British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey as both Medusa and Dorian Gray. Pointed ears and a quill pen behind his left.

Das Bildniss des Edward Grey

Nach dem Originalgemälde des Münchner Malers Jos. Felix Falkenbach.

After the original painting by the Munich painter Jos. Felix Falkenbach.



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Thursday, July 9, 1914

"[Grey] could only repeat to me that secret agreements between Great Britain on the one hand and France and Russia on the other, which would entail obligations on Great Britain in case of a European war, did not exist. England wished to preserve an absolutely free hand, in order to be able to act according to her own judgement in the event of continental complications. The Government had to a certain extent obligated itself to Parliament not to commit itself to any secret liabilities. . . .

But as he did not wish to put me on the wrong track — 'as I did not want to mislead you' — he at once added that his relations to the Powers referred to had none the less lost nothing of their earlier intimacy. So that even if there existed no agreements which imposed any obligations, he did not wish to deny that from time to time 'conversations' had taken place between the naval or military authorities on both sides . . ."

Quotation Context

Excerpt from a report from German Ambassador Prince Lichnowsky in London to German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg on July 9, 1914. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey had asked the Ambassador to call on him. Grey told the Ambassador that he would endeavor to persuade the Russian Government to take a conciliatory attitude towards Austria.

The 'conversations' between the naval and military authorities that Grey refers to would surprise many in Parliament when Britain went to war a few weeks after this meeting. The deployment of the French fleet to the Mediterranean and of the British fleet to protect France's Atlantic coast, and the deployment of British land forces on the continent on the left wing of the French Army had been subjects of these conversations.

Source

July, 1914; the Outbreak of the First World War; Selected Documents by Imanuel Geiss (Editor), 104, 105, copyright © 1967 Imanuel Geiss, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1967

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The Great War magazine, Great War magazine, Great War, Sir Edward Grey, Grey, Foreign Secretary Grey