VIII. The Erosion of Foreign Office Influence in the Making of Foreign Policy, 1916–1918

Abstract

Lord Hardinge, returning to the Foreign Office as Permanent Undersecretary in June 1916, after an interval of six years spent as Viceroy of India, remarked that he could scarcely recognize the pre-war Foreign Office in the structure with which he was confronted. Hardinge was thinking of the more obvious changes wrought by the war on the Foreign Office, where the work had increased dramatically since August, 1914 – indeed, by 1918, it was estimated that it had ‘more than quintupled since the outbreak of hostilities’ – and the resulting increase in staff had produced almost insurmountable practical difficulties. Yet there were other, more subtle ways in which the Foreign Office of 1916 differed from that over which Hardinge had presided from 1906 to 1910. Lord Bertie, British Ambassador in Paris, hinted at what was perhaps the most fundamental change when, writing to congratulate Hardinge on his appointment, he commented: ‘I think you will find that the Foreign Office is in great part a “pass-on” department viz. it issues instructions at the instance of other offices often without considering whether such instructions are advisable or feasible…’ Bertie's comment was to prove as relevant to the second as to the first half of the war. Indeed, there were occasions during the 1916–18 period when the Foreign Office might more properly have been described as a ‘passed-over’ department with little influence on the policy-making process.