The Lansdowne “Peace Letter” of 1917 and the Prospect of Peace by Negotiation with Germany

Abstract

In late November 1917, Lord Lansdowne, one of the most senior of British Unionist politicians, wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph. The letter asked for the war aims of the Entente and the USA to be “coordinated” and suggested that a moderate revision of war aims might bring a negotiated peace nearer. The letter appeared to ally Lansdowne with the British Radicals, who had been close to President Wilson (until April 1917), and had argued for a negotiated peace to end the war since the autumn of 1916. The letter was ferociously denounced by the Northcliffe press, and by many of Lansdowne's Unionist colleagues. It was supposedly a “plea for surrender” and “a national misfortune”. Nevertheless, it touched off a series of new departures in the search for a negotiated settlement: House's visit to the inter Allied Conference in December, the Labour War Aims Memorandum, Lloyd George's Caxton Hall speech, Wilson's Fourteen Points Address, and the beginning of a public parley with the Central Powers in the replies of Hertling and Czernin in January 1918. The paper examines the possibilities for a negotiated peace during the winter of 1917–1918, that is, in the period between the publication of Lansdowne's famous letter and the sudden Versailles “Knockout Blow” Declaration of February 1918 which rejected out of hand any prospect of negotiation. The paper examines Wilson's ambiguous position in this debate, and in particular the evolution of moderate opinion inside Germany in reaction to these events. The paper suggests the unfortunate enfeeblement of moderate opinion in Germany in the face of the apparent triumph of “knockout blow” opinion in the Entente camp.