Leopold Charles MauriceAt some stage in his youth, Amery began using the name Maurice in place of his previous name Moritz. He did this so consistently that almost all sources give his name as Maurice. Rubinstein, p. 181. Stennett Amery (22 November 1873 – 16 September 1955), also known as L. S. Amery, was a British Conservative Party politician and journalist. During his career, he was known for his interest in military preparedness, British India and the British Empire and for his opposition to appeasement. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies (1924–29), opposed the National Government of the 1930s and served as Secretary of State for India during the Second World War (1940–45). He was also a prolific writer whose output included a multi-volume history of the Second Boer War and several volumes of memoirs and (posthumously published) diaries.
Nowadays he is best remembered for the remarks he made in the House of Commons on 7 May 1940 during the Norway Debate, attacking the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, for incompetence in the fight against Hitler's Germany. Many of Amery's Parliamentary contemporaries pointed to this speech as one of the key drivers in the division of the House on the following day, 8 May, which led to Chamberlain being forced to resign and his replacement by Winston Churchill.
Early life and education Amery was born in Gorakhpur, British India, to an English father and a mother of Hungarian Jewish descent. His father was Charles Frederick Amery (1833–1901), of Lustleigh, Devon, an officer in the Indian Forestry Commission.Deborah Lavin, 'Amery, Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett (1873–1955)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011, accessed 2 June 2011. His mother Elisabeth Johanna Saphir (c. 1841–1908),Rubinstein, p. 177.For more accurate information of the life of Elisabeth Amery see Nebahat Avcioglu, 'Immigrant Narratives: The Ottoman Sultans' Portraits in Elisabeth Leitner's Family Photo Album of 1862–1873', Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, Brill, Vol. 36 (October 2018), pp. 193–228. who was the sister of the orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner,Elisabeth and Gottlieb's father Leopold Saphir died when they were young, and their mother married Johann Moritz Leitner. Rubinstein, p.177. had come to India from England, where her parents had settled and converted to Protestantism. In 1877 his mother moved back to England from India, and in 1885 she divorced Charles.
In 1887, Amery went to Harrow School, where he competed in gymnastics, held the top position in examinations for a number of years, and won prizes and scholarships. Winston Churchill (born December 1874) was junior to him at Harrow, and on one occasion mistook Amery, who was very short in stature, for a younger boy and pushed him into Ducker, the school outdoor swimming pool. Churchill placated him by claiming that his father Lord Randolph Churchill was "a great man" but was also short, but neither man forgot the incident, and as late as June 1934 Amery would mention the incident in his diary while recording how he had humiliated Churchill in a debate over India.Olson 2007, p.117
After Harrow he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he performed well. He gained a double first in Classical Moderations (classical languages) in 1894 and literae humaniores ("Greats", i.e. classical literature, history and philosophy) in 1896; he was proxime accessit (runner-up) for the Craven scholarship in 1894 and Ouseley scholar in Turkish in 1896. He also won a half-blue in cross-country running.
He was elected a fellow of All Souls College. He could speak Hindi at the age of three years; Amery was born in India and would naturally have acquired the language of his ayah (nanny). He could converse in French, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Serbian and Hungarian. Amery was an active freemason.
Journalism During the Second Boer War Amery was a correspondent for The Times. In 1901, in his articles on the conduct of the war, he attacked the British commander, Sir Redvers Buller, which contributed to Buller's sacking. Amery was the only correspondent to visit Boer forces and was nearly captured with Churchill. Amery later edited and largely wrote The Times History of the South African War (7 vol., 1899–1909).
The Boer War had exposed deficiencies in the British Army and in 1903, Amery wrote The Problem of the Army and advocated its reorganisation. In The Times he penned articles attacking free trade using the pseudonym "Tariff Reformer" and in 1906, he wrote The Fundamental Fallacies of Free Trade. Amery described it as "a theoretical blast of economic heresy" because he argued that the total volume of British trade was less important than the question of whether British trade was making up for the nation's lack of raw materials and food by exporting its surplus manufactured goods, shipping, and financial acumen.
He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers, set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
Early political career Amery turned down the chance to be editor of The Observer in 1908 and of The Times in 1912 to concentrate on politics.
Standing as a Liberal Unionist (a party, whose strength was by this time concentrated in and around the City of Birmingham and who were in an electoral alliance with the Conservatives) Amery narrowly failed to win the 1908 Wolverhampton East by-election, by eight votes. In 1911 Amery stood in the 1911 Birmingham South by-election again as a Liberal Unionist, this time unopposed and became a Member of Parliament (MP). One reason that Amery agreed to stand there under the Liberal Unionist label (that party would fully merge with the Conservative Party the following year) was that he had been a long-time political admirer of Joseph Chamberlain and was an ardent supporter of tariff reform and imperial federation. According to A. J. P. Taylor, Amery was a rare Conservative to promote protectionism "as merely the beginning of a planned economy".
Amery was a noted sportsman, especially famous as a mountaineer. He continued to climb well into his sixties, especially in the Swiss Alps but also in Bavaria, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy and the Canadian Rockies, where Mount Amery is named after him. He enjoyed skiing as well. He was a member of the Alpine Club (serving as its president, 1943–1945) and of the Athenaeum and Carlton Clubs.
He was a Senior Knight Vice-President of the Knights of the Round Table.
On 16 November 1910, Amery married Florence Greenwood (1885–1975), daughter of the Canadian barrister John Hamar Greenwood and younger sister of Hamar Greenwood, 1st Viscount Greenwood. She was normally known by the forename Bryddie. They had two sons.
First World War
During the First World War, Amery's knowledge of Hungarian led to his employment as an intelligence officer in the Balkans campaign. Later, working for the war cabinet secretariat in Lloyd George's coalition government, Amery was vested with parliamentary under-secretary like powers, and at the request of Lord Milner, he redrafted the Balfour Declaration.
Amery was greatly concerned with questions of grand strategy, and championed the idea of an "all-red route" to India, calling for Britain to control the sea-lanes to India not only via the Mediterranean–Suez Canal–Red Sea route, but also around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and for Britain to control the main land routes to India in the Middle East as well. In 1917–1918, Amery advocated as war aims the British occupation of Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia and the Caucasus. Amery regarded Britain's alliance with Imperial Russia as only temporary, and expected the traditional Anglo-Russian rivalry to resume after the war. However, the nation that Amery regarded as the most dangerous to the British Empire was Germany because the Reich had the world's second largest economy and its policy of Weltpolitik ("World Politics") was aimed at having Germany replace Britain as the world's dominant power. Amery argued that German attempts to dominate Europe along with the Middle East were intended to serve as the basis to make the Reich the world's number one power. In a memo written in April 1917, Amery traced the roots of German imperialism to Prussian imperialism in the 18th century. Amery argued that the Ottoman Empire had fallen into the German sphere of influence, and German efforts to push the influence of the Reich to the Persian Gulf were a major threat. Amery expressed much concern about the possible defeat of Russia under the Provisional Government which had taken over after the ousting of the Tsar in the February Revolution (March 1917 by the western calendar), writing that German control of Eastern Europe would be a major step towards allowing Germany to achieve "world power status". After the October Revolution (November 1917 by the western calendar) Amery came to regard the new Soviet regime in Russia as a main threat to Britain's position in Asia.
Amery argued that under no circumstances should Britain and its allies return any of the German colonies in Africa and in the Pacific that had been captured by the Allies, arguing that the German colonial empire would allow the Reich to establish submarine bases that would threaten British shipping in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Amery also warned that he foresaw the day when technological advances would allow submarines greater range, which led him to argue that a "mesh" of land, air, and naval bases would need to be established and led him to call for British annexation of German East Africa (modern Tanzania), German Southwest Africa (modern Namibia), the German colonies in the Pacific Ocean along with taking Mesopotamia and Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. Amery argued that with the Ottoman Empire having fallen into the German sphere of influence "and with Germany installed at the gates of Egypt on one side and in East Africa on the other, the Prussian instinct would never rest till the two were linked together, and the great railroad empire became continuous from Hamburg to Lake Nyasa". In Europe, Amery argued that Britain's chief aim was the liberation of Belgium. As for Britain's allies, he advocated that the French should annexe Syria and lesser Armenia from the Ottoman Empire while Russia should annexe greater Armenia and Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Amery took it for granted that both Germany and the Ottoman Empire would continue as major powers after the war, and advocated Britain seizing the Middle East in order to provide the best basis for maintaining British power in Asia after the war.
The final draft of the Balfour Declaration issued on 1 November 1917 promising British support for a "Jewish national home" in Palestine was written by Amery. Amery was commissioned by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to write a declaration promising the support of H.M. Government for Zionism while also taking into account the objections of the anti-Zionists in the cabinet such as Lord Curzon and Edwin Montagu. Hence the Balfour Declaration as written by Amery only promised a "Jewish national home", not a Jewish state, and likewise stated "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". He also encouraged Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the formation of the Jewish Legion for the British Army in Palestine.