Grey's Foreign Policy
THE first principle of Grey's foreign policy was the maintenance of friendship and confidence between England and France. From this there grew up his second principle, the development of friendship and confidence between England and Russia. But, as he explained more than once, he wanted to bring England and • Germany to better relations, and after the crisis of Agadir, in 1911, he thought that the Morocco question had been settled and that there was a greater opportunity for improving the relations of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente.
The new volume of British Documents belongs to this period. It covers the war between Italy and Turkey in 1911-1912 and the preparations for the war between Turkey and the Balkan States which was to follow on its heels.
The anxieties of our Foreign Office had shifted from Morocco to the Near East, with Russia taking the place of France.
Our new difficulties were as serious as our old. For our relations with Russia differed from our relations with France in two respects. We had in Persia a constant cause of friction with Russia, and though we went far, too far in the opinion of many Englishmen, in trying to remove this friction, conceding to Russia rights in Persia that were not ours to give, that friction persisted right down to the Great War.
In the second place whatever our misgivings of the Foreign Office about the tenacity of France, they were nothing to its misgivings about the fidelity of Russia.
Almost the last despatch in this volume shows on what delicate ground we were treading. Sazonow, the Russian Foreign Minister, had been to Balmoral, where he had seen Grey. On October 6th, 1912, Grey writes to Sir George Buchanan, our Ambassador in St. Petersburgh : " I was afraid that he might want us to take a strong pro-Balkan and anti-Turk line. Instead of that, however, he was very emphatic about putting strong pressure in the Balkan States to keep the peace, and he did not ask for any peremptory language in Constantinople." Grey's letter to Buchanan crossed a letter from Buchanan to Grey : " I feel it is my duty to call your attention to the deep feeling of disappoint- ment which has been aroused in this country by the apparent failure of M. Sazonow's visit to England to produce the decisive results which were expected of it in regard to the Balkan question. . . . I do not desire to give undue weight to the utterances of the Press in this country. But there is one question in Russia on which public opinion cannot be disregarded. In its Slav sympathies all Russia is united and both the Emperor himself and his Government would be powerless in face of a truly national Panslavist movement. . . . But it would seem that popular confidence in England has been severely shaken and a very widespread doubt has arisen as to the value to Russia of the existing Entente." Both England and France were always being reminded that Russia was an uncertain quantity and this character for instability was used to put pressure on her allies.
The embarrassment that this uncertainty caused is well illustrated when we compare two other messages in this volume, from Buchanan and Grey. Buchanan wrote on July 25th, 1912: " It would no doubt make for peace if Russia and Austria could come to some understanding about the Balkans to which the other Powers could also adhere ; but I have always felt that it is rather dangerous for us to en- courage an Austro-Russian understanding, for fear that it might end in an alliance of the three Emperors." On the other hand, Grey wrote to Buchanan in October : " We must do all we can to keep Austria and Russia co-operating together in Balkan affairs ; it is the only way to prevent them from falling out."
This kind of dilemma confronted almost every Power whenever anything disturbing happened anywhere in the world. It is not surprising that peace, depending on such an equilibrium, came to catastrophe.
J. L. HAMMOND..
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