Great Britain and the 1914-1915 Straits Agreement with Russia: The British Promise of November 1914

Abstract

* The author of The Russian Struggle for Power, 1914-1917 (New York, I956), Mr. Smith is a professor at the University of Georgia and during I965-x966 will occupy the Ernest J. King Chair of Maritime History at the US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. 1 The following are based, in varying degrees, on some or all of the Russian documents: Harry N. Howard, The Partition of Turkey, 1z93-i923 (Norman, Okla., I93I); Albert Pingaud, L'histoire diplomatique de la France pendant la grande guerre (3 vols., Paris, I937-40); F. I. Notovich, Poteria soiuznikami Balkanskogo poluostrova [The Loss of the Balkan Peninsula by the Allies] (Moscow, I947); C. J. Smith, The Russian Struggle for Power, 1914-1957 (New York, I956); W. W. Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy during the First World War (London, 1957). 2 Winston Churchill was the only member of the 1914-I9I5 War Cabinet who mentioned the British promises of November 1914 to the Russians. (See Winston Churchill, The World Crisis [4 vols., New York, I923], II, I98-200.) Churchill, however, gives no details as to either these promises or the formal agreement of March-April 1915. Although Sir Edward Grey is candid about the later, he overemphasizes the importance of the Dardanelles-Gallipoli campaign in explaining the agreement. (See Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, 5892-g916 [2 vols., New York, 1925], II, 183-89.) Grey's version of events was accepted without question by his distinguished biographer and defender. (See George M. Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon [Boston, 1937], 320-22; see also The Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections [2 vols., Boston, 1928], It, 77-78, and Lord Bertie of Thame, Diary, z954I918, ed. Lady Algernon Gordon Lennox [New York, 1924], 119, 149.) Aside from Pingaud's work, the most valuable French sources are Maurice Paleologue, La Russie des Tsars pendant la grande guerre (3 vols., Paris, 1921), and Raymond Poincare, Au service de la France (7 vols., Paris, I927-30). 3 Lady Violet Bonham Carter, widow of the late private secretary and literary executor of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Sir Maurice Bonham Carter, arranged that I be permitted to consult the Herbert H. Asquith Papers in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.