Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  In mid-November Duke told the War Cabinet he feared the talks might break down over the Ulster Unionists’ refusal to accept proposals made by the rest of Ireland. Nationalist predictions that their support would collapse in favour of Sinn Féin were coming true. Éamon de Valera, who had become its leader, was described by Viscount Chaplin (who had served in Salisbury’s cabinet) in a Lords debate as touring the country making ‘plain, deliberate, and cold-blooded incitements to rebellion … at meetings, one after the other all over the country, in studied terms.’214 He said de Valera’s speeches ‘point to three things in particular. One is the complete separation of Ireland from England, another is secession, and the third is the sovereign independence of that country. That is the policy of the Sinn Fein party as laid down by the leader of that party himself, who at present is allowed to go unmolested about the country preaching these seditious doctrines whenever and wherever it pleases him to do so.’215 De Valera’s victory in the East Clare by-election, caused by William Redmond’s death, was by a majority of more than two to one. Ever since the rebels had been released there had been sporadic outbreaks of rioting, notably in and around Cork. Duke believed Sinn Féin was developing a policy of violence; and that the end of emigration to America since 1914 had left many frustrated young men in Ireland who were rich pickings for the republicans.216

  The government continued to provide the republican movement with martyrs. Thomas Ashe, president of the supreme council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, was arrested in July under DORA for making a seditious speech. He died after forced feeding in Mountjoy prison on 25 September; he had gone on hunger strike in protest at being treated as a criminal and not a political prisoner. His body was taken to lie in state in City Hall, and thousands filed past it. The funeral was stage-managed for maximum effect: a procession from Dublin city centre to Glasnevin cemetery, the volley over the grave, and Michael Collins saying simply: ‘Nothing additional remains to be said. The volley we have just heard is the only speech which it is proper to make above the grave of a dead Fenian.’217 The authorities ‘agreed that it would have been quite impossible for the Executive to have interfered with any popular demonstration connected with the funeral without provoking the bitterest antagonism and serious disorder’, the War Cabinet learned.218

  Ashe had been a devout Roman Catholic, and a bishop attended his funeral, confirming where the power of the Church was being placed. Days after this show of organisational strength the Ard Fheis, or party conference, was held where the political wing, Sinn Féin, united with the Volunteers. The movement claimed 1,200 branches: the notion that it was a passing phenomenon was manifestly wrong. By acclamation, de Valera became leader of the united movement. His support of Eoin MacNeill in the executive elections sealed his readmission to republicanism’s top table. Dillon pleaded with the War Cabinet to allow ‘special rules’ for the treatment of Sinn Féin prisoners, to avoid another rebellion.219 The War Cabinet told Duke to exercise ‘discretion’.220 With around forty men on hunger strike, it was decided to change the rules; the government harboured the delusion that ‘if the Convention proved successful the Sinn Féin movement would collapse like a pack of cards.’

  De Valera had been freed from Lewes jail in July 1917 under the amnesty. He urged the arming, and training, of an army to achieve the movement’s stated aims. Such talk made a mockery of the convention. Following his victory in East Clare, Sinn Féin was now winning every by-election outside Ulster. Chaplin, and many like him, felt Duke should end the routine incitement in which de Valera engaged; the government, aware of the damage caused by the heavy hand post-Rising, moved with caution: though Duke’s use of DORA to silence men such as Ashe was highly ill-advised.

  A meeting addressed by de Valera in Waterford was allowed to go ahead; and in Dublin, when thirty-seven men were charged with illegal drilling, they refused to accept the jurisdiction of the court and were fined £10 each and discharged. Many in de Valera’s audiences were boys of fourteen or fifteen, who three or four years later would fight in a civil war. In response to Chaplin’s complaints, and those of other peers, Curzon asked whether they would prefer ‘wholesale repression’; the government, who already had 50,000 soldiers tied down in Ireland rather than on the Western Front, had few options. Worse, a general disarming of Ulster Volunteers to show the government was being even-handed was thwarted when it threatened to cause strikes in the north’s munitions factories.

  Food shortages in parts of Ireland, notably County Cork, in the winter of 1917–18, further helped Sinn Féin mobilise as a political force: they highlighted not just the incompetence of the government but also laid it open to accusations of selfishness in exporting food to England while Irish people did without. Sinn Féin talked about the danger of ‘famine’ whenever possible. It also rattled the government by threatening an unofficial plebiscite about independence. The movement’s high profile in the food crisis also helped create more Sinn Féin clubs, which would assist the party’s success at the 1918 general election. It soon claimed a membership of 250,000; all that remained to be settled was whether it would pursue its aims by political, or paramilitary, means. De Valera justified Ireland’s non-participation in the war by saying it was not being fought for the benefit of other small nations, such as Belgium or Serbia, but to secure the dominance of great powers such as Britain and France. A rumour of a new rising in November proved groundless; occasionally, Sinn Féiners were arrested for illegal drilling, but there was little appetite to provoke the movement by mass arrests. What did concern the government was that the Roman Catholic clergy, increasingly critical of the British government since the Rising, now seemed to be reaching militancy, especially among its younger members.

  The organised Left in Scotland was watching developments in Ireland closely. On 23 October Lloyd George received a deputation of trades unionists, the majority from Clydeside, some of whom wanted Scotland granted Home Rule after the war. He parried this by saying it would require the creation of an English Parliament, so mighty that it would rival the Imperial one, leaving Scotland overshadowed. For the moment, the Scottish demands died down; the problem of Ireland was carried into 1918, where it would take on an even graver dimension.

  CHAPTER 10

  ESCAPE

  I

  By December 1917, even allowing for the imminent arrival of American troops in France, the Army was desperately short of men. Every possible source of new recruits was examined. So desperate were matters that on 26 November the War Cabinet discussed, but rejected, the notion of conscription in Ireland. The hard-line policy on conscientious objectors continued: some were being repeatedly sent to prison. There were 1,300 in jail by late 1917, around two-thirds for at least the second time; 419 were serving a second term, 489 a third, 34 a fourth and 4 a fifth. It had become usual for these men to have the worst conditions – appalling food and, often, solitary confinement. One, James Brightmore from Manchester, was confined in a camp at Cleethorpes; and when he refused to obey orders was made to spend eleven days in a hole ten feet deep in which he was soon up to his ankles in water. Soaked and in a state of collapse, he was eventually found by a visiting officer from the General Staff. The punishment was ended, and the officer who had ordered it, a Major Grimshaw of the Manchester Regiment, was made to retire.1 Grimshaw denied everything.

  The next month there was a further incident at Cleethorpes, where a conscientious objector who told an NCO he could not, as a Christian, obey military orders, was made to walk around with his full kitbag tied around his neck, almost strangling him. Angered by reports of genuine Christian objectors being, effectively, persecuted, Hensley Henson, the Dean of Durham, who supported the war, wrote to The Times complaining of the lack of ‘that respect for the individual conscience which the religion of Christ requires’; and adding that the nation would rejoice if sincere Christian men imprisoned because of their consciences were released.2 Henson also regretted ‘the unfortunate exemption of ministers of religion from mili
tary service’, which he said ‘weighs heavily on those upon whom it was imposed and by whom it was neither demanded nor desired.’ He believed if Christians who wanted to fight were allowed to do so, Christians who did not could be excused jail.

  Some tribunals were incompetent; and a blind eye was often turned to their idiocy, more so as the desperate need for men increased. Ministers refused to interfere when complaints were made about decisions taken by local tribunals to refuse to grant exemptions. As a result, men who would have been quite happy to do war work, such as in agriculture, were put in defiance of the law. A number of those refused exemptions were practising Quakers whose objection to military service was long attested: many tribunal decisions bore no relation to the facts they had heard. When a man came out of prison he was immediately put under military rather than civilian law, which meant he was considered to be a soldier and in conflict with authority again for refusing to serve; he was court-martialled and sent back to prison. Some went on hunger strike and were force-fed. There was little public sympathy for pacifists: mobs, including a high proportion of women, often broke up meetings at which conscientious objection was encouraged, with wounded soldiers and men on leave joining in. An incident in Hackney in July 1917, involving an insurgency of between two and three hundred anti-pacifists, included a wounded man making a speech about the impossibility of peace while ‘Germany uncrushed’ existed, and renditions of ‘Rule, Britannia’ and ‘God Save the King’.3

  In early May Bertrand Russell at last obtained martyrdom, being jailed for six months in the second division – that is, with common criminals. He had written an article in January in the Tribunal, the newspaper of the No Conscription Fellowship of which he had been editor, advancing his belief (for which there were no grounds whatsoever) that American troops would be used to intimidate British strikers, ‘an occupation to which they are accustomed when at home’.4 He was convicted on 9 February but appealed against his sentence: and when that failed was sent to Brixton. On his conviction the Bow Street magistrate, Sir John Dickinson, condemned Russell’s language as ‘mischievous’. He had no doubt Russell had sought to prejudice Britain’s relations with America, and described his offence as ‘deplorable’ – and Russell as clever enough to know better.

  Thanks to an intervention by Balfour he was made a first division prisoner, meaning books and food could be sent in. His brother, Earl Russell, had been there fifteen years earlier for bigamy, and when visiting Bertrand was delighted to renew old friendships with the warders. In an era when most books still had uncut pages, Lady Ottoline Morrell would smuggle in letters from herself and from his present mistress, Lady Constance Malleson, tucked into the bound proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. The highlight of Russell’s spell in Brixton was his reading of Eminent Victorians by his friend Lytton Strachey, published that spring, the progenitor of the post-war world’s assault on Victorian values, the radicalisation of the post-war mind and its commitment to revisionism. Once when reading it ‘I laughed out so loud that the warder came round to stop me, saying that I must remember that prison was a place of punishment’.5

  This was hardly the case for Russell. ‘I found prison in many ways quite agreeable,’ he wrote: but then he was not forced to mix with common criminals. ‘I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work.’ He wrote his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, and found such prisoners as he did meet ‘in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence, as was shown by their having been caught.’ He found German prisoners with whom he could discuss Kant; and could write to his mistress in French, claiming to the authorities that they were passages copied out of a French book he was reading. ‘I suspect the Governor did not know French,’ he recorded, ‘but would not confess ignorance.’6

  It was not surprising that the authorities pursued with such vigour those trying to undermine conscription and the duty to fight for King and country. The Army on the Western Front, where an attack was most likely to come, was particularly under strength. Hankey worked out it was 720,000 men short, and home defence, which was recruiting eighteen-year-old boys, was 120,000 under.7 Haig told the Army Council on 24 November that he feared the infantry alone would be 250,000 men short by the end of March 1918.8 The formation on 29 November of the Women’s Royal Naval Service ensured there were more men for fighting duties at sea – Wrens (as they quickly came to be known) worked not just as cooks and in secretarial functions, but as telegraphists and electricians – but this was of little help to the Army.

  At the War Cabinet on 6 December Derby read out a warning from Haig that if no steps were taken to produce more men the infantry divisions in France ‘would be 40 per cent below their present establishments by the 31st March 1918.’9 A reduction in size of each division, cutting the number of its battalions from twelve to nine, was discussed: the War Cabinet finally agreed to this in January 1918. Robertson had already acquainted Lloyd George with the full reality of the military situation. As so often when confronted with difficulties, Lloyd George became ill and took to his bed, though not before berating his CIGS with examples of Haig’s groundless optimism and other exaggerations. The prime minister told Derby he wanted Haig out, prompting Derby to advise him of the unwisdom of so doing.

  The Navy, however, would undergo a change of leadership. Jellicoe was dismissed as First Sea Lord. It was tactlessly handled: Geddes sent Jellicoe a letter shortly before he went home on Christmas Eve 1917 saying he was being relieved of his duties. Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, an old shipmate and friend of the King, a veteran of both the Dardanelles campaign and the final evacuation, and since October deputy First Sea Lord, replaced him. Inevitable ever since Geddes had taken over the Admiralty, it was an unattractive end to a distinguished, if unimaginative, career. There was more high-ranking bloodshed to come. Milner told General Sir Henry Wilson on 30 December that ‘Lloyd George is so angry with Robertson that he proposes to kick him out and put [Wilson] in.’ With fake magnanimity, Wilson replied that ‘I am opposed to this, though all in favour of Lloyd George giving me more power at Versailles, and reducing Robertson from the position of a master to that of a servant.’10

  Robertson knew too well how the prime minister was keen to shift responsibility for strategic mistakes on to everyone but himself. He told Haig on 8 December that the War Cabinet ‘are at last scared as regards manpower’, Lloyd George – as Robertson reported to Haig – choosing to blame the Army Council (which had regularly warned them about the shortage of soldiers) for having ‘misled’ them.11 Robertson cited this manipulation of the facts as ‘proof of the impossibility of honestly working with such a man.’ This was the first manifestation of a dishonesty over troop numbers that would dog Lloyd George for the rest of the war (and his historical reputation thereafter), and put the Allies at risk of defeat. There were more men in the Army on home defence than remotely necessary – as Churchill pointed out at the 6 December meeting – but Lloyd George would not send them to the front because he feared Haig would find a way of slaughtering them to no obvious Allied advantage. The prime minister did this even though Haig had predicted that thirty German divisions would come from the Eastern Front now Russia was leaving the war – though by 6 December only six had arrived. Derby wrote to Haig, with Lloyd George’s endorsement, to urge him to ensure the better safety and security of his troops, perhaps by building better concrete pillboxes, such as those the Germans had.

  It was also apparent that American assistance, which was mainly discussed in terms of the numbers of men it promised to bring into the fight against Germany, was a double-edged sword, because of how it would shape American power. Over Sunday lunch at Walton Heath on 9 December Riddell warned Lloyd George of a grim year ahead: more shipping losses, a slump in foreign trade, and a £3 billion increase in debt. But, perhaps more ominously, he added: ‘Naturally, the Americans desire to make America the first na
tion in the world. At the end of 1918 they will hold all the gold in the world; they will have a huge mercantile fleet … they will have opened new markets all over the world, markets which they have been developing while we have been fighting. They resent our command of the seas … [they] will endeavour to clip our naval wings. Wilson is cool and crafty. We shall have to watch that in our efforts to annihilate the Germans we do not annihilate ourselves.’12

  Riddell’s worries were consistent with a growing sense of pessimism and frustration. The hitherto ebullient Haig was no longer talking of the next offensive, but had realised that on the Western Front only a defensive war was now feasible. The miracle of defeating Germany might have to await the arrival of the Americans, with fresh men or fresh thinking, or rely on a catastrophic error by the enemy. Northcliffe, who when leaving for America the previous year had ordered the Daily Mail in his absence always to take the side of the Army, was so appalled by the failure to consolidate gains at Cambrai that he turned his newspapers’ fire on the General Staff, notably Robertson. On 12 December The Times had called for an inquiry to find those responsible for the failures after Cambrai, though Northcliffe maintained a regard for Haig, believing he had been let down by poor subordinates. Auckland Geddes, the minister of National Service, lamented on 14 January that ‘no dramatic stroke less than a divine miracle would simultaneously solve all the problems which are loosely called one problem and labelled manpower.’13 He proposed repealing legislation providing certificates of exemption from military service on occupational grounds, and had long advocated abolishing exemptions for boys of eighteen.

  The government adjusted its priorities from week to week: if there was suddenly spare capacity in the shipyards, men no longer needed there could go to the front. Geddes claimed recruiting was going well: but the modern Army needed men adept at engineering, electrics and the science of explosives, and they could only be obtained from reserved occupations. He believed up to 450,000 potential recruits of military age in non-essential trades and war industries could be combed out and replaced, where necessary, by older men or women not yet in the workforce. The maintenance of morale no longer allowed those who had been seriously wounded, or older men realistically past the age for military service, to be sent back to fight, or to stop the leave of those at the front, while young, fit men enjoyed high wages and immunity from German shells and bullets.