# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Spring-Rice, Cecil Arthur

​SPRING-RICE, Sir CECIL ARTHUR (1859–1918), diplomat, was born in London 27 February 1859. He was the second son of the Hon. Charles Spring-Rice, second son of the first Baron Monteagle [q.v.], by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of William Marshall, M.P., of Halsteads and Patterdale Hall, Cumberland. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, he achieved distinction both at school and college as a scholar, and his first efforts at poetry appeared in an Eton booklet, whilst his Oxford Rhymes had a more than ephemeral vogue. Later on it was in poetry of a more serious order that he often revealed his innermost thoughts, and sometimes with rare felicity of expression and depth of feeling.
Spring-Rice's father had been at one time under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and he himself was appointed clerk in the Foreign Office on 9 September 1882. He had the advantage almost at ​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 ​spontaneous reaction of American public opinion against German ‘methods of frightfulness’.
During the whole of the War Spring-Rice only spoke once in public as British ambassador—returning thanks at Harvard in June 1917 in a few stirring words for the honorary degree conferred upon him. His reliance on the goodwill of America found its justification when he attended on 3 April 1917 the memorable session of Congress in which President Wilson declared a state of war to exist between the United States and the German Empire. To borrow the language in which Mr. Balfour afterwards summed up the British government's appreciation of his great services, he steered his course with unfailing judgement and unwearied forbearance, at a time when a single false step might have had the most serious consequences for the cause which he represented, and he might well be proud to remember that at that great moment he was ambassador at Washington, and had done all that lay in his power to prevent any unnecessary friction and avoid any appearance of undue pressure which might have impeded or delayed the President's action. With the entry of America into the War Spring-Rice's task was consummated, and he was the first to recognize that the work of the British embassy in Washington henceforth required a man of trained business capacity rather than a diplomatist, to superintend the huge transactions involved in the effective co-ordination of the financial, industrial, and shipping resources of the two nations for the joint prosecution of the War. At the end of the year the War Cabinet decided that Lord Reading, who had already discharged important missions in that connexion in the United States, should return there as ambassador; and on 13 January 1918 Spring-Rice left Washington for Canada on leave till the appointed time for his retirement.
The strain of the three and a half years' ceaseless work and anxiety had, however, told heavily upon a constitution already undermined by illness, and, whilst waiting at Ottawa for the ship that was to take him home, he died suddenly on 14 February 1918 before the fine tribute from Mr. Balfour, to which reference has been made, had had time to reach him.
[Foreign Office lists; Parliamentary Papers; private letters.]
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