CHAPTER 3
Hector Tarbox marched down Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square his face set against the cold March wind which cut through his long black woollen overcoat so much so that he regretted that he had not caught a cab from his office in the Houses of Parliament. Tarbox turned into Great Scotland Yard and spoke for a few moments to a man on crutches wearing the blue Army uniform of a wounded soldier. As he continued his journey Tarbox wondered if the war, “Over by Christmas” everyone had said in August 1914, would endure beyond this year into 1919, he shuddered at that thought. Tarbox entered Northumberland Avenue and quickly crossed the road and stopped in front of the Portland Stone building facing him. He reset his bowler hat before steadily mounting the granite steps and entering the entrance hall of the India Office.
‘Good morning, I have a meeting with Lord Surridge.’ Tarbox said to the porter.
The man looked at a piece of paper attached to a wooden board, which said, “The Right Honourable H Tarbox.” The porter added to himself ‘Member of Parliament’ and moved with a speed not normally associated with him. ‘If you come with me I’ll take you up to his Lordship straight away.’
‘Come in, Mr Tarbox,’ Lord Surridge, the Secretary of State for India, stood up and stretched across his desk a long, thin and bony hand. Tarbox’s firm grasp made Surridge visibly wince a reaction Tarbox pretended not to notice. ‘Please won’t you sit?’
‘Thank you for seeing me so quickly. I know how busy Government Ministers are,’ Tarbox replied.
‘My dear Mr Tarbox,’ Surridge looked at him across his half spectacles and said, ‘it is our duty to discuss matters of State with Members of Parliament, particularly if they happen to belong to the Prime Minister’s Liberal Party.’
Tarbox bowed his head in response. ‘I’ll come straight to the point. I am here to discuss an invasion threat to India that I and a few of my colleagues have been discussing informally in the House of Parliament. I want to know what His Majesty’s Government intends to do about it. ’
Surridge said, ‘what? I know nothing about this. Mr Grimes, my top civil servant, should hear this. Will you wait until my secretary fetches him?’
‘Of course,’ said Tarbox and as he disliked silence, he was after all a politician, he felt small talk was in order, ‘I wonder what the spring will bring on the Western Front and what impact the Americans will have. I wish in some ways that we did not have to rely on them.’ Surridge gazed at Tarbox a blank expression on his face, which Tarbox ignored as he added, ‘I saw a battalion of them in Winchester the other week and not one of them was less than five foot ten.’
‘Really,’ replied Surridge and as he opened his mouth to say something he saw his office door open, ‘ah, Grimes, come in.’
Grimes after being introduced to Tarbox sat beside him opposite Surridge.
‘I thought you should be here, Grimes, Mr Tarbox has comments about an invasion of India.’
‘What invasion?’ Grimes looked shocked.
Tarbox leaned forward. ‘Well actually it is a threat of, rather than an actual, invasion. All those German and Austrian prisoners of war in Turkestan could easily become an invasion army.’
‘I don’t follow you at all, Mr. Tarbox,’ said Grimes after glancing at Lord Surridge who batted his eyelids in wonderment at what Tarbox had said.
‘There are, according to my sources, something like 300,000 German and Austrian Prisoners of War (POWs) in Russian Turkestan. That gentleman is an army. An army, which can and will threaten India, mark my words,’ Tarbox sat back.
‘Can I ask how you know this?’ Surridge leant forward, put his elbows on his desk, his chin on his cupped hands and gazed at Tarbox.
‘We have our sources in the House, Lord Surridge.’ Tarbox looked wary.
‘You have told us the how many prisoners there are but not why you think it they are a threat to India,’ Grimes ventured.
‘My dear Grimes. First, the POWs are enemy soldiers. Second, this peace treaty Russia signed at Brest-Litovsk will free all POWs and naturally they will return to the colours. Third, despite the treaty’s terms I have no faith that the German army will stop where it is now. I understand that the German Army is continuing its invasion of the Ukraine on the look-out for food.’ Tarbox paused for effect, ‘then no doubt the Germans will continue: into the Caucuses; across the Caspian Sea; into Western Turkestan where they can be joined by these released prisoners from Eastern Turkestan. The obvious target then for the Germans is India.’ Tarbox waved his arms as though the invasion was a fait accompli.
‘I agree the Germans may continue with their invasion of Russia but it is a long way to India from where they are now. I am guessing it must be nearly two thousand miles at least. Then how easily can these POWs become fighting soldiers again?’ Grimes added with a shrug, ‘some of them would have been captured, perhaps three or more years ago and may no longer be any good.’
‘Quite right, Grimes, good soldiers are killed in battle.’ Surridge said with feeling.
Tarbox wondered how could anybody sitting in an office, warmed by a roaring fire, in London miles from action could have the impunity to question the courage or otherwise of soldiers. ‘Wellington, Napoleon and Julius Caesar might dispute that Lord Surridge,’ he said trying to keep sarcasm out of his voice.
Surridge flushed when he replied, ‘point taken.’
Grimes eager to defuse the tension between the other two men interjected quickly, ‘when I said “good” I meant that prisoners’ rations are usually poor so they would be undernourished and not very fit. It would take them some time to get back to fighting trim. We know that not all the Austro-Hungarians would continue to side with the Germans anyway, Mr. Tarbox. The Czechs POWs, for example, when they return from Russia are committed to fighting for Czech independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.’
‘That is as maybe, Mr. Grimes. But I believe it also true that Hungarian, Austrian and German prisoners are joining and fighting for the Bolsheviks,’ Tarbox responded.
‘Do you now think that the Bolsheviks will also invade India?’ Surridge said.
Tarbox thought for a moment, ‘possibly, let me remind you both about something. For fifty years or more the Russians were our sworn enemies in Asia. It was only because we signed that defence agreement with the French in 1905 that their allies, the Russians, became ours by default in 1907. And Mr. Grimes do you not agree, that Turkestan is the closest part of the Russian Empire to British India and it would be an ideal springboard for an invasion.’
‘Yes, Mr. Tarbox it is a possibility,’ Grimes conceded that point pursing his lips.
Tarbox was on his soapbox now. ‘We know that the Germans have been sending agents through Persia and China to stir up trouble in India since 1914. Let me finish, Grimes let me finish,’ he held up his hands at the Civil Servant, ‘now with what we know about Russia and their known foreign policy before 1907 it would take very little for them to do an about face again and threaten India.’ Tarbox sat back in the chair pleased.
‘The Great Game, Mr. Tarbox, is what you are referring to,’ mused Grimes.
‘Yes, the Great Game, Mr Grimes, the nineteenth century’s ongoing saga.’
‘My dear Tarbox,’ said Surridge reflectively from the depths of his chair and stroking his chin with forefinger and thumb before wagging his forefinger at Tarbox. ‘First, we seemed to have moved from a German to a Russian invasion.’
Tarbox shifted uncomfortably in his seat and interrupted, ‘they could combine together. That’s a possibility. The Germans and Russians have been allies in the past.’ He looked at Grimes for support but received no body language indicator one way or another.
Surridge continued, ‘the second thing I was going to say, before your knowledgeable interruption, was that there was always the school of thought that the Great Game never really existed. That school thought it existed merely in the minds of those who wished to expand their fiefdoms beyond the British Empire’s boundaries for their own grati
fication or glorification. The Great Game gave Indian Army officers a chance to go off exploring places where they shouldn’t have gone in an effort to avoid soldiering. “The Great Game” myth sold an awful lot of newspapers in the last century because we needed a bogeyman. It was scaremongering of the worst kind.’ Surridge, a Conservative politician actually had always believed that the Great Game had existed but Tarbox was a political antagonist and had to be opposed at all costs.
‘I am not sure your colleague, Lord Ballard, would agree with that statement, Lord Surridge,’ said Tarbox with a smile to which Surridge reciprocated.
‘Yes, George Ballard is a forward policy man. I think he believes the Empire should stretch from the Arctic to the Antarctic Oceans,’ Surridge said sarcastically.
‘Wouldn’t be a bad idea, my lord,’ supposed Grimes.
‘Oh yes, and who would pay for it all? You Grimes? Mr. Tarbox here?’ Surridge said deliberately sounding exasperated, which he hoped would hint to Tarbox that this silly meeting should end.
‘There’s the gun cotton to consider as well,’ remembered Tarbox suddenly out loud.
‘Gun cotton? What gun cotton?’ Surridge stirred in his chair and looked positively interested in the meeting for the first time.
‘There was a report in the Times about a load of cotton in Russian Turkestan that the Germans want to buy,’ Grimes said.
‘Yes, according to a report I have, there’s about twenty to forty thousand tons of the stuff,’ added Tarbox, ‘that could make an awful lot of explosives.’
‘Have I seen this report, Grimes?’
‘Page 5 my lord.’ Surridge picked up his copy of the ‘Thunderer’ and rummaged through it till he found the report. ‘A four line report. That can’t and doesn’t say much.’ Surridge looked annoyed at Grimes before he read, ‘it mentions the prisoners,’ he looked at Tarbox and nodded, ‘and the cotton.’
‘Yes, but that is not where I first heard about them.’ Tarbox shifted uncomfortably in his seat and wondered if he should tell Surridge that his source was an American friend. The American had recently been in China, and had heard the information from a member of his country’s embassy, in Peking.
Surridge threw the paper on his desk, ‘has Robbins up in Kashgar said anything about this, Grimes? Has he sent us a report? How did the Times get hold of this?’ Surridge read the piece again.
‘Robbins’ last report told us that there seemed to be complete turmoil in Turkestan – murder, theft and rape being perpetrated by not only these Bolos but by bandits, the local tribes and the anti-Revolutionary Whites. He was not sure just who is in charge in Tashkent.’ Grimes threw his hands up, ‘how the Times got the information we could find out, should I do that?’
‘No, don’t bother.’
‘Actually I think the cotton is more important than the soldiers in the short-term and that is really why I came to see you, Lord Surridge. The Germans could not invade India for months but the cotton could be in Germany in a few weeks. I got my secretary to check with the Board of Trade yesterday.’ He pulled out a piece of paper and read from it. ‘The Germans imported over three hundred thousand tons of cotton in 1913 mainly from the United States, three-quarters of the cotton was estimated to go on ammunition manufacture and the like. They got, it is estimated, only about fifty thousand tons in 1916 via neutral countries like Holland, Norway and Sweden. If a machine gun fires for three minutes it uses one bale of cotton as does one of our battleships when it fires a 15 inch shell. A bale of cotton weighs about 500 pounds so you can see why cotton is important.’
‘Think what price our soldiers will pay,’ Grimes uttered frowning.
Tarbox waved his forefinger in the air as he added quickly, ‘now we already know the Germans are after grain and other materials from the Ukraine. If the Germans buy the Turkestan cotton then all they have to do is get it to the Caspian Sea using the railway through Turkistan. Then, it is a short hop over the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan or some other Russian port under German control and then by rail from there into Germany. If the Germans can succeed in doing that then they defeat our blockade of their western ports. They defeat our blockade then who knows what?’ Tarbox shrugged his shoulders.
‘The Americans will be here before that happens, Mr Tarbox, surely,’ said Grimes looking to Surridge for support.
‘I hope you are right, Grimes, because they seem to be taking their time about things.’ The timbre of Surridge’s voice then changed to firmness. ‘The presence of German and Austrian prisoners in Russian Turkestan and the general upheaval in Russia is worrying yet I cannot see how they can threaten India.’ After a moment’s pause for reflection he added with feeling, ‘your point about breaking the cotton blockade, Mr Tarbox, is potentially a very explosive issue.’
Tarbox looked at Surridge and tried to determine whether the latter had intentionally made the joke – no Surridge was incapable of that. Time to reveal the real reason why he was here, ‘I have an idea what we should do, Lord Surridge,’
Surridge was intrigued, ‘and what is that, Mr Tarbox?’
‘We do not know what is happening in Russia or, what their intentions are towards India. I believe it is time to revive the sort of thing we used to do in the last century. We need to send agents into Russian Turkestan to find out what is going on.’ Tarbox sat back in his chair and looked at the other two.
The man’s read too many spy stories, thought Surridge. There is a war on with thousands dying every day and this idiot wants to send someone on a wild goose chase. Surridge composed himself and then spoke, ‘the whole question of Russia is so complex. We cannot afford to go off half cock and alienate the Bolsheviks and drive them fully into the arms of the Germans - if they are not there already. We need a co-ordinated policy because we need to be sure that what we are doing reflects the overall policy of His Majesty’s Government. We will take your idea seriously, Mr Tarbox, but I will have to talk first to my opposite numbers at the Foreign Office and the War Office.’ Surridge got up from his chair, ‘now I am afraid that I have appointment with the Prime Minister if you will excuse me.’
‘Of course,’ said Tarbox not sure whether he believed him but the tone of the man’s voice was clear. He stood and after bidding both of them, ‘good day,’ he quickly left the room.
‘Well Grimes, what did you think of our Mr Tarbox?’
‘He seemed well informed as I would expect a Member of Parliament to be.’ Grimes replied cautiously.
‘You mean he has read the morning papers,' snorted Surridge. ‘I am not sure about his statement that we in the “House” have our sources. When did Tarbox make the appointment to see me?’
‘Yesterday morning,’ said Grime.
‘Oh before this snippet of news was even in the Times - very interesting. He might be right about a mission. Perhaps sending some agents out there may be useful. What do you think?’
‘Just sending a couple of our chaps won’t cost much.’
‘I like that thought. Tarbox is a Member of Parliament so we ought to be seen to be taking some action otherwise he might say something we don’t like in the House. We ought to ask the Foreign Office to tell us more about what’s going on in Russia otherwise we will be doing one thing and them another. I’ll send the Foreign Secretary a note to that effect.’
There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Streetham, Surridge’s secretary, entered the room and handed him an envelope. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Lord Surridge. This has just come from the War Office and as it is marked “Urgent” I thought you might want to see it straight away.’
‘Thank you Mrs. Streetham. Don’t go for a moment, Grimes,’ as the latter made to follow Mrs Streetham from the room.
Lord Surridge’s face changed from impassivity to fury as read the note and when he had finished it he handed it without a word to Grimes. Grimes read it quickly and looked at Surridge in amazement
‘They cannot be serious they just can’t.’
‘I do not believe it ei
ther. If the War Office brings this up at the Eastern Committee meeting,’ he waved the note. ‘I’ll stonewall them until we have got our own thoughts organised. So you know what that means?’
‘You would like me to prepare a report based on what we know so far, draft proposals, plan of action, likely risks.’
‘Yes, we can refine it later if after the meeting. Now please send in Mrs Streetham again, will you, there’s a good fellow? ‘
‘Do you think Tarbox knew about the War Office’s note?’
Surridge stared at Grimes for a moment, ‘no, I do not see how.’
Grimes about to leave again hesitated, ‘I’ve just had a thought, Simla. Don’t you think they should get to know of this sooner rather than later? We don’t want them hearing about this from the War Office because we would look incompetent and slack if that happened.’
Surridge sat thinking, ‘I had better find out just how far the War Office has got with this,’ he waved the note. ‘They are unlikely to have told India anything yet. Get your draft to me by close of play tonight.’
‘What time are you expecting that to be, my Lord?’
‘I think I will have to be working really late,’ he paused looked at the time, glanced at the pile of papers on his desk; thought for a moment which did not fool Grimes for an instant, ‘probably half past six.’
The Cotton Spies Page 4
