Eyre Crowe

Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe (30 July 1864 – 28 April 1925) was a British diplomat, an expert on Germany in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is best known for his vehement warning, in 1907, that Germany's expansionism was motivated by animosity towards Britain and should provoke a closer Entente Cordiale between the British Empire and France. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Crowe worked with the French President Georges Clemenceau. Although Lloyd George and Crowe's rivals in the Foreign Office tried to prevent his promotion and lessen his influence, Crowe served as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1920 until his death in 1925, as a consequence of his patronage by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon. Early life Half-German, Crowe was born in Leipzig in 1864. He was educated at Düsseldorf, at Berlin, and in France. His father, Joseph Archer Crowe (1825–1896), was a British Consul-General and Chief European Commercial Attaché between 1882 and 1896, and also an art historian. His mother was Asta von Barby (c. 1841 – 1908). His grandfather Eyre Evans Crowe was a journalist and historian, and his uncle, Eyre Crowe, was an artist. Crowe first visited England in 1882, when he was seventeen, to cram for the Foreign Office examination. At the time, he was not fully fluent in English. Even later in life it was reported that when angry he spoke English with a German accent.