Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, better known as Sir Edward Grey, was a British Liberal statesman and the main force behind British foreign policy in the era of the First World War.
Background
Edward Grey was born in London on April 25, 1862. Grey was the eldest of the seven children of Colonel George Henry Grey and Harriet Jane Pearson. His grandfather Sir George Grey, 2nd Baronet of Fallodon, was also a prominent Liberal politician. He was also a cousin of two later British Foreign Secretaries: Anthony Eden and Lord Halifax.
Education
Grey attended Temple Grove School from 1873 until 1876. Whilst he was at that school his father died unexpectedly in December 1874, and his grandfather assumed responsibility for his education, sending him to Winchester College.
Grey went on to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1880 to read Literae Humaniores. Apparently an indolent student, he was tutored by Mandell Creighton during the vacations and managed a second class honours degree in Honour Moderations. Grey subsequently became even more idle, using his time to become university champion at real tennis.
In 1882 his grandfather died and he inherited a baronet's title, an estate of about 2,000 acres (8.1 km2), and a private income. Returning to the University of Oxford in the autumn of 1883, Grey switched to studying jurisprudence (law) in the belief that it would be an easier option, but by January 1884 he had been expelled. Nonetheless, he was allowed to return to sit his final examination. Grey returned in the summer and achieved Third Class honours.
Grey left university with no clear career plan and in the summer of 1884 he asked a neighbour, Lord Northbrook, at the time First Lord of the Admiralty, to find him "serious and unpaid employment." Northbrook recommended him as a private secretary to his kinsman Sir Evelyn Baring, the British consul general to Egypt, who was attending a conference in London. Grey had shown no particular interest in politics whilst at university, but by the summer of 1884 Northbrook found him "very keen on politics," and after the Egyptian conference had ended found him a position as an unpaid assistant private secretary to Hugh Childers, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Career
In 1892 Grey became undersecretary of the Foreign Office under Lord Rosebery and later under Lord Kimberley. In March 1895, he gave the so-called Grey declaration in the Commons that French activity in the Upper Nile would be viewed in London as an "unfriendly act." As an avowed imperialist he supported the Boer War, and as a Liberal he favored free trade. As early as 1904, Grey had come out in favor of alignment with Paris, fearing German expansion.
In December 1905, he became minister for foreign affairs in the cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and three months later at Algeciras upheld the French claim to Morocco. Grey was the principal author of the Anglo-Russian agreement of August 1907, whereby Tibet was declared neutral, Russia abandoned Afghanistan, and both nations agreed to separate spheres of influence in Persia. In 1911 Grey renewed Britain's agreement with Japan and two years later acknowledged Berlin's interests in Turkey. Until 1914 Grey, a man of portentous gravity, eschewed all secret treaties suggested by Germany for the eventual division of European, and especially Portuguese, colonies in Africa. His attempt to mediate the Vienna-St. Petersburg feud arising out of Austria-Hungary's seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 was rejected.
Grey was more successful three years later in getting Berlin to recognize the French position in Morocco in return for two strips of the French Congo. In 1912, however, he was to be bitterly disappointed over the failure of Lord Haldane's mission to Berlin to bring about mutual reductions in naval armaments.
The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir presumptive, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, ushered in Grey's gravest hour: the state secretary's efforts to convene a European conference to deal with the matter were rebuffed in Vienna and Berlin. The next day he witnessed Germany's refusal to recall its troops from Belgium and the resulting British declaration of war. Grey was no longer at the height of events.
Grey's bungling diplomacy in 1914/1915 cost the Entente Greece's entry into the war; instead, Grey pursued the mirage of Bulgarian support against the Central Powers and steadfastly refused to guarantee Greece's northern borders for fear of thereby jeopardizing Bulgaria’s claims to Greek Macedonia. The implications of this stubbornness for Britain's Dardanelles venture are obvious. On April 26, 1915, Grey signed the secret Treaty of London with Baron Sidney Sonnino in which Rome extorted promises of large parts of Dalmatia, North Africa, south Austria, and the Middle East in return for its willingness to join the Entente. By the end of that year, Grey was still, as he put it, "trying at Sofia," but his dilatory efforts were rejected not only by the Bulgars, but also by the Greeks and the Rumanians, with the result that Britain abandoned Serbia and virtually wrote off southeast Europe by October 1915.
In November 1915, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith declined to make Grey a member of the new War Committee owing to the state secretary's Balkan disasters, thereby clearly divorcing diplomacy from strategy in Britain's conduct "Colonel" Edward M. House as well as to U.S. Ambassador Walter Hines Page, on February 22, 1916, signed the so-called Grey-House agreement, whereby Washington agreed to call a conference to end the war in Europe. Specifically, Grey and House promised to restore Belgian independence and to give Alsace-Lorraine to France. But the political power of the state secretary had ebbed so low by September that he could do little more than register a protest when David Lloyd George, then secretary of state for war, issued a public warning to President Woodrow Wilson that Britain would tolerate no intervention "now that she is prepared until the Prussiof the war. In fact, Grey was quite isolated even on the matter of British war aims. The state secretary favored the restoration of Belgium's independence, but early in 1916 Asquith went much further in demanding an end to "Prussian militarism" and to "German domination," that is, a crushing military victory over Berlin. Grey, who had close ties to an military despotism is broken beyond repair." When Lloyd George became prime minister on December 7, 1916, with a clear mandate to win the war, he did not retain Grey at the Foreign Office.
As a final service to his country, Grey in September 1919 traveled to Washington in order to persuade the American leader to compromise with the Senate on the issue of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, Wilson refused even to see Grey.
Grey played a key role in the July Crisis leading to the outbreak of World War I.
Personality
Edward Grey was also a lifelong fly fisherman, publishing a book, Fly Fishing, on his exploits in 1899, which remains one of the most popular books ever written on the subject. He continued to fish by touch after his deteriorating eye-sight meant he was no longer able to see the fly or a rising fish.
He was also an avid ornithologist, one of the best-known photographs of him shows him with a robin perched on his hat; The Charm of Birds was published in 1927.
Physical Characteristics:
Grey's health had deteriorated steadily during the war and he was almost blind by the end of his tenure at Whitehall.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
football, tennis
Connections
Grey was married to Dorothy. After her death in February 1906 he married to Pamela Adelaide Genevieve Wyndham. There were no children from either marriage.
According to Max Hastings, however, Grey had two illegitimate children as a result of extra-marital affairs. According to Edward James, one of them is his sister, Audrey Evelyn James, officially the daughter of William Dodge James and Evelyn Elizabeth Forbes.