought nothing of selecting an author and then reading his entire work. I am indebted to Miss Sibyl Eyre Crowe of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, Crowe's daughter, for the opportunity to examine this carefully recorded information.

18 Typescript report of interview with Lord Curzon, October 15, 1919, Crowe MSS., F.O. 800/243.

19 It is significant that the memoirs of Grey and Hardinge contain scant mention of Crowe. It is true that Grey was most complimentary to Crowe in his introduction but Crowe does not figure in the main part of the book. Hardinge mentioned Crowe just once concerning a trivial matter. See Grey, , Twenty-Five Years 1892-1916, 2 vols.(London, 1925)Google Scholar; and Hardinge, , Old Diplomacy (London, 1947).Google Scholar

20 The appearance of vituperative criticism of Germany as early as 1903, and the key role of Bertie, has been documented by Monger, George W., The End of Isolation: British Foreign Policy 1900-1907 (London, 1963), pp. 99–103Google Scholar; and Steiner, Zara S., “The Last Years of the Old Foreign Office, 1898-1905,” Historical Journal, VI (1963), 75–80.Google Scholar

21 Lansdowne to Sir Frank Lascelles, May 6, 1904, Lascelles MSS., F.O. 800/12.

22 Mallet to Bertie, June 2, 1904, Bertie MSS., Series A, F.O. 800/170. Bertie did obtain the Paris position and served there from 1905 to 1918.

23 Bertie to Mallet, June 11, 1904, Bertie MSS., Series A, F.O. 800/170.

24 Hardinge to Lascelles, March 6, 1906, Lascelles MSS., F.O. 800/13.

25 Lascelles to Hardinge, March 9, 1906, Lascelles MSS., F.O. 800/13.

26 Tyrrell to Sir Cecil Spring Rice, May 1, 1906, Spring Rice MSS., F.O. 800/241.

27 Steiner, Zara S., “Grey, Hardinge and the Foreign Office, 1906-1910,” Historical Journal, X(1967), 435–436.Google Scholar

28 SirSalter, Arthur, Memoirs of a Public Servant (London, 1961), p. 151.Google Scholar

29 Steiner, , The Foreign Office and Forigen Policy, p. 209Google Scholar. Grey's final authority is a point also emphasized by Robbins, Keith, Sir Edward Grey: A Biography of Lord Grey of Fallodon(London, 1971)Google Scholar, passim.

30 Vansittart, Lord, The Mist Procession, p. 64.Google Scholar

31 Steiner, , The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, p. 112.Google Scholar

32 Strang, Lord, Home and Abroad (London, 1956), p. 308.Google Scholar

33 Memorandum by Bertie, December 19, 1914, Bertie MSS., Series A, F.O. 800/163.

34 O'Malley, , Phantom Caravan, p. 46.Google Scholar

35 Crowe to Grey, July 20, 1915, Crowe MSS., F.O. 800/243.

36 Clipping in Crowe MSS., F.O. 800/243.

37 Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons, November 11, 1915; Sir Robert Cecil in the House of Commons, December 9, 1915.

38 Clipping in Crowe MSS., F.O. 800/243.

39 Diary entry for August 9, 1917, in Repington, Charles, The First World War 1914-1918, 2 vols.(Boston, 1920), II, 25–26.Google Scholar

40 Oppenheimer, , Stranger Within, p. 347.Google Scholar

41 Lord Derby to Lord Curzon, December 8, 1919, Public Record Office, Ashridge, F.O. 794/2.

42 Norman to Campbell, December 18, 1919, Public Record Office, Ashridge, F.O. 794/2.

43 The evidence for this statement is in O'Malley, , Phantom Caravan, pp. 59–60Google Scholar and Peterson, Maurice, Both Sides of the Curtain (London, 1950), p. 50.Google Scholar

44 The work of Crowe described by Crowe, Sibyl Eyre in “Sir Eyre Crowe and the Locarno Pact,” English Historical Review, LXXXVII(January, 1972), 49–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, would seem to support this conclusion. While Crowe does certainly deserve some of the credit for the Locarno Pact, his main work, as Miss Crowe suggests, was his persuasion of the Cabinet to back Austen Chamberlain. The argument of this article reinforces the thesis here that Crowe's foremost contributions were bureaucratic.

45 The following is a list of Foreign Office officials who paid special tribute to Crowe in their memoirs: George P. Antrobus, John D. Gregory, Sir Edward Grey, Sir Thomas Hohler, Harold Nicolson, Sir David Kelly, Sir Owen O'Malley, Francis Oppenheimer, Sir Robert Vansittart, Maurice Peterson, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Sir George Rendel, Sir Arthur Salter, Sir William Strang, Sir John Tilley, Sir Walter Windham, Frank T. Ashton-Gwatkin, and Ivone Kirkpatrick.

46 Nicolson, Harold, Portrait of a Diplomatist: Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart. A Study in the Old Diplomacy (New York, 1930), p. 239.Google Scholar

47 O'Malley, , Phantom Caravan, p. 47.Google Scholar

48 Stanley Baldwin, quoted in Wilkinson, , Thirty-Five Years, p. 221.Google Scholar