Belgium whether she would remain neutral. France and Belgium both replied affirmatively, while Germany temporized. Hopeful negotiations which had been begun directly between Russia and Austria were wrecked by a German ultimatum to Russia to countermand her mobilization; and on Saturday Aug. 1 Germany declared war on France.
The moment for decision had come for Great Britain. Russia had asked her to declare herself against Germany and so give the German General Staff pause; France had asked her to co- operate, as Germany was about to invade French territory. The Cabinet had hitherto been divided, a strong section pressing for the preservation of neutrality, and so Sir Edward had been unable to reply favourably to either Russia or France. But now Germany had declared war on France, and was apparently about to disregard the neutrality of Belgium. The Opposition, through Mr. Bonar Law, tendered support for active measures to aid France and Russia; and Sir Edward with a Cabinet rallying, with slight exceptions, to his view, was able to make an appeal in the House of Commons on Aug. 3 for the support of public and parliamentary opinion to a policy of action. Unconditional neutrality, he said, was precluded by the commitment to France and the consideration of Belgium. The forces of the Crown were never more efficient; the Government had striven for peace till the last moment; and the country when it realized the situation would support them. The speech finally decided a wavering public opinion; with the exception of some Radicals and extremist Labour men, all parties, including the Irish Nationalists, accepted the necessity of war. Sir Edward demanded next day that Germany should respect the neutrality of Belgium, and on the German refusal, England went to war.
Great Britain found herself at once associated, in the war against the Central Powers, with France, Russia, Belgium and Serbia, to whom Japan, in virtue of her relations to Great Britain, was added in the course of August. One of Sir Edward's first tasks was to turn this assotiation into an alliance, which should bind its members to fight in common and make peace in common. In the course of the negotiations for this purpose, both with the Powers who were fighting Germany from the beginning and with those who, like Italy and smaller Powers, joined afterwards in the struggle, he did not hesitate to guarantee the support of Great Britain for the attainment of long-cherished national objects, provided that these did not conflict with the aims of liberation and self-development common to the Allies the most striking case being the promise, after Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, that Russia should have Constantinople.
Much of Sir Edward's time and attention during the first half of the war was occupied by difficult questions arising out of the blockade of Germany and the consequent interference with the trade of neutrals. Public opinion in Great Britain constantly complained that the blockade was not enforced with sufficient strictness, that the policy enunciated of preventing goods from either entering or leaving Germany was very far from being realized in fact; while the United States, as the principal neutral, harassed the British Government by repeated notes, denouncing the methods of the British navy, in the search of neutral ships and in the seizure of goods, as unnecessarily prejudicial to Amer- ican trade and contrary to international law. He was perhaps more successful in his answers to the Americans than in his justification to the British public; and a large body of opinion in America accepted his explanations as reasonable. He pointed out, as was indeed notorious, that American exports to neutral countries adjacent to Germany had enormously increased since the war began; that there was a serious danger lest these countries might become in consequence bases of supplies and arsenals for the enemy on an unprecedented scale; that there were neutral ports in the neighbourhood of Germany that were neutral only in name and really did a thriving trade in contraband; and that Britain was only exercising the right claimed by the United States in their Civil War of expanding the practices of international law to meet emergencies not hitherto contemplated. He further demonstrated that the assertion of the United States that the immense modern ships could be adequately searched at sea, at a period when submarine warfare was being vigorously prosecuted, and that it was unjustifiable to take them into port for the purpose, could not be seriously maintained. He claimed also that the British practice caused the least discomfort to neutrals; and contrasted with it the German practice of sinking ships, regardless of human life.
The tenure of the Foreign Office by a statesman so high-minded, sincere and experienced as Sir Edward Grey was everywhere regarded as such a valuable asset for Great Britain that it appeared only natural and fitting for Mr. Asquith, when contemplating the formation of a Coalition Government in May 1915, to lay down, as one of the essential conditions, that there should be no change in the office of Foreign Secretary. No one could refute with such authority the intermittent assertions of the German Chancellor that it was England and not Germany that was responsible both for the origin and for the continuance of the war. Sir Edward pointed out, in a letter to the press on Aug. 25 1915, that the reason why the Anglo-German negotiations of 1912 broke down was that Germany wished to retain her freedom to wage war while binding Britain to absolute neutrality. What she was really fighting for now was supremacy and tribute. When the pacifists called for negotiations in May 1916, he showed that when the Germans professed a readiness for peace it was only for a peace on the basis that Germany had won and the Allies were beaten; but the Allies were not beaten, and the first step towards peace would be taken when Germany began to recognize that fact. In Oct. 1916 he laid it down that, as the war was forced by Germany on Europe, it was the Allies who must have guarantees for the future. The peace must ensure that Europe should be free from Prussian militarism.
Credit must be given to Sir Edward for facilitating, in the early summer of 1915, the entry of Italy till May 3 a member of the Triple Alliance into the war against the Central Powers. It was, however, a grave disappointment to him that he was unable to prevent Bulgaria, in the autumn of 1915, from taking the field against the Allies. He had worked for a Balkan agreement founded on mutual concessions, but naturally Greece and Serbia would not make concessions unless Bulgaria joined the Allies; and Bulgaria was seduced by the promise of the Central Powers, who had not to consider the feelings of her neighbours. He warned Bulgaria that, if she joined the enemy, Britain would give her own friends in the Balkans all the support in her power in conjunction with her Allies, without reserve and without qualification. In fulfilment of this promise Allied troops were sent to Salonika, and he offered Cyprus to Greece in order to induce her to carry out her treaty obligations and go to Serbia's aid against Bulgaria. But on this issue King Constantino won the support of his people against M. Venizelos; and Serbia was crushed before help could reach her.
Sir Edward made strenuous efforts, with a certain measure of success, on behalf of British prisoners in Germany and British civilians interned at Ruhleben. The course of the war compelled him, in July 1916, after long hesitation, to abandon that Declaration of London in regard to naval warfare which he had strongly supported in peace-time. He took part, it may be added, in the first tentative experiments to obtain full cooperation of all the Allies in war, by attending Allied Conferences in Paris in Nov. 1915 and March 1916.
In July 1916 an affection of the eyes, which had been giving him increasing trouble, made it advisable that he should have as much relief from work as possible, and he accepted a peerage. It was announced that he had been created an earl a rank which his public services thoroughly warranted. But he wished to keep his own name, and yet not to enter into any competition with the head of his family, his cousin Earl Grey. Accordingly at his own request he was gazetted a viscount and not an earl Viscount Grey of Fallodon. When a few months later, in December, his friend and chief Mr. Asquith was succeeded in the premiership by Mr. Lloyd George, failing eyesight and political comradeship both united to determine him to bring his tenure of the Foreign Office to a close. He had served for a longer con-
