Читать книгу Politicians and the War 1914-1916 - Max Aitken - Страница 6

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No sooner were the Liberal Government over their first difficulty in securing a large Government majority for intervention in the war when they were confronted with quite a new difficulty. Strong objections were raised to the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force to France, a proceeding which had for years been considered in British Military and Cabinet circles as represented by the Committee of Imperial Defence as the first step in the possible Continental War.

These objections came from unexpected quarters—both Tory and Liberal. Denial on the part of the authors of these protests would be useless. And after all, why should anyone now consider it an article of faith to deny what they thought or said at that moment? The event proved that it was right to send the Expeditionary Force out. This does not prove that the counter arguments of fears were not honest.

None the less, the two main sources of these hesitations or objections were somewhat startling. Lord Northcliffe, on the Tory side, came to Mr. Churchill and protested strongly against this movement of the troops. I would ascribe this action in his case to a confusion of mind on military topics. Certainly his intervention did not influence Churchill, who stood out strongly for the despatch of the Expeditionary Force; all the more strongly perhaps because of Northcliffe’s intervention.

Lord Haldane’s attitude was far more complex and peculiar. The whole foundation of the modern British Army which he, as War Secretary, and his military advisers on the war had created, was precisely directed to the despatch of this particular force to the North of France, should the occasion arise. It had been asserted officially over and over again, particularly as an argument against conscription, that the Navy, the remaining regular divisions, the Special Reserve and the Territorials were a sufficient safeguard against invasion. The Committee of Imperial Defence had definitely declared in this sense. In all these decisions Lord Haldane was a principal participant. The creation of the Expeditionary Force and its splendid training for foreign war is indeed his greatest claim to be remembered gratefully as a successful executive Minister.

It is clear, therefore, that in theory he was absolutely bound to believe in the despatch of that body. In practice he was found to be voicing all the military doubts and arguments of those who were in favour of retaining the entire British Army at home.

Viscount Grey denies in his book, “Twenty-five Years,” that this charge against Lord Haldane, frequently repeated, has any foundation. He asserts that Lord Haldane “was, from the first, for giving authority at once to send all six divisions to France in the shortest possible time.”

It is true that Lord Grey was a colleague of Lord Haldane in the Government, and such evidence bears great weight. Yet I have before me a contemporary letter written by one Conservative leader to another, giving a detailed account of an interview with Lord Haldane at this time. Founding my view on this letter, I feel bound to say that Lord Haldane expressed different opinions from this Conservative writer. In substance he said:

(1) That if the Expeditionary Force were retained it might form the nucleus of a far more formidable force to be despatched at some future date; (2) that its present accession to the French strength would be trifling; (3) that its extinction would hamper us in the struggle later on. Such a stronger force might be used subsequently to cut across the German communications behind.

These arguments could hardly be taken seriously. The only formidable reason put forward was that this country would run the risk of invasion by the denudation of troops involved by the despatch of the Expeditionary Force. This last view had been definitely and formally dismissed, as I have said, by the Imperial Defence Committee, of which Lord Haldane was a prominent member.

At the actual crisis Lord Haldane appeared to be absolutely undecided. He used apparently the arguments of others against despatching the British Expeditionary Force—without definitely pinning himself to them—and yet they were the very arguments to which he himself was apparently bound to make the most conclusive of replies. The case against these arguments had long ago been supplied by himself.

Other influences than Lord Northcliffe or Lord Haldane were at work tending toward the same end. The “Westminster Gazette” showed inside knowledge of the struggle which was going on. It denounced attempts “to drive us into the reckless project of embarking our Expeditionary Force in continental warfare” quite regardless of the fact that the military system organised by the Liberal Government had for years designed it specifically for this “reckless” role. None the less, the “Westminster Gazette,” as a Liberal organ, had a perfect right to its own opinion.

The issue was further confused by a third school who were anxious to change the military plans in a different sense, and to land the British Expeditionary Force somewhere on the coast of Belgium with a naval base behind it. From here it would issue out against the right rear of the German turning movement instead of placing itself directly in the path. Mr. McKenna supported this idea, which contained within it the germ of the Antwerp manœuvre.

The predominant view of our strategy in the case of a war with Germany prevailed in the face of these fears, doubts and remonstrances. But the protests caused a considerable delay, and it was not until some time elapsed that the final decision to despatch the Army was taken. Several days had been wasted.

It is not pleasant to reflect that the issue of the Mons retreat and the Marne, where a few divisions either way would have turned the scale, hung for some days on a hair, and that the timidity of journalistic, military and Ministerial minds nearly exercised a fatal influence on the whole future of their race and of the world. A detached and impartial friend who studied Lord Haldane’s mind during these gyrations mournfully reported: “On the whole, I was rather depressed by a certain woolliness of thought and indecision of purpose which seemed to mark his conversation.”

The declaration of war by no means put an end to the dissensions in the Liberal Party. In the third week of August the attitude of Turkey was a cause of profound uneasiness, and the question of active operations against her confronted the country. A keen observer has given a picture of how the various Liberal actors struck him at the time. Asquith appeared anxious, with the best of reasons, to avoid a split at any cost. Lloyd George now, for the first time, began to advocate that idea of a Confederation of Balkan States on the side of the Allies, to which, in spite of all his plunges from right to left into every controversy of the time, he remained faithful to the very end.

The rest my informant pictured to me only in a lightning sketch: Haldane, mystic and unprecise; Simon, the last word in logic; Hobhouse, assertive and irrelevant; Runciman, precise in style and instructive in manner—the lesser luminaries of the party bewildered by the disagreement among its heads. As a matter of fact, war with Turkey was delayed for three months.

While these dissensions were rife within the Liberal ranks, an event occurred which destroyed all the good feeling between the leaders of the two parties and gave the Coalition conception a severe setback. This was the resurrection of the old pre-war Irish controversy due to the determination of the Government to complete the Parliamentary progress of the Home Rule Bill and to put it on the Statute Book.

Instantly the ghosts of ancient strifes and hatreds were resurrected in Westminster. Leaders flew to arms and the atmosphere of the House of Commons became charged with party suspicion. Equally in the constituencies the spirit of co-operation between Liberals and Conservatives which had arisen out of recruiting meetings and other common war activities was seriously impaired.

Looking backwards now after the lapse of years, such a violent gust of antagonism may seem hard to justify in the eyes of posterity. A generation which did not participate in the Home Rule struggle of the years 1910-1914 will be unable to understand the intense bitterness of the sentiment it evoked in Liberal and Conservative minds alike—so that even at the outset of the life and death struggle with Germany, any action of the Government could arouse the old vendetta in full force.

I can perhaps explain the intensity of this feeling as well as any man because I acted as an intermediary in practically all the negotiations for a compromise settlement which took place between the two party leaders, during the months when the United Kingdom seemed to be drifting towards civil war. In all such transactions one felt the complete lack of understanding of, or sympathy for, the standpoint of the opposite side.

At one meeting which took place between Asquith and Bonar Law at my country house at Leatherhead both men had come to it desiring to avoid conflict. Both were men of a high degree of intelligence. Yet so constrained was the atmosphere—so full of irreconcilable antagonism—that no progress could be made at all. The whole negotiation looked like tumbling into ruins.

Bonar Law was harsh and Asquith subsided into silence. Asquith then tried to relieve the tension by walking to the window and expatiating on the beauty of the view as it extended across the valley to the opposite hill. There was nothing like it, he remarked, in the South of England except the view from Hindhead. Unfortunately, this kind of observation never had the slightest effect in rousing Bonar Law’s interest. So this move failed.

It was at this moment that I had an inspiration. The “Daily Express” had just sent a special representative to Belfast to report on the threatened Ulster rising. I was even then on very intimate terms with the Editor, whom we all know affectionately as “Blum,” and I had received a note from him describing the fate of this correspondent. He had been suddenly recalled, on account of a misunderstanding, from a land of Covenanters singing eternally “Oh, God, our help in ages past,” and was kept waiting for an interview outside Blum’s door for the whole afternoon while others passed in and out. At last he could stand the punishment no longer. He sent in a note by a messenger—

“Oh, God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Chuck out the dirty beasts within

And let me see my Blum.”

When I told the story to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, humour came to the rescue and a contact of personality was instantly established.

I tell this trifling story because it illuminates the real basis of contact between public men. The leaders of parties live their lives among supporters, friends and subordinates who share their views and intensify their natural bias. When they meet their opponents it is as open foes in debate. In the course of time they lose their sense of perspective and become harsh and unbending in their attitude towards the viewpoint of the other side. This is especially the case with serious and honest men, and the only method of relieving the tension between them when they meet personally is to introduce some touch of humour or interest which makes them feel that the stage enemy may after all be human.

My own experience is that negotiations proceed better and national interests are more readily served when the negotiators on both sides are not too serious.

When, therefore, on 15 September, the Prime Minister announced his decision to carry the Home Rule Bill through its final stage, he was instantly accused by Bonar Law of an act of bad faith, and the accusation was couched in no measured terms. I will not try to estimate the rights and wrongs of the matter, or to repeat the arguments of the contestants. The issue is dead, and it does not possess a spark of life or interest to the reader of to-day.

My own opinion at the time was that it did not matter a rap whether Bills were put on the Statute Book or not. It was merely to fill in a post-dated cheque which had little prospect of being honoured. It was clear that much water had to flow under many bridges and rivers of blood over the fields of Europe before the question could be raised again, and by then who could tell what the situation would be?

One thing alone was certain—it would be different. Bills on the Statute Book would be only sand castles against the sweeping tide of change. From this standpoint I thought Bonar Law had lost his sense of proportion in making so much of the incident in the middle of such military events as were occurring in France. He thought differently, and was quite angry with me for maintaining the opposite view.

The real explanation seems to have been that some men acquired the war mentality rather earlier than other members of the political fraternity, for Bonar Law’s attitude was certainly not exceptional. It was shared, for instance, by Lord Carson, as the following story shows.

At this period there used to be regular meetings of the members of the Opposition Shadow Cabinet at Bonar Law’s room in the House of Commons at which policy was discussed. But the chief attraction of these meetings was the reception and reading out of the secret cables from the front which the Government thus transmitted to the Opposition.

These telegrams were not sent in exactly in the same words in which they were received, but were first paraphrased in the War Office. I remember that this fact gave some Conservatives considerable offence—as suggesting either that they were not to be trusted, or that the Government were cooking the news. Of course, the real explanation was the danger of the cipher leaking out owing to one of these telegrams going astray.

It was at a period when Lord French was sending back a series of messages which were a source of alarm to the heads of the Government and of the Opposition. Whenever one of these documents, with Mr. Asquith’s mark on it, reached Bonar Law, there was perturbation in the Shadow Cabinet. On one occasion Bonar Law’s secretary brought in such a message marked in the well-known way to a meeting, and immediately left the room. His anxiety to hear its contents was, however, almost unbearable. He waited outside and waylaid the first person to leave the room, who happened to be Carson. He was struck at once by something ghastly in the Ulster leader’s expression.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he exclaimed in alarm, “tell me what has happened? What is the news?” “The very worst possible, my dear fellow, the very worst.” “But what has happened? Is the news very bad?” “Bad”—in a tone of tragic solemnity—“very bad. Asquith has decided to put the Bill on the Statute Book.”

I do not tell this story imputing any blame to Carson. The Home Rule struggle had been his life issue, and if he took a little time to adjust his viewpoint to new conditions he was not the only public man by any manner of means who suffered from this defect. Soon he was to take the war very seriously indeed.

But at this time Carson might be regarded as a bulwark against Coalition. He fully shared Bonar Law’s belief that Asquith had tricked them both by promising them that there would be no new domestic legislation during the War and then putting the Home Rule Bill through its last stages in direct defiance of his promise.

So it may be said with confidence that the attitude of hostility towards Coalition which had existed in the higher Conservative circles at the outbreak of war had been intensified by this quarrel over the Home Rule Bill.