Between the World Wars: What was the United States' Involvement with the League of Nations?

The United States was the primary architect of the League of Nations but never  became a member.  In March 1920, the Treaty of Versailles, including the  Covenant for the League had been defeated by a 49–35 Senate vote. Wilson’s insistence that the Covenant be linked to the treaty was a blunder; over time, the treaty had been discredited as unenforceable, short-sighted, or too extreme in its provisions. Nine months later, Warren Harding was elected president on a platform opposing the League. 

America, however, next had to face the practical issues of dealing with the new international organization. Further, even while rejecting membership, the Republican Presidents of the period, and their foreign policy architects, agreed with many of the Leagues goals. 

To the extent that Congress allowed, the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations associated the United States with League efforts on several issues. Constant suspicion in Congress that steady U.S. cooperation with the League would lead to de facto membership prevented a close relationship between Washington and Geneva. Additionally, postwar disillusionment with the war and the Treaty of Versailles diminished public support for the League in the United States and the international community. 

Yet, the 50-plus countries operating collectively could not be ignored by America's statesmen. Consequently, an informal  level of  cooperation with the League through various unofficial channels evolved. American representatives often sat on League committees related to finance, and humanitarian issues, such as the League's Health Committee and the suppression of the opium trade. Large American organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation provided significant financial support for League projects in public health and economics.  

Most important was the off-and-on diplomatic cooperation between the United States and the League through war and peace-type emergencies. During the Manchurian Crisis (1931–1932), an American representative joined the commission of inquiry sent to Japan. The Japanese subsequently left the League in March 1933 following criticism of its invasion of Manchuria.  (Hitler soon after withdrew Germany from the League over re-armament issues, but America remained detached from that dispute.) Later, during the Ethiopian (Abyssinian) Crisis of 1935, the U.S. refused to cooperate with the League of Nations in placing formal sanctions on Italy. Instead, it invoked neutrality legislation that imposed an arms embargo on both belligerents. As Ethiopia was less industrialized, this restriction disproportionately hurt its defensive capability against Italy.  

Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's 1936 Address to the League of Nations
Came to Symbolize the League's Failure at Peacekeeping

The League stopped intervening in subsequent international crises including the Spanish Civil War and Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia. It effectively got out of the peacekeeping business, the main rationale for its creation. Meanwhile, by the end of the 1930s, the United States began to move away from strict isolationism, but, as a neutral, was not positioned with a broad coalition for holding off the rise of the Axis Powers.  

When war broke out in September 1939, the League simply ceased work; its headquarters in Geneva remained empty throughout the war.  In 1945—at the Conference in Yalta—America, Britain, and Russia formally agreed to convene a new international organization (the United Nations) when the war finished. On 12 April 1946, the League met in Geneva and formally abolished itself. 

Source: U.S. Department of State

How the Navy Won the War: The Real Instrument of Victory 1914-1918

 

By Jim Ring

Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2018

Review by Dr. Joseph Moretz, PhD, U.S. Naval Academy

The British Expeditionary Force Landing in France

Originally Presented in the International Journal of Naval History, December 2021

Unsurprisingly, the centenary of the First World War witnessed an outpouring of commemoration to a conflict whose legacy shaped the contours of modern life with veneration reaching its apogee in 2018, as nations noted the stark sacrifices made by an earlier generation. Giving thanks to a peace at last secured, many could pray such a profound test not be faced again. A natural enough response by the heirs of the defeated, it is a stance even later generations of the victorious have embraced. Living with weapons even more ghastly than those found in the World War may offer one explanation for such revision while a sense the victory won came at an altogether too high a price must stand as another. That the quality of generalship proved unequal to the challenge of modern, industrial war has become received wisdom in contemporary Britain and doubtless, elsewhere, too. 

Jim Ring is aware of this context in How the Navy Won the War, but has his eyes set on two problems of a different sort. To wit, Britain followed a flawed military strategy in the war to the detriment of her greater interests, and the subsequent historiography of the war, centered on the actions of the Western Front, overlooks the font of the conflict’s decisiveness: the sea. This rebuttal is not aimed at academic historians of the war, though some academics might agree. Nor is it directed at those schooled in the conflict’s finer details. Rather, Ring seeks to reach a public knowing of the war but faintly and then badly at that. Fed on a continuous diet of works from two competing heresies, that public must conclude British soldiers were indeed “lions led by donkeys” or that Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig was not so bad after all—certainly, he remained the best type of officer the Army could produce under the circumstances. Accordingly, at no point has the public been allowed to appreciate the maritime dimension of the World War and how it ruled all else.

The argument is not without appeal to those born to a maritime tradition and cannot be dismissed out of hand given that it is the crux of those who posit a “British Way in Warfare,” such as the late author and defense critic, Sir Basil Liddell Hart. Unsurprisingly, How the Navy Won the War draws freely and favorably from that writer as well as Winston Churchill, Admiral Sir John Fisher and the noted Oxford historian Alan Taylor in making its case. Collectively, a body of no mean intellect, ironically, all bear a responsibility for the very received wisdom that Ring laments. That this so may be attributed to a reason that they feature so prominently in How the Navy Won the War—all wrote fluently with veer, passion and, at times, a degree of venom. Certainly, none stands accused of boring their readers in the turgid style of the official histories penned by Julian Corbett, Henry Newbolt, and Ernest which the author fails to cite.

Central, though, to the author’s argument is the mistake Britain made by sending its army to the continent in August 1914 to act as an appendage of the French Army. From that decision flowed the destruction of the original British Expeditionary Force on the Marne and the subsequent disasters of the Somme and Third Ypres which decimated the “New Armies” which had replaced the “Old Contemptibles.”  Instead, better would it have been for Britain to limits its role to the traditional maritime strategy which had served it so well previously. Here, the influence of General Sir Henry Wilson, late Director of Military Operations, and Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, is castigated. The former by tying British military strategy so closely to France, while the latter, in raising an army of continental proportions, fed the beast that Wilson had ordained.

That proposition fails to persuade not least because Henry Wilson did not operate as a loose cannon. Francophile that he assuredly was, that officer remained subject to the guidance and oversight of the War Office and Richard Haldane, its Secretary of State during the key period before the war. It fails because sending the BEF to the continent in 1914 did not irretrievably commit Britain to a war of mass attrition. After all, Britain simultaneously initiated a series of peripheral operations against German colonies and would soon initiate another in Mesopotamia when the Ottoman Empire opted for belligerency in association with Germany and Austria-Hungary. More than anything else what committed Britain to a continental war was the fresh facts that Germany had created on the ground. With large portions of France and Belgium occupied and Russia suffering a heavy defeat at Tannenberg, the limits of naval power were all to painfully exposed when the German High Sea Fleet elected not to sally forth. In short, Britain could not leave France in the lurch unless it was willing to accept a very less than splendid isolation in a Europe now transformed to its detriment.  

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This does not mean that what followed passes without criticism, but coalition warfare for a coalition lacking a unifying strategy, possessing diverse political aims, and retaining fragmented operational control of its military forces posits mistakes—many mistakes—will be likely until success or failure beckons. The tale of the succeeding four years is of a coalition struggling to master such shortfalls. The sea made the war a World War, but it did not make it any easier to wage. Britain and the Allies, however, were fortunate that they faced a Germany having an uncanny ability to make its own share of grievous errors, especially at the nexus of strategy and policy, while never grasping the essence of maritime war.

In the end, what transformed matters were the defeat of Russia and the entry of the United States into the war. The first sowed the seeds of discord which eventually rebounded on a Germany which had abetted the return of Lenin to Russia. The second allowed economic warfare to be prosecuted in a rigor heretofore not possible owing to earlier American neutrality. The Royal Navy played its part in that prosecution but so too the Allied armies fighting at the front which forced the enemy to consume that which could not be replaced—be it food, be it armaments, or be it manpower. How the Navy Won the War attempts too much, but it does remind us that the war was more than the Western Front and the clash of armies. It was a clash of economies too and not by accident did the side mastering sea power ultimately prevail. The specialist attuned to the First World War may safely forego the work. Others, less steeped in the war, are invited to consider the corrective presented. 

Joseph Moretz, PhD

Gatchina Palace: Once the Beating Heart of Russian Military Aviation

Gatchina Palace from an Aircraft

Located 30 miles southwest of St. Petersburg, in the city of the same name, Gatchina Palace dates back to the time of Empress Catherine II. In 1765, the tsaritsa gave her favorite, Count Grigory Orlov, a lavish gift—the Gatchina estate. Tsar Nicholas II spent his childhood and youth living at Gatchina Palace, which served as the primary residence for his father, Alexander III, following the 1881 assassination of Alexander II. Nicholas II grew up in the "Citadel of Autocracy," often occupying simple rooms, but later preferred living in the Alexander Palace after his own accession to the throne in 1894.

Record Setting Lt. Rudnev in His Farmam III Biplane

Gatchina Palace and its surrounding Military Field played a pivotal role in early Russian aviation.  In 1910, the Voyennoye Polye (Military Field) near the palace became Russia's first air strip, where aviators, including the famous Aleksandr Kazakov, trained before serving in World War I, becoming Russia's leading ace.  Gatchina is remembered a century later as the "Birthplace of Russian Military Aviation." The military pilot Evgeniy Vladimirovich Rudnev, who had learnt to fly at the Gatchina aerodrome, made the first flight between two cities in the history of Russian aviation,  Gatchina and St. Petersburg, on 22 October 1910 with a Farman III aircraft. 

Officers and Students of the Aviation School

The Imperial Russian Air Service (IRAS), founded in 1912, performed notably at times on the Eastern Front.  Despite limited domestic industrial capacity, it produced some of the war's most innovative aircraft, such as the Ilya Muromets four-engine bomber and was the first to implement strategic bombing tactics. International aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky began his early aviation career at Gatchina, specifically during the 1910s, when he tested and showcased his pioneering aircraft.

Memorial with a Farman Aircraft Honoring the Contributions of the Gatchina Airmen on the Grounds of the Museum

During WWI, Gatchina trained pilots, while the nearby town later supported aircraft engine repairs, strengthening its connection to aerial warfare. Throughout the conflict, the area was vital for aircraft logistics, with the Museum of the History of Aviation Engine Construction now located in the former barracks of the Life Guards of the Uhlan regiment opposite the palace. Following the 1917 revolution, the palace was transformed into a museum, though it witnessed fighting between Red forces and the White Army in the subsequent Civil War period. 

Sources: Aviation of Russia; picryl; RussianPhotos.ru; Russia Beyond

A "Gift" from the Great War—The Universal Passport System

Wartime Passport Control on  the Nemunas River between Tilsit and Kaunas

A 1922 International Labor Organization's report succinctly summarized the impact of the war on international travel. It pointed out that for much of the 19th century, migration was, generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of departure, arrival or return, to suit his own convenience. In periods of peace, passports were a rare requirement, although there were notable special cases, such as the border between the Ottoman and Russian empires and pre-unification.  But World War I's outbreak brought harsh restrictions on freedom of movement. In 1914, warring states of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy were the first to make passports mandatory, a measure rapidly followed by others, including the neutral states of Spain, Denmark, and Switzerland. The British were the first to issue modern-style, photo-ID booklets. 

At the end of the war, the regime of obligatory passports was widespread. In reaction, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations, stipulated that member states commit to “secure and maintain freedom of communications and of transit.” To facilitate freedom of movement, participants agreed instead to establish a uniform, international passport, issued for a single journey or for a period two years. This is how we ended up with the format of the passports we use today. Participants also decided to abolish exit visas and decrease the cost of entry visas.

1916 Issue Passport for Austrian Scientist Georg Grasser

The first passport implementation conference was held in Paris in 1920, under the auspices of the League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations). Part of its Committee on Communication and Transit’s aim was to restore the prewar regime of freedom of movement.

Fences, however proved easier to build than to dismantle. The conference initially  recognized that restrictions on freedom of movement affect “personal relations between the peoples of various countries” and “constitute a serious obstacle to the resumption of normal intercourse and to the economic recovery of the world.”

Special Wartime Passport for a U.S. Postal Worker

But its delegates also concluded that security concerns prevented, for the time being, the total abolition of restrictions and the complete return to prewar conditions which the Conference hopes, nevertheless, to see gradually re-established in the near future. To facilitate freedom of movement, participants agreed instead to establish a uniform, international passport, issued for a single journey or for a period two years. This is how we ended up with the format of the passports we use today.

In 1947, the first problem considered at an expert meeting preparing for the UN World Conference on Passports and Frontier Formalities was “the possibility of a return to the regime which existed before 1914 involving as a general rule the abolition of any requirement that travelers should carry passports.” But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to the global conditions that prevailed before the start of the first world war. By 1947, that was a distant dream. 

Sources:  80 Years of Fee; The Treasure Bunker; The Postal Museum

Lonesome Memorials #24 The Remember Flanders Memorials, Ottawa and Guelph, Canada

 

The Remember Flanders memorials in Ottawa and Guelph, Canada, were designed by Canadian sculptor Ruth Abernethy. The bronze features John McCrae, author of the immortal poem "In Flanders Fields." The memorial commemorates the centennials of the Second Battle of Ypres, the Saint Julien Gas Attacks, and the writing of "In Flanders Fields." These statues were erected by the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery in collaboration with the Royal Canadian Medical Service and with support from the government of Flanders. There are two identical versions of the memorial, one in Ottawa and a second in McCrae's hometown of Guelph, Ontario. The first was unveiled on 3 May 2015 and the second on 25 June 2015. 

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was the Canadian soldier, a doctor and teacher, who wrote "In Flanders Fields" during the First World War. Born in Guelph, Ontario, in 1872, he served with an artillery battery in the South African War and had a successful civilian medical career. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the patriotic 41-year-old enlisted again and would be appointed as a medical officer with the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery. Sadly, Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae would not survive the conflict, dying of illness in January 1918. He is buried in the CWGC Wimereux Communal Cemetery in Pas de Calais, France

Locations

Ontario

92 Sussex Drive

Guelph

52 Norfolk Street

Remembering a Veteran: Jimmy Doolittle's World War I

General James Harold “Jimmy” Doolittle (1896–1993) was a pioneering pilot, aeronautical engineer, combat leader and military strategist whose career stretched from World War I to the height of the Cold War. He is most famous for leading a daring bombing raid over Tokyo in 1942, the first American attack on the Japanese mainland.

Doolittle Around the Time of World War One

Born in Alameda, California, he spent much of his childhood in western Alaska. His father, Frank, was a gold prospector and carpenter in Nome, where young Jimmy learned to fight bullies and pilot a dogsled. Eventually Rosa and Jimmy Doolittle returned to California, leaving Frank behind.

Jimmy attended high school in Los Angeles, where he distinguished himself as a gymnast and boxer. He then began courses at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Mines, but the war drew him to military service. He originally left his junior year at Berkeley in October 1917 to enlist as a flying cadet in the Signal Corps Reserve. A natural, he was soon soloing and earned his commission in March 1918. Initially he served as a flight gunnery instructor. He later requested a transfer to the European theater, but the Armistice dashed his dreams of combat.

Due to his high performance, three officers recommended he be retained in the Air Service after demobilization; he subsequently received a Regular Army commission in 1920. Doolittle worked at the Army’s Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, before returning to Berkeley to complete his degree. In 1922 he became the first pilot to fly coast to coast in under 24 hours, making the journey from Pablo Beach (now Jacksonville Beach) Florida to Rockwell Field, Coronado, California, with just one stop in Texas to refuel. The Army next sent him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in aeronautical engineering.

On 24 September 1929 Lieutenant Doolittle Made History's First Completely
Blind (Instrument Only) Takeoff and Landing in History on this Aircraft 

He spent the rest of the decade working as a test pilot for military and civilian planes, setting air race records and helping to develop instruments that allowed pilots to fly in whiteout conditions. In 1930 he left the army for higher-paying work at the Shell Oil Company, where he pressed for the adoption of advanced aviation fuel. Returning to the army full-time in 1940, Doolittle continued his test pilot work until January of 1942, when he was summoned by General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold to lead a raid on the Japanese mainland.  The rest is history.

A Tale from "My Old Man" Collection of Stories.

My father, George Hanlon (1905–1991), has made previous appearances on Roads to the Great War (See Preparedness Day Bombing, Jack London, and Influenza) and is now ready for a return visit. Here's another story he shared with me when I was growing up.

In the 1930s, the family trucking business in San Francisco was located adjacent to an aviation shop run by a German WWI veteran.  The mechanics there were apparently cutting edge and had recently provided support for the filming of Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels. They also attracted the interest of Jimmy Doolittle, who was checking up on  aviation developments during his civilian period between the wars. The Old Man drove trucks for my grandfather between his construction jobs and met Doolittle next-door several times while on coffee break visits. Apparently, Dad and the future general got on a friendly, first-name basis for a brief period, but they soon went their separate ways for a decade or so.

In 1942, the Old Man was a  civilian leaderman rigger at the Alameda Naval Air Station at the same dock where the second USS Hornet is now moored as a museum ship. One day, the original USS Hornet arrived unexpectedly. An announcement soon went out that all non-military employees were to leave the base for the next  72 hours. Being a supervisor, Dad was one of the last to leave the ship. Walking off the pier, he spied the Navy captain commanding the docks with an Army officer at the end of the pier. As he drew closer he recognized his old acquaintance, and called out, "Hi, Jimmy," who responded, "Hi, Skinny" (OM's nickname) and they shook hands. According to Dad,  the naval officer looked shocked, as if a major security breach had occurred, but said nothing. A day  or so later, Dad was riding to San Francisco on the Key System train that used to run on the lower level of the Bay Bridge, when the Hornet sailed underneath with a full load of Army bombers on its deck. He told me he knew immediately something interesting was up but kept it to himself for a long time, even after President Roosevelt announced the mission had been launched from Shangri-La.

Three Poetic Images of Hell from Frederic Manning

L'Enfer
Georges Leroux, 1921

Grotesque (Poem)

These are the damned circles Dante trod,

Terrible in hopelessness,

But even skulls have their humour,

An eyeless and sardonic mockery:

And we,

Sitting with streaming eyes in the acrid smoke,

That murks our foul, damp billet,

Chant bitterly, with raucous voices

As a choir of frogs

In hideous irony, our patriotic songs.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Frederic Manning (1882–1935) came to Britain in 1903 with his family. He originally signed up as a private in the King’s Shropshire Regiment, then started officer training in Oxford in April 1916. From August 1916 he served with the 7th battalion at the Somme and Ancre, and returned to the UK in December 1916 to undertake further officer training at Whittington Barracks before joining the Royal Irish Regiment in Dublin in May 1917. Greatly affected by his service on the Western Front, he began drinking heavily and was force to resign his commission in February 1918.

In 1917 he published a collection of poems under the title Ediola. This was a mixture of verse in his early style alongside war poems. In 1929 he composed a novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune, obviously autobiographical, about three soldiers’ experience of the trench nightmare, which is considered one of the greatest literary works to emerge from the war. A watered-down version was later published with the title  Her Privates We.

The Middle Parts of Fortune  (Novel Excerpt)

But war is a jealous god, destroying ruthlessly his rivals. . . In the last couple of days their whole psychological condition had changed: they had behind them no longer the moral impetus which thrust them into action, which carried them forward on a wave of emotional excitement, transfiguring all the circumstances of their life so that these could only be expressed in the terms of heroic tragedy, of some superhuman or even divine conflict with the powers of evil; all that tempest of excitement was spent, and they were now mere derelicts in a wrecked and dilapidated world, with sore and angry nerves sharpening their tempers, or shutting them up in a morose and sullen humour from which it was difficult to move them.

Fricourt (Somme Battlefield)
Borlase Smart

The Face  (Poem)

Out of the smoke of men’s wrath,

The red mist of anger,

Suddenly,

As a wraith of sleep,

A boy’s face, white and tense,

Convulsed with terror and hate,

The lips trembling…

Then a red smear, falling…

I thrust aside the cloud, as it were tangible,

Blinded with a mist of blood.

The face cometh again

As a wraith of sleep:

A boy’s face delicate and blonde,

The very mask of God,

Broken.

Note:  In an earlier posting, we presented Manning's reflections on death. It can found HERE.

"Hell and Maria!" Charles Gates Dawes Tells Off Congress and Becomes a Celebrity

Charles Dawes with the AEF

Charles Gates Dawes (1865–1951) was one of the most colorful and substantial characters of America's 20th-century history. Lawyer, banker, musical composer, first head of Bureau of the Budget, vice president of the United States, and Nobel Prize Laureate. His involvement in the nation's war effort stemmed from his  crossing paths with Lt. John J. Pershing in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the 1890s. They became lifetime friends. Two decades later, then General Pershing, Commander of the AEF, would help bring Dawes and his financial skills into the Army. He went on the serve with great distinction in France as  chief of supply procurement for the American combat forces and earned promotion to brigadier general. (Article on the scope of the AEF purchasing program HERE.)

After the Armistice, Dawes was instrumental in managing the logistical aftermath of the war. He oversaw the liquidation of billions of dollars' worth of surplus war material. In February 1921, Congress still coming to grips with the stupendous cost of the war was holding hearings on the subject, and called Dawes to testify, since there had been accusations of waste and overspend in the purchasing of war materials and the disposal on surplus supplies and equipment after hostilities. The tenor of the hearings had returned—as normal for Washington—to distinct partisanship. When Dawes testified, Republican lawmakers were hungry to discredit the now out-of-office Wilson administration and targeted Dawes despite his party affiliation.

An Early Summary of the Surplus Disposal Program Under Dawes' Command

Dawes famously defended his actions against congressional scrutiny regarding the sale of the enormous volume of surplus "junk," arguing that the speed of disposal was necessary and that the items were not worth moving back to the U.S. When questioned by a committee member about whether the Army had paid excessive prices for "mules and broomsticks" in France, Dawes famously shouted: "Hell and Maria, we weren't trying to keep a set of books over there, we were trying to win a war!". (That's Maria as in the "Wind Called Maria.")

He followed this by telling the committee he would have paid "horse prices for sheep" if they could have hauled artillery to the front lines, emphasizing that in the heat of combat, formal accounting was secondary to survival. "What Pershing needed, he got. Now you bark and whine about not getting more for that junk in France when it was not worth guarding, much less moving. To hell with that sort of talk!" 

Later, Vice-President Charles Dawes and Old Friend General Pershing

The public reaction was immediate and positive. The formerly little known banker and army officer became nationally famous as "Hell and Maria Dawes." Instead of being condemned for his temper, the public appreciated his blunt honesty and common-sense defense of the war effort. The fame from this incident directly boosted his political career. Shortly after, President Harding appointed him the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, where he was tasked with bringing the same intensity to streamlining government spending, which he accomplished.

The colorful career of Dawes continued after his time with the Bureau. Hell and Maria Dawes, managed to slip into the vice-presidency,  bicker constantly with President Coolidge, win the Nobel Peace Prize, write the music for a classic song, and  almost become the Republican candidate to run against FDR in 1936.  Here's a concise but informative biographical sketch of the man.

Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I

Jonathan ReedWinkler 

Harvard Univ. Press, 2008

Commander  Dale C. Rielage, U.S. Navy, Reviewer

Originally presented in the Naval War College Review, 

Spring 2009

WWI-Era Communications Center (Location Unidentified)

In March 1921, the U.S. subchaser SC154 fired on a cable ship attempting to land a transoceanic cable near Miami, Florida. The cable to South America would have been operated under foreign control. While the ship was undamaged, the cable never reached land. The lessons of World War I had left the United States willing to use force rather than allow a new foreign-controlled communications link to North America. In his excellent study, Jonathan Winkler recalls these episodes, describing the international and naval communications structures of the era, their influence on the war, and America’s recognition of its dependence on foreign communications systems. The Navy, with a cadre of technical experts and the need to command and control a worldwide fleet, played a central role in shaping a U.S. communications policy intended to reduce these vulnerabilities.

The years before World War I represent the start of our networked world. Trade, overseas news, colonial administration and the coordination of far-flung military forces all became dependent on a web of undersea communications cables, supplemented by a limited number of long-range radio stations. Understanding this dependence, both Great Britain and Germany entered the war with contingency plans to cut enemy cables at sea. However, British naval superiority ensured that damage from German attacks could be quickly repaired. 

Despite later German successes in using submarines to attack undersea cables, geography and infrastructure left Great Britain as the hub of the remaining international  communications system. While some of this story will be broadly familiar to readers of Barbara Tuchman’s classic study The Zimmerman Telegram, Winkler moves well beyond Tuchman’s work, describing how Britain’s information blockade emerged as a coordinated effort that complemented and reinforced its naval and economic blockades of Germany.

Initially, many in the U.S. government and Navy were sympathetic to British efforts. Even while neutral, the U.S. Navy cooperated, by closing German wireless stations in the United States. However, the British stranglehold on German communications had the effect of leaving the United States dependent on British cables to Europe and Latin America. British monitoring of cable traffic, a valuable source of military intelligence, also yielded commercial information that was used to further British trade––often against U.S. commercial interests. Reliable reporting of news from Germany became impossible, leaving the neutral American press dependent on British reporting of the war. The divergence of American and British interests forced the U.S. Navy’s realization that control of  communications had become an essential part of control of the seas in the modern age.

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In response, several U.S. government agencies moved to build an American cable network, but they were hampered by British control of raw materials. Others turned to emerging technology. Largely through Navy efforts, the United States ended World War I with the largest radio network in the world. However, the lack of a coordinated U.S. strategy and poor interagency coordination ultimately prevented the nation from dominating the international communications system after the war. Winkler asserts that the lessons learned from this failure provided the impetus for American dominance of international communications in years following the Second World War. This is an excellent book with a compelling story. Winkler deftly handles a complex topic that cuts across issues of naval history, intelligence, economics, and technological change. 

Dale C. Rielage

Sir Edward Grey's Debatable Culpability for the Great War

 

The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Sir Edward Grey

Sir Edward Grey

By John Lewis-Stempel 

Sir Edward Grey is known to everyone because of a single immortal quotation. On 3 August 1914, as foreign secretary, he looked out of the window of his office at dusk and observed the man lighting the gas lamps in St James's Park below and spoke those words to his chum, J.A. Spender. Grey was a countryman to his core.

Grey was always looking out of the window. He was a devout twitcher, and the waterfowl across in the park were one of his delights in London, which he hated. . . In his 11 years as foreign secretary (the longest anyone has held the office) he went abroad precisely once.

Everyone agreed, though, that Grey was charming, well mannered, and diffident, the very embodiment of the English gentleman. There's the rub. Was the great birdman of Westminster actually able to say boo to a goose?

There are historians who like to put Grey in the dock on the severest of all charges—he caused the murderous First World War by his lack of interest in his job. As foreign secretary of the world's super-power, for Heaven's sake! By his insularity and, above all, his failure to properly warn Berlin off the turf in July 1914 he was responsible for catastrophe. He was decent but amateurish and vapid, and so, in a huge test, he failed.

Another charge to be taken into consideration against the Right Honourable Edward Grey: When he did deign to diplomacy, he was the exact opposite of unworldly; he was Machiavellian and tied Britain in secret strings to France. These ended up as a noose around our necks. Few men have risen so languidly, or succeeded in so many disparate endeavours as Edward Grey. . .  [I]n his 50s, his physicians advised him to give up his job as foreign secretary and rest his eyes. He refused, believing his country needed him.

Did it? There is nothing novel in the accusation that Grey was an ineffectual foreign secretary. His colleague David Lloyd George devoted pages of his War Memoirs to damning Grey. But then, the Welsh politician gave over most of his war memoirs to trolling people. Nearly every malodorous myth about the Great War can be traced back to the literary septic tank that is Lloyd George's War Memoirs. . .

A Man of Many Parts
A highly respected ornithologist and naturalist, several of his books
 are still in print.  Earlier in his life, Grey was tennis champion
at Oxford and went on to win the British Championship five times.

For Grey, Britain was first, last, everything, though he would have peace, if peace could be had. In international dealings, at least, Grey was as true as his word. It is nigh on impossible to describe Grey the diplomat without delving into a lexicon of old-fashioned phrases. He wielded "a straight bat," he made British diplomacy a global brand for "fidelity."

For nearly a decade he kept the peace in Europe, almost single-handedly smoothing over major upsets caused by events in Africa in 1911 and the Balkans in 1912. Grey's tact and his obviously sincere desire for peace, contrasted with the bellicose arrogance of Berlin, turned up trumps in the Great War because they helped win America over. In other words, the winning team of UK, France, USA, and Russia was largely fashioned by one Sir Edward Grey. 

And so, to the main "crime" on the charge sheet against Edward Grey. In Lloyd George's words, "Had Grey warned Germany in time of the point at which Britain would declare war and wage it with her whole strength, the issue would have been different." There would have been no war. Did Grey bungle in summer 1914?

The accusation is a red herring. Germany had been told since 1911 by the British king, by War Secretary Haldane, and by Grey that if she attacked France, Britain would not stand idly by. In the end, France did not decide the issue, War or No. Everybody in Europe, from the lowliest English brickie to the emperor of Germany, knew in their hearts that Britain would honour her obligations to protect the independence of Belgium.

The tragedy of the First World War is that Berlin willfully ignored all evidence of British intent and bet the farm on the German Army being able to best France before Britain could meaningfully intervene. Some hope. There was good reason for Grey's softly, softly diplomacy in summer 1914. 

If he had rattled his saber against Germany he would have split the nation and been accused of warmongering by the peace party, which was led by. . . Lloyd George. Neither could one man have diverted the course of history. The tide this time was too strong.

One reason why Grey remains enigmatic is that there is, more's the pity, almost no one like him in modern British politics. His pursuit of ornithology and fishing were less diversions from duty, more tonics that enabled him to function. The hobbies, of course, gave him character; Grey is the exemplar of the politician with a hinterland. Grey, in profile, was absurdly birdlike; he had the nose of a hawk. . .

Yet he was, in his soul, an absolute dove. "I hate war," he declared in August 1914 (contrast that with the cheering that broke out in Prussian ministries on the declaration of hostilities). One taunt of Lloyd George's did hold water; Grey mistook "correctitude for rectitude."

The loathsome necessities of war were too much for him. When the conflict was declared, the light inside Edward Grey went out, and though he remained in office until 1916, he was increasingly a bewildered, ailing figure. A sightless white dove trapped in a long night. 

Editors Note:  Grey was was known for his dedication to strong relations with the U.S. During William Howard Taft's administration (1909–1912), this commitment helped foster a cooperative atmosphere between the two nations. This was much to Britain's advantage after war broke out. MH

Source: Excerpted from "Did Sir Edward Grey Provide the Spark for the Great War?" Sunday Express, May 2014

The Allies' First Victory: The Battle of Mt. Cer, 15–24 August 1914

Serbian Troops at Mt. Cer

At the outset of World War I, Serbia found itself facing the might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which sought to crush Serbia's independence and expand its own influence in the Balkans. On 12 August 1914, the Austro-Hungarian forces launched a large-scale offensive against Serbia, aiming to swiftly overrun the Serbian defenses and assert control over the region.

The invasion was commanded by Feldzeugmeister (Lieutenant General) Oskar Potiorek. Facing them was the Second Serbian Army under the command of the General (later Voyvoda, i.e., Field Marshal) Stepa Stepanović. General Stepanović was determined to resist. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, his Serbian soldiers and irregular auxiliaries displayed remarkable courage and tactical skill throughout the battle. After the ten-day battle, they had delivered the first victory of the Great War for the Allies

Site of the Battle

The Battle of Mt. Cer, fought about 60 miles west of Belgrade near the town of Shabac, began on 15 August 1914, when the Austro-Hungarian forces crossed the Drina River and advanced toward Mt. Cer. The Serbian troops, entrenched in defensive positions along the hills overlooking the valley, unleashed a withering barrage of artillery fire and rifle volleys upon the advancing enemy. Over the course of several days of intense fighting, the Serbian soldiers repelled wave after wave of Austro-Hungarian assaults, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy.

King Peter of Serbia Observes the Battle

Despite fierce resistance, the Austro-Hungarian advance stalled, and their forces were unable to break through the Serbian lines. On 20 August,  the Serbian Army launched a counteroffensive, driving the Austro-Hungarian forces back across the Drina River and inflicting a decisive defeat upon them. By 24 August, the Battle of Mt. Cer had ended in a resounding victory for Serbia.  

This battle was notable for two other events.  It saw the first aerial dogfight, when the pilots of Serbian and Austro-Hungarian reconnaissance aircraft engaged each other with small arms. More important, the invading Habsburg forces committed numerous atrocities, engaging in an orgy of looting, rape, murder, and mass extermination.

The Cer Memorial Ossuary

Militarily, the Battle of Mt. Cer was a costly engagement for both sides. Serbian casualties numbered around 3,000 killed and wounded, while the Austro-Hungarian losses exceeded 6,000 men. Despite the heavy toll, though, the Serbian victory at Mt. Cer bolstered the morale of the Allied powers and demonstrated Serbia's determination to resist foreign aggression, a fact that, unfortunately, seems to have been forgotten by the successor states of the former aggressors in the present day.

Sources: War History Online; BBC Global Politics magazine; The Lloyds Chronicle

Ten Interesting WWI Images I Found in the New York Public Library Digital Archives

The New York Public Library, 1919

As you may guess, since the New York Public Library has vast collections of stuff on just about every topic under the sun, it has a great collection of First World War material. I've drawn on NYPL regularly for material for Roads to the Great War. So recently, I decided to go poking around in their archives for some fresh images that I'd never seen before. Hope you enjoy what I've found. They can all be substantially enlarged by clicking on them.  MH

 

1. A Burberry Advertisement, Apparently Pre-Trench Coat

2. Christ with Cross vs. Trotsky

3. The King of Saxony, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff with the Army

4. Russian Poster - Harvesting German & Austrian Heads

5.  Western Front Battle Map—Dated 25 September 1918

6. Range Finder Cigarette Card (Front and Back)

7. "The path of the Cossack through war-smitten Galicia"

8. Rake for tearing down barbed wire entanglements. Cigarette Card

9. American Donkey Train in Meuse-Argonne Battle

10.  A road song: Return from Carcassonne to Toulouse