Título: TWENTY FIVE YEARS 1892-1916. VOLUME II
Autor: GREY, EDWARD
Año: 1925
Género: BIOGRAFÍAS Y MEMORIAS
Formato: EPUB
But one bit of real history of World War I that I can recommend to anyone is the viewpoint of the fellow on the other side of this “encirclement” business: Lord Grey of Fallodon, the British foreign minister during the war. If you've ever wondered who said “the lights are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”, Lord Grey is your man. His Memoirs are extremely readable –indeed, reading them one sees just why we have not seen the lamps lit again. There is simply no individual of Grey's caliber, politician or civil servant, in the whole government racket these days.
Viscount Grey's Memoirs must be ranked as the most important publication written from the British point of view regarding the international events during the quarter of a century which this record covers. It is important not only because for a great part of this time, Sir Edward Grey, as he was then known, was personally the centre of the diplomatic action of the British Empire, but because of the moral and intellectual qualities of the man. His elevation of mind, his sensibility to right and wrong, and his sincere interest in human welfare are clearly evident to the unprejudiced reader of these well documented recollections.
It is remarkable that a man of such unusual serenity of spirit, a man of thought and a lover of nature, simple in his tastes and without a passion for political activity, should ever have found himself so permanently placed at the centre of the machinery of imperial diplomacy as to be the pivot about which, for nearly a decade, to a very considerable extent, the whole mechanism of British policy revolved.
The first impulse of an American reader of this book is to ascertain what Lord Grey has to say about precipitating causes of the Great War. Upon this he has much to offer, but in the light of what is already known this is not the most important topic of this book. Although he writes with a singular openmindedness, it is not what Lord Grey says, but what is implied in what he says, which is most impressive, Never once does he condemn British policy. No one would expect him to do that. But he does unveil it; and in his loyal determination to defend it he sometimes gives reason to believe that, in his own thought, imperialism is a dangerously rough game, even when played with much delicacy of conscience and a true sense of sportsmanship.
 |  |