Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Asquith was slow to anger, but this was an exception: ‘Nothing in connection with this Report … has filled me with more indignation and disgust than that the publication of the criticisms made in it of Lord Kitchener’s conduct and capacity should have been taken advantage of by those who only two years ago were in a posture of almost slavish adulation to belittle his character, and, so far as they can, to defile his memory.’24 Kitchener, he said, had not taken the decision to support the Dardanelles campaign lightly; he had said there would not be sufficient available troops to make it a joint operation. Asquith disputed that the War Council had inadequately assessed Kitchener’s advice. ‘Lord Kitchener may have been right or wrong, but no one can doubt that those are grave and weighty reasons, and it is perfectly monstrous to suggest that we, the civilian members of the War Council, in view of that veto – that temporary veto – from our great military authority, should have interfered to overrule him, and say, “You must send out the 29th Division, and send it at once.”’25 Had the War Council overruled Kitchener, he would have resigned, ‘and that would have exposed us to the universal and just condemnation of our fellow citizens.’26 For the new prime minister it was enormously convenient that a man so vigorously attacked in the report was dead.

  Later, in the debate on the interim report, Churchill sought to justify the War Council’s and his decisions. ‘I am defending myself,’ he said, ‘but I am defending other interests besides my own. I am defending the Government of which I was a member. I am defending the chief under whom I served, and who had acted on the advice which I had tendered. I am defending the authority and dignity of the Admiralty, because, believe me, you could do it no greater injury than to weaken the confidence of the officers and men of the Fleet in the orders they get from the Admiralty by favouring the impression that those orders had been made in a reckless, careless, amateur, and a haphazard way.’27 If Lloyd George was using the report to bury Asquith, Churchill, commendably, refused to help him.

  He conceded that Fisher had objected: but rejected the idea that he, Asquith and Kitchener – as ministers – had no right to discount that objection; and he referred to the bombardments in March 1915 when the loss of life in several days had been, he said, ‘less than a battalion will lose on the Western Front in half an hour in their assembly trenches, or moving up to the attack … We must cultivate and observe a sense of proportion in these terrible matters. I may be accused of being reckless or sanguine, but I shall plead that if I am it is because the sense of proportion with which I have judged this War from the very beginning, is different in important respects from the accepted standard.’28 He too was content to be judged when there had been time to reflect on the events of March and April 1915: ‘When this matter is passed in final review before the tribunal of history, I have no fear where the sympathies of those who come after us will lie. Your Commission may condemn the men who tried to force the Dardanelles, but your children will keep their condemnation for all who did not rally to their aid.’29

  The other side of Lloyd George’s vindictiveness towards his opponents was his determination to surround himself with people who owed him total loyalty, having dispatched those who did not. He sometimes made some excellent choices, even if it meant breaking the mould of the usual characters from the landed and upper-middle classes who served their country in Whitehall and Westminster. His approach to the running of the Admiralty in the spring of 1917, when he became worried by food shortages and rising prices, was an object lesson in this.

  In late April, urged on by Hankey and with Beatty’s approval, he ordered Admiralty officials to introduce convoys, to try to prevent the destruction of so much merchant shipping: and losses were never again so great. Jellicoe, as First Sea Lord, had led opposition to the convoy system, but became a wholehearted convert. Nevertheless, Lloyd George relieved him of responsibility for overseeing naval and merchant marine shipbuilding, handing it over to Eric Geddes, elder brother of Auckland. Geddes became a Civilian Lord and Controller of the Admiralty, with a formal War Staff under him. It was not just another example of Lloyd George sending in a businessman where a politician had failed, but also an example of his management style in getting his chosen man in by inventing a new job with a new title, and which swallowed up all or much of the role of someone else: in this case Jellicoe.

  Geddes epitomised the Lloyd George man of ‘push and go’ who would provide the dynamism for victory. After being expelled from his Edinburgh school in the early 1890s for ignoring his studies and preferring to play rugby, he had become, among other things, a lumberjack, before progressing to be deputy general manager of the North-Eastern Railway. Lloyd George brought him into the Ministry of Munitions soon after its formation in 1915 to oversee production first of machine guns and then of the filling of shells. When shell production had risen but the railway system in France proved unequal to the task of transporting them rapidly to the front, Lloyd George (who had just succeeded Kitchener) sent Geddes out (without Haig being properly consulted) in July 1916 to tackle the problem. He went in the rank of major general, despite having had no Army experience; and he went to the Admiralty as a vice-admiral on the same basis. Luckily, Geddes had got on well with Haig, and his ability to work ‘amicably’ with the Army was taken as a reason to send him to deal with shipping.30 He did, though, become something of a figure of fun to many of his colleagues, not least through his almost Prussian enthusiasm for wearing any uniform to which he was entitled.

  When Geddes joined the Admiralty to oversee shipbuilding he found the department badly run, echoing the Downing Street view that it was rife with maladministration. Even Northcliffe (whom Lloyd George would soon divert from mischief-making in London by appointing him head of a war mission to the United States) had turned on Carson, the First Lord, with an editorial in the Daily Mail on 2 May complaining about ‘Too Much Civilian Control’.31 A week later the paper called for food rationing, invoking the shade of Asquith in saying that a ‘wait and see’ food policy could have catastrophic results. Lloyd George realised Carson had few managerial gifts, and was too inclined to agree with admirals, notably Jellicoe, whom Lloyd George disdained. Milner, who had applied his considerable mind to the workings of the Admiralty, had also impressed on Lloyd George that he had to replace Carson. The prime minister did this, Hankey recorded, ‘by the simple expedient of “booting” him up to the War Cabinet’, where ministers had no portfolios.32 Lloyd George then had to work out with whom to replace him, the post of First Lord having become even more sensitive than it already had been. The Army was now joining in the attack on the management of the Senior Service, using the difficulties there to distract attention from its own shortcomings.

  Haig and Robertson agreed with Geddes and Milner’s assessment of the Admiralty. Haig used the trouble to open a second front on the War Cabinet by protesting about the ‘seriously inefficient state of the Admiralty’: he caricatured this in his diary by writing that ‘the First Lord (Carson) has recently married [to a woman thirty years his junior], is very tired, and leaves everything to a number of incompetent sailors!’33 Geddes told Haig that Jellicoe was ‘feeble to a degree and vacillating’. Lloyd George toyed with the idea (suggested by the War Cabinet secretary himself) of replacing Carson with Hankey but, as Hankey noted with his customarily monumental self-regard, he was ‘practically irreplaceable’ in his existing job. Even Robertson was considered, but said he would refuse because he could not face becoming a politician: his candidacy had been advanced by Haig, who had had differences of opinion with him over strategy – upsetting the prime minister’s belief that Robertson was Haig’s front man and apologist.

  Therefore on 6 July – after a rough passage with Carson, whom he was afraid to disoblige – the prime minister offered the Admiralty to the ruthlessly efficient Geddes, who may have just been made a vice admiral but was not even a Member of Parliament. A by-election was arranged for him at Cambridge, which he fortunately won. His rise from railway executive to First
Lord of the Admiralty within two years was emblematic of Lloyd George’s business methods. He told Riddell he believed Geddes ‘will double the output of mercantile shipping’.34 The new First Lord and the prime minister agreed about Jellicoe: he lasted until Christmas Eve 1917 when he resigned as First Sea Lord, citing among other factors the unacceptable influence of Northcliffe on Lloyd George and naval matters. Geddes revolutionised the organisation of the Admiralty, forging the same direct relationship with shipyards that the War Office had with munitions factories; and Jellicoe’s marginalisation and then removal ended what was left of the institutional resistance to the convoy system. By Christmas 1917 Britain’s command of the seas, in peril from the submarine threat the previous spring, was now re-established.

  There was a much older and more dangerous friend who commanded Lloyd George’s attention once he had taken power, and that was Churchill. He remained widely despised in the Commons; but his thoughtful contributions to a secret session of the House on 10 May, about food rationing and conscription of labour, seemed to alter perceptions, and give Lloyd George a means of bringing him back inside the tent. Churchill argued that Allied strategy should be of defence and not attack until the Americans were fighting – which, as the troops required thorough training for trench warfare, would be some months yet. Guest, the chief whip (and Churchill’s cousin), reported to Lloyd George that MPs considered Churchill’s speech to have been ‘a fine statesmanlike effort’.35 The prime minister’s appreciation of this performance helped repair a breach between them over his lack of a government post: a few days earlier Scott had recorded that Churchill’s ‘tone was rather bitter in speaking of Lloyd George whom he had evidently come to consider his destined antagonist’.36

  In the succeeding weeks Lloyd George gave much thought to how Churchill – whom he had solemnly promised not to promote to the cabinet as a condition of Unionist support for his coalition – might be brought back. The prime minister’s health, which had a habit of imploding whenever he was under stress, was poor. He worked long hours, and things were going badly. Even the indefatigable Hankey was felled by toothache. The War Cabinet became badly behind on its agenda, to the point where Hankey feared that the same sclerosis that had brought down the Asquith coalition would occur again. Northcliffe told Lloyd George he thought the government even more unpopular than its predecessor, though Miss Stevenson felt he made that observation because Lloyd George refused to consult him. The prime minister told her on 19 May he was considering a reshuffle. ‘He says he wants someone in who will cheer him up and help and encourage him, and who will not be continually coming to him with a long face and telling him that everything is going wrong,’ she noted.37 The main depressive was Law, who was immovable. She added: ‘I think D is thinking of getting Winston in in some capacity.’ She knew they had talked about the prospect: and that Lloyd George ‘knows his [Churchill’s] limitations and realises he is eaten up with conceit.’ Nevertheless, Lloyd George valued Churchill’s spirit, resilience, energy, charisma, indefatigability and, despite his record of mistakes, his experience. The prime minister also craved support from the Liberal establishment, who despised him, and knew the only way to do that was to tempt Asquith back, thereby negating the reason why so many Liberals loathed him. He offered him the Woolsack, which he declined.

  Some warmed to the idea of Churchill returning, but others were resolutely against it. ‘To me he appears not as a statesman, but as a politician of keen intelligence, lacking in those puissant qualities that are essential in a man who is to conduct the business of our country through the coming year,’ Esher told Haig on 30 May. ‘I hope, therefore, that he remains outside the Government.’38 Admiral Lord Beresford warned Law on 2 June that after Antwerp and Gallipoli, not to mention his orders to the Fleet during the 1914 Ulster crisis, he had ‘the most violent feeling with regard to his ever being in office again.’39 Beresford, to whom half-measures and understatement were unknown, said he was considering forming a committee to hold meetings all over the country denouncing Churchill if he were appointed; that he had ‘papers and proofs’ (of what he did not say) that he would make public; and that he had seen ‘several Editors of important papers’ who were prepared to unleash the dogs to help ‘avoid this scandal and danger to the State.’

  Curzon, who carried far heavier metal, also wrote to Law, on 4 June, to remind him he had only joined the War Cabinet ‘on the distinct understanding that W Ch was not to be a member of the Govt.’40 If Law told Lloyd George this it seems not to have troubled him. He asked Smuts to prepare Churchill for an offer of the Air Board instead of Munitions, which had been discussed, because Munitions was now routine whereas Air could become ‘of decisive importance’ in the war.41 Smuts observed that ‘in spite of the strong party opposition to this appointment, I think you will do the country a real service by appointing a man of his calibre to this department’. Sir George Younger, chairman of the Conservative Party, wrote directly to Lloyd George – he refused to bother Law as his son had just been killed in action – to warn him of the strain on Tory loyalty that would be caused by appointing Churchill to replace Lord Cowdray, who ran the Air Board under Derby. He felt Lloyd George failed to appreciate the difficulties that already existed in making Tories accept much of Lloyd George’s programme: this might be the last straw.

  Derby, who wished to retain Cowdray, had a frank exchange with Lloyd George about it. Derby was alarmed at the prospect of Churchill’s interfering in the War Office, a predictable problem given how he had behaved while at the Admiralty and even in his last non-job as Chancellor of the Duchy. Curzon, having failed to make his point the first time, wrote to Lloyd George to make it again, warning him Churchill would be ‘intensely unpopular’ with the Army and Navy.42 ‘Is it worthwhile,’ Curzon asked, ‘to incur all these risks and to override some of those who are your most faithful colleagues & allies merely in order to silence a possible tribune of the people whom in my judgment the people will absolutely decline to follow?’ Even Cowdray wrote to Lloyd George about the success the Air Board had had under him, not only in turning out more machines, but in turning out better ones than the Germans. One of his concerns was that ‘Winston will see that he, and he alone, gets all the credit from the very brilliant achievements of the Air Services’ if appointed.43 He asked: ‘Is it wise for you to have, as one of your Ministers, a dangerously ambitious man who will, I believe be able to point to achievements by the Air Services … that have largely revolutionised the war and being the means of bringing about the peace’ because this would ‘lead him to think that he was the most important man (in the eyes of the country) in the Government & therefore the proper man to make a bid for the Premiership.’ The last remark shows that Cowdray at least understood his audience.

  Lloyd George was sufficiently concerned that he asked Guest to enquire of Churchill whether he would return to the Duchy of Lancaster, if various duties were assigned to it. The answer was ‘no’. All Churchill wanted was to ‘help to beat the “Hun”’, either from the War Cabinet (which he said he would do without salary, a remarkable offer given how little disposable income he had), or in charge of any ‘War Department’. Guest’s ‘utmost powers of persuasion’ failed to make any difference – Churchill could not or would not grasp how profoundly rank-and-file Tories loathed him. The chief whip suggested the only course open to Lloyd George was to try to appeal to his Unionist colleagues to change their minds.44

  Changing people’s minds was, however, no longer the Lloyd George way. If the prime minister could not win consent, he would do as he wished, and dare colleagues to challenge him. On 17 July – the very day the King founded the House of Windsor – Churchill returned to government, as minister of munitions; Cowdray survived, for the moment, at the Air Board. Churchill was not allowed in the War Cabinet: that would have been too much for the Unionists, to a man furious at his return. Knowing how the land lay, it was a rare matter on which Lloyd George did not consult Law, who was presented with a fait
accompli; in this instance, and recognising the depth of Unionist feeling against Churchill and, it seems, of his own discourtesy in bypassing Law, Lloyd George lacked the guts to tell Law himself, so sent Beaverbrook to do it. Law had again to face the choice of backing Lloyd George or bringing him down: he chose the former, and managed to quell the revolt in his own party. However, Long told him that ‘the real effect has been to destroy all confidence in Ll G. It is widely held that for purposes of his own quite apart from the war he has deceived and jockeyed us.’45 It seemed it was as much the prime minister’s fear of how Churchill might destabilise the government if his exclusion continued as any friendship between the two men that had caused Lloyd George to bring him back.

  Churchill replaced Addison, who was appointed the first minister of reconstruction. The ministry’s creation showed the government’s understanding that soldiers, or the widows and orphans of the fallen, could not be expected to endure the conditions the working class had tolerated in the era of the Great Unrest before 1914. No one was yet using the slogan ‘Homes fit for heroes’, but that was what was meant. However, until Germany was defeated little could be done except make plans: Addison’s job would be as much overseeing social reconstruction – a fair deal for everyone with the support of an embryo welfare state – and its problems as physical and material rebuilding. In the course of shuffling his team Lloyd George made Montagu Secretary of State for India. He had been under-secretary in the India Office from 1910 to 1914, but it was his closeness to Asquith that mattered to Lloyd George, and gave the appointment a symbolic significance.

  Montagu’s return to office was a consequence of the report of the Mesopotamia Commission. The India Office had during the spring of 1916 handed over responsibility for the campaign in Mesopotamia (conducted largely by Indian army troops), but the Secretary of State, Austen Chamberlain, had had ultimate responsibility when Kut-el-Amara was besieged and for the failure to provide proper medical services for the men who fought there. Although Chamberlain’s officials had largely kept him in ignorance of what was happening, the report included him in the list of those criticised either directly or by implication. He resigned, despite an attempt by Lloyd George to dissuade him. The respect accorded him by the public and colleagues for this principled act, ironically, won Chamberlain new status in the Unionist Party, and undermined F.E. Smith’s bon mot that ‘Austen always played the game and always lost it.’46