Plotting for Peace Daniel Larsen Frontmatter More Information

Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48668-2 — Plotting for Peace Daniel Larsen Frontmatter More Information

Plotting for Peace

With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and being increasingly dependent on the United States, rival factions in Asquith’s government battled over whether or not to seek a negotiated end to the First World War. In this riveting new account, Daniel Larsen tells the full story for the first time of how Asquith and his supporters secretly sought to end the war. He shows how they supported President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to convene a peace conference and how British intelligence, clandestinely breaking American codes, aimed to sabotage these peace efforts and aided Asquith’s rivals. With Britain reading and decrypting all US diplomatic telegrams between Europe and Washington, these decrypts were used in a battle between the Treasury, which was terrified of looming financial catastrophe, and Lloyd George and the generals. This book’s findings transform our understanding of British strategy and international diplomacy during the war.

Daniel Larsen is College Lecturer in History at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

Plotting for Peace American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917

Daniel Larsen University of Cambridge

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www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108486682 DOI: 10.1017/9781108761833 © Daniel Larsen 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Ltd, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Larsen, Daniel, 1985– author. Title: Plotting for peace : American peacemakers, British codebreakers, and Britain at war, 1914–1917 / Daniel Larsen, University of Cambridge. Other titles: American peacemakers, British codebreakers, and Britain at war, 1914–1917 Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2020037949 (print) | LCCN 2020037950 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108486682 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108708197 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108761833 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914–1918–Peace. | World War, 1914–1918– Diplomatic history. | United States–Foreign relations–Great Britain. | Great Britain–Foreign relations–United States. | United States–Foreign relations– 1913–1921. | Great Britain–Foreign relations–1910–1936. | World War, 1914–1918–Economic aspects–Great Britain. | World War, 1914–1918– Cryptography. Classiﬁcation: LCC D619 .L39 2021 (print) | LCC D619 (ebook) | DDC 940.3/120941–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037949 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037950 ISBN 978-1-108-48668-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Mom and Dad

Contents

List of Figures page viii List of Maps ix List of Graphs and Tables x Dramatis Personae xi Preface xv Acknowledgements xxiv

Introduction 1 1 The First Year of War: August 1914–August 1915 24 2 Strategy: August–December 1915 48 3 Negotiations: January–March 1916 71 4 Deliberations: March–May 1916 104 5 The Gamble: June–August 1916 137 6 The Knock-Out Blow: September–October 1916 159 7 The Fall of Asquith: October–December 1916 188 8 Peace Moves: December 1916–January 1917 246 9 The Zimmermann Telegram and Wilson’s Move to War: February–April 1917 280 Conclusion 307

Appendix I The Gold Standard and the Fixed Exchange Rate 321 Appendix II GDP of the United States, Britain, and France, 1914–1918 325 Notes 327 Bibliography 389 Index 411

vii

Figures

1 Edward M. House and Woodrow Wilson, c. 1915 page 10 2 Sir Edward Grey 12 3 Captain Reginald Hall 19 4 David Lloyd George 27 5 Headquarters of J. P. Morgan & Co. 31 6 Reginald McKenna 39 7 British war loan poster from 1915 42 8 Triangular arbitrage 50 9 Herbert Henry Asquith 53 10 Recruitment poster for the Derby Scheme, 1915 65 11 Arthur James Balfour 79 12 Austen Chamberlain 84 13 William Robertson and Douglas Haig 113 14 Lord Curzon 129 15 Charles Hardinge 144 16 A British ﬁeld dressing station in France during the Battle of the Somme, 1916 146 17 Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth) 167 18 Edwin Montagu 178 19 Lord Lansdowne 202 20 Edward Carson and Andrew Bonar Law 208 21 The illumination of the Statue of Liberty, drawn by Charles Graham 250 22 Karl I of Austria-Hungary 281 23 Signing the British War Loan, 1917 284 24 Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma in 1914 304 25 ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ exhibition at the Tower of London, November 2014 319

viii

Map

1 Map of First World War Europe page xxvi

Graph and Table

Graph 1 Price of Anglo-French ﬁve-year bonds, January 1915–April 1917 page 56

Table 1 US, British, and French GDP, 1914–1918 page 325

Dramatis Personae

August 1914–April 1917 (Arranged in alphabetical order, may exclude ofﬁces not mentioned in the text)

British † Liberal Party Politician * Conservative Party Politician

H. H. Asquith† Prime Minister (to December 1916) Leader of the Opposition (from December 1916) Arthur J. Balfour* First Lord of the Admiralty (May 1915– December 1916) Foreign Secretary (from December 1916) Francis Bertie Ambassador to France Andrew Bonar Law* Leader of the Conservative Party Colonial Secretary (May 1915– December 1916) Chancellor of the Exchequer (from December 1916) John Bradbury Permanent Secretary to the Treasury Edward Carson* First Lord of the Admiralty (from December 1916) Robert Cecil* Foreign Ofﬁce Parliamentary Undersecretary (from May 1915) Blockade Minister (from February 1916) Austen Chamberlain* Secretary of State for India Manpower Distribution Board Chair (August–December 1916) Winston Churchill† First Lord of the Admiralty (to May 1915) Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (May– November 1916)

xii Dramatis Personae

Lord Crawford* President of the Board of Agriculture (July– December 1916) Lord Crewe† Lord President of the Council (May 1915– December 1916) Lord Cunliffe Governor of the Bank of England Lord Curzon* Lord Privy Seal (May 1915–December 1916) Shipping Control Committee Chair (January–December 1916) President of the Air Board (May 1916– January 1917) War Cabinet Minister without Portfolio (from December 1916) Lord Derby* Director General of Recruiting (October 1915–May 1916) Eric Drummond Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary (from 1915) Sir Edward Grey† Foreign Secretary (to December 1916) Douglas Haig Commander-in-Chief, British Expeditionary Force (from December 1915) Reginald Hall Director of Intelligence Division, Admiralty (from October 1914) Maurice Hankey Secretary to the War Council/Committee/ Cabinet Lewis Harcourt† First Commissioner of Works (May 1915– December 1916) Lord Hardinge Foreign Ofﬁce Permanent Undersecretary (from June 1916) Arthur Henderson Leader of the Labour Party President of the Board of Education (May 1915–August 1916) Paymaster General (August– December 1916) War Cabinet Minister without Portfolio (from December 1916) John Maynard Keynes Treasury Civil Servant (from January 1915) Lord Kitchener War Secretary (to June 1916) Lord Lansdowne* Minister without Portfolio (May 1915– December 1916)

Dramatis Personae xiii

David Lloyd George† Chancellor of the Exchequer (to May 1915) Minister of Munitions (May 1915–July 1916) War Secretary (July–December 1916) Prime Minister (from December 1916) Walter Long* President of Local Government Board (May 1915–December 1916) Reginald McKenna† Home Secretary (to May 1915) Chancellor of the Exchequer (May 1915– December 1916) Lord Milner* War Cabinet Minister without Portfolio (from December 1916) Edwin Montagu† Chief Secretary to the Treasury (to February 1915, May 1915–July 1916) Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (February–May 1915, January–July 1916) Minister of Munitions (July– December 1916) Lord Northcliffe Newspaper owner, including of The Times and Daily Mail Lord Reading† Lord Chief Justice William Robertson Chief of Imperial General Staff (from December 1915) Walter Runciman† President of the Board of Trade (to December 1916) C. P. Scott Owner and editor of the Manchester Guardian Cecil Spring Rice Ambassador to the United States Frances Stevenson Personal Secretary to Lloyd George William Wiseman Head of MI1(c) in the United States (from October 1915)

American William Jennings Bryan Secretary of State (to June 1915) Clifford Carver Secretary to Edward M. House (January– March 1916) James Gerard Ambassador to Germany (to February 1917) Joseph Grew First Secretary, US Embassy in Berlin (to February 1917) Edward M. House Wilson’s advisor and conﬁdant

xiv Dramatis Personae

Roy Howard President of United Press Robert Lansing Secretary of State (from June 1915) Irwin Laughlin First Secretary of the US Embassy in London Walter Page Ambassador to Britain Frederic Penﬁeld Ambassador to Austria-Hungary Woodrow Wilson President

German Count Johann Ambassador to the United States (to von Bernstorff February 1917) Theobald von Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg Henning von Chief of the Admiralty Staff (from Holtzendorff September 1915) Arthur Foreign Secretary (from November 1916) Zimmermann

Austro-Hungarian Count Ottokar Czernin Foreign Minister (from December 1916) Karl I Emperor (from November 1916) Count Adam Tarnowski Ambassador-Designate to the United States (from January 1917)

Preface

This book began as a project on British codebreaking and Anglo- American relations during the First World War, and now aims to be a combined diplomatic, political, intelligence, and economic study of British war policy and American mediation efforts during the First World War. Its unifying idea is that of an American peace. It argues that a key faction in the coalition of H. H. Asquith favoured the idea and that, owing to British economic policy, the coalition of David Lloyd George had made itself almost powerless to stop one. This book reconsiders American mediation diplomacy itself. It explores the economic reasons that served as the principal cause of British interest in American mediation. It recounts the political debate within the British government both over this mediation diplomacy and over the fundamental economic concerns that drove British interest in it. Finally, it carefully reconstructs, to the extent possible, the role of British codebreaking and its effects as they relate to an American peace both within the British government and in the United States. This book aims to augment traditional diplomatic and political history by adding in methodologically robust approaches to economic and intelligence history. The only methodologically comparable work in First World War history, at least in terms of its systematic and detailed consideration of each and all four of these dimensions, is that of Nicholas Lambert in the wartime chapters of his Planning Armageddon, which consider the British blockade through the end of 1915 and include a detailed consideration of the economic factors affecting decision- making as well as the intelligence apparatus underpinning the administration of the blockade.1 This book similarly offers methodological improvement over the existing historiography not only in its combining all four dimensions in detail, but also in its novel approach to both economic and intelligence history. Its methodology concerning economic history beneﬁts considerably from quantitative research, while its robust approach to signals intelligence enables signiﬁcant historical

xvi Preface

reconstruction in the face of extensive document destruction and archival loss. This book’s argument arises out of an American diplomatic history core. It re-examines American mediation diplomacy and the British response to it during the period of American neutrality. Previous scholars have concluded that these American efforts were always doomed to failure and that none of the British leaders had any interest in them.2 This book demonstrates by contrast that a number of leaders in Asquith’s coalition showed genuine interest in them at almost every stage in 1916, excepting only a brief period around the month of August. It shows that, after Asquith’s fall from power, the peace negotiations between Edward M. House and British intelligence ofﬁcer Sir William Wiseman in December 1916 and January 1917 were not, as has been universally supposed, a rogue attempt at deceit by Wiseman, but rather formed a genuine attempt by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to keep the possibility of American mediation alive.3 This enables a fundamental reinterpretation of American mediation diplomacy in this period, showing where it was more effective and where it made mistakes, rather than dismissing it all as pointless. The fundamental cause of this British interest in American mediation can be explained as a result of this book’s approach to economic history. Past consideration of Anglo-American economic history and the balance of trade during the First World War – including both works primarily focussing on economic history and those aiming to combine political, diplomatic, and economic history – has almost universally taken a qualitative approach and looked primarily at the role of economic consider- ations in decision-making.4 This book, by contrast, aims to go beyond these qualitative approaches by attempting to evaluate this problem quantitatively as well. Though a lack of a good wartime economic statis- tics enormously complicates this effort, this book aims not only to consider decision-making, but it also seeks to understand the underlying Anglo-American economics from a numerical point of view – an area of study with an almost completely barren historiography. The only serious existing quantitative study of the British balance of trade in this period is a 1952 work by British economic historian E. V. Morgan.5 As Appendix I demonstrates, Morgan dramatically underestimated British government payments abroad during the war years, an error that renders his overall estimates of the British balance of trade effectively meaningless. Yet although clear evidence to make this rather straightforward compu- tation has been readily available since the 1970s, previous scholars, in their qualitative approaches, have never detected this. In fact, Morgan’s

Preface xvii

erroneous balance of trade numbers were relatively recently relied upon and reproduced in toto.6 By developing a clear quantitative understanding of the available data underlying wartime Anglo-American economics and its relationship to the principles of international macroeconomics, this book is able to elucidate more clearly the British Treasury’s desired strategy as well as the consequences of the government’s refusal to adopt it. By contrast, almost universally, excepting only Martin Farr, previous historians have never taken the Treasury’s strategic views particularly seriously, generally seeing the department as obsessed with fiscal rectitude and pessimistic- ally raising false alarms.7 This book clearly lays out the fundamental problem: American unwill- ingness to lend. This forced the liquidation of British assets deployable in the United States. By considering quantitatively the amount and pace of British asset liquidation in the United States,8 the following chapters are able to demonstrate precisely why the alarms the Treasury rose in October 1915 and May 1916 were overly pessimistic at the time: in October 1915, the reason was departmental and allied overestimation of their spending requirements, and in May 1916 it was the Treasury’s underestimation of British assets. The Treasury, however, was not wrong about the fundamentals. This quantitative approach is able to show that the Treasury warning in November 1916 about the impending exhaus- tion of British assets by mid-1917 was in fact accurate: an order for the compulsory seizing of American securities in January 1917 yielded the Treasury only small sums. Britain stood on the brink of financial exhaus- tion, notwithstanding the confident claims of some of its politicians to the contrary. By having a clear understanding of the principles of international macroeconomics, this book is also able to make much better sense of the Treasury’s economic aims, which focussed above all on maintaining British exports. As explained in Chapter 2, the principle of currency arbitrage in fact lay at the very centre of this strategy in mid-to-late 1915. Without understanding this principle, the Treasury’s strategic views simply make no sense. Yet the concept of arbitrage has never before been mentioned in relation to the economics of the war, and in fact one economic historian, neglecting it, wrongly condemned the Treasury for advocating what he saw as a preposterously ineffective strategy.9 This book, however, is intended as a work for non-economists and for general readers, and so the presentation of this economic methodology has been approached very carefully. A more robust quantitative approach, despite its seeming complexity, does have some advantages

xviii Preface

in terms of reader understanding: most numbers in the book are carefully contextualized because they are typically expressed relative to GDP figures, and, wherever practicable, in US dollars.10 Indeed, it is hoped that by the end of the book the reader will have developed something of an intuitive sense for the amounts of currency under discussion. The terminology, moreover, has been carefully chosen so as to maximize comprehensibility. For example, British efforts to borrow on collateral are purposefully described herein as ‘mortgaging operations’ to try to make clear that these should be understood principally as a means of disposing of pre-existing British assets. One can either sell a security, or borrow upon it: either way, the security is used up. The term ‘collateral loan’, by contrast, risks general readers conflating it with ‘unsecured loan’ as merely two different kinds of loans, and so the term is avoided.11 Important macroeconomic concepts – including trade deficits, the gold standard, and currency arbitrage – are introduced as the narrative requires, and are explained, it is hoped, in straightforward and easily intelligible terms. Appendix I offers a fuller discussion of the economics involved and is directed more principally at economic historians. Having thus established the fundamentals of the Anglo-American economic situation, this book reframes British political history during this period. Previous historians have divided the British Cabinet into two camps, pitting a prevailing group that favoured a consumptionist strategy against an unsuccessful group that favoured an alternative economic strategy. The historiography, moreover, has tended to favour strongly the consumptionist camp.12 This book, by contrast, styles the fundamental divide within the government as being instead between ‘realists’ and ‘maximalists’. The ‘realist’ camp includes all of those who favoured one of three possible and reasonable strategies, which can be summed up in the following phrase: ‘A total war army, colossal war supplies from the United States, and a long war: choose any two’. A small group most exemplified by Conservative Austen Chamberlain favoured emphasizing the first two of these three, wanting an all-out effort and a gamble for a win in 1916. The Asquithian Liberals and Conservative Arthur Balfour instead favoured a more economic approach that emphasized the latter two. All of these individuals, however, operated in a shared intellectual space, one that affirmed the necessity of making a choice. The ‘maximalist’ camp – consisting of Liberal David Lloyd George, most of the rest of the key Conservatives within the Cabinet, and Britain’s military leadership – by contrast insisted that Britain did not have to make a choice: it could, they said, maintain both a total war army and these colossal American supplies, and it could maintain both of these indefinitely.

Preface xix

The robustness of this book’s economic methodology allows for a clear, key judgement: the realists were correct and the maximalists were wrong. British assets did not, in fact, have the capability to sustain such a war effort as the maximalists demanded. This book’s approach to understanding this political history, moreover, allows for the political divide within the British government to be understood with greater nuance. Chamberlain typically is identified only as a consumptionist along with Lloyd George and the rest of the Conservatives,13 when in fact there was an enormous intellectual divide that separated him from the rest – a divide that grows in clarity over the course of 1916. By thus reconceptualizing British political history in this period, this book is able to explain the political divide within the British government with respect to American mediation diplomacy. This divide over American mediation exists simultaneously as both a manifestation of the realist–maximalist divide and as an important effect of it. This book shows that the key political quarrels within the Asquith coalition over many seemingly disparate subjects – conscription, strategy, finance, munitions, industry, diplomacy – were in fact all part and parcel of one fundamental political debate playing out over and over again: one that ultimately was about the power of the United States and about Britain’s ability to continue to rely on the United States as its key base of supplies. The debate over conscription, for example, is not a story of how the exigencies of war forced reluctant Liberals to overcome their ideology of laissez-faire, pitting a Lloyd Georgian faction that favoured ‘coordinated state control’ against Asquithians ‘determined to resist state expansion’, as it has often been portrayed.14 Conscription, rather, merely provided yet another battleground for the realists and maximalists to argue over the limits of British economic power vis-à-vis the United States. As on most such issues, the maximalists eventually carried the day. The fact that the realists continually failed to prevail in these other debates was a key factor in driving them to favour American mediation. The realists correctly understood that these British choices were increasingly placing the Allies into the hands of the American President and that, even absent American hostility, the extensive Allied dependence on American goods would have to end unless they could bring the United States into the war. Though there were differences amongst the realists in terms of timing, most eventually began to conceive of the war as unwinnable absent American military intervention, and American mediation seemed to offer an escape. This realist–maximalist political framework is capable of explaining the Asquith coalition Cabinet’s divide on American mediation with only two individual exceptions. Edwin Montagu was a realist who firmly rejected

xx Preface

American mediation, though he does not play a key role in the narrative until summer 1916, when his actions as Minister of Munitions become especially significant. His views and role are explored more fully in Chapter 6. More importantly, Lloyd George was a maximalist who tended to see the war as unwinnable on other grounds, and he broadly favoured an eventual end to the war through American mediation until the autumn of 1916, when he abruptly became a vehement opponent. This book relies on a robust intelligence history methodology, discussed below, to explain this key shift. The fall of Asquith and his replacement by Lloyd George in early December 1916 is therefore a seminal political moment, one of enormous consequence for American mediation diplomacy, because it effectively ended the British political debate over the involvement of the United States. The causes, course, and effects of this key event are therefore reconsidered with the assistance of recently found documents that shed new light on Asquith’s perspective and strategy during these crucial days.15 This key event also marks a fundamental shift in approach for the final two chapters of this book. The preceding seven chapters largely concern themselves with tracking the evolution of the realist–maximalist divide in Britain and its relationship to American mediation diplomacy. With the maximalists having won control of the British government in December 1916, the emphasis of the final two chapters is on the diplomacy of the United States. The focus on British political decision-making accord- ingly diminishes, albeit with two exceptions. The first exception lies in the re-examination of Balfour’s foreign policy and his rogue efforts, as the key remaining realist in the government, to use Wiseman to quietly keep alive the possibility of American mediation notwithstanding his colleagues’ unified rejection of it. The second exception lies in the critique of the political cowardice of the new Chancellor, Andrew Bonar Law. His new responsibilities seem to have awoken him to the gravity of Britain’s economic problems after he had rejected their ser- iousness all year. Yet he remained fundamentally unwilling to alert his colleagues and to force a political confrontation over the radical economic measures that would have been needed absent American entry into the war. As for the measures he did take, they were so weak and ineffectual as to amount to a non-response to the deepening crisis. Otherwise, the final two chapters return more explicitly to the book’s American diplomatic history core, re-examining American mediation efforts between Britain and Germany, and subsequently between Britain and Austria-Hungary. For the former, this book offers a novel

Preface xxi

interpretation of the House–Wiseman talks. For the latter, it sees these as the most significant peace talks of the war, against a historiography that has tended to neglect them.16 This book makes clear that the German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare did not diminish Wilson’s diplomatic determination to try to force a peace conference. This book’s economic methodology establishes that he had the growing power to compel the Allies to attend one. The key problem is to explain why he nevertheless abandoned this diplomatic course. Doing so requires turning to intelligence history and to the Zimmermann Telegram. A consensus increasingly sees the Zimmermann Telegram as having had only limited impact in the United States, rating German submarine warfare as more important in leading the Wilson Administration and American public opinion to war.17 This book, by contrast, offers an innovative argument for the importance of the Zimmermann Telegram in the form of making a novel connection between it and the end of Wilson’s mediation diplomacy in late February 1917. This renewed study of the Zimmermann Telegram exists as the cul- mination of a robust intelligence history methodology that underlies the entire book. This book carefully reconstructs the signals intelligence dimension in Anglo-American relations, which has required a painstak- ing methodological approach. Even by usual intelligence history stand- ards, the evidentiary base directly related to this intelligence is extremely fragmentary. Most of the relevant papers have been destroyed, including almost all of the archives of MI1(b) and much of the archives of Room 40. There is no surviving distribution list of who received the diplomatic decrypts that these organizations generated, let alone any clear indica- tions in the surviving intelligence files of their impact. The few decrypts that do survive in ministerial papers do so only because the minister ignored clear instructions to burn them.18 Most of the personal papers of Reginald Hall, the head of Room 40, have been destroyed, and he left behind only a small, self-serving archival collection.19 Yet despite these seemingly insuperable difficulties, extremely careful analysis has nevertheless made it possible to reconstruct much of the overarching intelligence narrative. The intelligence files that survive have been very carefully mined. The utility of these files has been augmented with a strongly developed technical understanding of the relevant American codes employed, of British codebreaking capabilities, and of the then-existing telegraphic communications network.20 This has rendered it mostly irrelevant as to whether individual decrypts of particu- lar telegrams survive: their texts can rather straightforwardly be

xxii Preface

reconstructed by consulting original American documentation. One can often gain a sense of the impact of these decrypts by carefully and consistently comparing these American telegrams to the papers of British policymakers. With a sufficiently exhaustive search, fleeting but striking similarities emerge, which can then be integrated into the overall narrative. By contrast, with the exception of Lambert, most existing studies of British intelligence tend to be narrow ones focussed on intelligence history.21 Wider studies, when they try to pay attention to intelligence, almost always do so according to the convenience of the limited fragments of evidence that survive in the papers of policymakers.22 They almost never attempt a thorough, systematic study of the intelligence dimension that incorporates a serious and detailed examination of its technical elements. This robust methodology allows this book to make four principal intelligence contributions. In order of importance, the first is in the reinterpretation of the Zimmermann Telegram episode in Chapter 9. The second is in the impact of the decrypts on David Lloyd George and their crucial role in wrongly convincing him of the hostility of the United States in the autumn and winter of 1916, which is documented in Chapters 6–8. The third is in showing how Lloyd George misused this intelligence, observing the political objectives that he sought to achieve as well as his recklessness in doing so. Lloyd George came profoundly close to disclosing this secret to Washington, the Anglo-American diplomatic – and therefore economic – consequences of which could have been dire. The fourth is in reconstructing the political efforts of the head of Room 40, Reginald Hall, to undermine American mediation within the British government. There is clear evidence that Hall had the motive, means, and opportunity to move as strongly against American mediation as he could. An exhaustive search of the archives has turned up a handful of fragments of evidence showing him acting to do so. But with such extensive archival loss, the evidence takes us no further than this, and the surviving fragments are insufficient to allow a clear, broad judgement as to the overall impact of his manoeuvring within the British government. The combining of these four dimensions together allows for a com- plete and compelling novel understanding of American mediation as it relates to Britain during the First World War. Diplomatic history provides us with the fundamental subject matter. Economic history provides a compelling explanation for the motivations behind the interest within the British government in mediation. Political history allows us to chart the course and evolution of the internal debate over American mediation

Preface xxiii

within the British government and to contextualize it within a much broader British strategic debate. Intelligence history gives us important factors contributing to, and in the end causing, mediation’s failure. As the Conclusion summarizes it: diplomacy gives us the what; economics the why; politics the how; and intelligence much of the why not. Coalesced, these four approaches form a solid and durable whole.

Acknowledgements

For all his comments, questions, and insights, I would like to thank my former PhD supervisor and mentor, Professor Christopher Andrew. He originally set me loose with two pages from his book Secret Service, which provided the impetus for an MPhil, a PhD, this book, and a number of journal articles. I am very grateful for all of his attention and support. I would also like to thank my mentor at Trinity College, Professor Dominic Lieven, and my former PhD advisor, Dr Peter Martland, for their guidance and assistance. I am grateful to Professor Lloyd Ambrosius at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who originally started me on this path as my undergraduate mentor. I am very appreciative of Dr John Thompson, who served as internal examiner for my doctoral degree, for a number of stimulating conversations in recent years and for generously reading much of my manuscript and providing extensive comments. For many stimulating presentations and discussions, I thank the members of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, including my erstwhile fellow MPhil and PhD student, Dr Christian Schlaepfer. I am similarly grateful to Dr Jim Beach, Dr Gui-Xi Young, Dr Almuth Ebke, Dr Martin Deuerlein, Dr Joe Walmswell, Fergus Rattigan, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. I owe a significant debt to Dr Martin Farr of the University of Newcastle. When I contacted him about access to his PhD thesis on Reginald McKenna as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he very trustingly sent me his only personal hardbound copy. This highly significant and stirringly written thesis, now digitized and available online, played an enormous role in my development of this book’s economic dimension, as did our extensive subsequent conversations in person, for which I am exceedingly grateful. I am also grateful to Dr Maren Froemel and Dr Solomos Solomou for their assistance in helping me to gain a deeper understanding of international economics as applied to this period. I would like to acknowledge very gratefully the support, financial and moral, of Trinity College and Christ’s College, Cambridge.

xxiv

Acknowledgements xxv

Chapters 3 and 4 of this book contain material derived from two journal articles I previously published with Taylor & Francis journals, which I acknowledge here: “War Pessimism in Britain and an American Peace in Early 1916”, International History Review 34/4 (2012), pp. 795–817. Available online: www.tandfonline .com/10.1080/02684527.2010.537123 “British Intelligence and the 1916 Mediation Mission of Colonel Edward M. House”, Intelligence and National Security 25/5 (2010), pp. 682–704. Available online: www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/07075332.2012.702675 I am also grateful to Nevil Hagon for assistance in locating a cover image for this book. Finally, my deepest gratitude and warmest affection goes to my family, and above all to my parents and grandparents, to whom I am deeply indebted and without whom this book would never have come to completion.

1 Map of First World War Europe