Lord Haldane and the July Crisis

Young, John W

Abstract

There are widely differing interpretations of Lord Haldane’s behaviour during the July crisis. To some historians, the Lord Chancellor was part of a group – alongside Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill – loyal to the Anglo-French entente cordiale, who supported British intervention. As a former Secretary of War, they also believe he was committed to the early despatch of a British Expeditionary Force to the continent. But some of his contemporaries suspected Haldane of ‘pro-Germanism’, believed that he strove to prevent Britain going to war, that he worked to forestall the despatch of troops to France and that he tried to block Lord Kitchener’s appointment to head the War Office. This essay reconsiders the issue, exploiting evidence unavailable to earlier writers – notably an unpublished memoir by Haldane’s close friend, the Librarian of the House of Lords, Edmund Gosse – and argues that, far from exhibiting sympathy for Germany in 1914, Haldane was at the forefront of those who pushed the Liberal government towards war, having decided, early in the July crisis, that Germany was determined to exploit the situation to tip the balance of power in its own favour. He also acted as an important emotional prop for Grey in the closing week of the crisis and foresaw that the war, far from being ‘over by Christmas’, was likely to last for years.

Citation

Young, J. W. (2024). Lord Haldane and the July Crisis. Diplomacy and Statecraft, 35(3), 456-470. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2024.2383002

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 26, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Oct 23, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Deposit Date: Jul 19, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 24, 2026
• Journal: Diplomacy and Statecraft
• Print ISSN: 0959-2296
• Electronic ISSN: 1557-301X
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 456-470
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2024.2383002
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/37316514
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592296.2024.2383002