Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1911, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1917, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours, and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the 1923 Birthday Honours. Personal life In 1903, Crowe married his widowed maternal first cousin Clema Gerhardt, a niece of Henning von Holtzendorff, who was to become the Chief of the German Naval Staff in the First World War. Due to being half-German and having other German connections, Crowe was often attacked in the press during the First World War, especially by Christabel Pankhurst and William le Queux. Legacy Stanley Baldwin called Crowe "our ablest public servant". Lord Vansittart in his memoirs said of him: "...a dowdy, meticulous, conscientious agnostic with small faith in anything but his brain and his Britain". Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick said Crowe was: ...probably the most efficient public servant ever produced by the Foreign Office. His mother was German, he spoke with a guttural accent and he had a mind of truly Germanic clarity and orderliness. No-one since his time has ever kept so tight a grip on the work of the whole office. He read a copy of every inward and outward telegram (there were fewer in those days) and sent his marginal notes on them by urgent box to the appropriate department. He sometimes telephoned to juniors to make known his views or his disapproval. I was paralysed one day to pick up the telephone to hear his voice: ‘I have just r-r-read your minute. Either you do not mean what you say, in which case you are wasting my time. Or you do mean it, in which case you are wr-r-riting r-r-rot.’ And with that he put down the receiver. Crowe's industry was prodigious. In December 1921 Lord Curzon asked for the office perspective on Anglo-French relations. Crowe regarded this as a suitable holiday task for himself, and on our return from the Christmas holidays we found a 20,000-word manuscript memorandum in his inimitable limpid style. It was unfortunate for Crowe that he should have served under a chief who never appreciated his quality and who was apt to take advantage of his zeal. The work which Curzon heaped on his willing shoulders probably accelerated his premature death