Searching for Security in a New Europe During the First World War, Sir George Russell Clerk was a senior Foreign Office official strongly sympathetic to the cause of the ‘oppressed nationalities’ of the Austro- Hungarian Empire. In 1919 Clerk was forced to put these ideals to the test when the Allies dispatched him to Budapest to construct a Hungarian government with whom they could make peace. In 1920 he became the first British minister to the newly created succession state of Czechoslovakia. This biographical study of Sir George Russell Clerk focuses on his significant role as a nation-builder in the New Europe carved out of the First World War until his eventual downfall at the hands of Anthony Eden and retirement in 1937. Drawing on extensive research, this study attempts to shed new light on a key figure in British and European diplomacy. Gerald J.Protheroe is Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Sciences at New York University and the Head of the History Department at The Browning School in New York. Diplomats and diplomacy Series Editors: Peter Catterall and Erik Goldstein ISSN: 1478–7237 This series aims to provide a primarily biographical approach to the study of diplomacy and international relations in the twentieth century. How have diplomats and foreign ministers tackled not only the traditional business of managing relations between states, but also the rise of multilateral negotiations, the proliferation of international organisations and the increasing significance of economic diplomacy? This series seeks to contribute to an understanding of how diplomacy and international relations developed in the twentieth century. Oliver Franks and the Truman Administration Anglo-American relations 1948–1952 Michael F.Hopkins Searching for Security in a New Europe The diplomatic career of Sir George Russell Clerk Gerald J.Protheroe Locarno Revisited European diplomacy 1920–1929 Edited by Gaynor Johnson Searching for Security in a New Europe The diplomatic career of Sir George Russell Clerk Gerald J.Protheroe LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “ To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2006 Gerald J.Protheroe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-49144-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-60813-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN10 0-7146-5511-2 (Print Edition) ISBN13 978-0-7146-5511-6 (Print Edition) Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc. Contents Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 1 Empire, world war and a New Europe 1898–1919 3 2 Nation-building in the New Europe: Hungary 1919 37 3 Nation-building in the New Europe: Czechoslovakia 1920–6 64 4 Repairing relationships: the New Turkey 1926–33 104 5 ‘Ripe for a mighty enterprise’: France 1934–5 133 6 The crisis of security: France 1935–7 149 Conclusion 175 Notes 178 Bibliography 201 Index 211 Acknowledgements Many debts have been incurred throughout the course of writing this biography. I must thank the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to use Walter Stoneman’s portraits of Sir George Clerk taken in 1931 and 1947. I would like to thank Ms Christine Penney and her staff at Special Collections, Birmingham University. I am most grateful to Lady Avon for her kind permission to draw on Sir Anthony Eden’s diaries and private correspondence. I would also like to thank the Earl of Derby for permission to use the correspondence of Lord Derby deposited in the Liverpool Record Office; Sir Henry Rumbold for permission to draw on his grandfather Sir Horace Rumbold’s papers in the Bodleian Library; Sir Colville Barclay for permission to use Sir Robert Vansittart’s letter to Anthony Eden of 14 September 1936 in the Eden papers; Christopher Seton-Watson for permission to make use of R.W.Seton-Watson’s papers in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at London University; and the Bodleian Library for allowing me to consult the papers of Sybil, Lady Colefax. I am grateful to the editors of Diplomacy and Statecraft for permission to reproduce some sections of my article ‘Sir George Clerk and the Struggle for British influence in Central Europe, 1919–1926’. Finally, I must thank the Royal Bank of Scotland, in so far as they have copyright ownership of Sir George Clerk’s personal correspondence, for permission to use the small number of letters written by him, which are held in the private collections outlined above. Unpublished Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office in Kew is reproduced with the gracious consent of Her Majesty the Queen. This biography of Sir George Clerk emanated from an earlier dissertation on Clerk’s role as the first British Minister to the new successor state of Czechoslovakia in the 1920s. I must thank Professor Donald Cameron Watt of the London School of Economics for his support of this work in its most embryonic stage. I would also like to thank Dr Zara Steiner for her insight and encouragement. But my greatest debt of thanks must go to Professor Erik Goldstein of Boston University for his patience, his interest in Clerk and his unfailing support for this biography. Last but not least, my thanks must also go to friends in London and other parts of the United Kingdom who have borne my summer visits with fortitude and a somewhat bemused tolerance. And, of course, I must thank my wife, Paula, for the many sacrifices she has made to allow this book to come to fruition and for her constant support. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owner of copyright materials in this book. In some cases this has proved to be impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive any information leading to any further acknowledgements and in the meanwhile offer sincere apologies for any omissions. Abbreviations BD Great Britain, Foreign Office, British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914 BDFA Great Britain, Foreign Office, British Documents on Foreign Affairs CAB Cabinet Office Papers DBFP Great Britain, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39 DDF France, Quai d’Orsay, Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1932–9 DGFP Germany, Auswärtiges Amt, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–45 DNB Dictionary of National Biography FO Foreign Office Papers FRUS United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States HO Home Office Papers Searching for Security in a New Europe 1 Introduction The collapse of single-party dictatorship in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 constituted a watershed in the political, economic and military history of Europe, which continues to pose an enormous challenge to that continent in the present century and to the Western alliance, which helped to protect it. In 1919, the collapse of autocracy and supranational empires in Central and Eastern Europe presented the Allied and Associated Powers with unprecedented opportunity to shape the political and economic construction of the successor states. In that year, Sir George Russell Clerk had become private secretary to the acting British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon. During the Great War, Clerk had been head of the War Department at the Foreign Office in London. During this period, he had become the premier contact within the Foreign Office for a number of Balkan political refugees and their British patrons, The Times journalist Henry Wickham Steed, and the young Scottish historian R.W.Seton-Watson. Through the patronage of these men, little known spokesmen for ‘oppressed nationalities’ Frano Supilo and Thomas Masaryk argued the case for their revolutionary cause: the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Sir George Clerk listened sympathetically. He became the central link in a chain connecting refugees and patrons with the upper echelons of the Foreign Office. By the end of 1916, this loose connection of individuals had transformed itself into an effective pressure group with its own publication. The primary aim of The New Europe periodical was to educate British public opinion about the plight of ‘oppressed nationalities’. It hoped to influence the political nation and political establishment of Great Britain, and bring about the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its replacement by new nation states organized on a liberal democratic basis. Sir George Clerk was not a contributor to The New Europe. Nevertheless, he was held in the highest esteem by that publication. In the autumn of 1919, Clerk was entrusted by the Supreme Council of the Allies with the task of settling the conflict between Hungary and Romania, and establishing a government in Hungary with whom the Allies could negotiate a peace treaty. These missions to Budapest and Bucharest can be viewed as test cases for the political principles that The New Europe wished to establish as the basis of international relations in Europe. It was no coincidence that, after the successful termination of these missions, Sir George Clerk proceeded to Prague to become the first British minister to the newly independent successor state of Czechoslovakia, whose president, Thomas Masaryk, Clerk had first encountered as a refugee in wartime London.