Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  fn1 Learning that a reshuffling of diplomatic posts was in the offing, Isvolsky sent an aide to St. Petersburg to discover which embassy he might get. The results of this secret inquiry were to be wired back to Copenhagen in code: if the posting was to be Italy, the agent was to write “Macaroni”; if Berlin, “Sauerkraut.” Once in St. Petersburg, the aide learned that his master was to become Foreign Minister. The telegram to Isvolsky read: “CAVIAR.”

  fn2 To Lady Fisher, Fisher insisted that he himself “wasn’t actually sick”25 but remained in his cabin because of a “horrible sick headache.” Nevertheless, he admitted, “I look with horror to the trip back across the North Sea and would like to come back by train....”

  Chapter 33

  The Navy Scare of 1909

  On December 8, 1908, at the Monday-morning meeting of the British Cabinet, Reginald McKenna, who had replaced Lord Tweedmouth as First Lord of the Admiralty, gave his fellow ministers a nasty shock. The navy, McKenna declared, would ask for six new dreadnoughts in the Estimates he would present to Parliament in March; the ministers had expected him to ask for four. Further, in addition to these six, another six would be needed in 1910 and a third six in 1911. He based this request on alarming information he had received about the accelerated building program of the German Fleet. Two prominent ministers, David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Winston Churchill, President of the Board of Trade, adamantly opposed anything more than four dreadnoughts. McKenna and the Sea Lords, led by Fisher, insisted that, unless six ships were authorized, they would not remain in office. The Navy Scare, which gripped Parliament, press, and country in the winter and spring of 1909, was under way.

  At the center of this battle lay the Liberal Party’s election pledge to spend less money on armaments and more on social reform. Liberal M.P.’s saw dreadnoughts as a horrid form of profligacy; battleships represented staggering sums of money wasted on floating mountains of steel. In 1907, 136 M.P.’s had petitioned Campbell-Bannerman to reduce spending on armaments; in 1908 a similar petition was signed by 144 M.P.’s. The government and Admiralty had obliged by sacrificing ships. Before leaving office in December 1905, Lord Cawdor, the Unionist First Lord, had issued a memorandum to guide British dreadnought building: “Strategic requirements1 necessitate the building of four armored ships a year.... The period of building is two years, therefore eight ships will be building at any given time.” Within weeks of taking power, the Liberals swung the axe: one dreadnought of the Bellerophon class was cut from the 1906 Estimates. In 1907, the cut was repeated and one dreadnought was lopped from the Collingwood class. In 1908, the four-ship program was cut to two. By July 1908, Great Britain had twelve dreadnoughts, instead of sixteen, built, building, or authorized by Parliament.fn1

  Asquith, who replaced Campbell-Bannerman in April 1908, was content with this slowing tempo in dreadnought building. Indeed, he wondered if it had slowed enough. “As you know,”2 he wrote to McKenna in July, “I have for a long time been growing skeptical... as to the whole dreadnought policy. I don’t want to press you, but as you have now surveyed the whole situation from the inside, I should be very glad to know if you have come to any conclusion of your own as to the lines upon which construction ought to proceed for the next few years. There is much money in it—and more than money.” The Prime Minister was dismayed five months later when his First Lord proposed that the navy be given, not two new dreadnoughts as in the 1908 budget, not four as recommended in the Cawdor Memorandum, but six.

  McKenna’s argument was based on the German building program. The Keel of the first German dreadnought, Nassau, had been laid in July 1906. In the summer of 1907, within a few weeks of one another, three additional German dreadnoughts, Westfalen, Posen, and Rheinland, each similar in most characteristics to the first eight British dreadnought battleships, had been laid down. The German 1907 program also included the first German dreadnought battle cruiser, Von der Tann, with its eight eleven-inch guns and twenty-five-knot speed a match for the British Invincible. In 1908, the Reichstag authorized four more German dreadnoughts, the battleships Thüringen, Helgoland, and Ostfriesland, and the battle cruiser Moltke. In 1909, the German Navy Law called for three more battleships and another battle cruiser to be laid down.

  Within two years, beginning in the summer of 1907, Germany had laid down or ordered nine dreadnoughts. Beginning in 1905, Great Britain had ordered twelve dreadnoughts over four years. If the British and German programs for 1909 each included four new ships, then in 1912, when all these ships were completed, Germany would possess thirteen dreadnoughts and Britain sixteen. This did not seem to McKenna and the Sea Lords a sufficient margin on which to rest British naval supremacy. It rendered illogical Asquith’s statement that the Two Power Standard, to which he said Britain remained committed, required “a preponderance of ten percent3 over the combined strengths in capital ships of the next two strongest powers.”

  More ominous from McKenna’s viewpoint were Admiralty suspicions that the Germans were accelerating secretly: gathering essential shipbuilding materials, acquiring guns, turrets, and armor well in advance of actually building the hulls. Reports reached London that dreadnought keels were being laid down months before the dates scheduled by the German Navy Law—in advance even of the appropriating votes in the Reichstag. For several years, it had been evident that Germany’s shipbuilding capacity was significantly expanding. By 1908, seven shipyards in the Reich were capable of constructing dreadnoughts.fn2 From keel-laying to launching required an average span of one year. Immediately after the hull was launched and towed to a fitting-out dock for installation of turrets, guns, and propulsion machinery, a new keel could be laid on the building way. Theoretically, the German Navy could begin seven new dreadnoughts every year. In fact, there was a brake on this tempo. The governing factor in rate of dreadnought construction was not the time required to build a hull, but the time needed to manufacture the guns, gun mountings, and armor that transformed a floating hill into a fighting ship. The date of laying down could therefore be delayed without affecting the date of completing a vessel, provided work was proceeding on these more intricate components.

  The making and accumulation of these components was much easier to hide than the laying of a keel and the building of a hull. Naval guns, mountings, and armor for the German Navy were made in the workshops of Krupp of Essen. Krupp, already the largest business enterprise in Europe, was expanding rapidly, from 45,000 workers in 1902 to 100,000 in 1909. There were rumors that Krupp was secretly buying quantities of nickel, a metal essential to the process of hardening steel and therefore integral to the manufacture of guns and armor. It was said that rows of huge naval gun barrels lined the sheds at Essen, awaiting shipment to the naval shipyards.

  Contracts for three German dreadnoughts in the 1909 program were supposed to have actually been placed with shipyards ahead of the dates scheduled by the Navy Law and before the Reichstag had authorized the money to pay for them. If these reports were true, the British Admiralty was being stripped of a guideline for predicting the future size of the German Fleet. The Admiralty had assumed an average building period for German dreadnoughts of three years. Now, it seemed, ships were being laid down ahead of time and constructed more quickly because guns, gun mountings, and armor had been manufactured in advance. The three years might be shrinking to two and a half, or even two, which was the average time Britain allowed for construction of a dreadnought. (England, as the world’s most advanced industrial power, had always been able to build ships faster than any other nation. Even when another power began a ship of advanced design, Britain had always been able to adapt and overtake.) Using the published Navy Law schedules, the dreadnought ratio in 1912 would be 16:13. But if the Germans had laid down early and were accelerating construction, the Admiralty declared, as “a practical certainty”4 Germany would have seventeen dreadnoughts in 1912. And, if the maximum capacity of German shipyards were utilized, the High Seas Fleet could have twenty-one dre
adnoughts in 1912 to pit against Britain’s sixteen.

  McKenna presented these fears to Grey on December 30, 1908:

  My dear Grey:5

  ... The argument... may be summarized as follows: German shipbuilding is in excess of the monetary provision for it made under the Fleet Law and the Estimates.... Hence the terms of the Law are no guide to the dates when the ships will be completed. We are bound therefore to look at the German capacity to build, and we can best judge what they can do by what they are doing.... If by any spurt Germany can once catch us up, we have no longer any such superior building capacity as would ensure our supremacy....

  Four days later, on January 3, 1909, the First Lord wrote to Asquith:

  My dear Prime Minister:6

  ... It seemed to me that an examination of the German Naval Estimates might prove helpful in showing how far Germany is acting secretly and in apparent breach of her Law.... I am anxious to avoid alarmist language, but I cannot resist the following conclusions which it is my duty to submit to you:

  1) Germany is anticipating the shipbuilding program laid down by the law of 1907.

  2) She is doing so secretly.

  3) She will certainly have 13 big ships in commission in the spring of 1911.

  4) She will probably have 21-big ships in commission in the spring of 1912.

  5) German capacity to build dreadnoughts is at this moment equal to ours.

  The last conclusion is the most alarming, and if justified would give the public a rude awakening should it become known.

  This closing shot in McKenna’s letter was shrewdly placed. The First Lord knew that a consummate political animal like Asquith would be influenced by a sense of political risk. Already the country was uneasy, knowing that Germany had laid down four ships in 1908 to Britain’s two. Once McKenna’s worries reached the Unionist M.P.’s and the Unionist press, a howl of alarm would rise up. The First Lord’s recommendations therefore could not—as Asquith might dearly have wished—be ignored.

  On the Liberal side of the House and in the Liberal press, any increase over the planned four dreadnoughts would be strongly opposed. “I will not dwell7 upon the emphatic pledges given by all of us before and at the last General Election to reduce the gigantic expenditure on armaments built up by the recklessness of our predecessors,” Lloyd George wrote to Asquith. “Scores of your most loyal supporters in the House of Commons take these pledges seriously and even a three million pound increase will chill their zeal for the Government... an increase of five to six million will stagger them.” Churchill also did not accept McKenna’s case: “I found the Admiralty’s figures8 exaggerated,” he wrote. “I did not believe the Germans were building dreadnoughts secretly in excess of their published laws.” Germany had a constitution; dreadnoughts could not be built without a vote of money by the Reichstag. If the German Navy was building in secret from England, it was also building in secret from the Reichstag; Churchill thought this unlikely. Thus, he concluded, “I believed four ships sufficient.”

  In January 1909 the Admiralty, instead of paring down from six to four, suddenly asked for two additional dreadnoughts, raising the total requested to eight. On January 3, Lloyd George warned Churchill: “The Admiralty mean to get9 their six dreadnoughts... the Admiralty have had very serious news from their Naval Attaché in Germany since our last Cabinet meeting and... McKenna is now convinced we may have to lay down eight dreadnoughts next year.” He had feared “all along this would happen,” the Chancellor said. The struggle continued through January and most of February. Lloyd George and Churchill, supported by Morley, Burns, and others, wanted four. Grey and Haldane wanted six. McKenna wanted at least six, possibly eight. The Liberal press warned against “Panic-mongers”; Conservative papers attacked “Pacifists,” “Little Englanders,” and “Economaniacs.” Personalities became involved. “What are Winston’s reasons10 for acting as he does in this matter?” asked Knollys, the King’s private secretary. “Of course it cannot be from conviction or principle. The very idea of his having either is enough to make anyone laugh.” Resignations were in the air. “The economists are in a state11 of wild alarm, and Winston and Lloyd George by their combined machinations have got the bulk of the Liberal press into the same camp,” Asquith wrote to Margot on February 20. “They... go about darkly hinting at resignation (which is bluff)... but there are moments when I am disposed summarily to cashier them both.”

  The Cabinet was deadlocked and the Prime Minister faced loss either of his Foreign Secretary and First Lord, or of his Chancellor and Board of Trade President. On February 24, a special meeting was called in Grey’s room at the Foreign Office. The Sea Lords were present. Lloyd George rose from his chair and began to pace the room. When the discussion turned to Krupp’s increased capacity for making gun turrets, the Chancellor burst out, “I think it shows12 extraordinary neglect on the part of the Admiralty that all this should not have been found out before. I don’t think much of any of you admirals.” McKenna, who now violently disliked Lloyd George, held his temper and replied calmly, “You know perfectly well that these facts were communicated to the Cabinet at the time we knew of them, and your remark [then] was, ‘It’s all contractor’s gossip.’”

  There seemed no way out of the impasse, when Asquith suddenly made a proposal which satisfied everyone: the government would ask for four dreadnoughts in the 1909 Estimates, two to be laid down in July and two in November. In addition, it would seek authority to build four additional dreadnoughts to be laid down no later than April 1, 1910, if careful monitoring of the German construction program proved them necessary. The contingent four, as well as the first four, would be completed in 1912, the British “danger year” as seen by the Admiralty. And, if the contingent four were built, this would have no effect on the regular 1910 program, under which it was assumed that still another four dreadnoughts would be ordered.

  Although all in the Cabinet agreed to the four-now, perhaps-four-later compromise, it displeased extremists on either side. Lloyd George and Churchill, realizing that they were outmaneuvered, suddenly expressed willingness to vote for six. It was too late. Meanwhile, McKenna, Fisher, and the Sea Lords worried that they had been tricked and that the six they had demanded and the eight they had hoped for all would vanish in Parliament. “We are placing13 our whole and sole trust in you that these two jugglers [Lloyd George and Churchill] don’t outwit us,” Fisher wrote to McKenna. “There was a certain sweet certainty about ‘six’... which is lacking in a bill with possibly evading phrases capable of being twisted against us, but I’ve no doubt of your seeing to it.” McKenna took the Admiral’s case to Asquith, saying that if the four-plus-four bill “is rejected either in the Commons14 or the Lords, I understood from you yesterday that you would instantly resign.” Asquith replied, “I do not see how15 it is possible for me to say more than that I regard my personal and public honor pledged.... My one predominant desire is to attain the end which we both have in view. I have never before made—as I make to you now—so clear and direct an appeal for trust and confidence.”

  Fisher, fighting for eight, sent to McKenna (who forwarded it to the Prime Minister) a report from an Argentinian naval mission which had just visited the Krupp works and a number of German shipyards. Hoping to attract orders, the Germans had shown their visitors everything. According to Fisher, the visitors were overwhelmed by the size and capacity of the German plant and shipyards. They reported twelve capital ships on the building ways and, at the Krupp plant in Essen, they counted one hundred eleven-inch and twelve-inch barrels nearing completion. The lesson, the First Sea Lord said, was that “nothing less than eight ships16 would do.”

  Asquith adhered to the four-plus-four compromise. McKenna put it before the House of Commons on March 16. When the First Lord rose, members listened intently and for the most part silently. Tea hour came and nobody left. The Prince of Wales sat in the Peers’ Gallery, his head thrust forward to catch every word. Fisher was present, sitting behind the Speaker
’s Chair. McKenna’s speech was blunt: “No matter what the cost,17 the safety of the country must be assured. We do not know, as we thought we did, the rate at which German construction is taking place:” He spelled out the possibilities from the grimmest to the least grim. The House listened, mostly in silence. Balfour followed, then Asquith. Both supported McKenna. When Asquith sat down, the Speaker looked at the House and the House looked at the Speaker and for several minutes no one got up. Nothing further was heard of a motion to reduce the Estimates, made by the 140-member Little Navy group.

  The country, which, like the House, had heard only rumors about the battle going on inside the Cabinet, was stunned by McKenna’s speech. The Liberal press, despairing at the damage increased dreadnought building would do to social programs, took the position that if the four contingent ships were to be laid down, they must be credited against the 1910 naval budget; it was intolerable that Britain might pay for eight dreadnoughts in a single year. But Asquith could manage the Liberals. The real attack on the Estimates came from the Unionists. Before March 16, Conservatives had agreed that six new ships would be enough. Now, facing the threat of possible German acceleration as revealed by the First Lord, Conservatives in the Commons, the Lords, the press, and the country demanded that all eight ships be laid down at once. “We want eight18 and we won’t wait!”, a slogan coined by M.P. George Wyndham, became the battle cry of the Unionist Party. Accusations of incompetence and of abdicating supremacy at sea were flung at the government, at the Admiralty, and at Fisher himself. “Citoyens,19 la patrie est en danger!” declared the Daily Telegraph. “We are not yet prepared to turn the face of every portrait of Nelson to the wall.” The National Review described Fisher as the “reincarnation of Marshal Leboeuf,”20 the French Minister of War who boasted on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War that the French Army was ready to the last gaiter button! When Asquith refused to pledge himself to the immediate building of the four contingent ships, the Daily Telegraph prounced that “since Nero fiddled21 there has never been a spectacle more strange, more lamentable, than the imperilling of the whole priceless heritage of centuries to balance a party budget.” On March 19, Balfour gave notice of a motion of censure: “In the opinion of this House,22 the declared policy of His Majesty’s Government respecting the immediate provision of battleships of the newest type does not sufficiently secure the safety of the Empire.”