Britain
Eyre Crowe
1864–1925 Foreign Office official and author of the 1907 memorandum on Germany; Permanent Under-Secretary, 1920–1925
Born in Leipzig in 1864 to an English father and a German mother, Eyre Crowe was educated in Germany and France before entering the Foreign Office in 1885. In January 1907, as senior clerk in the Western Department, he wrote a memorandum on British relations with France and Germany. It weighed two explanations of German policy, a deliberate bid for hegemony or an unfocused expansion, without choosing between them, and likened giving way to German demands to yielding to a blackmailer. Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, called it most valuable. In the war Crowe served in the Contraband Department, and he became Permanent Under-Secretary in 1920, holding the post until his death in 1925. Historians remain divided on whether he foresaw German aims or helped to harden hostility.
In the chronicle
Sources
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Crowe
- classicsofstrategy.com/2022/03/02/unvarying-courtesy-or-unbending-determination-the-1907-eyre-crowe-memorandum-and-the-dilemmas-of-strategic-forecasting
- en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_the_Present_State_of_British_Relations_with_France_and_Germany
- en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Crowe,_Sir_Joseph_Archer