Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 The initial contact
- 2 Yugoslavia in the Balkan negotiations, 1914–15
- 3 Espionage and propaganda, 1914–16
- 4 War aims, 1916
- 5 Britain and Austria-Hungary, 1917–18
- 6 The recognition of the Polish National Committee, 1917
- 7 Commitment by implication, 1918
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The initial contact
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 The initial contact
- 2 Yugoslavia in the Balkan negotiations, 1914–15
- 3 Espionage and propaganda, 1914–16
- 4 War aims, 1916
- 5 Britain and Austria-Hungary, 1917–18
- 6 The recognition of the Polish National Committee, 1917
- 7 Commitment by implication, 1918
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
During the autumn of 1914 the prime minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, and his foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, attempted in a series of public statements to explain the government's role in the July crisis and its reasons for entering the conflict. These statements were designed to ensure public support for the uncomfortable position in which the government now found itself and contained in general terms the aims it intended to pursue. These were the first official war aims and the only ones to be defined publicly before 1917.
On 18 September 1914 Asquith, reflecting a Gladstonian approach to Continental affairs, said that the war was being fought:
In the first place, to vindicate the sanctity of treaty obligations and of what is properly called the public law of Europe; in the second place, to assert and to enforce the independence of free States, relatively small and weak, against the encroachments and violence of the strong; and in the third place, to withstand, as we believe is in our best interests not only of our own Empire, but of civilization at large, the arrogant claim of a single Power to dominate the development of the destinies of Europe.
According to the official interpretation, that single power, Germany, under the inspiration of Prussian militarism, had attempted to upset the balance of power in its own favour. Grey had already made this clear on 5 September when he wrote to a public meeting:
It is against German militarism that we must fight. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Britain and the Origins of the New Europe 1914–1918 , pp. 12 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1976