Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/531

 the outset of his diplomatic career of serving directly under two secretaries of state, first as assistant private secretary to Lord Granville and then as précis-writer to Lord Rosebery. His first post abroad, as well as his last, was Washington, where, with brief intervals, he spent several years between 1886 and 1895; he was then transferred to Berlin. He remained in the German capital until 1898 and he had there the opportunity, which he always regarded as having been of the greatest educational value to him, of watching at close quarters the ‘new course’ upon which the policy of the German Empire was being set by William II after he had emancipated himself from Bismarck's tutelage. From Berlin Spring-Rice went in 1898 first to Constantinople and then to Teheran. He was seconded thence in 1901 as British commissioner on the Caisse de la Dette Publique in Cairo where, as he put it, he went ‘back to school’ under Lord Cromer, than whom he wished for no better schoolmaster. From Cairo he was promoted in 1903 to be secretary of embassy at St. Petersburg during the stormy years of the Russo-Japanese War and the first revolutionary upheavals in Russia. While serving in Russia he married, in 1904, Florence, the only daughter of his former chief, Sir Frank Lascelles [q.v.], then still ambassador in Berlin; one son and one daughter were born of the marriage. In 1906 he was created K.C.M.G. and he returned to Persia as British minister. There his sympathies were with the Persian people in their first gropings towards constitutional freedom, and in troublous times thousands used to take sanctuary within the grounds of the British legation in Teheran. None the less he faithfully carried out the policy of the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 which placed fresh restraints upon Persian independence. After Teheran he enjoyed from 1908 to 1913 five years of relative ease and rest at Stockholm as British minister to Sweden. It was, however, a post of observation from which he watched the heavy storm-clouds gathering on the European horizon. In April 1913 he was appointed ambassador at Washington, and shortly after his arrival there he signed the agreement renewing the Anglo-American Arbitration Convention of 1908. He was at home on leave after a somewhat serious illness when the Serajevo tragedy precipitated the European conflict, which he had long foreseen.

Spring-Rice returned to his post as soon as war had broken out in Europe, and within a few weeks affixed his signature to a document which the violent clash of arms had already turned to irony. It was a treaty for which the then secretary of state, Mr. Bryan, had long diligently laboured and had secured the adhesion of Great Britain and a number of other powers, including France, Russia, and Italy, but not of Germany, who had declined to have anything to do with it. It provided for the establishment of a permanent International Peace Commission, to which disputes were in the last resort to be referred, when diplomatic methods of adjustment had failed, the contracting parties agreeing to await the Commission's report before beginning hostilities. The sterner realities which the British ambassador had now to face were those of a state of war in Europe, which was bound to put a severe strain upon England's relations with all neutral countries, and not least with the United States. Spring-Rice's knowledge of American affairs and the many friendships he had gained in America in the early part of his career stood him in good stead at this critical juncture. He had great confidence in the sound instincts of the American democracy as a whole, but he knew that the Allies must reckon with the bitter hostility of many alien and anti-British elements. Difficult and delicate questions, moreover, were certain to arise out of the exercise, however careful, of British naval power, so long as America remained neutral and was the foremost champion of neutral rights and interests.

The State Department entered frequent protests against the seizure and detention of United States vessels and goods and the practice of British prize courts. The British order-in-council of 15 March 1915 relating to the blockade of Germany, and the proclamations of 20 August and 15 October declaring raw cotton and various cotton goods and products to be absolute contraband, gave rise to still more serious differences; while the ‘blacklisting’ on 29 February 1916 of a number of firms, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, aroused the strongest resentment in certain sections of the American business world. In the lengthy controversies between the two governments, Spring-Rice's conciliatory influence made itself constantly felt at Washington, where his tact and forbearance, and anxiety to meet any legitimate grievance, were deservedly appreciated. Some of his fellow-countrymen were apt to criticize him for placing less faith in demonstrative forms of propaganda than in the 505