LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
NON-INTERVENTION IN 1870.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR:]
SIR,—Lord Granville has given in the House of Lords a fiat contradiction to a statement of mine that the late Lord Ampthill—he being then Mr. Odo Russell—endeavoured during the Franco-German War to persuade him (Lord Gran- ville), then Minister for Foreign Affairs, to offer mediation on the part of England between the belligerents.
All I can say is, that Lord Granville must be badly served by his memory, for I received the statement from Lord Ampthill himself. As I keep a diary, I can give at least par- ticulars as to the date and place of conversation. It was at Carlsbad, during an afternoon walk on July 23rd, 1883. This was the year previous to his death. The occasion arose from my telling him, in the course of our walk, of the effort which a few of us had made in London at the time of the war, to induce the English Government to intervene. He then used words to the following effect :—"I think you were perfectly right, and only wish you had been more successful. I felt so strongly that England should have done something, that I went to Lord Granville myself, and proposed mediation should be offered; indeed, I drew up a paper of suggestion and sub- mitted it. Lord Granville was very averse to taking any step, but said he would consult Gladstone. The result was that nothing was done." I do not profess to quote his words exactly ; I only give the substance and vouch for its accuracy. He then added that when the war was over, when he was at Berlin, Bismarck, the Crown Prince (afterwards Emperor Frederick), and Blumenthal all told him without any reserve that if England had proposed mediation, it would have been accepted, and they had expected her to offer it. The only qualification I have to make on my original statement is that I should not have described Mr. Odo Russell as, at the time of his appeal to Lord Granville, British representative to German head-quarters, or as having made an express journey from Versailles to see Lord Granville. This was my own in- ference. All he told me was that he went to Lord Granville. I concluded it was from Versailles, having been under the impression that he was there throughout the siege ; but he only went, it seems, to Versailles in November. The appeal to Lord Granville was probably made before then, and when he was acting as Assistant-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a position which would have given him every facility to con- sult with his chief.
I will add that Lord Ampthill did not give me the informa- tion in the nature of a confidential communication at all ; in fact, he spoke as if he did not object to people knowing the efforts he had made to induce England to assume the re- sponsibility which befitted her in such a great European crisis. At the same time, he did not in words blame Lord Granville. He simply told me the story. It made a great impression on me, because I have always held very strongly that England during the Franco-German War failed miserably in her duty as a great European Power, and here I found the English Ambassador to Germany, and our own Envoy to Versailles during the siege of Paris, corroborating my view, and relating how he had urged the duty of mediation upon the English Foreign Minister, and showing that the German Government would have accepted it.
No one can accuse me of having been precipitate in making this startling story known. More than five years have passed -since I heard it. If I have revealed it now, it is only because it affords a striking and much-needed illustration of the -disastrous effect of what is euphemistically termed a policy of non-intervention," but what really means one of selfish isolation and a grave dereliction of the responsibilities of a P.S.—Since writing the above, I have seen Lord Granville's second contradiction. I can quite understand his desiring to -discredit the story I had from Lord Ampthill's own lips ; but I must protest against his attempt to do so by misrepresenting my explanation. He says,—" Admiral Maxse returns to the -charge with a story utterly at variance with the facts and dates first told by him," and "he admits that the initiative of Mr. Russell and the special visit to Walmer are creations of his own imagination." I admit nothing of the sort. Mr. Odo Russell did, according to his statement to me, "act entirely on his own initiative," and did press his view on Lord Granville -at Walmer. There is no discrepancy at all, in relation to Lord .Ampthill's statement to me, between my original statement and the above.
I related, as I have explained, the journey from Versailles because I erroneously thought that Lord Ampthill (then Mr. Odo Russell) was at Versailles with the German head- -quarters during the whole siege. Lord Ampthill said to me,—" I went to Lord Granville." How is this state- ment affected because I thought he went from a different place to the one he did go from ? Supposing I declared that Lord Granville went to the House of Lords from Carlton Terrace and made a speech against Home-rule, when it turned out after all that he had gone there from South Audley Street and made it ? Would this '• discrepancy " 'vitiate my statement about the Home-rule speech, if it had been delivered ? I admit, however, that Mr. Odo Russell -would have had more authority as an adviser if he had gone to Lord Granville straight from the German head-quarters instead -of from London. The most important fact that comes out from my narrative must not be lost sight of,—it is that the German authorities informed Lord Ampthill afterwards at Berlin that they expected England to offer mediation, and that it would have been accepted. In this alone lies the condemna- tion of Lord Granville's conduct of our responsibility as a great neutral Power.
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