Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  One of Asquith’s great defects as a prime minister, as Grey said of him, was that he ‘took no trouble to secure his own position or to add to his personal reputation.’11 He gave credit where it belonged and took responsibility for failures. He never, though, grasped the different tempo of war and nor, despite the warnings of his wife and his friends, did he understand how senior colleagues could plot against him. Duff Cooper, then in the Foreign Office and a member of the circle of Raymond Asquith, the prime minister’s eldest son, recalled him as ‘a man of great dignity, somewhat aloof and Olympian. He belonged to the Victorian age. He would have thought it ill-bred to discuss current politics at the dinner-table or to criticise other politicians.’12 He also had a capacity to see all sides of any argument, which could be regrettable in a time of emergency. In late November 1916, writing to Haig to inform him of the political crisis, Robertson referred to a War Committee discussion on conscripting people for industrial work. The plan was put to the full cabinet, some of whom rejected it. Robertson wrote: ‘The PM at once began to wobble and once again the whole thing was thrown back into the talking pot. It is impossible to do business so long as each of 23 claims the right to “object” and to “concur” in regard to war committee decisions.’13

  Despite the lengths to which he had gone throughout his prime ministership, and even during the war, to make opportunities for recreation, Asquith was exhausted. He was sixty-four, drinking heavily, and had three sons on active service about whom he worried deeply. He exhibited none of the raucous dynamism that made people admire Lloyd George and see him as a man of energy and determination, but remained the national leader whom Haig, with a sneer, had seen ‘dressed for golf’. Law, Curzon and Balfour had all begun to lose faith in him. Then, Raymond, from whom he had grown somewhat apart, was killed on the Somme on 15 September, which proved a shattering blow.

  The prime minister had made one of his many visits to the Western Front nine days before Raymond was killed, and had seen him in the village of Fricourt, recently recaptured from the Germans. Haig, with whom he dined, noted how heavily Asquith was drinking: ‘The PM seemed to like our old brandy. He had a couple of glasses (big sherry glass size) before I left the table at 9.30, and apparently had several more before I saw him again. By that time his legs were unsteady, but his head was quite clear …’14 On the evening of Sunday 17 September one of Asquith’s secretaries rang the Wharf, where the Asquiths were spending the weekend, and told Mrs Asquith that Raymond had been shot dead two days earlier, having just led his men in an attack on the village of Lesboeufs: a letter from Haig had arrived at Downing Street with the news. When she conveyed it to her husband moments later he broke down. Instead of returning to London on the Monday for a cabinet meeting, Asquith went to spend time with his widowed daughter-in-law. Downing Street was inundated with messages of condolence, starting with one from the King and Queen.

  II

  Not only did Asquith still have to cope in his bereavement, but he also had increasingly to try to manage the economic impact of the war. On 11 October he had to ask Parliament for another £300 million, making a total of £1,350 million for the 1916–17 financial year thus far, and an extra £3,132 million since August 1914. In 113 days since he had previously asked for money the Navy, Army and munitions had cost £379 million, loans to allies and the Dominions had cost £157 million and miscellaneous items, including food and railways, £23 million. In describing the value the British taxpayer, and creditor, had had for all this money, Asquith put the brightest possible gloss on the Somme, claiming the Army had advanced ‘some seven miles on a front of nine miles’, that the RFC had obtained ‘complete mastery in the air’, and caused the Germans ‘practically to abandon the attack on Verdun’.15 British forces alone in the battle had taken 28,050 prisoners, 121 guns and 396 machine guns. Haig, he said, had told him how British forces had been ‘equal to the test’, and Asquith had accepted that, it seems, without cynicism. It was not, he said, ‘a moment … for faint hearts, faltering purpose or wavering counsel.’16

  Carson reminded MPs that Asquith, like some of them, had lost a son in the battle still raging: but for all the brave words, there was no disguising the reality. There had been ‘considerable cost, and there is no use shutting our eyes to the fact, because it is a fact patent from day to day and patent to the whole world.’17 A fight to the finish, he continued, would be ‘a Herculean task’; he wanted undertakings about manpower. George Wardle, the MP for Stockport, speaking for Labour, said that ‘the time perhaps never will come when the whole tale of the burden upon the hearts and lives of people can be told; but certainly whatever that burden may be, I believe that the cost, however great, must be borne because the cause for which that cost is borne is worthy both of this House and of the people for all time’.18 In all the subsequent arguments about ‘lions led by donkeys’, it is worth recalling the support the party of the working class gave at the time to the direction of the Battle of the Somme; Wardle had made his reputation at that year’s party conference, when a speech he made galvanised much of the party in support of the war. Conscious too of Asquith’s personal strain, Wardle said he had just delivered ‘what I think will rank as one of the most remarkable speeches that has ever been delivered in the history of this House’.19

  The mounting sense of crisis increasingly coloured political action, and acted as a stimulant to those who in any case harboured teeming ambition. Lloyd George, the main offender, visited Asquith on 28 October to complain about the conduct of the war. Asquith told Hankey the war secretary had been ‘very depressed about the war, very disappointed with the lack of imagination of the General Staff, and very disgusted at the heavy losses in the offensive on the Somme’.20 Hankey agreed with Lloyd George’s assessment, and told Asquith so. Three days later Lloyd George ranted at Hankey about the ‘bloody and disastrous failure’ on the Somme, and said he would resign sooner than be a party to a repetition. It would prove an ironic promise given the two calamitous offensives of 1917, both sanctioned by Lloyd George once in power.

  The government tried to meet public concerns about the failed military strategies. In November 1916 an attempt was made to make the Admiralty more responsive to the needs of the Navy and the merchant fleet: not by removing Balfour, but by replacing Jackson, the First Sea Lord, with Jellicoe, who handed command of the Grand Fleet to Beatty. However, at the War Office Lloyd George’s relationship with Robertson was steadily deteriorating. In October Lloyd George had complained to Hankey about the ‘lack of imagination’ of the General Staff, and told him he would not remain in office if for 1917 another ‘bloody and disastrous failure’ such as the Somme were contemplated.21 Robertson knew more about soldiering and strategy than Lloyd George, something the Secretary of State would not accept; and he and Robertson disagreed over Robertson’s Western Front policy. Lloyd George saw the Somme vindicating his view that a new front should be opened at Salonica. His indiscreet remarks about some generals caused the upper ranks of the Army to distrust him, and to complain to Robertson. To make matters worse, Lloyd George also believed Robertson was in league with McKenna, the chancellor and Lloyd George’s sworn enemy, and that McKenna was trying to have Lloyd George sent on a mission abroad to get him out of the way, in the manner earlier, and fatally, applied to Kitchener – and as Lloyd George had wanted to do with Robertson.

  Robertson had Asquith’s complete support; and Hankey believed even Lloyd George did not want to be rid of the CIGS, because there was no obvious successor. Hankey refereed the fight between the two men, which he feared would end in one of them resigning – ‘Robertson’s disappearance being a military disaster of the first magnitude and Lloyd George’s a political disaster which would smash the Government and perhaps the alliance.’22

  The war secretary’s ambitions were by now widely known: Esher, whose antennae were second to none, had discerned them long since. He had written to Haig on 29 September about an attempt by the ‘Marconigang’ to take over the Liberal
clubland newspaper, the Westminster Gazette, edited by Asquith’s close confidant J. A. Spender. When they acquired a controlling shareholding, Spender successfully dug in his heels. ‘Lloyd George and his gang could not influence him to throw over Asquith,’ he told Haig. ‘They bought The Westminster Gazette, and threatened to dislodge him, but at the last moment they funked, and contented themselves with putting Murray of Elibank as Chairman of the Board of Direction.’23 Murray’s appointment only confirmed Esher’s view that Lloyd George’s cronies were mobilising. ‘There is no sort of doubt that he and the Marconigang mean to take supreme power into their hands.’

  Jellicoe, meanwhile, was so alarmed by the losses to shipping that on 30 October he bypassed Balfour, his political master as First Lord, and wrote direct to Asquith about the need to develop a means of dealing with U-boats. Convoys – the idea of grouping ships together as a protective phalanx – were discussed, but there were insufficient warships to protect merchant vessels, and by forcing convoys to move at the rate of the slowest ship there would be delays and congestion in ports. Jellicoe asked the War Committee, to which he was summoned on 2 November, to supply 3,000 guns to arm merchant vessels. Shipping losses, and their effect on the food supply, provided Lloyd George with another area of contention with Asquith. A poor potato harvest and commensurate rise in prices aggravated this. On 10 November Lloyd George asked at the War Committee that a ‘shipping dictator and food dictator’ be appointed to implement ‘drastic measures’ to secure and regulate the supply of food which, Miss Stevenson recorded, ‘is getting serious’. Those close to Asquith rubbished the idea, as did Curzon, but having asked for his views to be minuted Lloyd George told his mistress that he ‘can always point to it when they have failed to do anything and it is too late.’24 The incident revealed much: Lloyd George’s disillusion being such that he was not afraid to open another front on his enemies; his expectation of their failure; and his determination to protect his own reputation. Collective responsibility could not easily survive such an outlook, and it did not.

  Unlike Asquith, Lloyd George grasped the necessities of total war – which, for patriotic reasons that were perhaps only secondary to his motivations, made his ambitions legitimate – and that traditional Liberal values had to be put aside. Others shared this understanding: such as the Glasgow MP George Barnes, who argued that the working class in particular was agitated about food prices and those speculating in food commodities – and the government was desperate to avoid working-class restiveness. ‘The policy of laissez faire is no more good in regard to social economics than it is in regard to fighting the War,’ Barnes said. ‘It is as dead as Queen Anne, and the sooner [the president of the Board of Trade] recognises that fact and makes up his mind to step forward a good deal more boldly upon the lines of regulation and control, the better for all concerned.’25 Barnes suggested the government nationalise Britain’s entire wheat output, and all foreign imports, and fix the price. However, his argument that the state should take ownership of agriculture and the food industry, rather as it had with munitions, was too radical to find favour.

  Barnes nonetheless identified problems contributing to this national emergency that could only be solved by government intervention. He said that supplies of beef, bacon and milk were prey to speculators. Worse, there were stories that the well-to-do were behaving as though there were no war: ‘The other day I read in a daily newspaper that it is still customary in the West End to supply dinners at £1 per head, and sometimes a good deal more than that; and I read, quite recently, that 2s 6d was paid for a peach and 2s for a pear. This is no time for that sort of extravagance, and where it is indulged in by the rich to that extent they are simply increasing the burden on the poor. I trust that will be kept in mind.’26

  He said the price of sugar had risen by 120 per cent since August 1914 – in fact he understated the matter, as it had risen by 166 per cent – and asked how much this was due to the quantity of sweets eaten by the public, driving up the price of the commodity.27 There were, however, Barnes said, wider problems with the food supply: not only were middlemen taking their cut, with farmers, millers, wholesalers and bakers all affecting the price of bread, but the demands on manpower meant that 112,000 acres farmed in 1914–15 lay fallow in 1915–16. The wheat crop of that latter year was estimated at only 88.5 per cent of the average of the preceding decade, a disaster in wartime.28 Other MPs called for discharged soldiers to be called up to work on the land, and for men on the Reserve not yet in France to be drafted in too. However, Francis Acland, the parliamentary secretary to the War Office, had admitted to the Commons on 21 August that 27,000 soldiers had been provided for a two-week period in August 1916, but farmers had applied to use only 3,000, since many appeared unaware of the scheme. As so often, problems of administrative competence outweighed those of manpower: and MPs demanded to know why the government had not tackled these crucial difficulties.29

  Such government control as existed was usually poorly thought through. For example, shops open late in the evening had been ordered, under DORA, to close earlier as autumn drew on, to conserve heating and lighting. However, because of people working shifts many small shops did much business after 7 p.m., and the effect of the new restrictions on their owners’ livelihoods was severe. It was yet another blow to the small trader, already before the war suffering from the growth of larger retailers and chain stores, enterprises far better able to sustain restrictions on opening hours. One MP, Henry Chancellor, illustrated the difficulties faced by his Shoreditch constituents, reading out a letter from one:

  I have been a shopkeeper in the grocery and provision trade for twenty-four years, paying rates and taxes, and the best part of my trade is done in the evening after [the return of] the poor women who work in the City, mostly office cleaning, and [who] do not return till eight or ten o’clock at night, when they have to buy their food for supper, chiefly consisting of cheese, tinned meat, sausages, bread, butter, etc. If I have to close at seven I might just as well put the shutters up for good, while my neighbour who sells fried fish may keep open and therefore take my living away. I am a widow with one son, whom they are taking from me to join the Army, and I have no other means of getting my living.30

  The government was implored to reconsider, or face the proprietors of such shops ending up en masse in the workhouse. It was also pointed out that essential workers, especially in munitions, would be unable to shop without missing shifts unless the restrictions were relaxed. Samuel, defending the order, cited recommendations from the Coal Supply Committee to conserve fuel; and he also listed trade bodies representing drapers, chemists, grocers, hairdressers, meat-traders, ironmongers and small traders that had, during a consultation process, endorsed the proposals. However, because of the force of opposition, he agreed to allow shops to open until 8 p.m. from Monday to Friday and 9 p.m. on Saturday.

  As the food crisis began to trigger, at least in official circles, mild panic, many in the House of Commons began to consider the wider issue of centrally managed food control. On 15 November William Hewins, the Tory MP for Hereford and an academic economist, demanded the appointment of a food controller to ‘diminish the risk of shortage and serious increase in prices in the event of war being prolonged’.31 He launched a Commons debate on the subject, in which he said that there was ‘considerable anxiety in the country’ and a continued rise in prices was inevitable.32 He blamed the coalition. ‘Considering that we have under British control the largest area and the most fertile lands there are in the world, considering that you can grow everything in indefinitely large quantities that is required for the service of man in the British Empire, I say that the policy of the Government of this country in dealing with the question of food supplies is totally inexcusable. If you cannot do it with the British Empire at your back, then you cannot do it at all.’33 The government had avoided any statement about food production in the Empire or at home, and questions of labour and transport that bore on the production and a
vailability of food. It symbolised the dysfunction of the administration.

  Hewins’s aim was to smoke ministers out, but also to make them see that such a wide range of ministries was involved in the implementation of food policy that central coordination was crucial. Although he claimed that ‘I am not making the slightest reflection on the Prime Minister or on any member of the Government’, he had highlighted a critical failing of the administration just when its failures threatened to become fatal.34 He argued that no business could survive without central direction: yet the government believed the food business could do just that.

  Runciman, the president of the Board of Trade, reassured MPs that the government was taking measures to improve the food supply. He reported record harvests in Australia, Canada and America; but admitted shipping was not always available to bring the fruits of those harvests to Britain, something for which he partly blamed the French, for being so slow to turn round British ships in their ports. He claimed that, despite shortages of labour in shipyards, production would increase in 1917. Yet he also acknowledged serious problems. For example, Britain felt an obligation to supply food to its allies, which made the situation at home even more fraught: all the more remarkable, therefore, that it had not sought to improve matters sooner. Runciman admitted it was ‘most difficult’ when recruiting in rural areas to judge when to do any more would damage the food supply.35 Also, high prices had not driven down consumption, so he admitted the government might be ‘compelled’ to control prices.36 Sugar remained a problem: but there were also cases of potato profiteering, with prices rising after it became known that a Lincolnshire farmer had made £62-an-acre profit selling potatoes to the Army, thanks to incompetence by the War Office in procurement.

  Runciman outlined a series of steps that he proposed to take to remedy these difficulties. He planned to order the pooling of skilled labour to ensure vessels were completed. Yet although labour could be directed to complete ships, the ships themselves could not be built without steel; and a shortage of skilled steelworkers had led to many blast furnaces going out. Runciman therefore promised these would be relighted, and skilled steelworkers brought back from the Army. He announced that no more full-time agricultural workers would be called up after 1 January; and no dairymen after 1 April, unless substituted for discharged men who had returned to the land. He also admitted that much agricultural machinery was in poor repair, and Britain lacked mechanics to fix it.