Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 Part 3

CHAPTER IV

LORD KITCHENER'S LATER RECORD

The munitions question and the Dardanelles, to be dealt with later -- The Alexandretta project of the winter of 1914-15 -- Such an operation presented little difficulty then -- H.M.S.

_Doris'_ doings -- The scheme abandoned -- I am sent to Paris about the Italian conventions just after the Dardanelles landings -- Concern at the situation after the troops had got ash.o.r.e at h.e.l.les and Anzac -- A talk with Lord K. and Sir E. Grey -- Its consequences -- Lord K. seemed to have lost some of his confidence in his own judgement with regard to operations questions -- The question of the withdrawal of the _Queen Elizabeth_ from the Aegean -- The discussion about it at the Admiralty -- Lord K.'s inability to take some of his colleagues at their own valuation -- Does not know some of their names -- Another officer of distinction gets them mixed up in his mind -- Lord K.'s disappointment at the early failures of the New Army divisions -- His impatience when he wanted anything in a hurry -- My own experiences -- Typists' idiosyncrasies aggravate the trouble -- Lord K. in an unreasonable mood -- His knowledge of French -- His skilful handling of a Portuguese mission -- His readiness to see foreign officers when asked to do so -- How he handled them -- The Serbian Military Attache asks for approval of an attack by his country upon Bulgaria at the time of Bulgarian mobilization -- A dramatic interview with Lord K. -- Confidence placed in him with regard to munitions by the Russians -- His speeches in the House of Lords -- The heat of his room -- His preoccupation about the safety of Egypt -- He disapproves of the General Staff plan with regard to its defence -- His att.i.tude with regard to national service -- His difficulties in this matter -- His anxiety to have a reserve in hand for delivering the decisive blow in the war -- My last meeting with him -- His pleasure in going to Russia -- His failure to accomplish his mission, a great disaster to the Entente cause -- A final word about him -- He did more than any man on the side of the Allies to win the war -- Fitz.

Lord Kitchener's actions and att.i.tude in connection with two particular matters evoked a good deal of criticism in various quarters at the time, and much has been said and written about them. One of those matters was the munitions question, the other was the Dardanelles undertaking; both of those subjects are, however, discussed in special later chapters, and no reference will therefore be made to them in this one, except incidentally. I have, moreover, no recollection of ever having been brought into contact with the Secretary of State in connection with those projects for combined naval and military operations on the Flanders coast which received considerable attention in the winter of 1914-15, although, as will be mentioned in Chapter VI., aware of what was under review.

That Flanders coast scheme const.i.tuted, it may be observed, a question of the general strategical conduct of the war; it was, in fact, a question of "operations." The first time that I went into any problem coming properly under that heading with the Secretary of State was when a plan of landing troops at or near Alexandretta was on the tapis in December 1914. There was a good deal to be said for such an enterprise at that particular juncture. Military opinion invariably favours active in preference to pa.s.sive defence, so long as active defence can be regarded as reasonably feasible and the troops needed for the purpose are available. The Turks were mustering for an attack upon Egypt across the Isthmus of Sinai at that time. It was an axiom in our military policy that the Nile delta must be rendered secure against such efforts. There was something decidedly attractive about employing the troops--or a portion of them--who must in any case be charged with the protection of Egypt, actively against the enemy's line of communications instead of their hanging about, a stationary force, on the Suez Ca.n.a.l awaiting the onset of the Osmanli. Right through the war, the region about the Gulf of Iskanderun was one of prime strategical importance, seeing that Entente forces planted down in those parts automatically threatened, if they did not actually sever, the Ottoman communications between Anatolia and the theatres of war in Palestine and in Mesopotamia. But at dates subsequent to the winter of 1914-15 the enemy had fully realized that this was the case, was in a position to provide against the eventuality, and had taken steps accordingly.

At the time I speak of, the Turks were not, however, in strong force at or near Alexandretta. Nor were they in a position to a.s.semble formidable bodies of troops in that neighbourhood at short notice. For railway communications running westward towards Smyrna and the Golden Horn remained interrupted by the great Taurus range of mountains, the tunnels through which were making slow progress, and the tunnels through the Ama.n.u.s hills which sever Aleppo from the Cilician Plain were likewise incomplete. One of our light cruisers (H.M.S. _Doris_, if my memory is not at fault) was stationed in the Gulf of Iskanderun, and was having a high old time. She dodged up and down the coast, appeared unexpectedly at unwelcome moments, and carried terror into the hearts of the local representatives of the Sublime Porte. She landed boats' crews from time to time just to show that she was top-dog, without their even being fired upon. Somebody ash.o.r.e having done something that she disapproved of, she ordered the Ottoman officials to blow up certain of the bridges on their own railway, and when these hara.s.sed individuals, anxious to oblige, proffered the excuse that they lacked the wherewithal to carry her instructions out, she lent them explosives and saw to it that they were properly used.

Her activities made it plain to us that there was absolutely no fight in the enemy at the moment in this quarter.

The whole subject of an expedition to Alexandretta was carefully gone into, in consultation with Sir J. Maxwell who was commanding the forces in Egypt, and we came to the conclusion that a comparatively small force could quite easily effect a landing and gain sufficient ground to make itself comfortable on enemy soil, even if the Turks managed gradually to a.s.semble reinforcements. One realized that securing a considerable sector of ground [p.63] at once was essential in an amphibious operation of this kind, the very thing that was never accomplished on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Lord K. was much interested in the project for a time; he believed that it would help the Russians, who were in some straits in Armenia, and he was satisfied that if it was successfully carried into effect, hostile designs against the Suez Ca.n.a.l line would automatically be brought to nought.

A job of this sort would have served as a capital exercise for some of the Australasian troops then in Egypt, who from the training point of view were still a raw soldiery; such a task would have represented a very different cla.s.s of trial from that which they were actually to undergo three months later when getting ash.o.r.e at Anzac Cove. But Mr.

Churchill's naval project against the Dardanelles began to take shape early in January, and it put an end to any thoughts about Alexandretta. The matter is, indeed, only mentioned here because its consideration marked about the first occasion on which Lord Kitchener made any use of the General Staff within the War Office in connection with any operations question outside the United Kingdom.

It was not until another four months had elapsed, however, that I personally had much say in regard to those very questions which a Director of Military Operations would, from his t.i.tle, seem necessarily to be closely concerned with. The change that then took place I attribute very largely to an incident which on that account deserves recording. It happened that, on the very day after welcome tidings came to hand by cable from Sir I. Hamilton to the effect that he had successfully landed 29,000 troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula on the 25th of April, I was sent off to Paris to represent the British Army at a secret conference with French and Russian commissioners and with representatives of the Italians (who were coming into the war), at which naval and military conventions with our fresh ally were to be drawn up. Further reference to this conference will be made in a later chapter. The consequence was that for several days I heard no more about Sir Ian's operations beyond what appeared in the newspapers, and it was only when Mr. Churchill turned up somewhat unexpectedly and told me what had occurred, that it was borne in on me that our Dardanelles expeditionary force was completely held up in cramped positions and without elbow-room on an uncomfortable sort of sh.o.r.e. An examination of the telegrams and a discussion with my a.s.sistants after getting back from Paris convinced me that the situation was in the highest degree unsatisfactory, and I gathered, furthermore, that H.M.

Government did not seem to be aware how unsatisfactory the situation was.

A day or two later, Lord K. summoned me to his room to ask some question, when I found Sir E. Grey closeted with him. Here was an opportunity that was not to be missed. While the Chief was making a note at his desk of the point that he wanted to know, I spoke to Sir Edward, and told him in effect that we had not a dog's chance of getting through the Dardanelles unless he secured the aid of the Bulgars, or of the Greeks, or of both of them--purposely putting the matter more strongly than I actually felt about it, in the hopes of making an impression by a jeremiad. Lord K. stopped writing and looked up. We had a short conversation, and after a few minutes I left the room. The Foreign Minister may not have been impressed, but Lord K.

was; for he sent for me again later in the day, and we had a long discussion about Sir I. Hamilton's prospects. The incident, moreover, had a result which I had not antic.i.p.ated. From that time forward the Chief often talked to me about the position in the Dardanelles and in the Near East generally. He used to take me with him to the Dardanelles Committee which was formed soon afterwards; and when he was away I ordinarily represented him at the deliberations of that body, deliberations which, as a matter of fact, covered a good deal of ground besides the Gallipoli Peninsula.

It struck me at the time that Lord Kitchener's confidence in himself and his own judgement, in connection with what may be called operations subjects, had been somewhat shaken, and that from this stage onwards he rather welcomed the opinion of others when such points arose. The Antwerp adventure had proved a fiasco. The endeavour to force the Dardanelles by naval power, unaided by troops, had conspicuously failed. Coming on the top of those discouraging experiences, our army thrown ash.o.r.e on the Gallipoli Peninsula had, after suffering very heavy losses, straightway been brought to a standstill. As regards the Fleet's efforts against the Straits, I gathered at the time (from Fitzgerald, I think) that in taking an optimistic view of the project when it was under discussion by the War Council, Lord K. had been a good deal influenced by recollections of the bombardment of Alexandria, at which he had been present. The Chief always claimed to have been led astray by Mr. Churchill concerning the potentialities of the _Queen Elizabeth_, and had, I should say, come to the conclusion that the judgement of the then First Lord, with whom he had been so closely a.s.sociated for nine months, was not quite infallible. He cannot but have been aware that his Cabinet colleagues no longer reposed the implicit trust in his own judgement that they had accorded him at the outset. All through the summer of 1915 he grew more and more disposed to listen to the views of the General Staff as regards questions affecting the general conduct of the war, and, after Sir A. Murray became C.I.G.S. in October, that inst.i.tution was almost occupying its proper position in the consultative sense. It did not recover its proper position in the executive sense, however, until Lord K. arranged that Sir W. Robertson should take up charge at the end of the year.

The question of the _Queen Elizabeth_ cropped up in somewhat acute form two or three weeks after my conversation with Sir E. Grey which has been mentioned above. Lord Fisher had, as I knew from himself, been getting decidedly jumpy about the enemy U-boats, which were known to be approaching the Aegean, and about the middle of May he raised the question of fetching away the "_Lizzie_," as Sir I.

Hamilton's troops used to call her, lest evil should befall this, the most powerful s.h.i.+p in commission at the time. Lord Fisher has referred to this matter in his book _Memories_. He speaks of great tension between Lord K. and himself over the business, and he mentions an interview at the Admiralty at which, according to him, Lord K. got up from the table and left when he (Lord Fisher) announced that he would resign unless the battles.h.i.+p was ordered out of that forthwith. Now there may have been more than one interview at the Admiralty, but I was present at the conference when the matter was settled, and my recollection of what occurred does not agree with Lord Fisher's account.

Lord Kitchener sent for me early one morning, and on my presenting myself, told me that Lord Fisher was insisting upon recalling the _Queen Elizabeth_ owing to enemy submarines, that Mr. Churchill was in two minds but leant towards keeping her where she was, that he (Lord K.) objected to her removal, and that I was to accompany him to a meeting at the Admiralty a little later in connection with the affair.

"They've rammed that s.h.i.+p down my throat," said he in effect.

"Churchill told me in the first place that she would knock all the Dardanelles batteries into smithereens, firing from goodness knows where. He afterwards told me that she would make everything all right for the troops as they landed, and after they landed. And now, without 'with your leave or by your leave,' old Fisher says he won't let her stop out there." He seemed to be quite as much concerned about the way he had been treated in the matter, as influenced by any great alarm at the prospect of the s.h.i.+p leaving the vicinity of the Dardanelles.

Finally, he asked me what I thought myself.

Now, there could be no question as to the _Queen Elizabeth_ being a most powerful s.h.i.+p of war; but the fact was that she had been a regular nuisance. Mr. Churchill had somehow persuaded himself, and what was worse, he had managed to persuade Lord Kitchener as well as Mr. Asquith and others, that she would just about settle the Dardanelles business off her own bat. I had, as it happened (and as will be mentioned in the next chapter), expressed doubts to him six months earlier when the idea of operations in this quarter was first mooted, as to the efficacy of gun-fire from wars.h.i.+ps in a.s.sisting troops on sh.o.r.e or when trying to get ash.o.r.e. Nothing which had happened since had furnished any reason for altering that view. No battles.h.i.+p depending upon flat trajectory guns could ever play a role of paramount importance during fighting ash.o.r.e, except in quite abnormal circ.u.mstances. The whole thing was a delusion. s.h.i.+ps of war, and particularly such a vessel as the _Queen Elizabeth_, did undoubtedly provide moral support to an army operating on land close to the coast, and their aid was by no means to be despised; but their potentialities under such conditions were apt to be greatly overestimated, and had, in fact, been greatly overestimated by the War Council. My reply to the Chief, therefore, was to the effect that it was of secondary importance from the soldier's point of view whether this particular battles.h.i.+p stopped or cleared out, and that, seeing the risks which she obviously was running, it seemed to me a mistake to contest the point. We discussed the matter briefly, and Lord K.

gave me to understand that, although he must put up some sort of fight as he had already raised objections, he would make no real stand about it at the coming pow-wow.

When we went across the road we found Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher waiting in the First Lord's room. After some remarks by Mr. Churchill giving the _pros_ and _cons_, Lord Fisher burst out that, unless orders were dispatched to the battles.h.i.+p without delay to "come out of that," he would resign. The First Lord thereupon, somewhat reluctantly as it seemed to me, intimated that in view of the position taken up by his princ.i.p.al expert adviser, he had no option but to recall the vessel. Lord Kitchener demurred, but he demurred very mildly. There was no jumping up and going off in a huff. Some perfectly amicable discussion as to one or two other points of mutual interest ensued, and when we took our departure the Chief was in the very best of humours and asked me if he had made as much fuss as was expedient under the circ.u.mstances.

Lord K. seemed quite incapable of taking his Cabinet colleagues so seriously as people of that sort take themselves. Indeed, but for the more prominent ones, he never could remember what their jobs were, nor even recollect their names. It put one in a cold perspiration to hear him remark, when recounting what had occurred at a Cabinet seance or at the meeting of some committee bristling with Privy Councillors, "A fellow--I don't know his name but he's got curly hair--said..." Other soldiers besides Lord K. have, however, been known on occasion to get these super-men mixed up in their minds. There were three Ministers, for instance, whom for convenience we will call Messrs. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Mr. Jacob was on one occasion taking part in a conference at the War Office about something or other, a whole lot of the brightest and best sitting round a table trying to look intelligent; and in the course of the proceedings he felt constrained to give his opinion on a matter that had cropped up. A soldier of high degree, who was holding a most respectable position in the War Office and was sitting on the opposite side of the table, thereupon lifted up his voice. "I quite see Mr. Abraham's point," he began argumentatively, "but I----." He was thrown into pitiable confusion, was routed, lost his guns, his baggage, everything, forgot what he was about to say, on being brought up short by a snarl from across the table, "My name is Jacob, not Abraham."

One day in the summer of 1915 when Lord K. had summoned me to ask some question, he appeared to be in particularly low spirits, and presently he showed me a communication (a telegram, I think it was) from Sir J. French, intimating that one of the New Army divisions which had recently proceeded across the water had not borne itself altogether satisfactorily when a.s.sailed in the trenches. The troops had apparently been in a measure caught napping, although they had fought it out gallantly after being taken at a disadvantage owing to keeping careless guard. That these divisions, in which he naturally enough took such exceptional personal interest, needed a great deal of breaking-in to conditions in presence of the enemy before they could be employed with complete confidence, had been a bitter disappointment to him. On this subject he was perhaps misled to some extent by the opinions of officers who were particularly well qualified to judge.

The New Army troops had shown magnificent grit and zeal while preparing themselves in this country for the ordeal of the field, under most discouraging conditions, and they had come on very fast in consequence. Their very experienced divisional commanders, many of whom had come conspicuously to the front in the early months of the war and had learnt in the best of schools what fighting meant under existing conditions, were therefore rather disposed to form unduly favourable estimates of what their divisions would be capable of as soon as they entered upon their great task in the war zone. I remember receiving a letter from that very gallant and popular gunner, General F. Wing (who was afterwards killed at Loos), written very shortly before his division proceeded to France, in which he expressed himself enthusiastically with regard to the potentialities of his troops. His earnest hope was to find himself pitting them against the Boche as soon as the division took the field.

In one respect we most of us, I think, found Lord K. a little difficult at times. He was apt to be impatient if, when he was at all in a hurry, he required information from, or wanted something carried out by, a subordinate. This impatience indeed rather disposed him to rush his fences at times. Your book or your orator always extols the man of lightning decision, and in time of war soldiers do often have to make up their minds for better or for worse on the spur of the moment. But there is a good deal to be said for very carefully examining all the factors bearing upon the question at issue before coming to a conclusion, if there be leisure for consideration. Certain of the Secretary of State's colleagues were perpetually starting some new hare or other overnight, and the result would often be that the Chief would send for me at about 9.30 A.M., would give me some brand-new doc.u.ment or would tell me of some fresh project that was afoot, and would direct me to let him have a note on the subject not later than 11 A.M., so that he should be fully posted up in the matter by 11.30 A.M., when the War Council, or the Cabinet, or the Dardanelles Committee, as the case might be, would be wanting to chat about it.

One would thereupon proceed to investigate the project, or whatever the thing was, would muster one's data, would probably consult some subordinate and get him to lend a hand, and by, say, 10.15 A.M. one had hurriedly drafted out a memorandum, and had handed it to one's typists with injunctions that the draft must be reproduced at all hazards within twenty minutes. About 10.30 A.M. a War Office messenger, wearing a hunted look on his face, would appear at one's door. "His Lords.h.i.+p wants to know, sir, if you have that paper ready that he asked you for." "Tell him that he shall have it directly," and one got on to the telephone to the clerks' room and enjoined despatch.

In another ten minutes, Lord K.'s Private Secretary, and one of the best, Creedy, would turn up panting but trying not to look heated. "I say, can't you let the S. of S. have that confounded paper he is worrying about? Do be quick so that we may have some peace." Fresh urgings through the telephone, accompanied by reminders that the twenty minutes had more than elapsed. Five minutes later Fitzgerald would arrive. "Look here! K.'s kicking up the devil's own fuss because you won't let him have some paper or other. Typists? But it's always those typists of yours, General. Why don't you have the lot up against the wall out in the courtyard, and have them shot? It's the only thing to do in these cases." When one had almost given up hope, the typist would hurry in with a beautifully prepared doc.u.ment, and one would rush off to the Chief. "Oh! Here you are at last. What a time you've been. Now, let me see what you say.... Well, that seems all right. But stop. Show me on the map where this place B---- that you mention is.

One of them may ask." They were just a little exhausting, those occasions.

What exactly the tomfoolery is that expert typists engage on after they have typed a doc.u.ment, I have never been able to discover. As long as they are at play on their machines these whirr like the propeller of a Handley-Page. They get down millions of words a minute.

But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they t.i.ttivate, they muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not--the expert typist treats you with the scorn that the expert always does treat the layman with. At such junctures it is an advantage if the typist happens to be a he, because you can tell him what you think of him. If the typist happens to be a she, and you tell her what you think of her, the odds are she will take cover under a flood of tears, and goodness only knows what one is supposed to do then. Not that my typists were not highly meritorious--I would not have exchanged them with anybody. They merely played their game according to the rules.

Lord K. could no doubt be really unreasonable on occasion; but I can only recall one instance of it in my own experience. It all arose over our Military Attache at our Paris emba.s.sy, Colonel H. Yarde-Buller, having taken up his abode from an early date at Chantilly so as to be in close touch with General Joffre's headquarters. Not being on the spot at the Emba.s.sy, his work in the meantime was being done, and very well done, by our Naval Attache, Captain M. H. Hodges. I do not know why it was, but one afternoon the Chief sent for me to say that a Military Attache was required at once in Paris, and that I was to proffer names for him to choose from forthwith. After consultation with my French experts, I produced a list of desirable candidates for the post, all, to a man, equipped with incontestable qualifications.

But Lord K. would have none of my nominees, although he probably knew uncommonly little about any of them. I tried one or two more casts, but the Chief was really for the moment in an impossible mood. Even Fitzgerald was in despair. At last the name of Colonel Le Roy Lewis occurred to me, whom I somehow had not thought of before; but on repairing to the Chief's anteroom, where Fitz always was, a restful air was noticeable in the apartment, and Fitz acquainted me in a tone of relief that the boss had gone off home. He moreover counselled me to keep Le Roy Lewis up my sleeve and to lie low, as the whole thing might have blown over by next day, and that is exactly what happened.

One heard no more about it; but several weeks later I began myself to find that the military work in Paris was getting so heavy that we ought to have an attache of our own, instead of depending upon the Admiralty's man, Hodges. So I went to Lord K., proposed the appointment of a second Military Attache, and suggested Le Roy Lewis for the job. "Certainly," said Lord K.; "fix the business up with the Foreign Office, or whatever's necessary." The fuss there had been a few weeks before had apparently been forgotten.

His intimate acquaintance with the French language stood him in rare stead, and this undoubtedly represented an a.s.set to the country during the period that he was War Minister. His actual phraseology and his accent might peradventure not have been accounted quite faultless on the boulevards; but he was wonderfully fluent, he never by any chance paused for a word, and he always appeared to be perfectly familiar with those happy little turns of speech to which the Gallic tongue so particularly lends itself. The ease with which he took charge of, and dominated, the whole proceedings on the occasion of one or two of the earlier conferences on the farther side of the Channel between our Ministers and the French astonished our representatives, as some of them have told me. He thoroughly enjoyed discussions with foreign officers who had been sent over officially to consult with the War Office about matters connected with the war, and he always, as far as one could judge, deeply impressed such visitors. I do not think that the warmth with which some of them spoke about him after such pow-wows when I ushered them out, was a mere manifestation of politeness. He was gifted with a special bent for diplomacy, and he prided himself with justice on the skill and tact with which he handled such questions.

Quite early in the war--it must have been about November 1914--a small Portuguese military mission turned up, bearers of a proposal that our ancient ally should furnish a division to fight under Sir J. French's orders on the Western Front. Our Government, as it happened, were not anxious, on political grounds which need not be gone into here, for open and active co-operation on the part of Portugal at this time.

Regarding the question from the purely military point of view, one doubted whether the introduction into the Flanders war zone of Portuguese troops, who would require certain material which we could then ill spare before they took the field, would not be premature at this early juncture. When tactfully interrogating concerning the martial spirit, the training efficiency, and so forth, of the rank and file, one was touched rather than exhilarated by the head of the mission's expression of faith "ils savent mourir." The officers composing the mission were, however, enthusiasts for their project, and they were on that account somewhat difficult to keep, as it were, at arm's length. But Lord K.'s management of the problem was masterly.

In the course of a protracted conference in his room, he contrived to persuade our friends from Lisbon that the despatch of the division at this moment would be a mistake from their, and from everybody else's, point of view, and he extracted promises out of them to let us have many thousands of their excellent Mauser rifles, together with a goodly number of their Schneider-Canet field guns. The small arms (of which we were horribly short at the time) proved invaluable in South Africa and Egypt, while the guns served to re-equip the Belgian army to some extent with field artillery. He managed to convince the mission that this was by far the most effective form of a.s.sistance which Portugal could then afford to the Entente--as was indeed the case--and he sent them off, just a little bewildered perhaps, but perfectly satisfied and even gratified. One felt a little bewildered oneself, the whole business had been conducted with such nicety and discretion.

His name counted for much in the armies of the Allies, as I myself found later wherever I went in Russia. Foreign officers coming on official errands to London, attached an enormous importance to obtaining an interview with him, and he was very good about this. "Oh, I can't be bothered with seeing the man," he would say; "you've told him the thing's out of the question. What's the good of his coming to me, taking up my time?" "But you see, sir," one would urge; "he's a little rubbed up the wrong way at not getting what he wants, and will not put the thing pleasantly to his own people when he fetches up at their end. You can smooth him down as n.o.body else could, and then he'll go away off out of this like a lamb and be quite good." "Oh well, bring him along. But, look here. You must have him away again sharp out of my room, or he'll keep on giving tongue here all the rest of the day." What actually happened as a rule on such occasions was that Lord K. would not let the missionary get a word in edgeways, smothered him with cordiality, chattered away in French as if he were wound up, and the difficulty was, not to carry the man off but to find an opportunity for jumping up and thereby conveying a hint to our friend that it was time to clear out. "Comme il est charmant, M. le Marechal," the gratified foreign officer would say after one had grabbed him somehow and conducted him out of the presence; "je n'oublierai de ma vie que je lui ai serre la main." And he would go off back to where he had come from, as pleased as Punch, having completely failed in his emba.s.sy.

But Lord K. could if the occasion called for it, adopt quite a different tone when dealing with an Allied representative, and I have a vivid remembrance of one such interview to which there seems to be no harm in referring now. Some aspects of the tangled political web of 1915, in the Near East, will be dealt with at greater length in Chapter VII. Suffice it to say here that, at the juncture under reference, Serbia, with formidable German and Austro-Hungarian hosts pouring into her territory from the north and aware that her traditional foe, Bulgaria, was mobilizing, desired to attack Tsar Ferdinand's realm before it was ready. That, from the purely military point of view, was unquestionably the sound procedure to adopt.

"Thrice is he armed who has his quarrel just, but four times he who gets his blow in fust." We know now that it would have been the sound procedure to adopt, even allowing for arguments against such a course that could be put forward from the political point of view. But our Government's att.i.tude was that, in view of engagements entered into by Greece, the Serbs must not act aggressively against the still neutral Bulgars. Nor do I think that, seeing how contradictory and inconclusive the information was upon which they were relying, they were to blame for maintaining an att.i.tude which in the event had untoward consequences.

One afternoon the Serbian Military Attache came to see me. He called in to beg us soldiers to do our utmost to induce H.M. Government to acquiesce in an immediate offensive on the part of King Peter's troops against the forces of the neighbouring State, which were mobilizing and were evidently bent on mischief. I presented our Government's case as well as I could, although my sympathies were in fact on military grounds entirely on the side of my visitor. He thereupon besought me to take him to Lord Kitchener, and I did so. The Chief talked the question over in the friendliest and most sympathetic manner, he gave utterance to warm appreciation of the vigorous, heroic stand which the sore-beset little Allied nation had made, and was making, in face of dangers that were gathering ever thicker, he expressed deep regret at our inability to give effective a.s.sistance, and he admitted that from the soldier's point of view there was much to be said for the contention that an immediate blow should be struck at Serbia's eastern neighbour. But he stated our Government's att.i.tude in the matter clearly and uncompromisingly, and he would not budge an inch on the subject of our sanctioning or approving an attack upon Bulgaria so long as Bulgaria remained neutral.

The Attache protested eagerly, volubly, stubbornly, pathetically, but all to no purpose. Then, when at last we rose to our feet, Lord K., finding his visitor wholly unconvinced, drew himself up to his full height. He seemed to tower over the Attache, who was himself a tall man, and--well, it is hard to set down in words the happenings of a tense situation. The scene was one that I never shall forget, as, by his demeanour rather than by any words of his, Lord K. virtually issued a command that no Serb soldier was to cross the Bulgar border unless the Bulgars embarked on hostilities. The Attache stood still a moment; then he put his kepi on, saluted gravely, turned round and went out without a word. I followed him out on to the landing. "Mon Dieu!" he said; "mon Dieu!" And then he went slowly down the great marble staircase, looking a broken man. But for that interview the Serbs might perhaps have given their treacherous neighbours an uncommonly nasty jar before these got going, and this might have rendered their own military situation decidedly less tragic than it came to be within a very few days. But I do not see that Lord Kitchener could have done otherwise than support the att.i.tude of the Government of which he was a member.

Striking testimony to the confidence which his name inspired amongst our Allies is afforded by the action of the Russians in the summer of 1915, in entrusting the question of their being furnished with munitions from the United States into his hands. They came to him as a child comes to its mother. This, be it noted, was at a time when our own army fighting in many fields was notoriously none too well fitted out with weapons nor with ammunition for them, at a time when the most powerful group of newspapers in this country had recently been making a pointed attack upon him in connection with this very matter, at a time when an idea undoubtedly existed in many quarters in the United Kingdom that the provision of vital war material had been neglected and botched under his control. That there was no justification whatever for that idea does not alter the fact that the idea prevailed. As I a.s.sumed special responsibilities in connection with Russian supplies at a later date, a date subsequent to the _Hamps.h.i.+re_ catastrophe, and as the subject of munitions will be dealt with in a later chapter, no more need be said on the subject here. But the point seemed to deserve mention at this stage.

We came rather to dread the occasions when the Chief was going to deliver one of his periodical orations in the House of Lords.

Singularly enough, he used to take these speeches of his, in which he took good care never to tell his auditors anything that they did not know before, quite seriously--a good deal more seriously than we did.

He prepared them laboriously, absorbing a good deal of his own time, and some of the time of certain of those under him, and then he would read out his rough draft to one, asking for approval and grateful for hints. He was always delighted to have some felicitous turn of expression proffered him, and he would discuss its merits at some length as compared with his own wording, ending by inserting it in the draft or rejecting it, as the case might be. I remember on one occasion, when he was going to fire off one of these addresses, just about the time when the great Boche thrust of 1915 into the heart of Russia came to an end, his making use of the idiom that the German "bolt was about shot." I objected. "Don't you like the phrase?"

demanded Lord K. I admitted that it was an excellent phrase in itself, but urged that it was not altogether applicable, that the enemy seemed to have come to a standstill, not because he could get no farther but because he did not want to go farther, meaning to divert force in some new direction, and that the words somehow represented our princ.i.p.al foe as in worse case than was correct. Lord K. seemed disappointed. He said that he would consider the matter, and he made a note on his draft. But he stuck to his guns as it turned out; he used the phrase in the Upper House a day or two later, and it was somewhat criticised in the newspapers at the time. He was, I believe, so much captivated by his little figure of speech that he simply could not bear to part with it.

He was a regular salamander. The heat of his room, owing to the huge fire that he always maintained if it was in the least cold outside and to the double windows designed to keep out the noise of Whitehall, was at times almost unbearable. One's head would be in a buzz after being in it for some time. His long sojourn in southern lands no doubt rendered him very susceptible to low temperatures. On one occasion, when General Joffre had sent over a couple of superior staff officers to discuss some questions with him, the four of us sat at his table for an hour and a half, and the two visitors and I were almost [p.79] in a state of collapse at the end. "Mais la chaleur! Pouf! C'etait a.s.sommant!" I heard one say to the other as they left the room, not noticing that I was immediately behind.

Lord Kitchener's judgement in respect to general military policy in the Near East and the Levant, during the time that he was War Minister was, I think, to some small extent warped at times by excessive preoccupation with regard to Egypt and the Sudan. His hesitation to concur in the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula until he had convinced himself of the urgent necessity of the step by personal observation, was, I am sure, prompted by his fears as to the evil moral effect which such a confession of failure would exert in the Nile Delta, and up the valley of the great river. Soon after Sir Archie Murray had become C.I.G.S., and when the War Council had taken to asking for the considered views of the General Staff upon problems of the kind, a paper had to be prepared on the subject of how best to secure Egypt. This doc.u.ment I drafted in the rough in the first instance. Sir Archie and we Directors of the General Staff then went carefully through it and modified it in some respects. Its purport when presented was that the proper course to pursue with regard to Egypt would be to depend upon holding the line of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, and some minor areas in front of it, as a comparatively small force would suffice for the purpose.

Lord K. was much disappointed. He sent for me, expressed himself as strongly opposed to our view, and he seemed rather hurt at the att.i.tude we had taken up. He favoured the despatch of a body of troops to the Gulf of Alexandretta with the idea of carrying on a very active defence; he wished to keep the enemy as far away from Egypt as possible for fear of internal disturbances, and this opinion was, I know, concurred in by Sir R. Wingate and Sir J. Maxwell. We should, no doubt, have concurred in that view likewise, had there been unlimited numbers of divisions to dispose of, and had there been no U-boats about. But an army merely sufficient to hold the Egyptian frontier would have been entirely inadequate to start a campaign based on the sea in northern Syria, and experiences in the Dardanelles theatre of war hardly offered encouragement for embarking on ventures on the sh.o.r.es of the Levant. Lord K. called Sir D. Haig, who happened to be over on short leave at the time, into counsel; Sir Douglas supported the contention that a comparatively small force distributed about the Ca.n.a.l would render things secure. The Chief then despatched General Home (who in those days was known rather as an expert gunner than as commander of aggregates of army corps) to Egypt to report; I had ceased to be D.M.O. before the report came to hand, but I believe that it favoured our plan, the plan which actually was adopted and which served its purpose for many months.

A good many of us in the War Office were a little inclined to cavil at our Chief's deliberation in the matter of demanding a system of national service, when the country had arrived at the stage where expansion of the fighting forces was no longer hopelessly r.e.t.a.r.ded by lack of war material. But, looking back upon the events of the first year of the war, one realizes now that if he made a mistake over this subject it was in not establis.h.i.+ng the principle by statute at the very beginning, in the days when he was occupying a position in the eyes of his countrymen such as no British citizen had enjoyed for generations. He could have done what he liked at the start. The nation was solid behind him. Not Great Britain alone, but also Ireland, would have swallowed conscription with gusto in September 1914, after the retreat from Mons. Our man-power could in that case have been tapped gradually, by methods that were at once scientific and equitable, so as to cause the least possible disturbance to the country's productive capacity.

Twelve months later, he had ceased to present quite so commanding a figure to the proletariat as he had presented when first he was called in to save the situation. Of this he was probably quite aware himself, and it is a great mistake to suppose that he was indifferent to public opinion or even to the opinion of the Press. By that time, moreover, he was probably a good deal hampered by some of his colleagues and their pestilent pre-war pledges. A good many politicians nowadays find it convenient to forget that during those very days when the secret information reaching them must surely have made them aware of Germany's determination to make war on a suitable opportunity presenting itself, they were making the question of compulsory service virtually a party matter, and were binding themselves to oppose it tooth and nail. The statemonger always a.s.sumes that the public take his pledges (which he never boggles over breaking for some purely factious object) seriously. The public may be silly, but they are not quite so silly as that.

Having missed the tide when it was at the flood, Lord K. was wise in acting with circ.u.mspection, and in rather shrinking from insisting upon compulsion so long as it had not become manifestly and imperatively necessary. When, in the early autumn of 1915, he told me off as a kind of bear-leader to a Cabinet Committee presided over by Lord Crewe, which was to go into the general question of man-power and of the future development of the forces--a Committee which was intended, as far as I could make out, to advise as to whether compulsory service was to be adopted or not--I found him a little unapproachable and disinclined to commit himself. I was, of course, only supposed to a.s.sist in respect to information and as regards technical military points; but it would have been a help to know exactly what one's Chief desired and thought. Fitzgerald was a great standby on such occasions. I gathered from him that the Secretary of State was not anxious to precipitate bringing the question to a head, with the conception ever at the back of his mind of conserving sufficient fighting resources under his hand to deal the decisive blow in the war when the psychological moment should come, months ahead. He was not, in 1915, looking to 1916; he was looking to 1917, having made up his mind from the outset that this was to be a prolonged war of attrition. He, no more than all others, could foresee that the Russian revolution was to occur and was to delay the final triumph of the Entente for full twelve months.

The last time that I saw the greatest of our War Ministers was a day or two before he started on his fatal expedition to Russia. I had recently come back from that country, and had been able to give him and Fitzgerald some useful hints as to minor points--kit, having all available decorations handy to put on for special occasions, taking large-sized photographs to dole out as presents, and so forth. He was very anxious to get back speedily, and had been somewhat disturbed to hear that things moved slowly in the Tsar's dominions, and that the trip would inevitably take considerably longer than he had counted on.

I had urged him not to be in too great haste--to visit several groups of armies, and to show himself in Moscow and Kieff, feeling absolutely convinced that if the most was made of his progress through Russian territory it would do an immense amount of good. But he was in just as great a hurry to get journeys over in 1916 as he had been in South African days, when he used to risk a smash by requiring the trains in which he roamed the theatre of war to travel at a speed beyond that which was safe on such tortuous tracks; and it is easy to understand how hard-set, with so impetuous a pa.s.senger, the Admiralissimo of the Grand Fleet would have been to delay the departure of the _Hamps.h.i.+re_ merely on the grounds of rough weather on the day on which she put to sea.

On that last occasion when I saw him the Field-Marshal was in rare spirits, looking forward eagerly to his time in Russia, merry as a schoolboy starting for his holidays, only anxious to be off. With that incomparable gift of his for interpreting the essentials of a situation, he fully realized how far-reaching might be the consequences of the undertaking to which he stood committed. The public of this country perhaps hardly realize that the most unfortunate feature of his death at that time, from the national point of view, was that it prevented his Russian trip. Had it not been for the disaster of the 5th of June 1916 off the Orkneys, that convulsion of March 1917 in the territories of our great eastern Ally might never have occurred, or it might at least have been deferred until after the war had been brought to a happy termination. Apart from this, Lord Kitchener's work was almost done. Thanks to him, the United Kingdom had, alike in respect to men and to material, been transformed into a great military Power, and yet further developments had been a.s.sured.