vincent sherry
neutral Belgium.^7 Butother pressures—the commitments hidden in the ‘secret
agreements’—were also coming to bear on the Liberal government. The tension
between these rival frames of partisan reference is reflected in the editorial reports
on Grey’s address in the two leading Liberal dailies on 4 August.
TheManchester Guardianholds true to the standard of reason at liberty, which,
in this instance, the writer depicts as a compromised principle. This report protests
that citizens and Parliament have not been given information sufficient to ‘form a
reasoned judgment on the current of our policy’. In Grey’s conclusion that Britain
must go to France’s aid, even when Germany has vowed not to move on any
undefended areas, the writer accurately intuits that the Secretary is being compelled
by forces that exceed those of the moral rationale he has claimed. ‘His reasons are
extraordinary,’ the editorial demurs. ‘Is it rational? Can it be deduced, we will not
say from the terms of the Entente, but from the account of secret conversations
which was given yesterday? Can it be reconciled with any reasonable view of British
policy? It cannot.’^8
Theespeciallystrenuouseffortof‘reconcil[ing]’theseeventualities with a‘reason-
able view of British policy’ may be evidenced in the language of the news leader in the
WestminsterGazettte,whichoffersthisnarrative—andargumentative—paraphrase
of Grey’s speech:
Sir Edward Grey passed to the consideration of the present position of the French fleet in
the Mediterranean whichevidentlysprang out of the plans for co-operation. The French
fleet was in the Mediterraneanbecause of the feeling of confidencebetween the two countries.
Hence it followedthat if a foreign fleet came down the channel we could not stand aside
and see it attack the defenceless coast of France.The House was brought to the conclusion
that we had a definite obligation to defend the coast of France from attack, and, generally
speaking, it showed that it was prepared to support the government in taking action. France
wasthereforeentitled to know and know at once that she could depend on British support.^9
Tellingly, this report of ‘The House and Sir Edward Grey’s Statement’ bears
the subtitle ‘Logic of Events’. Complying entirely with Grey’s own rationalistic
stratagems, the report pays special attention to inserting those conjunctions that
establish cause and reasoned transition in the argument. This language of analytical
and ethical reasoning is obviously imposed on a resistant circumstance, however.
The second-thought, second-hand, overlaid nature of this rhetoric of ethical
reasoning is the one conclusion that may be safely drawn from this passage.
‘Reason in all things’ is a poetics, ethically addressed but aesthetically prepared,
and the fact that it springs into service already and immediately witnesses quite
evidently its established, well-endowed power. But if Anglo-American modernists
(^7) The text of the speech was printed in all the major dailies on 4 Aug.; e.g. ‘Sir E. Grey’s Speech’,
Manchester Guardian,7–8.
(^8) ‘Peace or War’,Manchester Guardian, 4 Aug. 1914, 6.
(^9) ‘A Dramatic Scene: The House and Sir Edward Grey’s Statement: Logic of Events’,Westminster
Gazette, 4 Aug. 1914, 10; my italics.