An earlier paragraph has hinted that, owing to military authorities in

Whitehall not seeing quite eye to eye with the new Secretary of State

when he took up his appointment, he was to some small extent working

in an atmosphere of latent hostility to his measures. This state of

affairs was, however, of very short duration, and certainly did not

hamper his operations in the slightest degree; he would indeed have

made uncommonly short work of anybody whom he found to be actively

opposing him, or even to be hanging back. But the situation in the

case of G.H.Q. of the Expeditionary Force was different. It is a

matter of common knowledge--anybody who was unaware of it before the

appearance of Lord French's "_1914_" will have learnt it from that

volume--that the relations between Lord Kitchener and some of those up

at the top in connection with our troops on the Western Front were,

practically from the outset, not quite satisfactory in character.

The attitude taken up by G.H.Q. over a comparatively small matter

during the first few days is an example of this. The Secretary of

State had laid his hands upon one officer and one or two

non-commissioned officers of each battalion of the Expeditionary

Force, and had diverted these to act as drill-instructors, and so

forth, for the new formations which he proposed to create. That his

action in this should have been objected to within the bereft units

was natural enough; their officers could hardly be expected to take

the long view on the question at such a juncture. But that the higher

authorities of our little army proceeding to the front should have

taken the measure so amiss was unfortunate. And it was, moreover,

instructive, indicating as it did in somewhat striking fashion the

lack of sense of proportion prevalent amongst some of those included

in G.H.Q. This chapter deals only with early days; but it may perhaps

be mentioned here that there was a disposition to deride and decry the

New Army at St. Omer almost up to the date, May 1915, when the first

three of its divisions, the Ninth, Twelfth and Fourteenth, made their

appearance in the war zone.

Watching the progress of events from behind the scenes, one could not

but think that in respect to the occasional _tracasseries_ between the

War Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the British troops in

France and Flanders, there were faults on both sides. The wording of

some of the telegraphic messages passing between Lord K. and Sir J.

French did not strike one as altogether felicitous, and, if messages

from G.H.Q. were provocative, the replies were not always calculated

to pour oil on troubled waters. The truth is, that when a pair of

people both of whom require "handling" become associated under

conditions of anxiety and stress that are bound to be trying to the

temper and jarring on the nerves, it's a horse to a hen they won't

make much of a fist of handling each other. The Secretary of State's

action in sending Sir H. Smith-Dorrien to command the Second Corps at

the very outset of the campaign after General Grierson's tragic death,

struck me at the time as a mistake. Sir J. French had asked for

General Plumer who was available, and his wishes might well have been

acceded to. Owing to circumstances of a quite special character the

selection was not in any case an altogether happy one, as the

relations between the new commander of the Second Corps and the chief

of the B.E.F. had not always been too cordial in the past. Having been

away from home so much, Lord K. may not have been aware of this; but I

imagine that if he had consulted the Military Members of the Army

Council they would have mentioned it, as it was almost a matter of

common knowledge in the Service.

On that unpleasant controversy with regard to the rights and the

wrongs of what occurred when the War Minister paid his sudden visit to

Paris during the retreat from Mons, of which so much has been heard, I

can throw no light whatever. At a later date "Fitz" (Colonel O.

Fitzgerald, Lord K.'s constant companion) and I were in pretty close

touch, and he used to keep me informed of what his chief had in his

mind; but I hardly knew him to speak to during the early weeks. In

respect to the Antwerp business, it certainly did seem to me that our

principal commander on the Western Front (for the moment there were

two) was not being very well treated. From a perusal of some of the

communications that were flying about at a juncture when Sir J. French

was confronted by a complex problem, and was virtually embarking on an

entirely new set of operations, one gathered that he was hardly being

kept so well informed of what was in progress and of what was

contemplated as he had a right to expect, and as was indeed demanded

by the situation. Still, this was no doubt due to what one might call

bad Staff work, and not to any wish to keep Sir John in the dark as to

Sir H. Rawlinson's orders, nor as to the position of this new British

force that was being planted down in the war zone. It may well have

been the direct result of Lord K.'s system of keeping all telegraphic

work in connection with operations in his own hands, instead of this

being carried out by the General Staff as under the existing

regulations it was supposed to be.

Much has been written and has been said in public about the pushing of

the General Staff into the background at the War Office during the

early months of the war. An idea exists that this subversion was

mainly, if not indeed entirely, consequential on the weakening of its

personnel as a body owing to a number of its most prominent and

experienced members having gone off to the wars. While readily

admitting that its efficiency suffered as a result of these

withdrawals, I am by no means sure that it would have managed to keep

in the foreground even if the whole of its more shining lights had on

mobilization remained where they were in Whitehall. Lord Kitchener had

never been closely associated with Generals Robertson and Henry

Wilson, its two principal members to leave for the front, and it by no

means follows that if they had remained they would, during the first

few critical weeks, have been much more successful than were Sir C.

Douglas and Sir J. Wolfe-Murray in keeping a hand on the helm. The

Secretary of State would no doubt have learnt to value their counsel

before long, but he would no more have tolerated the slightest attempt

at dictation in respect to the general conduct of the war until he

knew his men, than he would have put up with dictation as to how the

personnel which he was attracting into the ranks at the rate of tens

of thousands per week were to be disposed of. The story of how the

General Staff gradually recovered much of its lost ground will,

however, be touched upon in the next chapter, and on that point no

more need be said at present.

It may, however, be remarked here that the comparative elimination of

the General Staff was virtually confined to its elimination in

respect to what admittedly is its most important function in times of

national emergency--advising the Government of the country on the

subject of the general conduct of the war--and in respect to the

administrative task of actually issuing instructions as to operations

to those in supreme command in the theatres of conflict. The duties of

the General Staff cover many other matters besides these. They include

collection of information, secret service, questions of international

law, military education, training of troops, etc. It fulfilled its

mission in connection with such subjects just as had always been

intended, nor, in so far as they were concerned, was it thrust on one

side in any sense. Lord Kitchener's system of centralization only

directly affected a small proportion of the very numerous

directorates, branches, and sections into which the War Office was

divided up.

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 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

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 attitude 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 attitude which in the event had

untoward consequences.

One afternoon the Serbian Military Attaché 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 assistance, 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 attitude 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 Attaché 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 Attaché, 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 Attaché 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 attitude 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 assumed special responsibilities in connection with

Russian supplies at a later date, a date subsequent to the _Hampshire_

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 principal

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'était

assommant!" 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 document 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 Canal, 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

attitude 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

shores 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

Canal 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 retarded 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 establishing 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 assumes

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 circumspection, 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 assist 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 passenger, the Admiralissimo of the

Grand Fleet would have been to delay the departure of the _Hampshire_

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 assured.

The employing of the instrument which he had created could be left to

other hands.

Many appreciations of him appeared at the time of his lamented

passing, and have appeared since. His character and his qualifications

as man of action and elaborator had not always been appraised quite

correctly during his lifetime, and they are a subject of differences

of opinion still. Often was he spoken of as a great organizer and

administrator. But his claim to possess such qualifications rested

rather upon the results that he obtained than upon the methods by

which he obtained them. Of detail he possessed no special mastery, and

yet he would concern himself with questions of detail which might well

have been left to subordinates to deal with. He won the confidence of

those under him not so much through trusting them in the sense of

leaving them responsibility, as through compelling them to trust him

by the force of his personality and by the wide compass of his outlook

upon the numberless questions that were ever at issue. He had been

described as harsh, taciturn, and unbending. He was on the contrary a

delightful chief to serve once one understood his ways, although he

would stand no nonsense and, like most people, was occasionally out of

humour and exacting.

A more cunning hand than mine is needed to depict adequately the great

soldier-statesman. But this I would say. There has been much foolish

talk as to this individual and to that having won the war. That any

one person could have won the war is on the face of it an absurdity.

The greatest factor in achieving the result was the British Navy; but

who would claim that any one of the chieftains in our fleets or

pulling the naval strings ashore decided the issue of the struggle?

Next, however, to what our sailors achieved afloat, the most important

influence in giving victory to the side of the Entente was the

development, to an extent previously undreamt of, of the British

fighting resources ashore. That was primarily the handiwork of Lord

Kitchener. His country can fairly claim that he accomplished more than

did any other individual--French, American, Italian, Russian,

British--to bring German militarism to the ground.

No reference to the famous Field-Marshal's career during the Great War

would be complete without one word as to "Fitz." Fitzgerald was, after

a fashion, the complement of his Chief. We in Whitehall would have

been lost without him. A comparatively junior officer, he was looked

upon with some suspicion by those high up in the War Office just at

first, in consequence of the exceptional influence that he enjoyed

with the War Minister, and of his always knowing more about what was

going on than anybody else but the War Minister himself. But all hands

speedily came to appreciate the rare qualities of this seeming

interloper, to realize what useful services he was able and ever ready

to perform, and to turn his presence at his Chief's elbow to the best

account. Sometimes he would be acting as a buffer; at other times he

assumed the rôle of coupling-chain. Lord Kitchener frequently employed

him to convey instructions verbally, and on such occasions the

emissary always knew exactly what was in the War Minister's mind. If

after an interview with the Chief one felt any doubts as to what was

required of one, a hint to Fitz would be sure to secure the

information of which one stood in need. Lord K. reposed implicit

confidence in the judgement of this Personal Military Secretary of

his, and with good reason. Often when the solution of some problem

under discussion appeared to be open to question, he would say, "Let's

have in Fitz and see what he thinks."

The relations between them were like father and son. Each swore by the

other, and Lord K. indeed never seemed better pleased than when one

showed a liking for the Bengal Lancer whom he had chosen when in India

and attached to himself. "I'll go and talk it over with Fitz, sir,"

was sure to be rewarded with a pleasant smile and a "Yes, do."

Possessing a charming personality, a keen intellect, a fund of humour

and a considerable knowledge of the world, Fitz was an extremely

attractive figure quite apart from the exceptional qualifications

which he possessed for a post which he filled with so much credit to

himself, and with such advantage to others. Of the thousands who went

down in the great struggle, few were probably more sincerely mourned

by hosts of friends than the gallant soldier whose body, washed ashore

on the iron-bound coast of the Orkneys, we laid to rest one showery

June afternoon in the hillside cemetery overlooking Eastbourne.

CHAPTER V

THE DARDANELLES

The Tabah incident -- The Dardanelles memorandum of 1906 --

Special steps taken with regard to it by Sir H.

Campbell-Bannerman -- Mr. Churchill first raises the question --

My conference with him in October 1914 -- The naval project

against the Straits -- Its fundamental errors -- Would never have

been carried into effect had there been a conference between the

Naval War Staff and the General Staff -- The bad start -- The

causes of the final failure on the 18th of March -- Lord K.'s

instructions to Sir I. Hamilton -- The question of the packing of

the transports -- Sir I. Hamilton's complaint as to there being

no plan prepared -- The 1906 memorandum -- Sir Ian's complaint

about insufficient information -- How the 1906 memorandum

affected this question -- Misunderstanding as to the difficulty

of obtaining information -- The information not in reality so

defective -- My anxiety at the time of the first landing -- The

plan, a failure by early in May -- Impossibility of sending out

reinforcements then -- Question whether the delay in sending out

reinforcements greatly affected the result in August 1915 -- The

Dardanelles Committee -- Its anxiety -- Sir E. Carson and Mr.

Churchill, allies -- The question of clearing out -- My

disinclination to accept the principle before September -- Sir C.

Monro sent out -- The delay of the Government in deciding -- Lord

K. proceeds to the Aegean -- My own experiences -- A trip to

Paris with a special message to the French Government -- Sent on

a fool's errand, thanks to the Cabinet -- A notable state paper

on the subject -- Mr. Lloyd George and the "sanhedrin" --

Decision to evacuate only Anzac and Suvla -- Sir W. Robertson

arrives and orders are sent to evacuate Helles -- I give up the

appointment of D.M.O.

No sooner did disquieting intelligence come to hand to the effect that

the Ottoman authorities had given the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ a

suspicious welcome in Turkish waters during the opening weeks of the

great struggle, than it became apparent that war with a fresh

antagonist was at least on the cards. It was, moreover, obvious that

if there were to be a rupture between the Entente and the Sublime

Porte, the Bosphorus was certain to be closed as a line of

communication between the Western Powers and Russia. Such an

eventuality was bound to exercise a far-reaching influence over the

course of the war as a whole. One therefore naturally gave some

attention to the possibilities involved in an undertaking against

Constantinople and the Straits--a subject with which by chance I

happened to be probably as familiar as anybody in the army.

Some eight years before, in the early part of 1906, H.M. Government

had found itself at variance with the Sublime Porte in connection with

a spot called Tabah at the head of the Gulf of Akaba, which we

regarded as within the dominions of the Khedive but which Osmanli

troops had truculently taken possession of. The Sultan's advisers had

been rather troublesome about the business, and Downing Street and the

Foreign Office had been obliged to take up a firm attitude before the

Ottoman Government unwillingly climbed down. I had been in charge of

the strategical section of the Military Operations Directorate at that

time, and, in considering what we might be able to do in the military

line supposing that things came to a head, had investigated the

problems involved in gaining possession of the Dardanelles. Some years

earlier, moreover, I had passed through the Straits and had spent a

night at Chanak in the Narrows, taking careful note of the lie of the

land, of the batteries as then existing, and so forth.

After an accommodation had been arrived at with Johnny Turk in 1906,

the Committee of Imperial Defence had followed up this question of

operations against the Hellespont, more or less as an academic

question; and I had drafted a paper on the subject, which was gone

through line by line by General Spencer Ewart who was then D.M.O., in

consultation with myself, was modified in some minor respects by him,

was initialed by General Lyttelton, the Chief of the General Staff,

and was accepted in principle by the C.I.D., Sir J. Fisher (as he then

was) having as First Sea Lord expressed his full concurrence with the

views therein expressed. These in effect "turned" the project "down."

When about the end of August I searched for the 1906 memorandum in the

files of the Committee of Imperial Defence papers which were in my

safe, I found a note in the file concerned to say that by order of the

Prime Minister the memorandum had been withdrawn. The reason for this

I discovered at a later date. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had fully

realized the importance of this Dardanelles transaction of 1906. He

had perceived that it was a matter of quite exceptional secrecy. He

had dreaded the disastrous results which might well arise were news by

any mischance to leak out and to reach the Sublime Porte that the

naval and military authorities in this country had expressed the

opinion that successful attack upon the Dardanelles was virtually

impracticable, and that H.M. Government had endorsed this view. Tell

the Turk that, and our trump card was gone. We could then no longer

bluff the Ottoman Government in the event of war with feints of

operations against the Straits--the very course which I believe would

have been adopted in 1914-1915, had the Admiralty War Staff and the

General Staff considered the question together without Cabinet

interference and submitted a joint report for the information of the

War Council. That 1906 memorandum and the Committee of Imperial

Defence transactions in connection with it were treated differently

from any C.I.D. documents of analogous kind then or, as far as I know,

subsequently. I never saw the memorandum from 1906 till one day in May

1915, when Mr. Asquith pushed a copy across the table to me at a

meeting of the War Council in Downing Street, and I recognized it at

once as in great measure my own production. It would not seem to have

been brought to the notice of the Dardanelles Commission that the

memorandum (to which several references are made in their Reports) was

practically accepted by the Committee of Imperial Defence as governing

the military policy of the country with respect to attack on the

Straits in the event of war.

The consequence of my having made myself familiar with the question in

the past was that, when at the beginning of September 1914 Mr.

Churchill raised the question of a conjunct Greek and British

enterprise against the Straits, it was a simple matter for me to

prepare a short memorandum on the subject, a memorandum of a decidedly

discouraging nature. As a matter of fact, what was perhaps the

strongest argument against the undertaking at that time was by

oversight omitted from the document--the Greeks had no howitzers or

mobile heavy artillery worth mentioning, and any ordnance of that

class that we disposed of in the Mediterranean was of the prehistoric

kind. The slip was of no great importance, however, because there

never was the remotest chance of King Constantine, who was no mean

judge of warlike problems, letting his country in for so dubious an

enterprise.

We were not actually at war with the Ottoman Empire for another two

months. But hostilities had virtually become certain during the month

of October, and one morning in the latter part of that month the First

Lord sent a message across asking me to come over to his room and

discuss possibilities in connection with the Dardanelles. I found the

First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg) and the Fourth Sea Lord

(Commodore C. F. Lambert) waiting, as well as Mr. Churchill, and we

sat round a table with all the maps and charts that were necessary for

our purpose spread out on it. The problem of mastering the Straits was

examined entirely from the point of view of a military operation based

upon, and supported by, naval power. If the question of a fleet attack

upon the defences within the defile was mentioned at all, it was only

referred to quite incidentally.

From my own observation on the spot, and as a result of later

examination of maps, charts, confidential reports, and so forth, I had

come to the conclusion that the key to the Dardanelles lay in the

Kilid Bahr plateau, which dominates the channel at its very narrowest

point from the European (Gallipoli Peninsula) side. By far the best

plan of gaining possession of this high ground would, I considered, be

to land, by surprise if possible, the biggest military force that

could be very rapidly put ashore on that long stretch of coast-line

practicable for troops to disembark from boats in fine weather, which

was situated about the locality that has since become immortalized as

Anzac Cove. A project on these lines is what we actually discussed

that morning in the First Lord's room. I pointed out the difficulties

and the dangers involved, _i.e._ the virtual impossibility of

effecting a real surprise, the perils inseparable from a

disembarkation in face of opposition, the certainty that the enemy was

even now improving the land defences of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and

the fact that, at the moment, we had no troops to carry such a scheme

out and that we were most unlikely to have any to spare for such an

object for months to come. One somewhat controversial tactical point I

gave particular attention to--the efficacy of the fire of warships

when covering a military landing and when endeavouring to silence

field-guns on shore; my own view was that the potentialities of a

fleet under such conditions were apt to be greatly overestimated. My

exposition was intended to be dissuasive, and I think that Mr.

Churchill was disappointed.

We had a most pleasant discussion, the First Lord having a good

working knowledge of military questions owing to his early career and

training, and being therefore able to appreciate professional points

which might puzzle the majority of civilians. At the end of it he

seemed to clearly realize what a very serious operation of war a

military undertaking against the Straits was likely to be, but he

dwelt forcibly, and indeed enthusiastically, upon the results that

would be gained by the Entente in the event of such an undertaking

being successfully carried out--on that subject we were all quite at

one. The story of this informal pow-wow has been recorded thus at

length, because it was really the only occasion on which the General

Staff were afforded anything like a proper opportunity of expressing

an opinion as to operations against the Dardanelles, until after the

country had been engulfed up to the neck in the morass and was

irretrievably committed to an amphibious campaign on a great scale in

the Gallipoli Peninsula. Prince Louis resigned his position as First

Sea Lord a few days later; Commodore Lambert often mentioned the

pow-wow in conversation with me in later days, after the mischief (for

which the professional side of the Admiralty was only very partially

to blame) had been done.

As one gradually became acquainted in the following January with the

nature of the naval scheme for dealing with the Straits, it was

difficult not to feel apprehension. While, as Brigade-Major R.A. in

the Western Command and later as commanding a company of R.G.A. at

Malta, concerned with coast defence principles, the tactical rather

than the technical scientific side of such problems had always

interested me. When musing, during those interminable waits which take

place in the course of a day's gun practice from a coast-defence

battery, as to what would be likely to happen in the event of the work

actually engaging a hostile armament, one could picture oneself driven

from the guns under the hail of flying fragments of rock, concrete,

and metal thrown up by the ships' huge projectiles. But one did not

picture the battery as destroyed and rendered of no effect. Anybody

who has tried both is aware how infinitely easier gun practice is at

even a moving target on the water than it is at a target on land. One

foresaw that the enemy's warships would plaster the vicinity of the

work with projectiles, and would create conditions disastrous to human

life if the gun-detachments did not go to ground, but that they would

not often, if ever, actually hit the mark and demolish guns and

mountings.

The Admiralty's creeping form of attack, chosen on Admiral Carden's

initiative, ignored this aspect of the question altogether. The whole

scheme hinged upon _destroying_ the Ottoman coast batteries, the very

thing that ships find it hardest to do. They can silence batteries;

but what is the good of that if they then clear out and allow the

defenders to come back and clean up? The creeping plan, moreover,

obviously played into the hands of Turkish mobile guns, which would

turn up in new positions on successive days, and which, as I had told

Mr. Churchill three months before, our ships would find most difficult

to deal with; these guns would probably give the mine-sweepers much

more trouble than the heavy ordnance in the enemy's fixed defences.

Then, again, one could not but be aware that the Sister Service was

none too well equipped for dealing with the enigma of mines in any

form--that had become obvious to those behind the scenes during the

first six months of the war--and one's information pointed to the

Turkish mine-defence of the Dardanelles being more up to date than was

their gun-defence. Finally, and much the most important of all, this

deliberate procedure was the worst possible method to adopt from the

army's point of view, supposing the plan to fail and the army then to

be called in to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The enemy would

have been given full warning, and would deliberately have been allowed

what the Turk always stands in need of when on the war-path--time to

prepare.

The "First Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, as well as

sidelights thrown upon the affair from other quarters, have

established that of the three eminent naval experts who dealt with the

project and who were more or less responsible for its being put into

execution, two, Sir Arthur Wilson and Sir Henry Jackson, were by no

means enthusiastic about it, while the third, Lord Fisher, was opposed

to it but allowed himself to be overruled by the War Council. Had

those three admirals met three representatives of the General Staff,

Sir J. Wolfe-Murray, General Kiggell and myself, let us say, sitting

round a table with no Cabinet Ministers present, I am certain that

the report that we should have drawn up would have been dead against

the whole thing. The objections raised from the military side would

have been quite sufficient to dispel any doubts that the sailors had

left on the subject. As for that naïve theory that we might draw back

in the middle of the naval operations supposing that the business went

awry, of which I do not remember hearing at the time---- Pooh! We

could hardly, left to ourselves, have been such flats as to take that

seriously.

The cable message from Tenedos which announced the result of the first

effort against the conspicuous and comparatively feeble works that

defended the mouth of the Straits, was the reverse of heartening. The

bombarding squadron enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in armament

from every point of view--range, weight of metal, and accuracy. The

conditions were almost ideal for the attacking side, as there was

plenty of sea-room and no worry about mines. If the warships could not

finally dispose of Turkish works such as this, and with everything

favourable, by long-range fire, then long-range fire was "off." Once

inside the Straits, the fleet, manoeuvring without elbow-room, would

have to get pretty near its work, mines or no mines, if it was going

to do any good. The idea of the _Queen Elizabeth_ pitching her stuff

over the top of the Gallipoli Peninsula left one cold. Several days

before Admiral de Robeck delivered his determined attack upon the

defences of the Narrows of the 18th of March, one had pretty well made

up one's mind that the thing was going to be a failure, and that the

army was going to be let in for an extremely uncomfortable business.

Accounts emanating from the Turkish side have suggested that the naval

operations were within an ace of succeeding, and that they only had to

be pressed a little further to achieve their object. An examination of

the books by Mr. Morgenthau and others does not bear this out. The

Turks imagined that our fleet had been beaten off by gun-fire on the

18th, and they appear to have got nervous because the ammunition for

certain of their heaviest guns was running short. Their heavy guns,

and the ammunition for them, was a matter of quite secondary

importance. The fleet was beaten off owing to the effect of the

drifting mines. The Turks thought that the damage done to the ships

was due to their batteries, when it was in reality caused by their

mines. They did not appreciate the situation correctly, for they do

not appear to have been short of mines. The Russian plan of letting

these engines of destruction loose at the Black Sea end of the

Bosphorus to drift down with the current indeed provided the Osmanlis

with a constant supply of excellent ones; they were picked up, shipped

down to the Dardanelles, and used against the Allies' fleet. These

weapons, drifting and fixed, together with the mobile artillery which

so seriously interfered with mine-sweeping, proved to be the trump

cards in the hands of Johnny Turk and his Boche assistants.

I was present when Lord Kitchener met Sir I. Hamilton and his chief

staff-officer, General Braithwaite, and gave Sir Ian his instructions.

At that time Lord K. still hoped that, in so far as forcing the

Dardanelles was concerned, the fleet would effect its purpose,

practically if not wholly unaided by the troops. These were designed

rather for operations subsequent to the fall of what was after all but

the first line of Ottoman defence. It was only after Sir Ian arrived

on the spot that the naval attack actually failed and that military

operations on an ambitious scale against the Gallipoli Peninsula took

the stage. The fact that when the transports arrived at Mudros they

were found not to be packed suitably for effecting an immediate

disembarkation on hostile soil, has been a good deal criticized.

Although it was not a matter within my responsibility, I was sharply

heckled over the point by Captain Stephen Gwynne when before the

Dardanelles Commission. But the troops left before there was any

question of attempting a landing in force in face of the enemy in

the immediate vicinity of the Straits. At the date when they sailed it

remained quite an open question as to what exactly their task was to

be. The transports could not have been appropriately packed even after

military operations in the Gallipoli Peninsula had been decided upon,

without knowing exactly what was Sir Ian's plan.

Sir Ian complained to the Dardanelles Commission that no preliminary

scheme of operations had been drawn up by the War Office; and he

certainly got little assistance in that direction, although it might

not have been of much use to him if he had.[4] He also complained that

there was a great want of staff preparation, no arrangements for

water, for instance, having been made. This was in effect the

consequence of the General Staff at this time not exercising its

proper functions or being invested with the powers to which it was

entitled. There never was a meeting of the various directors in the

War Office concerned, under the aegis of the General Staff, to go into

these matters in detail. The troops would certainly be called upon to

land somewhere, sooner or later, whether the fleet forced the

Dardanelles or not, and all the arrangements as regards supplies,

transport, water, hospitals, material for piers, etc., required to be

worked out by those responsible after getting a lead from the General

Staff. If the commodities of all kinds involved could not be procured

locally or in Egypt, then it was up to the War Office to see that

they should be sent out from home, and be sent out, moreover,

practically at the same time as the troops left so that they should be

on the spot when needed.

[Footnote 4: A single "preliminary scheme of

operations" would have been of little service to

the C.-in-C. of "Medforce"--it must have been based

on the mistaken assumption (which held good when he

started) that the fleet would force the Straits,

and it would consequently have concerned itself

with undertakings totally different from those

which, in the event, Sir Ian had to carry out. If

the army was to derive any benefit from projects

elaborated in the War Office, there must have been

a second "preliminary scheme of operations" based

on the assumption that the fleet was going to fail.

What profit is there in a plan of campaign that

dictates procedure to be followed after the first

great clash of arms? In the case under

consideration, the first great clash of arms befell

on the 18th of March, five days after Sir Ian left

London with his instructions, and it turned the

whole business upside down.]

Sir Ian also mentioned that he had not been shown the 1906 memorandum

before going to the Near East. As it turned out, the mystery made

about this document (although there was excellent reason for the

special steps that were taken in connection with it at the time of its

coming before the Committee of Imperial Defence) proved inconvenient

in 1914-15. One wonders, indeed, whether it was ever seen by the

Admiralty experts at the time when they had Admiral Carden's plan of a

creeping naval attack upon the Dardanelles under consideration,

because the memorandum expressed considerable doubts as to the

efficacy of gun-fire from on board ship against the land, and the

event proved that these doubts were fully justified. Had I had a copy

in my possession I should certainly have shown it to Sir Ian, or else

to Braithwaite, with whom, as he had been a brother-Director on the

General Staff at the War Office for some months previously, I was in

close touch.

Sir Ian, the Report says, "dwelt strongly on the total absence of

information furnished him by the War Office staff," and he complained

very justly that the map, or maps, given him had proved inaccurate and

inadequate. Now, that reflected upon Generals Ewart and H. Wilson, who

had been holding the appointment of D.M.O. between 1906 and 1914, and

it reflected upon Sir N. Lyttelton, the late Lord Nicholson (actually

a member of the Commission) and Sir J. French, who had successively

been Chiefs of the General Staff during the same period. Topographical

information cannot be procured after hostilities have broken out; it

has to be obtained in advance. On noting what was said about this in

the "First Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, I asked to be

allowed to give evidence again, and the Commission were good enough to

recall me in due course. The object was, not to contest Sir I.

Hamilton's assertions but to point out that under the circumstances

of the case no blame was fairly attributable to those who were

responsible for information of some sort being available.

To have obtained full information as to the Gallipoli Peninsula and

the region around the Dardanelles, but especially as to the peninsula,

was a matter of money--and plenty of it. In no country in the world in

pre-war days was spying on fortified areas of strategical importance

without money a more unprofitable game than in the Ottoman dominions.

There were, on the other hand, few countries where money, if you had

enough of it, was more sure to procure you the information that you

required. Ever since the late General Brackenbury was at the head of

the Intelligence Department of the War Office in the eighties secret

funds have been at its disposal, but they have not been large, and

there have always been plenty of desirable objects to devote those

funds to. Had the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1906 taken the line

that, even admitting an attack upon the Straits to be a difficult

business, its effect if successful was nevertheless likely to be so

great that the matter was one to be followed up, a pretty substantial

share of the secret funds coming to hand in the Intelligence

Department between 1906 and 1914 would surely have been devoted to

this region. All kinds of topographical details concerning the

immediate neighbourhood of the Dardanelles would thereby have been got

together, ready for use; it would somehow have been discovered in the

environs of Stamboul that the Gallipoli Peninsula had been surveyed

and that good large-scale maps of that region actually existed, and

copies of those large-scale maps would have found their way into the

War Office, where they would speedily have been reproduced.

It was made plain to me when giving evidence before the Commission

that the Rt. Hon. A. Fisher and Sir T. Mackenzie, its members

representing the Antipodes, considered that there had been great

neglect on the part of the War Office in obtaining information with

regard to the environs of the Dardanelles in advance. But, quite

apart from the peculiar situation created by the decision of the

Committee of Imperial Defence, there must have been serious

difficulties in obtaining such information about the Gallipoli

Peninsula--only those who have had experience in such matters know how

great the difficulties are. Intelligence service in peace time is a

subject of which the average civilian does not understand the meaning

nor realize the dangers. The Commission, which included experts in

such matters in the shape of Admiral Sir W. May and Lord Nicholson,

made no comment on this point in its final Report, evidently taking

the broad view that the lack of information was, under all the

circumstances of the case, excusable. In his special Report, Sir T.

Mackenzie on the other hand blames the Imperial General Staff for

being "unprepared for operations against the Dardanelles and

Bosphorus," obviously having the question of information in his mind,

as he must be perfectly well aware that the planning of actual

operations was just as much a matter for the Admiralty as for the

General Staff, the whole problem being manifestly an amphibious one.

As a matter of fact, considering the kind of place that the Gallipoli

Peninsula was, and taking into consideration the extreme jealousy with

which the Turks, quite properly from their point of view, had always

regarded the appearance of strangers in that well-watched region, the

information contained in the secret official publications which the

Mediterranean Expeditionary Force took out with it was by no means to

be despised. All but one of the landing places actually utilized on

the famous 25th of April were, I think, designated in these booklets,

and that one was unsuitable for landing anything but infantry. A great

deal of the information proved to be perfectly correct, and a good

deal more of it might have proved to be correct had the Expeditionary

Force ever penetrated far enough into the interior of the Peninsula to

test it.

There had been many occasions giving grounds for disquietude since the

days of Mons, but I never felt greater anxiety at any time during the

war than when awaiting tidings as to the landing on the Aegean shore.

We knew that this was about to take place, but I was not aware of the

details of Sir I. Hamilton's plan. Soldiers who had examined carefully

into the factors likely to govern a disembarkation in force in face of

an enemy who was fully prepared, were unanimous in viewing such an

operation as a somewhat desperate enterprise. There was no modern

precedent for an undertaking of the kind. One dreaded some grave

disaster, feared that the troops might entirely fail to gain a footing

on shore, and pictured them as driven off after suffering overwhelming

losses. The message announcing that a large part of the army was

safely disembarked came as an immense relief. Although disappointed at

learning that only a portion of the troops had been put ashore at

Anzac on the outside of the Peninsula, which, I had presumed, would be

the point selected for the main attack, I felt decidedly optimistic

for the moment. What had appeared to be the greatest obstacle to

success had been overcome, for a landing had been effected in spite of

all that the enemy could do to hinder it. As mentioned in the previous

chapter, I left London immediately afterwards, and it was a bitter

disappointment to hear the truth a few days later, to realize that my

first appreciation had been incorrect, and to learn that gaining a

footing on shore did not connote an immediate advance into the

interior. It provides a good example of how difficult it is to

forecast results in war.

By fairly early in May, there already seemed to be little prospect of

the Expeditionary Force achieving its object unless very strong

reinforcements in men and munitions were sent out to the Aegean. But

there was shortage of both men and munitions, and men and munitions

alike were needed elsewhere. The second Battle of Ypres, coupled with

the miscarriage of the Franco-British offensive about La Bassée,

indicated that the enemy was formidable on the Western Front.

Although there was every prospect of an improvement before long in

respect to munitions output, the shell shortage was at the moment

almost at its worst. We knew at the War Office that the Russians were

in grave straits in respect to weapons and ammunition, and one could

not tell whether the German Great General Staff, probably quite as

well aware of this as we were, would assume the offensive in the

Eastern theatre of war, or would transfer great bodies of troops from

East to West to make some determined effort against the French and

ourselves. The change of Government which introduced Mr. Asquith's

Coalition Cabinet, moreover, came about at this time, and political

palaver seriously delayed decisions.

It was, no doubt, unfortunate, from the point of view of the

Dardanelles campaign, that there was so much hesitation about sending

out the very substantial reinforcements which only actually reached

Sir I. Hamilton at the end of July and during the early days of

August. But it by no means necessarily follows that if they had

reached their destination, say, six weeks sooner, the Straits would

have been won. Much stress has always been laid upon the torpor that

descended upon Suvla during the very critical hours which followed the

successful disembarkation of the new force in that region; but those

inexperienced troops and their leaders must have acted with

extraordinary resolution and energy to have appreciably changed the

fortunes of General Birdwood's great offensive against Sari Bair.

Information from the Turkish side does not suggest that Liman von

Sanders gained any great accessions of strength during July and early

August. It was the ample warning which the enemy received of what was

impending before ever a soldier was landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula

that, far more than anything which occurred subsequently, rendered the

Dardanelles operations abortive.

The Dardanelles Committee came into being in June. This body included

most of the more prominent figures in the Coalition Cabinet.

Attending its deliberations from time to time one acquired the

impression that an undue amount of attention was being given in

Government circles to the Aegean theatre of war, an attention out of

all proportion either to its importance or to our prospects of

success; for the talk ranged over the whole wide world at times and

the Committee dealt with a good deal besides the Dardanelles. Its

members always took the utmost interest in the events in the Gallipoli

Peninsula, and, up to the date when the August offensive in that

region definitely failed, they were mostly in sanguine mood. One or

two optimistic statements made in public at that time were indeed

quite inappropriate and had much better been left unspoken. The

amateur strategist, that inexhaustible source of original and

unprofitable proposals, was by no means inarticulate at these

confabulations in 10 Downing Street. He would pick up Sir I.

Hamilton's Army and would deposit it in some new locality, just as one

might pick up one's pen-wiper and shift it from one side of the

blotting-pad to the other. That is how some people who are simply

bursting with intelligence, people who will produce whole newspaper

columns of what to the uninformed reads like sensible matter, love to

make war. In a way, the U-boats in the Aegean served as a blessing in

disguise; they helped to squash many hare-brained schemes inchoated

around Whitehall, and to consign them to oblivion before they became

really dangerous.

After the failure of the August offensive in the Gallipoli Peninsula,

the members of the Dardanelles Committee became extremely anxious, and

with good reason. They would come round to my room and discuss the

situation individually, and I am afraid they seldom found me in

optimistic vein. I had run over to Ulster in April 1914 on the

occasion of certain stirring events taking place, which brought

General Hubert Gough and his cavalry brigade into some public

prominence, and which robbed the War Office of the services of Colonel

Seely, Sir J. French and Sir Spencer Ewart. I had been allowed behind

the scenes in the north of Ireland as a sympathiser, had visited

Omagh, Enniskillen, historic Derry and other places, had noted the

grim determination of the loyalists, and had been deeply impressed by

the efficiency and the foresight of the inner organization. Necessity

makes strange bedfellows. It was almost startling to find within

fifteen months of that experience Sir E. Carson arriving in my

apartment together with Mr. Churchill, their relations verging on the

mutually affectionate, eager to discuss as colleagues the very

unpromising position of affairs on the shores of the Thracian

Chersonese.

From a very early stage in the Dardanelles venture there had been a

feeling in some quarters within the War Office that we ought to cut

our losses and clear out of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and that sending

out reinforcements to the Aegean which could ill be spared from other

scenes of warlike activity looked uncommonly like throwing good money

after bad. My friends at G.H.Q., from whom I used to hear frequently,

and who would look in when over on duty or on short leave, were

strongly of this opinion; but they naturally were somewhat biassed.

One took a long time to reconcile oneself to this idea, even when no

hope of real success remained. It was not until September indeed, and

after the decision had been come to to send out no more fresh troops

to Sir I. Hamilton, that I personally came to the conclusion that no

other course was open than to have done with the business and to come

away out of that with the least possible delay. Sir Ian had sent home

a trusted staff-officer, Major (now Major-General) the Hon. Guy

Dawnay, to report and to try to secure help. Dawnay fought his corner

resolutely and was loyalty itself to his chief, but the information

that he had to give and his appreciation of the situation as it stood

were the reverse of encouraging. By the middle of October, when the

Salonika affair had begun to create fresh demands on our limited

resources and when Sir C. Monro was sent out to take up command of the

Mediterranean [p.103] Expeditionary Force, any doubts which remained on the

subject had been dispelled, and I was glad to gather from the new

chief's attitude when he left that, in so far as he understood the

situation before satisfying himself of the various factors on the

spot, he leant towards complete and prompt evacuation.

If a withdrawal was to be effected, it was manifest that this ought to

be carried out as soon as possible in view of the virtual certainty of

bad weather during the winter months. But the War Council, which had

superseded the Dardanelles Committee, unfortunately appeared to halt

helplessly between two opinions. Even Sir C. Monro's uncompromising

recommendation failed to decide its members. Lord Kitchener was loth

to agree to the step, as he feared the effect which a British retreat

might exert in Egypt and elsewhere in the East. As will be remembered

he proceeded to the Aegean himself at the beginning of November to

take stock, but he soon decided for evacuation after examining the

conditions on the spot. The whole question remained in abeyance for

some three weeks.

My own experiences of what followed were so singular that a careful

note of dates and details was made at the time, because one realized

even then that incidents of the kind require to be made known. They

may serve as a warning. On the 23rd of November my chief, Sir A.

Murray, summoned me, after a meeting of the War Council, to say that

that body wished me to repair straightway to Paris and to make General

Gallieni, the War Minister, acquainted with a decision which they had

just arrived at--viz., that the Gallipoli Peninsula was to be

abandoned without further ado. The full Cabinet would meet on the

morrow (the 24th) to endorse the decision. That afternoon Mr. Asquith,

who was acting as Secretary of State for War in the absence of Lord

Kitchener, sent for me and repeated these instructions.

I left by the morning boat-train next day, having wired to our

Military Attaché to arrange, if possible, an interview with General

Gallieni that evening; and he met me at the Gare du Nord, bearer of an

invitation to dinner from the War Minister, and of a telegram from

General Murray intimating that the Cabinet, having met as arranged,

had been unable to come to a decision but were going to have another

try on the morrow. Here was a contingency that was not covered by

instructions and for which one was not prepared, but I decided to tell

General Gallieni exactly how matters stood. (Adroitly drawn out for my

benefit by his personal staff during dinner, the great soldier told us

that stirring tale of how, as Governor of Paris, he despatched its

garrison in buses and taxis and any vehicles that he could lay hands

upon, to buttress the army which, under Maunoury's stalwart

leadership, was to fall upon Von Kluck's flank, and was to usher in

the victory of the Marne.)

A fresh wire came to hand from the War Office on the following

afternoon, announcing that the Cabinet had again been unable to clinch

the business, but contemplated a further séance two days later, the

27th. On the afternoon of the 27th, however, a message arrived from

General Murray, to say that our rulers had yet again failed to make up

their minds, and that the best thing I could do under the

circumstances was to return to the War Office. General Gallieni, when

the position of affairs was explained to him, was most sympathetic,

quoted somebody's dictum that "la politique n'a pas d'entrailles," and

hinted that he did not always find it quite plain sailing with his own

gang. Still, there it was. The Twenty-Three had thrown the War Council

over (it was then composed of Messrs. Asquith, Bonar Law, Lloyd

George, and Balfour, and Sir E. Grey, assisted by the First Sea Lord

and the C.I.G.S.) and they were leaving our army marooned on the

Gallipoli Peninsula, with the winter approaching apace, in a position

growing more and more precarious owing to Serbia's collapse and to

Bulgaria's accession to the enemy ranks having freed the great artery

of communications connecting Germany with the Golden Horn.

Life in the War Office during the Great War, even during those early

anxious days of 1914 and 1915, had its lighter side. The astonishing

cheeriness of the British soldier under the most trying circumstances

has become proverbial; but his officer shares this priceless

characteristic with him and displays it even amid the deadening

surroundings of the big building in Whitehall. The best laugh that we

enjoyed during that strenuous period was on the morning when news came

that Anzac and Suvla had been evacuated at the cost of only some

half-dozen casualties and of the abandonment of a very few worn-out

guns. Then it was that an official, who was very much behind the

scenes, extracted a document on the familiar grey-green paper from his

safe and read it out with appropriate "business" to a joyous party.

This State paper, a model of incisive diction and of moving prose,

conceived in the best Oxford manner, drew a terrible picture of what

might occur in withdrawing troops from a foreshore in presence of a

ferocious foe. Its polished periods portrayed a scene of horror and

despair, of a bullet-swept beach, of drowning soldiers and of

shattered boats. It quoted the case of some similar military

operation, where warriors who had gained a footing on a hostile

coast-line had been obliged to remove themselves in haste and had had

the very father and mother of a time during the process--it was

Marathon or Syracuse or some such contemporary martial event, if I

remember aright. This masterly production, there is reason to believe,

had not been without its influence when the question of abandoning the

Gallipoli Peninsula was under consideration of those responsible. Well

did Mr. Lloyd George say in the House of Commons many months later in

the course of his first speech after becoming Prime Minister: "You

cannot run a war with a Sanhedrin."

When the War Council, or the Cabinet, or whatever set of men in

authority it was who at last got something settled, made up their

minds that a withdrawal of sorts was really to take place, they in a

measure reversed the decision which I had been charged to convey to

the French Government a fortnight before. The orders sent out to Sir

C. Monro only directed an evacuation of Anzac and Suvla to take place.

This, it may be observed, seems to some extent to have been the fault

of the sailor-men. They butted in, wanting to hang on to Helles on

watching-the-Straits grounds; they were apparently ready to impose

upon our naval forces in the Aegean the very grave responsibility of

mothering a small army, which was blockaded and dominated on the land

side, as it clung to the inhospitable, storm-driven toe of the

Gallipoli Peninsula in midwinter.

Sir W. Robertson arrived a few days later to take up the appointment

of C.I.G.S., which, I knew, meant the splitting up of my Directorate.

Being aware of his views beforehand as we had often talked it over, I

had a paper ready drafted for his approval urging an immediate total

evacuation of Turkish soil in this region. This he at once submitted

to the War Council, and within two or three days orders were

telegraphed out to the Aegean to the effect that Helles was to be

abandoned. After remaining a few days longer at the War Office as

Director of Military Intelligence, I was sent by the C.I.G.S. on a

special mission to Russia, and my direct connection with the General

Staff came to an end but for a short period in the summer of 1917. It

is a satisfaction to remember that the last question of importance in

which I was concerned before leaving Whitehall for the East was in

lending a hand towards getting our troops out of the impossible

position they were in at the mouth of the Dardanelles.

CHAPTER VI

SOME EXPERIENCES IN THE WAR OFFICE

A reversion to earlier dates -- The statisticians in the winter

of 1914-15 -- The efforts to prove that German man-power would

shortly give out -- Lack of the necessary premises upon which to

found such calculations -- Views on the maritime blockade -- The

projects for operations against the Belgian coast district in the

winter of 1914-15 -- Nature of my staff -- The "dug-outs" -- The

services of one of them, "Z" -- His care of me in foreign parts

-- His activities in other Departments of State -- An alarming

discovery -- How "Z" grappled with a threatening situation -- He

hears about the Admiralty working on the Tanks -- The

cold-shouldering of Colonel Swinton when he raised this question

at the War Office in January 1915 -- Lord Fisher proposes to

construct large numbers of motor-lighters, and I am told off to

go into the matter with him -- The Baltic project -- The way it

was approached -- Meetings with Lord Fisher -- The "beetles" --

Visits from the First Sea Lord -- The question of secrecy in

connection with war operations -- A parable -- The land service

behind the sea service in this matter -- Interviews with Mr.

Asquith -- His ways on such occasions.

These random jottings scarcely lend themselves to the scrupulous

preservation of a chronological continuity. Many other matters

meriting some mention as affecting the War Office had claimed one's

attention before the Dardanelles campaign finally fizzled out early in

January 1916. The General Staff had to some extent been concerned in

the solutions arrived at by the Entente during the year 1915 of those

acutely complex problems which kept arising in the Balkans. Then,

again, quite a number of "side-shows" had been embarked on at various

dates since the outbreak of the conflict, of which some had been

carried through to a successful conclusion to the advantage of the

cause, while the course of others had been of a decidedly chequered

character. The munitions question, furthermore, which had for a time

caused most serious difficulty but which had been disposed of in great

measure by the end of 1915 owing to the foresight and the labours of

Lord Kitchener and of the Master-General of the Ordnance's Department,

was necessarily one in which the Military Operations Directorate was

deeply interested. These and a number of other matters will be dealt

with in special chapters, but some more or less personal experiences

in and around Whitehall may appropriately be placed on record here.

Already, early in the winter of 1914-15, the statisticians were busily

at work. They had found a bone and they were gnawing at it to their

heart's content. Individuals of indisputable capacity and of infinite

application set themselves to work to calculate how soon Boche

man-power would be exhausted. Lord Haldane hurled himself into the

breach with a zest that could hardly have been exceeded had he been

contriving a totally new Territorial Army organization. Professor Oman

abandoned Wellington somewhere amidst the declivities of the sierras

without one qualm, and immersed himself in computations warranted to

make the plain man's hair stand on end. The enthusiasts who

voluntarily undertook this onerous task arrived at results of the most

encouraging kind, for one learnt that the Hun as a warrior would

within quite a short space of time be a phantom of the past, that

adult males within the Kaiser's dominions would speedily comprise only

the very aged, the mentally afflicted or the maimed wreckage from the

battlefields of France and Poland, and that if this attractive

Sovereign proposed to continue hostilities he must ere long, as

Lincoln said of Jefferson Davis, "rob the cradle and the grave." Even

Lord Kitchener displayed some interest in these mathematical

exercises, and was not wholly unimpressed when figures established the

gratifying fact that the German legions were a vanishing proposition.

I was always in this matter graded in the "doubting Thomas" class.

The question seemed to base itself upon what premises you thought fit

to start from. You could no doubt calculate with some certainty upon

the total number of Teuton males of fighting age being somewhere about

fifteen millions in August 1914, upon 700,000, or so, youths annually

reaching the age of eighteen, and upon Germany being obliged to have

under arms continually some five million soldiers. After that you were

handling rather indeterminate factors. You might put down

indispensables in civil life at half a million or at four millions

just as you liked; but it made the difference of three and a half

millions in your pool to start with, according to which estimate you

preferred. After that you had to cut out the unfit--another

problematical figure. Finally came the question of casualties based on

suspicious enemy statistics, and the perplexities involved in the

number of wounded who would, and who would not, be able to return to

the ranks. The only conclusion that one seemed to be justified in

arriving at was that the wastage was in excess of the intake of

youngsters, that the outflow was greater than the inflow, and that if

the war went on long enough German man-power would give out. When that

happy consummation would be arrived at, it was in the winter of

1914-15 impossible to say and fruitless to take a shot at.

The Director of Military Operations received copies of most Foreign

Office telegrams as a matter of course, and during the early months of

the war many of these documents as they came to hand were found to be

concerned with that very ticklish question, the maritime blockade. The

attitude taken up by those responsible in this country regarding this

matter has been severely criticized in many quarters, certain organs

of the Press were loud in their condemnation of our kid-glove methods

in those days, and the Sister Service seemed to be in discontented

mood. But there was a good deal to be said on the other side. Lack of

familiarity with international law, with precedents, and with the

tenour and result of the discussions which had at various times taken

place with foreign countries over the manners and customs of naval

blockade, made any conclusions which I might arrive at over so complex

a problem of little profit. But it always did seem to me that the

policy actually adopted was in the main the right one, and that to

have bowed before advocates of more drastic measures might well have

landed us in a most horrible mess. You can play tricks with neutrals

whose fighting potentialities are restricted, which you had better not

try on with non-belligerents who may be able to make things hot for

you. The progress of the war in the early months was not so wholly

reassuring as to justify hazarding fresh complications.

In his book, "_1914_," Lord French has dealt at some length with an

operations question which was much in debate during the winter of

1914-15. He and Mr. Churchill were at this time bent on joint naval

and military undertakings designed to recover possession of part, or

of the whole, of the Belgian coast-line--in itself a most desirable

objective. Although I did not see most of the communications which

passed between the French Government and ours on the subject, nor

those which passed between Lord Kitchener and the Commander-in-Chief

of the B.E.F., I gathered the nature of what was afoot from Sir J.

Wolfe Murray and Fitzgerald, as also from G.H.Q. in France, and

examined the problem which was involved with the aid of large-scale

maps and charts and such other information as was available. The

experts of St. Omer did not appear to accept the scheme with

absolutely whole-hearted concurrence. By some of them--it may have

been a mistaken impression on my part--the visits of the First Lord of

the Admiralty to their Chief hardly seemed to be welcomed with the

enthusiasm that might have been expected. Whisperings from across the

Channel perhaps made one more critical than one ought to have been,

but, be that as it may, the project hardly struck one as an especially

inviting method of employing force at that particular juncture. We

were deplorably short of heavy howitzers, and we were already feeling

the lack of artillery ammunition of all sorts. Although some

reinforcements--the Twenty-Seventh and Twenty-Eighth Divisions--were

pretty well ready to take the field, no really substantial

augmentation of our fighting forces on the Western Front was to be

anticipated for some months. The end was attractive enough, but the

means appeared to be lacking.

In long-range--or, for the matter of that, short-range--bombardments

of the Flanders littoral by warships I placed no trust. Mr.

Churchill's "we could give you 100 or 200 guns from the sea in

absolutely devastating support" of the 22nd of November to Sir J.

French would not have excited me in the very least. In his book, the

Field-Marshal ascribes the final decision of our Government to refuse

sanction to a plan of operations which they had approved of at the

first blush, partly to French objections and partly to the sudden

fancy taken by the War Council for offensive endeavour in far-distant

fields. That may be the correct explanation; but it is also possible

that after careful consideration of the subject Lord Kitchener

perceived the tactical and strategical weakness of the plan in itself.