The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (85 page)

In time all these would be avenged. Von Hipper would be intercepted on his next sortie and so badly mauled that he would never reappear on the high seas. Von Spee and his entire squadron would be sunk in the waters off the Falkland Islands. An Australian cruiser would annihilate the
Emden.
Only the U-boats would venture to take the offensive after that, and while their toll was spectacular, their torpedoing of American merchantmen trading with England would eventually bring the United States into the war. But in late 1914 all that lay in the future. The Admiralty’s initial defeats shocked Britons. They had thought their navy invincible. The shelling of their coast, the threat to transports bringing Indian troops back to fight in France, the sinking of their proud warships, evoked cries of pain and anger. Inevitably the Admiralty’s first lord, the most visible member of the government, paid a price for his flamboyance.

The lord mayors of Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough demanded coastal artillery and dreadnoughts anchored off their beaches. The Indian government telegraphed that Madras must be protected. The
Morning Post
found that “grave doubt is expressed on every hand” about Churchill’s competence: “In the War Office we have a soldier in whom the Army and the nation have confidence. In the Admiralty, upon the other hand, there is a First Lord who is a civilian, and cannot be expected to have any grasp of the principles and practice of naval warfare.” Thomas Bowles, a former Tory MP, published a pamphlet charging that the three cruisers had been lost off the Netherlands “because, despite the warnings of admirals, commodores and captains, Mr Churchill refused, until it was too late, to recall them from a patrol so carried on as to make them certain to fall victims to the torpedoes of an active enemy.” The House was hostile; when he triumphantly announced the naval fliers’ air raids on Germany, he was castigated for violating Swiss airspace. “What’s the Navy doing?” hecklers cried, and he could not reply without jeopardizing missions and men. “In spite of being accustomed to years of abuse,” he later wrote, “I could not but feel the adverse and hostile currents that flowed about me.”
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Some flowed very close. Lloyd George told his secretary and mistress, Frances Stevenson, who kept a diary, “Churchill is too busy trying to get a flashy success to attend to the real business of the Admiralty. Churchill blames Admiral Cradock for the defeat in South America—the Admiral presumably having gone down with his ship & so unable to clear himself. This is characteristic of Churchill.” Asquith wrote the King that the Cabinet felt the naval losses were “not creditable.” The King, who already regarded Churchill as unreliable and irresponsible, was disgusted with his Liverpool speech. After the loss of the three cruisers, His Majesty’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, wrote: “Indeed seeing what alas! happened today when the rats came out of their own accord and to our cost, the threat was unfortunate and the King feels it was hardly dignified for a Cabinet Minister.” Even Kitchener, usually steadfast, despaired during one cabinet meeting, saying that a German invasion was not only possible, but that England would not be able to stop it. Churchill challenged him to have the brightest experts in the War Office pick any British beach, any day, and work out the logistics of landing 150,000 men. The Admiralty would then show how they could hurl those men back into the sea.
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Nevertheless, someone’s head had to roll. It was scapegoating time again, and the choice of the victim reflects ill upon all who participated in his undoing. Since the outbreak of the war the first sea lord had been the target of a vicious witch-hunt. The press had hounded him, and every minister had been inundated with anonymous letters questioning his loyalty. Lord Charles Beresford, Fisher’s bête noire, told the House that while Prince Louis was an “exceedingly able officer,” nothing could alter the fact that he was a German, had German servants, owned property in Germany, “and as such should not be occupying his present position.” Churchill warned Beresford not to repeat those remarks: “The interests of the country do not permit the spreading of such wicked allegations by an officer of your rank, even though retired.” Violet Asquith wrote that her father’s reaction to the smear campaign was one of “disgust.” That is not the impression left by his letters to Venetia Stanley, however. He wrote her that he was not, “entre nous, very trustful of the capacity of Prince Louis.” Then: “Our poor blue-eyed German will have to go.” And then: “He
must
go.”
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He went. Churchill told the King that the attacks on the first sea lord’s “name and parentage” had subjected Louis to an intolerable strain: “The exacting duties and heavy responsibilities of his office have no doubt affected his general health and nerves, so that for the good of the service a change has become necessary.” Back at the Admiralty, he wrote Louis that he and Asquith agreed that “a letter from you to me indicating that you felt in some respects yr usefulness was impaired & that patriotic considerations wh at this junction must be supreme in yr mind wd be the best form of giving effect to yr decision. To this letter I wd on behalf of the Govt write an answer.” There was more of this, all of it lamentable. He closed: “No incident in my public life has caused me so much sorrow.” Their parting interview may have caused him more. The prince had just learned that his young cousin, Maurice, a grandson of Queen Victoria and an infantry lieutenant, had been killed in France. With great dignity the grieving father said that “as a loyal subject of His Majesty” he was leaving “the great service to which I have devoted my life” to ease “the burden laid on His Majesty’s Ministers.” Thus Louis Alexander of Battenberg, GCB, GCVO, KCMB, PC, was evicted from office on shabby charges of disloyalty to which a Liberal government capitulated. At the King’s request Louis changed his name to Mountbatten. One day his younger son, Dickie, then fourteen, would vindicate him.
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The question of his successor was a momentous one. Haldane had written Churchill that if Lord Fisher were returned to active duty, it would “make our country feel that our old spirit of the Navy was alive and come back.” Violet Asquith had “not a shadow of doubt that Winston would wish to appoint Lord Fisher…. There was a magnetic mutual attraction between these two and they could not keep away from one another for long.” The old salt had been bombarding Churchill with advice, sometimes on profound matters, sometimes on trivia: “Why is standard of recruits raised 3 inches to 5 feet 6?… What d——d folly to discard supreme enthusiasm because it’s under 5 feet 6.
We are a wonderful nation!
astounding how we muddle through! There’s only one explanation—We are the lost 10 Tribes!” He was now seventy-four. On his frequent visits to the Admiralty, Winston, in his words, “watched him narrowly to judge his physical strength and mental alertness” and had “the impression of a terrific engine of mental and physical power burning and throbbing in that aged frame.” He sounded him out “and soon saw he was fiercely eager to lay his grasp on power.” No one else would do, Winston told Asquith. When the prime minister agreed, the first lord was elated. Violet, seeing him immediately afterward, said: “No one knows his weather better than you do—and you are no doubt prepared for squalls ahead.” Winston said: “I know him—and I know that I can manage him.”
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The difficulty was that Fisher felt the same way about Churchill. And there were doubters even then. Clementine was apprehensive; she was afraid the old admiral would be “like the curate’s egg.” Beatty wrote his wife: “The situation is curious; two very strong and clever men, one old, wily, and of vast experience, one young, self-assertive… but unstable.” Aitken believed that Churchill had “co-opted Fisher to relieve the pressure against himself,” but had no “intention of letting anyone else rule the roost.” He foresaw a duel between a first lord and a first sea lord “both bent on an autocracy.” Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss predicted: “They will be thick as thieves at first until they differ on some subject, probably as to who is to be Number 1, when they will begin to intrigue against each other.” The most determined opponent of the appointment was George V. The “Sailor King” had served fifteen years before the mast, and he distrusted Jacky Fisher. He summoned Churchill to Buckingham Palace, where, according to Stamfordham’s account of their conversation, the King said that Winston’s choice was “a great surprise.” His Majesty thought that “Lord Fisher has not the confidence of the Navy; he is over 73 years of age. When First Sea Lord… he created a state of unrest and bad feeling among the officers of the service.” Churchill replied that no other admiral was fit for the job. The King ended the audience by saying that he could not approve until he had seen Asquith. Stamfordham bore the sovereign’s message to No. 10: “The proposed appointment would give a shock to the Navy which no one could wish to cause in the middle of this great War.” Lord Fisher, the royal message continued, had become aged; he talked and wrote a great deal, but his opinions changed “from day to day.” Asquith himself was troubled by Fisher’s “strangely un-English” face, with its “twisted mouth” and round eyes, “suggesting the legend (which I believe quite untrue) that he had a Cingalese mother,” but he replied that he supported Churchill’s decision. The King, having done all a constitutional monarch could do, signed the appointment but wrote the prime minister: “I do so with some reluctance and misgivings.”
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He then sent for the appointee. Churchill had coached Fisher carefully. The meeting lasted an hour, and afterward the King wrote in his diary: “He seems as young as ever.” The two agreed to meet once a week. Winston wrote Asquith and Grey that the old admiral “is already a Court Favourite.” The choice seemed inspired. It was immensely popular with the country. Since the old admiral usually awoke at 4:00
A.M.,
between them he and Churchill could keep an almost unsleeping watch at the Admiralty. Winston loved Fisher’s wit, his contempt for pomp, his devotion to the service. He wrote him: “Contact with you is like ozone to me.” To Clementine he wrote: “Tomorrow old Fisher comes down to the yacht with me. This always has a salutary effect.” Certainly Fisher’s energy was astounding. He wrote a friend: “Thanks for your dear letter! Isn’t it fun being back? Some d——d fools thought I was dead and buried! I am busy getting even with some of them! I did 22 hours work yesterday but 2 hours sleep not enough so I shall slow down!
SECRET
. The King said to Winston (I suppose dissuading) that the job would kill me. Winston was perfectly lovely in his instant reply: ‘Sir, I cannot imagine a more glorious death’! Wasn’t that delicious? But burn please!” He wrote Jellicoe: “Let everyone be optimistic, and shoot the
pessimists!”
To Beatty he said: “It’s not numbers that tell, but
GUNNERY
!
Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery!
All else is twaddle. Hit the target!”
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At the outset the first sea lord’s relationship with the first lord was as Wemyss had predicted: superb. In Churchill’s words, “As long as the port and starboard lights shone together all went well.” The old man proposed a daring plan to force an entry into the Baltic Sea and secure command of it, cutting Germany off from its Scandinavian supplies and freeing Russian troops for an amphibious assault on Berlin. Winston, with his love of adventure, was delighted. He authorized the building of landing craft. Then he questioned Fisher about details. Before the Baltic could be entered, the Elbe River must be blocked. How could this be done? Could British warships enter the Baltic while Tirpitz’s fleet was free to sortie from the Kiel Canal and attack the ships left behind in Scapa Flow? How could the Baltic islands be seized while barring the Elbe? The admiral was vague; clearly he hadn’t thought it through. Slowly Churchill began to realize that the King had been right, that the aged first sea lord “was very old. In all matters where naval fighting was concerned he was more than usually cautious. He could not bear the idea of risking ships in battle.” Winston had trapped himself. Fisher was his man, confirmed despite the protests of, among others, the sovereign. If the old salt turned on him, Churchill would be alone. And they were bound to find themselves on a collision course eventually, for Winston believed in taking chances—“It is not right to condemn operations of war simply because they involve risk and uncertainty,” he told the cabinet—while his first sea lord, so audacious in conversation and letters, was transformed into an archconservative when the prospect of action loomed. “He settled,” Churchill wrote bleakly, “upon a doctrine widely inculcated among our senior naval officers, that the Navy’s task was to keep open our communications, blockade those of the enemy, and to wait for the Armies to do their proper job.”
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B
ut the armies were not doing their proper job. The assumption had been that Belgium would be the battleground. That was the gist of the War Office summary Winston had sent Clementine on August 9. Three days later
Punch
had run its first wartime cartoon, showing a brave little Belgian boy in wooden shoes barring the way to a fat German trespasser, with the caption “No Thoroughfare!” Heavy casualties had not been expected. When Winston learned that his young cousin Norman Leslie had been killed in action he thought it bad luck. Even in South Africa death had come to relatively few. He had no way of knowing that fifteen thousand British soldiers had fallen in five days—and that their losses had been light compared to those of the French. On the morning of August 24, three weeks after Germany had declared war on France, he looked up from his desk and saw Kitchener standing in the doorway. K of K’s face was peculiar. Winston had “the subconscious feeling that it was distorted and discoloured as if it had been punched with a fist. His eyes rolled more than ever.” Wordlessly he held out a telegram from the commander of the BEF, Sir John French. The Belgian fortress of Namur had fallen to the enemy. At the time this was considered a disaster. Namur was fifty-seven miles from the German frontier and the gateway to France. Neither Kitchener nor Churchill could have envisioned what lay ahead: a further BEF retreat of 157 miles, putting the Tommies just outside the suburbs of Paris before they rallied. To cheer up the war minister, Winston took him to the Other Club and proposed, after dinner, his intention to break the club rule forbidding any toast but that to the King; with a flourish he raised his glass to “success to the British arms.” He beamed at Kitchener, who drank but still looked pummeled.
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