The great lost peace

One hundred years ago this month, my great-great grandfather sat down to compose a letter which would finish a long and distinguished career — and destroy his reputation. Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, had held some of the most prominent posts in the British Empire and government: governor–general of Canada, viceroy of India, secretary of state for war, foreign secretary and Conservative leader of the House of Lords.

But in the winter of 1917, as casualties mounted on the Western Front, he decided that enough was enough and that Britain should seek a negotiated peace with Germany to end the first world war.

Lord Lansdowne’s ‘Peace Letter’ remains one of the most controversial episodes of the war. Published in the Daily Telegraph on 29 November 1917, it sent shock waves through the British establishment, as much for its authorship as for its content. The Times, which had refused to publish it, turned on him; The Spectator described the letter as ‘inopportune’; political colleagues who had privately encouraged him disowned him in public. Ever since his death in 1927 he has been banished to the margins of history.

But Lansdowne was neither a pacifist nor a traitor, and his letter deserves more generous consideration today. Not only did it propose a way forward which would have saved thousands of lives, it also set out the terms of a settlement which could have prevented the economic collapse of Germany and the conditions that allowed Hitler’s rise to power. I believe he was right to seek peace rather than pursue military victory to the bitter end, and the biography I have written seeks to re-instate him as the statesman he undoubtedly was.

Lansdowne had not always been against the war — indeed, at the outset in August 1914 he played a vital part in convincing Herbert Asquith, the prime minister, to challenge Germany.