Asquith (65 page)

This was clear notice of the direction in which the King would endeavour to push the Government. But his influence was minor compared with the appalling rate at which men were consumed in France. So long as the Government permitted the generals to engage in frontal attacks on heavily fortified positions, with the frightful losses which were inevitably involved, they left themselves no ultimate alternative to conscription. Asquith saw this, but, supported by Kitchener, he wished to approach the decision in the most gradual way possible. Kitchener’s reasons were associated with the traditions of War Office administration and his own prestige as “ a great poster.” Asquith’s were largely political. Despite the cross currents within the Cabinet, back-bench opinion on the issue divided sharply on party lines; and the Liberals’ allies, the Labour Party and the Irish Nationalists, found compulsory service even more repugnant than they did themselves. Early in August Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, told Asquith that all the trades union leaders were “ hotly against compulsion in any form and will use the whole force of their organisation to fight it inch by inch.” Later the same month Asquith recorded what his own Chief Whip had told him:

Gulland, whom I saw this morning for the first time for weeks, tells me that he gets letters from Liberal chairmen, etc., all over the country denouncing Lloyd George as a lost soul, and some of them predicting that conscription would bring us to the verge, or over the verge of revolution. I have had several interviews with colleagues—Harcourt, Simon, etc.,—all strong in the same sense.
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Whatever Asquith’s supporters at home might say, military developments during August tilted the argument still further in favour of compulsion. At the end of the first week came the failure of the landings at Suvla Bay on the Gallipoli Peninsula. A third precarious bridgehead was established, but contrary to the most confident expectations, General Hamilton, badly served by an elderly but inexperienced corps commander, failed to break through to the high ground which dominated the Narrows. Asquith described this as the worst disappointment of the war. It destroyed the hope of victory by strategic adventure rather than by stubborn slaughter.

Then, on August 20th, after a four-day conference with Joffre and French, Kitchener told the Cabinet that he had been forced to agree to a new Allied offensive in the west. Asquith wrote to the King:

General Joffre is quite determined both on political and military grounds (the main element in the former being the situation in Russia) to take the offensive without delay and on a considerable scale. Sir J. French has agreed with him as to the urgency of such a step from a military point of view. Lord Kitchener while far from sanguine that any substantial military advantage will be achieved is strongly of the opinion that we cannot, without serious and perhaps fatal injury to the alliance, refuse the co-operation which General Joffre invites and expects. The drawbacks and even dangers of the proposed operation were pointed cut with great force by Mr. Churchill and other members of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister and Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Kitchener himself expressed his concurrence in some at any rate of their apprehensions. But after much consideration the Cabinet adopted Lord Kitchener’s view and the necessary steps will be taken.
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The “ necessary steps ” led, for the British, to the Battle of Loos and for the French to the great offensives at Souchez towards Vimy Ridge, and in Champagne. All the assaults were launched on September 25th, and they were effectively over by the early days of October. The gains were negligible, but the casualties were immense. The British lost 60,000 and the French 150,000. Although the Champagne offensive was kept going in some form until November 8th, the campaigns of 1915 were substantially at an end. Throughout the whole year the front had nowhere moved by more than three miles and the gains, such as they were, were mainly in the Germans’ favour. But their casualties were barely two-fifths of those of the Allies.

All this was at least half foreseen by the Cabinet at its gloomy, resigned meeting on August 20th. Certainly the likely manpower consequences of the proposed offensive were in Asquith’s mind. He
faced them only because he saw no other way of avoiding a fatal rupture with the French. But he was perfectly aware that, apart from the appalling human loss, the offensive would force forward the conscription issue in a way that might well lead to the destruction of the Government. It was to be another nine months before the problem was finally disposed of—by the adoption of general compulsion from the age of 18 to 41—and during this period Asquith, advancing slowly and patiently towards the almost inevitable conclusion, managed the component parts of his pre-1915 majority with consummate skill. He lost Sir John Simon from the Government in January, 1916, but he circumnavigated the threatened resignations of Grey, Runciman and McKenna; and, against all the likely odds, he retained the services of Henderson and the Labour junior ministers. He never put himself in the position of being dependent upon Tory votes to carry the policies of the Government through Parliament.

The reverse side of the coin was that he managed his relations with the Unionists on the issue a great deal less skilfully. His old fault of underestimating Bonar Law and overestimating Balfour and Curzon was well to the fore. On August 11th it was decided to set up a special Cabinet Committee on manpower. Bonar Law was absent from that meeting of the Cabinet, but he wrote to Asquith on the following day to express great surprise that “ as the leader of our Party in the House of Commons ” he had been excluded without consultation. Asquith returned a bland reply which made matters a good deal worse. Law’s name had been on the original list, he explained, but when he had discussed this with Curzon they had both thought it rather too long, and had agreed that Law and Simon should be struck off.

Asquith would however now be delighted if Law would serve. But at this stage Law would not. He returned a sulky answer and persisted in his refusal when Asquith tried again.
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The barrier which separated the two men is neatly illustrated by the fact that in this, as in other exchanges between them, all Law’s letters began with a stiff “ Dear Mr. Asquith,” and all Asquith’s with a gracious “ My dear Bonar Law.” It was as much Law’s fault as it was Asquith’s. If he had behaved like an equal the Prime Minister would have been more likely to treat him as one. Instead, despite his supposed tenacity of character, Law showed every sign at this stage of being frightened of Asquith. He avoided interviews with him whenever he could, and when they did occur he often agreed to something which
he had. subsequently to retract by letter. He gave little enough cause for respect but Asquith might have been a wiser Coalition Prime Minister if he had responded to the barrier of incomprehension by deliberately according a special consideration to the leader of the Unionist Party.

He did the reverse of this. Having snubbed Law in August, he proceeded in September to attempt an elaborate bridge-building exercise with Balfour. On the 18th of that month Asquith wrote a long and “ most secret ” letter about compulsory service to the First Lord of the Admiralty:

My mind has been inclining to the view that a joint intervention on your part and mine may be necessary, or at any rate highly expedient. . . .

It is now indisputable that any attempt at the moment to establish compulsion, either military or industrial, would encounter the practically united and passionately vehement opposition of organised Labour. The speech of J. H. Thomas, who is the ablest man and one of the most successful peace-makers among the Trade Union leaders, is very significant.... I need say nothing about the Irish, except that the whole Nationalist party, including the O’Brienites, would fight against the change with all their resources. I come lastly (for I purposely say nothing about the Unionists) to my own, the Liberal Party. I have received during the last few days from the most trusted and representative men of the rank and file a number of apparently spontaneous communications. and all in the sense of resolute and dogged opposition. It is no exaggeration to say that, at this moment, the two most unpopular and distrusted men in the party are Ll. George and W. Churchill. ... I sincerely believe that, great as is my personal authority (I can say so without undue vanity) if I were to announce myself tomorrow a reluctant but whole-hearted convert to Compulsion, I should still have to face the hostility of some of the best, and in the country some of the most powerful elements of the Liberal Party. ... I should be glad to know how far these (general considerations) commend them to your judgment. I have come to think that it is only by our joint efforts that a bridge can be constructed over a yawning and perilous chasm
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This curiously inconclusive letter—what solution was the joint intervention to propound?—was sent to the wrong man. Balfour had neither the authority to impose a policy upon the Unionist Party nor the desire to embroil himself in a problem which was not his own. He was never a man for courageous interference, and there is no record that he returned any substantial answer to the Prime Minister.

By the middle of October Asquith’s personal and political fortunes appeared to have reached a nadir—but it was in fact a false bottom. The offensive in France had subsided into obvious failure. Sir John French had clearly outlived his usefulness as a commander. The memory of the Suvla Bay disappointment was still fresh, and Gallipoli faced the Government with the problem of large forces clinging almost without hope to three precarious beachheads. From there it was unlikely that they could be evacuated without heavy casualties, a serious loss of prestige throughout the East, and bitter quarrels at home. The French who at one moment in September had surprised everyone by offering large reinforcements for this theatre, had subsequently insisted on an expedition to Salonika, in which Asquith had no faith at all. They were supported in this plan, and in subsequent demands for a strengthening of the Salonika force, by important members of the British Cabinet, notably Lloyd George and Carson. On October 12th Carson announced that, in view of the inadequacy of our support for Serbia and his general dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war, he proposed to resign. On October 19th, with the need for immediate conscription brought in as an additional reason, his resignation was made public.

The machinery of government at home was creaking badly, but Asquith’s attempt in late September to set up a new, smaller, and more effective War Council was coldly received by his colleagues. Balfour, always adept at pointing out difficulties, had propounded the simple doctrine of despair that it was the personalities that were the trouble and that unless the leading ministers changed their characters, no administrative change would improve matters. Lloyd George brought this view into sharper focus by saying that nothing would work so long as Kitchener remained at the War Office. As a result the only change that was made was to give the Dardanelles Committee, with its membership of twelve, the name of War Council.

Kitchener’s own abilities, always exaggerated as most members of the Cabinet now believed, were obviously flagging. The system which he had created, by which he acted not only as Secretary of State but also as a generalissimo without a general staff, was clearly a failure. But his reputation with the public still persisted. He remained the greatest of all recruiting sergeants. If he were to go, all lingering hopes of raising enough men by voluntary service would go with him. The Prime Minister’s biggest political problem would become much more acute.

To all these troubles Asquith suddenly found that the most unusual one of ill-health had been added. On October 19th he became seriously unwell during the night. “ I have not spent a day in bed for almost untold years,” he wrote on the 19th, “ nor do I quite know what is the matter with me.” But Margot thought she did. “ I have had an agonising time,” she wrote to Lady Islington on October 26th. “ I never got such a fright in my life. I thought Henry was
absolutely done
. I think he thought so too.” The doctor’s diagnosis, she added, was that “ overwork, hot rooms and no sort of exercise had gripped his liver and driven bad blood all over him.” After the first attack he slept for thirty-six hours. A week later he was substantially well, and by the beginning of November he was back in full harness.

His convalescence was not a restful one. On October 19th came Carson’s resignation and a letter of general complaint from Walter Long. Feeling both amongst the public and in the House of Commons was bad, Long said: “ I have had many representations from quiet loyal men who only want to help to win the war. .. . They say they do not know how things stand or what we are doing.
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On the following day Selborne wrote an equally critical letter, and Lord Robert Cecil, who had joined the Cabinet in July as second Foreign Office Minister, wrote to demand a War Council of three. “ If Queen Victoria was still alive I should suggest that the Crown be asked to nominate this Triumvirate, but as things are I think they would have to be elected by Parliament, or perhaps a H. of C. vote by ballot. I am perfectly certain that unless some step of this kind can be taken, the Ministry will be turned out. . . .
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More serious than this was the view which the Cabinet took at its meeting of October 21st. Crewe reported thus to the King (and in similar terms to Asquith):

This conversation (a criticism of Grey for offering Cyprus to Greece after consultation only with the Prime Minister and Kitchener
¹
) led on without any pre-arranged scheme to a dis
cussion of the conduct of war business and the working of the War Council.