Eyre Crowe

Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe GCB GCMG (30 July 1864 – 28 April 1925) was a British diplomat. He was a leading expert on Germany in the foreign office. He is best known for his 1907, vigorous warning that Germany's expansionist intentions toward Britain were hostile and had to be met with a closer alliance ("Entente") with France.

Eyre Crowe was born in Leipzig and educated at Düsseldorf and Berlin and in France. His father, Joseph Archer Crowe (1825 - 1896), had been a British consul-general and ended his career as commercial attache for all of Europe (1882–1896), as well as being an important art historian. His mother was Asta von Barby (c1841 - 1908). His grandfather Eyre Evans Crowe was a journalist, writer 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 and at the time was not fully fluent in English. Even later in life it was reported that when angry he spoke English with a German accent. He married his widowed German cousin Clema Gerhardt in 1903. Crowe's wife's uncle was Henning von Holzendorff, who was to become the Chief of the German Naval Staff in the First World War. Due to being half-German, Crowe was often attacked in the press and by Christabel Pankhurst and William le Queux for this during the First World War.

Crowe entered the Foreign Office in 1885 and until 1895 was resident clerk. He served as assistant to Clement Hill in the African Protectorates' Department but when responsibility for the protectorates was handed over to the Colonial Office he was asked to reform the registry system. His success led to his appointment as senior clerk in the Western Department in 1906 and in January 1907 he produced an unsolicited Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany for the Foreign Office. The memorandum stated Crowe's belief that Germany desired "hegemony" first "in Europe, and eventually in the world". Crowe stated that Germany presented a threat to the balance of power in Europe similar to the threat posed by Philip II of Spain, the Bourbons and Napoleon. Crowe opposed appeasement of Germany because:

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