Chapter 33

SOME INTER-ALLIES CONFERENCES

The Conference with the Italians in Paris in April-May 1915 -- Its constitution -- Italians anxious that Allies should deliver big offensive simultaneously with advance of Italian army -- Impossibility of giving a guarantee -- Difficulties over the naval proposals -- Banquet given by M. Millerand at the War Office -- A visit to the front -- Impressions -- Mr. Churchill turns up unexpectedly -- A conference with General Joffre at Chantilly over Salonika -- Its unsatisfactory character -- Admiral Gamble races "Grandpère," and suffers discomfiture -- A distinguished party proceed to Paris -- A formal conference with the French Government -- Messrs. Asquith, Grey and Lloyd George as linguists -- The French attitude over Salonika -- Sir W. Robertson gives his views -- The decision -- Dinner at the Élysée -- Return to London -- Mr. Lloyd George and the soldiers on the Boulogne jetty -- Points of the destroyer as a yacht -- Mr. Balfour and Sir W. Robertson afloat -- A chatty dinner on our side of the Channel -- Difficulty over Russian munitions owing to a Chantilly conference -- A conference at the War Office -- Mr. Lloyd George as chairman -- M. Mantoux.

The first meeting of importance with representatives of the Allies at which I was present took place in Paris at the end of April 1915, and has already been referred to on p. 63. Sir H. Jackson and I were sent over, as representing respectively the Admiralty and the War Office, to take part in a secret conference that was to be held between French, Russian, and British naval and military delegates on the one side, and Italian naval and military delegates on the other side in connection with Italy's entry into the war as an associate of the Entente. That Italy was to join the Allies had already been arranged secretly between the four governments, and it was understood that she was to open hostilities in the latter part of May. The purpose of the Conference was to permit of the situation being discussed, and formal naval and military conventions were to be drawn up between the contracting Powers. Sir Henry and I were accompanied by small staffs, and we put up at the Ritz in the Place Vendôme.

M. Millerand, who was French War Minister at the time, presided at the Conference which assembled in the War Office, and he made an ideal chairman--the French are always admirable at managing such functions. The principal French military delegate was General Pellé, General Joffre's Chief of Staff; the Russians were represented by their Military Attaché in Paris, Colonel Count Ignatieff, and the principal Italian military delegate was a colonel (whose name I cannot recall), a most attractive and evidently an extremely capable soldier, who unhappily was killed within a few months when in command of a brigade in one of the early fights near Gorizia. In so far as framing the military convention was concerned, that part of the proceedings gave little trouble. The Italian representatives, it is true, were anxious that the Allies should undertake to embark upon an offensive on the greatest possible scale practicable, simultaneously with the Italian army crossing the frontier about the Isonzo; but General Pellé and I could give no guarantee to that effect, the more so seeing that a Franco-British offensive had already, as it was, been decided upon to start in the Bethune-Vimy region within a few days and before the Italian army would be ready. One had a pretty shrewd suspicion that there was no opening whatever for an offensive on the Eastern Front in view of our Russian Allies' grave munitions difficulties, although the French seemed strangely unaware of the nakedness of the land in that quarter; still, it was no part of the game to hint at joints in our harness of that kind to the Italian representatives. Ignatieff, bluff and cheery, was careful not to commit himself on the subject. The end of it was that our military convention amounted to little more than an agreement that we were all jolly fine fellows, accompanied by cordial expressions of good-will and of a determination on the part of the four contracting Powers to do their best and to stick together. The naval side of the problem, on the other hand, was beset by pitfalls, and that part of the business was not satisfactorily disposed of for several days.

Even to a landsman like myself, it was apparent that the Italian conception of war afloat in the year of grace 1915 was open to criticism. Our new friends contemplated employing their fleet very freely as an auxiliary to their army in its advance along the littoral towards Trieste, a theory of naval operations which came upon one with something of a shock at the very start. Pola and other well-sheltered bowers for under-water craft lie pretty handy to the maritime district in which King Victor's troops were going to take the field. For battleships and cruisers to be pottering about in those waters serving out succour to the soldiers on shore, succour which would in all probability be of no great account in any case, suggested that those battleships and cruisers would be transmogrified into submarines at a very early stage of the proceedings. One wondered if the Ministry of Marine away south by the Tiber had heard the tragic tale of the _Hogue_, the _Cressy_ and the _Aboukir_. Nor was that all. The Italian naval delegates put forward requests that fairly substantial assistance in the shape of war-craft of various types should be afforded them within the Adriatic by the French and ourselves.

All this struck even an outsider like myself as somewhat unsatisfactory, and that was clearly the view which Sir H. Jackson took. For, in some disorder, he let slip an observation to the effect that it looked like the recently acquired collaborator with the Entente being rather a nuisance than otherwise. The rendering of this expression of opinion of the Admiral's into French at the hands of our Naval Attaché in Paris (Captain Hodges) was a masterpiece of diplomatic camouflage. In the end the Italian sailors were obliged to ask for an adjournment to allow of their communicating with Rome, and, if I recollect aright, the principal one of them had to proceed home to discuss the question at headquarters. All this took up time, and we did not finally get the conventions signed for nearly a fortnight.

M. Millerand gave a banquet at the War Office in honour of us delegates, at which we met M. Viviani, the Prime Minister, together with other members of the French Cabinet. I enjoyed the good fortune of sitting next to M. Delcassé, and so of making the acquaintance of one of the great Foreign Ministers of our time. Paris is at its best in spring, and had it not been war-time and had one not been in a fidget to get back to Whitehall, a few days of comparative idleness spent in _la ville lumière_ after nine months of incessant office work, while the international sailor-men settled their differences, would have been not unwelcome. The pause, however, provided an opportunity for motoring down to St. Omer and spending a couple of days in the war zone--my first visit to the Front. Two points especially struck me on this trip. One was the wonderful way that the women and children of France (for scarcely an adult male was to be seen about in the rural districts) were keeping their end up in the fields. The other was the smart and soldier-like bearing of the rank-and-file amongst our troops, in striking contrast to the go-as-you-please methods which prevailed in South Africa, and to which, indirectly, some of the "regrettable incidents" which occurred on the veldt were traceable. It gave one confidence. Sir J. French and some of G.H.Q. were at advanced headquarters at Hazebrouck as offensive operations were impending, and Sir John, on the afternoon that I saw him, was greatly pleased at a most successful retirement of our line in a portion of the Ypres salient which General Plumer had brought off on the previous night. On getting back to Paris it transpired that the naval trouble was not yet settled.

One morning, sitting with Admiral Gamble who was over to help Sir H. Jackson, in the long alley-way of the Ritz where one enjoys early breakfast if that meal be not partaken of in private apartments, Commodore Bartolomé, the First Lord's "Personal Naval Assistant," was of a sudden descried in the offing and beating up for the Bureau. "Good God!" exclaimed the Admiral, horror-stricken. "Winston's come!" He had, so we learnt from Bartolomé; but what he had come for nobody could make out. Telegraphic communication exists between Paris and London, and Sir H. Jackson was in constant touch with our Admiralty. However, to whatever cause the visit was to be attributed, there was Mr. Churchill as large as life and most anxious to get busy; and I personally was glad to see him, because he told me all about what had been going on in the Gallipoli Peninsula since the landing of a few days before. One did not gather that the French were any more delighted at his jack-in-the-box arrival, and at his interventions in the Conference discussions, than were our naval representatives who had been officially accredited for the purpose. A satisfactory agreement was, however, at last arrived at over the Adriatic, the conventions were signed with due pomp and circumstance, and our party returned to England. While in Paris I had paid one or two visits to General Graziani, who was the Chief of the General Staff at the French War Office; but we in Whitehall never could make out exactly what were the relations between the military authorities in Paris and those at Chantilly. The very fact that General Joffre's Chief of Staff had been French military representative at our Conference, and not General Graziani or his nominee, seemed odd.

Some six months later, early in November, I again went over to France, this time with Sir A. Murray, to attend a discussion with General Joffre at Chantilly concerning Salonika. Admiralty representatives, including Admiral Gamble and Mr. Graeme Thomson, Director of Naval Transport, were of the party. Sir J. French with Sir W. Robertson, his Chief of the General Staff, and Sir H. Wilson came up from St. Omer. It was by no means a satisfactory meeting. We from the War Office in London desired to circumscribe British participation in this new side-show to the utmost, and to keep the whole business as far as possible within limits; but we got uncommonly little support from G.H.Q. Sir W. Robertson expressed no opinion, nor was he called upon to do so; he would have found it awkward to dissent from his commander-in-chief. But the result was that when a much more important conference over the same subject took place a few days later, this time between the two Governments, Sir J. French was not present while Sir W. Robertson was. These things do arrange themselves somehow.

As the discussion took place at Chantilly late in the afternoon, G.H.Q. and we put up at Amiens for the night. On our discovering that General Joffre contemplated crossing the Channel next day to have a chat with our Government, the C.I.G.S. prevailed upon Admiral Gamble to hurry on in his motor to Boulogne next morning so as to catch the packet there, to cross to Folkestone, and to get up to London in time to warn our people of the somewhat expansive Salonika programme which "Grandpère" had up his sleeve. The Silent Navy, it is hardly necessary to say, fairly rose to the occasion, for the Admiral was off under forced draught in the dog-watch. Chancing things, however, when weathering a promontory off Montreuil, he contrived to pile up his craft on a shoal in a bad position, and he would have missed trans-shipment at Boulogne altogether had he not got himself taken off in a passing craft which was under charge of soldier-officers who were likewise making for the packet. So he got across all right in the end and he flashed up to town, only to find that old man Joffre had not played the game. "Grandpère" had slept peacefully in the train, had boarded a destroyer at some unearthly hour of the morning, and was already in Whitehall before our staunch, precipitate emissary had cast off from Boulogne.

On the occasion of that next pow-wow mentioned [p.228] above, Messrs. Asquith, Balfour (now First Lord), Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey crossed over as our representatives. Sir H. Jackson (now First Sea Lord), Sir W. Robertson, who had been summoned over to London, and I accompanied them, as well as Colonel Hankey and some others. We travelled by specials and a destroyer and took the Boulogne route. Our warship tied up to the _East Anglia_, hospital ship, at Boulogne, and as we passed across her some of us had a few words with nurses and wounded on board, little anticipating that she would be mined next day on the passage over to England, with most unfortunate loss of life. Eventually we arrived at the Gare du Nord about midnight, to be welcomed by a swarm of French Ministers and Lord Bertie, and to find all arrangements made for us with typical French hospitality.

The Conference took place at the Foreign Office on the Quai d'Orsay, M. Briand presiding. Several members of the French Government were present, besides Generals Joffre, Gallieni and Graziani; and with our party, as well as interpreters, secretaries and others, there was quite a gathering. After M. Briand had welcomed us cordially and in felicitous terms, Mr. Asquith got a charming little speech in French off his chest; it may perhaps have had a whiff of the lamp about it and had probably been learnt by heart, but the P. M. undoubtedly managed to serve up a savoury _appétitif_, and we felt that in the matter of courtesy and the amenities our man had held his own. In the course of the discussion that followed, Sir E. Grey's minute-gun process of turning our host's delightful language to account afforded all present ample time to take in the drift of his cogent, weighty arguments and to appraise them at their proper worth. Had it been any one else, Mr. Lloyd George would have been voted an unmitigated nuisance on all hands. As a result of prolonged residence in the Gay City at a somewhat later date, the Right Honourable Gentleman is now, it is understood, in the habit of bandying badinage with the _midinettes_ in the _argot_ of the Quartier Latin. But at the time that I speak of his acquaintance with the Gallic tongue was strictly limited (although he did put forward claims to be able to understand "Grey's French"), and he kept from time to time insisting upon the proceedings being brought to a halt while a translation of something that had been said was furnished for his benefit, generally selecting some particularly unprofitable platitude which had been uttered by one of those present for the purpose of gaining time.

The French took up a strong line over Salonika. In a sense they drove our side into a corner, and the responsibility for hundreds of thousands of French and British troops being interned in Macedonia for years rests with them, and it was in great measure the outcome of that day's debate. Sir W. Robertson was called upon to state his views. He knows French perfectly well, but he absolutely refused to speak anything but English, and his remarks were translated, sentence after sentence, by a young French officer with a perfect command of the latter tongue. After each successive sentence had been rendered into French, Sir William, who was sitting beside me, would murmur, "Infernal fellow, that's not what I said," as though repeating the responses, the poor interpreter having in reality done his duty like a man. The gist of his remarks was what might have been expected, viz. that the Germans were the real enemy and that the proper course for the Allies to pursue was to concentrate force against them and not to be hunting about for trouble in the uttermost parts of the earth. Views of that kind, enunciated bluntly and with considerable emphasis, were very likely not wholly palatable to M. Briand; but it seemed to me that they were not regarded with disfavour by General Joffre, nor yet by General Gallieni, although those distinguished soldiers when invited to give expression to their views contrived merely to say nothing at considerable length. The end of it all was that we were committed to dumping down three more divisions at Salonika in addition to the two already there or disembarking, and that we were, moreover, committed to sending them thither without delay. When they got there it took ages to get their impedimenta ashore owing to lack of landing facilities--as we had fully foreseen. The amateur strategist imagines that you can discharge an army out of a fleet of transports and freight-ships just anywhere and as easily as you can empty a slop-pail.

We dined with the President and Mme. Poincaré at the Élysée that night, and most of the French Cabinet, as well as Generals Joffre and Gallieni, were likewise invited. Our Big Four were in some doubt as to what garb to appear in, seeing that it was not to be a full-dress function, sporting trinkets; and they eventually hit upon dinner-jackets with black ties. So Sir W. Robertson and I decided to doff breeches, boots and spurs, and to don what military tailors refer to as "slacks" but what in non-sartorial circles are commonly called trousers. The French civilians all wore frock-coats, so that there was an agreeable lack of uniformity and formality when we assembled. I sat next to M. Dumergue, the Colonial Minister, and between us we disposed of the German Colonies in a spirit of give and take--or rather take, because there was none of that opera-bouffe "mandate" which has since then been wafted across from the Western Hemisphere, included in our arrangements. In the course of the evening I managed to obtain General Joffre's views concerning the feasibility of withdrawing from the Gallipoli Peninsula without encountering heavy loss, a subject that one had constantly in mind at that time. Père Joffre's opinion was that, subject to favourable weather and to the retreat taking place at night, the thing could be managed, and he emphasized the fact that the conditions of trench warfare rather lent themselves to secret withdrawals of that nature.

We made our way back to London on the following day, leaving Paris in the forenoon, and were to embark at Calais; but owing to some misunderstanding our special ran into Boulogne and out on to the jetty, where numbers of troops were assembled as a leave-boat was shortly to cross. This afforded me an opportunity of experiencing how very engaging Mr. Lloyd George can make himself when dealing with a somewhat critical audience. For the whole party got out, glad to stretch their legs, and I wandered about with the Munitions Minister. We got into conversation with some of the men, he was recognised, and a crowd speedily gathered round us. He questioned them, and it is hardly necessary to say that, being British soldiers, they did not forget to grumble; they were particularly eloquent on the subject of the quality and the quantity of hand-grenades. But Mr. Lloyd George handled them most skilfully, got a great deal of useful information out of them, delighted them with his cheery manner and apt chaff, and when we had to hurry off as our train was about to move on, the men cheered him to the echo. "Sure he's a great little man intoirely," I heard a huge lump of an Irish sergeant remark to a taciturn Highlander, who removed his pipe from his mouth to spit in unqualified acquiescence.

They say that a destroyer represents an invaluable form of fighting-ship, and no doubt she does; but it is ridiculous to pretend that she makes an agreeable pleasure-boat--at all events not at night and with all lights out. In the first place there is nothing whatever to prevent your falling out of the vessel altogether, and as the gangways which pretend to be the deck are littered with anchors, chains, torpedoes, funnels, ventilators, and what not, you dare not, if you have been so ill-advised as to remain up top, roam about in pitch darkness even in harbour, let alone when the craft is jumping and wriggling and straining out in the open. Having tried the high-up portion of the ship at the front end, where the cold was perishing and the spray amounted to a positive outrage, on the way over, I selected the wardroom aft on the way back and found this much more inhabitable. There was a nice open stove to sit before, a pleasant book to read, and there was really nothing to complain about except the rattle and whirr of the propellers. Sir W. Robertson is a very fine soldier, but he does not cut much ice as a sailor; although it was as settled as the narrow seas can fairly be expected to be in late autumn, he lay perfectly flat on his back on a bunk with his hands folded across his chest like the effigies of departed sovereigns in Westminster Abbey, and he never moved an eyelid till we were inside the Dover breakwaters. All the same, he stayed the course, and that is more, I fear, than the First Lord of the Admiralty did. For the Ruler of the King's Navy made a bee-line for the Lieutenant-Commander's own private dug-out the moment he came aboard at Calais, and he remained in ambuscade during the voyage.

There used to be a ditty sung at a pantomime or some such entertainment when I was at Haileybury--music-halls were less numerous and less aristocratic in those days than they are now--of which the refrain was to the effect that one must meet with the most unheard-of experiences ere one would "cease to love." We used to spend an appreciable portion of our time in form composing appropriate verses, as effective a mental exercise perhaps as the labours we were supposed to be engaged on. Mr. Goschen had recently been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and one distich in the official version ran: "May Goschen have a notion of the motion of the ocean, if ever I cease to love." It is to be apprehended that Mr. Balfour acquired a better notion of the motion of the ocean than he cared for, on these destroyer trips in which he was in the habit of indulging; for when we fetched up on this side of the Channel and made our way to the attendant dining-car, where the trained eye instantly detected the presence of glasses on the tables of that peculiar shape that denotes the advent of bubbly wine (none of your peasant drinks when the taxpayer is standing treat), the First Lord rolled up swathed in a shawl, a lamentable bundle, and disappeared like a transient and embarrassed phantom into a corner, to be seen no more until we steamed into Charing Cross.

The run up to town from Dover by special was edifying and was not uninstructive, for it threw some light upon the mystery that is connected with the frequent leaking-out of matters which upon the whole had better be kept secret. A train composed of only a couple of cars makes less noise than the more usual sort, and our dining-car happened to be a particularly smooth-running one. The consequence was that almost every word that was said in the car could be heard by anybody who chose to listen. The Big Three (Mr. Balfour had deserted as we have seen) sat together at one table, whilst we lesser fry congregated close at hand at others. The natural resilience following upon the conclusion of the Conference and the happy termination of cross-Channel buffetings may perhaps have been somewhat stimulated by draughts of sparkling vintage; but, be that as it may, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Munitions were in their most expansive mood, and after a time their conversation was followed by the rest of us with considerable interest. To the sailors present, as also to one or two of the junior soldier-officers, it was probably news--and it must surely have been news to the waiters--to learn that Sir J. French was shortly to vacate command of the B.E.F. in France. Nor could we be other than gratified at the discussions concerning Sir D. Haig's qualifications as a successor; I was expecting every moment to hear Sir W. Robertson's suitability for the post freely canvassed; he was sitting back-to-back with the Munitions Minister, but with the half-partition usual in our English dining-cars intervening. Cabinet Ministers certainly are quaint people.

I attended more than one Conference with the Allies on the subject of munitions and supplies at a later stage of the war. They had a rather inconvenient habit, some of them, of springing brand-new proposals upon one without any warning, and they would without turning a hair raise questions the discussion of which was wholly unforeseen and had not been prepared for. A good deal of trouble was, for instance, caused on a certain occasion owing to the question of armament for Russia being brought up at one of the Chantilly Conferences which used to take place from time to time, without our having a delegate present who was posted up in the actual situation with regard to this particular problem. The Russians had, shortly before, put forward requests that we should furnish them with a very big consignment indeed of heavy guns and howitzers--somewhere about 600 pieces of sorts. We had no intention of falling in with this somewhat extravagant demand; but we had more or less promised about 150. However, at a meeting of a Sub-Committee on munitions delegated by this particular Chantilly Conference, only General Maurice, who was not concerned in munitions details nor aware of the actual facts, represented us; and at this meeting the Russians and French mentioned in the course of the discussion that we had promised 600 pieces. Not fully acquainted with the position, General Maurice did not contradict the assertion. This caused some difficulty, because on later occasions the French and Russians would say, "But you agreed to furnish 600 at Chantilly," and would produce the protocol of the meeting. Similarly, we were regularly rushed into a Conference at Paris over Greek supplies in the autumn of 1917--the subject has already been mentioned on p. 216, and it will be referred to again farther on in this volume--without knowing what the business was about. Greek supplies and our connection with them were consequently in a shocking tangle for months to come.

There was one of these international gatherings, one that was held in Mr. Lloyd George's room in the War Office about November 1916 when he was Secretary of State for War, of which I have a vivid recollection. M. Albert Thomas and General Dall' Olio, the respective Munitions Ministers in France and Italy, had come over, accompanied by several assistants; and the Russian Military Attaché from Paris with several representatives of the special Russian Commission in England were present, as well as the Head of the Roumanian Military Mission in France. The Russians, Roumanians and Italians all, needless to say, wanted to get as much as they could out of us, and the French were quite ready to back the Russians and Roumanians up. Mr. Lloyd George made a tip-top chairman, conciliatory and, thanks to ignorance of French, always unable to understand what was said when it happened to be inconvenient to grasp the purport. At one juncture M. Thomas and General Dall' Olio came rather to loggerheads over something or other, steel I think. Had they been Britishers, one would have been preparing to slip under the table so as to be out of harm's way; but Latin nations are more gesticulatory than we are, and this sort of effervescence does not mean quite so much with them as it does when it shows a head amongst us frigid islanders. Just when the illustrious pair of Ministers were inclined to get a little out of temper, arguing of course in French, Mr. Lloyd George burst out laughing, threw himself back in his chair and ejaculated, "Now will some kind friend tell me what all that's about!" He had touched exactly the right note. Everybody beamed. The disputants burst out laughing too, harmony was completely restored, and the discussion was conducted thenceforward in friendliest fashion.

By far the most interesting feature, however, about this pow-wow, and several others, was provided by the interventions of M. Mantoux, the gifted interpreter who used to come over from Paris, and of whom I believe great use was made at Conferences at various times at Versailles. His performance on such occasions was a veritable _tour de force_. He never took a note. He waited till the speaker had finished all that he wanted to say--and your statesman generally has an interminable lot to say--whether it was in French or in English. He then translated what had been said into the other language--English or French as the case might be--practically word for word. His memory, quite apart from his abnormal linguistic aptitudes, was amazing. Nor was that all. He somehow contrived, almost automatically it seemed, to imitate the very gestures and the elocution of the speakers. M. Thomas is troubled with a rather unruly wisp of hair which, when he gets wrought up in fiery moments, will tumble down over his brow into his eyes, to be swept back every now and again with a thrust of the hand accompanied by a muttered exclamation, presumably a curse. Rendering M. Thomas into English, M. Mantoux would sweep back an imaginary wisp of hair with an imprecation which I am confident was a "damn!" Then again, no man can turn on a more irresistibly ingratiating smile when he is getting the better of the other fellow than Mr. Lloyd George, and he has mastered a dodge of at such moments sinking his voice to a wheedling pitch calculated to coax the most suspicious and recalcitrant of listeners into reluctant concurrence. M. Mantoux would reproduce that smile to admiration, and his tones when translating Mr. Lloyd George's seductive blandishments into French were enough to cajole a crocodile.