The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (107 page)

Kitchener having joined the Glorious Dead, the K of K myth was strengthened tenfold. Blaming him was impolitic now; the number of those who shared the Dardanelles guilt had been diminished by one. Asquith then had second thoughts about a full disclosure of the documents. Two weeks later Hankey wrote Churchill that the prime minister had resolved not to open the minutes of the War Council on the ground that ministers, fearing that their remarks might be “liable to publication,” would be hesitant to speak out in future meetings, and that “it would be very difficult to resist a pressure to publish proceedings in regard to other aspects of the war which might not be in the public interest.” Winston protested to Asquith that only the council’s archive could show, among other things, “the strong support of the naval project given by you, Grey, Kitchener & A. Balfour” and his own “disclaimer of responsibility if a military disaster occurred through inadequate troops not being sent in time,” which “was not an ordinary incident of discussion, but that I asked formally & at that time that my dissent shd be placed on record.” It was inconceivable to him that the prime minister could not appreciate “that this fact is vy important for a true judgement on the event.” Asquith, replying, repeated the argument that “the public interest” might suffer. To Lloyd George, who had succeeded Kitchener at the War Office, Winston bitterly remonstrated that the promise to release the minutes had been given to the House “after prolonged consideration & with full knowledge both of the facts and of the suitability of the documents for publication at this juncture.” Surely the country had a right to know the role played by the prime minister, “who alone cd have co-ordinated the naval and military action & given to the war-policy of the country the necessary guidance & leadership.” That, of course, was precisely what the prime minister did not want the country to know. His ruling stood. Winston wrote his brother: “The Govt have decided to repudiate their pledge to publish the D’lles papers. My dossier was more than they could face. There will be a row, but there are many good arguments in the public interest against publishing: and many more good arguments in the Government interest!”
²¹⁵

But Parliament was not so easily gulled. There was a tremendous row in the middle of July, when Asquith informed the House that “the presentation of these papers must be postponed,” that his commitment to release them “cannot for the moment… be fulfilled” because it would entail “omissions so numerous and so important that the papers actually presented would be incomplete and misleading.” Carson led the attack on this position, and he had great support; Bonar Law’s assurance had been given, not to Churchill, but to the entire House, and the MPs’ curiosity was immense. Lloyd George proposed that a secret committee of MPs investigate the Turkish campaign. Asquith accepted the compromise. He announced the appointment of a select commission, comprising eight distinguished Englishmen headed by Lord Cromer, “to inquire into the conduct of the Dardanelles operations.” This Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Dardanelles did not satisfy Churchill. He told the House that it was a poor substitute for opening the books, “as was originally intended and promised by the Prime Minister, in the name of the Government.” But at least it would not be a whitewash. Cromer couldn’t be bought. And Winston would be allowed to testify and submit evidence.
²¹⁶

Churchill in the summer of 1916

The commission’s hearings opened on August 17. Winston devoted five months to his defense. “I am hopeful that the truth may be published,” he wrote Seely. “But failure & tragedy are all that are left to divide.” It was hard to reconstruct the past, key evidence was unavailable to him, he had to skirt the issue of Kitchener’s incompetence, and since the commissioners included a field marshal, an admiral, and a captain, it was difficult to criticize the conduct of officers in the strait and on Gallipoli. In one of his appearances, on September 28, he declared that the facts proved five points: there had been full authority for the assault, a reasonable chance of success, “all possible care and forethought exercised” in preparing for the attacks, “vigour and determination” in the execution, and no compromise of military interests elsewhere. “Everything I hear about the D’lles Commission encourages me,” he wrote Sinclair at the end of November. “The interim report cannot now be long delayed and I have good hopes that there will be a fair judgement. I sh’d like to have it out as soon as possible. But the days slip away.”
²¹⁷

They were slipping away from Asquith, too. Less than a week later he was maneuvered into resigning, undone by Lloyd George and widespread Tory dissatisfaction with his conduct of affairs. George had finally made it. On December 7, 1916, he “set out,” in Winston’s words, “upon his march as High Constable of the British Empire,” with Balfour moving from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office and Bonar Law becoming chancellor of the Exchequer, leader of the House, and the government’s second in command. Since most of the Liberal ministers, offended by George’s coup, had resigned with Asquith, the old Welsh radical’s government was dominated by Conservatives. There was no place in it for Churchill. He had assumed there would be. But he was still widely regarded as a discredited adventurer. The
World,
a weekly journal which carried a popular column on politics, had commented on November 14: “Mr Churchill, in his frantic effort to reinstate himself in public esteem, is enlisting the support of some powerful newspaper interest…. But if a serious attempt is being made to foist Winston once more on the British public the matter would assume a different aspect…. Winston Churchill is responsible for the
opéra bouffe
Antwerp expedition which made the British nation ridiculous in the eyes of the world…. He was responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles expedition which ranks with Walcheren as one of the greatest military disasters of our time.”
^*
There was still a spark of defiance in Lloyd George. He toyed with the idea of appointing Churchill and then bent to the storm. In his memoirs he recalled asking Bonar Law, “Is he more dangerous
for
you than when he is
against
you?” Law answered: “I would rather have him against us every time.” A colleague had drawn up a list of possible ministers. Churchill was not on it. George wrote in the margin: “? Air Winston.” But there was still no air ministry and he did not create one. The last blow to Churchill’s chances of office came on December 7, when four members of the new cabinet—Lord Curzon, Lord Robert Cecil, Austen Chamberlain, and Walter Long—told Lloyd George that they would serve only on the condition that Churchill be excluded.
²¹⁸

The Lloyd George Winston had once known would have bridled at a Tory veto. He didn’t now, but at the time Churchill knew of neither the challenge nor the submission to it. Discussing the political future with Scott of the
Guardian,
he had said, according to Scott’s account, that “Lloyd George, ‘with all his faults,’ was the only possible alternative Prime Minister. I asked if in case George formed a ministry he could count on being included. He said he thought so—that George would desire it and that it would be in his interest.” In fact, he believed he would be offered a choice of posts. All things considered, he rather preferred a return to the Admiralty. The brutal fact that he would have nothing was revealed to him after a dinner in F. E. Smith’s Belgravia house. The new prime minister was there; the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the makeup of the new government. Incredibly, Lloyd George had suggested that Churchill be invited. Winston naturally took this to mean that he would be offered a seat on the Treasury Bench. Early in the conversation the guest of honor was summoned to Buckingham Palace. He asked Max Aitken to join him for the taxi ride. In the cab, George said that there would be no office for Winston and, Aitken later wrote, “asked me to convey a hint of this on my return to the party…. He thought Churchill too confident of high office in the new regime. It would be better if Churchill were dashed a bit at first.” Back at the table Aitken found the unsuspecting Winston in a jovial mood. Choosing his words carefully, Aitken said: “The new Government will be very well disposed towards you. All your friends will be there. You will have a great field of common action with them.” Aitken’s account continues: “Something in the very restraint of my language carried conviction to Churchill’s mind. He suddenly felt he had been duped by his invitation to the dinner, and he blazed: ‘Smith, this man knows that I am not to be included in the new Government.’ ” According to Aitken, an “almost ludicrous” scene followed: “Churchill changed from complete optimism to violent anger and depression. He abused me most violently, and when I got tired of it and replied in kind he picked up his hat and coat and, without even putting them on, dashed into the street. Smith ran out after him and tried to calm him, but in vain.” In the morning Winston telephoned to apologize. “It was really quite unnecessary on his part,” Aitken wrote. “It is impossible to feel hurt at anything Churchill says in this vein, for he is always so willing to take as good as he gives, and makes no complaint about the counter-blow.” Aitken himself was feeling resentful, but for another reason. He, too, had hoped for office. Instead, the new prime minister offered him a peerage. He reluctantly agreed. Thus he became—and spent the rest of his life regretting it—Lord Beaverbrook.
²¹⁹

Reconciled, Churchill wrote Sinclair: “It will be odd now on the direct opposition Bench with all the furious ex Ministers arriving. I expect they will be vy anxious to be civil to me. But I intend to sit in the corner seat in a kind of isolation.” He seemed puzzled at being passed over. Clementine’s shrewd eye saw the transformation in Lloyd George, however. “At one time he abused the Dukes to please the working-men,” she wrote. “Now he has abused the working-men to please the soldiers.” He had deposed Asquith by insisting that he would prosecute the war more vigorously, providing the generals with everything they needed. This tactic had been effective because the politicians and the press, to keep civilian morale at fever pitch, had glorified the military hierarchy, endowing it with an almost ecclesiastical aura. After the appalling Somme and Verdun casualty lists, the sensible move for the Allies would have been the pursuit of a negotiated peace. Lord Lansdowne recommended just that. A meaningful victory, he suggested in a cabinet memorandum, was clearly impossible. He asked: “Can we afford to go on paying the same sort of price for the same sort of gains?” Haig, responding, assessed the outlook for 1917 as “excellent.” Robertson wrote: “Quite frankly, and at the same time respectfully, I can only say that I am surprised that the question should be asked. The idea had not before entered my head that any member of His Majesty’s Government has a doubt on the matter.” Lloyd George called Lansdowne’s letter “a terrible paper.”
^*
220

What made this gifted statesman climb into bed with Douglas Haig and Wully Robertson? There is only one possible explanation. He had been twisted by his yearning for power. He profoundly disagreed with Robertson’s western strategy, but he had been unable to change it because of the ennoblement of the general staff by an adoring country. Privately he said that the War Office kept “three sets of figures, one to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself.” He also said: “If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t—and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship wouldn’t pass the truth. The thing is horrible, and beyond human nature to bear, and I feel I can’t go on any longer with the bloody business.” But of course he did go on, as men in high office always have, justifying themselves to themselves, by making little adjustments in their reasoning. Haig held him in contempt. When he heard that Lloyd George had asked Foch’s opinion of British strategy, he said tightly: “I could not have believed that a British minister could have been so ungentlemanly.” Later, when 1917 had become even madder than 1916, he wrote in his diary: “L.G. is feeling that his position as P.M. is shaky and means to try and vindicate his conduct of the war”—as though it had been Lloyd George’s, not Haig’s and Robertson’s—“in the eyes of the public and try to put the people against the soldiers.” He added a patronizing note: “Quite a nice little man when one had him alone, but I should think most unreliable.” Robertson agreed. He wrote of George: “I can’t believe that a man such as he is can remain for long head of any government. Surely
some
honesty and truth are required.”
²²¹

Churchill, who could have been invaluable to his old colleague when the 1917 campaign was being planned, remained in purgatory. But the end of his personal martyrdom was in sight. In January the Royal Commission of Inquiry issued an interim report. Its only criticism of Churchill was that he had been “carried away by his sanguine temperament and his firm belief in the success of the operation which he had advocated.” The heavy losers were Asquith and Kitchener. Asquith was faulted for failing to keep his colleagues informed and for “the atmosphere of vagueness and want of precision which seem to have characterized the proceedings of the War Council.” Kitchener’s failure to consult his general staff, the commissioners concluded, had created “confusion and want of efficiency,” and his delays in sending troops—delays Winston had protested at the time—had been ruinous. Three months later the commission’s final report disposed of all accusations against Churchill. He had always acted with the full support of his naval advisers, it found, and had been blameless of any “incorrect” behavior. In the commissioners’ view his plans had been right; others had been responsible for the flaws of execution. Asquith was again condemned, even more severely. Winston was not completely satisfied—the findings, he said, omitted “proof that when we stopped the naval operations the Turks had only three rounds of ammunition”—but he thought they were “at any rate an instalment of fair play” and he told the House that the commissioners had “swept away directly, or by implication, many serious and reckless charges which have passed… throughout the land during the long months of the last two years.” By telling their “long, tangled, complicated story,” they had relieved him of the burdens “which have been thrown on me and under which I have greatly suffered.” Now “the current of public opinion and the weight of popular displeasure” which had been “directed upon me” could recede.
²²²

They didn’t; not yet. He had been cleared in the House, but acquittal in the public’s view was another matter. Hatred of Churchill, like the later hatred of Franklin Roosevelt, satisfied the emotional needs of too many people. As a politician Lloyd George had to reckon with their feelings. He thought he understood one reason for their distrust of Winston. “Here is the explanation,” he later wrote. Churchill’s “mind was a powerful machine, but there lay hidden in its material or make-up some obscure defect which prevented it from always running true. They could not tell what it was. When the mechanism went wrong, its very power made the action disastrous, not only to himself but to the causes in which he was engaged and the men with whom he was co-operating…. He had in their opinion revealed some tragic flaw in the metal.” Such people ignored the commission’s report, or discounted it, or found him objectionable for other reasons. No. 10 extended no invitation to him through the remainder of April and May. It was June 18 before Lloyd George summoned him, and then it was to say that he would “try” to get him back the duchy of Lancaster. Winston felt insulted. He declined it on the spot. Frances Stevenson, a reliable guide to George’s moods, described Winston as “very sulky” when the two men met at a Guildhall function, and noted in her diary that everyone “remarked how surly he was looking.”
²²³

But the prime minister could no longer dismiss him from his thoughts. Churchill cut a different figure in the House now. Vindicated in the eyes of Parliament, he was once again heard with respect, and, Bonar Law’s views to the contrary, Churchill against you was formidable. The
Nation,
which refused to join in the press choir deifying the military hierarchy, had prepared a series of articles demonstrating how the British had been outmaneuvered by an enemy tactical withdrawal. The first piece had already appeared in London and was being widely reprinted in Germany. The general staff demanded that the rest of the series be suppressed. Lloyd George did it, defended the action in a highly emotional speech, and then left the floor as Winston rose to reply—an exit Winston noted with biting wit. The
Nation
’s disclosures were “absolutely immaterial and innocent,” Churchill said; they made “mild reading compared with the Dardanelles Report from the point of view of public confidence.” Gagging editors would only bring “a universal harmonious chorus of adulation from morning to night about whatever was done, until some frightful disaster took place.” The prime minister’s move demonstrated “an undue love of the assertion of arbitrary power.” In George’s absence, Winston asked Bonar Law to consider the uneasiness of the House. Law interrupted to say that that would be reflected in parliamentary votes—the weakest of replies. Churchill sprang: “Do not look for quarrels, do not make them; make it easy for every party, every force in this country, to give you its aid and support, and remove barriers and obstructions and misunderstandings that tend to be superficial and apparent divergence among men whose aim is all directed to our common object of victory, on which all our futures depend.” It was the government’s duty to treat Opposition concern “fairly and justly”—not to answer with “the kind of rhetoric or argument which might do very well on public platforms but is entirely unsuitable to the cool discussion in the House of Commons.”
²²⁴