Chapter 24

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 ashore at Helles 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 Attaché 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 attitude 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 attitude 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 constituted, 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 passive 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 Canal 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 assemble 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 Amanus 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 ashore 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 harassed 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 assemble 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 Canal 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 class of trial from that which they were actually to undergo three months later when getting ashore 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 title, 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 shore. An examination of the telegrams and a discussion with my assistants 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 anticipated. 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 ashore 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 associated 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 institution 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 ship 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 battleship 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 ship 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 ship 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 ship 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 warships in assisting troops on shore or when trying to get ashore. Nothing which had happened since had furnished any reason for altering that view. No battleship depending upon flat trajectory guns could ever play a rôle of paramount importance during fighting ashore, except in quite abnormal circumstances. The whole thing was a delusion. Ships 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 battleship 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 battleship 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 principal 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 circumstances.

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 séance 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 assailed 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 document 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 Lordship 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 document, 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 document, 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 tittivate, 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 Attaché at our Paris embassy, 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 Embassy, his work in the meantime was being done, and very well done, by our Naval Attaché, Captain M. H. Hodges. I do not know why it was, but one afternoon the Chief sent for me to say that a Military Attaché 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 attaché 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 Attaché, 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 asset 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 assistance 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 nobody 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 Maréchal," 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 serré la main." And he would go off back to where he had come from, as pleased as Punch, having completely failed in his embassy.

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