page_title: Cecil Spring Rice
section_title: Early diplomatic career
hierarchical_section_title: Cecil Spring Rice / Career / Early diplomatic career
caption_attribution_description: English: Sir Cecil Spring-Rice (1859-1918)
context_page_description: Sir Cecil Arthur Spring Rice, GCMG, GCVO, PC 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.
  He is best known as the writer of the lyrics of the patriotic hymn, "I Vow to Thee, My Country".
context_section_description: 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. In November 1901, he had been promoted to the rank of Secretary of Embassy. He was made Chargé d'Affaires in St. Petersburg in 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.
caption: Spring Rice as a young man.
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