Table Of ContentSearching for Security in a New Europe
During the First World War, Sir George Russell Clerk was a senior Foreign Office
official strongly sympathetic to the cause of the ‘oppressed nationalities’ of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. In 1919 Clerk was forced to put these ideals to the test when the
Allies dispatched him to Budapest to construct a Hungarian government with whom they
could make peace. In 1920 he became the first British minister to the newly created
succession state of Czechoslovakia.
This biographical study of Sir George Russell Clerk focuses on his significant role as a
nation-builder in the New Europe carved out of the First World War until his eventual
downfall at the hands of Anthony Eden and retirement in 1937. Drawing on extensive
research, this study attempts to shed new light on a key figure in British and European
diplomacy.
Gerald J.Protheroe is Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Sciences at New York
University and the Head of the History Department at The Browning School in New
York.
Diplomats and diplomacy
Series Editors: Peter Catterall and Erik Goldstein
ISSN: 1478–7237
This series aims to provide a primarily biographical approach to the study of diplomacy
and international relations in the twentieth century. How have diplomats and foreign
ministers tackled not only the traditional business of managing relations between states,
but also the rise of multilateral negotiations, the proliferation of international
organisations and the increasing significance of economic diplomacy? This series seeks
to contribute to an understanding of how diplomacy and international relations developed
in the twentieth century.
Oliver Franks and the Truman Administration
Anglo-American relations 1948–1952
Michael F.Hopkins
Searching for Security in a New Europe
The diplomatic career of Sir George Russell Clerk
Gerald J.Protheroe
Locarno Revisited
European diplomacy 1920–1929
Edited by Gaynor Johnson
Searching for Security in a New
Europe
The diplomatic career of Sir George Russell Clerk
Gerald J.Protheroe
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York,
NY 10016 USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“ To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
© 2006 Gerald J.Protheroe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
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from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-49144-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-60813-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN10 0-7146-5511-2 (Print Edition)
ISBN13 978-0-7146-5511-6 (Print Edition)
Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc.
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 Empire, world war and a New Europe 1898–1919 3
2 Nation-building in the New Europe: Hungary 1919 37
3 Nation-building in the New Europe: Czechoslovakia 1920–6 64
4 Repairing relationships: the New Turkey 1926–33 104
5 ‘Ripe for a mighty enterprise’: France 1934–5 133
6 The crisis of security: France 1935–7 149
Conclusion 175
Notes 178
Bibliography 201
Index 211
Acknowledgements
Many debts have been incurred throughout the course of writing this biography. I must
thank the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to use Walter Stoneman’s portraits of
Sir George Clerk taken in 1931 and 1947. I would like to thank Ms Christine Penney and
her staff at Special Collections, Birmingham University. I am most grateful to Lady Avon
for her kind permission to draw on Sir Anthony Eden’s diaries and private
correspondence. I would also like to thank the Earl of Derby for permission to use the
correspondence of Lord Derby deposited in the Liverpool Record Office; Sir Henry
Rumbold for permission to draw on his grandfather Sir Horace Rumbold’s papers in the
Bodleian Library; Sir Colville Barclay for permission to use Sir Robert Vansittart’s letter
to Anthony Eden of 14 September 1936 in the Eden papers; Christopher Seton-Watson
for permission to make use of R.W.Seton-Watson’s papers in the School of Slavonic and
East European Studies at London University; and the Bodleian Library for allowing me
to consult the papers of Sybil, Lady Colefax. I am grateful to the editors of Diplomacy
and Statecraft for permission to reproduce some sections of my article ‘Sir George Clerk
and the Struggle for British influence in Central Europe, 1919–1926’. Finally, I must
thank the Royal Bank of Scotland, in so far as they have copyright ownership of Sir
George Clerk’s personal correspondence, for permission to use the small number of
letters written by him, which are held in the private collections outlined above.
Unpublished Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office in Kew is reproduced
with the gracious consent of Her Majesty the Queen.
This biography of Sir George Clerk emanated from an earlier dissertation on Clerk’s
role as the first British Minister to the new successor state of Czechoslovakia in the
1920s. I must thank Professor Donald Cameron Watt of the London School of Economics
for his support of this work in its most embryonic stage. I would also like to thank Dr
Zara Steiner for her insight and encouragement. But my greatest debt of thanks must go
to Professor Erik Goldstein of Boston University for his patience, his interest in Clerk
and his unfailing support for this biography. Last but not least, my thanks must also go to
friends in London and other parts of the United Kingdom who have borne my summer
visits with fortitude and a somewhat bemused tolerance. And, of course, I must thank my
wife, Paula, for the many sacrifices she has made to allow this book to come to fruition
and for her constant support.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owner of copyright materials in this
book. In some cases this has proved to be impossible. The author and publisher will be
glad to receive any information leading to any further acknowledgements and in the
meanwhile offer sincere apologies for any omissions.
Abbreviations
BD Great Britain, Foreign Office, British Documents on the
Origins of the War 1898–1914
BDFA Great Britain, Foreign Office, British Documents on
Foreign Affairs
CAB Cabinet Office Papers
DBFP Great Britain, Foreign Office, Documents on British
Foreign Policy, 1919–39
DDF France, Quai d’Orsay, Documents Diplomatiques
Français, 1932–9
DGFP Germany, Auswärtiges Amt, Documents on German
Foreign Policy, 1918–45
DNB Dictionary of National Biography
FO Foreign Office Papers
FRUS United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of
the United States
HO Home Office Papers
Searching for Security in a New Europe 1
Introduction
The collapse of single-party dictatorship in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the subsequent
dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 constituted a watershed in the political,
economic and military history of Europe, which continues to pose an enormous challenge
to that continent in the present century and to the Western alliance, which helped to
protect it. In 1919, the collapse of autocracy and supranational empires in Central and
Eastern Europe presented the Allied and Associated Powers with unprecedented
opportunity to shape the political and economic construction of the successor states. In
that year, Sir George Russell Clerk had become private secretary to the acting British
Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon. During the Great War, Clerk had been head of the War
Department at the Foreign Office in London. During this period, he had become the
premier contact within the Foreign Office for a number of Balkan political refugees and
their British patrons, The Times journalist Henry Wickham Steed, and the young Scottish
historian R.W.Seton-Watson. Through the patronage of these men, little known
spokesmen for ‘oppressed nationalities’ Frano Supilo and Thomas Masaryk argued the
case for their revolutionary cause: the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Sir George Clerk listened sympathetically. He became the central link in a chain
connecting refugees and patrons with the upper echelons of the Foreign Office. By the
end of 1916, this loose connection of individuals had transformed itself into an effective
pressure group with its own publication. The primary aim of The New Europe periodical
was to educate British public opinion about the plight of ‘oppressed nationalities’. It
hoped to influence the political nation and political establishment of Great Britain, and
bring about the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its replacement by new
nation states organized on a liberal democratic basis. Sir George Clerk was not a
contributor to The New Europe. Nevertheless, he was held in the highest esteem by that
publication.
In the autumn of 1919, Clerk was entrusted by the Supreme Council of the Allies with
the task of settling the conflict between Hungary and Romania, and establishing a
government in Hungary with whom the Allies could negotiate a peace treaty. These
missions to Budapest and Bucharest can be viewed as test cases for the political
principles that The New Europe wished to establish as the basis of international relations
in Europe. It was no coincidence that, after the successful termination of these missions,
Sir George Clerk proceeded to Prague to become the first British minister to the newly
independent successor state of Czechoslovakia, whose president, Thomas Masaryk, Clerk
had first encountered as a refugee in wartime London. In Prague between 1920 and 1926,
Clerk raised British prestige and influence to a position unparalleled in the interwar era,
whilst his personal popularity with the Czechs was not equalled until the later era of Sir
Philip Nichols.1 In Angora between 1926 and 1933, Clerk presided over a gradual but
very real rapprochement between Great Britain and another important successor state, the
first Turkish Republic of Kemal Atatürk, an event of the greatest significance for both
countries.
Introduction 2
After just a few months in Brussels, in the winter of 1933, Clerk reached the apex of
his diplomatic career when he was appointed ambassador to France where he served until
1937. From 1919 to 1933, Clerk had acquired a consummate knowledge of the successor
states of the New Europe and a profound understanding of their political psychology and
diplomatic policies, which should have stood him in good stead in France. But it was
clear that his embassy in Paris proved to be anticlimactic, and that the challenge of
dispelling the mutual misconceptions, which governed the relationship between Great
Britain and France amidst the turbulence of the 1930s and the threat of Nazi Germany,
proved too daunting a task for Clerk as it did for subsequent ambassadors. The major
purpose of this study is, first, to examine the role of Sir George Clerk in Central Europe
and the Near East in the interwar period and explore the effectiveness of his nation-
building diplomacy in Hungary in 1919; to assess the nature of his relationship with
Czech and Turkish leaders between 1920 and 1933, and evaluate the success of his
personal diplomacy within the broader context and constraints of British policy during
this period; second, to examine the nature of his failure in France, and shed light on the
personality and career of a diplomat of some considerable stature whose preference for
anonymity, by obscuring his achievements, has rendered his name in certain quarters
synonymous with failure and ridicule.
