The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (76 page)

Nonetheless, he had set a questionable example. In addition, he had again offended the left, whose powerful ally he had been at the Board of Trade. Masterman charged Churchill with “whiff-of-grapeshot” tactics, even with a “longing for blood.” Labour MP Ramsay MacDonald called the mobilization “diabolical” and went on: “This is not a mediaeval state, and it is not Russia. It is not even Germany…. If the Home Secretary had just a little bit more knowledge of how to handle masses of men in these critical times, if he had a somewhat better instinct of what civil liberty does mean… we should have had much less difficulty during the last four or five days in facing and finally settling the problem.” One observer concluded that Churchill’s “reputation with organized labour suffered a severe blow.” Even the
Manchester Guardian,
until now Winston’s warmest admirer in the press, was outraged when, despite the absence of any request from the lord mayor, troops appeared and occupied Manchester’s railroad stations.
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The speed with which Churchill’s reforms were forgotten is puzzling. It is almost as though the radicals had felt uncomfortable with him in their midst. Henceforth he would be regarded as a conservative. He had always felt ties to the past, and there is an inevitable connection between a public man’s performance and the psychic baggage which is his unshakable companion. But the politicians of the left had pushed him rightward, just as the Tories had pushed him in the opposite direction seven years earlier. His own view was evocative of Robert E. Lee’s: “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another.” Essentially Churchill was unaltered. It was England which had shifted direction. The awakening of the working class, which he himself had stirred, had altered the political climate. In Victoria’s reign, or even during her son’s early years on the throne, workmen would never have conspired to bring the country to its knees over a union issue. But neither would a chancellor have imposed a supertax on the rich, nor a party have humiliated the peers. Social stability was wobbly, and civility diminished. The easy cordiality which had marked the rivalry between Joe Chamberlain and young Winston would soon be a rarity. Enemies were implacable. Friendships became exhausted, reservoirs of goodwill drained, public men used up. The disturbances of 1910–1911 had damaged Churchill’s credibility in the Home Office, and Asquith decided to shake up his cabinet. The rift within the Liberal-Labour coalition over the use of force in industrial disputes was one reason. The other lay in Europe. The kaiser, so welcome at Edward’s funeral, had been behaving outrageously. Germany was now regarded as a menace to the long European peace.

C
hurchill had met the kaiser on September 8, 1906, when he was still undersecretary at the Colonial Office. He had sought an invitation to the German army’s military maneuvers that year in Silesia, and as a member of Britain’s ruling class he was welcome. Count von der Schulenberg, military attaché at the emperor’s London embassy, informed him that an officer would meet his train in Breslau; he would stay at the Hofmarschallamt as the personal guest of
Seine Majestät.
Winston didn’t speak a word of German—“I’ll never learn the beastly language,” he growled, “until the Kaiser marches on London”—but like most upper-class Britons of the time, he assumed that every civilized man knew English.
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His chief problem was finding an appropriate uniform. Von der Schulenberg had specified levee dress for a state dinner, and he hadn’t any. He thought he could borrow the leopard skin and plume of the Oxfordshire Hussars from his brother, but Jack had turned the skin into a hearthrug six years earlier. Finally Sunny rooted around in Blenheim’s attic and found his.

Winston witnessed the kaiser’s “entry into the city of Breslau at the beginning of the manoeuvres. He rode his magnificent horse at the head of a squadron of cuirassiers, wearing their white uniform and eagle-crested helmet… surrounded by Kings and Princes while his legions defiled before him in what seemed to be an endless procession.” On September 14 Churchill wrote Elgin from Vienna: “I had about 20 minutes talk with H.I.M. at the Parade dinner. He was vy friendly & is certainly a most fascinating personality.” They had bantered over a recent issue. Rebellious natives in German Southwest Africa had recently fled into the Cape Colony; German police had crossed the frontier in hot pursuit, and the kaiser, Churchill told Elgin, “was pleased to be sarcastic about ‘his design of flying across the deserts to seize Cape Town’ wh he suggested we attributed to him; & he said that if a native rising took place all over S.A. ‘those people (in Cape Town) would be vy glad of my troops.’ He enlarged on the fighting qualities of the Hereros, & I said in reply that in Natal on the contrary our chief difficulty had not been to kill the rebellious natives, but to prevent our Colonists (
who so thoroughly understood native war
) from killing too many of them.” Still, Winston had been impressed by the “massive simplicity & force” of the Prussian military machine. He told his aunt Leonie: “I am very thankful there is a sea between that army and England.”
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Wilhelm remembered him, and was aware of the Churchills’ prestige in England. Over a year later, in December 1907, Jennie wrote Winston that the kaiser, meeting Leonie at a Clarence House luncheon, “asked a great deal after me & said he remembered me in Berlin with R[andolph]. He also spoke of you.” In the summer of 1909, with his reputation growing, Churchill was asked to return to Germany for another visit. He wrote his mother: “The German Emperor has invited me to the Manoeuvres as his guest, and I am to be at Wurzburg, in Franconia, on the 14th of September.” He wrote Clementine that the kaiser, who appeared “vy sallow—but otherwise looks quite well,” was “vy friendly—‘My dear Winston’ & so on.” His imperial host warned him “to guard against ‘disagreements on party politics’ & chaffed about ‘Socialists’ in a good-humoured way.” Winston was treated as an exalted guest: “I have a vy nice horse from the Emperor’s stables, & am able to ride about wherever I choose with a suitable retinue. As I am supposed to be an ‘Excellency’ I get a vy good place.”
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Churchill and Kaiser Wilhelm at German maneuvers in 1909

He was troubled by the Teutonic character: “These people are so amazingly
routinière
that anything at least [sic] out of the ordinary—anything they have not considered officially and for months—upsets them dreadfully…. With us there are so many shades. Here it is all black & white (the Prussian colours). I think another 50 years will see a wiser & gentler world. But we shall not be spectators of it. Only the P.K. will glitter in a happier scene.” This time he was even more awed by the kaiser’s martial juggernaut. He described it as “a terrible engine. It marches sometimes 35 miles in a day. It is in number as the sands of the sea—& with all the modern conveniences…. How easily men could make things better than they are—if they only all tried together! Much as war attracts me & fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations—I feel more deeply every year—& can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms—what vile & wicked folly & barbarism it all is.” He treasured his family all the more: “Sweet cat—I kiss your vision as it rises before my mind. Your dear heart throbs often in my own. God bless you darling & keep you safe & sound. Kiss the P.K. for me all over. With fondest love—W.”
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Back in England he once more persuaded himself that war between the two empires was unthinkable; it would be too ghastly; no sane authority could countenance it. He counseled the new King to take a conciliatory line, writing him on May 13, 1911, “Mr Churchill thinks that Your Majesty’s references on Tuesday next to the German Emperor will be very warmly welcomed by the Peace party in the country, & will do a lot of good to public sentiment here & in Germany.”
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Then, less than seven weeks later, came Churchill’s greatest volte-face, transforming him from a dove into a hawk. It was triggered that July by the incident at Agadir, an obscure port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

The Germans had been late entrants in the race for colonies, and by the time they reached Africa all the prizes were gone. After the Tangier incident in 1905, Germany and France had agreed that neither would annex Morocco, but unrest there spread into French Algeria, and French troops, in another hot pursuit, crossed over onto Moroccan soil. The kaiser, on the advice of his aggressive foreign minister, decided to make an issue of it. He dispatched a gunboat, the
Panther,
to Agadir. Wilhelm expected the French to grab Morocco, which they did, and had no intention of contesting it; his goal was acquisition of a bargaining chip which would win him concessions in the Congo. He got them, but the arrival of the
Panther
on July 1, 1911, was destined to set off a murderous chain reaction. While Paris and Berlin were haggling, the Italians took advantage of the diversion by invading Tripoli. Tripoli was part of the Turks’ Ottoman Empire. Discontented nationalities in the Balkans decided that if Italy could take on the Turks, so could they. The immediate results were the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, followed by the rise of Serbia, Austria-Hungary’s fear of a strong Serbia, and Russia’s alliance with the Serbs, a consequence of the czar’s determination to preserve his credibility in the Balkans. Russia’s growing military presence in the region threatened Austria-Hungary and Germany, Austria-Hungary’s powerful ally. The kaiser liked his cousin in Saint Petersburg, but he believed that if he ever allowed him time to mobilize and arm Russia’s countless millions, they would be unbeatable. Therefore he began to contemplate pre-emptive war. Meanwhile, all the great European powers, engaging in a deadly quadrille, rearmed at a furious pace.

These sequelae were unrevealed to the Britons of 1911. No man, not even the wisest statesman, can see across the horizon, and in the barbarous 1980s the appearance of a small warship in an African harbor does not seem provocative. But it was then. Diplomacy was different in the years before 1914. A studied insult, even an unanswered note, could make governments tremble. The display of naked force—the
Panther
—had been shocking. It simply was not done. By doing it, the Germans changed a lot of minds, among them that of Lloyd George. Obviously, George told Churchill, Berlin believed that London would never intervene, whatever the kaiser did. He said, “People think that because I was pro-Boer I am anti-war in general, and that I should faint at the mention of a cannon.” He meant to correct that impression at once, and he did, in the chancellor’s annual address to the City bankers at the Mansion House. He said: “If a situation were forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure.” The German ambassador, who had described George as a pacifist, was recalled in disgrace.
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Churchill was also reappraising his position. His opposition to the Admiralty’s dreadnought program had been based upon his faith in Germany’s good intentions. Now, in an undated memorandum on Home Office stationery, he set down his thoughts. “Germany’s action at Agadir,” he wrote, “has put her in the wrong & forced us to consider her claims in the light of her policy & methods.” He believed that England must give France diplomatic support. “If no settlement is reached between F. & G. & deadlock results we must secure Brit interests independently…. If Germany makes war on France in the course of the discussion or deadlock (unless F. has meanwhile after full warning from us taken unjustifiable ground) we shd join with France. Germany should be told this now.” Asquith appointed him to the cabinet’s Committee of Imperial Defence, formed in 1904. There Sir Edward Grey revealed his 1906 pledge to defend France. On August 30 Winston wrote Grey that if “decisive action” became necessary, Britain should join France and Russia in “a triple alliance,” guarantee Belgium’s frontiers, “aid Belgium to defend Antwerp,” and plan “a blockade of the Rhine.”
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