Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  For the moment the Volunteers – who from around this time came to be known by a new name, the Irish Republican Army – confined themselves to attacking RIC men: soon they would move on to British soldiers. The Mansion House meeting issued a call to the world’s free nations to recognise the Irish republic and support it; and called for the ‘foreign garrison’ in Ireland to be evacuated. The new Dáil asserted that it alone had the right to make laws for Ireland and it alone was the just recipient of the allegiance of Irish people. A war of independence began that would last until July 1921.

  On 4 February 1919 de Valera (described in his police ‘wanted’ poster as ‘aged 35, a professor, standing 6ft 3in, and dressed in civilian clothes’) and two others – John Milroy and John McGarry – escaped from Lincoln jail using a forged key smuggled in by a visitor. De Valera had made an impression of the jail’s master key in candle wax from the chapel, having taken the key from the chaplain, and in the traditional manner the duplicate was brought into the prison in a cake.107 He was spirited to Manchester and thence briefly to Ireland and the United States, before returning home in April to become president of the Dáil. Four comrades had escaped from the prison at Usk the week before; all had been incarcerated since French’s round-up the previous May. To hit the Ascendancy where it hurt most Sinn Féin demanded a ban on fox-hunting in Ireland until the republican prisoners held in Britain since the round-up the previous July were released: this, however, backfired because so many of its supporters worked for hunts and bloodstock businesses. The Lord Mayor of Dublin appealed to Shortt, not just home secretary but also the last Irish secretary, to release the prisoners because of the ‘desperate’ state of Ireland after the election landslide.108 When he failed, the Lord Mayor pleaded directly to Lloyd George – ‘no useful purpose can be served by still detaining them in prison’, he said, and there would be ‘deplorable results’ from doing so.109

  French too wanted the men released: he saw, shrewdly, that a moderate element in Sinn Féin was tussling with extremists, and he thought the moderates would obtain more traction if the government made a gesture. The schism he spotted would be played out in the civil war of 1921–22 that followed the formal partition of Ireland. The government was effectively leaderless on this question because of Lloyd George’s absence in Paris: the War Cabinet decided on 4 March to release the prisoners ‘gradually’.110 Meanwhile, de Valera did a lap of honour around Irish America, raising money and gathering support.

  When the King opened Parliament on 11 February he said, in the speech Lloyd George had had written for him, ‘the position in Ireland causes Me great anxiety, but I earnestly hope that conditions may soon sufficiently improve to make it possible to provide a durable settlement of this difficult problem.’111 There was no indication of how this nirvana would be achieved, though Sir Horace Plunkett suggested that ‘Ireland must be given the status of a self-governing dominion’ as the only means likely to avoid disaster.112 Lord Hugh Cecil suggested a council should be formed in each of Ireland’s four provinces and they should discuss among themselves how best to proceed while the Home Rule Act was suspended for five years. However, the old compromises were irrelevant to an Ireland dominated by republicans, as even the government could see; and time was running out. Britain was slow to denominate it thus, but the majority in Ireland had rejected constitutional change and was at the start of its war of independence.

  Ireland was not the only British possession to be seeking self-determination in the aftermath of the Great War. India, too, was stepping up a campaign for independence, the impetus for which came not least from what the country felt Britain owed it after the sacrifices its people had made to support the mother country since 1914. A more direct cause of agitation was the passage in March 1919 of the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act (known as the Rowlatt Act, after the judge whose committee recommended it). This extended indefinitely provisions of the 1915 Defence of India Act that allowed detention without trial for up to two years for those engaged in terrorist or seditious behaviour. It provoked unrest on a scale unseen since the Mutiny of 1857.

  A pivotal event in the history of British India occurred on 13 April 1919 in the Jallianwala Bagh, a garden in Amritsar, in the Punjab, when several parts of India were afflicted by famine. The Punjab had raised 360,000 men to fight in various theatres of the Great War, so its loyalty to the King–Emperor had been evident.113 However, there had been days of unrest after the arrest and deportation of Dr Satya Pal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, Indian nationalist leaders who had urged non-violent protests against the Rowlatt Act. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor, and Acting Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, Indian-born and with over thirty years’ experience in the Indian army, commanding the local garrison, feared a rerun of the Mutiny. Martial law was declared and a proclamation was made banning public meetings.

  This was either ignored by, or did not reach, thousands of Indians who went to Jallianwala Bagh to mark the Punjabi festival of Baisakhi, and to hear speakers preaching passive resistance to British rule. Regarding this as a display of disobedience that threatened order, Dyer – with whom, under martial law, the initiative lay – took fifty men armed with rifles and, without warning those in the garden, ordered them to fire on the crowd; there were also forty Gurkhas armed with kukris. Once they opened fire from either side of the entrance to the garden the crowd panicked and a stampede began; the fusillade lasted for perhaps ten minutes.114 An official report claimed the result was 379 dead and 1,000 wounded; local estimates put the number of dead at over 1,000. Indians and Britons alike execrated Dyer; though many Britons in India felt he had acted correctly, as did many at home, who received only partial and (to begin with) inaccurate reports in newspapers. The official line was that Dyer had avenged an assault on a British teacher, Marcella Sherwood, by an Indian mob: this assault had happened, but was used as an excuse to display exemplary force to cower militants. It was also said that in Amritsar three bank managers had been burned to death, one after being clubbed. The Times, on the basis of what the Viceroy’s office chose to transmit back to Britain, berated the ‘passive resistance’ movement for lacking passivity, and (in drawing attention to his effect in leading the unrest), observed that ‘Mr MK Gandhi … is a misguided and excitable person’, a ‘stalking horse’ for ‘dangerous’ types fomenting revolution.115

  In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, newspapers exuded indignation that British nationals had been killed, and shock at what Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy, called ‘open rebellion’. They demanded the immediate and severe punishment of the ‘rebels’.116 It was weeks before anything like the truth was revealed to the British public, and even when it was out those responsible retained their apologists. O’Dwyer, whom an Indian nationalist seeking revenge would murder in 1940 at a public meeting in London, was praised for running a tight ship. Dyer became known as ‘the Butcher of Amritsar’; he expressed no regret, and Kipling, not only a major public figure but also one with a deep knowledge of India, praised him. A fund set up by the Morning Post raised £26,000 for him. It was a gesture reminiscent of Carlyle’s in 1866 for another heavy-handed imperialist, Edward Eyre.117 Montagu, the Secretary of State, called Dyer’s actions ‘a grave error in judgment’.

  Dyer’s defence was that, having noted disturbances in other cities, he had feared a conspiracy against British rule and believed it was his mission to prevent it, however ruthlessly: yet there was no conspiracy, and even had there been the lessons of the Easter Rising at least should have shown that bloodshed was not an ideal palliative. Politicians and the public writing to newspapers drew parallels between Ireland and India, with a common theme of the imperial power’s mismanagement. Ireland would have a degree of resolution within three years: in India this would take three decades. However, the process of loosening imperial ties had begun. The massacre at Jallianwala Bagh became a defining moment for the nationalist movement; and whatever good the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms might have d
one was negated. Although some British politicians – notably Churchill – would continue to regard India as incapable of governing itself, the articulacy of India’s advocacy in favour of self-determination, and the justice of its arguments, would in the years to come secure more and more supporters at Westminster.

  VI

  In the first two months of the peace conference, which began on 12 January, little progress was made. On 5 March Lloyd George went to Paris and over the next few weeks he, Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson and Orlando started to thrash out the details. The principal problem the other leaders faced was Clemenceau’s insistence on humiliating Germany to the benefit largely of France. Miss Stevenson noted that the French ‘cannot believe that Germany is defeated, and feel that they cannot have enough guarantees for the future.’118 The Americans irritated Lloyd George, planning, according to Wilson, to enlarge greatly the size of their army and navy, while holding up the conference by insisting on commitments to the League of Nations. At the request of the other leaders, Lloyd George agreed to stay in Paris until the preliminary terms were signed.

  His absence abroad not only meant that the great reconstruction programme had to be set in motion without his constant oversight; the vacuum he left behind, and the removal of the unifying factor of war, encouraged sometimes unwelcome freelance operations by colleagues. It seemed at least one minister was already bored with the post-war world. The ‘disloyal and ambitious’ Churchill was giving Lloyd George ‘great trouble,’ Miss Stevenson recorded on 13 April. ‘Being Secretary of State for War, he is anxious that the world should not be at peace, and is therefore planning a great war in Russia.’119

  Lloyd George returned to London briefly on 16 April to advise the Commons on progress, not least about Russia, which (singing Churchill’s tune) he absurdly said the Allies could conquer if they needed to; and then returned straight to Paris. In the course of his Commons speech, having claimed he did not want a ‘vindictive peace’ with Germany, he savaged Northcliffe – without naming him – for the way he was trying to orchestrate the approach taken to Germany at Versailles, and said: ‘honestly, I would rather have a good peace than a good press.’120 He continued:

  When a man is labouring under a keen sense of disappointment, however unjustified and however ridiculous the expectations may have been, he is always apt to think the world is badly run. When a man has deluded himself, and all the people whom he ever permits to go near to him help him into the belief that he is the only man who can win the War, and he is waiting for the clamour of the multitude that is going to demand his presence there to direct the destinies of the world, and there is not a whisper, not a sound, it is rather disappointing; it is unnerving; it is upsetting.

  Then the War is won without him. There must be something wrong. Of course it must be the Government! Then, at any rate, he is the only man to make peace. The only people who get near him tell him so, constantly tell him so. So he publishes the Peace Terms, and he waits for the ‘call.’ It does not come. He retreats to sunny climes, waiting, but not a sound reaches that far-distant shore to call him back to his great task of saving the world. What can you expect? He comes back, and he says, ‘Well, I cannot see the disaster, but I am sure it is there. It is bound to come.’ Under these conditions I am prepared to make allowances; but let me say this, that when that kind of diseased vanity is carried to the point of sowing dissension between great Allies, whose unity is essential to the peace and happiness of the world, and when an attempt is made to make France distrust Britain, to make France hate America, and America to dislike France, and Italy to quarrel with everybody, then I say that not even that kind of disease is a justification for so black a crime against humanity.121

  When he uttered ‘diseased vanity’, Lloyd George tapped his head to indicate his belief that Northcliffe was mad. He had not quite finished; he wished to justify his assault on Northcliffe as essential to disabuse his Allied colleagues of certain notions. ‘They still believe in France that The Times is a serious organ. They do not know that it is merely a threepenny edition of the Daily Mail. On the Continent of Europe they really have an idea that it is a semi-official organ of the Government.’

  The lack of an opposition allowed the prime minister to launch this attack without anyone reminding him of his own earlier dependence on Northcliffe; the attack itself diverted attention from the peace settlement, which Lloyd George had no wish to discuss, given his difficulties on various matters with Wilson and Clemenceau. Northcliffe had just sacked Dawson, The Times’s editor (though he would be back eventually to fulfil his historical destiny as a leading appeaser of Hitler, along with Northcliffe’s brother, Rothermere), and urged his replacement, Henry Wickham Steed, to attend the House to watch Lloyd George’s report from Versailles. Steed noted that the House ‘roared with delight’ as it watched the prime minister’s assault on his proprietor.122 Northcliffe’s retaliation included printing a black box in the Mail each day recording the numbers of killed, missing and wounded in the war, and elsewhere in the paper the prominent slogan ‘Those Junkers will Cheat You Yet’.123

  On 7 May German delegates at Versailles were presented with peace terms. The Allies had continued the blockade – and it would last until July – to ensure the Germans had to come to the table and agree terms. Clemenceau’s determination for reparations was stimulated by the fact that in France more than half a million houses and 17,600 buildings had been either partly or completely ruined. Around 20,000 factories or workshops had been damaged or destroyed, with plant confiscated and taken to Germany. An estimated 860,400 acres of farmland were derelict, and a million head of cattle had been rounded up by the Germans and taken home. When the Germans retreated they had routinely laid waste the land they evacuated. The French estimated the damage, and the cost of fighting the war Germany had started against them, at between 35 billion and 55 billion pre-war gold francs.124

  France was not, of course, alone in bearing that cost. Even if Britain had a substantial army to fight the Russians, whether it could afford to pay and supply it was another matter. On 30 April Chamberlain introduced his Budget; the problem of paying for the war continued, while that of paying for the peace began. With the 1918–19 deficit at £1,690,280,000 there would be no cut in taxation; even without a massive army to pay and equip, the projected deficit for 1919–20 was still £233,810,000. Beer and spirits duties rose, and death duties too, to the point where on the largest estates they were 40 per cent, leading to break-ups of more ancient landholdings. A new Victory Loan, in June 1919, raised £250,000,000, but matters remained parlous.

  A week before the final act at Versailles, on 21 June, the German High Seas Fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow on the orders of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the officer in command of the captured ships. The sinking was in breach of the Armistice and therefore technically an act of war; it was announced that von Reuter would be court-martialled. The French were angry because they had wanted some of the ships; the British were relieved because they wished to avoid a row about how they would be parcelled out. Long told the Commons that as the ships were interned and not surrendered the Admiralty was unable to take precautions to prevent their sinking. Had guards been on the ships – more than seventy of which were either sunk or beached, Long reported – it would have breached the terms of the Armistice. The question of what their loss would add to the reparations bill was discussed at Versailles; it hardened the Allies’ determination to enforce their terms without negotiation.

  Mrs Webb, staying in the country with like-minded friends, all of them as with many on the Left still licking their wounds after Lloyd George’s manipulation of the general election, wrote in her diary when hearing of the scuttling: ‘We are all so disgusted with the Peace that we have ceased to discuss it – one tries to banish it from one’s mind as an unclean thing that will be swept away by common consent when the world is once again sane.’125 She added: ‘The Germans will sink other things besides their fleet before the Allies repent of this
victory: the capitalist system for instance. The Germans have a great game to play with Western civilisation if they choose to play it, if they have the originality and the collective determination to carry it through.’

  On 28 June 1919, five years to the day after the assassinations in Sarajevo, Lloyd George convened a lunch in Paris before the signing of the peace treaty at Versailles. He assembled Law and Lord Robert Cecil, his main coalition partners; his closest confederates from Downing Street and the Garden Suburb, Frances Stevenson, Philip Kerr, Sir William Sutherland (as he had become), J. T. Davies and Law’s right-hand man, Davidson; and his daughter Megan. After lunch, the party drove to Versailles, and Davidson recalled that ‘the last quarter of a mile leading up to the Palace was lined on either side by French cavalry in steel helmets and blue field uniforms, knee to knee.’126 A guard of honour presented arms as the dignitaries reached the entrance; they proceeded up a staircase lined by the Republican Guard in uniforms identical to those worn at Waterloo, ‘of blue cloth with red facings, white buckskin breeches, and wonderful silver helmets with horsehair plumes, each man standing immobile with drawn sword held at the carrier. It was most artistic and very impressive, and must have made the Hun think when his turn came to ascend the stairs.’127

  Other aspects of the spectacle were less impressive. Lloyd George and Law had to elbow their way through the crowd to reach the Hall of Mirrors. At three o’clock the Germans entered, bowed to Clemenceau, and after the French leader had spoken, signed the treaty. Lloyd George then wrote, in his own hand, a letter to the King. The news was telegraphed to London: crowds milled outside Buckingham Palace from late afternoon, and just after 6 p.m. the King and Queen and their children went out on to the central balcony and acknowledged ‘a great demonstration of loyalty’ for forty minutes while a hundred-and-one-gun salute was fired.128