INTRODUCTION

People who know nothing else about Sir Edward Grey (1862–1933), the longest-serving British Foreign Secretary (from December 1905 to December 1916), are familiar with his uncharacteristically fatidic observation on the eve of the First World War:"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."1

The remark was made at dusk on August 3rd, 1914. At a little after 7:00 a.m. that morning, the Belgian government had rejected an ultimatum demanding that German troops be permitted to pass through the country. Kaiser andReichskanzler were reminded of their nation's solemn pledge to respect Belgium's neutrality, and were told that the Belgian Army would resist the invasion.2

Rising at a little after 3:00 that afternoon in the House of Commons, Grey had given a speech that had shifted sentiment among members.3 A majority, in the Cabinet as well as the House, may still have supported British neutrality before he spoke. This was not the case afterward. Grey pointedly refrained from mentioning repeated German and Austrian rejections of British proposals for a negotiated settlement, and, with characteristic scrupulousness, did not even refer to the insulting bid for British neutrality that German Chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg had made the day before. Instead, he stressed the country's moral obligation to defend the northern coast of France from the German Fleet. He and the Prime Minister both seem to have hoped that naval action was all that would be required of the U.K. in the coming war.4 Then, at some length, he made the case that it was in Britain's vital interest to preserve Belgium's neutrality.5

Now he and the country were waiting for the first shots to be fired, presumably in the vicinity of the Liege forts. There would be a British ultimatum to Berlin the next day, but everyone assumed it would be ignored.

The Foreign Secretary was standing at his office window, looking across St. James Park to the Mall. It was around 9:00 p.m. The street lights flickered on. Grey's friend J. A. Spender, editor of theWestminster Gazette, was beside him, and it was to Spender that he addressed the remark. Grey later recalled that the lamps were"being lit," but they'd been electric for over a decade, and came on without the benefit of a lamplighter.

The lamps never came back on. About 16.5 million soldiers6 and civilians lost their lives in the conflict,7 but historians cannot even estimate to the nearest 10 million how many individuals were killed as an indirect result of the war, for the triumph of National Socialism and Communism are inconceivable without it. We are still living with the war's consequences a century later.

If someone knows anything else about Sir Edward apart from the"lamps" quote, it's likely that the Foreign Secretary was regarded by friend and foe alike–save for German propagandists during the war–as an exceptionally honest, straightforward, sincere, and trustworthy individual, a man of his word."Lies and intrigue are equally repugnant to him," wrote the last pre-war German Ambassador to London, Prince Max Lichnowsky.8

If a third thing is known about Grey, it is surely his love of the countryside, and his preference for fishing and bird-watching to politics. In fact, he is remembered today by some individuals primarily for his contributions to ornithology and for his nature writing. HisFly Fishing (1899) andThe Charm of Birds (1927) are regarded as classics, and the Edward Grey Center for Ornithology at Oxford, founded in 1937, commemorates Grey the naturalist. The Foreign Secretary recalled for Katharine Lyttelton how he used to look longingly out the window while cramming for his exams at Balliol, wishing he could exchange places with the gardener, who was trundling by with his wheelbarrow.9 On the hustings and attending sessio