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Pacifist to Interventionist: David Lloyd George in 1911 and 1914. was Belgium an Issue?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Bentley B. Gilbert
Bentley B. Gilbert
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
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Extract

David Lloyd George's behaviour in the crucial week between 27 July and 3 August 1914 has commanded much scholarship and more speculation. Nearly every member of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's Liberal cabinet, including the chancellor of the exchequer himself, has told the story of those agonizing days, by memoir, diary or letter. Yet Lloyd George's part in Britain's decision to declare war upon Germany on 4 August remains unclear; indeed it is less clear now than it seemed to be half a century ago. How could the ‘Pro-Boer’ of the days of the South African war, who had been the object of any number of dangerous personal assaults for his treasonable speeches, the enemy of the dreadnoughts, the slasher of naval estimates, indeed the man who most recently declared at the Mansion House and had asserted again in the House of Commons only six days later – the last coming on the day of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia – that powerful commercial influences in Germany and Britain were drawing the two nations so close that great arms were unnecessary, how could such a man become the supporter of intervention in a continental war on behalf of France?

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 863 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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