Robert GASCOYNE-CECIL (1830-1903)

When schoolgirl Juliet Sladden referred to Lord Salisbury’s advice about studying large-scale maps, she was referring not to the then current Lord Salisbury, James Edward Hubert Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury (1861-1947) but to his predecessor, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1803-1903).

The 3rd Lord Salisbury was a Conservative politician and three times Prime Minister, serving for a total of 13 years.  In 1878, when Salisbury was Foreign Secretary and Disraeli was Prime Minister (with the Russians close by Merv, an ancient Central Asian city), Salisbury warned:  "Mervousness does not stand the test of large-scale maps".  He felt that Disraeli was inflating Russia’s threat to India via Constantinople because his maps were too small; threats that seemed near and great were remote and a sense of distance was a way to think proportionately.  Presumably the newspapers of 1914 were quoting Salisbury’s remark with reference to the current situation.