The English Army, with General Henry Wilson as spokesman, rejected Churchill’s document as “that silly memorandum” and called it publicly an “utterly amateur legend.” The Army’s jealous indifference to this opinion from a civilian brain of the first order was only typical of the professional military attitude before any war. Despite the fact that generals and admirals are trained at the public expense and presumed to be competent, most wars begin with a series of blunders, disasters, setbacks, and stupidities, such as Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, and the rest.
Embarrassingly enough for the British generals and admirals, including Harry Wilson, Churchill was soon elevated right over their heads, after which he began to issue documents marked “Orders.” The astute Asquith invited the Home Secretary on a trip to Scotland, where they played some extremely questionable golf. While Churchill was carrying out a program of excavation in a sand trap, Asquith, up above, inquired, “Did you ever hear the word, Weltpolitik?” He had touched a raw wound. Churchill had heard of, and nearly assimilated, “Agricola in horto est,” but he had got little further in a linguistic way. At a recent party he had jokingly said that he intended to learn German when the Kaiser’s legions hit the beach at Dover. As he stalled for time, Asquith went on to explain the bristling German dream — the Weltpolitik of the Kaiser and Lebensraum of that latter Brahman, Adolf Hitler: the dream of “living space,” of a world-spanning chain of colonies wherein the flaxen-haired clods of Bavaria and the swarthy street gamins of Hamburg could stretch and grow, spreading the national neurosis.
Churchill expressed himself as being alive to this problem, and Asquith changed the subject. “Would you be interested in taking over the Admiralty?” he inquired. Churchill’s answer, which came with great rapidity, was, “Indeed I would.”
“We have only the Navy,” said Asquith. “It is our only hope.”
In an unheard-of move, Churchill and Reginald McKenna, then head of the Admiralty, exchanged ministries. This was doubly peculiar in that, two years before, the two had quarreled bitterly in Commons, McKenna advocating larger Naval Estimates and Churchill, the pacifist, opposing them.
Now the fighting pacifist had disappeared. Churchill embarked on a pugnacious reshuffling of the Admiralty that had the majority of high naval brass sulking in their tents. After the start of hostilities, he cajoled out of retirement a brilliant and balky sailor, Lord Fisher, who was regarded by about half the Navy as being a ripe candidate for observation. It was well known that he favored all manner of new ideas, including absurd notions about faster ships and bigger guns, and he had never shown the least respect for seniority. This had given him a standing in the British Navy, as it would in any navy, roughly equivalent to that of a leper at a 4-H conference.
Fisher was just the man for Churchill, whose ideas also had never conformed to the popular pattern. The two arranged a meeting at Fisher’s home in Reigate, where they mapped out strategy. The retired admiral finally agreed to become First Sea Lord, which means second in command in the British Admiralty. (The minister himself is known as the “First Lord.”) Then Churchill made some unpopular promotions, lifting Admiral Sir John Jellicoe up to command the Home Fleet, by-passing many senior officers, and naming as Naval Secretary to the First Lord, David Beatty, a young rear admiral whose talents Churchill had appreciated ever since the Battle of Omdurman, when Beatty, aboard one of the gunboats, had tossed him a bottle of spare champagne.
With Fisher’s tacit approval, Churchill flew in the face of public opinion and ordered 15-inch guns, instead of the usual 13.5-inch ones, for all his new battleships. It was a decision of grave responsibility, since, if they failed, the fleet would be impotent. A heart-rending cry arose from many naval people. But Churchill bulled right ahead, and when the war began, his ships could outfire anything the Germans had to offer, and often did.
Even amidst these martial omens, he took brief time out for other considerations. His espousal of the Home Rule for Ireland Bill (whereby the destiny of the northern Protestant counties of Ulster would be decided by Ireland rather than by Britain) was so vigorous that Ronald McNeill, an Ulsterman, arose in Commons, wound up, took careful aim, and scored a direct hit on Churchill’s nose with a copy of the Parliamentary Rules and Etiquette. Criticism of McNeill was outspoken; it was felt that he could have selected a more fitting volume. However, his apology was so handsome that, later, Churchill made him his chief financial assistant at the Treasury. Leo Amery, the former Harrovian, jumped on Churchill in the House for deploying the fleet near Ireland at a time of high feeling. He wished to know if this “would lead to bloodshed and fighting.” Momentarily forgetting Amery’s onetime role as editor of the Harrovian, Churchill leapt up and denounced “this hellish suggestion.” In the words of the historian Ephesian, the minister “is at once called to order by the Speaker, and, for the second time only on the fourteen years in Parliament, has to withdraw an offensive epithet.”
Churchill’s name was mentioned peripherally in connection with a financial scandal of the time. It brought charges that Lloyd George and the Attorney General Rufus Isaacs, had used secret government information to speculate in shares of the Marconi Company. Asked to give evidence, Churchill impatiently arrived in what has been described as “his most characteristically Napoleonic manner” and complained that he had been wrenched away from vital work at the Admiralty to testify in connection with “the merest unsupported tittle-tattle.” He denied any knowledge of the transactions and sought to establish Lloyd George’s reputation by saying that “hardly a day passes in Parliament when we do not converse on current topics for at least half an hour.”
One of the questioners, a Mr. Birrell, commented only that “Neither of you can be very easily bored.”
As the events of Europe marched in inevitable succession toward conflict, Churchill continued his efforts to build a supreme Navy. He created the first “Fast Division” of battleships, a variation of which was still widely used in the Second World War, and he brought about a greatly disputed changeover from coal to oil fuel in the fleet. This led to Britain’s purchase of a controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which Churchill has lately seen frittered away by a fully socialized England. In 1913 and 1914 he introduced the largest Naval Estimates ever given to Parliament, saying in an accompanying speech, “Unless our Naval strength were solidly, amply, and unswervingly maintained, the Government could not feel that they were doing their duty to the country.” In the early summer of 1914, he called off the usual maneuvers and announced instead a “practice mobilization.” His decision again displayed prescience of an almost mystical quality. The fleet concentrated at Spithead on July 17. On June 28 the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated by students of his vassal state of Serbia. A month later, on July 29, Austria-Hungary marched on Serbia, Russia backed up the tiny Slavic country, Germany mobilized, and Europe was at war.
Chapter 19
THE HISTORY of Winston Churchill in the First World War is divided into about equal parts of tragedy and comedy. On the whole, it makes remarkable reading. Perhaps never before had such a whirlwind of human energy been loosed upon a wartime government. The Admiralty was groggy within a week, and it did not shake its head entirely clear until ten months later, when he was rather summarily removed. In that time, he had effected changes, embraced new conceptions, and followed lines of enterprise that revolutionized the British Navy and nearly brought the war to a close in 1915.
But at the crucial moment, as often happens, things hung delicately in the balance and then went wrong altogether. To use Churchill’s old refrain — one of his happiest inspirations — “Everyone threw the blame on me.” This blame — for the entrapment at Antwerp and, more importantly, for the fiasco of the Dardanelles — pursued and harried him for years, crippling his career, establishing him as a national butt, and depriving his country of his uniquely valuable services. A lesser man would doubtless have wilted beneath the hot blasts of slander and accusation. Churc
hill, untroubled, did his best within the limits so harshly imposed upon him.
In the beginning, he and the recalled Lord Fisher were in warm agreement, exchanging letters, notes, and memos at a brisk clip. Fisher’s, for reasons best known to himself, were ended with picturesque inventions that included, “Yours till charcoal sprouts,” “Yours till Hell freezes,” and “Yours till battleships fly.” Ice had scarcely started to form on the fringes of hell before the two men were to part in anger, but the temperature remained steady in the opening weeks. Anti-Conservative historians are apt to dismiss Churchill’s contributions to this period. In a quick round of inspections, he traveled aboard the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, flew in the several rickety and frowned-upon aircraft owned by the Navy, and made land trips to the European front. His first unpopular (and then loudly applauded) decision had been completed on August 1, three days before Britain’s formal declaration of war. In the face of a Cabinet veto, without the King’s signature, wholly illegally, he ordered full mobilization of the Navy, calling out the total naval reserve strength of the nation. Because of this audacious act, the fleet was ready to fight when the war began, one of the few times on record when a defending Navy has been even halfway prepared.
Churchill took a fancy to his aircraft and set in motion the development of an air arm. He and Fisher hammered it through, between them laying the foundations for the present Royal Air Force, and Churchill continued his agitations for Air in succeeding posts. His new “hobby,” as Prime Minister Asquith acidly termed it, was a heavy bane to his associates, who were kept busy declining invitations to ride with him. It was Churchill’s pleasure to take to the skies with some junior officer and then pre-empt the controls. He persuaded one young friend to go up in a three-seater. The passenger arrived a little late, with apologies. “Where have you been?” growled Churchill. “Making my will,” said the man cheerfully. Some time afterward, when he had won the Victoria Cross, he explained that he had not actually been afraid of Churchill but had thought it only tidy to put his affairs in order.
The War Office, too, was becoming interested in airplanes, but Churchill’s relentless drive overshadowed everything. In the memoirs of Sir Sefton Brancker, who was then Deputy Director of Military Aeronautics and later became Air Vice-Marshal (and died in 1930 in the crash of the dirigible R 101) is found a description of the situation: “Immediately after mobilization,” he wrote, “I went over to the Admiralty and had a talk with my opposite number, Murray Sueter, about the allocation of available contractors, aircraft and engines. He was prepared to draw up as clear a line of delimitation as possible between the trade activities of the two departments ...
“I endeavored to cooperate thoroughly with him and I think that he was anxious to meet the wishes of the War Office in every way possible: but he was not his own master, for the vigorous and enthusiastic personality of Mr. Winston Churchill had come into play. He believed in aviation. Even at that time he had realized the enormous possibilities of the attack on hostile territory by an independent air force, and had grasped the necessity of some central control over all aeronautical matters. But the Admiralty conceived that this control should be vested in the Admiralty, with the independent force part and parcel of the Navy, his particular responsibility at the moment; and to this end he worked assiduously during the last months of 1914.
“The first sign of this policy was his sudden announcement that the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps had become the Royal Naval Air Service — this without any reason or warning being given to the War Office.”
Churchill’s hungry bites at the air potential became so voracious that Lord Kitchener, his old nemesis, lately made a field marshal and called to head the War Office, reluctantly asked him to undertake the Aerial Home Defense. On the theory that the best defense is a good offense, Churchill directed his aircraft to proceed to Europe and win the war. There began a series of rash and unlikely operations that are still mentioned with awe in the British military.
The planes flew first to Cologne and Friedrichshafen, where, to the stunned astonishment of the Kaiser and his generals, they beat to a pulp the German airship sheds. Then the pilots turned their attention to Zeebrugge and the submarine bases. Even the War Office monitors, not necessarily inclined to be friendly, reported that the attacks were “sound and justified.” From this start, Churchill branched out fast. Kitchener had only to mutter something about a “diversionary gesture” at Dunkirk before Churchill was in full stride with his notorious marine “Circus.” Unluckily for Kitchener, the word was of his own selection; Churchill interpreted it literally. On August 27, three weeks after the start of the war, Commander Samson landed in France with some naval troop units — marines and yeomen — several double-decker buses that Churchill had ordered covered with iron plating, and a few of the growing squadron of airplanes. The activities of this joyous band undoubtedly represented the most bizarre excursion of the war. To begin with, they traveled so fast that the Germans could never get anywhere near them. According to one observer, they were “here, there and everywhere terrorizing marauding Uhlans and inspiring French Territorials.” The force looked much like a group of wildly celebrating fans returning from a successful football match. In Churchill’s view, a circus was aimed to make noise; his units rode while singing, shouting at the top of their lungs, and heaving beer bottles into the streets. Their impudence had such scope that they once dispatched a telegram to one of the Allied armies in the neighborhood, asking details of its movements, as they wished to “co-operate.” A British Army officer of the period wistfully commented in a meeting that the Navy, heretofore, had always been known as “the Silent Service.”
Churchill often went over and joined his repertory company, and had a grand time. And as he did so, Prime Minister Asquith, who had to run the Admiralty in the interim, grew increasingly peevish. He finally ordered the Circus disbanded, and the wandering minister returned to take up other matters.
Churchill may unequivocally be described as the father of the tank. It was due solely to his farsightedness that the tank came into being as a weapon of modern warfare. One night he had sat long at his desk, thinking about the armor that the crafty Hannibal had used on elephants. A few others had since made tentative suggestions for a protected vehicle of attack. Churchill went somewhat further, blandly earmarking $350,- 000 for the production of eighteen “landships.” When the news got about, it was transposed into a huge joke, known as “Winston’s folly.” And when the foolish Churchill gave up the Admiralty to Arthur Balfour, the latter quickly canceled the tank order though not in time to prevent one machine from going through. On September 15, 1916, it and (by courtesy of a belatedly convinced War Office) forty-eight of its brothers took the field in the Battle of Thiepval. The Germans threw down their guns and fled, and warfare underwent another lasting alteration, comparable to the effect of the Merrimac and the Monitor in the American Civil War. About the only person to give Churchill the proper credit was General Ludendorff, who said in his memoirs that he had sought an armistice because of “enemy tanks in unexpectedly large numbers.”
Very little resulted from Churchill’s Steam Troop Crusher or from his personal shield. He had suggested, as an alternative to humans going over the top and suffering casualties, a gigantic iron roller which would grind its way into enemy trenches and chew up all the personnel they contained. He had bright visions of riding to Berlin and victory over roads of flattened-out troops, and of a war ended mechanically. The effect of his improvisation on the War Office was something less than genial. “Stark, staring mad” was the general feeling, and the device was noisily pigeonholed. “I remained impenitent and unconvinced,” Churchill wrote afterward. There was a similar reaction to his urging of individual shields for the soldiers. Despite his dual lack of success, a good many reputable officers now think the ideas sound; eventually they may come to pass.
The word “tank” was about the only new military term of these years that Churchill did not coi
n. From his fertile pen there sprang such staples of our present vocabulary as “seaplane,” “flight” (of airplanes), and “fog of war.” All his directives were models of painstaking composition, as if the writer meant to put them to use later, but he would tolerate nothing but brevity from his associates. “Winston made us all write what we had to say on one side only of one piece of paper,” one of them said lately. “He would call up and ask for information, but he wanted just the skeleton facts. He filled out the rest from his extraordinary understanding.” A number of people who know Churchill feel quite frankly that, with his usual farsightedness, he took special care in keeping his documents because he knew he would compose a history of the war and sell it. And sure enough, when the smoke rolled away, there appeared his monumental The World Crisis, a very controversial work, in four volumes. They hasten to point out that there is nothing shabby about this procedure; military leaders from Caesar on have presented accounts of their stewardship, and the public, discounting school children, has always benefited.
There began to be some doubt, even in the minds of the principals, as to whether Churchill or Asquith was Prime Minister. In his passion for management, Churchill often reached across ministerial lines, and his repeated trips, such as the ones to the Circus, left Asquith in frequent charge of the Admiralty. A cooling-off process was noted in their relations. It was not retarded by an outing that Churchill had arranged for their families, aboard the Enchantress. He was thunderstruck to find that none of the Asquiths, with particular reference to the head of the Government, planned to spend several days listening to a monologue by Churchill. If anything, the shoe was on the other foot. The First Lord was rendered extremely disgruntled by Asquith’s recital of exhaustive data about every part of the world. Up till then, Churchill had been regarded as the Empire’s premier talker; Asquith put him in the shade aboard the Enchantress. To make matters worse, the Prime Minister steered the group into parlor games that required harkbacks to a college education. There were mentions of Greek, and even Latin, a language that the Churchill family had tacitly agreed was dead beyond any hope of resurrection. When Asquith took to improvising Greek verses, Churchill took to refreshment. He suffered terribly while his learned guest paraded his erudition. “No one could write down in a five-minute period more generals beginning with L or poets beginning with T,” said biographer Rene Kraus of the loquacious Asquith. Altogether, the ordeal on the Enchantress proved so strenuous that Churchill was a little suspicious of his boss from that point onward.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 26
