Record of previously unknown meeting between George V and his Foreign Secretary reveals that the King told him to “find a reason” to go to war with Germany.
It is a letter that throws fresh light on one of the darkest periods in Britain’s history.
A note which has remained in private hands for a century details a previously undocumented meeting between George V and his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, on the eve of the First World War.
The King, mindful of his position as a constitutional monarch, made no public declarations about the situation in Europe in the lead-up to the conflict.
But in the newly-disclosed meeting, the King informed Sir Edward it was “absolutely essential” Britain go to war in order to prevent Germany from achieving “complete domination of this country”.
When Sir Edward said the Cabinet had yet to find a justifiable reason to enter the conflict, the King replied: “You have got to find a reason, Grey.”
Historians have no record of the meeting which took place at Buckingham Palace on August 2 1914, two days before Britain went to war.
It was revealed in a letter written by Sir Cecil Graves, Sir Edward’s nephew, who met with the King a month after his uncle’s death in 1933.
[…]
