Doom! Doom! Doom! February 18, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This is one of those WIBT (wish I’d been there) moments, described by Lloyd George some two decades after the event. First some background. 4 August 1914 Britain had given an ultimatum to Germany stating that Germany would have to remove its troops from Belgium forthwith. If Germany continued to violate Belgian neutratlity then Britain would declare war at midnight on the 4. The day was necessarily a tense one. First, there was confusion about whether midnight was British or German time: the difference of an hour. (The kind of thing that only the British would get worried about.) Second, a misunderstood intercepted German message led the British to think that Germany had pre-emptively declared war on Britain in the early evening. An embarrassing episode followed when Britain’s furious declaration of war was sent to the German embassy but had to be rapidly recalled when it was discovered that Germany had not done any such thing! In short it had been a long day.
Gathered around the table in the cabinet room, the seat of the British executive, were Lloyd George, Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Viscount Haldane and Reginald McKenna: the flower of the Liberal Party; the finest politicians from an exceptional generation. They had arrived at nine o’clock and remained there talking, with the very slight hope that a conciliatory message might be en route from Berlin.
We sat at the green table in the famous room where so many historic decisions had been taken in the past. It was not then a very well-lighted room, and my recollection is that the lights had not all been turned on, and in the dimness you might imagine the shades of the great British statesmen of the past taking part in a conference which meant so much to the Empire, to the building up of which they had devoted their lives: Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Castlereagh, Canning, Peel, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone. In that simple, unadorned, almost dingy room they also had pondered over the problems which had perplexed their day. But never had they been confronted with so tremendous a decision as that with which British Ministers were faced in these early days of August, 1914. And now came the terrible decision: should we unleash the savage dogs of war at once, or wait until the time limit of the ultimatum had expired, and give peace the benefit of even such a doubt as existed for at least another two hours? We had no difficulty in deciding that the Admiralty was to prepare the fleet against any sudden attack from the German flotillas and to warn our coasts against any possible designs from the same quarter. But should we declare war now, or at midnight? The ultimatum expired at midnight in Berlin. That was midnight according to Central Europe time: it meant eleven o’clock according to Greenwich time. We resolved to wait until eleven. Would any message arrive, from Berlin before eleven informing us of the intention of Germany to respect Belgian neutrality? If it came there was still a faint hope that something might be arranged before the marching armies crashed into each other. As the hour approached a deep and tense solemnity fell on the room. No one spoke. It was like awaiting the signal for the pulling of a lever* which would hurl millions to their doom – with just a chance that a reprieve, might arrive in time. Our eyes wandered anxiously from the clock to the door, and from the door to the clock, and little was said. ‘Boom!’ The deep notes of Big Ben rang out into the night, the first strokes in Britain’s most fateful hour since she arose out of the deep. A shuddering silence fell upon the room. Every face was suddenly contracted in a painful: intensity. ‘Doom!’ ‘Doom!’ the hammer of destiny. What destiny? Who could tell?
As with everything from Lloyd George, a showman, a story-teller and a self publicist, there is doubt about how genuine his memories are. However, Beach would vouch for the ‘doom’, ‘doom’: that sounds like a real impression from a man who knew that terrible months and perhaps years awaited ahead.
Other WIBT moments: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
*The image of course is from the gallows.
