British Historians and the First World War

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2018-09-14 "Two Souls Dwell in the German Nation": British Historians and the First World War

Wainwright, Samuel George

Wainwright, S. G. (2018). “Two Souls Dwell in the German Nation”: British Historians and the First World War (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32953 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/107790 master thesis

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“Two Souls Dwell in the German Nation”: British Historians and the First World War

Samuel George Wainwright

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2018

Abstract

Historical scholarship on British-German relations prior to 1914 often emphasizes mutual antagonism. This antagonism, supposedly, reached a nadir during the First World War, with ‘the

Hun’ being demonized as the enemy to civilization, but was replaced with a more sympathetic narrative after 1919, rooted in a reaction against the allegedly punitive peace settlement. This conventional view is too simplistic. Pre-war British historians overwhelmingly adopted favourable attitudes towards Germany, and often used their professional writing to encourage congenial relations between the two countries. Conceptually, their arguments centred upon the

‘two Germanies’ thesis, an abstraction which enabled British admiration for German cultural and intellectual achievements to exist in tension with fears concerning Prussia militarism. This literature shaped demi-official British views on Germany before the war, which were anti-

Prussian rather than anti-German in orientation. The ‘two Germanies’ thesis continued to influence how historians conceptualized Germany after hostilities erupted in 1914. Following the war, this continuity enabled Germanophile historians to retain an idealistic view of Germany.

This conviction led them to embrace and disseminate revisionist interpretations which posited that the European Powers shared responsibility for the conflict. The idea that all the belligerent states were equally responsible for the war encouraged the view that the grievances which a relatively ‘guiltless’ Germany sought to redress were legitimate. Germanophile historians occupied a central role in supplying the vocabulary by which politicians could frame post-war reconciliation. Placed within this context, pro-German historians provided the intellectual and moral justification for sympathetic policies towards Weimar Germany. There can be no doubt that the appeasement policies adopted in the 1930s resulted in part from the conciliatory atmosphere that historians inculcated in the previous decades.

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank Dr. John Ferris. Not only did he supervise this project, but he also provided me with constant feedback and support. His advice and patience were invaluable to this project.

I would also like to personally thank Dr. Warren Elofson, Dr. Timothy Stapleton, and Dr.

Annette Timm. Their compassion, empathy, and kindness ensured that I was able to complete my first semester. I am also truly indebted to Lori Somner, whose charity and generosity made this project possible.

I would also like to thank several professors from Carleton University. Dr. Aleksandra

Bennett, thank you for your encouragement and support, you believed in me before I ever believed in myself. Dr. Andrew Johnston and Dr. Andrew Wallace, thank you for your continued friendship, guidance, and advice.

Natalie Wainwright and Jordan Ross provided me with comfort and comedic relief throughout. I am indebted to Emily Labine for her support, kindness, and affection. She ensured that this process was both enjoyable and manageable. I would also like to extend my gratitude to

Benoit Allain-Melanson, Colin Robertson, Erik Saizew, and Gorden Taggart for their constant friendship and camaraderie.

Finally, this thesis would not have been possible without my wonderful parents, Maureen and David Wainwright. Thank you for your endless patience, guidance, and support. Without your encouragement and love I would never have achieved this goal.

iii

For Melville Keith Thompson.

Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iii

Dedication iv

Table of Contents v

Chapter One: Historiography and Methodology 1

Chapter Two: British Historians and the Historical Practice in the Pre-War Period 23

Chapter Three: British Historians and the Great War 50

Chapter Four: British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles 79

Conclusion 107

Bibliography 111

Chapter One: Historiography and Methodology

Historical scholarship on British-German relations prior to 1914 often emphasizes mutual antagonism.1 This antagonism, supposedly, rose steadily from 1900. It reached a nadir during the

First World War, with ‘the Hun’ being demonized as the enemy to ‘Western Civilization’ but was replaced with a more sympathetic narrative after 1919, rooted in a reaction against the allegedly punitive peace settlement. This conventional view is too simplistic, because it marginalizes the influential cultural, intellectual, and religious voices which continued to advocate for friendship and reconciliation even when British-German relations were characterized (and defined) as ‘antagonistic’. Pre-war British historians, for example, overwhelmingly adopted favourable attitudes towards the German Empire, and often used their professional scholarship to encourage congenial relations between the two countries. This pre- war literature shaped demi-official British views on Germany during the war, which were anti-

Prussian rather than anti-German in orientation. This literature also directly inspired revisionist scholarship in the inter-war period, and – in a period when the academic (and intellectual) sphere overlapped with the political sphere – influenced government policies and public debates on issues such as territorial disputes, reparation payments, and war guilt. These revisionist discoveries provided intellectual and moral justification for sympathetic policies towards the

Weimar Republic and inculcated a conciliatory atmosphere that prepared the public for the appeasement policies in the 1930s.

1 See e.g. Paul Kennedy’s The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (1980), John Mander’s Our German Cousins: Anglo-German Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1974), Robert K. Massie’s Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1991), A. J. A. Morris’s The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament, 1896-1914 (1984), Peter Padfield’s The Great Naval Race: The Anglo-German Rivalry, 1900-1914 (1984), Jan Ruger’s The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (2007). Richard Scully maintains that Kennedy’s The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism is “still the dominant master-narrative despite three decades of subsequent scholarship.” Richard Scully, British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860-1914 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2012), 1.

The preoccupation with deteriorating British-German relations has shaped how historians understand Britain’s relationship with Germany before 1914. Historians tend to treat British-

German relations teleologically, accepting that conflict between the two countries was unavoidable. That the two nations went to war with one another has caused historians to largely neglect cultural evidence. Historians and literary critics have often referred to cultural evidence only when it has supported their teleological interpretation.2 Preoccupation with declining relations has led historians and political scientists to assume that the intensification in diplomatic antagonism between the two nations must have distorted British historical scholarship on

Germany in the pre-war period. Manfred Messerschmidt, for instance, argues that a discernible demarcating point occurred in 1894-1908, when British historical writing assumed greater opposition towards the German State.3 He suggests that pre-war British historians turned from enthusiastic Germanophiles to unreasonable critics in the decades preceding the First World

War.4 Catherine Ann Cline, citing Messerschmidt, suggests that the propagandistic views which pervaded historical authorship during the war originated before it. The historical establishment’s explanation for the war “had, in a sense, been developed before its outbreak.”5 Likewise, Panikos

Panayi claims that negative perceptions of the German Empire dominated historical textbooks before 1914. He argues that while earlier academic studies had focused favourably upon the

Saxon invasions in the fourth and fifth centuries, pre-war scholarship increasingly fixated on the

German State as a menacing threat.6 Similarly, Peter E. Firchow maintains that the First World

2 Scully, British Images of Germany, 2. 3 Steven Siak, “‘The Blood that is in Our Veins Comes from German Ancestors’: British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 30, no. 2 (1998): 221. 4 Stefan Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson: The Career and Politics of an Historian of Germany,” The English Historical Review 116, no. 465 (February 2001): 84. 5 Catherine Ann Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 20, no. 1 (Spring, 1988): 45-46. 6 Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914 (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995), 238.

War represented a cultural watershed, a turning point in how the British perceived German national character. “By 1915,” he explains, “the German cousin was dead, never again to be resurrected except by cranks and Nazi-sympathizers.” Even those sympathetic towards revisionist interpretations could not compassionately negotiate with “the individual Germans whom they … met – or, if they did, then only by supreme effort.”7

Paul Kennedy, meanwhile, concludes that “the religious, racial, cultural and dynastic ties which … bound Britain and Germany together had little or no weight” on their deteriorating relationship.8 Cultural and intellectual attachments were irrelevant, since such affinities “counted for little in actual political terms.”9 He suggests that between 1880 and 1907 British-German relations shifted from ambivalence to permanent antagonism. The explanation he provides for this dramatic shift is economical. “Historians grappling with the overall alteration in Anglo-

German relations have before anything else to confront the fact that whereas Britain produced over twice as much steel as Germany at the beginning of this period, it produced less than half at the end of it.”10 This argument is dangerously close to crude economic determinism.11 However,

Kennedy prudently qualifies his statement with two additional factors. First, geographical proximity meant that German maritime expansion into the North Sea directly endangered

Britain’s national security interests. Secondly, the perceived ideological incompatibility between

‘Liberal England’ and ‘Reactionary Prussia’ simultaneously encouraged British intervention to maintain the international status quo, and German aggression to break free from this artificial

7 Peter E. Firchow, The Death of the German Cousin: Variations on a Literary Stereotype, 1890-1920 (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1986), 178. 8 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1980), 386. 9 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 386-409. 10 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 464. 11 David Stafford, “A Moral Tale: Anglo-German Relations, 1860-1914,” The International History Review 4, no. 2 (May 1982): 250-251.

3 equilibrium.12 These factors – combined with broader economic concerns – produced a volatile relationship. The consequences associated with economic change, however, “were not limited to the power-political arena alone.” The growing industrial working-class also shaped deteriorating

British-German relations. On the German side, working-class agitation tempted beleaguered elites “to seek a solution in overseas expansion and,” when this failed, “to repeat the

Bismarckian tactic of solving domestic questions with a foreign war.” Growing labour agitation in Britain, meanwhile, coincided with discouraging external developments to produce a rightward electoral swing “that enhanced the tactical position of the imperialist and interventionist” elements within the Liberal Party, which formed the Government after 1906.

Consequently, the external threat presented by the German Empire received greater apprehension than in an earlier, more self-confident period.13

Kennedy concludes that British-German antagonism proceeded from the fact that German economic “growth gradually threatened to infringe upon perceived ‘British interests’, [and] that these economic shifts increased the nervousness of British decision-makers already concerned about ‘saving the Empire’.”14 More importantly, French sovereignty was increasingly viewed as vital to British national and imperial interests. Hence, a German strike against France had to be resisted. Resisted is the operative word, because Germany was the dynamic factor in this bilateral relationship.15 Responsibility for 1914, Kennedy explains, “rests upon the German side.

Had her leaders not been so determined to alter the maritime balance after 1897, and to unleash a westward strike [after] … Sarajevo … then an Anglo-German conflict might well have been

12 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 465. 13 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 464-466. 14 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 466. 15 Stafford, “A Moral Tale,” 251.

4 avoided.”16 Ultimately, Kennedy concludes that war between Britain and Germany was unavoidable. Other alternatives are presented as fallacious: “the forces and personalities which determined events moved, consciously or unconsciously, in a certain direction … it is [therefore] idle to speculate upon the alternatives which were not chosen.”17 His preoccupation with diplomatic evidence and economic data has led Kennedy to produce a narrative that suggests a relationship in perpetual decline which inevitability led to conflict. Some critics note that an alternative focus upon cultural evidence “reveals 1914 as an abrupt termination, rather than a logical culmination.” Nonetheless, his influential monograph (1980) remains “the dominant master-narrative.”18

Kennedy’s stated purpose was to explain why “the British and German peoples,” who possessed no longstanding enmity and whose co-operative traditions were reinforced by dynastic, economic, and religious ties, “went to war against each other in 1914.”19 The continued fascination with this apparent paradox (i.e. amity to antagonism) has encouraged subsequent historians to accentuate the escalation in pre-war hostilities between the two nations.20 Richard

Scully, however, has convincingly disputed the general conclusion that anti-German public sentiment was an essential component for British mobilization in 1914. The notion that rampant

Germanophobia permeated the public sphere before the First World War is slowly being replaced with a more nuanced view that emphasizes ambivalence. Cultural historians have come to realize that popular attitudes shifted much more gradually, “and often with a significant

16 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 467. 17 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 466-467. 18 Scully, British Images of Germany, 1-4. 19 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 464. 20 See e.g. R. J. W. Evans and H. Pogge von Strandmann’s (eds.) The Coming of the First World War (1990), Suzanne Y. Frederick’s “The Anglo-German Rivalry, 1890-1914” (1999), James Joll’s The Origins of the First World War (1984), Robert K. Massie’s Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1991), A. J. A. Morris’s The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament, 1896-1914 (1984), Jan Ruger’s The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (2007).

‘delay’ when compared with changes in [diplomatic] perceptions.” Scully, nonetheless, concedes that “it has been difficult for historians brought up on the older diplomatic version … to abandon the notion that after 1890, there was … an inexorable downturn in British attitudes towards

Germany; and that from the Second South African War (Boer War) … ‘it was downhill all the way to 1914’.”21

For that reason, recent literature on British-German relations has unquestionably complicated earlier viewpoints. Historians now argue that the mutual perceptions which Britain and Germany shared “were more varied, changeable, and opened-ended than previously” suggested.22 Even when diplomatic antagonism reached its apogee influential voices still argued for friendship and reconciliation.23 Both nations’ external perceptions fluctuated enormously, making it difficult to discern a linear progression from ambivalence to antagonism.24 The cultural, intellectual, and religious voices formerly marginalized as insignificant have recently been revealed as more influential.25 Thomas Weber’s Our Friend “The Enemy” epitomizes current historiographical trends on pre-war British-German relations.26 Our Friend “The Enemy” explores how cultural ideologies were mutually exchanged at elite educational institutions in

Britain (Oxford) and Germany (Heidelberg). Weber suggests that previous studies on pre-war

British-German relations amplified “conflict, tension, and differences,” and largely ignored

“opposing development.”27 Far too often, historians have distorted the past by taking the First

21 Scully, British Images of Germany, 4. 22 Jan Ruger, “Revisiting the Anglo-German Antagonism,” The Journal of Modern History 83, no. 3 (September 2011): 589. 23 Thomas Weber, Our Friend “The Enemy”: Elite Education in Britain and Germany before World War I (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 93-98. 24 Ruger, “Revisiting the Anglo-German Antagonism,” 589. 25 See e.g. Kennedy’s The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, pp. 386-409. 26 See also Thomas Weber, “‘Cosmopolitan Nationalists’: German Students in Britain – British Students in Germany,” in Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity, ed. Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwarth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 249-270. 27 Weber, Our Friend “The Enemy”, 3.

World War as their departure point for explaining British-German relations. Weber petitions historians to stop treating these relations teleologically, arguing that this focus has prevented scholars from recognizing conciliatory transnational connections.28 Similarly, Marie-Eve

Chagnon and Tomas Irish contend that “transnational intellectual networks, institutions, and individuals” shaped how the wider public perceived the war, guided policymakers and politicians, and informed how philanthropic organizations distributed their resources. Their edited collection suggests that academic, cultural, and intellectual “mobilizations, ruptures and demobilizations happened in the plural, at different points during and after the war.”29 Dominik

Geppert and Robert Gerwarth, meanwhile, maintain that the British-German narrative must now account for “cultural affinities, intellectual cross-fertilizations, social connections, and mutual admiration.” They claim that the traditional focus has obscured transnational cultural and intellectual affinities. Cultural exchanges between Britain and Germany “were particularly intense when their relationship was characterized by enmity as well as by veneration, by simultaneous rivalry and partnership.” Both countries embraced each other’s culture with a striking intensity that was “partly motivated by competition and hostility, but also driven by admiration.”30

Despite these changing perceptions, historians continue to disregard a correlation between pro-German histories issued before 1914 and the production and dissemination in revisionist scholarship in the inter-war period. Even Steven Siak, who challenges the assumption that anti-German sentiment was entrenched in historical literature prior to 1914, dismisses any

28 Weber, Our Friend “The Enemy”, 2-3. 29 Marie-Eve Chagnon and Tomas Irish, “Introduction: The Academic World in the Era of the Great War,” in The Academic World in the Era of the Great War, ed. Marie-Eve Chagnon and Tomas Irish (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 12-14. 30 Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwarth, introduction to Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity, ed. Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwarth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2-4.

7 connection between pro-German history textbooks published before the war and revisionist scholarship published after 1918. Hence, Siak observes that British-German academic

“friendship and solidarity” was extinguished after “four years of slaughter on the fields of

Flanders.” He posits that a dividing line can be “drawn through August 1914,” when the historiography “took a definite and distinguishable turn against the ‘German cousin’, who by wartime had become the ‘Hun’.”31 His assessment accords with Peter Firchow’s claim that “by

1915 … the German cousin was dead, never again to be resurrected.”32 Historians and literary critics conclude that the Great War inaugurated an abrupt transformation in historical literature.

This interpretation overlooks the pliability and resilience of pre-war intellectual networks, conceptual frameworks, and mental maps. Conceptually, the most important pre-war construct was the ‘two Germanies’ thesis – an abstraction which enabled British admiration for German cultural and scientific achievements to exist in tension with fears concerning Prussian militarism.33 Hence, historians could easily conceptualize the old principalities as idealistic and sentimental, while simultaneously characterizing Prussia as despotic and militaristic.34

Significantly, Germanophile historians continued to encourage the ‘two Germanies’ thesis during the First World War.35 Even the Bryce Report on Alleged German Outrages committed in

Belgium, an important public statement for British views during the war, readily distinguished

31 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 251-252. 32 Firchow, The Death of the German Cousin, 178. 33 The ‘two Germanies’ thesis came in two variants: one cultural, the other, geographical. The cultural variant emphasized German cultural achievements and distinguished them from the German Empire’s political immaturity. The geographical variant sought to physically separate Prussia from the ‘sentimental’ principalities. 34 See e.g. J. Ellis Barker’s Modern Germany (1908), William Harbutt Dawson’s The Evolution of Modern Germany (1908), Walter Alison Phillips, James Wycliffe Headlam, and Arthur William Holland’s A Short History of Germany and Her Colonies (1914), and J. H. Rose, C. H. Herford, E. C. K. Gonner, and M. E. Sadler’s Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1912). 35 See e.g. James Bryce’s The Attitude of Great Britain in the Present War, C. R. L. Fletcher’s “The Germans, their Empire, and what they covet” (1914), William Sanday’s “The Deeper Causes of the War” (1914), and Spenser Wilkinson’s “Great Britain and Germany” (1914).

8 between the “good-natured” German people (old Germany) and their ruling militaristic elite

(new Germany).36

Historians have ignored the startling survival for such views in wartime British works on

Germany. Stuart Wallace, for one, claims that ‘Manifesto of the Ninety-Three’ (issued on 4

October 1914) “effectively destroyed the creditability of the image of ‘two Germanys’.”37 This argument disregards countless academic works (e.g. the Oxford Pamphlet Series, 1914-1915 and

Peace Handbooks) which continued to cite and encourage the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. Cline, meanwhile, notes that historians agreed that there were “two Germanies, old and new, good and bad.” However, she does not consider whether this conceptualization had any impact on post-war attitudes towards Germany.38 Stefan Berger suggests that the ‘two Germanies’ thesis originated in the pre-war period, as Germanophile historians tried to account for ‘Prussian’ militarism.39

This abstraction, he argues, would come to dominate Labour Party thinking in the inter-war period. Radical-Liberal and Labour politicians believed that it was their task to protect the new liberal Germany, “and hence … opposed the Versailles Treaty as unjust, … [because] it punished a democratic Germany which could not be held responsible for the … war.”40 Berger, nonetheless, fails to consider the role historians occupied in inculcating this sympathetic viewpoint. Significantly, and somewhat inexplicably, no scholar has yet studied the continuities between pre- and post-war scholarship on the German State. For that reason, historians and their views on Germany have been neglected. Their views are important because history, “more so

36 James Bryce, et al., Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages (London: Macmillan and Company, 1915), 44-45. 37 Stuart Wallace, War and the Image of Germany: British Academics, 1914-1918 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1988), 112. 38 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 45. 39 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 85. 40 Stefan Berger, “Between Efficiency and ‘Prussianism’: Stereotypes and the Perception of the German Social Democrats by the British Labour Party, 1900-1920,” in Stereotypes in Contemporary Anglo-German Relations, ed. Rainer Emig (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000), 184.

9 than any other academic discipline,” shaped public discourse and elite government opinion on

Germany both before and after the First World War.41

Before 1914, and throughout the inter-war period, historians and history occupied a central place in the formulation of Britain’s domestic and foreign policies. Notably, leading politicians had either received historical training or were themselves active historians (e.g.

Herbert H. Asquith, Stanley Baldwin, J. R. M. Butler, Lord James Bryce, Lord James Gascoyne-

Cecil, Austen Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, H. A. L. Fisher, G. P. Gooch, Lord Halifax, Sir

Samuel Hoare, J. A. R. Marriott, and Sir Charles Trevelyan).42 During the inter-war period, historians regularly engaged with popular media forms such as periodical magazines and national newspapers and, at times, dominated the editorial columns. They frequently were employed to write letters, memorandum, and speeches for influential politicians. W. H. Dawson, for example, wrote letters and speeches for both David Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson.43 Consequently, historians played a significant role in moulding both popular and elite perceptions. One method for determining the socio-political importance assigned to individual historians is to use independent case studies. H. A. L. Fisher supplies an insightful example for examining the political significance attached to academic historians. Fisher was vice-chancellor at Sheffield

University (1913-1917), when in December 1916, he was elected to Parliament as a member for

Sheffield Hallam. Subsequently, he joined Lloyd George’s government as President at the Board for Education. Fisher, a distinguished nineteenth-century French historian, possessed no previous political experience, but proved a proficient and ambitious administrator with expansive ideas.44

41 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 231. 42 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson.” 77. 43 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson.”, 79-93. 44 Kenneth O. Morgan, “Lloyd George’s Stage Army: The Coalition Liberals, 1918-1922,” in Lloyd George: Twelve Essays, ed. A. J. P. Taylor (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), 230.

Lloyd George recorded that Fisher’s tenure constituted “one of the most outstanding chapters in the annals of our educational history.”45 Kenneth O. Morgan identifies Fisher, along with

Winston Churchill, as the only two Coalition Liberal ministers who were consistently near the decision-making centre.46 He maintains that Fisher played an influential role in formulating

Lloyd George’s domestic and foreign policies.47 His instrumental position in devising the 1918

Education Act won him general applause. Fisher was a prestigious figure in Lloyd George’s post-war government – “his sole link with the Liberal intelligentsia amidst the professional politicians.”48

Fisher was not the only historian to influence Lloyd George’s policies. William Harbutt

Dawson, a nineteenth-century German historian, impressed Lloyd George while both worked at the Board for Trade. During his presidency at the Board (1905-1908), Lloyd George began to admire German industrial organization and social reform. His most important source for information was Dawson, a prolific author, whose texts on German welfare, industrial legalisation, and national social insurance were widely celebrated.49 Lloyd George recorded that

Dawson’s books were written to interpret “German thought, life and character,” and to explicate

German social and industrial practices.50 Between 1906 and 1911, Dawson produced reports and memorandum on German social reform, wrote speeches for Lloyd George on the German social insurance system, and helped to draft the 1911 National Insurance Act.51 He used his advisory position to vigorously defend Germany, promoting it as the most “pacific nation in Europe.”52

45 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs vol. 1 (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1933), 642. 46 Morgan, “Lloyd George’s Stage Army,” 230. 47 Kenneth O. Morgan, “Lloyd George and Germany,” The Historical Journal 39, no. 3 (September 1996): 760. 48 Morgan, “Lloyd George’s Stage Army,” 230. 49 Morgan, “Lloyd George and Germany,” 756. 50 Quoted in Morgan, “Lloyd George and Germany,” 756. 51 Lloyd George was chiefly responsible for designing the act and ensuring its passage. Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 79. 52 William Harbutt Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), 12.

Significantly, he believed that “no wilful disturbance” should be apprehended from Germany,

“for the economic conquest upon which their mind was set could only be achieved by peaceful methods.”53 The German Empire had doubtless become an economic competitor, but there was no need for “disparagement,” as its progress had “been achieved by means and methods which

[were] open to all the world if only people [would] employ them.”54 Dawson’s pre-war texts often portrayed German socio-economic institutions as exemplary models from which Britain could learn.55 Ultimately, his lower-middle-class background and his inability to obtain a public school education prevented him from having a distinguished political career.56 Nonetheless, he was invited to negotiate with the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, and even produced a manual on German colonial administration for the plenipotentiaries.57 Throughout the inter-war period, his advice to Lloyd George remained pro-German.58 He also used his authoritative position to petition the decision-making elite about the need to revise the punitive peace settlement.

Dawson often corresponded with G. P. (George) Gooch, editor-in-chief at The

Contemporary Review. Gooch regularly requested articles from Dawson and regarded him as the most knowledgeable and productive source for information on Germany. Gooch wrote Dawson in March 1915 to inform him that he had “read every one of [his] books on Germany except the

53 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 12 54 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, v-vi. 55 See e.g. The German Workman (1906), The Evolution of Modern Germany (1908), Industrial Germany (1912), and Social Insurance in Germany, 1883-1911 (1912). 56 Dawson did, however, establish a correspondence with Arthur Henderson, who suggested that Dawson take an active role in the Labour Movement. W. H. Dawson Papers, 1871-1948, University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library and Special Collections, Birmingham: WHD 577: letter Henderson to Dawson, 5 Aug. 1921. Hereinafter, the W. H. Dawson Papers will be cited as WHD. 57 See Peace Handbooks (25 vols., ed. George W. Prothero, 1920) prepared by the Historical Section of the British Foreign Office. 58 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 80.

12 last on the towns, and … [had] learned more from them than the writings of anybody else.”59

Prior to his editorial position, Gooch had been elected to Parliament as a Liberal Member in

1906, but lost his seat in the 1910 general election. Shortly thereafter, he became co-editor at The

Contemporary Review (1911). Both as editor and parliamentarian, Gooch vocally criticized the

British Secretary for State Sir Edward Grey. Between 1906 and 1910, as the Liberal Member from Bath, Gooch denounced British negotiation in the Near East and Persia. He continued to impugn British foreign policies while co-editing The Contemporary Review.60 The Foreign

Office historian, James Wycliffe Headlam-Morley, was afraid that Gooch, in his chapter for the

Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy (1922), would not present Britain’s diplomatic case as forcefully as the Foreign Office desired because he [Gooch] was too critical towards Sir

Edward Grey.61 During the Great War, Gooch used his editorial position to generate support for both the Union of Democratic Control (UDC) and a negotiated settlement.62 Once the Versailles

Treaty was finalized, Gooch worked to revise what he characterized as “essentially a French peace – a Clemenceau peace.” He objected to the “stipulations concerning the Saar and the

Polish Corridor,” and “the cruellest thing,” the decision to prohibit a union between Austria and

Germany.63 Gooch, like Dawson and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, doubted that Germany was solely responsible for the conflict.64 He echoed Dawson and Dickinson’s pronouncements when

59 WHD 269: letter Gooch to Dawson, 24 Mar. 1915. 60 Keith Hamilton, “The Pursuit of ‘Enlightened Patriotism’: The British Foreign Office and Historical Researchers During the Great War and Its Aftermath,” in Forging the Collective Memory: Government and International Historians Through Two World Wars, ed. Keith Wilson (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996), 203. 61 Keith Wilson, “Introduction: Governments, Historians, and ‘Historical Engineering’,” in Forging the Collective Memory: Government and International Historians Through Two World Wars, ed. Keith Wilson (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996), 15. 62 Hamilton, “The Pursuit of ‘Enlightened Patriotism’,” 203. 63 Quoted in Frank Eyck, G. P. Gooch: A Study in History and Politics (London: Macmillan, 1982), 314. 64 See e.g. G. P. Gooch, “The Rise and Fall of the German Empire” (1919), Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy (1923), and Germany (1925). For Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson’s position see The European Anarchy (1916), Causes of International War (1920), and The International Anarchy, 1904-1918 (1926).

13 he concluded that the real cause for war was a deficient international system which had divided

Europe into two armed coalitions.65 No European Power was singularly responsible for the conflict, for none had desired war. However, all were culpable for failing to correct the

“international anarchy” which they had inherited and “did little to abate.”66

The view that all the European Powers shared responsibility for the war suited those who sought to challenge the peace settlement. More importantly, revisionist discoveries provided intellectual justification for sympathetic policies towards Weimar Germany. For that reason,

Gooch opened The Contemporary Review to British and German scholars who “decried reparations and the French insistence on collecting them.”67 He routinely requested “moderately- worded” articles from radical-Liberal and Socialist historians.68 Dawson, in a 1920 article written for the periodical, reasoned that if the Western Powers wanted “Democratic Germany to survive,” they would “have to meet her in a [friendlier] spirit.”69 During the 1920s, British policy-makers became increasingly familiar with revisionist scholarship produced on topical subjects like reparation payments and the war guilt issue. This could be achieved because inter- war scholars could easily access government leaders. Catherine Ann Cline notes that “Dawson,

[Raymond] Beazley, [Arnold] Toynbee, and Harold Temperley all corresponded at one time or another with Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, or Neville Chamberlain on foreign affairs questions.”70 Keith Hamilton likewise notes that the historian and political scientist Harold Laski maintained an intimate friendship with MacDonald.71 Gooch also cultivated a close relationship

65 G. P. Gooch, Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy, 4th ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1930), 212-214. 66 Gooch, Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy, 214. 67 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 51-52. 68 WHD 377: letter Gooch to Dawson, 1 July 1918. 69 W. H. Dawson, “Germany and Spa,” Contemporary Review, 118 (1 July 1920), 8. 70 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52. 71 Hamilton, “The Pursuit of ‘Enlightened Patriotism’,” 206.

14 with the Labour Prime Minister.72 MacDonald had opposed British participation during the war and denounced the peace settlement. He doubtless found in Gooch, whom he regarded as “by far and away our ablest historian,” the intellectual and moral rationale for his own moderate policies towards Weimar Germany.73

MacDonald, like Dawson, Dickinson, and Gooch, feared that internal extremism and nationalism would destabilize the Weimar Republic. He therefore adopted the view inculcated by revisionist historians that ‘Democratic Germany’ could survive only if the peace settlement was revised.74 The Versailles Treaty was merely a provisional ‘armistice’ which desperately needed to be replaced with a “real peace.”75 MacDonald endeavoured to normalize relations with the

Weimar Republic and vigorously campaigned to include German representatives in multilateral negotiations. He believed that a return to ‘normal’ diplomatic conditions and an agreement which incorporated the Dawes Report, “would have ... greater moral value than … the Versailles

Treaty.”76 His sympathetic sentiment reveals the instrumental position which revisionist historians occupied in the inter-war period. To be sure, there were numerous influences which brought the Versailles Settlement into disrepute. For one, deteriorating British-French relations after 1919 “tended to foster an increasingly sympathetic attitude towards Germany.” Moreover, the failure to revitalize the economy in the post-war period led to an awareness that German economic stability was essential to Britain’s own financial prosperity. This recognition generated a corresponding desire to amend the features in the settlement which most impended economic

72 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52-53; Eyck, G. P. Gooch, 339. 73 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52; Keith Robbins, History, Religion and Identity in Modern Britain (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), 11. 74 Patrick O. Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War: Britain, the United States and the Accords of London and Locarno, 1923-1925,” Contemporary European History 12, no. 1 (February 2003): 13. 75 Quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald: A Biography (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1977), 250. 76 Ramsay MacDonald to Edouard Herriot, Paris, 8 July 1924, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First Series, vol. XXVI, ed. W. N. Medlicott and Douglas Dakin (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1985), no. 507, p. 755.

15 recovery.77 This view was reinforced by John Maynard Keynes in his brilliant polemic, The

Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). His contemptuous caricatures and anecdotal observations tended to undermine respect for the Treaty and its “incompetent”, “slow and unadaptable” negotiators.78 Finally, vocal criticism from various elite coteries (e.g. bankers, clergymen, economists, industrialists, and historians) contributed to an erosion in public support for the settlement. The elite group that did the most to bring about a reversal in educated and elite opinion was the historical community.79 For that reason, the provisional case studies enumerated above demonstrate the influential socio-political role historians occupied before, during, and after the First World War.

Throughout the 1920s, British elite and governmental opinion on the Versailles System took countless forms, often contradictory, but generally and increasingly favouring its revision, to the advantage of Germany. Numerous public groups promoted discussion on these issues.

Particularly, myriad historians laboured to persuade both the educated public and political elite that the peace settlement needed urgent revision. To be sure, not all historians encouraged a re- evaluation in the ‘war guilt’ question. Those who advanced the ‘shared responsibility’ thesis were often radical-Liberals or Socialists, with ties to the UDC. They had received a public- school education and respected German cultural and scientific achievements (i.e. pre-war

Germanophiles). These historians shared “certain values and assumptions, cultural and ethical, clear-cut and durable, which coloured their responses to the settlement.”80 Most had received historical training in Germany, and they often specialized in modern European or German

77 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 43. 78 John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 45. 79 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 43-44. 80 Antony Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: From Versailles to Hitler, 1919-1940 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 85.

History. The two historical schools with which this coterie most often interacted were structuralists: whether with a UDC focus on the danger of arms races and the need to avoid traditional power politics, or more conservative diplomatic historians, who advocated for a new

European Concert (or continental system) which would reintegrate Germany back into the international community. Germanophile arguments could combine with those from either structuralist group. The two most prominent historians within the Germanophile school were G.

P. Gooch and W. H. Dawson. Their scholarship provided the intellectual and moral rationale for sympathetic policies towards Weimar Germany. The ‘Gooch-Dawson’ interpretation of the origins of the war led politicians to question “whether Germany was morally bound to honour a peace settlement concluded under” the misguided conviction that Germany had been responsible for the conflict.81 Germanophile arguments and views were undeniably romanticised perceptions.

Their assertions and opinions often did not reflect current realities and their facts were occasionally unsubstantiated (e.g. the Social Democratic Party often performed well in

‘Prussian’ Berlin). Their desire to revive the idealistic and day-dreaming Germany (from their youth) led them to stress moral and sentimental considerations over basic power factors.82 This preoccupation led Germanophile historians to formulate and disseminate the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. This abstraction was used to dismiss ‘negative’ features (as such militarism and totalitarianism) as Prussian rather than German. These pre-war perceptions, while inaccurate, are significant, because liberal and radical scholars embraced and encouraged them with renewed vigour after 1919.

Even though a re-evaluation in war guilt was not unanimous among all historians, the need to revise the peace settlement had become virtually incontestable in liberal, radical, and

81 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 57-58. 82 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 57.

17 internationalist circles by the mid-1920s.83 Liberal, Socialist, and moderate Conservative politicians, disillusioned with the peace terms, embraced revisionist history as the intellectual justification for an extensive modification in the peace settlement.84 MacDonald, and later

Austen Chamberlain, contributed decisively to this moderate position by translating revisionist discoveries into politically viable multilateral agreements (e.g. the London Reparation Settlement and the Locarno Treaties).85 Both Chamberlain and MacDonald accepted the revisionist viewpoint that Germany should be brought back into the European Concert. Chamberlain’s conviction led him to negotiate the Locarno Treaties in October 1925. The Locarno Pact echoed the conciliatory pronouncements which were persistently espoused in revisionist scholarship.

The agreement guaranteed the German frontier from French and Belgian occupation, secured

German membership in the League of Nations, contained a promise that the signatory powers would refrain from military operations for a ten-year period, and committed the co-signers to establishing a feasible international agreement on disarmament.86 Revisionist historians had long called for these moderate provisions.87 Chamberlain, Lloyd George, and MacDonald doubtless found in revisionist literature the intellectual and moral justification for their own moderate (and internationalist) policies towards Weimar Germany.

History mattered to British elites, who trusted expert historical advice. Given the prevailing attitude about unchanging national character, political leaders expected nations to act presently as they had done historically. Historians had an audience among the both educated and

83 For dissenting voices see R. W. Seton-Watson’s Sarajevo: A Study in the Origin of the Great War (1926) and J. W. Headlam-Morley’s “The Origins of the War” (1927) and Studies in Diplomatic History (1930). 84 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 57-58. 85 Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War,” 9. 86 Gaynor Johnson, “Austen Chamberlain and Britain’s Relations with France, 1924-1929,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 17 (2006): 755. 87 See e.g. Dawson’s “Germany and Spa” (1920), Dickinson’s The European Anarchy (1916) and Causes of International War (1920), and Gooch’s “The Rise and Fall of the German Empire” (1919).

18 elite elements within British society, affecting their mentalities and debates, either directly or indirectly as educators or advocates. Not only did historians shape educated and elite opinion but they also provided context for British policies towards Germany. Historians were politically active and often corresponded with political leaders on foreign affairs questions. The Historical

Section at the Foreign Office was organized specifically to assist the plenipotentiaries at the Paris

Peace Conference.88 C. K. Webster, an author at the Historical Section, later observed that

“during the War and the Peace the Historian was much used by the Diplomatist,” and that “at

Paris, Historians were as thick as bees.”89 Harold Nicolson, a career diplomat and politician, noted that after reading Webster’s peace handbook he “knew exactly what mistakes had been committed … in 1814 [at the Vienna Congress].” Historians journeyed to Paris with diplomats, journalists, and politicians, “not merely to liquidate the war, but to establish a new order in

Europe.”90 The Historical Section represented a transitory process from nineteenth to twentieth century diplomacy, whereby expert historical advisors became an essential component in the conduct of foreign affairs.91 The Foreign Office’s decision to institutionalize an historical advisory position after 1919 emphasizes the significance politicians attached to historical knowledge (and history) and demonstrates the influential socio-political role historians occupied in the inter-war period.

This thesis will continue and expand upon the current historiographical reassessment by investigating the transnational intellectual networks that connected British and German scholars with diplomats, journalists, and political leaders. Its methodological approach follows the

88 Erik Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy: G. W. Prothero and the Experience of the Foreign Office Historical Section, 1917-20,” Historical Research 63, no. 151 (June 1990): 195. 89 C. K. Webster, The Study of International Politics: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth on Friday 23 February 1923 (London, 1923), pp. 7, 11. 90 Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919: Being Reminiscences of the Paris Peace Conference (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), 31-32. 91 Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 211.

19 collective biographical model. This approach enables historians to analyse how shared experiences informed and influenced communal perceptions. Unlike biographical dictionaries, which document information, collective biographies aim to micro-biographically examine a well-defined subject.92 This method allows historians to construct more informative depictions than personal testimonies or individual commentaries. Because collective biographies situate individuals within their personal and social contexts it is possible to consider “the individual and the collective without sacrificing the connection between the two.” The collective can be studied as a group without forcing the individual aggregates into identical categories.93 This approach requires a common design, source material, and consistent documentation.94 Researchers must establish explicit criteria for determining an investigatory subject and select uniform evidence for comparative analysis (e.g. professional scholarship, newspaper editorials, personal correspondence, etc.). The collective model enables historians to see beyond broader social tendencies (e.g. reconciliation, economic considerations, and deteriorating British-French relations after 1919) to observe how educational affiliations, personal relations, and conceptual frameworks affected and informed pro-German tendencies among historians. Prosopographical analysis allows us to reconstruct the intellectual networks that connected scholars with journalists, plenipotentiaries, and leading statesmen. This approach will enable us to understand how intellectuals problematize the ‘master-narrative’ (which prioritizes deteriorating relations).

It will also let us draw correlations between individual case studies and communal experiences to establish the intellectual, personal, and social influences that motivated this collective’s resolve

92 Joseba Agirreazkuenaga and Mikel Urquijo, “Collective Biography and Europe’s Cultural Legacy,” The European Legacy 20, no. 4 (2015): 381. 93 Charles Tilly, “Family History, Social History, and Social Change,” Journal of Family History 12, no. 1 (January 1987): 320-323. 94 Agirreazkuenaga and Urquijo, “Collective Biography and Europe’s Cultural Legacy,” 381.

20 to contest cultural conventions. The aim is not to interpret history through individuals, but to understand how individuals and collectives affect (and are affected by) history.95 Larger structural forces are important, but individual agents pull structural levers and “act within or against cultural norms.”96 Hence, this project presents a collective argument wherein individuals, institutions, and intellectual networks simultaneously shaped and informed popular and elite opinion on the German State.

This thesis contains three chronological chapters. The second chapter will consider the significance that educated and political elites attached to history (as an academic discipline) in the pre-war period. It will also consider the cultural, historical, and racial assumptions that underlay elite British perceptions towards Germany. One method by which to examine these assumptions is to consider how Germany was depicted in historical literature. By analysing articles, pamphlets, and textbooks this chapter will demonstrate that pre-war historians tended to view Germany favourably and attempted to use their professional scholarship to encourage congenial relations between Britain and Germany. Chapter Three will consider how historians approached Germany between 1914 and 1918. This chapter will argue that Germanophile historians did not turn Germanophobe after 1914 and will suggest that there were definite limits to wartime antagonism. By focusing upon how historians conceptualized Germany, this chapter will stress continuity, and argue that Germanophile historians continued to admire German cultural and intellectual achievements. This could be achieved because wartime historians continued to encourage and disseminate the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. The fourth chapter will demonstrate how this continuity allowed for an immediate reorientation in post-war literature. It

95 Agirreazkuenaga and Urquijo, “Collective Biography and Europe’s Cultural Legacy,” 374-382. 96 Robert I. Rotberg, “Biography and Historiography: Mutual Evidentiary and Interdisciplinary Considerations,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40, no. 3 (Winter 2010): 305.

21 will argue that historians provided the ‘vocabulary’ by which politicians could frame post-war reconciliation. Moreover, it will posit that historians provided the intellectual and moral justification for sympathetic policies towards Weimar Germany. Finally, the conclusion will consider the role Germanophile historians occupied in influencing and informing elite perceptions after Locarno (1925) and suggest several new questions which arise from this historiographical reassessment.

Chapter Two: Historians and the Historical Practice in the Pre-War Period

History, more than any other academic discipline, shaped elite British perceptions towards Germany in the pre-war period. Before the war, the historical practice was widely regarded as “an important socialization tool,” a means to inculcate civic-mindedness and to engender patriotism.97 James Wycliffe Headlam (-Morley), in an editorial printed in History, stated that historical knowledge was a communal responsibility: “the child must be brought up, not only as a gentleman, or as a scholar, or an athlete, but as the responsible member of a free, self-governing community. One of the highest aims of education must be citizenship. And there can be no citizenship without knowledge of history.”98 Historical knowledge was therefore viewed as a prerequisite to responsible citizenship. Edward Augustus Freeman, Regius Professor for Modern History at Oxford (1884-1892), formulated the famous axiom: “History is past

Politics, and Politics are present History.” Sir John Seeley, meanwhile, suggested that “Without

History, Politics has no root, without Politics, History has no fruit.”99 Albert Frederick Pollard, first chairman for the Historical Association (1906), affirmed that history “provides a sound basis for politics.” “Everyone has to be a citizen,” he maintained, but “he cannot be an intelligent citizen if he is utterly ignorant of the history of his country.”100 On that account, historical education was widely regarded as a nursery for “patriotism and public virtue.”101

During the decades before the First World War, history became an increasingly popular elementary school subject.102 By 1900, elementary school instruction had shifted away from the

97 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 231-232. 98 J. W. Headlam, “The Effect of the War on the Teaching of History,” History 3, no. 9 (April 1918), 15. 99 Quoted in H. L. Withers, “The Teaching of History in England in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Teaching of History and Papers, ed. H. L. Withers and J. H. Fowler (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1904), 156. 100 Quoted in Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 232. A. F. Pollard, On the Value of the Study of History, Historical Association Leaflet No. 26 (London: June 1911), 8. 101 The Times Educational Supplement (May 1887), p. 137. Report of a lecture, by H. C. Bowen. 102 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 222.

‘three R’s’ (reading, writing, and arithmetic), rigorous schoolroom discipline, and a rigidly constructed classroom hierarchy, towards a system that “stressed efficiency and manual training, commercial and technological progress, and a humanities curriculum centred on the development of patriotism, civic ideals, and basic knowledge about the nation and empire.”103 The Board for

Education’s 1904 Code of Regulations listed history as one of nine subjects considered mandatory for elementary school instruction.104 The regulatory code asserted that elementary schools should aim “to arouse in [children] a living interest in the ideals and achievements of mankind, and to bring them to some familiarity with the literature and history of their own country.” The school teacher should implant in the child industrious habits, self-control, courageous perseverance, deference to duty, and a readiness for self-sacrifice. This could be achieved by providing students with “general knowledge concerning the great persons and events of English History and the growth of the British Empire.”105 History inculcated a communal spirit and regulated potentially fragmenting social identities, such as class and gender. To construct an idealized national community, history programmes routinely emphasized ‘racial inheritance’ and a shared cultural heritage. Teachers explored socially inclusive categories (such as ‘race’ and ‘racial inheritance’) to create and reinforce communal solidarity. Elementary school textbooks cultivated a symbolic narrative whereby ‘Englishness’ was a socially constructed category which combined cultural considerations with racial attributes that could be traced back linearly to the Anglo-Saxons.106

103 Stephen Heathorn, “‘Let Us Remember That We, Too, Are English’: Constructions of Citizenship and National Identity in English Elementary School Reading Books, 1880-1914,” Victorian Studies 38, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 396- 397. 104 The other eight subjects were: the English Language, Arithmetic, Knowledge of the Common Phenomena of the External World, Geography, Drawing, Singing, Physical Exercises, and Plain Needleworking. 105 Board of Education, 1904 Code of Regulations for Public Elementary Schools (London: Wyman and Sons Ltd, 1904), 1-2. 106 Heathorn, “Constructions of Citizenship and National Identity in English Elementary School Reading Books,” 396-397.

The idea that Britain and Germany shared a common racial heritage formed the basis for cultural and racial Anglo-Saxonism, a sixteenth-century myth which reached its maturity in the late nineteenth-century.107 The tradition for a Saxon England originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with religious reformers, who “wished to demonstrate that England was returning to older, purer religious practices dating from before the Norman Conquest.” Their intensive efforts ensured that a well-defined myth was available to future generations.108 These ideas were appropriated and disseminated with a renewed vigour during the Romantic Period

(circa 1800-1850). John Kemble’s Saxons in England (1849) firmly placed British-German kinship on a scholarly foundation.109 Kemble believed that the origins for Britain’s greatness – its common law, representative institutions, and social order – were inherited from the Teutons.

The British owed nothing to the “degenerate Greeks and enervated Romans.”110 The Romantic

Spirit (which emphasized “pride in the past, in language, race, and national identities”) led scholars to subordinate institutional definitions to racial categories.111 During this period, comparative philologists began to link “language with race and nation,” and traced the English- language to a ‘prehistoric’ Saxon-Germanic past. This interest led historians to attribute “a far more complex, vigorous, and noble historical heritage” to the Germanic Peoples.112 The attendant shift in scientific interest “from the universal human species” to its comparative classification led scholars to establish racial hierarchies, which attributed “different innate characteristics and capabilities to different races, with the concomitant for ascribing superior

107 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 227. 108 Reginald Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 3 (July-September 1976): 387-389. 109 Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850, 403. 110 John M. Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici vol. I (London: Sumptibus Societatis, 1849), iii. 111 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 227. 112 Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850,” 390-391.

25 capacities to the [Saxon-Germanic] race.”113 Racial Anglo-Saxonism encouraged the conviction that Britain and Germany shared a unique world destiny.

Racial theories exerted a significant influence upon how historians formulated a distinctly

‘English’ historical consciousness, but not in a simple way. Numerous ideological systems, complimentary and contradictory, influenced British perceptions towards other peoples: imperial anthropology, racism, Orientalism, ‘Whig’ paternalism, national characteristics, cultural ethnocentrism (which treated alleged British characteristics as the universal norm), and a model for the evolutionary modernization of all peoples along British lines. Scholars and educated elites attached great weight to race and national characteristics, but these concepts took countless permutations, as ideas and viewpoints. Some Britons defined ‘race’ in genetic terms, with rigid and fixed outcomes, but they were a minority. Most Britons used the word ‘race’ as an euphemism for ‘nation’ (i.e. a ‘Welsh race’ or a ‘French race’). They relied on concepts of national characteristics to describe and explain the behaviour of other peoples. Though these characteristics were generally regarded as constant, they could also change. The ‘nation’, as

Ernest Barker defined it, was “a material basis with a spiritual superstructure.” The material basis contained three elements (or factors): race, environment, and population (or occupation). The spiritual superstructure cognitively connected these three factors. The ‘nation’ could “almost revolutionize its character,” if it quadrupled “its population through industrializing its occupation,” or through religious conversion.114 Between 1870-1945, British elites believed that many western and some non-western peoples, especially the Japanese, had changed their national

113 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 228; Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo- Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850,” 391. 114 Sir Ernest Barker, National Character and the Factors in its Formation (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1927), 1- 4.

26 characteristics.115 This concept underlay all liberal ideas about the civilizing effect of the British

Empire and, for that matter, many versions of racial Anglo-Saxonism.

During this time, history “was firmly establishing itself as an independent academic discipline.”116 The historical practice was modestly introduced at the University of Oxford in

1853 as a combined subject with Law. The Oxford School of Law and History was initially established to give idle country gentlemen “a valuable educating influence.”117 Between 1853 and 1872, seven hundred and ninety-seven students graduated from the integrated programme.

Then, in 1872, the combined curriculum was dissolved, and an independent Modern History

School emerged. The Modern History programme exceeded its limited expectations. Student enrolment rapidly surpassed both Classics and Litterae Humaniores (or ‘Greats’).118 The

University of Cambridge, meanwhile, implemented a special Tripos in History in 1873 and held its first examinations in 1875.119 By 1904, George Prothero, president for the Royal Historical

Society (1901-1905), could write confidently that the Modern History School at Cambridge was

“flourishing,” with student registration “improving” each year.120 The generation instructed at

Cambridge and Oxford immediately before 1914 received a moralistic education which idealized civic virtue, patriotism, and self-sacrifice. The Honours History Programmes at Cambridge and

Oxford provided future policy-making elites with an astonishing confidence in England’s remarkable past and enduring future. History professors concentrated on ‘objective’ moral

115 See e.g. John Ferris, “‘Worthy of Some Better Enemy?’: The British Estimate of the Imperial Japanese Army, 1919-1941, and the Fall of Singapore,” Canadian Journal of History 28, no. 2 (August 1993). 116 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 222. 117 Quoted in Reba Soffer, “Nation, Duty, Character and Confidence: History at Oxford, 1850-1914,” The Historical Journal 30, no. 1 (March 1987): 77. 118 Soffer, “Nation, Duty, Character and Confidence: History at Oxford, 1850-1914,” 77-78. 119 Withers, “The Teaching of History in England in the Nineteenth Century,” 158. 120 Quoted in Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 232. Prothero to Oscar Browning, 1 February 1904, The Papers of Oscar Browning, 1853-1983, University of Cambridge, King’s College Modern Archive Centre, Cambridge.

27 lessons which would prepare their students to lead Britain into a future entirely consistent with its historic past. Despite ubiquitous self-doubt following the First World War, politicians educated at Cambridge and Oxford clung to the ‘universal truths’ which they had energetically received as history undergraduates.121 These ‘self-evident’ certainties undoubtedly shaped

Britain’s political and educated elite.

Professors in Modern History faculties often encouraged pro-German sympathies. Sir

John Seeley, for example, affirmed that “as a rule, good works are in German.”122 Regius

Professor for Modern History at Cambridge from 1870 to 1895, Seeley was deeply influenced by

German scholarship, having studied in Germany.123 Reverence for German culture was not confined to Seeley, but pervaded his fellow historians, in particular those positioned at

Cambridge and Oxford.124 To be sure, German scholarship enjoyed a preeminent position within

British intellectual circles before 1914.125 H. A. L. Fisher, for instance, would reminisce that “to sit at the feet of some great German Professor, absorbing his publications, listening to his lectures, working in his seminary, was regarded as a valuable, perhaps as a necessary passport to the highest kind of academic career.” The names “Ranke and Mommsen, … Wilamowitz and

Lotze, were sounded again and again by their admiring disciplines in British lecture-rooms.”

Every year, Fisher avowed, “young graduates from our universities would repair to Berlin and

Heidelberg, to Gottingen and Bonn, to Jena and Tubingen.”126 The first biographer for Lord

James Bryce likewise recorded that “from his early youth,” Lord Bryce “had drunk deeply from

121 Soffer, “Nation, Duty, Character and Confidence: History at Oxford, 1850-1914,” 102-104. 122 John R. Seeley. Lectures and Essays (London: Macmillan and Co., 1870), 214. 123 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 222. 124 For a list of the names of the British academics from all fields who enjoyed a German education before 1914, see Stuart Wallace, War and Image of Germany: British Academics, 1914-1918 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1988), appendix 1. 125 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 222-223. 126 H. A. L. Fisher, An Unfinished Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 79-80.

28 the well of German literature and historical science,” and had counted among his happiest recollections “those student days in Heidelberg, in that delightful, old, idealistic Germany, which had been so easy and hospitable and so intent upon the things which minister to the higher needs of man.”127 The Oxford historian Alexander Carlyle affirmed that the position held by “the great

German nation in philosophy, science and literature was so powerful that students were bound to study German and go to Germany if they [showed] any promise.”128 German educational institutes were highly regarded for their academic research and scientific spirit (Wissenschaft).

Seeley noted that German students pursued original research more “methodically” and

“habitually” than their counterparts “at Oxford or Cambridge.”129 British intellectuals frequently praised German universities for their universal “freedom, courage, and learning.”130

Given the influential position that German education enjoyed within British intellectual life and the academic importance attached to ‘race’ and ‘racial inheritance’, pro-German sentiment among liberal (and radical) historians was understandably commonplace.131 Together, these factors suggest that an anti-German orientation had not yet pervaded historical scholarship.

To gain a “deeper insight into the historical establishment’s collective attitude towards”

Germany prior to 1914, one must examine the views promulgated within history textbooks and articles issued before the First World War.132 History textbooks served as important tools for transmitting idealized opinions, values, and world views.133 G. M. Trevelyan, Regius Professor at

Cambridge (1927-1943), noted that because “history is not an exact science but an

127 H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O. M. vol. II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), 126-127. 128 Quoted in Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 223. 129 Seeley, Lectures and Essays, 185-186. 130 Fisher, An Unfinished Autobiography, 79. 131 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 224. 132 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 230-231. 133 Steven Wai-Meng Siak, “Germanophilism in Britain: Non-Governmental Elites and the Limits to Anglo-German Antagonism, 1905-1914” (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997), 191.

29 interpretation,” opinion and variety inevitably intrude as factors.134 History was (and remains) an academic discipline shaped by personal bias, experience, and opinion. “Of all school subjects,” history was “most obviously a vehicle for the opinions” and attitudes held by its practitioners and their social class. History gave scope to various cultural, ethnic, and political expressions, and since these expressions were embedded in a traditional and often emotive narrative, they were more favourably received than ideas which emanated from other disciplines. For that reason, these subjective opinions readily implanted themselves in the individual mind as well as in the national consciousness.135

One method to determine how historians viewed the German Empire before 1914 is to consider how they approached German unification. Siak claims that historians “regarded the unified Germany as a beneficial presence in Europe, an embodiment of the liberal ideal of liberation and unification, a guarantor of the European balance of power, and the bastion of peace at the heart of the continent.”136 German unification as a positive influence was indeed an enduring theme in historical literature prior to the First World War. British historians tended to sympathize with the unified Germany. To elicit support for the German Empire, historians often depicted France as Europe’s traditional aggressor. Emily Hawtrey, for example, cited bitter

French resentment as the cause for the Franco-Prussian War. She observed that France had

“longed for a war which should humble their old enemies [Prussia].”137 On that account, France had “forced war upon Germany,” and had “ignorantly helped her to achieve unity.”138 From

Hawtrey’s perspective, German unification secured peace in Europe: “Germany is a progressive

134 George Macaulay Trevelyan, An Autobiography and Other Essays (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1949), 68. 135 Valerie Chancellor, History for their Masters: Opinion in the English History Textbook, 1800-1914 (Bath: Adams & Dart, 1970), 8. 136 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 250. 137 Emily Hawtrey, A Short History of Germany (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), 240. 138 Hawtrey, A Short History of Germany, 246.

30 nation and has a progressive Emperor … no longer do people feel that European peace is imperilled.”139 G. Barnett Smith, meanwhile, argued that Napoleon III, alarmed with Prussia’s rapid progress, had sought an occasion “for humbling her, and in … 1870, he rashly jumped to the conclusion that his destiny pointed him to Berlin.”140 Smith concluded that the Franco-

Prussian War was solely attributable to French jealousies and provocation. The French war party,

“with singular recklessness and culpability,” had attempted to humiliate the Prussian King at

Ems. However, Wilhelm I, “with great indignation,” refused to listen to Count Benedetti’s imperious demands. The frenzied excitement which foolishly seized the French upon their ambassador’s ignominious return, led Smith to surmise that no nation had ever rushed “so headlong upon its fate.”141

James Sime likewise blamed Napoleon III’s anxiety and irrationality for the Franco-

Prussian War. “The Emperor Napoleon,” he summarized, “had never heartily accepted the reconstitution of Germany, and … anxious for an opportunity to establish his waning popularity

…, resolved to make Leopold’s candidature the pretext for war with Germany.” The Prussians endeavoured to placate the French Emperor and forced Leopold to “formally resign his candidacy.” Napoleon, however, was “not content with this triumph,” and attempted to humiliate the Prussians, insisting that Wilhelm I “should give an assurance to France that the candidature

… would not be renewed.” Wilhelm, with “great dignity and moderation,” dismissed this request, and “hurried towards Berlin.”142 This dispute was only a pretence for war. Excited by recent Prussian success, France fought to maintain its “supposed supremacy in Europe.”

139 Hawtrey, A Short History of Germany, 265. 140 G. Barnett Smith, William I and the German Empire: A Biographical and Historical Sketch (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1887), 168. 141 Smith, William I and the German Empire, 166-168. 142 James Sime, History of Germany edition adapted for American Readers, ed. Edward A. Freeman (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1884), 258.

Germany, meanwhile, took “up arms in her own defence.” For centuries, France had “lost no opportunity for adding to” German divisions, “depriving her of her just place among the nations.”143 On that account, Sime depicted France as the traditional troublemaker in Europe, the agitator against whom continental coalitions were constantly formed. Moreover, he defended the

German resolution to annex Alsace and Lorraine, because the long-lost “German” provinces

“would henceforth form a defence against future French attacks.” Finally, his publication celebrated the German triumph since it united the Southern German States with the North

German Confederation: “all the German States,” he maintained, “are united under one head for great national ends.”144

Sime’s publication was later revised by Adolphus William Ward, “than whom England can supply no one better fitted to deal with matters for German History on all dates,” as E. A.

Freeman acknowledged in his preface to the edition adapted for American readers.145 Thomas

Frederick Tout, future President for the Royal Historical Society (1925-1929), affirmed that “all through his life, Ward was anxious to do all that was in his power to emphasize friendly relations between” Britain and Germany.146 Ward acted as editor and contributed two chapters on

Revolutionary Germany to the eleventh volume in the Cambridge Modern History series, The

Growth of Nationalities (1909). Ward selected the historian and military correspondent Frederick

Maurice to write the chapter on the Franco-Prussian War. Maurice, like Sime and Barnett, cited

French envy and jealousy as causing the conflict.147 Prussia’s success during the Austro-Prussian

143 Sime, History of Germany, ed. Edward A. Freeman, 259. 144 Sime, History of Germany, ed. Edward A. Freeman, 267-268. 145 E. A. Freeman, Introduction to History of Germany edition adapted for American readers, ed. E. A. Freeman (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1884), i. 146 T. F. Tout, “Memoir,” in A Bibliography of Sir Adolphus William Ward, 1837-1924, ed. Augustus F. Bartholomew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), xxvii. 147 Frederick Maurice, “The Franco-German War,” in The Cambridge Modern History, vol. 11, The Growth of Nationalities, eds. Adolphus W. Ward, George W. Prothero, and Stanley Leathes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), 576.

War “came to be regarded by the Imperialist Party as a humiliation which it was essential to avenge.” Thus, Napoleon III “began to scheme to obtain some advantage [over] Prussia, which would lower” its continental prestige, and enable France to secure European allies. Maurice, like his contemporaries, recounted the events at Ems from a pro-German perspective. Count

Benedetti, he noted, was directed to press Wilhelm I into renouncing Prince Leopold’s claim.

“While despatches were passing between Paris and Ems, it was announced from Spain that

Leopold had withdrawn” his candidature. This diplomatic triumph “was not sufficient for

Napoleon, who … dared not close the incident without inflicting a public [humiliation] upon

Prussia.” Napoleon III’s misplaced resentment led him to “adopt extreme measures.” On 14 July

1870 he “decided on war.”148 Maurice’s favourable attitude towards Germany continued into his conclusion. The German Unification Wars “had made Germany a united nation,” which “could proudly claim to be the first military Power in the world.”149 Liberal (and radical) historians celebrated German unity because it embodied the liberal tradition for national liberty and self- determination.

Numerous pre-war publications cited bitter French resentment and Napoleon III’s impulsivity as causes for the Franco-Prussian War. Such publications applauded Bismarck’s aggressive unification policies and celebrated German unity. L. Cecil Jane, like Sime and

Maurice, noted that Napoleon III “was not content with the [diplomatic] success which he had won” at Ems. Consequently, Benedetti “was instructed to demand a guarantee that the candidature would not be renewed.” When it was publicly announced that Wilhelm I had dismissed Benedetti, French “excitement rose to a fever pitch,” and Napoleon III, “against his own better judgement,” declared war. Jane suggested that if an instructive moral lesson was to be

148 Maurice, “The Franco-German War,” 577-578. 149 Maurice, “The Franco-German War,”, 612.

33 drawn from the conflict it should be one that stressed humility. Neither Bismarck nor Napoleon were above “uttering diplomatic lies.”150 The Prussian Chancellor, however, “was a less soaring exponent to the deceptive art, and his humility gained its just reward.” Bismarck was the “god- fearing hero,” who restored “unity to a long-divided race,” and conquered “his country’s hated foe.” Napoleon III, meanwhile, was unrestrained in his deception, and “had attempted to deceive on too great a scale.” Employing a theatrical motif, Jane argued that Napoleon had endeavoured to rule the “continent with play-acting,” but “the audience had hissed him off the stage.”151 Once again, German unification was viewed approvingly, and France was rebuked for its role as the long-established agitator in Europe.

James Wycliffe Headlam (-Morley) likewise stated that France, with “growing discontent and suspicion,” had sought a confrontation with Prussia to reassert its continental dominance.

The French believed that their mainland dominion was being threatened by the growth in

Prussian power.152 On that account, France opposed pan-German unification, and wished to keep the Southern States in semi-isolation. “This could not long continue,” Headlam argued, since the

German people “were looking forward to the time when the Southern States should join [together with] the North.” There were, he admitted, still factions within Austria and Bavaria which opposed unification; however, the unprovoked French declaration was “so completely without reason or excuse,” that it swept away “all minor party differences,” and helped Germany to achieve its unity.153 Headlam, an apologist for the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, maintained that “Bismarck was no Napoleon: he had determined that war was required, but he

150 L. Cecil Jane, From Metternich to Bismarck: A Textbook of European History, 1815-1878 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1910), 247-248. 151 Jane, From Metternich to Bismarck, 252-253. 152 James Wycliffe Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), 315. 153 Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 316-317.

34 did not go to the terrible arbitrament with a light heart … it was his strength that he never forgot that he was working, not for himself, but for others.”154 “We should be sure,” he confidently informed his readers, “that Bismarck would not have gone to war unless he believed it to be completely necessary.”155 Bismarck was magnanimous and honourable. The German Chancellor

“was not a man who from personal ambition would order thousands to go to their death or bring ruin to his country.”156 Headlam-Morley’s perceptions are significant, because he would later become the first historical advisor at the Foreign Office, when the position was officially instituted in 1920.

John Holland Rose, an influential nineteenth-century European historian, emphasized

France’s traditional role as agent provocateur: “if we look at the past, we find that our forefathers dreaded France far more than the wildest alarmists now dread Germany.”157 Its geographical position gave France “great advantages for an attack on England and English commence.” France had “ports in the North Sea, the English Channel, the Biscay Bay, and the

Mediterranean; and [to observe] ... her numerous harbours and extensive littoral was a task far harder than that which would await the British navy in … a war [with] Germany.”158 Like Sime,

Rose justified the decision to appropriate Alsace-Lorraine because it secured the German frontier: “we who live behind the rampart of the sea know little (save in times of panic) of the fear that besets a State which has no natural frontiers.” The annexation was defensible because it constructed “a barrier against” future French hostility. It was only natural that Germany wished

“to end the French menace.” If Britain had been in a similar position, “we should have done the

154 Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 251. 155 Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 315. 156 Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 251. 157 J. Holland Rose, “The Political History,” in Germany in the Nineteenth Century: Five Lectures, ed. J. H. Rose, C. H. Herford, E. C. K. Gonner, and M. E. Sadler (Manchester: The University of Manchester Press, 1912), 21. 158 Rose, “The Political History,” 21.

35 same.”159 By reiterating its geographical vulnerability, he explained German naval expansion:

“by land she is easily assailable on three sides; by sea she is less vulnerable; but there she labours under a great disadvantage, viz., that her oceanic commerce has to pass through ... the English

Channel, within easy striking distance for the French and British fleets at Brest, Plymouth,

Cherbourg, Portsmouth, and Dover.” This, he charged, “is what makes her nervous about her mercantile marine,” and “what makes her build a great fleet.” Once more, Rose reminded his readers “were we in her situation we should do the same.”160

Summarizing his argument, Rose concluded that German unity was a great “gain to

Europe and therefore to Great Britain.” German unification was a “wonderful work,” which would contribute to “world peace.” The German Unification Wars (1866-1871) served to secure the unguarded continent from expansionist conflicts, “which had so often lured France into false courses in the previous centuries.” From this viewpoint, it is obvious that France was an unstable instigator, whereas the German Empire was a beneficial presence which had helped to maintain

“peace for forty years.” Unity enabled Germany to develop its hitherto stunted political institutions, and so “helped to build up on a secure basis a new European System.” Unification

“effected at one stroke what Great Britain, with all her expenditure on blood and treasure, had never been able to effect, namely, to assure the European Balance in so decisive a manner as to make a great war” an impossible venture.161 The new balance would impose caution upon even the most unrestrained leaders. Like Headlam, Rose depicted Bismarck as the consummate statesman, whose expansionist policies were defensible because they served to secure national security. Since the German Chancellor had no practical alternative, the British public “must not

159 Rose, “The Political History,” 16-17. 160 Rose, “The Political History,” 21-22. 161 Rose, “The Political History,” 19-22.

36 be too hard on” him for seeking to guard Germany from France, “by annexing the old German lands.” Bismarck, he suggested, had often been misquoted, and was misrepresented when termed the ‘Iron Chancellor’. “One thing is tolerably certain,” he concluded, “the aims of the German

Rulers and of their Chancellors have been … peaceful.”162 Since Bismarck had helped to achieve

German unity, liberal scholars extolled his ‘benevolent’ and ‘magnanimous’ virtues. To liberal and radical historians, German unification was “a natural and welcome development,” which joined together the various German states.163

These arguments appeared in an edited collection which contained five lectures on nineteenth-century Germany. Rose’s lecture was concerned with German political history.

Charles H. Herford addressed German intellectual and literary history, while the economic and educational histories were written by E. C. K. Gonner and Michael E. Sadler respectively.

Herford’s contribution extolled nineteenth-century German literature. Educated in Berlin and an architect for the English Goethe Society (1886), Herford argued that Germany remained the nation which “most highly prized” individualism and originality.164 Sadler, meanwhile, emphasized the educational ties between Britain and Germany. “Every educational student in

England,” he affirmed, “owes a debt to what he has learnt from German writings and from

German example.” “Berlin, Jena, Marburg, Frankfurt-on-Main and Munich,” he continued,

“have each, in a remarkable degree, influenced the recent educational thought in this country

[Britain].”165 Sadler, an university administrator and educationalist, noted that the British and

162 Rose, “The Political History,” 16-18. 163 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 242. 164 C. H. Herford, “The Intellectual and Literary History,” in Germany in the Nineteenth Century: Five Lectures, ed. J. H. Rose, C. H. Herford, E. C. K. Gonner, and M. E. Sadler (Manchester: The University of Manchester Press, 1912), 75-77. 165 Michael E. Sadler, “The History of Education,” in Germany in the Nineteenth Century: Five Lectures, ed. J. H. Rose, C. H. Herford, E. C. K. Gonner, and M. E. Sadler (Manchester: The University of Manchester Press, 1912), 125.

German educational systems originated from and were “governed by closely related ideas” that connected life, sacrifice, and duty. He added that “they are far more closely akin to one another than is either ... to the present educational system in France.”166 Even in education, France was suspiciously foreign, whereas Britain and Germany shared a common tradition. Sadler’s conclusion advocated a more intimate relationship between Britain and Germany, advising that

“German and British education have much to gain from a closer understanding.” Over time, a more personal relationship would permit a constant interchange in experience and knowledge. It is apparent that pro-German and anti-French views pervaded British historical scholarship prior to the First World War. Before 1908, nineteenth-century foreign office correspondence was subject to obstructive censorship.167 These restrictions meant that universities rarely taught history after the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). This led political and military historians to perceive France as a continental (and imperial) rival and to view a weak and fragmented

Germany as a problem for British security. On that account, German unity was celebrated because it secured continental stability.

Countless pre-war historical texts were issued with the intent to lessen British-German antagonism. Rather than contribute to deteriorating diplomatic relations, historians “sought to affect a détente,” by accentuating Britain and Germany’s common racial heritage.168 Arthur

William Holland, for instance, emphasized Britain and Germany’s shared Teutonic lineage in A

Short History of Germany to the Present Day (1912). His work was published by the British-

German Friendship Society (the successor to the Anglo-German Friendship Committee), and his

166 Sadler, “The History of Education,” 125-126. 167 Wilson notes that “in 1908, no correspondence later than 1780 could be seen without restriction and censorship; correspondence between 1780 and 1850 was open to inspection, and could be copied, but only under special permit issued by the secretary of state.” Wilson, “Introduction: Governments, Historians, and ‘Historical Engineering’,” 5. 168 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 238.

38 intentions are immediately suggested in the introductory chapter. Britons and Germans, he argued, “belong to the same race, to a race which … we call Teutonic, or Germanic.”169 Theories which associated racial kinship to a shared Germanic origin permeated the educated classes, as did the conviction that British “social institutions, from ancient Saxon pedigree, were superior to” all others.170 British political and religious institutions were commonly believed to have originated in Saxon Germany, and to have been “developed in isolation in Britain.”171 Historians served this Meliorist myth more faithfully than any other academic profession. Nineteenth- century scholars confidently argued that the English-people had been assigned two special responsibilities in world history: the industrial task of conquering more than half the globe “for the use of man,” and the constitutional task of sharing their conquest, and showing other nations how this could be achieved.172 This supreme responsibility belonged to the entire Saxon-

Germanic genus rather than a single nation.173

This myth had an enduring hold on Victorian Britain. Historians accepted as axiomatic the view that English political, religious, and social institutions had “enjoyed a continuous history from ancient Saxon times.”174 The confident assertions concerning Britain’s ‘racial inheritance’ and ‘civilizing mission’ persevered into the Edwardian period. Pre-war history textbooks increasingly focused upon artificially constructed categories such as ‘race’ and ‘racial

169 Arthur William Holland, A Short History of Germany to the Present Day (London: The British-German Friendship Society, 1912), 5. 170 Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons (Montreal: Harvest House, 1982), 89. 171 Donald A. White, “Changing Views of the Adventus Saxonum in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century English Scholarship,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32, no. 4 (October-December 1971): 587. 172 Thomas Carlyle, “Chartism,” in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. IV (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 175. 173 Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Britain before 1850,” 390. 174 Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Britain before 1850,” 390.

39 inheritance’.175 By 1900, cultural and racial Anglo-Saxonism had reached its zenith and contained four essential principles: 1) the Germanic peoples were inherently superior to all others; 2) the English were originally German; 3) the qualities which rendered English political and social institutions the most free in the world were inherited from Germany; 4) the English, more than any other Germanic people, represented the ancestral genius and carried a special burden.176 This romanticized myth was developed and perpetuated to emphasize the cultural and historical link between the British and their Germanic forefathers. The Germanic peoples were extolled for their freedom and representative political institutions. This glorified ideal encouraged the belief that the Germanic love for independence and civil liberties had “been transposed by the Saxons in England into a system of free institutions.” Freedom and independence had been lost during the Norman Conquest, and it was not until after 1215 (Magna

Carta) that the English-people were “able to regain their long-lost freedoms.”177 Racial Anglo-

Saxonism was undeniably a self-serving ideology which encouraged the view that the English and German peoples were racially superior to all others and therefore shared a common

‘civilizing mission’. “The two peoples,” Holland reiterated, “are from the same blood.”178 This conviction unquestionably helped to encourage and promote pro-German sympathies in the pre- war period.

Holland’s conciliatory designs were further developed under the heading “The Germans as a Commercial People.” Here, he reminded his readers that the Germans were “first and foremost” a manufacturing people. “Their prime interests,” he maintained, “are neither naval nor

175 Heathorn, “Constructions of Citizenship and National Identity in English Elementary School Reading Books,” 395. 176 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 228. 177 Horsman, “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Britain before 1850,” 388-389. 178 Holland, A Short History of Germany to the Present Day, 5.

40 military, nor colonial, nor even educational, but commercial.”179 Holland, like William Harbutt

Dawson, concluded that Germany, as “a commercial nation,” was inevitably “a peaceful nation.”180 Its extensive commercial and industrial growth over a forty-year period, suggested its pacific nature. Hence, “Prussia, after years of struggle, has attained the position which she sought, and Germany, under her leadership, has now no need to fight unless it is to protect her great commercial interests, a right which she retains in common with every other civilized

Power.” His apologetic was carried even further when he sympathetically declared that Germany must defend itself from external threats (e.g. Russia). Despite deploring its vast military expenditure, Holland echoed Rose, when he suggested that Englishmen “bring themselves to look at this matter for a moment from the German viewpoint.” Holland concluded by reiterating the cultural and historic links that connected the two nations. “Readers of these pages and all who have paid attention to the history of Germany will perceive how close and numerous are the ties which link the peoples of that country and of England, and how unnatural would be any serious or lasting estrangement between them.”181 Holland included a suggested reading section, which catalogued numerous works which portrayed the German Empire ‘objectively’. His publication shows that historians did not just regard themselves as educators but also as political analysts and propagandists.182

This view is further illustrated in William Harbutt Dawson’s The Evolution of Modern

Germany (1908). Dawson’s position as an important source for information on Germany before

1914 is reflected in letter he received from Robert Donald, editor-in-chief at the Daily Chronicle.

179 Holland, A Short History of Germany to the Present Day, 121. 180 Holland, A Short History of Germany to the Present Day, 5; William Harbutt Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), 12. 181 Holland, A Short History of Germany to the Present Day, 127. 182 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 239.

Donald asked Dawson to write “one or two articles on a German subject,” noting that Lloyd

George, then Chancellor for the Exchequer, had recommended him “as the most competent authority to write them.”183 Dawson worked throughout the pre-war period to secure a better understanding between Britain and Germany. He believed that naval expansion was the

“principal obstacle” that prevented “the restoration in confidence between [the] two countries.”

On 1 November 1910, he wrote to the German historian and politician Dr. Adolph Wagner, “in the hope that [he] might … use [his] influence in Government circles,” to secure a conference on naval expenditure. Such a conference would remove the uncertainties that prohibited reconciliation, “and so relieve the existing strain.”184 Dawson also used his celebrated publications to promote friendship and reconciliation, and The Evolution of Modern Germany, which went through six impressions before the First World War, was his most influential work.185 His study largely ignored diplomatic considerations; instead, he delineated Germany’s economic and industrial transformation over a fifty-year period. His observations were intended to neither extol nor disparage the German Empire, but to relate how the Germans had advanced from an industrial standpoint, “to describe their efforts, energies, [and] successes,” not to discourage his British readers but to reassure them. The German Empire, he maintained, had doubtless become an economic competitor; however, there was no need for “disparagement,” since its industrial progress had been achieved through “means and methods which” were available “to the entire world.”186 Britain could learn from German experiences, above all in socio-economic organization, industrial legalisation, and national social insurance. Despite its

183 WHD 205: letter Robert Donald to W. H. Dawson, 10 November 1910. 184 WHD 204: letter W. H. Dawson to A. Wagner, 1 November 1910. 185 William Harbutt Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, new and revised edition (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1919), ii. 186 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, v-vi.

42 vast expenditure on armaments, its economic expansion inevitably rendered Germany the most

“pacific nation in Europe.”187

Both Dawson and Holland accepted as axiomatic the Cobdenite view that commerce had a civilizing affect upon industrializing nations. Numerous liberal and radical historians identified progress “as the gradual movement from militarism to industrialism,” and were therefore

“inclined to emphasize the relationship between commerce and peace.”188 Cobdenism (the view that free trade and laissez-faire internationalism were prerequisites to international trade and world peace) influenced how liberal and radical historians perceived German expansion (and unification). They believed that free trade and internationalism would unite mankind and render war obsolete. The great industrial nations “were now so economically interdependent” that a conflict between them would bankrupt the entire ‘civilized world’. Thus, war was “irrational and could only be supported by relying on assumptions about economic structure which were” outdated. It was understood that “once the politicians ... realized what this economic interdependence entailed,” international conflict would disappear.189 The economic historian J.

A. Hobson reminded his readers in 1913 that the bonds between Britain and Germany

(commercial, financial, intellectual, and moral) were “growing stronger and more numerous all the time.”190 British hostility towards Germany was illogical since their trading and financial connections were increasing each year.191 Perceiving German competition from a British viewpoint, Dawson opined that “British enterprise will have nothing to fear if only it will follow the large aims and emulate the courage and resolution of the pioneers of our national industry,

187 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 12. 188 P. J. Cain, “J. A. Hobson, Cobdenism, and the Radical Theory of Economic Imperialism, 1898-1914,” The Economic History Review, New Series 31, no. 4 (November 1978): 565-566. 189 Cain, “J. A. Hobson,” 580. 190 J. A. Hobson, The German Panic (London: The Cobden Club, 1913), 20. 191 Cain, “J. A. Hobson, Cobdenism, and the Radical Theory of Economic Imperialism,” 581.

43 who not only gave to British trade [its] pre-eminent position … but who even created,” the

German industries “whose assault is proving most effective.” The only practical and politic way to meet German competition was to adopt a friendly attitude that combined “inflexible good- humour … with an equally inflexible determination not to abandon ingloriously” Britain’s entrepreneurial tradition.192

Dawson, like Headlam and Rose, perceived Bismarck’s unification policies as a triumph for “sagacious statesmanship and racial tenacity.” Bismarck transformed a disunited Germany into “a world-empire, rich in all the material resources, with commerce in every sea, and territory on almost every continent.”193 His “fixed conviction,” was “that Germany had henceforth nothing to ask from other nations save the right to strengthen its frontiers and develop its resources in peace.” He declared Germany a “satiated State,” which desired no further territorial expansion. So long as Bismarck “held power, German foreign affairs continued to be conducted upon these sensible lines.” Bismarck, Dawson conceded, “did, indeed, turn his glance across the seas when, almost against his will, he was persuaded to acquire colonies,” yet this decision was not designed to upset the European Concert. The German population was expanding beyond its

“geographical and economic limits.” Hence, Germany needed new and receptive markets around the world, “in which manufacture [could] be exchanged for food.” Germany was “simply pursuing its inevitable destiny” – a supreme responsibility it shared with Britain. The British politician, he argued, “naturally looks exclusively to political causes” to explain Germany’s

Weltpolitik (world policy), and accordingly perceives these policies as “a deep-seated design against the existing balance … attributing it to territorial ambition pure and simple.” However,

“the candid student” should disregard “hypothetical motives,” because economic considerations

192 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, vii. 193 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 2.

44 alone “sufficiently explain why Germany is to-day turning its attention with increasing urgency to expanding its influence abroad.”194

From the above discussion it is apparent that British historians cultivated and even encouraged congenial relations with the German Empire before the First World War. However, the most important pre-war historical construct was the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. This concept came in at least two variants: one cultural, the other, geographical. The cultural variant emphasized German cultural achievements and distinguished them from the German Empire’s political immaturity. The geographical variant sought to physically (and conceptually) separate

Prussia from the ‘sentimental’ principalities (old Germany).195 This abstraction enabled British admiration for German cultural and scientific achievements to exist in tension with fears about

Prussian militarism. Germany could be castigated for its commitment to universal conscription and naval expansion, while simultaneously being lauded as the most “pacific nation in

Europe.”196 More importantly, historians could conceptualize the old principalities as idealistic and sentimental, while characterizing Prussia as despotic and militaristic. Citing the neo-Kantian philosopher, Friedrich Paulsen, Dawson observed that “two souls dwell in the German nation.”

The old principalities, while poor in substance, were rich in ideals. The German Empire while rich in substance had forfeited its earlier idealism. Once populated with “poets and thinkers,”

Germany was now a “nation for masterful combatants.” Since 1870, Germany had “devoted its undivided strength” to mastering the material realm and to achieving “political ascendency.”197

Dawson admired German cultural and intellectual achievements, but “he located them more in

194 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 334-336. 195 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 85. 196 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 12. 197 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 11-12.

45 the [recent] past than in the present.”198 “We know what old Germany gave to the world,” he proclaimed, “and for that … the world will be forever grateful: we do not know what modern

Germany … has to offer beyond its materialistic science and its merchandise.”199 Nonetheless, despite fundamental ideological changes, “scholarship is nowhere held in greater regard, learning is nowhere cultivated more resolutely and for its own sake, than in” Germany.200

More importantly, Dawson observed that when his compatriots disparaged Germany, they really were criticizing Prussia, “and consciously or not,” ignored “the fact that in but few things can Prussia be regarded as a typical and representative for the whole Empire.”

Notwithstanding its material wealth and efficient military structure, Prussia’s “political thought and institutions [were] far behind the smaller States in the South.” Those states were “altogether more modern” – their political institutions realized “in far greater fullness the representative principle.” Nonetheless, the autocratic, royal party in Prussia continued to remind the nation

“that the constitution under which it … governed [owed nothing] to popular assent.” Despite representative rule having been established for more than fifty-five years, the royal faction (and its conservative allies) continued to stifle democratic procedure. “Just as the old Conservative

Party,” was opposed to granting parliamentary government in the 1850s, “so the modern

Conservative Party sympathises far more with the Crown than with the people.” Not only in

Prussia’s “prevailing political spirit,” “but in its entire culture,” did it greatly differ from the more liberal and representative Southern States. Despite this, the German Empire’s political frailties were offset by Dawson’s conviction that its faults were “in the main ... faults

198 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 84. 199 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 16. 200 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 2-3.

[attributable to] youth.” Dawson perceived in its “youth, immaturity, and underdevelopment … hope for the future.”201

James Sime likewise allayed concerns that Prussia would politically dominate the

Southern States: “some fear lest Prussia should become too powerful, and the various German

States be moulded too much after one pattern. But influences remain to prevent such a result.”

Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg remained largely autonomous, and still regulated their own affairs. Each state maintained “a certain individuality,” whose roots were “to be found in the distant past.” Unity, he argued, had been achieved, but there would “always be unity in variety.”

Despite alluding to Prussian despotism, Sime reassured his readers that Bavaria, Baden,

Württemberg, and all the minor principalities would continue to control Prussia’s continental ambitions. Like Dawson, Sime extolled Germany’s cultural and intellectual achievements. The unified Germany “has maintained the high place in science, literature, and art which she had previously won for herself. No other nation has an intellectual life so rich and many-sided.”202

Furthermore, Sime proclaimed that every scientific discipline had “received new developments during the present century from Germany.” The German Empire was unrivalled in art, literature, music, and the physical sciences. The world was indebted to Germany for its great cultural and scientific advancements.203 From Sime’s viewpoint, German political immaturity and impulsivity were insignificant when compared to its cultural and scientific achievements.

The ‘two Germanies’ thesis (albeit a more critical version) is also discernible in J. Ellis

Barker’s Modern Germany, fourth edition (1912). Born Otto Julius Eltzbacher, Barker (who changed his name after war erupted in 1914) probed the old-new dichotomy when he

201 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 16-20 202 Sime, History of Germany, ed. Edward A. Freeman, 266-268. 203 Sime, History of Germany, ed. Edward A. Freeman, 268-270.

47 distinguished the old principalities as idealistic and sentimental, populated with “philosophers, poets, [and] composers,” while describing the German Empire as: “hard-headed, calculating, cunning, business-like, … and very up-to-date.”204 ‘Modern’ and ‘old’ Germany were two different countries. “Old Germany” continued “to vegetate and to dream dreams,” but under a different name and banner (Austria). Barker reminded his readers that “it should not be forgotten that” Germany’s romantic representatives (such as Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Wieland, Schlegel,

Uhland, Hegel, Fichte, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn) “belonged to old Germany and were non-Prussians.”205 The German Empire was nothing more than an aggrandized Prussia: the empire had adopted the Prussian monarch, Berlin remained the capital, and Prussians retained the most important administrative and bureaucratic positions. Barker noted that Wilhelm I,

“somewhat contemptuously, though very truly, said,” that the re-constituted Germany was merely “an enlarged Prussia.”206 From Barker’s standpoint, the old Germany was idealistic and easy-going. The German Empire, meanwhile, was bellicose, militaristic, and hard-headed.

Nonetheless, he offered some complimentary words for modern Germany. When comparing the

British and German chemical industries, Barker remarked “that the scientific and industrial part in the nation can learn much from … the chemical industry in Germany.”207 The ‘two

Germanies’ thesis featured again in the fifth edition, “revised and brought up to January

1915.”208 The edited volume contained several additional chapters, including one titled “How the

Military Rules Germany.” The chapter opened with an immediate reference to the ‘two

Germanies’ thesis. The present war had “been brought about by the German war faction …

204 J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany: Her Political and Economic Problems, Her Foreign and Domestic Policy, Her Ambitions, and the Causes of Her Success, 4th ed. (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1912), 12. 205 Barker, Modern Germany 4th ed., 12. 206 Barker, Modern Germany 4th ed., 23. 207 Barker, Modern Germany, 4th ed., 644. 208 J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany: Her Political and Economic Problems, Her Foreign and Domestic Policy, Her Ambitions, and the Causes of Her Success, 5th ed. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1915), i.

48 against the wish and will of the civil power.” There were “two powerful currents in Germany, an autocratic and a democratic one.” The average German, he voluntarily conceded, was

“undoubtedly peaceful,” but “in the struggle between … the military and the people, the military had proved victorious.”209 This wartime distinction is important because it allowed historians to differentiate between the good (old) Germany and the bad (new) Germany.

Pre-war historical literature is significant because it directly inspired revisionist scholarship after 1918, and informed and influenced government policies and public debates on issues such as territorial disputes, reparation payments, and war guilt. Historians often argue that the First World War inaugurated an abrupt transformation in historical literature and dismiss connections between history articles, pamphlets, and textbooks published before 1914 and those issued thereafter. This interpretation underrates the pliability and resilience which the ‘two

Germanies’ thesis enjoyed within early twentieth-century intellectual circles. That abstraction would continue to exercise a considerable influence upon historians even after hostilities erupted in 1914. More importantly, this continuity permitted an immediate reorientation in post-war literature and fuelled the desire to revive the idealistic, sentimental Germany. The ‘two

Germanies’ thesis would become much more significant in the inter-war period as liberal and radical historians worked to accommodate perceived German grievances.

209 Barker, Modern Germany, 5th ed., 798-829.

Chapter Three: British Historians and the Great War

Symbolically, on 1 August 1914, the day on which Germany declared war against Russia, nine academics submitted a formal protest in The Times against British military intervention.210

The editorial argued that Germany “was so akin to our own” that “war upon her in the interest of

Servia and Russia [would] be a sin against civilization.”211 Germany was “a nation leading the way in Arts and Sciences,” and all had “learnt and [were] learning from German scholars.”

Contemporary scholars often question why historians immediately assumed such a “prominent role in influencing public opinion and rallying the nation around the flag.” Steven Siak, for example, argues that “in sharp contrast to the [favourable] tone and attitude” displayed in pre- war textbooks, historical publications issued after 4 August 1914 “betrayed a distinct anti-

German orientation.”212 However, The Times manifesto suggested a definite limit to political dissent: “if by … honourable obligation, we be unhappily involved in war [with Germany], patriotism might still our mouths, but at this juncture we consider ourselves justified in protesting against being drawn into a struggle with a nation … with whom we have so much in common.”213 Twenty-four years earlier (1890), the influential philosopher and economist Henry

Sidgwick had written that even the most “thoughtful and moral” intellectual should silence their political opposition during wartime. Once war had commenced, it was “doubtless right for most if not all men to side with their country unreservedly,” since not even the most censorious scholar “should keep coldly aloof from patriotic sentiment.” Only before hostilities erupted,

210 The nine signatories were: C. G. Browne, Professor of Arabic, Cambridge; F. C. Burkitt, Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, J. F. Carpenter, Principal of Manchester College, Oxford; F. J. Foakes-Jackson, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, H. Latimer Jackson, Rector of Little Canfield, Essex; Kirsopp Lake, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard; W. M. Ramsey, Regius Professor of Humanity, Aberdeen; W. B. Selbie, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford; and J. J. Thomson, Cavendish Professor or Experimental Physics, Cambridge. 211 “Scholar’s Protest Against War with Germany,” The Times (London, England), 1 August 1914. 212 Steven Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 245. 213 “Scholar’s Protest Against War with Germany,” The Times (London, England), 1 August 1914.

“when the discordant cloud that is to cover the sky is … no bigger than a man’s hand,” could such “moral persons” be expected “to make an earnest and systematic” attempt at impartiality,

“and grapple practically and persistently with … the points at issue.”214

Contemporary historians maintain that wartime scholars enthusiastically carried out

“their patriotic and polemical duties.”215 Siak sees a demarcating line through August 1914, separating “the point at which a discernible pro-Germanism yielded to a distinct anti-German orientation.”216 He suggests that while “Germany had generally been viewed favourably before

August 1914, she was now treated with apprehension and hostility.” Following British mobilization historians began to publish vitriolic polemics which admonished Germany and justified Britain’s decision to intervene militarily.217 Siak’s analysis harmonizes with Peter

Firchow’s claim that the First World War represented a cultural watershed – a turning point in how British intellectuals perceived German national character. “By 1915,” Firchow explains,

“the German cousin was dead, never again to be resurrected except by cranks and Nazi- sympathizers.”218 Cline, meanwhile, argues that by September 1914 historians regarded

Germany’s “guilt as too self-evident to require discussion.” The historical establishment advanced an explanation for war which placed responsibility solely on Germany. This explanation had become virtually incontestable by the war’s second month.219 Consequently, modern historians conclude that the Great War inaugurated an abrupt transformation in historical literature and dismiss connections between history articles, pamphlets, and textbooks published

214 Henry Sidgwick, “The Morality of Strife,” The International Journal of Ethics vol. 1 (October 1890): 14. 215 See e.g. Steven Siak’s “‘The Blood that is in Our Veins Comes from German Ancestors’: British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” Catherine Ann Cline’s “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” and Stuart Wallace’s War and the Image of Germany, 1914-1918. Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 246. 216 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 222. 217 Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War,” 245. 218 Firchow, The Death of the German Cousin, 178. 219 Catherine Ann Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 44-46.

51 before 1914 and those issued thereafter. However, an alternative focus which concentrates upon how wartime historians (scholars) conceptualized Germany indicates continuity and suggests that historians continued to admire German cultural and intellectual achievements even if they located those accomplishments in the recent past.

British liberal and radical intellectuals overwhelmingly agreed that there were two

Germanies – old and new, good and bad. The old Germany (whose representatives included

Goethe, Kant, and Schiller) was poor in substance but rich in cultural achievements. Modern

Germany while rich in substance had forfeited its earlier idealism.220 Old Germany was identified as idealistic and sentimental, while new Germany was characterized as materialistic and dispassionate. On that account, Germany had become Prussianized. However, wartime historians continued to differentiate between the militarist, authoritarian Germany (Prussia) and the more easy-going, sentimental Germany (the Southwestern and Central States). Moreover, they often distinguished the civilian population, which they associated with the good old

Germany, from the militaristic, bellicose elite. The ‘two Germanies’ thesis (as noted above) had at least two variants: one cultural, the other geographical.221 During the war, historians continued to encourage and disseminate this pre-war conceptualization. “Of the two Germanys,” the historian and educationalist Michael E. Sadler wrote to a friend, “the one which you and we love is not responsible for this wickedness, except so far as it has not had the moral or physical courage enough to stab its Junkers in the face long ago.”222 Despite having observed Wilhelmine

Germany’s political hostility and impulsivity, the First World War came as a genuine shock to

220 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 12. 221 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 85. 222 Quoted in Wallace, War and the Image of Germany, 31.

52 most liberal historians. G. P. Gooch, for example, suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to work or entertain for several months.223

Gooch summarized his pre-war attitude in an autobiographical piece written in 1949:

“though I should not, like my old friend Lord Haldane, describe Germany as ‘my spiritual home’

– for I have several spiritual homes – I have always regarded it as my second country.”224 Gooch regarded German learning as an “inexhaustible treasure-house,” its “intensive exploration,” was his “most rewarding occupation.”225 Gooch, like his Germanophile contemporaries, was both emotionally and intellectually attached to Germany. Like W. H. Dawson, to whom he candidly wrote, he had received a German education and was married to a German woman. On that account, he perceived the conflict as a “civil war,” a view which he shared with his wife and most intimate friends.226 Despite his pro-German inclination, Gooch (like Dawson) was a patriotic Englishman, and belatedly supported the British war effort.227 Similar to most pro-

German scholars, his ability to endorse Britain’s intervention resulted from the German decision to violate Belgian neutrality: “of course I agree with you [Dawson] that no one alive can ever forget or forgive the attack on Belgium, which seems to me one of the greatest crimes in history.”228 Dawson also supported Britain’s armed intervention; however, like Gooch, he did not turn Germanophobe nor did he produce vitriolic propaganda. Gooch praised Dawson’s wartime publications for their “dispassionate” views, “moderate spirit and clear vision.”229

Throughout the war, Gooch routinely solicited “moderately-worded” commentaries from

Dawson. In 1918, Gooch requested an article from Dawson on “opinion in Germany,” noting

223 WHD 269: letter Gooch to Dawson, 24 March 1915. 224 Quoted in Eyck, G. P. Gooch, 32. 225 G. P. Gooch, Under Six Reigns (London: Longmans, 1958), 39-40. 226 WHD 269: letter Gooch to Dawson, 24 March 1915. 227 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 87. 228 WHD 269: letter Gooch to Dawson, 24 March 1915. 229 WHD 347: letter Gooch to Dawson, 28 October 1917.

53 that “I need hardly say that I do not want any tub-thumping or Northcliffe invective, and that is why I apply to you.”230

Despite hostilities, Dawson still admired Germany’s cultural and intellectual achievements. This is evidently clear in his introduction to Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke’s

History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. Ironically, the war had initiated a renewed interest in German history and philosophy. On that account, Treitschke’s History was translated into English in six volumes beginning in 1915.231 Dawson’s introduction emphasized the duality inherent in the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. Treitschke’s History was “what he meant it to be – a clarion call to national consciousness and an inspiration to national devotion.” His emphasis on

“nationality and the national standpoint caused him to set at defiance … the most cherished canons in the historical science, for it made detachment and objectivity impossible.” This,

Dawson argued, led Treitschke “into partisanship and special advocacy,” to prioritize racial pride and patriotism over impartiality and equanimity. “Moderation,” Dawson observed, “was not his special grace, nor was judicial temperament his special gift.” These virtues while not the historians’ only attributes, were essential to the historical craft.232 Nonetheless, Treitschke’s

History remained a “literary masterpiece, one of the foremost contributions … to the historical science.” That it took thirty-six years to translate his “great literary achievement” was regretful, almost shameful.233 More importantly, Dawson noted that “if Treitschke’s temper as a historian has received much adverse criticism, his literary style has received no less praise, and deservedly so.”234 Even in wartime, Dawson acknowledged a persistent indebtedness to Treitschke: “even at

230 WHD 377: letter Gooch to Dawson, 1 July 1918. 231 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 88. 232 William Harbutt Dawson, introduction to Treitschke’s History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century vol. 1, trans. Eden Paul and Cedar Paul (New York: McBride, Nast and Company, 1915), viii-ix. 233 Dawson, introduction to Treitschke’s History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, v. 234 Dawson, introduction to Treitschke’s History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, x.

54 this long distance of time the instincts of loyalty and gratitude refuse to be overborne, and I confess that I, for one, am still so unredeemed that, were I required to throw stones at Heinrich von Treitschke, I should wish my stones to be pebbles, and when I had thrown them I should want to run away.”235 Considering the time and context, his remarks can easily be viewed as conciliatory – issued with the intention to lessen wartime hostilities.

The introduction to Dawson’s 1915 publication What is Wrong with Germany? ended “on a melancholic note,” with the historian observing: “this is the first book upon Germany which I have written without pleasure.” Echoing Henry Sidgwick, Dawson acknowledged the patriotic responsibilities entrusted to public intellectuals: “had I not believed that it would serve a nationalistic purpose I should have shrunk from the mental struggle which the effort has cost me.”236 The subject was difficult “for one who has sincerely striven during many … years … to help forward the reconciliation between two great nations.” Despite his Germanophile tendencies, Dawson (like Sidgwick’s “thoughtful and moral” scholar) embraced his patriotic duties.237 Nonetheless, he continued to distinguish the ruling militaristic caste from the honest, good-natured German citizen. He argued that

official Germany, military Germany, and to some extent financial and industrial Germany – in other words, the ruling classes – have long been bitterly hostile to us, but to the last there were large sections of the population which were earnestly endeavouring to bring about a good understanding between the two countries and contemplated the possibility of armed conflict with horror and dread.

Furthermore, millions “resident in the Reichsland and in the disaffected provinces – the Polish districts, Schleswig-Holstein, and old Hanover – cannot be regarded as our enemies save in a formal sense.” The English-people would forever remain sympathetic towards those who resided

235 WHD 2144/81: William Harbutt Dawson, “Some Personal Memories of Treitschke,” Nineteenth Century (January 1915), 158. 236 William Harbutt Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany? (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1915), xi. 237 Sidgwick, “The Morality of Strife,” 14.

55 in South and Central Germany. He admitted that the “distinction between the constitutionally hostile and the naturally friendly elements” within Germany was presently inconsequential.

Nonetheless, it was “important to know how far the nation might be expected to stand together” should an offer be proposed for a negotiated peace settlement. Such a settlement would marginalize Prussian militarism and transform the constitutional system which had hitherto made the people victim to an unrestricted military despotism.238 Even in 1915, Dawson contemplated the need for a generous peace settlement which would ultimately reintegrate Germany back into the European Concert.

Dawson concluded his publication with a chapter on potential “reforms from within and from without.” Here, he identified the “possible measures for remedying the issues that have been shown to be amiss with Germany.”239 Militarism was “essentially a Prussian institution,” which had been forced autocratically upon the Southern and Central States. If Germany were to be defeated militarily, these States would resent Prussia. Prussia’s defeat would discredit and weaken militarism and give the democratic elements within Germany the impetus to oppose and overthrow the autocratic military caste. When discussing militarism, it was essential “to discriminate, for though the whole nation suffers from the effects, it does not equally share the militaristic spirit.” “No one” would ever think to discuss “Bavarian, or Saxon, or Württemberg militarism … the words would not fit.”240 Militarism was “a Prussian growth,” and had “been forced upon Germany by Prussia” – a state which had been “established by force and maintained by force down to the present time.” Dawson identified militarism with the Prussian Junkers, a jingoistic social class which had made “imperial constitutionalism a mockery,” and had left

238 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, x. 239 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 213. 240 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 113.

Prussia oblivious to “any genuine democratic government.” Prussian militarism was responsible for committing “Germany to a war against civilization.”241 Though Germany was united in the present struggle, the German people were overwhelmingly “at one with foreign critics in recognizing that militarism,” and its attendant evils, were “not a source for pride or for real national strength.”242

Dawson argued that “among the educated and commercial classes … there are unquestionably many … who have remained” agreeable and sympathetic towards Britain.

However, the only social group “which has not been carried away as a class … is the working class, which knows too well that liberty comes from the West.” This knowledge prevented the working class from indiscriminately vilifying Britain, “a nation whose political institutions have been its envy, hope, and inspiration for over a generation.” The fact that the working class had embraced “the national cause and thrown themselves wholeheartedly into its prosecution,” did not mean that they endorsed the policies or unscrupulous diplomatic manoeuvring which had led to the war. This, Dawson noted, had been “made perfectly clear by the Socialist Party in the

Reichstag,” in August 1914, when “it declared that in voting supplies it dissociated itself entirely from the Government’s foreign policy, and hinted that this policy had brought about the war.”

The Social Democratic Party, which represented more than four million electors, opposed the chauvinistic militarist caste which dominated Berlin.243 The Socialist Party drew its support from

South and Central Germany. No one “can have extended intercourse with” Germany, “without realizing the important political, social, and temperamental differences which separate North and

South.” This discord created a cultural, intellectual, and political incompatibility between the

241 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 113-115. 242 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 130. 243 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 185-186.

Southern and Central German States and Prussia.244 Here, Dawson’s argument epitomizes the geographical division inherent in the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. Since Prussian militarism was irreconcilable with his sympathetic narrative he distinguished Prussia from the idealistic principalities. This incompatibility was historical and had existed long before the old principalities united with Prussia.

Prussia, Dawson avowed, was a disruptive influence – “it was no mere political accident” that the South and Central German States had delayed their union with the North German

Confederation. Even now, “there is no greater political fiction extant than the idea that the

German States are” happily united, “eager to out vie each other in individual self-effacement for the common cause.” Responsibility for this disunity belonged to Prussia. From the beginning, its

“undue influence, its arrogance, and its continual inroads upon particularist rights and sentiment

[had] evoked deep resentment and created widespread alarm.” The smaller states (i.e. the old principalities) remained in the German Empire because it was a political necessity, “their only existing guarantee and security against Prussian aggression.”245 The cause for this deep-seated incompatibility was evolutionary. During the time that the “conquerors and colonists” in northeast Germany were still trying to establish “themselves in that unpromising region, winning victories over hostile tribes, inhospitable climate, and penurious soil,” southwestern Germany had achieved ‘civilization’. The South German States continued to evolve culturally, acting as a nursery for German civilization – “home to its poetry and philosophy, its music and art.” Once again, the reader was reminded that Germany’s cultural representatives were non-Prussian:

“Lessing, Fichte, and Wagner were Saxons, Holbein and Durer were Bavarians, Goethe was a

Frankfurter, Wieland, Schiller, and Hegel were Swabians, Beethoven was a Rhinelander, and

244 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 192. 245 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 192-194.

Bach a Thuringian.” For that reason, the South regarded Prussia as barbarous and uncivilized, while Prussia despised the Southern and Central States for their sensitivities and weakness.

Prussia had never led Germany in either intellectual or political matters, “all real advances in popular liberty have been made in the South.”246

Dawson’s analysis integrated elements found in both the cultural and geographical variants associated with the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. First, his evaluation endeavoured to conceptually separate Prussia (and east Germany) from the old, idealistic principalities.

Secondly, he emphasized German cultural and intellectual achievements and distinguished them from Wilhelmine Germany’s political immaturity and impulsivity. More importantly, he accredited German cultural accomplishments to the South and Central German States. This was designed to dissociate the ‘good’, idealistic Germany from the autocratic, militaristic Prussia.

Simultaneously, he attributed Germany’s political immaturity and underdevelopment exclusively to Prussia, whose special contribution was authoritarian statism. This despotic feature was

“antipathetic and alien to the South.”247 Dawson’s argument also suggests that the ‘two

Germanies’ thesis had a third form – a political variant. The Socialist Party, he argued, was the only political organization which “had the courage to … strenuously and persistently” combat

Prussian despotism.248 Despite his overall approval, Dawson believed that the German people required external support if they were to enact the constitutional amendments required to reform and rehabilitate their national character. If Imperial Germany were victorious it would prove infinitely more disastrous for its people than defeat. Historical precedent suggested that success would legitimize the militaristic doctrine, and “further confirm and perpetuate the institution in

246 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 195-196. 247 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 196. 248 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 52.

59 which that doctrine is embodied.”249 The German people were too docile and obedient to overthrow their tyrannical ‘War Lord’ – the revolutionary spirit was incompatible with their national character. The general population’s failure to respond indignantly to their government’s decision to violently infringe upon Belgian neutrality indicated their complicit passivity and suggested the need for outside pressure to ensure that Germany upheld its future treaty obligations to small and independent states. For Dawson, the unprovoked attack on Belgium significantly influenced his decision to endorse the British war effort.

The German resolution to invade Belgium was also a decisive factor in determining the historian and politician James Bryce’s attitude towards the war – as it was for most liberal (and some radical) intellectuals.250 Bryce, like Dawson and Gooch, was deeply attached to Germany on both an emotional and intellectual level. Thus, he made sure to distinguish the good (old)

Germany from the bad (new) Germany. His biographer, H. A. L. Fisher, noted that although he was alive to the potential menace which Prussian militarism presented, Bryce “had incessantly hoped and believed that the moderate forces and good sense which he knew to be widely spread among the German people would prevail against the mania for violence.”251 For that reason, he was invariably inclined to absolve the individual, private soldier from wrongdoing. The German peasant, he wrote, was “a good, simple, kindly fellow” – merely a “passive instrument,” with a penchant for “implicit obedience.”252 Enlisted as a private soldier, the German peasant was forced to execute his orders because his superiors were “extremely severe in military discipline,”

– they would “shoot readily for a minor infraction.” Bryce noted that even “the officers were

249 Dawson, What is Wrong with Germany?, 226. 250 Wallace, War and the Image of Germany, 32. 251 Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, 127. 252 James Bryce, introduction to The Belgian Deportations, ed. Arnold J. Toynbee (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1917.), 9.

60 shocked by what they were forced to do.” They obeyed orders, he admitted, because if an officer deliberately disregarded a military directive, he would be shot. Thus, Bryce concluded that “the

Higher German Command” was to blame, “the authority that issued the orders [was] guilty.” The severities committed in Belgium were methodical – designed to “terrorize the civilian population, to break [their] courage.” Like Dawson, Bryce dissociated the average citizen from the barbarous acts committed in Belgium. The German people had been fed fictitious stories to encourage their compliance, “they had been made to believe in cruelties alleged [against] …

French and English combatants.” Once Germany had been defeated militarily, the people would overthrow their ruling “military caste and repudiate its nefarious doctrines.”253

One year earlier, Bryce had argued that the First World War was a conflict between two irreconcilable principles. On the one side, there was a “doctrine that the State is, like the individual, subject to a moral law and bound in honour to observe its promises.” On the German side, “there is a doctrine that … the State is Power, … that war is necessary and even desirable as a factor in progress … that the State may disregard all obligations, and that what is called military necessity justifies harshness and cruelty in war.” Bryce did not attribute this doctrine to the German people:

for I do not know how far these doctrines are held outside the military and naval caste which has now unhappily gained control of German policy, and I cannot believe that the German people, as I have hitherto known them, ever since I studied at a German University more than fifty years ago, could possibly approve of the action of their Government if their Government suffered them to know the facts relating to the origins and conduct of the war as those facts are known to the rest of the world.

Thus, “we have … no hatred towards the German people. We do not grudge them their prosperity. Neither have we any wish to break up Germany, destroying her national unity, or to

253 Bryce, introduction to The Belgian Deportations, 9-12.

61 interfere in any way with her internal politics. Our quarrel is with the German Government.”254

Only after he had distinguished between the government and its people did Bryce feel comfortable supporting the British war effort.255 Bryce also encouraged the cultural variant found in the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. In “time past,” Englishmen had known and admired

German achievements “in literature, learning and science, … had desired peace with them, [and] had been the constant advocates for friendship between the two nations.”256 Such Englishmen did not cease in their admiration for German cultural or intellectual achievements. Nonetheless, the militaristic doctrine which the German government had adopted endangered civilization. For that reason, even ‘peace-loving’ Englishmen were determined to continue the war until its victorious conclusion. Once again, the German decision to invade Belgium – “without provocation” – was used to vindicate British intervention.

Even the Bryce Report on alleged German outrages committed in Belgium readily differentiated between the ‘good-natured’ peasantry and the ruling military caste.257 Moreover, the committee (which included three historians) discriminated between the cruel and obedient

Prussian officer and the private soldier.258 The Prussian officer deified aggressive force – to him war was a “sacred mission … the highest function [available to] the omnipotent State.” The

Prussian Kingdom, “itself as much an armed force as a State,” encouraged viciousness, deference, and obedience. “Ordinary morality and sentiment” vanished in its presence, replaced by a militaristic doctrine which justified any “means that [could] conduce success.” The militarist elite legitimized and endorsed cruelty because it promised territorial conquest. This

254 Bryce, The Attitude of Great Britain in the Present War, 25-26. 255 Wallace, War and the Image of Germany, 33. 256 Bryce, The Attitude of Great Britain in the Present War, 24. 257 James Bryce, et al., Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, 44-45. 258 The committee included three historians: James Bryce, Frederick Pollock, and H. A. L. Fisher. The remaining four members were: Edward Clarke (barrister), Alfred Hopkinson (academic), Kenelm E. Digby (civil servant), and Harold Cox (politician).

62 doctrine, however, was not “a national doctrine, for it neither springs from nor reflects the mind and feelings of the German people as they have heretofore been known to other nations.” Rather, it was “a military doctrine … a theory held by a ruling caste who have brooded and thought, written and talked and dreamed about War until they have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotised by its spirit.”259 This was not the first time that a false doctrine, “disguising itself as loyalty to a State or to a Church,” had been used to pervert national character.

Despite their mandate to report on alleged German atrocities, the committee members continued to differentiate between the ‘two Germanies’. They argued that the present outrages had not resulted from “any special ferocity” in the common soldiery, “for whoever has travelled among the German peasantry knows that they are as kindly and good-natured as any people in

Europe.” Besides, the cruelties perpetrated in Belgium and France were “too widespread and too uniform in their character to be mere sporadic outbursts.” Rather, they were contrived “to strike terror into the civilian population,” and were directed from Berlin.260 These atrocities were designed to “dishearten the Belgian troops … to crush down [their] resistance and extinguish

[their] self-defence,” and had been set forth in the German Official Monograph on Land Warfare

(Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege).261 This view pervaded the German General Staff and had engendered the conviction that martial exigencies justified excessive cruelties, “and upon this principle … the Prussian officers acted.” Though propagandistic in purpose, the Bryce Report continued to promulgate the notion that there were ‘two Germanies’. The distinction between the militaristic, compliant (Prussian) officer and the good-natured, kindly private suggests that historians continued to distinguish the old Germany from the new Germany. The division

259 Bryce, et al., Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, 43-45. 260 Bryce, et al., Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, 44. 261 The War Book of the German General Staff: The Usages of War on Land, trans. J. H. Morgan (New York: McBride, Nast, and Company, 1915).

63 between old and new, good and bad is made further explicit in the following passage: “those who can recall the war in 1870 will remember that no charges resembling those proved by these depositions were then established.”262 This argument suggests that the ‘two Germanies’ thesis included a fourth form – a temporal variant. Old Germany, the committee suggested, would not have committed such barbarities. The overwhelming influence Prussia enjoyed within Imperial

Germany was the only explanation for the vindictive cruelties perpetrated in Belgium and

France. The decision to absolve the private, individual, non-Prussian combatant indicates that

Bryce and his colleagues continued to endorse the geographical variant associated with the ‘two

Germanies’. That these moderate views survived after hostilities erupted suggests continuity rather than an abrupt transformation. Bryce often repeated his view that the German people did not bear the same guilt as their militaristic leaders.263

Reviewing J. H. Morgan’s German Atrocities: An Official Investigation (1916), Bryce repudiated the argument that the German people “share in the all the guilt [attached to] their

Government.” The “ferocious language” used in the German Press should not be taken as evidence that the entire nation supported the war effort. Englishmen “must remember how severe is the German censorship, how accustomed the Germans are to believe what their Government tells them, how mendacious the … authorities have been in [all their] accounts.” The German mind had been supplied with nothing but fabrications and falsehoods ever since the war had commenced, “and it now believes, absurd as the belief is, that it is the innocent victim.”

Whenever a voice was raised to proclaim the truth and plead for good-will, “that voice [was] instantly silenced.” Bryce hoped that after the war, when “the facts hitherto concealed from the people” became known and were “reflected on with calmness,” there would be condemnation for

262 Bryce, et al., Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, 43-45. 263 Wallace, War and the Image of Germany, 182.

64 the brutalities committed in Belgium and France. He anticipated that Germany and Austria (the

Central Powers), would “join in the efforts … to regulate and mitigate” future conflicts.264 His review was appended to Morgan’s publication, but Bryce refused to contribute an introduction because Morgan endorsed retributive violence.265 This practice was intolerable to Bryce, since he believed that the peasant conscript was an innocent instrument. The individual combatant was not responsible for the nefarious excesses committed in Belgium. Bryce referenced Morgan’s translated edition, The German War Book, as evidence that the German High Command had deliberately planned the barbarities perpetrated against civilian populations.266 The War Book demonstrated that the peasant conscript was himself a victim, compelled to obediently execute his military directives. Even in his introduction to Arnold Toynbee’s Belgian Deportations

(1916), which addressed forced labour and relocation – which Bryce considered “virtual slavery”

– he still exonerated the individual combatant.267 This sentiment enabled Bryce to support a sympathetic approach towards British-German relations in the inter-war period and led him to advocate for post-war reconciliation.

The other academics on the Bryce Commission also opposed retributive violence. H. A.

L. Fisher stressed that whatever the Germans might do, it was for the British “to show the world how … gentlemen conduct the most arduous and terrible business in life.” Unlike the Prussians,

British sailors and soldiers were “chivalrous, temperate, and disciplined.”268 Following the deliberate destruction at Louvain, the eminent jurist and historian Sir Frederick Pollock warned

“let there be no wild discussion on reprisals.” Justice demanded retribution, “but a retribution

264 The Rt. Hon. Viscount Bryce, “A Review of German Atrocities,” in German Atrocities: An Official Investigation, ed. J. H. Morgan (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1916), 188-190. 265 Wallace, War and the Image of Germany, 182. 266 Bryce, “A Review of German Atrocities,” 190-192. 267 Bryce, introduction to The Belgian Deportations, 5. 268 H. A. L. Fisher, The War: Its Causes and Issues (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914), 30.

65 falling on the true culprits, and not only exemplary but judicial and dispassionate.” The “true culprits,” he protested, were “the Prussian militarists,” whose “calculated wickedness” exceeded any war crime “committed since the Thirty Years’ War.” Unlike the ‘horrible’ “Prussian commanders and their underlings,” the British would “continue to observe the laws” which governed “civilized warfare.”269 The archaeologist and classicist Sir Arthur Evans shared

Pollock’s assessment, and referred to the sack at Louvain as a “Prussian Holocaust.”270 Fisher, like Pollock and Evans, denounced Prussian militarism for the outrages committed in Belgium and France, “for it is Prussia, not Germany, which is at the root of the evil.”271 Fisher exonerated the German “common folk,” since the war had been represented to them as a defensive act against an aggressive autocracy (i.e. Russia). “The man in the street” could not be blamed for

Berlin’s decision to crush an “innocent and unoffending State.” The average citizen, like the private combatant, was not culpable for the excesses committed in Belgium and France. Both

Fisher and Pollock agreed that Prussia, and not Germany, was responsible for the outrages perpetrated at Louvain (and in Belgium).272 Fisher’s wartime arguments are significant because as President at the Board for Education (1916-1922), he was consistently near the decision- making centre in Whitehall.

Historians tended to suggest that Prussia (the ‘real’ antagonist) was “German in little save language.” Citing an anonymous author, the Oxford historian H. E. Egerton argued that the explanation for “everything intolerable in modern Germany is Prussian dominance.”273 Like

Bryce, Egerton’s source noted that the German peasant was “docile to authority.” He accepted

269 Frederick Pollock, “Letters on the War,” The Times (London, England), 1 September 1914. 270 Arthur Evans, “The Moral of the Holocaust,” The Times (London, England), 1 September 1914. 271 Fisher, The War, 24. 272 Fisher, The War, 24-30. 273 H. E. Egerton, “The British Dominions and the War,” Oxford Pamphlets 1914 no. 21 (London: Oxford University Press, 1914), 20.

66 and indeed demanded State guidance. The author claimed that “under Prussian influence German theories have … hardened into a drilled and disciplined national monomania.” Prussia has “now plunged Europe into the most terrible … war in history, and only war has revealed how powerful and how demoralizing their teaching has been.” Once again, the innocent peasant conscript was absolved from wrongdoing. Responsibility for the atrocities committed in Belgium and Northern

France was directed towards the militaristic ruling caste.274 Bismarck, who had previously been portrayed as a ‘god-fearing hero’, was now blamed for fastening “Prussian autocracy, with its reactionary and militarist discipline, upon the whole German people.”275 Prussia was depicted as alien. Morgan noted that the Prussians were not from the “Teutonic Genus” but were “a ‘throw- back’ to some Tartar Stock.”276 “Even the word ‘Prussia’ is not German,” wrote J. W. Allen. The

Prussians, “in whom Treitschke managed to see the [quintessential] Germanic,” were “at bottom, either Germanised Slavs or at most … a mixture between Slavs and Germans.” Like Egerton,

Allen argued that Imperial Germany was insufferable because “the ruling and directing force … is Prussia.” Much the same as Morgan, he differentiated between the Prussians and the ‘real’

Germans. The ‘real’ Germans resided in southwestern Germany, “in the Rhineland, or in the

South and in Holland and Switzerland.” Both Allen and Morgan embraced the geographical separation encouraged by the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. Allen, for one, regarded the Elbe River as demarcating the division between Germany (civilization) and Prussia (barbarity). These arguments applied racial motifs to dissociate Prussia from the ‘real’ Germany. Previously, ‘race’ and ‘racial inheritance’ had been employed to applaud pan-German unification. Historians now argued that Prussia was ‘Slavic’, because during the tenth and eleventh centuries, everything “in

274 The Round Table, “Germany and the Prussian Spirit,” in British and German Ideals: The Meaning of the War, ed. Members of The Round Table, a Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Empire (London, 1915), 86-87. 275 L. Cecil Jane, From Metternich to Bismarck, 252-253; The Round Table, “Germany and the Prussian Spirit,” 86. 276 J. H. Morgan, German Atrocities: An Official Investigation (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1916), 42-45.

67 what is now Northern Germany was Slavonic.”277 This argument used the traditional British

Liberal distaste for Russia to defend the ‘real’, good Germany.

The role which historians occupied in influencing and informing wartime public opinion is suggested in George Prothero’s letter-to-the-editor at the Times. Prothero proposed that an association be formed “which would undertake to send qualified speakers to address working- class constituencies throughout the country … to explain the reasons which … compel us to take up the glove.” Despite advocating for public lectures on topical subjects, Prothero asserted “that such addresses should [not] be bitter nor inflammatory; they should merely aim at setting forth the truth – that is, that we have to cope with an unscrupulous aristocracy, with an aggressive military caste.”278 Responding to Prothero’s declaration that there was no need for ‘bitter or inflammatory’ addresses, the economist Alfred Marshall, affirmed that jingoistic lectures would

“inflame passions which will do little or nothing towards securing victory; but may ... greatly increase the slaughter on both sides.” Lecturers should aim to win over popular opinion, rather than alienate it: “it is to be remembered that a great many Germans, especially among the working classes, are averse to exploitative wars, but, like similar classes at home, are exasperated by insults to the Fatherland.”279 Marshall readily accepted that there was a ‘good’ Germany:

“those who know and love Germany, even while revolted at the hectoring militarism which is more common there than here, should insist that we have no cause to scorn them … as a people I believe them to be exceptionally conscientious and upright, sensitive to … duty, tender in their family affections, true and trusty in friendship.”280 Arthur Cecil Pigou, Marshall’s former student and Cambridge colleague, also warned against “undiscriminating hatred.” Pigou based his

277 J. W. Allen, Germany and Europe (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1914), 46. 278 G. W. Prothero, “A Fight to a Finish,” The Times (London, England), 20 August 1914. 279 Alfred Marshall, “A Fight to a Finish,” The Times (London, England), 26 August 1914. 280 Alfred Marshall, “A Fight to a Finish,” The Times (London, England), 22 August 1914.

68 argument on the conviction that there were ‘two Germanies’: “it is incumbent upon us to recollect that the direct responsibility for German methods of warfare lies upon the shoulders of a few men, by whom the Empire is controlled, and not upon those of the great mass of the

German people.”281 Marshall and Pigou’s sympathetic expressions demonstrate that the ‘two

Germanies’ thesis pervaded academic disciplines outside the historical profession. Neither were historians, but both accepted as self-evident the view that there were ‘two Germanies’ (good and bad). Classicists, economists, geographers, and theologians (along with historians) all referred to and were influenced by this theory. This feature is most prominently demonstrated in the often- neglected Oxford Pamphlet Series, 1914-1915.

Between 1914 and 1915, the Oxford University Press requested popular pamphlets on wartime themes from renowned classicists, historians, geographers, and theologians. The project culminated in eighty-seven pamphlets which were collected and published in a complete series set in 1916 (available for 19s. 6d.). The series demonstrates how the ‘two Germanies’ thesis continued to influence and constrain wartime scholarship. The collection also illustrates the pliability and resilience that the ‘two Germanies’ thesis possessed within early twentieth-century liberal (and radical) intellectual circles. Following Prothero’s suggestion that an association be formed “to address [the less motivated] working-class constituencies,” the Oxford Regius

Professor for Modern History, H. W. C. Davis, initiated the Oxford War Pamphlets.282 Davis found a willing collaborator in Charles Cannan, Secretary for the Oxford University Press, and called together historians and other eminent scholars to educate the public on the war and its issues. The purpose for the enterprise, as Davis explained to the historian I. V. Chirol, whom he recruited to write a pamphlet, was as follows: “the series is intended for the intelligent working

281 Quoted in Wallace, War and the Image of Germany, 145. 282 G. W. Prothero, “A Fight to a Finish,” The Times (London, England), 20 August 1914.

69 man, and therefore the method for treatment to be adopted is simple, even elementary.”283 Davis modified his objective two months later, writing that the pamphlets were designed “to provide useful information on the War and all questions connected with it.”284 Nonetheless, he still intended to reach the working-classes, whom he believed could not afford to purchase referential textbooks but desired “exact information.”285 Thus, the pamphlets (which were typically twenty to forty pages long) were individually priced at between 1d. and 4d.. Their affordable price and uncomplicated prose allowed academics to reach a large, non-academic audience.286 The challenge, as Davis perceived it, was to persuade the “artisan” to purchase and read a viewpoint

“which [was] not his own.” He therefore solicited “various labour organizations” to help him devise the questions which the pamphlets would address.287

The first pamphlets were historically orientated brochures which dealt with topical subjects such as the “Responsibility for the War,” “Great Britain and Germany,” the “Germans, their Empire, and how they have made it,” “Austrian Policy since 1867,” and “Italian Policy since 1870.” The theologian Dr. William Sanday produced the first pamphlet, “The Deeper

Causes of the War.” Throughout his brochure, Sanday differentiated between the ruling caste and the “quiet, peace-loving people.”288 He believed “that the natural attitude and aims of a large part of the nation” were “by no means identical with those of the military party.” The common,

283 Oxford University Press Archive, Davis to Chirol, 14 September 1914. Quoted in Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, “The Role of British and German Historians in Mobilizing Public Opinion in 1914,” in British and German Historiography, 1750-1950: Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers, ed. Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 353. 284 Oxford University Press Archive, Davis’s note about a pamphlet on Japan, 17 November 1914. Quoted in Strandmann, “The Role of British and German Historians in Mobilizing Public Opinion in 1914,” 353. 285 Strandmann, “The Role of British and German Historians in Mobilizing Public Opinion in 1914,” 353. 286 Simon Eliot, “The Press and the British Book Trade,” in The History of Oxford University Press vol. III: 1896- 1970, ed. Wm. Roger Louis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 542. 287 Oxford University Press Archive, Davis to Kilbracken, 18 September 1914. Quoted in Strandmann, “The Role of British and German Historians in Mobilizing Public Opinion in 1914,” 353-354. 288 Dr. William Sanday, “The Deeper Causes of the War,” Oxford Pamphlets 1914 no. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1914), 5.

‘peace-loving’ citizen was “quite prepared to live on good terms with their neighbours on all sides.” Sanday conceded that the aggressive war faction now controlled both Berlin and the

Kaiser. This faction was “Prussian rather than German.” Since Prussia was “the dominant power in Germany,” it could impress “its spirit upon the whole nation.” Through sheer force and volume, the “Prussian War Party” had silenced the masses, and “without their real assent,” had committed them to an expansionist war. Despite his overall disapproval, Sanday was restrained in his criticism towards the ‘Prussianized Germany’: at one point, he even admitted a certain respect for Bismarck, confessing that German unification had been achieved “in a masterful and impressive manner.”289 Sanday exemplifies the moderate tone which the Oxford University pamphleteers adopted towards Germany.

This conciliatory approach can be further discerned in the ‘Oxford scholars’ response to the German theologians ‘address to the Evangelical Christians abroad’. The signatories were quick to express their belief in the sincere “protestations and disclaimers” which appeared in the

German theologians’ address. Moreover, the co-signers acknowledged a personal indebtedness to the individual scholars who had signed their names to the German document.290 “No student among us,” they asserted, “would wish for a moment to shut his eyes to the enormous output from the German Universities in every [academic] department, or to its real value.”291 The signatories admitted a special bond between themselves and their continental colleagues. The pamphlet typifies the moderate, dispassionate tone which liberal (and radical) scholars adopted when addressing Germany. The signatories were more interested in rejecting the defensive arguments offered by their counterparts than with condemning Germany. On that account, the

289 Sanday, “The Deeper Causes of the War,” 5-11. 290 Oxford Signatories, “To the Christian Scholars of Europe and America: A Reply from Oxford to the German Address to Evangelical Christians,” Oxford Pamphlets 1914 no. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1914), 3. 291 Oxford Signatories, “To the Christian Scholars of Europe and America,” 14.

71 scholars stated purpose was to examine, “with self-restraint and … impartiality,” the evidence submitted in the German address. The signatories noted a temporal shift in the values which governed educated Germany. Following the Franco-Prussian War, a significant change had passed over the ‘German Professoriate’. The Prussianized German Government, which nominated the professorial chairs, refused to tolerate academic dissent. For that reason, the professoriate had become imperialistic in tone. Since the Social Democrats were perceived as anti-governmental, the moderate forces within Wilhelmine Germany could no longer “aspire to

… professorial chairs.” Consequently, the imperialistic ideals which ruled ‘modern’ Germany emanated from Prussia. These ideals were directed from Berlin and could not be attributed to the average, peace-loving citizen. The Oxford Series pamphleteers regarded themselves as impartial experts, “whose business it [was] to sift evidence and to look for facts.”292 Despite this, the authors often approached their subject from a rigid perspective which emphasized duality – they

“differentiated between Prussia and the other German States, the ruling caste and the ordinary peace-loving German, the military and civilian circles,” in short, between the good (old)

Germany and the bad (new) Germany.293

For the most part, the pamphleteers who encouraged the ‘two Germanies’ thesis were either liberal or radical intellectuals. However, conservative scholars also endorsed the ‘two

Germanies’ theory. The historian C. R. L. Fletcher, an ardent Conservative and imperialist, believed that the militaristic course upon which Germany was set did “not at all … represent the aims and temper of the great majority of the German people.”294 “Nothing,” he wrote, would persuade him that “the German people … [had] wanted this war.” If the ordinary citizen now

292 Oxford Signatories, “To the Christian Scholars of Europe and America,” 3-7. 293 Strandmann, “The Role of British and German Historians in Mobilizing Public Opinion in 1914,” 355. 294 C. R. L. Fletcher, “The Germans, their Empire, and how they have made it,” Oxford Pamphlets 1914 no. 6 (London: Oxford University Press, 1914), 3.

72 supported the conflict, it was because the governing classes controlled the newspapers and schoolrooms. State-sponsored censorship and ‘implicit obedience’ meant that the private citizen was a passive instrument. Fletcher (like Bryce and Marshall) extolled the average citizen for their “domestic virtues,” “patriotism,” and “sentimentality.” Moreover, he echoed liberal

Germanophiles when he acknowledged German cultural and intellectual pre-eminence, noting that in history, philosophy, poetry, and every scientific branch, Germany could “claim equality with, if not superiority to, any nation in the world.”295 Fletcher also made sure to distinguish the

German people and from their “Prussian Government.” Hence, punishment for the war should fall directly upon “those few who made it, on the German Government, [and] not on the German people.” He likewise differentiated between Prussia and the principalities. He identified the

“peaceful and prosperous” principalities with culture, democratic rule, and free trade. Prussia was uncivilized and autocratic, a nation which coveted “riches alone.”296 This argument, popular with liberal (and radical) intellectuals, combined both the cultural and geographical variant associated with the ‘two Germanies’ thesis. This assessment is significant because it let historians (and other scholars) dissociate Germany from Prussia. Once Prussia had been defeated militarily, this disconnection allowed historians to encourage conciliatory relations with

Germany and to advocate for British-German reconciliation.

Whereas liberal historians were nearly unanimous in arguing that the ‘German

Government’ (but not its “peace-loving people”) had caused the war, the crusading journalist E.

D. Morel proposed an alternative explanation.297 Morel was convinced that the conflict had resulted from secret diplomatic manoeuvring. For that reason, he worked throughout the war to

295 Fletcher, “The Germans,” 4-6. 296 Fletcher, “The Germans,” 21-22. 297 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 45.

73 eradicate what he described as “the legend that Germany was the sole responsible author for this war.”298 The most influential historian to share Morel’s perspective was his fellow Union of

Democratic Control associate (and Cambridge Professor) Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson whose book, The European Anarchy (1916), likewise argued that no single nation was culpable for the conflict. Dickinson disputed “with full conviction” the view that Germany had for decades past pursued an aggressive, expansionist position, “while all the other Powers had been pursuing … peace.” He argued that the war had resulted from general disorder, colonial and economic rivalries, and a deficient international system – which grouped Britain, France, and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Thus, all the belligerent states were responsible for the antagonistic atmosphere which preceded the conflict. The European Powers had engendered

“mistrust and fear,” and to each belligerent the war appeared “as one forced upon them by sheer wickedness.” On that account, responsibility for the conflict was shared equally among all the warring states.299

The ‘shared responsibility’ thesis was commonplace among Union of Democratic Control

(UDC) members. Historians and historical authors were well represented within the UDC (H. N.

Brailsford, G. Lowes Dickinson, G. P. Gooch, J. A. Hobson, and R. H. Tawney), and often provided pamphlets and books on topical subjects for publication. The organization brought historians into close contact with influential radical-Liberal and Labour politicians. The UDC was the most significant political dissent group formed during the First World War. The principal instigator for the association was the radical-Liberal MP C. P. Trevelyan (brother to the influential historian G. M. Trevelyan). Trevelyan soon recruited fellow politician Arthur

Ponsonby, E. D. Morel, Ramsay MacDonald (then Labour Party Chairman), and the journalist

298 E. D. Morel, Truth and the War (London: National Labour Press Ltd, 1916), 104. 299 Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, The European Anarchy (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), 1281-131.

74 and historical author Norman Angell (The Great Illusion). The UDC began as a radical-Liberal organization, but soon evolved “into a more broadly-based coalition on the left, … whose members were eventually to identify politically with Labour.” Both Morel and MacDonald publicly denounced Sir Edward Grey for intervening militarily and for negotiating secret treaties with France and Russia. Subjected to criticism in the jingoist press for defeatism and

Germanophile sentiment, E. D. Morel published a pamphlet (The Morrow of the War) which listed the organization’s two universal objectives.300 “First, it is imperative that the war, once begun, should be prosecuted to a triumph for our country. Secondly, it is equally imperative, while we continue the war, to prepare for peace.”301

This shift in focus led the UDC to articulate four fundamental principles for a durable peace settlement: 1) no province shall be transferred from one government to another without popular consent; 2) no settlement shall be entered upon without democratic consent; 3) British foreign affairs should not be aimed at creating alliances, but should be directed towards establishing “an International Council whose deliberations and decisions shall be public;” 4) the drastic reduction in armaments and the nationalization in arms manufacture.302 One year later, J.

A. Hobson suggested a fifth principle: “the European conflict shall not be continued with economic [warfare] after the military operations have ceased. British policies shall be directed towards promoting free commercial intercourse between all nations.”303 This last point was added after the Australian Prime Minister W. M. Hughes had advocated for a permanent economic alliance after the war. To Cobdenite Liberals (who believed that free-trade promoted

300 F. M. Leventhal, “Union of Democratic Control, 1914-1924” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (28 September 2006): 1-2. 301 E. D. Morel, The Morrow of the War (London: The Union of Democratic Control, 1916), 1-2. 302 Morel, The Morrow of the War, 1-2. 303 Quoted in F. Seymour Cocks, E. D. Morel: The Man and His Work (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1920), 225.

75 peace) the proposed post-war economic coalition was an outrage.304 Thus, the association ascribed the war to secret diplomatic manoeuvring, economic and imperial rivalries, general disorder, and the exponential growth in armaments. Significantly, it was the economic historian

J. A. Hobson’s study on imperialism that convinced radical-Liberals (and Socialists) that imperialism had caused the conflict.305

Despite disagreeing with Dickinson and the UDC on the ‘war guilt’ issue, liberal scholars were quick to adopt their pronouncements on the future peace settlement. Dickinson argued that the war (and future settlement) would “bring no lasting peace to Europe unless it [brought] radical change both in the spirit and in the organization in international politics.”306 One year earlier (1915), he presented his views in an article for War and Peace, titled “The German

Socialists and the War.” Here, he noted that there were “two opposite currents … struggling for control” in Germany: the militaristic, agrarian Junkers and the peaceable, ‘good-natured’ Social

Democrats. The Social Democrats repudiated “all annexation,” and were determined to establish a permanent peace, “based upon an equal consideration for … all nations.” The Socialist Party represented the peace-loving, easy-going people. Based upon this understanding, he supported a moderate a peace settlement, one which would not isolate, threaten, nor starve Germany. If

Prussian militarism could be defeated, then the democratic elements within Germany (if they were not “threatened by foreign aggression”) would overthrow the militaristic Junker caste.

Once again, the ‘two Germanies’ thesis was applied to endorse a sympathetic approach towards post-war Germany. Finally, Dickinson argued that any potential peace settlement should include a guarantee from the Great Powers to submit their future disputes to an international tribunal for

304 Harry Hanak, “The Union of Democratic Control during the First World War,” Historical Research 36, no. 94 (November 1963): 170-171. 305 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: James Nisbet & Co. Ltd, 1902). 306 Dickinson, The European Anarchy, 129.

76 arbitration.307 These arguments fascinated liberal historians (and scholars) and led them to advocate for post-war reconciliation and a generous peace settlement.

Like Dickinson, Dawson encouraged a “just and equitable” peace settlement, which would consider “all claims and interests.”308 On 1 July 1918, Gooch wrote to Dawson to request an article on opinion within Germany. He reminded Dawson, “you know my view, - that only moderate demands from the Allies can strengthen the forces for moderation in Germany.”309

Both Dawson and Gooch regarded Secretary for State Richard von Kuhlmann’s compromise speech as evidence that a new spirit animated ‘official’ Germany.310 Dawson noted that “as a sign and portent, the Kuhlmann speech would be significant even … alone, but that is not the case.” Those who had once supported the militarist system, “are to-day to be ranked amongst its severest critics.” Moreover, the Social Democrats demanded a cessation in hostilities, and had refused “to vote new war credits.” Even though “it would be unwise to over-estimate the” strength for anti-militarism in Germany, there was evidence that the better elements within

Germany were “earnestly striving to regain their lost” confidence:

It is no less our interest than our duty to encourage this new spirit that is finding voice in Germany by every means in our power compatible with due fidelity to the aims which the Allies will need to press when the time for serious parleying arrives. This can be done best by answering moderation with moderation.

Germany had to be assured that British war and peace aims were neither vindictive nor expansionist. Punitive and ill-considered peace terms would strengthen the pan-German and militarist parties. Dawson called for “co-operation, union, mutuality, fellowship, [and] solidarity,” built upon “a generous spirit for toleration.” The peace settlement must depart from

307 G. Lowes Dickinson, “The German Socialists and the War,” War and Peace, 1 August 1915, 168-169. 308 William Harbutt Dawson, “The Fifth Year of the War,” The Contemporary Review 114 (1 July 1918): 124. 309 WHD 377: letter G. P. Gooch to W. H. Dawson, 1 July 1918. 310 Eyck, G. P. Gooch, 303.

77 earlier traditions and create new precedents – there was no place for nineteenth-century

“diplomatic triumphs.” For the settlement to survive, it had to provide “even-handed justice to all nations alike.”311 Gooch was delighted with the opinion-piece, as he wrote to Dawson: “I thought your article excellent, - firm on essentials and moderate in details. I wish, with you, that … [the

German] Liberals would rally the people against the autocratic system.”312 Both Socialist (UDC) and Germanophile historians used the ‘two Germanies’ thesis to encourage reconciliation and a moderate peace settlement. On that account, the ‘two Germanies’ abstraction would become increasingly significant in the inter-war period as historians worked to accommodate revisionist interpretations and to reintegrate Germany back into the international community.

311 Dawson, “The Fifth Year of the War,” 118-125. 312 WHD 383: letter G. P. Gooch to W. H. Dawson, 9 August 1918.

Chapter Four: British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles

Historians were initially optimistic about the peace settlement. Most agreed that Germany should be punished, but the settlement should be moderate, and it should reintegrate Germany back into the international community. One thing was certain: honesty and openness were essential. Corresponding in 1916, Dickinson wrote that it was “imperative” that the government

“keep before the public the principles that must govern any peace that is not … to be a prelude to a new war.”313 Harold Nicolson noted that the peacemakers “were committed to ‘open covenants openly arrived at’: there would be no … secrecy about proceedings.”314 The idealistic proclamations which emanated from the United States excited historians. The Oxford classicist and historian Gilbert Murray would later explain that President Woodrow Wilson had encouraged “English Liberals” to hope that, “contrary to almost all precedent,” the peace settlement would be “so high-minded and statesmanlike and far-seeing, so scrupulously fair to the vanquished and so single-mindedly set upon … healing national wounds” that there could be no motive for a retributive war. To liberal intellectuals it appeared “as if President Wilson was upholding, with … [great] insistence and emphasis, the banner for ultimate reconciliation.”315

His intervention was greeted enthusiastically by radical and liberal intellectuals, because the

President embodied the internationalist ideals (free trade, international cooperation, and national self-determination) which the British Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone had endorsed in the nineteenth-century.316 To be sure, the principles articulated by Wilson as the basis for post-war

313 The Manchester Guardian Archive, the University of Manchester, the John Rylands Library, Manchester: GDN A/D33/7a letter Dickinson to C. P. Scott, 12 July 1916. Hereinafter, the Manchester Guardian Archive will be cited as GDN. 314 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 31. 315 Gilbert Murray, The Problem of Foreign Policy: A Consideration of Present Dangers and the Best Methods for Meeting Them (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1921), 21-22. 316 P. M. Kennedy, “Idealists and Realists: British Views of Germany, 1864-1939,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (1975): 149.

79 reconciliation “had been strongly influenced by … British Liberals and Radicals,” and his main purpose “in enunciating the Fourteen Points was to satiate their demand for assurances that the

… war would produce a better world order.” For that reason, liberal and radical historians approached the peace settlement with high expectations.317

The Historical Section at the British Foreign Office was mobilized in 1918 in preparation for the peace conference. The task assigned to the department was “to produce, not elaborate books, but sketches, such as busy negotiators may have time to absorb, or which may be useful for reference [regarding] facts.”318 The influential historian and editor (Sir) George Walter

Prothero was recruited to supervise the enterprise. Between 1917 and 1919, the Historical

Section produced one hundred and seventy-four referential handbooks (commonly referred to as peace books or ‘P. books’). Prothero provided each author with Instructions for Historical

Writers, which reminded them to “remember that their readers will be likely to have no time to waste on matter not immediately important for the work in hand … Compression and clearness should therefore be carefully studied; and the books must be severely practical.”319 Prothero warned Dawson that his seventy-five-thousand-word manuscript on German Colonisation “is too long for us to include in our series.” The work was admirable, but “busy negotiators will not be at the pains to read a two hundred and fifty-page book. What they will require is the bare facts as clearly and tersely and consecutively narrated as possible.” He recommended that Dawson submit an abbreviated version “not exceeding about fifteen-thousand-words in length.”320

Despite cautioning the writers about the need for impartiality, Prothero encouraged them to

317 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 46-47. 318 Quoted in Erik Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 195. George Prothero to Lord Robert Cecil, 11 November 1918, Cecil Papers, British Library. 319 Quoted in Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 204-205. 320 WHD 363: letter G. W. Prothero to W. H. Dawson, 14 March 1918.

80 explicitly express their views: “it is hoped that writers will not hesitate to draw such conclusions regarding the past as may seem to them fairly deducible from the facts referred to in their narratives, and also to make suggestions or recommendations concerning the future directly connected with the subject in hand.”321 These specialist recommendations were appended to each handbook in a section titled ‘general remarks/observations’. Consequently, historians were able to influence and inform how the plenipotentiaries understood the major issues negotiated at the conference.

The peace books were divided into four categories: geography (physical and political), political history, present social and political conditions, and economic conditions.322 Each pamphlet included an appendix with relevant treaties as well as an additional reading section

(listed as ‘authorities’). More than eighty-five experts collaborated on the project.323 “It was arranged that the books should be anonymous,” however, the most prominent authors received acknowledgement.324 Several contributors were university academics while others were recruited from the Political Intelligence Department (Foreign Office) and the Historical Section (Military

Intelligent). Both “departments were sympathetic to historical needs,” because both were administered by historians: James Wycliffe Headlam-Morley at the Political Intelligence

Department and Harold Temperley at the Directorate for Military Intelligence. The historians C.

K. Webster and E. L. Woodward were recruited from Military Intelligence, while the Political

Intelligence Department provided the historians A. W. A. Leeper and Arnold Toynbee.

Webster’s handbook on the Vienna Congress was thought so important that the Foreign Office

321 Quoted in Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 204-205. 322 See e.g. “Russian Poland, Lithuania, and White Russia,” Peace Handbooks vol. VIII, ed. G. W. Prothero (London: H. M. Stationary Office, 1920). 323 Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 202. 324 Quoted in Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 203.

81 ordered its immediate publication. It was considered invaluable reading for delegates about to convene “at the first major conference on reordering the international system” since Vienna

(1814-1815).325 Once he had read it, Harold Nicolson “knew exactly what mistakes had been committed by the misguided, the reactionary, and after all pathetic aristocrats who had represented Great Britain in 1814.” The British delegation, Nicolson added, studied “the ‘Peace

Conference Handbooks’ … with great care.” Nicolson, for one, seems to have been imbued with the ‘two Germanies’ thesis, noting that his attitude towards Germany was one that combined

“fear, admiration, sympathy, and distrust.” He admired their scientific achievements and the fortitude “with which [their] civilian population had withstood the blockade.” However, he

“hated them for their practical ruthlessness … [and] political ineptitude.”326 This attitude applied the same arguments which liberal and radical historians had put forward during the war. Mainly, that the admirable people were not culpable for the excessive cruelties committed by their inept militaristic elite.

The Historical Section represented a transition from pre- to post-war diplomatic procedure, a process which saw expert historical advisors become indispensable to how countries conducted foreign affairs.327 During a debate on ‘war aims’ on 13 February 1918, the Liberal MP

Noel Buxton (Norfolk North) urged the Foreign Office to appoint “the most eminent expert on

German opinion and institutions in this country, Mr. [William] Harbutt Dawson,” to investigate the “psychological situation in Germany which will be produced by one … settlement or another.” Buxton encouraged the Foreign Office to enlist “great authorities” (or expert advisors) to help draft a sensible peace settlement.328 One week later (20 February), Dawson received a

325 Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 202-203. 326 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 31-34. 327 Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 211. 328 United Kingdom. HC Deb, 13 February 1918, volume 103, column 200 (Mr. Noel Buxton).

82 letter from the Labour MP Walter Hudson (Newcastle-upon-Tyne). Hudson wrote that he had

“twice mentioned” Dawson by name “in speeches in the House in urging that the Government should seek expert advice.”329 Lord Bryce, meanwhile, notified Dawson that he would gladly present “before [His Majesty’s] Government any ideas or suggestions that you, with your knowledge for Germany, might have to make.”330 History evidently mattered to political elites.

Buxton cited Dawson (and his work) when he argued for democratization and a generous settlement, since humiliation would furnish the militarists “with the right material for [their] continuance in … power.”331 Both Dawson and Dickinson had published on the need for reconciliation and democratization three years earlier.332 Gooch also expressed this view in a letter to Dawson: “you know my view – that only moderate demands from the Allies can strengthen the forces for moderation in Germany.”333

Lord Richard Haldane, the former (and future) Lord Chancellor (1912-1915 and 1924), wrote to Dawson in February 1919 to commend his recent publication on the German Empire

(The German Empire, 1867-1914 and the Unity Movement, two volumes).334 Haldane praised

Dawson for his justness, eloquence, and internationalism. Such a fair-minded spirit was needed in Paris.335 He wrote to Dawson again in March to congratulate him on his second volume, which he admired “if possible even more than the first.” The judgements expressed within were “fair and temperate,” and the individual studies on Bismarck and Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg were “excellent,” “just and true.” He only wished that Dawson was in Paris, “to leaven the Peace

329 WHD 358: letter W. Hudson to W. H. Dawson, 20 February 1918. 330 WHD 376: letter Lord Bryce to W. H. Dawson, 27 June 1918. 331 United Kingdom. HC Deb, 13 February 1918, volume 103, column 200 (Mr. Noel Buxton). 332 See e.g. William Harbutt Dawson, “Germany after the War” (1917), “The Case for Conditional Return” (1917), and G. Lowes Dickinson, “The German Socialists and the War” (1916). 333 WHD 377: letter G. P. Gooch to W. H. Dawson, 1 July 1918. 334 William Harbutt Dawson, The German Empire, 1867-1914 and the Unity Movement, two volumes (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919). 335 WHD 418: letter Lord Haldane to W. H. Dawson, 10 February 1919.

Conference with [his] knowledge.”336 Haldane would later “strongly” recommend to Lloyd

George that Dawson receive either a K. B. E. (Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire) or C. B. (Companion Knight, Order of the British Empire) for his excellent and equitable work.337 Dawson unquestionably contributed to how intellectual and political elites perceived and cognitively mapped Germany.338 His work was highly praised by both politicians (like

Haldane and Lloyd George) and academic historians. Reviewing What is Wrong with Germany?

(1916), J. W. Headlam (-Morley) wrote “there is … no one in England who has a wider and more intimate knowledge of modern Germany than Mr. Dawson.”339 The admiration and praise which his countless works attracted leave no doubt as to his influence on shaping educated and elite opinion on Germany. His personal correspondence also reveals the important role historians occupied in shaping elite perceptions and emphasizes the significance politicians attached to expert historical advisors.340

In 1919, historians journeyed “to Paris, not merely to liquidate the war, but to establish a new order in Europe.”341 The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Lord Hardinge, invited Prothero to attend the peace conference as the historical advisor to the British delegation.342 C. P. Scott, editor-in-chief at the Manchester Guardian, obtained permission from

Lloyd George to send Dawson to Paris as an expert advisor and correspondent.343 Shortly after his arrival, Dawson prepared a memorandum for Lloyd George on “German Territorial

Questions.” Dawson prudently warned that “territorial measures” would doubtless affect

336 WHD 428: letter Lord Haldane to W. H. Dawson, 10 March 1919. 337 WHD 521: letter Lord Haldane to W. H. Dawson, 30 December 1920. 338 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 81. 339 J. W. Headlam, “New Books: Prussia and Germany,” Manchester Guardian (Manchester, UK), 16 March 1916. 340 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 81. 341 Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919, 31-32. 342 Goldstein, “Historians Outside the Academy,” 202. 343 GNA A/D22/9: telegram C. P. Scott to David Lloyd George, 31 March 1919.

Germany’s “future attitude … towards the settlement and the peace.” French short-sightedness would compel Germany to reach an arrangement with Russia, “this is a danger to which I have repeatedly called attention, and to-day am more than ever convinced that it is real and that the policies advocated in France would make it inevitable.” French policies would require antiquated alliance systems which “would keep Europe in constant unrest, and … would impose upon bleeding and bankrupt nations martial and financial burdens beyond their power to bear.”

Dawson implored Lloyd George to exert moderation, “nothing but faith can save us – faith in humanity and a better future.”344 Throughout the inter-war period, his advice to Lloyd George remained pro-German, and he became an early proponent for treaty revision. Despite his frustration with the eventual settlement, Dawson defended Lloyd George’s record at Versailles,

“the British Prime Minister did more than any other plenipotentiary to reduce the number and the gravity of [the] defects” produced by the Versailles Treaty.345

Despite their initial optimism, liberal and radical historians were ultimately disappointed with the peace settlement. The classical historian and archaeologist Sir William Ramsay recounted wittily that “Grey made the war and Wilson ruined the peace.”346 On that account, historians considered the final settlement a cynical betrayal to their liberal ideals. German officials noted their distress and identified them as the group that would be the most helpful in discrediting Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty (the War Guilt Clause). The German government quickly mobilized a ‘war guilt section’ concerned with invalidating the war guilt clause. The most important project that this office initiated was Die Grosse Politik (1922-1927), a forty-volume compendium which contained German Foreign Office material from 1871 to

344 GNA A/D22/13a: letter W. H. Dawson to David Lloyd George, 14 April 1919. 345 William Harbutt Dawson, Germany Under the Treaty (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1933), 87. 346 GNA A/R5/40a: letter Sir William Ramsay to C. P. Scott, 17 October 1925.

1914.347 The collection included government memoranda, personal memoirs, and diplomatic correspondence which predominantly originated from the defeated nations. The editors often claimed that the documents they selected for publication were based upon scholarly considerations. However, the enterprise was more political than academic. Correspondence between the editors and the German Foreign Office reveals myriad attempts to reconcile historical faithfulness with the government’s foreign agenda. The German Foreign Minister

Gustav Stresemann (1923-1929) was worried that documents from the immediate pre-war period might adversely affect statesmen still in office.348 For that reason, before publication, all documents were examined by diplomatic staff, “to avoid unnecessary damage to politicians who are still living.”349 Meanwhile, Friedrich Thimme (the chief-editor) omitted several passages from a 1905 document because he believed that their inclusion would jeopardize Anschluss with

Austria.350 Despite these omissions, Die Grosse Politik was the most extensive and significant collection “bearing on the war guilt issue that became available to … British historians between

1920 and 1927.”351 Indeed, as the Polish-born British historian Lewis B. Namier wrote to C. P.

Scott: “this is a standard work, indeed a monumental work, such as no other government has so far published. I have not seen it reviewed in the M. G. [Manchester Guardian], but it deserves more than a simple, short review.”352

The two historians who worked the hardest to comprehend these new documents were G.

P. Gooch and W. H. Dawson. Gooch wrote to Dawson in September 1923 to exclaim his

347 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 47-48. 348 Raymond J. Sontag, “The German Diplomatic Papers: Publication after Two World Wars,” The American Historical Review 68, no. 1 (October 1962): 61. 349 Quoted in Sontag, “The German Diplomatic Papers,” 61. 350 Sontag, “The German Diplomatic Papers,” 61-62. 351 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 49. 352 GDN A/N2/7: letter Lewis Namier to C. P. Scott, 9 March 1923.

86 excitement at the new material.353 Despite their Germanophile tendencies, both Gooch and

Dawson had supported the British war effort. Both, however, refuted the view that Germany alone was responsible for the conflict. Gooch’s conclusions were set forth in his publication

Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy (1923). He echoed Dickinson’s arguments when he concluded that real cause for the war was a deficient international system which had divided the continent into two armed coalitions. The conflict arose from fear: “the Old World had degenerated into a powder-magazine,” which when ignited, “was almost certain to produce a gigantic conflagration.” Hence, no one power was responsible for the conflict. However, all the belligerents were culpable for the “international anarchy” which they had inherited and “did little to abate.”354 Dawson likewise declared that the alliance system was the fundamental cause for war in 1914.355 He would later suggest that the French desire for “complete and invincible” continental dominion was more responsible than German transgressions for the First World

War.356 Several other historical studies published during this period (1920-1926) reached similar conclusions.357 Dickinson’s expanded and revised work The International Anarchy, 1904-1914

(1926) used the new documents to augment his earlier argument for shared responsibility.358

Dickinson concluded that Austria was less at fault than Russia (and Serbia), but dismissed the argument as unimportant. The real culprit was an international system in which sovereign states armed “with a view to war,” made alliances “in expectation for war,” and conducted “relations in

353 WHD 761: letter Gooch to Dawson, 3 Sept. 2923. 354 Gooch, Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy, 212-214. 355 William Harbutt Dawson, introduction to German Colonization Past and Future: The Truth About the German Colonies, ed. Dr. Heinrich Schnee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 41-42. 356 Dawson, Germany Under the Treaty, 396. 357 See e.g. G. P. Gooch, “The Rise and Fall of the German Empire” (1919); Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Causes of International War (1920) and The International Anarchy, 1904-1918 (1926); Sidney B. Fay, “New Light on the Origins of the World War” (1920). 358 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 50.

87 secret.” The European States, he argued, had all pursued policies which could only be satisfied with territorial conquest.359

The shared responsibility thesis was reinforced in the public mind by statements from prominent statesmen.360 David Lloyd George noted in private to Gooch that the “more one reads” about what “happened before 1 August 1914, the more one realizes that no one … quite meant war.” The conflict was something into which the continental powers (Germany, Austria-

Hungary, and Russia) had “glided, or rather staggered and stumbled.”361 Germany did not deliberately plot nor want war in 1914. Nonetheless, Britain had been right to defend Belgian neutrality and to uphold its obligations to France. Lloyd George reiterated these conclusions a decade later in his War Memoirs (1933): “how was it that the world was so unexpectedly plunged into this terrible conflict? Who was responsible?” “Not even the … most far-seeing statesman,” he replied, “foresaw in the early summer … that the autumn would find the … world interlocked in the most terrible conflict.” The role Germanophile historians occupied in influencing elite opinion is obvious: “after reading … the [historical] literature explaining why the nations went to war, and who was responsible, the impression left on my mind is … utter chaos, confusion, feebleness, and futility … a stubborn refusal to look at the rapidly approaching cataclysm.”362 Sir Edward Grey, while defending his own pre-war policies, was clear as to why the conflict had occurred: “the moral is obvious: it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war

… The enormous growth in armaments in Europe, the sense in insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable.”363 He also suggested that the peacemakers had

359 G. Lowes Dickinson, The International Anarchy, 1904-1914 (London: The Century Co., 1926), 464-471. 360 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 51. 361 Quoted in G. P. Gooch, History of Modern Europe, 1878-1919 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1925), 559. 362 Lloyd George, War Memoirs vol. 1, 32-34. 363 Viscount Edward Grey, Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1916 vol. I (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925), 91-92.

88 erred when they had inserted the ‘war guilt clause’ into the Versailles Treaty, “it was a bad mistake to attribute the whole responsibility for the war to the Central Powers.”364 Philip Kerr

(later Lord Lothian), who had helped to draft Article 231, became a fervent proponent for its retraction.365 Later, he would insist on the need for extensive revision, territorial appeasement, and an equal ratio in armaments.366 Consequently, on 18 August 1925, Gilbert Murray could attest, “without too much exaggeration,” that these opinions were generally accepted by the public.367 “Hardly any reasonable person in England,” he assured his German correspondent,

“continues to talk about Germany as solely responsible for the war.”368

These views received additional support from the revisionist historian Sidney Bradshaw

Fay, whose triptych article (1920-1921) maintained that Germany did not “deliberately” plot or want war in 1914. “Germany did not [desire] … war,” and did make belated efforts to “find a feasible solution.”369 His arguments were well received within British liberal (and radical) intellectual and political circles. Gooch affirmed that Fay’s article revealed, “to students all over the world,” the complexities attached to the ‘war guilt’ issue. Reviewing his “masterly” two- volume work (1928), Gooch wrote: “he has mastered the whole evidence, including the valuable testimonies still half-hidden in the Slavonic languages, and he pronounces judgement on statesmen, parties, and countries with serene impartiality. He has no thesis to prove or disprove and is out for truth alone.”370 Much to Gooch’s approval, Fay declared that Germany “did not plot a European War, did not want one, and made genuine, though too belated efforts, to avert

364 Gooch, Under Six Reigns, 230. 365 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 51. 366 J. R. M. Butler, Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr), 1882-1940 (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1960) 121-122. 367 Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), 25. 368 Quoted in Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement, 25. 369 Sidney B. Fay, “New Light on the Origins of the World War, II: Berlin and Vienna, July 29 to 31,” The American Historical Review 26, no. 1 (October 1920): 51-52. 370 G. P. Gooch, “Book Review: The Origins of the War,” Contemporary Review 135 (1 January 1929): 395-396.

89 one.” Germany was a victim to its alliance with Austria, its “only dependable ally.” It could not dismiss Austria, because it “would stand isolated between Russia, where pan-Slavism and armaments were growing stronger … and France, where Alsace-Lorraine … and Agadir were not forgotten.”371 Like Dickinson, Fay suggested that Russia and Serbia were more at fault in 1914 than the Central Powers, “the verdict goes heavily against Serbia … That Russia’s general mobilization made war inevitable is as certain as that the Austrian ultimatum rendered it almost impossible to avert.”372 Similar to Gooch, Dickinson, and Dawson, Fay argued that the alliance system divided the continent “into two hostile coalitions.” This antagonistic situation was compounded “with the increase in armaments, economic rivalries, nationalist ambitions … and newspaper incitement.” The assassination in Sarajevo consolidated these elements, “and started the rapid and complicated succession in events which culminated in a World War.” Based upon

“the evidence now available,” the verdict declared at Versailles, that “Germany and her allies were responsible for the War, … is historically unsound. It should therefore be revised.”373 Like

Fay, Germanophile historians argued that ‘war guilt clause’ had no moral or historical validity.

For that reason, they endorsed its retraction from the Versailles Settlement. This reassessment emanated less from a strategic analysis for British interests than from apprehension concerning the turbulent developments within Germany.374

Gooch, Dawson, and Dickinson all feared that internal extremism and rampant nationalism would destabilize the Weimar Republic. Believing that its survival “depended on bringing about changes in the peace settlement,” liberal and radical historians “laboured

371 Sidney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the World War vol. II: After Sarajevo: Immediate Causes of the War (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928), 552-553. 372 Gooch, “Book Review: The Origins of the War,” 396. 373 Fay, The Origins of the World War, vol. II, 558. 374 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 51.

90 throughout the 1920s to persuade the … public” and political elite about the need for such revisions. For that reason, Gooch opened the Contemporary Review to British and German scholars who opposed reparations and denounced the vindictive settlement.375 Gooch often requested “moderately-worded” commentaries from Dawson, whose articles he valued for their

“dispassionate” views, “moderate spirit and clear vision.”376 Gooch wrote to Dawson in 1920 to request “an utterance” on “present tendencies in Germany.” He hoped that Dawson would accommodate his appeal, “as the situation [needed] careful and sympathetic handling.”377

Dawson’s article appeared one month later under the title “Germany and Spa.” He reasoned that if “Democratic Germany [was] to survive,” the Allied Powers would “have to meet her in a

[friendlier] spirit.” Since the Versailles Treaty, the relations between the Western Allies and

Germany had “been marked by … humiliations, slights, and pin-pricks,” which had culminated in France lawlessly invading Germany. The manner “in which France has exaggerated and abused the powers attributed to her in the Saar Valley is … a source for deep resentment.” Once again, France had assumed the position as Europe’s traditional aggressor: “the vain hankering after Rhenish territories, which lured Napoleon III to his doom … still exercises an evil fascination upon France.”378 This was to become a popular theme in the struggle to discredit the

Versailles Settlement. France was depicted “as the real threat to … stability and the major barrier to a better international understanding.379

Dawson had no compunction in assigning to France blame for all the negative features found in the settlement.380 The French were “now claiming a mortgage upon the Ruhr coal basin

375 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52. 376 WHD 347: letter Gooch to Dawson, 28 October 1917; WHD 377: letter Gooch to Dawson, 1 July 1918. 377 WHD 504: letter Gooch to Dawson, 1 June 1920. 378 W. H. Dawson, “Germany and Spa,” Contemporary Review, 118 (1 July 1920): 8. 379 Berger, “William Harbutt Dawson,” 94. 380 Robert A. Brady, “Germany Under the Treaty by W. H. Dawson,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 172 (March 1934): 175.

… for payment for impossible indemnities.” These punitive measures would lead Germany back into its “old evil militarist ways.” For that reason, there was no justification for “withholding from reformed Germany and her constitutional rulers our sympathy and practical encouragement

… From a truly democratic Germany there can be nothing to fear; but a revived militarist

Germany would be a standing menace.”381 This argument suggests the duality inherent in the

‘two Germanies’ thesis. Britain needed to adopt (and encourage) moderate policies towards

Germany, otherwise, militarism and imperialism (which had recently been eradicated) would grow. Gooch likewise linked the French incursion into the Ruhr with growing extremism and nationalism. “Nationalism in the old sense was weak and, in some measure, discredited,” but it has been revived “since the invasion in the Ruhr.” The unlawful French occupation was an infringement to “British Law” and confirmed the feebleness of the League.382 The desire to see the ‘idealistic’ German State restored precipitated the production and dissemination in revisionist scholarship. Cline notes that “as close observers,” historians “recognized that nationalism and extremism were rampant, and that support for the Weimar Republic was weak.” Even though countless factors could have accounted for this unfortunate situation (defeat itself, persistent pre- war characteristics, political divisions, etc.), historians attributed it to the ‘ruinous peace’.383

Consequently, internal developments within the reconstituted German Republic compelled historians to persuade the British public and its political elite that the peace settlement needed urgent revision.

Dawson believed that “New Germany” could “only be truly interpreted and intelligently understood in the light of a fair knowledge of the Old.” This knowledge, he admitted, had greatly

381 Dawson, “Germany and Spa,” 3-8. 382 G. P. Gooch, “The German Mind since the War,” Transactions of the Grotius Society vol. 10: Problems of Peace and War (1924): 55-58. 383 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 51.

92 profited him on his recent sojourn to “the reorganized Realm.” His trip convinced him that

Germany would emerge from its present trials “not weaker but stronger, first in moral, then … in material strength: not a lesser but a greater factor in civilisation than heretofore.” This was possible because its unlawful ambitions had been purged, it was now “clearer as to its rightful place in the [international community] and bent on pursuing a peaceful and orderly career.” This would be achieved as “soon as its enemies [gave] back to it the indispensable conditions for a healthful life, free development, and legitimate expansion.”384 If the ruinous peace were revised, then Germany would return to its idyllic and sentimental (and old) condition. On his return,

Dawson wrote to Lloyd George (4 November 1921), and offered to place at his disposal certain facts on “economic and political questions” which he had gathered from bankers and industrialists during his visit. Dawson wrote that he had met, “as a private individual,” with

Friedrich Rosen (German Foreign Minister, 1921) and Walther Rathenau (German Foreign

Minister, 1922) to discuss “an agreement for reparations.” Since it was recognized that he had no interest except to serve peace his suggestions were “freely and sympathetically discussed.” On that account, he offered to act as a mediator between Lloyd George and eminent industrialists and politicians in Germany. He proceeded to request an interview with the Prime Minister so that he could communicate his (revisionist) discoveries “in confidence.”385 Dawson’s proposal reveals once more that historians did not just regard themselves as educators but also as political analysts and diplomatic emissaries.

Gooch and Dawson were among the first scholars to visit Dr. Friedrich Sthamer (the

German ambassador to the United Kingdom) when the German Embassy reopened in 1920.386

384 William Harbutt Dawson, “The Outlook in Germany,” The Contemporary Review 120 (1 July 1921): 727-736. 385 WHD 595: letter W. H. Dawson to David Lloyd George, 4 November 1921. 386 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52.

John Morley (Viscount Morley) invited Gooch to his residence to meet Dr. Sthamer, when

Sthamer arrived in London in 1920 as Chargés d’Affaires.387 The historian and political scientist

Ernest Barker, Principal at King’s College London (1920-1927), also visited with the ambassador.388 Sthamer wrote to Dawson on 16 August 1920 following a request from “our mutual friend … G. P. Gooch,” to extend an invitation “to come and see me.” Their acquaintance, he assured the historian, would give him “the greatest pleasure.”389 Dawson recorded that their conversation dealt with the possibilities for treaty revision and colonial restoration.390 Dawson also corresponded with the diplomat Albert Dufour-Feronce. Dufour-

Feronce invited Dawson to meet with him in September 1921, so that he could provide Dawson with introductory letters “to whomever you may wish in our country.”391 Shortly thereafter,

Dawson began to forward his articles to diplomatic staff at the German Embassy for review before publication. C. Roediger, a clerk at the embassy, wrote to Dawson in December 1921 to request that he submit a manuscript on the Saar to “the Foreign Office in Berlin … because … the [subject] is rather a complicated one, and perhaps they might find small corrections to make.”392 Dawson (as well as the academic historian Charles Raymond Beazley) would later receive financial support from Margaret Gartner’s Wirtschaftpolitische Gesellschaft (Economic

Policy Society), a ‘private’ propaganda group which worked to persuade the British elite about the need for treaty revision.393

387 John Morley was Lord President at the Council (1910-1914) when he resigned his position in August 1914 to protest British military intervention. Eyck, G. P. Gooch, 317. 388 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52; Ernest Barker, Age and Youth: Memories of Three Universities and Father of the Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 141. 389 WHD 509: letter Friedrich Sthamer to W. H. Dawson, 16 Aug. 1920. 390 WHD 509: conversation record W. H. Dawson 16 Aug. 1920. 391 WHD 587: letter Albert Dufour-Feronce to W. H. Dawson, 19 September 1921. 392 WHD 614: letter C. Roediger to W. H. Dawson. 12 Dec. 1921. 393 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52.

Revisionist scholarship found an appreciative audience within Germany. Cline notes that selected works from Beazley, Dawson, Dickinson, and Gooch were translated and published by writers at the ‘war guilt section’.394 Historians were also prominent among the signatories to the

‘Appeal of Conscience’, a 1925 declaration “which attacked the war guilt clause and called for an impartial court to determine” responsibility for the war.395 The Kriegsschuldreferat (War

Guilt Section at the German Foreign Ministry) seized upon the initiative and disseminated it as domestic propaganda. Eminent Germans called upon British officials to re-evaluate the war guilt issue and to help establish continental stability. Hermann Lutz a civil servant at the German

Foreign Ministry used this argument in a 1924 appeal for British friendship (An Appeal to British

Fair Play): “the German People unanimously repudiate the moral stigma … which in 1919 they were forced under duress to admit. The British People are, more than any other, in a position to check the anarchy and chaos in Europe. The fundamental condition for a sane reconstruction in

European affairs is Justice to Germany.”396 On occasion, historians inadvertently assisted the

‘war guilt section’ as well as ‘private’ propaganda agencies.397 German diplomats endeavoured to provide British historians with the most recent diplomatic ‘evidence’. Dufour-Feronce, for instance, made certain to send Dawson the most topical Vorkriegsakten (‘pre-war files’).398

Dawson and Gooch also received up-to-date publications from the German Embassy on topics such as reparations and reconstruction.399 British historians often found themselves in agreement with apologists at the German Foreign Office (such as Lutz) in their view that “before we have

… cleared up the chief causes and have made them known to the world there cannot be the right

394 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52-53. 395 The signatories included Dickinson, Gooch, A. J. Grant, J. L. Hammond, Gilbert Murray, A. F. Pollard, and R. H. Tawney. Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 53. 396 Hermann Lutz, An Appeal to British Fair Play, as quoted in Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement, 25. 397 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52-53. 398 WHD 631: letter Albert Dufour-Feronce to W. H. Dawson, 4 February 1922. 399 See e.g. WHD 766: letter A. Bernstorff to W. H. Dawson, 12 October 1923.

95 spirit for a real understanding [between our] … peoples and the so much needed reconciliation.”

Lutz even commended Dawson for continuing to search “for the truth re: the origins for the

Great War.”400

During the 1920s, British policy-makers became more and more familiar with revisionist scholarship on reparation payments and the war guilt issue. This could be achieved because historians could easily access government leaders. Dawson, Dickinson, Fisher, Toynbee, and

Temperley all corresponded at one time or another with Lloyd George, MacDonald, and Sir

Austen Chamberlain. Cline claims that the most important correspondence, with respect to influence, “was the increasingly close friendship between Gooch and MacDonald.”401

MacDonald often visited Gooch at his residence in Kensington, and both had been involved with the UDC and the Rainbow Circle (a pre-war political, industrial, and social reform association).

Gooch’s biographer, Frank Eyck, notes that MacDonald admired Gooch, and that “the two men respected and trusted each other.” Despite representing different political parties, both Gooch

(Liberal) and MacDonald (Labour) worked for a better “international understanding and reconciliation.”402 MacDonald doubtless found in Gooch, whom he regarded as “by far and away our ablest historian,” the intellectual rationale for his own moderate policies towards Weimar

Germany.403 Dawson likewise corresponded with MacDonald. His letters often encouraged a stronger stance against French territorial ambitions, “one argument only influences France, because it is the only argument she understands – firmness.”404 MacDonald, meanwhile, noted that Dawson had “done more perhaps than any [other] living Englishman to put the German

400 WHD 711: letter Hermann Lutz to W. H. Dawson, 16 November 1922. 401 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52. 402 Eyck, G. P. Gooch, 329-330. 403 Quoted in Eyck, G. P. Gooch, 339; Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 52-53. 404 WHD 793: letter W. H. Dawson to Ramsay MacDonald, 3 April 1924.

96 nation into books for the enlightenment and guidance of English students.”405 Dawson was also well known to MacDonald through his frequent correspondence with Arthur Henderson, the wartime Labour Party Leader (1914-1917). Henderson employed Dawson to ghost-write memoranda, letters, and speeches. On 19 December 1918, Dawson wrote a letter for Henderson addressed to Lloyd George, which stated the Labour Party’s position on the peace settlement “so well, that [Henderson] sent it … almost entirely as per draft.”406 Henderson expressed his gratitude, and agreed that a violent, aggressive, and vindictive peace would threaten continental security. Dawson warned Henderson that “the extravagant territorial demands, which the French

Government” insisted upon, would “flagrantly violate” self-determination and “stir up in

Germany undying hatred and an unquestionable thirst for revenge.”407 On that account,

Henderson used his influence to persuade “the National Labour Committee to commence at once a great public campaign … [for] a ‘Wilson’ Peace.”408 Dawson and Henderson continued their correspondence, and in 1921, Henderson suggested that Dawson take a more active role in the

Labour Movement.409 There can be no doubt that liberal, radical, and internationalist politicians used revisionist scholarship to intellectually and morally rationalize their own moderate attitudes towards the Weimar Republic.

Disillusionment with the peace settlement led politicians to embrace revisionist scholarship that supported a reassessment in the Versailles Treaty. MacDonald, like his trusted friend Gooch, feared that internal disorder would destabilize Weimar Germany. He accepted the revisionist view that only a revised settlement could save ‘Democratic Germany’. On that

405 WHD 2154/335: review Ramsay MacDonald on W. H. Dawson’s Social Insurance in Germany, London 1912. 406 WHD 410: letter Arthur Henderson to W. H. Dawson, 20 December 1918. 407 WHD 409: letter W. H. Dawson to David Lloyd George, 19 December 1918. 408 WHD 410: letter Arthur Henderson to W. H. Dawson, 20 December 1918. 409 WHD 577: letter Henderson to Dawson, 5 Aug. 1921.

97 account, his core objective was to draw the Weimar Republic into a reformed continental system which would enhance both French and German security.410 Like his historical advisors,

MacDonald perceived France as the major obstacle to continental stability.411 He believed that while “France must have another chance,” it must be reasonable and cease its policies for selfish aggrandizement.412 His first task was to normalize relations between Britain, France, and

Germany. To achieve this objective, he campaigned to include German representatives in multilateral negotiations. Lloyd George had proposed a bilateral defensive pact to France in

January 1922 to secure French support for his moderate policies towards Germany (his ‘Grand

Design’). MacDonald had no interest in such bilateral arrangements.413 He believed that “a guarantee given to one nation alone” could not “make for peace … Therefore, any attempt made to allay public fears by giving securities must include … Germany.”414 MacDonald argued that a return to normal diplomatic conditions and an agreement which incorporated expert evidence,

“would have ... greater moral value than the … Versailles Treaty.”415

The greatest impediment to this development was the “unlawful” French intervention in the Ruhr. The trouble emerged in January 1923 when the French refused to agree to a two-year moratorium on reparation payments – a respite that Britain had been inclined to accept. On 11

January 1923, French and Belgian forces marched into the Ruhr to ensure a continuation in payments. The German government responded with passive resistance, but the incursion led to

410 Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War,” 12. 411 Carolyn J. Kitching, “Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary: The Dual Role of James Ramsay MacDonald in 1924,” Review of International Studies 37, no. 3 (July 2011): 1411. 412 Quoted in Kitching, “Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,” 1411. 413 F. G. Stambrook, “‘Das Kind’: Lord D’Abernon and the Origins of the Locarno Pact,” Central European History 1, no. 3 (September 1968): 235. 414 United Kingdom. HC Deb, 23 July 1923, volume 167, column 86 (Mr. James Ramsay MacDonald). 415 Ramsay MacDonald to Edouard Herriot, Paris, 8 July 1924, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First Series, vol. XXVI, ed. W. N. Medlicott and Douglas Dakin (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1985), no. 507, p. 755. Hereinafter, the Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939 will be cited as DBFP.

98 hyperinflation and the eventual collapse in the German Papiermark. Responding to the situation, the Reparations Commission appointed two subcommittees to consider possible options to counteract the economic crisis.416 The incident marked a nadir in post-war British-French relations, “there have been few occasions upon which public opinion has been so united as it has been on [condemning] … the French incursion into the Ruhr.” Gooch published an article in the

Contemporary Review which declared that “public opinion here [Britain], and indeed throughout the civilized world, is almost unanimous in deprecating the French action in advancing into the

Ruhr Valley.”417 Beazley, Dawson, Dickinson, Gooch, and Pollard all published articles (or editorials) that condemned France and sympathized with Germany. To be sure, historians occupied a prominent role in influencing educated opinion on the invasion, and often wrote vitriolic commentaries and editorials which denounced the armed intervention.

The French incursion infuriated liberal and radical historians, who perceived France as the greatest threat to continental security. Dawson believed that France “was reorganizing and increasing her armed forces … with resources which would be far better, and for Europe more safely, employed in … national reconstruction.”418 Albert Frederick Pollard compared the

Franco-Belgian intervention to the Napoleonic Wars: “it was because the French went to Berlin in 1807 that the Germans came to Paris in 1814 and 1870, and were hardly prevented … from getting to Paris again in 1914 and 1918.” French treatment “under Napoleon … provoked conscription in Germany and goaded a somewhat lethargic Prussia into becoming the protagonist for militarism in Europe.”419 Once again, France was depicted as the traditional aggressor in

Europe, the agitator against whom Britain had constantly formed continental coalitions.

416 Kitching, “Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,” 1411. 417 Beauchamp, “France and the Ruhr,” The Contemporary Review 123 (1 January 1923): 273. 418 W. H. Dawson, “France and the Ruhr,” The Times (London, UK), 17 January 1923. 419 A. F. Pollard, “France’s Policy: Some Historical Analogies,” The Times (London, UK) 19 January 1923.

Germany was exonerated for its past indiscretions because France had forced militarism and totalitarianism upon it. MacDonald accepted these views and worked to find a compromise that would guarantee continental pacification and universal disarmament. This commitment led him to orchestrate the London Conference on reparations (1924), the first ‘real’ attempt at post-war reconciliation. MacDonald regarded the eventual agreement “as the first Peace Treaty, because we sign it with a feeling that we have turned our backs on the terrible war years and war mentality.”420 On that account, he contributed decisively to the sympathetic atmosphere

(inculcated by historians) by translating revisionist scholarship into a viable multilateral peace accord.421 The arrangement concluded in London involved a substantial revision to the ‘ruinous’

Versailles Settlement, and attests to MacDonald’s commitment to converting revisionist discoveries into moderate policies towards Weimar Germany.

His journal entries from the conference reveal his frustration with French aggression and obstinance. France was nearly “impossible,” having “been taught [almost] nothing,” and was still pursuing “armed power, tricky diplomacy, [and] stupid economics.”422 His correspondence with liberal (and radical) historians confirmed his opinion that French actions obstructed general pacification, universal disarmament, and economic recuperation.423 On occasion, the representatives from Germany also irritated him, especially when they suggested “long speeches and meticulous points.”424 Nonetheless, he accepted the revisionist view that Germany was an

‘underdog’ in the conflict with France, and warned that French belligerence would destabilize

‘Democratic Germany’, an argument which the historian H. A. L. Fisher had made in a

420 J. Ramsay MacDonald concluding speeches, 16 August 1924, Proceedings of the London Reparation Conference July and August 1924 (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1924), no. 8, p. 95. 421 Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War,” 9. 422 Quoted in Kitching, “Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,” 1412. 423 Stambrook, “Lord D’Abernon and the Origins of the Locarno Pact,” 234. 424 Quoted in Kitching, “Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,” 1412.

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Commons Debate one year earlier (23 July 1923).425 For that reason, MacDonald sympathized with the German President Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Stresemann, “whom he came to see as

[democratic] guardians,” in an “embattled republic.”426 He perceived Ebert, Stresemann, Hans

Luther, and Wilhelm Marx as the ‘moral elite’, “sincere spirits who were truly democratic.”427

His resolve to accommodate Germany was based on the Germanophile argument that economic and territorial insecurities would destabilize the Weimar Republic and lead to its replacement with an autocratic militarist regime.428 MacDonald believed that French policies perpetuated wartime hostilities, noting that “the worst form of German Nationalism was the result of the way that Germany had been handled by the Allies” since Versailles.429 The London Conference represented the first post-war Franco-German peace process, or what MacDonald termed “the first really negotiated agreement since the war.”430 For liberal and radical historians the settlement represented the first morally significant post-war arrangement. MacDonald doubtless found in their revisionist discoveries the intellectual rationale for his own sympathetic agenda towards the ‘embattled’ Weimar Republic.

To be sure, there were other influences that affected MacDonald’s external policies. Like his UDC associates, he attributed the war to an exponential growth in armaments, economic and imperial rivalries, and traditional power politics. This conviction led him to endorse multilateral agreements negotiated before Parliament and the public. MacDonald’s foreign policies as Prime

Minister and Foreign Secretary (1924) were often contradictory. He cancelled the Singapore

425 Fisher noted that he was “alarmed by the growth in hostile and militant feeling which had been excited by the French occupation. That occupation, so far from bringing France security, is likely to bring her just the reverse.” United Kingdom. HC Deb, 23 July 1923, volume 167, column 117 (Mr. H. A. L. Fisher). 426 Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War,” 14. 427 Our Correspondent, “Mr. MacDonald and France,” The Times (London, UK), 16 Feb. 1924. 428 Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War,” 13. 429 Ramsay MacDonald to Mr. Knox, 6 May 1924, DBFP, vol. XXVI, no. 462, p. 681. 430 MacDonald concluding speeches, Proceedings of the London Reparation Conference July and August 1924, 95.

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Naval Base, because he thought that it would produce an arms race with Japan, and war. “Once

Singapore was commenced circumstances would inevitably contrive to build up a military situation in the East until we reached a state similar to that in the North Sea in 1914.”431 The decision to halt construction at Singapore was intended to demonstrate his anti-militarist position. To proceed with the scheme “would exercise a most detrimental effect on our general foreign policies.”432 Yet he did not cancel the Royal Air Force (RAF) expansion programme, which was intended to match French airpower, because he accepted the view that it was a defensive act. He embraced the RAF argument that France presented an aerial threat and noted that the British public would naturally perceive France’s “1000 aeroplanes against our 80 … as a menace.”433 Hence, MacDonald could be a Francophobe without necessarily being a

Germanophile. However, his Francophobe tendencies made him more receptive to pro-German historians and their arguments. It can thus be reasoned that these historians provided the

‘vocabulary’ by which MacDonald could frame post-war reconciliation.

Sir Austen Chamberlain, MacDonald’s successor at the Foreign Office (1924-1929), also used revisionist scholarship to rationalize moderate policies towards Germany. He was indeed familiar with revisionist discoveries, and corresponded with Dawson, whose letters continued to encourage anti-French sentiment.434 More importantly, he had studied history at Trinity College,

Cambridge (1885), and often cited historical precedent to supplement his arguments. On 5 March

1925, in a Commons Debate on continental security, Chamberlain argued that “our history shows

[that] … it is more important to-day than ever before that we should not regard ourselves as so

431 Quoted in John Ferris, “James Ramsay MacDonald, 1866-1937,” in British Foreign Secretaries and Japan, 1850- 1990: Aspects of the Evolution of British Foreign Policy, ed. Antony Best and Hugh Cortazzi (London: Renaissance Books, 2018), 148. 432 Quoted in Kitching, “Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,” 1413-1414. 433 Quoted in John Ferris, “The Theory of a “French Air Menace’, Anglo-French Relations and the British Home Defence Air Force Programmes of 1921-1925,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 10, no. 1 (1987): 72. 434 See e.g. WHD 929: letter W. H. Dawson to Sir Austen Chamberlain, 29 August 1926.

102 protected and so separated from [continental] Europe and its misfortunes.”435 During his time at the Foreign Office, he often requested historical advice.436 Unlike his Conservative predecessor,

Lord Curzon (1919-1924), who had advocated ‘passive neutrality’, Chamberlain pursued a policy of ‘continental equilibrium’.437 He sought to improve international relations with assurances on territorial questions, “by giving our guarantee to this Western Frontier [Franco-

German Border] we should remove the acute fears which distort French policies and which prevent any improvement in Franco-German relations.”438 Like MacDonald, Chamberlain accepted the view that Germany must be reintegrated back “into the comity of nations.”439 This conviction led him to negotiate the multilateral Locarno Treaties in October 1925. The Locarno

Pact realized the suggestions which Germanophile historians had continually argued for in revisionist scholarship. The agreement guaranteed the German frontier with France and Belgium

(as defined in the Versailles Treaty), secured German membership in the League of Nations, contained a promise that the signatories would refrain from armed conflict for a ten-year period, and committed the co-signers to increasing their efforts to find a viable agreement on disarmament.440 These ‘moderate’ provisions had long been called for by liberal and radical historians (and scholars).

Chamberlain’s resolve to negotiate the Locarno Pact was also influenced by the historical analogies offered by J. W. Headlam-Morley, the historical advisor at the British Foreign Office.

Headlam-Morley had observed during the Paris Peace Conference that it was regrettable that

435 United Kingdom. HC Deb, 5 March 1925, volume 181, column 715 (Sir Austen Chamberlain). 436 Erik Goldstein, “The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy for the Locarno Pact, 1924-1925,” in Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890-1950 ed. Michael L. Dockrill and Brian J. C. McKercher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 134. 437 Cohrs, “The First ‘Real’ Peace Settlements after the First World War,” 22. 438 Austen Chamberlain to Lord D’Abernon, 18 March 1925, DBFP, vol. XXVII, no. 255, p. 398. 439 Austen Chamberlain to Lord D’Abernon, 15 May 1925, DBFP, vol. XXVII, no. 325, p. 510. 440 Gaynor Johnson, “Austen Chamberlain and Britain’s Relations with France, 1924-1929,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 17 (2006), 755.

103 public opinion “countenanced the view that the doctrine of the Balance of Power can be neglected. It is, and will remain, a fundamental point just as much after the establishment of a

League of Nations as it has been before.” During the inter-war period, he continued to advocate for a new European Concert, and often restated the conventional rationale for continental involvement, “our island is so close to the continent that we cannot afford to ignore what goes on there, and so we get the next fundamental requirement, that the [states] opposite … the Channel and North Sea should never be brought under the control of a single great armed or naval power.” His ideas appealed to Chamberlain, who confessed that he was “much struck with an observation made by Mr. Headlam-Morley … that the first thought for Castlereagh after 1815 was to restore the European Concert, [and] that the more ambitious peacemakers at Versailles, when they framed the Covenant, still left a gap which only a new Concert … can fill.”441

Chamberlain was so taken with this historical argument that he recommended “Professor

Webster’s book on Castlereagh’s policies after 1815” to Dr. Friedrich Sthamer (the German

Ambassador), telling him that he intended to pursue similar continental policies.442 First, he meant to secure the peace settlement, and then, he designed to bring Germany back into the international community. “Lord Castlereagh had achieved this object, with the result that … the

Powers almost at once regrouped themselves on new lines as new problems required their attention.” He reminded Sthamer, whom he respected, “that it was sometimes useful to recall the past.”443 Symbolically, Chamberlain had Lord Castlereagh’s portrait exhibited in the room where the Locarno Treaties were signed.444

441 Quoted in Goldstein, “The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy for the Locarno Pact,” 123. 442 C. K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1815-1822: Britain and European Alliance (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1925). 443 Austen Chamberlain to Lord D’Abernon, 15 May 1925, DBFP, vol. XXVII, no. 325, p. 509-510. See also Austen Chamberlain to Lord D’Abernon, 2 April 1925, DBFP, vol. XXVII, no. 283, p. 437. 444 Goldstein, “The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy for the Locarno Pact,” 124.

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The historical analogies offered by both Headlam-Morley and Webster convinced

Chamberlain that Britain should restore the traditional European Balance. Headlam-Morley advised that, “for more than five hundred years our statesmen and rulers have … held that we had a predominant interest in” continental Europe, “and that they have never failed to use every means, including … war, to assert this interest.”445 To be sure, this argument differed from the one offered by Dawson, Gooch, and their Germanophile allies. These analogies and suggestions were not derived from any personal affinity for Germany, but rather were rooted in structural diplomatic concerns. Based upon these historical precedents, Chamberlain believed that Britain should manage the continental balance, because there was “the constant risk that either France or

Germany might upset the apple-cart.”446 Despite his inclination towards conservative structuralist arguments and Francophilia, Chamberlain did correspond with Dawson, and he respected the individual Germans with whom negotiated, referring to Gustav Stresemann as a

“good friend.”447 It can therefore be argued that Germanophile historians had some influence over how he perceived German ‘rehabilitation’ and the ‘continental equilibrium’. On that account, both the Germanophiles and the more traditional structuralists provided Chamberlain and his ‘internationalist’ associates with the intellectual rationale for the Locarno Treaties

(1925). Erik Goldstein notes that Chamberlain was quite taken with “what Headlam-Morley presented, and it doubtless contributed to [his] growing attraction to a ‘Castlereaghesque’ solution to European instability.”448

Like Lloyd George and MacDonald, Chamberlain embraced the historical advice he received, whether that information came from official channels (at the Foreign Office) or

445 James Wycliffe Headlam-Morley, Studies in Diplomatic History (London: Metheun & Co. Ltd, 1930), 157. 446 Austen Chamberlain to Lord D’Abernon, 2 April 1925, DBFP, vol. XXVII, no. 283, p. 437. 447 Quoted in Johnson, “Austen Chamberlain and Britain’s Relations with France,” 762. 448 Goldstein, “The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy for the Locarno Pact,” 134.

105 personal correspondence. History mattered to political elites. The conviction that nations would act presently as they had done historically led politicians to accept as self-evident the historical

‘truths’ which they received from revisionist (and in Chamberlain’s case structuralist) historians.

These views received additional support from the ‘two Germanies’ thesis, which enabled an immediate reorientation in post-war attitudes. Political and diplomatic historians therefore provided a framework for inter-war policies and influenced how post-war Britain interacted with the ‘rehabilitated’ Germany.

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Conclusion Before the First World War, numerous British historians published works with the intention to make their readers sympathetic towards Germany, especially by propagating the cultural, historical, and racial links between the two countries. Conceptually, their arguments centred on the ‘two Germanies’ thesis, which enabled British admiration for German cultural and intellectual achievements to exist in tension with fears about Prussian militarism. Germany could be castigated for its commitment to universal conscription and naval expansion, while simultaneously being lauded as the most “pacific nation in Europe.”449 Significantly, the ‘two

Germanies’ thesis continued to influence how historians conceptualized and perceived Germany after 1914. Even the Bryce Report, an important statement for wartime British views, distinguished the ‘Prussian’ Germany from the ‘idealistic’ Germany, and Prussian leaders from ordinary Germans. Following the war, this continuity enabled Germanophile historians to retain an idealistic (and romanticized) image of Germany. This conviction led them to embrace and disseminate revisionist interpretations which posited that the European Powers shared responsibility for the conflict, and thus to support ‘judicious’ amendments to the peace settlement. The political influence of these historians was increased by their interactions with radical (UDC) and diplomatic structuralist historians, whose own arguments made the educated public and political elite more receptive to revising the Versailles Treaty. Placed within this context, Germanophile arguments provided additional intellectual and moral justification for sympathetic policies towards Weimar Germany. Between 1914 and 1923, pro-German historians remained a small subgroup. However, the deterioration in relations between Britain and France after 1919, especially the Franco-

Belgian intervention into the Ruhr (1923), alarmed both the public and political elite. These trends strengthened the impact of Germanophile historians, as did the Locarno Pact (1925). To be sure, during the later 1920s, myriad factors brought the Versailles Settlement into disrepute: deteriorating British-French relations, economic stagnation, and vocal criticism from elite

449 Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, 12.

107 coteries (e.g. bankers, clergymen, economists, and industrialists). Nonetheless, the elite group that worked the hardest to reverse public and political opinion on the settlement was Germanophile historians. Their views were not simple. Gooch’s work on the British Documents on the Origins of the War (BDOW) was certainly objective and scholarly.450 His documents and editorial analysis suggested that Germany had done more than Britain to harm their relations before the 1914, and that German actions during the July Crisis had almost driven Britain into the war. Nonetheless, the mainstream views of Germanophile historians as expressed by Dawson and Raymond Beazley (Vice President for the Royal Historical Society) continued to gain ascendency. Beazley summarized their position in The Road to Ruin in Europe (1933), Germany “had not plotted the Great War, had not desired a war, and had made genuine, though belated and ill-organized efforts to avert it.”451 These views gained significant traction among the political elite, largely because Germanophile historians had cultivated intimate relations with prominent statesmen in the previous two decades. Even after 1933, these historians continued to call for economic and territorial concessions. Since Nazism was directly related to “the crushing territorial and economic penalties enforced upon Germany at Versailles,” a “rational revision” in the settlement would stabilize continental Europe and prevent another world war. The moral that Germanophile historians tried to impress throughout the 1930s was that treaty revision would save the Continent from (another) conflagration.452 On that account, their calls for revision were motivated by two antithetical factors: 1) a determination to reverse the ‘unjust’ and ‘restrictive’ settlement and 2) a desire to prevent another continental conflict. Their response to the disorderly and troublesome developments within Germany demonstrates “the relentlessness with which moral considerations were stressed [over] power factors.” By contrast, French security (or insecurity) was completely ignored as were the elementary dictates of the ‘continental

450 British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914, 2 volumes, eds. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1927). 451 Raymond Beazley, The Road to Ruin in Europe, 1890-1914 (London: J. M. Dent, 1932), 86. 452 William Harbutt Dawson, “The Urgency of Treaty Revision,” The Contemporary Review 144 (1 July 1933): 16- 17.

108 equilibrium’.453 The idea that all the belligerent states equally shared responsibility for the First World War encouraged the view that the grievances which a relatively ‘guiltless’ Germany sought to redress were legitimate. On that account, there can no doubt that the appeasement policies adopted in the 1930s, resulted in part from the sympathetic atmosphere that historians had inculcated throughout the 1920s.454 This thesis demonstrates that the pre-war cultural, intellectual, and religious voices which Paul Kennedy marginalizes as insignificant are indeed important. His argument that “religious, racial, cultural, and dynastic ties … [had] little or no weight on” deteriorating British-German relations requires re-evaluation.455 This thesis suggests that intellectual and public opinion mattered more to the formulation of British policies than Kennedy, and other diplomatic historians, believe. It indicates that both before 1914 and during the 1920s, numerous historians engendered Germanophile feelings among the educated public, which did affect the atmosphere around decision-making. The voices which argued for moderation and friendship in the pre-war period continued to call for reconciliation after 1914. Thus, a temporal shift, suggests that these elite influences were certainly significant. Germanophile historians had access to prominent politicians before, during, and after the First World War, which allowed them influence British policies on Germany and Europe. Their influence was minimal both before and during the war, but its existence demonstrates that there were limits to British-German antagonism prior to 1914.456 During the war, Germanophile historians did not turn Germanophobe, as some have suggested, nor did they produce vitriolic propaganda.457 Rather, they continued to conceptualize Germany through pre-war intellectual frameworks and constructs. This allowed them to distinguish the civilian population (and conscripted soldiery), which they identified with old Germany, from the militaristic elite. Modern historians have often ignored the startling survival

453 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 54-57. 454 Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” 43-56. 455 Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 386. 456 Siak, “Germanophilism in Britain,” 2. 457 See e.g. Cline, “British Historians and the Treaty of Versailles,” Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, and Siak, “British Historians and the Coming of the First World War.”

109 of such views in wartime British works on Germany. Finally, this thesis suggests the central role Germanophile historians occupied in providing the ‘vocabulary’ by which policy-makers and the public could frame German ‘rehabilitation’ after the war. It therefore shows the need to consider private individuals and intellectuals when considering diplomatic issues. This thesis deviates from previous studies on British-German relations in the Great War era because it concentrates on how educated elites conceptualized (and romanticized) Germany. This alternative focus indicates continuity in attitudes. The First World War did not inaugurate an abrupt transformation in the views of historians, and of the educated public, towards Germany. This recognition provides context for Germanophile and revisionist scholarship in the inter-war period, which grew in significance between the Versailles Treaty and the Locarno Pact, and therefore, exerted increasing influence over elite perceptions. This reappraisal raises several new questions, like the central role pro-German historians played in generating support for treaty revision after 1925, or how this group shaped German perceptions towards Britain. Germanophile historians corresponded with eminent German academics, industrialists, and politicians both before and after the First World War. These relationships have often been neglected by anglophone historians. It remains uncertain whether (and to what extent) these interactions affected how German academic and political elites perceived Britain before, during, and after the Great War. Moreover, it might be worthwhile to investigate whether anglophone historians directly influenced the development of historical schools within Germany (e.g. the

Sonderweg thesis). Ultimately, this thesis stresses continuity and invites historians to re-evaluate the First World War as the moment when British-German relations were irreconcilably transformed.

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