From Caxton Hall to Genoa via Fontainebleau and Cannes: David Lloyd George’s Vision of Post-War Europe

ABSTRACT

Only David Lloyd George of the Big Four survived to play a major role in early post-war diplomacy, remaining as British premier until October 1922. This analysis assesses the development of his ideas and policies with particular reference to his war aims speech of 5 January 1918, his Peace Conference Fontainebleau Memorandum of 25 March 1919, and the paper handed to the French premier, Aristide Briand, at Cannes on 4 January 1922. John Maynard Keynes accused Lloyd George of being “rooted in nothing,” but Edward House’s grudging acknowledgement that “With all his faults, he is by birth, instinct and upbringing, a liberal” seems a fairer assessment. He attempted to put his ideas, based on self-determination, trade, disarmament, and a broad sense of what was just, into practice in his ambitious attempt to re-engage Germany and the Soviet Union into the mainstream of international politics at the 1922 Genoa Conference. By then his credibility with his French counterparts and Tories at home was much depleted. Furthermore, he neglected laying the tedious but necessary foundations on which to build his vision and the constraints of international and domestic politics thwarted his proposed panacea to post-war problems.

Acknowledgments

My thanks, as ever, to Professor Tom Fraser for his comments and encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Speaking to students in Hamburg in 1953.

2. Lansing diary, 22 January 1919, quoted by D. Perman, The Shaping of the Czechoslovak State (London: Brill, 1962), 105; Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why The First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Allen Lane, 2016), 7.

3. Alan Sharp “Adapting to a New World? British Foreign Policy in the 1920s,” in Gaynor Johnson, ed., The Foreign Office and British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), 74–86. Kerr suggested leaving “Europe to itself with such assistance as the League of Nations can give to it”: Kerr to Lloyd George, 2 October 1920, LG [Earl Lloyd George Papers, Parliamentary Archives, London] F/90/1/18. Smuts, on 24 June 1921 at the Imperial Conference, said, “I would rather assume a position of independence, putting the British Empire entirely aside from all of them,” CAB [Cabinet Records, The National Archives, Kew] 32/2/E6; Nicolson paper [CID 251-B], 10 July 1920, CAB 4/7.

4. See John Grigg, Lloyd George: From Peace to War 1912–1916 (London: Harper Collins, 1997), passim; Alan Sharp, David Lloyd George: Great Britain (London: Haus, 2008), 12–35.

5. Peter Rowland, Lloyd George (London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd., 1975), 463.

6. David Butler and Jennie Freeman, British Political Facts 1900–1967, 2nd ed. (London: Papermac, 1968), 141. Frances Stevenson diary, 5 March 1919, in A. J. P. Taylor, ed., Lloyd George: A Diary (London: Hutchinson, 1971), 169.

7. John Vincent, ed., The Crawford Papers: The Journals of David Lindsay Twenty-seventh Earl of Crawford and Tenth Earl of Balcarres 1871–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 449.

8. John Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader 1916–1918 (London: Penguin, 2003), 378–79; Rowland, Lloyd George, 427–28; Michael G. Fry, And Fortune Fled: David Lloyd George, the First Democratic Statesman, 1916–1922 (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 148–51.

9. David Lloyd George War Memoirs (2 vols, London: Odhams Press, 1936) Vol.II 1510-17

10. Fry, Fortune Fled, 151; Charles Seymour The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, (4 vols. Ernest Benn, London: 1928), III 350.

11. Seymour, Intimate Papers, IV, 167. Cf. “I do not believe President Wilson has thought out his nebulous proposals”: Crowe minute, 30 November 1918, FO 371/4353[Foreign Office Records, The National Archives, Kew] .

12. Antony Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: From Versailles to Hitler, 1919–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 23–46.

13. Keith Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 236–38.

14. Cmd 2169: Papers Respecting Negotiations for an Anglo-French Pact, 1919–1922 (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office [HMSO], 1924), 78–79.

15. Ibid., 80.

16. Ibid., 82–83.

17. Ibid., 80–82.

18. Ibid., 81–87.

19. Ibid., 83.

20. Leon Lipson, “Peaceful Coexistence,” Law and Contemporary Problems, 29/4–5 (1964), 872.

21. Stephen White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979), 3–26; G. H. Bennett British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919–24 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 66–70; Churchill to Lloyd George, 22 March 1920, LG F/9/9/20.

22. CC 541A(21), 26 June 1921, CAB 23/15.

23. Carole Fink The Genoa Conference: European Diplomacy, 1921–1922 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 3–30.

24. Cmd 2169, 116–21.

25. White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 3.

26. Lord Hardinge, the ambassador at Paris, wrote, “I regard him as a dirty dog”; Curzon reciprocated: “I wish Poincaré with his meticulous hostility was at the bottom of the sea for ever.” Hardinge to Curzon, 5 May 1922, Curzon to Hardinge, 8 May 1922, both Hardinge [Baron Hardinge of Penshurst Papers, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge], 45.

27. For the various draft treaty proposals and Anglo-French discussions, see Cmd 2169, 129–72.

28. Antony Lentin, “Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the Elusive Anglo-French Guarantee Treaty 1919; ‘A Disastrous Episode’?” in Alan Sharp and Glyn Stone, eds., Anglo-French Relations in the Twentieth Century: Rivalry and Cooperation (London: Routledge, 2000), 104–19.

29. Churchill to Lloyd George, 22 March 1920, LG F/9/9/20. Emphasis in original.

30. Alan Sharp, “Anglo-French Relations from Versailles to Locarno, 1919–1925: The Quest for Security,” in Sharp and Stone, Anglo-French Relations, 122–25, Keith Wilson, Channel Tunnel Visions, 1850–1945; Dreams and Nightmares (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 107–53.

31. W. N. Medlicott and D. Dakin, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939 [DBFP], First Series, vol. XVI (London: HMSO, 1968), 869.

32. Cmd 2169, 121–22.

33. Sharp, “Anglo-French Relations,” 128.

34. Lord Beaverbrook, The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George (London: Collins, 1966), 119–121, 289–90.

35. Chamberlain to Lloyd George, 21 March 1922, LG F/7/5/20; Lloyd George to Chamberlain, 22 March 22, LG F/7/5/21; White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 68–74; Bennett, British Foreign Policy, 70–71.

36. Following Barthou’s assassination, Frances Stevenson noted, “Poincaré had determined that it should be a failure and sent constant wires to Barthou, bidding him oppose D. [Lloyd George] on this and that. ‘I’ve received my 900th wire today,’ said Barthou to D. one morning”: diary, 10 October 1934, Taylor, A Diary, 283.

37. Fink, Genoa Conference, 141–208; Stephanie Salzmann, Great Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union: Rapallo and After, 1922–1934 (London: Boydell Press, 2003), 7–18; White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 55–78; idem, The Origins of Détente: The Genoa Conference and Soviet-Western Relations, 1921–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), passim.

38. Stevenson diary, 7 April 1934, in Taylor, A Diary, 266.

39. Kenneth Morgan, Consensus and Disunity: The Lloyd George Coalition Government 1918–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 32, 370–71.

40. WC 491B(18), 26 October 1918, CAB 23/14. See also Peter Clarke, The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power, and Guilt (London: Bloomsbury, 2017) on the Gladstonian focus on guilt.

41. Hankey to Lloyd George, 21 February 1919, Lothian [Marquess of Lothian Papers, National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh] GD40/17/64.

42. Lentin, Lost Peace, 23–46; David Lloyd George The Truth About The Peace Treaties, (2 vols. Victor Gollancz, London: 1938), I, 474 and 435–513; Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919–1923, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018), 71–99.

43. Minutes of meetings held 30 May 1919 and 1 June 1919, Michael Dockrill, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, (6 vols. University Publications of America, Frederick, MD: 1989), IV, 91–116; Sharp, Versailles Settlement, 89–91.

44. Alan Sharp, “Lloyd George and Foreign Policy, 1918–1922. The ‘And Yet’ Factor,” in J. Loades, ed., The Life and Times of Lloyd George (Bangor: Headstart History, 1991), 135–38.

45. Sir C.E. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, (2 vols, Cassell and Co., London: 1927), II, 149.

46. Gary Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 60–82.

47. James Willis, Prologue to Nuremberg; The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War Criminals of the First World War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982); Mark Lewis The Birth of the New Justice: The Internationalization of Crime and Punishment, 1919–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Alan Sharp, Versailles 1919: A Centennial Perspective (London: Haus, 2018), 120–26.

48. Sharp, Versailles Settlement, 113–16, 119–23.

49. Sharp, Lloyd George, 112–42.

50. Dragan Bakić, Britain and Interwar Danubian Europe: Foreign Policy and Security Challenges, 1919–1936 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 10–12.

51. Ibid., passim.

52. Trevor Wilson, ed., The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott 1911–1928 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970), 426; Bennett, British Foreign Policy, 76–88; Alan Sharp, “Foreign Policy and the Fall of the Lloyd George Coalition Government,” Revue Francaise de Civilisation Britannique, 16/2 (2011), 137–53.

53. Peter Yearwood, “‘On the Safe and Right Lines’: The Lloyd George Government and the Origins of the League of Nations,” Historical Journal, 32/1 (1989), 131–55; idem., Guarantee of Peace: The League of Nations in British Policy, 1914–1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Ruth Henig The League of Nations (London: Haus, 2010), 64.

54. Henig, League of Nations, 25–94.

55. David Stevenson, “Britain, France and the Origins of German Disarmament, 1916–1919,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 29/2 (2006): 195–224; Fry, Fortune Fled, 82–83; Keith Jeffery and Alan Sharp, “Après la Guerre finit, Soldat anglais parti …: Anglo-French Relations 1918–25,” in Erik Goldstein and B. J. C. McKercher, eds., Power and Stability: British Foreign Policy 1865–1965 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 127–35.

56. Curzon memorandum, 28 December 1921, DBFP, I, XVI, 862.

57. CID Meeting, 13 February 1925, CAB 24/172; Churchill to Lloyd George, 28 November 1921, LG F/10/1/48.

58. Comte de Saint-Aulaire Confessions d’un Vieux Diplomate (Paris, Flammarion, 1953) 536

59. Lloyd George to Curzon 10 December 1919, Lloyd George to Simons 8 March 1921, LG F/12/2/11, F/53/3/8.

60. “Menteur” wrote Henri Jaspar, the Belgian statesman, in his notes; however, his 1937 article on Genoa was more subtle: “Et le culte de la veracité comme la suite dans les idées n’obsédèrent jamais Lloyd George.” Jaspar [Papiers Jaspar, Archives du Royaume, Brussels] Dossier 209. Clemenceau told Lord Derby, the British ambassador, he “had been tricked by him … he says he can’t believe a word the P.M. says!”: Derby to Curzon, 16 October 1919, Curzon [Earl Curzon Papers, British Library London] MSS EUR F112/196.

61. Alan Sharp, “The Foreign Office in Eclipse, 1919–1922,” History, 61/2 (1976): 198–218. For alternative views, see G. H. Bennett, “Lloyd George, Curzon and the Control of British Foreign Policy, 1919–1922,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, 45/4 (1999): 467–82; G Johnson, “Curzon, Lloyd George and the Control of British Foreign Policy, 1919–1922: A Reassessment,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 11/3 (2000): 49–71.

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Alan Sharp

Alan Sharp is Emeritus Professor of International History at Ulster University, from which he retired as Provost of its Coleraine campus in 2009. He is the author of The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919–1923 (1991; third edition 2018) and was general editor of the 32-volume Haus series Makers of the Modern World to which he contributed David Lloyd George: Great Britain (2008) and Consequences of Peace: The Versailles Settlement: Aftermath and Legacy 1919–2010 (2010) revised and reissued as Versailles 1919: A Centennial Perspective (2018).