First World War

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, I, like other noble Lords, am of the generation of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. I belong to a generation which was concerned in our childhood with the Great War, as we referred to it. We had not, of course, participated in it. We remember from our childhood how everything stopped at 11 o’clock on 11 November to commemorate the war before World War II. In the 1914 war, my mother—as we are referring to family relations—was a VAD, which stood for voluntary aid detachment. She was a nurse in Mesopotamia and perhaps she knew the father of the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. Mesopotamia is, of course, a much nicer word for Iraq, which we used until Iraqi independence. She was under Turkish guns on a train going up to Kut Al Amara. “What was it like being under Turkish fire?”, my children would ask. “Well, it wasn’t at all agreeable”, my mother would explain, “but it was nothing like so disagreeable as being under the mosquitoes in Basra”. That was the spirit that probably helped to win the war.

I have a personal recollection, too. I knew Harold Nicolson, the young diplomat who carried the ultimatum from the Foreign Office to the German embassy in Carlton House Terrace, where it was received with the greatest melancholy by the Anglophile German ambassador Prince Lichnowsky. Harold Nicolson remembered for the rest of his life just how sad the German ambassador was on that occasion.

In relation to this terrible conflict, it is important to realise that it was the catastrophe which caused European civilisation to collapse—to commit suicide. Of course, our first responsibility—no doubt about it—is to recall what happened to our fellow countrymen in France. My first publisher, Douglas Jerrold, a Gallipoli veteran gave a moving description in his book Georgian Adventure of watching eight lines of men who passed him going up to the Front in France “so closely that I could see every expression on their faces as they faded into the mist, and among all those men marching so resolutely to wounding or to death, I saw not one expression of fear, or regret, or even surprise”.

We need to remember that not only Britain and the imperial defence forces suffered but the sacrifices made by our allies—especially the French but also the Americans, the Russians and the Italians. We have not heard any of those countries mentioned this afternoon, which is surprising. Perhaps they should have been.

We should recall that our enemies in 1914—above all the Germans, but also the central Europeans and the Turks—suffered greatly before siding with us substantially in the Cold War in which we could have been consumed had it not been for their help and that of others. It is worth while recalling that the greatest of Americans alive in 1914, in my opinion, was Henry James, who became a British citizen in 1915. He was once walking past Buckingham Palace with his brother, the philosopher, William James. Henry raised his hat to the flag flying over the palace. “You do love the English, don’t you?”, said William. “Why is it?”. “Well, William”, said Henry, “it’s because they’re so decent and so dauntless”. I trust that we should enjoy that accolade if the worst came to the worst in the 21st century.

Talking of our enemies, it is fair to say that the best novel about the approach to the war of 1914 was the Transylvanian Trilogy by a Hungarian, Miklós Bánffy. He was an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat who lived in Transylvania, which was destroyed by the Treaty of St Germain afterwards. We should recognise that his work articulates nobly the continent-wide nature of the tragedy of the war. Perhaps I should declare an interest as I wrote the introduction to the Everyman edition of that great book.

This has been a marvellous debate, full of fascinating memories. We should, and will, remember for a long time the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton. We will also remember the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, recalling the memoirs of Anthony Eden—Lord Avon—with his interesting descriptions of life in the war and before.

One more thing we should remember is that the war had many long-term reasons, which historians have gone into with great care and interest—I studied the origins of the First World War as a special subject at Cambridge—but the immediate cause of the war was an act of terrorism by a young Serbian, Gabriel Princip, who was too young to execute despite being found guilty of the pointless murder in Sarajevo. The fact that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was probably the most thoughtful of the leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that his morganatic wife, Sophie Chotek, was completely innocent should not be forgotten by those considering equally vile terrorist actions today.

One Member of this House, the late Lord Amery—Julian Amery—met Princip’s father in Belgrade in 1938. “Yes”, said Princip’s father, “it was a tragedy about poor Gabriel: he would have been so useful in our printing office”. Alas that he did not stick to printing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

I accept the noble Baroness’s point.

The background to this includes a little story which may interest the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. I was reading the memoir of my grandfather-in-law, who was wounded in the trenches and sent to Ireland to act as a resettlement officer for returning, injured Irish guardsmen and others. He was captured by Sinn Fein in the south of Ireland and found himself in a difficult situation when, suddenly, a bunch of German soldiers turned up under a German officer. That German officer looked pretty vicious, but then walked up to my grandfather-in-law and said, “You don’t recognise me, do you? I used to be a waiter at the Charing Cross Hotel. I was a German spy and was sent there from 1900 to 1914. Then I went back and joined the German army, and now they’ve sent me over here in an intelligence role”. There was a certain amount of preparation by somebody at that time. The Germans were obviously making sure that they could protect themselves as best they could.

I have a few comments on how we are going. It is absolutely right that we should recognise the role of the Commonwealth; I have great respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, and Indians and others who wish to be represented. For that reason we are accommodating them by having this first service in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games. My worry is that it is the day after the Commonwealth Games. How many Commonwealth leaders are actually going to stay beyond the games? It is important if that service is in Glasgow—when others might have thought Westminster Abbey would be the obvious location for it—that a real effort is made to ensure that a good number of Commonwealth leaders are there. The vigil in Westminster Abbey with the turning out of the lights, which is to be replicated in churches around the country, must therefore have full support.

There are lessons to be learnt about the courage of our young men of that time and the appalling dangers they faced. It has been pointed out that there was no conscription until 1916, and I do not think any tribute to all those who went and served before that time, in full knowledge of the horror that they faced, could be too great. My noble friend Lady Williams said that we have learnt the lessons of history in 70 years of working together and that there is no risk of any war again. I look at the situation in Ukraine, which we have discussed before, and the risk of Russia perhaps seeking to expand its activities. We can never be complacent. We must always be alert. We must always use every possible form of diplomatic relationship, and must always be aware of how great the price might be if we were to get involved in conflict.

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

I remind the noble Lord, and my noble friend Lady Flather, that the word in 1914 was not “Commonwealth” but “Empire”.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

Yes, but we are having the Commonwealth Games. I am referring to what is happening now, and the fact that we are accommodating the Commonwealth.