Sir Cecil Arthur Spring Rice, (27 February 1859 – 14 February 1918) was a British diplomat who served as British Ambassador to the United States from 1912 to 1918, as which he was responsible for the organisation of British efforts to end American neutrality during the First World War.
He was also a close friend of US President Theodore Roosevelt, and served as best man at his second wedding.Roosevelt's Contemporaries: Cecil Spring Rice , Theodore Roosevelt Center (7 April 2014). Retrieved 28 July 2016.
He is best known as the writer of the lyrics of the patriotic hymn "I Vow to Thee, My Country".
Early life and family Spring Rice was born into an aristocratic and influential Anglo-Irish family. He was the son of a diplomat, The Hon. Charles William Thomas Spring Rice, who was the second son of the prominent Whig politician and former cabinet minister Lord Monteagle of Brandon. Spring Rice's maternal grandfather was the politician William Marshall, and he was a cousin of Frederick Spring. He was the great-grandson of The 1st Earl of Limerick, John Marshall, and George Hibbert. Spring Rice's father died when he was eleven, and he was raised at his mother's family's house at Watermillock on the shore of Ullswater. During his childhood, he was often ill, and he later suffered from Graves' disease, despite maintaining an active lifestyle.
He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, at both of which he was a contemporary and close friend of George Nathaniel Curzon, and at the latter of which he studied under the direction of Benjamin Jowett. Spring Rice rowed for Balliol, and achieved a double first in Classical Moderations (1879) and Literae Humaniores (1881).Oxford University Calendar 1895, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1895 : 232, 329 At Oxford, he was also a contemporary and close friend of John Strachey and Edward Grey. However, Spring Rice contributed, alongside John William Mackail, to the composition of a famous sardonic doggerel about Curzon that was published in The Balliol Masque, and, when British Ambassador to the United States, he was suspected by Curzon of trying to prevent Curzon's engagement to the American Mary Leiter, whom Curzon nevertheless married. However, Spring Rice assumed for a certainty, like many of Curzon's other friends, that Curzon would inevitably become Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: he wrote to Curzon in 1891, 'When you are Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs I hope you will restore the vanished glory of England, lead the European concert, decide the fate of nations, and give me three months' leave instead of two'.
After completing university, Spring Rice travelled in Europe, where he improved his French, at the time the language of diplomacy. Uncertain about which career to pursue, he took an examination for the Foreign Office and was accepted. Although brought up as an Englishman, Spring Rice maintained a close affinity with Ireland, and he later wrote a poem about his dual Rice (Irish) and Spring (English) roots.
Spring Rice had four sisters and four brothers, two of whom predeceased him: Stephen Spring Rice died in 1902 and Gerald Spring Rice was killed while serving as an officer on the Western Front in 1916.
Marriage and issue In 1904, Spring Rice married Florence Caroline Lascelles, the daughter of Sir Frank Cavendish Lascelles and a cousin of the Duke of Devonshire. He had two children with Florence:
Mary Elizabeth Spring Rice (1906–1994), married Sir Oswald Raynor Arthur in 1935. Anthony Theodore Brandon Spring Rice (1908–1954), died unmarried.
Career
Early diplomatic career
Spring Rice began his career as a clerk in the Foreign Office in 1882. In 1886, he was appointed Assistant Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, the Liberal politician Lord Rosebery. Spring Rice was known to be a supporter of the Liberal Party and was sympathetic to the Irish Home Rule movement so he was relieved of his post when the Conservatives came to power later that year. Spring Rice subsequently made the unusual move to the diplomatic service, where he remained for the rest of his life, starting with his first posting to the British legation in Washington, D.C. in 1887.
In 1892 he was posted to Japan, and undertook a tour of Korea with Curzon later that year. While in Japan Spring Rice was instrumental in laying the foundations of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which he identified as vital to British interests if Russian expansionism in the region was to be challenged. He left Japan in October 1893 and was posted again to Washington until October 1895, when he was posted to the British embassy in Berlin. During his time in Germany he fell in love with his future wife, Florence Lascelles, the daughter of the then British ambassador. He left Berlin in July 1898, and after spending several months with his family on Ullswater was posted to Constantinople. In May 1899 he was given his first posting to Persia as Secretary of Legation, and he became the British chargé d'affaires in Tehran in March 1900, when the Minister, Sir Mortimer Durand, left for London due to his wife's health. In 1901 Spring Rice was appointed Commissioner of Public Debt in Cairo, where he remained for two years, and in November that year he was promoted to the rank of Secretary of Embassy.
He was appointed First Secretary and Chargé d'Affaires in St. Petersburg in early 1903, and in June of that year began to warn the British government that war between Russia and Japan was becoming increasingly likely. He was still serving in Russia when the Russo-Japanese War began in January 1904, and he corresponded at length with his close friend and confidant President Roosevelt about the United States' mediation in the conflict and the subsequent Treaty of Portsmouth. In January 1905 Lord Lansdowne appointed Spring Rice as the Foreign Office's special representative to the US president. Spring Rice was carrying out the duties of the British ambassador to Russia, who was unwell, during the 1905 Russian Revolution and was involved in the early negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907.
In September 1906 Spring Rice undertook his first ambassadorial role when he was made British Minister to Persia, before becoming Ambassador to Sweden in 1908.
Ambassador to Sweden Upon being appointed ambassador, Spring Rice was instructed by Edward VII to help improve relations between Sweden and Norway following the dissolution of the Union between the two countries in 1905. The primary concern of the British government, however, was the increasingly friendly relations between Sweden and Germany, and the growing diplomatic, cultural and economic influence of Germany in Scandinavia. In a letter to Lord Cranley in May 1909, Spring Rice stated "I suppose you realise that Sweden is in effect a province of Prussia [Germany], not in will but in necessity". He went on to say that "in case of war I think we should regard Sweden as German in effect...". Spring Rice became irritated by what he saw as Sweden's deference to Wilhelm II, and his embassy was involved in an intensifying rivalry between Germany and Britain for control of Sweden's important iron and timber resources.Patrick Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 43. Nonetheless, relations between Sweden and London remained amicable.
In November 1912, after four years in Sweden, it was announced that Spring Rice's next diplomatic posting was to be as ambassador to the United States.
Ambassador to the United States
Spring Rice had long held the ambition of being appointed ambassador to the United States. In his biography of Spring Rice, Stephen Gwynn stated that Spring Rice's main concern, throughout his diplomatic career, was to "improve relations between the two great English-speaking powers". Within the diplomatic service Spring Rice had unique entrée into Washington's corridors of power, and his work alongside President Roosevelt in 1905 led the British government to regard him as a natural choice for ambassador by 1912. The diplomat Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol observed that Spring Rice's "whole career seems to have been a preparation for the final struggle in Washington".
Within two years of Spring Rice's posting to Washington DC, the First World War had broken out in Europe, and his principal task became that of ending American neutrality. The United States was the largest potential supplier of munitions, arms and food to the United Kingdom and its allies, as well as a potential ally in the war. However, in 1914 public opinion in America favoured neutrality, and Spring Rice had to grapple with the strong anti-British and non-interventionist elements in American politics at the time. Spring Rice also had the complex task of justifying British policies that violated America's rights as a neutral state, such as the monitoring of mail and telegrams and the seizure of contraband at sea. Furthermore, German diplomats under Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff were active in attempting to influence American political opinion against the Allies. Of particular concern to Spring Rice was liaison between German and Irish groups in America, and his embassy was closely involved in gathering intelligence regarding the actions of anti-British spies and informants.Stephen Hartley, Licínia Simão, The Irish Question as a Problem in British Foreign Policy, 1914–18 (Springer, 1987), p. 45 (Retrieved 25 July 2016). He successfully engaged with his many Atlanticist American friends, including Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Stimson and Joseph Hodges Choate, who applied pressure on Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality.
In January 1915 Arthur Balfour, the former prime minister, was sent on a mission to convince the United States Congress of Britain's friendship./ref>"absolutely irreplaceable supplies", Cabinet Papers, 41/23/7 In a series of meetings, Spring Rice and Consul-General, Sir Courtenay Bennett, were marginalised by the delegation's representatives. Spring Rice and Bennett agreed to support the subsequent Commercial Agreement on the condition that Spring Rice's friend, J. P. Morgan Jr., was appointed as the sole purchasing agent.Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War 1914–1918 (Routledge, 2014), p. 18 (Retrieved 25 July 2016). Spring Rice was able to keep the feeble commission alive, but voiced his concerns that British finances in the United States were reaching a critical point as chaotic credit arrangements by-passed the body set up by parliament to effectuate co-ordination. Spring Rice sent daily wires to London warning that Gold runs would seriously undermine British bank facility, but these were largely ignored. Spring Rice had served as best man at J. P. Morgan's wedding and his influence over the commission was too great for him to be seen as impartial.The Board of Management, "The Bulletin of the Federal Reserve" - for warnings to US Treasury and Wall Street against investing in foreign Treasury bills;
As the war went on, Spring Rice's embassy increasingly assumed an advisory role to the many British special delegations which were sent to secure the support of the US government. Spring Rice complained about the limited part he was able to play in the 1915 Anglo-French Financial Commission led by Lord Reading. Spring Rice was also concerned by the large number of private brokers and agents, both with and without official authority, who were operating in the United States on behalf of the government and British businesses. As a result, Spring Rice had to request for the War Office to provide him with an official list of accredited agents, which was reluctantly compiled in late 1914.Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War 1914–1918 (Routledge, 2014), p. 17 (Retrieved 25 July 2016).