"Yes, do, by all means. The very thing."

He came back presently. "I've seen the D.-G., sir, and he's frightfully excited. He's got hold of all his deputies and hangers-on, and the whole gang of them are talking as if they were wound up. One of them says he thinks he has heard of an antidote, but of course he knows nothing whatever about it really, and is only talking through his hat, I tell you what, sir, we ought to lend them a hand in this business. I know Professor Stingo; he's miles and away the biggest man on smells and that sort of thing in London, if not in Europe. So, if you'll let me, I'll charter a taxi and be off and hunt him up, and get him to work. If the thing can be done, sir, he's the lad for the job. May I go, sir?"

"Very well, do as you propose, and let me know the result."

He turned up again in the afternoon. "I've seen old man Stingo, sir, and he's for it all right. He's going to collect a lot more sportsmen of the same kidney, and they're going to have the time of their lives, and to make a regular night of it. You see, sir, I pointed out to him that this was a matter of the utmost urgency—not merely a question of finding an antidote, but also of distributing it methodically and broadcast. After it's been invented or made or procured, or whatever's got to be done, some comedian in the Quartermaster-General's show will insist on the result being packed up in receptacles warranted rot-proof against everything that the mind of man can conceive till the Day of Judgment—you know the absurd way those sort of people go on, sir—and all that will take ages, aeons." He really thought of everything. "And there'll have to be books of instructions and classes, and the Lord knows what besides! After that the stuff'll have to be carted off to France and the Dardanelles, and maybe to Archangel and Mesopotamia; so Stingo and Co. are going to be up all night, and mean to arrive at some result or to perish in the attempt. And now, sir, what have you done about it at the Foreign Office?"

This was disconcerting, seeing that I had done nothing.

"Oh, but, sir," sounding that note of submissive expostulation which the tactful staff-officer contrives to introduce when he feels himself obliged reluctantly to express disapproval of superior military authority, "oughtn't we to do something? How would it be if I were to go down and see Grey, or one of them, and to talk to him like a father?"

"Well, perhaps it might be advisable to make a guarded suggestion to them on the subject. Give my compliments to ——" But he was gone.

He returned in about half an hour. "I've been down to the Foreign Office, sir, and as you might have expected, they haven't done a blooming thing. What those 'dips' think they're paid for always beats me! However, I've got them to promise to cable out to their ambassadors and consuls and bottle-washers in Scandinavia to keep their wits about them. I offered to draft the wires for them; but they seemed to think that they could do it themselves, and I daresay they'll manage all right now that I've told them exactly what they are to say. I really do not know that we can do anything more about it this evening," he added doubtfully, and with a worried, far-away look on his face. Good heavens, he was never going to think of something else! He took himself off, however, still evidently dissatisfied and communing with himself.

Next forenoon "Z" came into my room in a hurry. "I've been hearing about the caterpillars, sir," he exclaimed joyously.

"The caterpillars?"

"Oh, not crawly things like one finds in one's salad, sir. The ones the Admiralty are making[5]—armoured motor contrivances, with great big feet that will go across country and jump canals, and go bang through Boche trenches and barbed wire as if they weren't there. They'll be perfectly splendid—full of platoons and bombs and machine guns, and all the rest of it. I will say this for Winston and those mariners across Whitehall, when they get an idea they carry it out and do not bother whether the thing'll be any use or can be made at all—care no more for the Treasury than if it was so much dirt, and quite right too! Just what it is. But when they've got their caterpillars made, they won't know what to do with them any more than the Babes in the Wood. Then we'll collar them; but in the meantime I might be able to give them some hints, so, if you'll let me, I'll go across and——"

[Footnote 5: The first I heard of the Tanks, which made so dramatic a debut near the Somme a year and a half later.]

"Yes, yes; but just one moment. How about the poison?"

"The poison, sir? What poi—oh, that stuff. Didn't I tell you, sir? It isn't poison at all. You see, sir, it's this way. There are two forms of it. There's the white form, and that is poison, shocking poison; it's what the Fijians use when they want to pacify a busybody like Captain Cook who comes butting in where he isn't wanted. As a matter of fact there's uncommon little of it—they don't get a hundredweight in a generation. Then there's the red form, and that's what Johnnies have been dumping down 580 tons of at What's-its-name. It's quite innocuous, and is used for commercial purposes—tanning leather, or making spills, or something of that kind. Now may I go to the Ad——"

"But have you told all this to the Director-General?"

"Oh yes, sir. I told him first thing this morning."

"Did he pass no remarks as to your having started him off after this absurd hare of yours?"

"Well, you see, sir, he's an uncommonly busy man, and I didn't feel justified in wasting his time. So, after relieving his mind, I cleared out at once."

"And your professors?"

"Oh, those professor-men—it would never do to tell them, sir. They'd be perfectly miserable if they were deprived of the excitement of muddling about with their crucibles and blow-pipes and retorts and things. It would be cruelty to animals to enlighten them—it would indeed, sir; and I know that you would not wish me to do anything to discourage scientific investigation. Now, sir, may I go over to the Admiralty?" And off he went, with instructions to find out all that he could about these contrivances that he had heard about, and to do what he could to promote their production. A treasure: unconventional, resourceful, exceptionally well informed, determined; the man to get a thing done that one wanted done—even if he did at times get a thing done that one didn't particularly want done—and in some respects quite the best intelligence officer I have come across in a fairly wide experience. To-day "Z" commands the applause of listening senates in the purlieus of St. Stephen's and has given up to party what was meant for mankind; but although he is not Prime Minister yet, nor even a Secretary of State, that will come in due course.

It was in May 1915 that "Z" told me that the Admiralty were at work on some sort of land-ship, and set about finding out what was being done; he had previously been in communication with Colonel E. D. Swinton over at the front. Only in the latter part of 1919, when the question of claims in connection with the invention and the development of Tanks had been investigated by a Royal Commission, did I learn to my astonishment that this matter had been brought by Swinton before the War Office so early as the beginning of January 1915, and that his projects had then been "turned down" by a technical branch to which he had, unfortunately, referred them. It does not seem possible that the technical branch can have brought the question to the notice of the General Staff, or I must have heard of it. The value of some contrivance such as he was confident could be constructed was from the tactical point of view incontestable, and had been incontestable ever since trench warfare became the order of the day on the Western Front in the late autumn of 1914. But the idea of the land-ship appeared to be an idle dream, and there was perhaps some excuse for the General Staff in its not of its own accord pressing upon the technical people that something of the sort must be produced somehow. Knowledge that a thoroughly practical man possessed of engineering knowledge and distinguished for his prescience like Swinton was convinced that the thing was feasible, was just what was required to set the General Staff in motion.

Thanks to Swinton, and also to "Z," the General Staff did get into touch with the Admiralty in May, and then found that a good deal had already been done, owing to Mr. Churchill's imagination and foresight and to the energy and ingenuity with which the land-ship idea had been taken up at his instigation. But the War Office came badly out of the business, and the severe criticisms to which it has been exposed in connection with the subject are better deserved than a good many of the criticisms of which it has been the victim. The blunder was not perhaps so much the fault of individuals as of the system. The technical branches had not been put in their place before the war, they did not understand their position and did not realize that on broad questions of policy they were subject to the General Staff. It is worthy of note, incidentally, that Swinton never seems to have got much satisfaction with G.H.Q. in France until he brought his ideas direct before the General Staff out there on the 1st of June by submitting a memorandum to the Commander-in-Chief. It is to be hoped that the subserviency of all other branches to the General Staff in connection with matters of principle has been established once for all by this time; it was, I think, pretty well established by Sir W. Robertson when he became C.I.G.S. Should there ever be any doubt about the matter—well, remember the start of the Tanks!

One morning in January or February 1915, Lord K. sent for me to his room. It appeared that Lord Fisher had in mind a project of constructing a flotilla of lighters of special type, to be driven by motor power and designed for the express purpose of landing large bodies of troops rapidly on an enemy's coast. The First Sea Lord was anxious to discuss details with somebody from our side of Whitehall, and the Chief wished me to take the thing up, the whole business being of a most secret character. Lord Fisher, I gathered, contemplated descents upon German shores; Lord K. did not appear to take these very seriously, but he did foresee that a flotilla of the nature proposed might prove extremely useful in connection with possible future operations on the Flanders littoral. In any case, seeing that the Admiralty were prepared to undertake a construction job of this kind more or less in the interests of us soldiers, we ought to give the plan every encouragement.

Vague suggestions had reached me from across the road shortly before—I do not recollect exactly how they came to hand—to the effect that one ought to examine into the possibilities offered by military operations based on the German Baltic coast and against the Frisian Islands. Attacks upon these islands presented concrete problems; the question in their case had been already gone into carefully by other hands before the war, and schemes of this particular kind had not been found to offer much attraction when their details came to be considered. As for the Baltic coast, one was given nothing whatever to go upon—was groping in the dark. You wondered how it was proposed to obtain command of these protected waters, bearing in mind the nature of the approaches through defiles which happened to be in the main in neutral hands, but you realized that this was a naval question and therefore somebody else's job. Still, even given this command, what then? Investigations of the subject, based upon uncertain premises, did not lead to the conclusion that, beyond "containing" hostile forces which otherwise might be available for warfare in some other quarter, a landing in large force on these shores was likely to prove an effective operation of war; and it was bound to be an extremely hazardous one.

It has since transpired from Lord Fisher's volcanic Memories that the First Sea Lord had, with his "own hands alone to preserve secret all arrangements," prepared plans for depositing three "great armies" at different places in the Baltic, "two of them being feints that could be turned into reality." How the First Sea Lord could draw up plans of this kind that were capable of being put into effective execution without some military assistance I do not pretend to understand. A venture such as this does not begin and end with dumping down any sort of army you like at a spot on the enemy's shores where it happens to be practicable to disembark troops rapidly. Once landed, the army still has to go ahead and do its business, whatever this is, as a military undertaking, and it stands in need of some definite and practicable objective. The numbers of which it is to consist and its detailed organization have to be worked out in advance, with a clear idea of what service it is intended to perform and of the strength of the enemy forces which it is likely to encounter while carrying out its purpose. It has to be fed and has to be supplied with war material after it has been deposited on terra firma. Is it to take its transport with it, or will it pick this up on arrival? Even the constitution of the armada which is to convey it to its point of disembarkation by no means represents a purely naval problem. Until the sailors know what the composition of the military force in respect to men, animals, vehicles, etc., is to be, they cannot calculate what tonnage will be required, or decide how that tonnage is to be allotted for transporting the troops oversea. For a project of this kind to be worked out solely by naval experts would be no less ridiculous than for it to be worked out solely by military experts. Secrecy in a situation of this kind is no doubt imperative, but you must trust somebody or you will head straight for catastrophe.

When I went over by appointment to see Lord Fisher, he got to work at once in that inimitable way of his. He explained that what he had in view was to place sufficient motor-lighters at Lord Kitchener's disposal, each carrying about 500 men, to land 50,000 troops on a beach at one time. He insisted upon the most absolute secrecy. What he wanted me to do was to discuss the construction of the lighters in detail with the admiral who had the job in charge, so as to ensure that their design would fall in with purely military requirements. I had, some sixteen years before when Lord Fisher had been Commander-in-Chief on the Mediterranean station, enjoyed a confidential discussion with him in Malta concerning certain strategical questions in that part of the world, and had been amazed at the alertness of his brain, his originality of thought, his intoxicating enthusiasm, and his relentless driving power. Now, in 1915, he seemed to be even younger than he had seemed then. He covered the ground at such a pace that I was speedily toiling breathless and dishevelled far in rear. It is all very well to carry off Memories into a quiet corner and to try to assimilate limited portions of that work at a time, deliberately and in solitude. But to have a hotch-potch of Shakespeare, internal combustion engines, chemical devices for smoke screens, principles of the utilization of sea power in war, Holy Writ, and details of ship construction dolloped out on one's plate, and to have to bolt it then and there, imposes a strain on the interior economy that is greater than this will stand. After an interview with the First Sea Lord you suffered from that giddy, bewildered, exhausted sort of feeling that no doubt has you in thrall when you have been run over by a motor bus without suffering actual physical injury.

The main point that I insisted upon when in due course discussing the construction details of the motor-lighters with the admiral who was supervising the work, was that they should be so designed as to let the troops aboard of them rush out quickly as soon as the prow should touch the shore. The vessels were put together rapidly, and one or two of those first completed were experimented with in the Solent towards the end of April, when they were found quite satisfactory. Although they were never turned to account for the purpose which Lord Fisher had had in mind when the decision was taken to build them, a number of these mobile barges proved extremely useful to our troops in the later stages of the Dardanelles campaign, notably on the occasion of the landing at Suvla and while the final evacuations were being carried out. Indeed, but for the "beetles" (as the soldiers christened these new-fangled craft), our army would never have got away from the Gallipoli Peninsula with such small loss of stores and impedimenta as it did, and the last troops told off to leave Helles on the stormy night of the 8th-9th of January 1916 might have been unable to embark and might have met with a deplorable disaster.

After that first meeting with him at the Admiralty, I frequently saw Lord Fisher, and he kept me acquainted with his views on many points, notably on what was involved in the threat of the U-boats after Sir I. Hamilton had landed his troops in the Gallipoli Peninsula. On more than one occasion he honoured me with a surprise visit in my office. These interviews in my sanctum were of quite a dramatic, Harrison-Ainsworth, Gunpowder-Treason, Man-in-the-Iron-Mask character. He gave me no warning, scorning the normal procedure of induction by a messenger. He would appear of a sudden peeping in at the door to see if I was at home, would then thrust the door to and lock it on the inside with a deft turn of the wrist, would screw up the lean-to ventilator above the door in frantic haste, and would have darted over and be sitting down beside me, talking earnestly and ventre-a-terre of matters of grave moment, almost before I could rise to my feet and conform to those deferential observances that are customary when a junior officer has to deal with one of much higher standing. Some subjects treated of on these occasions were of an extremely confidential nature, and in view of the laxity of many eminent officials and—if the truth be told—of military officers as a body, the precautions taken by the First Sea Lord within my apartment were perhaps not without justification.

War is too serious a business to warrant the proclamation of prospective naval and military operations from the housetops. Reasonable precautions must be taken. One thing one did learn during those early months of the war, and that was that the fewer the individuals are—no matter who they may be—who are made acquainted with secrets the better. But this is not of such vital importance when the secret concerns some matter of limited interest to the ordinary person as it is when the secret happens to relate to what is calculated to attract public attention.

Of course it was most reprehensible on the part of that expansive youth, Geoffrey, to have acquainted Gladys—strictly between themselves of course—that his company had been "dished out with a brand-new, slap-up, experimental automatic rifle, that'll make Mr. Boche sit up when we get across." Still it did no harm, because Gladys doesn't care twopence about rifles of any kind, and had forgotten all about it before she had swallowed the chocolate that was in her mouth. But when Geoffrey informed Gladys a fortnight later—again strictly between themselves—that the regiment was booked for a stunt at Cuxhaven, it did a great deal of harm. Because, although Gladys did not know where Cuxhaven was, she looked it up in the atlas when she got home, and she thereupon realized, with a wriggle of gratification, that she was "in the know," and under the circumstances she could hardly have been expected not to tell Agatha—under pledge, needless to say, of inviolable secrecy. Nor would you have been well advised to have bet that Agatha would not—in confidence—mention the matter to Genevieve, because you would have lost your money if you had. Then, it was only to be expected that Genevieve should let the cat out of the bag that afternoon at the meeting of Lady Blabit's Committee for the Development of Discretion in Damsels, observing that in such company a secret was bound to be absolutely safe. However, that was how the whole story came to be known, and Geoffrey might just as well have done the thing handsomely, and have placarded what was contemplated in Trafalgar Square alongside Mr. Bonar Law's frenzied incitements to buy war bonds.

Speaking seriously, there is rather too much of the sieve about the soldier officer when information comes to his knowledge which it is his duty to keep to himself. He has much to learn in this respect from his sailor brother. You won't get much to windward of the naval cadet or the midshipman if you try to extract out of him details concerning the vessel which has him on her books in time of war—what she is, where she is, or how she occupies her time. These youngsters cannot have absorbed this reticence simply automatically and as one of the traditions of that great Silent Service, to which, more than to any other factor, we and our Allies owe our common triumph in the Great War. It must have been dinned into them at Osborne and Dartmouth, and it must have been impressed upon them—forcibly as is the way amongst those whose dwelling is in the Great Waters—day by day by their superiors afloat. The subject used not to be mentioned at the Woolwich Academy in the seventies. Nor was secretiveness inculcated amongst battery subalterns a few years subsequently. One does not recollect hearing anything about it during the Staff College course, nor call to mind having preached the virtues of discretion in this matter to one's juniors oneself at a later date. Here is a matter which has been grossly neglected and which the General Staff must see to.

When Lord Kitchener was going to be away from town for two or three days in the summer of 1915, he sometimes instructed me to be at Mr. Asquith's beck and call during his absence in case some important question should suddenly arise, and once or twice I was summoned to 10 Downing Street of a morning in consequence, and was ushered into the precincts. On these occasions the Prime Minister was to be found in a big room upstairs; and he was always walking up and down, like Aristotle only that he had his hands in his pockets. His demeanour would be a blend of boredom with the benign. "Whatch-think of this?" he would demand, snatching up some paper from his desk, cramming it into my hand, and continuing his promenade. Such observations on my part in response to the invitation as seemed to meet the case would be acknowledged with a grunt—dissent, concurrence, incredulity, or a desire for further information being communicated by modulations in the grunt. Once, when the document under survey elaborated one of Mr. Churchill's virgin plans of revolutionizing the conduct of the war as a whole, the Right Honourable Gentleman in an access of exuberance became garrulous to the extent of muttering, "'Tslike a hen laying eggs."

But, all the same, when instructions came to be given at the end of such an interview, they invariably were lucid, concise, and very much to the point. You knew exactly where you were. For condensing what was needed in a case like this into a convincing form of words, for epitomizing in a single sentence the conclusions arrived at (supposing conclusions by any chance to have been arrived at) after prolonged discussions by a War Council, or at a gathering of the Dardanelles Committee, I have never come across anybody in the same street with Mr. Asquith.



CHAPTER VII

FURTHER EXPERIENCES IN THE WAR OFFICE

Varied nature of my responsibilities — Inconvenience caused by a Heath-Caldwell being a brother-Director on the General Staff — An interview with Lord Methuen — The Man of Business — His methods when in charge of a Government Department — War Office branches under Men of Business — The art of advertisement — This not understood by War Office officials — The paltry staff and accommodation at the disposal of the Director of Supplies and Transport, and what was accomplished — Good work of the Committee of Imperial Defence in providing certain organizations for special purposes before the war — The contre-espionage branch — The Government's singular conduct on the occasion of the first enemy spy being executed at the Tower — The cable censorship — The post office censorship — A visit from Admiral Bacon — His plan of landing troops by night at Ostend — Some observations on the subject — Sir J. Wolfe Murray leaves the War Office — An appreciation of his work — The Dardanelles papers to be presented to Parliament referred to me — My action in the matter and the appointment of the Dardanelles Committee in consequence — Mr. Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War — His activities — I act as D.C.I.G.S. for a month — Sound organization introduced by Sir W. Robertson — Normal trench-warfare casualties and battle casualties — I learn the facts about the strengths of the different armies in the field — Troubles with the Cabinet over man-power — Question of resignation of the Army Council — The Tank Corps and Tanks — The War Office helps in the reorganization of the Admiralty — Some of the War Cabinet want to divert troops to the Isonzo — The folly of such a plan — Objections to it indicated — Arrival of General Pershing in London — I form one of the party that proceeds to Devonport to meet Colonel House and the United States Commissioners — Its adventures — Admirals adrift — Mr. Balfour meets the Commissioners at Paddington.

During those months as Director of Military Operations my responsibilities were in reality of a most varied nature. They covered pretty well the whole field of endeavour, from drafting documents bearing upon operations—subjects for the edification of the very elect—down to returning to him by King's Messenger the teeth which a well-known staff-officer had inadvertently left behind him at his club when returning to the front from short leave. One was for various reasons brought into contact with numbers of public men who were quite outside of Government circles and official institutions, and whose acquaintance it was agreeable to make. Moreover, officers of high standing, over from the front or holding commands at home, would look in to pass the time of day and keep one posted with what was going on afield. Soldiers appointed to some new billet overseas had constantly to be fitted out with instructions, or to be provided with books, maps, and cipher. The last that I was to see of that brilliant leader, General Maude, was when I went down to Victoria to see him and my old contemporary of "Shop" days, General E. A. Fanshawe, off on their hurried journey to the Dardanelles in August 1915.

A certain amount of minor inconvenience in connection with telephones, correspondence, visits, and so on, arose owing to General Heath-Caldwell taking up the appointment of Director of Military Training about six months after mobilization. That two out of the four Directors on the General Staff within the War Office should have practically the same name, was something of a coincidence. Lord Methuen, who was then holding a very important appointment in connection with the home army (with which I had nothing to do), was ushered into my room one day. He had scarcely sat down when he began, "Now I know how tremendously busy all you people are, and I won't keep you one moment, but ...," and he embarked on some question in connection with the training of the troops in the United Kingdom. I tried to interrupt; but he checked me with a gesture, and took complete command of the situation. "No, no. Just let me finish what I want to say ..." and off he was again in full cry, entirely out of control. After one or two other attempts to stop him, I had to give it up. You can't coerce a Field-Marshal: it isn't done. At last, after about five minutes of rapid and eager exposition of what he had come to the War Office to discuss, he wound up with "Well, what d'you think of that. I haven't kept you long, have I?" It was then up to me to explain that he had attacked the wrong man, that the question he was interested in did not concern me, and that the best thing I could do was to conduct him forthwith to Heath-Caldwell's lair.

One saw something of the Man of Business in those days, as also later. Next to the "Skilled Workman," the "Man of Business" is the greatest impostor amongst the many impostors at present preying on the community. Just as there are plenty of genuine Skilled Workmen, so also are there numbers of Men of Business who, thanks to their capacity and to the advantage that they have taken of experience, constitute real assets to the nation. Latter-day events have, however, taught us that the majority of the individuals who pose as Skilled Workmen are in reality engaged on operations which anybody in full power of his faculties and of the most ordinary capacity can learn to carry on within a very few hours, if not within a very few minutes. What occurred in Government departments during the war proved that a very large percentage of the Men of Business, who somehow found their way into public employ, were no great catch even if they did manage to spend a good deal of the taxpayer's money. To draw a sharp dividing-line between the nation's good bargains and the nation's bad bargains in this respect would be out of the question. To try to separate the sheep from the goats would be as invidious as it would be vain—there were a lot of hybrids. But it was not military men within the War Office alone who suffered considerable disillusionment on being brought into contact with the Man of Business in the aggregate; that was also the experience of the Civil Service in general.

The successful Man of Business has owed his triumphs to aptitude in capturing the business of other people. Therefore when he blossoms out as a Government official in charge of a department, he devotes his principal energies to trying to absorb rival departments. It was a case of fat kine endeavouring to swallow lean kine, but finding at times that the lean kine were not so badly nourished after all—and took a deal of swallowing. And yet successful Men of Business, when introduced into Government departments, do have their points. One wonders how much the income-tax payer would be saved during the next decade or two had some really great knight of industry, content to do his own work and not covetous of that of other people (assuming such a combination of the paragon and the freak to exist), been placed in charge of the Ministry of Munitions as soon as Mr. Lloyd George had, with his defiance of Treasury convention, with his wealth of imagination, and with his irrepressible and buoyant courage, set the thing up on the vast foundations already laid by the War Office. Unsuccessful Men of Business, when introduced into Government departments, have their points too, but they are mostly bad points.

The Man of Business' procedure, when he is placed at the head of a Government department, or of some branch of a Government department, in time of war is well known. He makes himself master of some gigantic building or some set of buildings. He then sets to work to people the premises with creatures of his own. He then, with the assistance of the superior grades amongst the creatures, becomes wrapped up in devising employment for the multitudinous personnel that has been got together. He then finds that he has not got sufficient accommodation to house his legions—and so it goes on. He talks in moments of relaxation of "introducing business methods into Whitehall." But that is absurd. You could not introduce business methods into Whitehall, because there is not room enough; you would have to commandeer the whole of the West End, and then you would be cramped. While the big men at the top are wrestling with housing problems, the staff are engaged in writing minutes to each other—a process which, when indulged in, in out-of-date institutions of the War Office, Admiralty, Colonial Office type, is called "red tape," but which, when put in force in a department watched over by Men of Business, is called "push and go." Engulfed in one of the mushroom branches that were introduced into the War Office in the later stages of the war, I could not but be impressed by what I saw. The women were splendid: the way in which they kept the lifts in exercise, each lady spending her time going up and down, burdened with a tea-cup or a towel and sometimes with both, was beyond all praise.

One is prejudiced perhaps, and may not on that account do full justice to the achievements of some of those civilian branches which were evolved within the War Office and which elbowed out military branches altogether or else absorbed them. But they enjoyed great advantages, and on that account much could fairly be expected of them. Your civilian, introduced into the place with full powers, a blank cheque and the uniform of a general officer, stood on a very different footing from the soldier ever hampered by a control that was not always beneficently administered—financial experts on the War Office staff are apt to deliver their onsets upon the Treasury to the battle-cry of Kamerad. Still, should the civilian elect to maintain on its military lines the branch that he had taken over, he sometimes turned out to be an asset. When the new broom adopted the plan of picking out the best men on the existing staff, of giving those preferred a couple of steps in rank, of providing them with large numbers of assistants, and of housing the result in some spacious edifice or group of edifices especially devised for the purpose, he sometimes contrived to develop what had been an efficient organization before into a still more efficient one. In that case the spirit of the branch remained, it carried on as a military institution but with a free hand and with extended liberty of action—and the public service benefited although the cost was considerably greater. But that was not always the procedure decided upon.

Whatever procedure was decided upon, every care was taken to advertise. Advertisement is an art that the Man of Business thoroughly understands, and as to which he has little to learn even from the politician with a Press syndicate at his back. Soldiers are deplorably apathetic in this respect. It will hardly be believed that during the war the military department charged with works and construction often left the immediate supervision of the creation of some set of buildings in the hands of a single foreman of works, acting under an officer of Royal Engineers who only paid a visit daily as he would have several other duties of the same nature to perform. But if that set of buildings under construction came to be transferred to a civilian department or branch—the Ministry of Munitions, let us say—a large staff of supervisors of all kinds was at once introduced. Offices for them to carry on their supervisory duties in were erected. The thing was done in style, employment was given to a number of worthy people at the public expense, and it is quite possible that the supervisory duties were carried on no less efficiently than they had previously been by the foreman of works, visited daily by the officer of Royal Engineers.

From the outbreak of war and for nearly two years afterwards, the headquarters administration of the supply branch of our armies in all theatres except Mesopotamia and East Africa was carried out at the War Office by one director, five military assistants and some thirty clerks, together with one "permanent official" civilian aided by half-a-dozen assistants and about thirty clerks. It administered and controlled and supervised the obtaining and distribution of all requirements in food and forage, as also of fuel, petrol, disinfectants, and special hospital comforts, not only for the armies in the field but also for the troops in the United Kingdom. This meant an expenditure which by the end of the two years had increased to about half a million sterling per diem. Affiliated to this branch, as being under the same director, was the headquarters administration of the military-transport service, consisting of some fifteen military assistants and fifty or sixty clerks. The military transport service included a personnel of fully 300,000 officers and men, and the branch was charged with the obtaining of tens of thousands of motor vehicles of all kinds and of the masses of spare parts needed to keep them in working order, together with many other forms of transport material. The whole of these two affiliated military branches of the War Office could have been accommodated comfortably on one single floor of the Hotel Metropole! Well has it been said that soldiers have no imagination.

There were four especial branches under me to which some reference ought to be made. Of two of them little was, in the nature of things, heard during the war; these two were secret service branches, the one obtaining information with regard to the enemy, the other preventing the enemy from receiving information with regard to us. Of the other two, one dealt with the cable censorship and the other with the postal censorship. The Committee of Imperial Defence has been taken to task in some ill-informed quarters because of that crying lack of sufficient land forces and of munitions of certain kinds which made itself apparent when the crisis came upon us. It was, however, merely a consultative and not an executive body. It had no hold over the purse-strings. Shortcomings in these respects were the fault not of the Committee of Imperial Defence but of the Government of the day. On the other hand, the Committee did splendid work in getting expert sub-committees to compile regulations that were to be brought into force in each Government department on the outbreak of war—compiling regulations cost practically nothing. Moreover, thanks to its representations and to its action, organizations were created in peace-time for prosecuting espionage in time of war and for ensuring an effective system of contre-espionage; these were under the control of the Director of Military Operations, and were the two secret branches referred to above.

About the former nothing can appropriately be disclosed. So much interesting information about the latter has appeared in German Spies at Bay that little need be said about it, except to repeat what has already appeared in that volume—the branch had already achieved a notable triumph more than a fortnight before our Expeditionary Force fired a shot and some hours before the Royal Navy brought off their first success. For the whole enemy spy system within the United Kingdom was virtually laid by the heels within twenty-four hours of the declaration of war. Every effort to set it up afresh subsequently was nipped in the bud before it could do mischief.

One point, however, deserves to be placed on record. The disinclination of H.M. Government to announce the execution of the first enemy agent to meet his fate, Lodi, was one of the most extraordinary incidents that came to my knowledge in connection with enemy spies. Lodi was an officer, or ex-officer, and a brave man who in the service of his country had gambled with his life as the stake—and had lost. He had fully acknowledged the justice of his conviction. All who were acquainted with the facts felt sympathy for him, although there could, of course, be no question of not carrying out the inevitable sentence of the court-martial. And yet our Government wanted to hush the whole thing up. They did not seem to realize that the shooting of a spy does not, when the spy is an enemy, mean punishment for a crime, that it represents a penalty which has to be inflicted as a deterrent, and which if it is to fulfil its purpose must be made known. Those of us who knew the facts were greatly incensed at the most improper, and indeed fatuous, attitude which the Executive for a time took up. What made them change their minds I do not know.

Then there was the cable censorship, an organization which did admirable work and got little thanks for it. The personnel consisted largely of retired officers, and many of them broke down under the prolonged strain. The potentialities of the cable censorship had not been fully foreseen when it was automatically established on mobilization, and of what it accomplished the general public know practically nothing at all. The conception of this institution had at the outset merely been that of setting up a barrier intended to prevent naval and military information that was calculated to be of service to the enemy from passing over the wires, whether in cipher or in clear. But an enterprising, prescient, and masterful staff perceived ere long that their powers could be developed and turned to account in other directions with advantage to the State, notably in that of stifling the commercial activities of the Central Powers in the Western Hemisphere. The consequence was that within a very few months the cable censorship had transformed itself to a great extent out of an effective shield for defence into a potent weapon of attack. The measure of its services to the country will never be known, as some of its procedure cannot perhaps advantageously be disclosed. Its labours were unadvertised, and its praises remained unsung. But those who were behind the scenes are well aware of what it accomplished, creeping along unseen tracks, to bring about the downfall of the Hun.

The postal censorship started as a branch of comparatively modest dimensions; but it gradually developed into a huge department, employing a personnel which necessarily included large numbers of efficient linguists. The remarkable success achieved by the contre-espionage service in preventing the re-establishment of the enemy spy system after it had been smashed at the start was in no small degree due to the work of the censorship. That the requisite number of individuals well acquainted with some of the outlandish lingoes which had to be grappled with proved to be forthcoming, is a matter of surprise and a subject for congratulation. This was not a case merely of French, German, Italian, and languages more or less familiar to our educated and travelled classes. Much of the work was in Scandinavian and in occult Slav tongues, a good deal of it not even written in the Roman character. The staff was largely composed, it should be mentioned, of ladies, some of them quite young; but young or old—no, that won't do, for ladies are never old—quite young or only moderately young, they took to the work like ducks to the water and did yeoman service. As in the case of the cable censorship, employment in the postal censorship was a thankless job; but the labourers of both sexes in the branch had at least the satisfaction of knowing that they had done their bit—some of them a good deal more than their bit—for their country in its hour of trial.

Reference was made in the last chapter to certain discussions which took place in the winter of 1914-15 on the subject of suggested conjunct naval and military operations on the Flanders coast. The possibility of such undertakings was never entirely lost sight of during 1915, although the diversion of considerable British forces to far-off theatres of war necessarily enhanced the difficulties that stood in the way of a form of project which had much to recommend it from the strategical point of view. Our hosts on the Western Front were absolutely dependent upon the security of the Narrow Seas, and that security was being menaced owing to the enemy having laid his grip upon Ostend and Zeebrugge. One afternoon in the autumn of 1915 Admiral Bacon of the Dover Patrol, who believed in an extremely active defence, came to see me and we had a long and interesting conversation. He was full of a scheme for running some ship-loads of troops right into Ostend harbour at night and landing the men by surprise about the mole and the docks. His plans were not, however, at this time worked out so elaborately, nor had such effective preparations been taken in hand with regard to them, as was the case at a later date after Sir D. Haig had taken up command of the B.E.F. The Admiral describes these preparations and his developed plans in The Dover Patrol.

On the occasion of this talk in the War Office, Admiral Bacon was, if I recollect aright, contemplating landing the troops straight off the ordinary type of vessel, not off craft especially designed and constructed for the particular purpose, as was intended in his improved project. Nor was it, I think, proposed to use "beetles" (these may perhaps all have gone to the Mediterranean). My impression at the time was that the scheme had very much to recommend it in principle, but that its execution as it stood must represent an extremely hazardous operation of war. Nor was this a moment when one felt much leaning towards new-fangled tactical and strategical devices, for we had a large force locked up under most depressing conditions in the Gallipoli Peninsula, we were apparently going to be let in for trouble in Macedonia, and, although the United Kingdom and the Dominions had by this time very large forces under arms, a considerable proportion of the troops could hardly be looked upon as efficient owing to lack of training.

Looking at this question of the Flanders littoral from what, in a naval and military sense, may be called the academical point of view, it is certainly a great pity that neither the project worked out by Admiral Bacon in the winter of 1915-16 in agreement with G.H.Q., nor yet the later plan for conjunct operations to take place in this coast region had the Passchendael offensive of 1917 not been so disastrously delayed, was put into execution. Had either of them actually been carried out this must, whatever the result was, have provided one of the most dramatic and remarkable incidents in the course of the Great War.

Passing reference has already been made to Sir Archie Murray's assumption of the position of C.I.G.S. in October 1915, when he replaced the late Sir James Wolfe-Murray. Shrewd, indefatigable, of very varied experience, an excellent administrator and a man of such charming personality that he could always get the very best out of his subordinates, Sir James would have admirably filled any high, non-technical appointment within the War Office during the early part of the contest, other than that which he was suddenly called upon to take up on the death of Sir C. Douglas. Absolutely disinterested, his energies wholly devoted to the service of the State, compelling the respect, indeed the affection, of all of us who were under him in those troublous times, a more considerate chief, nor one whose opinion when you put a point to him you could accept with more implicit confidence, it would have been impossible to find. But for occupying the headship of the General Staff under the existing circumstances he lacked certain desirable qualifications. Although well acquainted with the principles that should govern the general conduct of war and no mean judge of such questions, he was not disposed by instinct to interest himself in the broader aspects of strategy and of military policy. His bent was rather to concern himself with the details. Somewhat cautious, nay diffident, by nature, he moreover shrank from pressing his views, worthy of all respect as they were, on others, and he was always guarded in expressing them even when invited to do so.

Dealing with a Secretary of State of Lord Kitchener's temperament, reticence of this kind did not work. Lord K. liked you to say what you thought without hesitation, and, once he knew you, he never resented your giving an opinion even uninvited if you did so tactfully. As for the personnel who constitute War Councils and their like, it is not the habit of the politician to hide his light under a bushel, nor to recoil from laying down the law about any matter with which he has a bowing acquaintance. That an expert should sit mute when his own subject is in debate, surprises your statesman profoundly. That the expert should not be brimming over with a didactic and confident flow of words when he has been invited to promulgate his views, confounds your statesman altogether. General Wolfe-Murray never seemed to succeed in getting on quite the proper terms either with his immediate superior, the War Minister, or yet with the members of the Government included in the War Council and the Dardanelles Committee; and it was cruel luck that, with so fine a record in almost all parts of the world to look back upon, this most meritorious public servant should towards the close of his career have found himself unwillingly thrust into a position for which, as he foresaw himself when he assumed it, he was not altogether well suited.

Subsequent to returning from Russia, and very shortly after the loss of the Hampshire with Lord Kitchener and his party, I came to be for some weeks unemployed, afterwards taking up a fresh appointment—one in connection with Russian supplies, which later developed into one covering supplies for all the Allies and to which reference will be made in a special chapter. But the result was that, as a retired officer, I ceased for the time being to be on the active list and became a gentleman at large. Thereby hangs a tale; because it was just at this juncture that I was asked by the Army Council to go into the question of papers which were to be presented to the House of Commons in connection with the Dardanelles Campaign. Badgered by inquisitive members of that assembly, Mr. Asquith had committed himself to the production of papers; and Mr. Churchill had got together a dossier dealing with his share in the affair, which was sent to me to consider, together with all the telegrams, and so forth, that bore on the operations and their prologue.

On examining all this stuff, it soon became manifest that the publication of any papers at all during the war, in connection with this controversial subject, was to be deprecated. Still, one recognized that the Prime Minister's promise had to be fulfilled somehow; so the great object to be kept in view seemed to be to keep publication within the narrowest possible limits compatible with satisfying the curiosity of the people in Parliament. As a matter of fact, there were passages in some of the documents which Mr. Churchill proposed for production that must obviously be expunged, in view of Allies' susceptibilities and of their conveying information which might still be of value to the enemy. There could be no question that, no matter how drastic might be the cutting-down process, the Admiralty, the War Office and the Government would come badly out of the business. Furthermore, any publication of papers must make known to the world that Lord Kitchener's judgement in connection with this particular phase of the war had been somewhat at fault.

When asking me to take the matter up, the Army Council had probably overlooked my civilian status or forgotten what a strong position this placed me in. An ex-soldier does not often get an opportunity of enjoying an official heart-to-heart talk, on paper, with the powers-that-be in the War Office. My report was to the effect that it was undesirable to produce any papers at all during the war, but that, as some had to be produced, they ought to be cut down to a minimum, that everybody official concerned in the business at home would be more or less shown up, that this was particularly unfortunate just at this time in view of Lord Kitchener's lamented death, that the papers must be limited to those bearing upon the period antecedent to the actual landing of the army in the Gallipoli Peninsula, that if this last proviso was accepted I would go fully into the question and report in detail, and that if the proviso was not accepted I declined to act and they might all go to the—well, one did not quite put it in those words, but they would take it that way. The result was not quite what one had either expected or desired. The production-of-papers project was dropped, and the Dardanelles Commission was appointed instead.

Mr. Lloyd George had become Secretary of State for War by this time. He was full of zeal and of original ideas, nor had he any intention of being merely a "passenger." He had, after the manner of new War Ministers, introduced a fresh personal entourage into the place, and a momentary panic, caused by the news that telephonic communications into and out of the place were passing in an unknown guttural language not wholly unlike German, was only allayed on its being ascertained that certain of his hangers-on conversed over the wires in Welsh. Besides being full of original ideas, the new Secretary of State was in a somewhat restless mood. He took so keen an interest in some wonderful scheme in connection with Russian railways (about which I was freely consulted) that he evidently was hankering after going on a mission to that part of the world himself. He no doubt believed that a visit from him would be an equivalent for the visit by Lord Kitchener which had been interrupted so tragically. To anybody who had recently been to Russia, such an idea was preposterous. Few who counted in the Tsar's dominions had ever heard of the Right Honourable Gentleman at this time; Lord Kitchener's name, on the other hand, had been known, and his personality had counted as an asset (as I knew from my own experience), from Tornea on the Lappland borders to the highlands of Erzerum. The project did not strike one as deserving encouragement, and I did what I could to damp it down unobtrusively.

It was nearly a year later than this, in the summer of 1917, that, owing to the horse of General Whigham, the Deputy C.I.G.S., slipping up with him near the Marble Arch and giving him a nasty fall, he became incapacitated for a month. Sir W. Robertson thereupon called me in to act as locum tenens. From many points of view this proved to be a particularly edifying and instructive experience. One could not fail to be impressed with the smoothness with which the military side of the War Office was working under the system which Sir William had introduced, and one furthermore found oneself behind the scenes in respect to the progress of the war and to numbers of matters only known to the very few.

The plan under which nearly all routine work in connection with the General Staff, work that the C.I.G.S. would otherwise be obliged to concern himself with personally to a large extent, was delegated to a Deputy who was a Member of the Army Council was an admirable arrangement. It worked almost to perfection as far as I could see. It allowed Sir W. Robertson, in consultation with his Directors of Military Operations and of Intelligence, Generals Maurice and Macdonogh, to devote his attention to major questions embracing the conduct of the war on land as a whole. The Deputy in the meantime wrestled with the details, with the correspondence about points of secondary importance, in fact with the red tape if you like to call it that, while keeping in close and constant touch with the administrative departments and branches. Everybody advocates de-centralization in theory; Sir William actually carried it out in practice, reminding me of that Prince of military administrators, the late Sir H. Brackenbury. The Deputy's room opened off that of the C.I.G.S.; but on many days I never even saw him except when he looked in for a minute to ask if I had anything for him, or when I happened to walk home some part of the way to York House with him after the trouble was over for the day.

It was intensely interesting to have the daily reports of casualties at the Western Front passing through one's hands, and to note the extent to which these mounted up on what might be called non-fighting days as compared to days of attack. As this was during the opening stages of the Flanders offensive subsequent to General Plumer's victory at Messines, these statistics were extremely instructive. I do not know whether the details have ever been worked out for the years 1915-17, but it looked to me at that time as if the losses in three weeks of ordinary trench-warfare came on the average to about the same total as did the losses in a regular formal assault of some section of the enemy's lines. Or, putting the thing in another form and supposing the above calculation to be correct, you would in three weeks of continuous attack in a given zone only lose the same number of men as you would lose in that same zone in a year of stagnant, unprofitable trench-warfare. Some of our offensives on the Western Front have been condemned on the grounds of their costliness in human life; but it has not been sufficiently realized in the country how heavy the losses were during periods of quiescence.

As acting D.C.I.G.S. one, moreover, enjoyed opportunities of examining the various compiled statements showing the numbers of our forces in the various theatres, with full information as to the strength of our Allies' armies in all quarters, as well as the carefully prepared estimates of the enemy's fighting resources as these were arrived at by our Intelligence organizations in consultation with those of the French, Italians, Belgians, and others. One learnt the full details of our "order of battle" for the time being, exactly where the different divisions, army corps, etc., were located, and who commanded them. It transpired that the Entente host on the Salonika Front at this time comprised no fewer than 655,000 of all ranks, without counting in the Serbs who would have brought the total up to about 800,000, while the enemy forces opposed to them were calculated to muster only about 450,000; the situation was, in fact, much worse than one had imagined. One discovered that, while slightly over 17 per cent of the male population of Great Britain had been enrolled as soldiers, only 5 per cent of the Irish male population had come forward, and that but for north-east Ulster the figure would not have reached 3 per cent. One became aware, moreover, that the Army Council, or at least its Military Members, were at loggerheads with the War Cabinet over the problem of man-power, and that this question was from the military point of view giving grounds for grave anxiety.

In one of my drawers there was the first draft of a [p.144] secret paper on this subject, which expressed the views of the Military Members of the Council in blunt terms, and which amounted in reality to a crushing indictment of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. I have a copy of the draft in my possession, but as it was a secret document it would be improper to give details of its contents; it, moreover, was somewhat modified and mellowed in certain particulars before the paper was actually sent to Downing Street. The final discussion took place at a full meeting of the Army Council while I was acting as D.C.I.G.S., but which I did not attend as not being a statutory member of that body. Parliament ought to call for this paper; it was presented in July 1917; it practically foreshadowed what actually occurred in March 1918. The Military Members of the Council nearly resigned in a body over this business; but they were not unanimous on the question of resignation, although perfectly unanimous as regards the seriousness of the position. It may be mentioned that at a considerably later date the Army Council did, including its civilian members, threaten resignation as a body when Sir N. Macready gave up the position of Adjutant-General to become Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, owing to an attempt made from Downing Street to civilianize the Adjutant-General's department. The Army Council beat Downing Street, hands down.

The disquieting conditions in respect to man-power were, incidentally, hampering the development of two important combatant branches at this time, the Machine-Gun Corps and the Tank Corps. The heavy demands of these two branches, coupled with the fact that infantry wastage was practically exceeding the intake of recruits, threatened a gradual disappearance of the principal arm of the Service. We had by this time got long past the stage with which, when D.M.O., I had been familiar, where lack of material and munitions was checking the growth of our armies in the field. We had arrived at the stage where material and munitions were ample, but where it was becoming very difficult to maintain our armies in the field from lack of personnel—a state of things directly attributable to the Government's opportunist, hand-to-mouth policy in the matter, and to their disinclination to insist upon practically the whole of the younger categories of male adults joining the colours. The organization of the Tank Corps was finally decided actually while I was acting as D.C.I.G.S. In so far as the general control of Tank design and the numbers of these engines of war to be turned out was concerned, it seemed to me to be a case of "pull devil, pull baker" between the military and the civilians as to how far these matters were to be left entirely to the technicalist; but the technicalist was not perhaps getting quite so much to say in the matter as was reasonable. The personal factor maybe entered into the question.

When the War Office had been reconstituted by the Esher Committee in 1904, the Admiralty organization had been to a great extent taken as a model for the Army Council arrangement which the triumvirate then introduced. Thirteen years later the Admiralty was reorganized, and on this occasion the War Office system of 1904, as modified and developed in the light of experience in peace and in war, was taken as the model for the rival institution. Whigham had played a part in the carrying out of this important reform, lending his advice to the sailors and explaining the distribution of duties amongst the higher professional authorities on our side of Whitehall, especially in connection with the General Staff. The most urgently needed alteration to be sought after was the relieving of the First Sea Lord of a multitude of duties which were quite incompatible with his giving full attention to really vital questions in connection with employing the Royal Navy. For years past he had been a sort of Pooh Bah, holding a position in some respects analogous to that occupied by Lord Wolseley and Lord Roberts when they had been nominally "Commander-in-chief" of the army. Under the arrangements made with the assistance of the War Office in 1917, a post somewhat analogous to that of D.C.I.G.S. was set up at the Admiralty, and the First Sea Lord was thenceforward enabled to see to the things that really mattered as he never had been before. Although the amount of current work to be got through daily when acting as Deputy C.I.G.S. proved heavy enough during the month when I was locum tenens, it was not so heavy as to preclude my looking through the instructive documents dealing with this matter amongst Whigham's papers.

The glorious uncertainty of cricket is acknowledged to be one of the main attractions of our national game. But the glorious uncertainty of cricket is as nothing compared to the glorious uncertainty which obtains in time of war as to what silly thing H.M. Government—or some of its shining lights—will be wanting to do next. At this time the War Cabinet, or perhaps one ought rather to say certain members of that body, had got it into their heads that to send round a lot of Sir Douglas Haig's troops (who were pretty well occupied as it was) to the Isonzo Front would be a capital plan, the idea being to catch the Central Powers no end of a "biff" in this particular quarter. That fairly banged Banagher. For sheer fatuity it was the absolute limit.

Ever since the era of Hannibal, if not indeed since even earlier epochs, trampling, hope-bestirred armies have from generation to generation been bursting forth like a pent-up torrent from that broad zone of tumbled Alpine peaks which overshadows Piedmont, Lombardy and Venetia, to flood their smiling plains with hosts of fighting men. Who ever heard of an army bursting in the opposite direction? Napoleon tried it, and rugged, thrusting Suvorof; but they did not get much change out of it. The mountain region has invariably either been in possession of the conquerors at the start, or else it has been acquired by deliberate, protracted process during the course of a lengthy struggle, before the dramatic coup has been delivered by which the levels have been won. The wide belt of highlands extending from Switzerland to Croatia remained in the enemy's hands up to the time of the final collapse of the Dual Monarchy subsequent to the rout of the Emperor Francis' legions on the Piave. The Italians had in the summer of 1917 for two years been striving to force their way into these mountain fastnesses, and they had progressed but a very few miles. They had not only been fighting the soldiery of the Central Powers, but had also been fighting Nature. Nature often proves a yet more formidable foe than do swarms of warriors, even supposing these to be furnished with all modern requirements for prosecuting operations in the field.

Roads are inevitably few and far between in a mountainous region. In such terrain, roads and railways can be destroyed particularly easily and particularly effectively by a retiring host. In this kind of theatre, troops can only quit the main lines of communications with difficulty, and localities abound where a very inferior force will for a long time stay the advance of much more imposing columns. You can no more cram above a given number of men on to a certain stretch of road when on the move, than you can get a quart into a pint pot. Even if your enemy simply falls back without fighting, destroying all viaducts, tunnels, embankments, culverts, and so forth, your army will take a long time to traverse the highlands—unless it be an uncommonly small one. Armies in these days are inevitably of somewhat bloated dimensions if they are to do any good. Theatrical strategy of the flags-on-the-map order is consequently rather at a discount in an arena such as the War Cabinet, or some members of that body, proposed to exploit. Even had there been no other obvious objections to a diversion of force such as they contemplated, the project ignored certain elementary aspects of the conduct of warlike operations which might be summed up in the simple expression "common-sense."

But there were other obvious objections. To switch any force worth bothering about from northern France to the Friuli flats was bound to be a protracted process, because only two railways led over the Alps from Dauphine and Provence into the basin of the Po; and those lines were distinguished for their severe gradients. It was, as a matter of fact, incomparably easier for the enemy to mass reinforcements in the Julian Alps than it was for the two Western Powers to mass reinforcements in the low ground facing that great area of rugged hills. The question of a transfer of six divisions from the Western Front to Venetia had, however, been gone into very thoroughly by the General Staff in view of conceivable eventualities. An elaborate scheme had been drawn up by experienced officers, who had examined the question in consultation with the Italian military authorities, and had traversed the communications that would have to be brought into play were such a move to be carried out. What time the transfer would take was a matter of calculation based on close examination of the details. The final report came to hand while I was acting as Deputy C.I.G.S., although its general purport had already been communicated several weeks before. Two or three months later, when it suddenly became necessary to rush British and French troops round from northern France to the eastern portions of the Po basin after the singular debacle of Caporetto, actual experience proved the forecasts made in this report to have been quite correct. There was not much "rushing" about the move. It took weeks to complete.

General Pershing and his staff arrived in England just at this time, and I enjoyed the pleasure of meeting them and discussing many matters. The attitude of these distinguished soldiers, one and all, impressed us most agreeably. One had heard something about "Yankee bounce" in the past, which exists no doubt amongst some of the citizens of the great Republic across the water. But here we found a body of officers who, while manifestly knowing uncommonly well what they were about, were bent on learning from us everything that they possibly could, and who from the outset proved themselves singularly ready to fall in with our methods of doing business even where those methods differed widely from what they had been accustomed to.

Some weeks later (in the capacity of War Office representative) I accompanied Lord Jellicoe and Admiral Sims, together with Sir I. Malcolm and Sir W. Wiseman of the Foreign Office, to Devonport to meet a large party of high officials from the United States who were coming over to Europe to take general charge of things in connection with the American share in the war. It was headed by Colonel House, and included the Chiefs of the Naval and Military Staffs with their assistants, as well as financial and other delegates. We arrived some time before the two cruisers conveying the party were due, so we proceeded to Admiralty House. While waiting there, one was afforded a most welcome opportunity of learning something about how the strings were being pulled over the great water-area which was under special charge of the local commander-in-chief. The whole thing was set out on a huge fixed map covering, I think, the billiard-table. On it were shown where the various convoys were at the moment, the minefields, the positions where German U-boats had recently been located, and numberless other important details. To a landsman it was absorbingly interesting to have all this explained, just as it had been interesting, a few days before, to visit General Ashmore's office at the Horse Guards and to learn on the map how the London anti-aircraft defences were controlled during an attack.

Just about dusk the two cruisers were descried coming in past the breakwater, so it became a question of getting to the Keyham dockyard where they were to fetch up. Ever keen for exercise in any form, Lord Jellicoe decided to walk, and the commander-in-chief went with him. Knowing the distance and the somewhat unattractive approaches leading to the Keyham naval establishments, and as it, moreover, looked and felt uncommonly like rain, I preferred to wait and to proceed in due course by car, as did all the rest of our party. The flag-lieutenant and the naval officer who had come down with Lord Jellicoe from the Admiralty likewise thought that a motor was good enough for them. By the time that the automobile party reached the dockyard it was pitch dark and pouring rain, and the cruisers were already reported as practically alongside; but to our consternation there was no sign of the two flag-officers. Now, a dog who has lost his master is an unperturbed, torpid, contented creature compared with a flag-lieutenant who has lost his admiral, and there was a terrible to-do. All the telephones were buzzing and ringing, the dockyard police were eagerly interrogated, and there was already talk of despatching search-parties, when the two distinguished truants suddenly turned up, exceedingly hot, decidedly wet, and, if the truth must be told, looking a little muddy and bedraggled. However, there was no time to be lost, and we all rushed off into the night heading for where the vessels were to berth. How we did not break our necks tumbling into a dry-dock or find a watery grave tumbling into a wet one, I do not know. We certainly most of us barked our shins against anchors, chains, bollards, and every sort of pernicious litter such as the sister service loves to fondle, and the language would have been atrocious had we not been out of breath—the Foreign Office indeed contrived to be explosive even as it was. However, we managed to reach the jetty after all just as the two big warships had been warped alongside, winning by a nose. So all was well.

Colonel House and his party had not been fortunate in their weather during the crossing, and they had come to the conclusion that a fighting ship represented an overrated form of ocean liner. More than one of the soldiers and civilians confided to me that if there was no other way of getting across the herring-pond on the way back than by cruiser, they would stop this side. They were all quite pleased to find themselves on dry land, and during the journey up to town by special there was plenty of time to make acquaintance and to discuss general questions. One point was made plain. Mr. Balfour's recently concluded mission to the United States had been a tremendous success. Junior officers who had not met him spoke of him almost with bated breath, and a hint that he might be at the terminus to greet the party caused unbounded satisfaction. When we steamed into Paddington about 1 o'clock A.M. and his tall figure was descried on the platform, the whole crowd burst out of the train in a disorderly swarm, jostling each other in trying to get near him and have a chance of shaking his hand; it was quite a business getting them sorted and under control again so as to start them off in the waiting cars to Claridge's. We do not always send the right man as envoy to foreign parts, but we had managed it that time.



CHAPTER VIII

THE NEAR EAST

The first talk about Salonika — The railway and the port — The question of operations based on Macedonia at the end of 1914 — Failure of "easterners" to realize that the Western Front was Germany's weakest front — Question whether it might not have been better to go to Salonika than to go to the Dardanelles — Objections to such a plan — The problem of Bulgaria — Consequences of the Russian debacle — Difficulty of the Near Eastern problem in the early summer — An example of how the Dardanelles Committee approached it — Awkwardness of the problem after the failure of Sir I. Hamilton's August offensive — The Bulgarian attitude — Entente's objection to Serbia attacking Bulgaria — I am ordered to Salonika, but order countermanded — The disaster to Serbia — Hard to say what ought to have been done — Real mistake, the failure to abandon the Dardanelles enterprise in May — The French attitude about Salonika — General Sarrail — French General Staff impressed with War Office information concerning Macedonia — Unsatisfactory situation at the end of 1915 — The Salonika business a blunder all through — Eventual success does not alter this.

"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed nought else," Rudyard Kipling's old soldier sings, mindful of spacious days along the road to Mandalay. The worst of the East, however, is that people hear it calling who have never been there in their lives. That there were individuals in high places who were subject to this mysterious influence, became apparent at a comparatively early stage of the World War.

The first occasion on which, apart from a few outpost affairs over the Dardanelles with Mr. Churchill to which reference has already been made, "easternism" (as it came to be called later) raised its head to my knowledge to any alarming extent, was when Colonel Hankey asked me, one day early in December 1914, to go across to Treasury Buildings to meet Sir E. Grey and Mr. Lloyd George. There is not a more depressing structure in existence than Treasury Buildings. The arrangement of the interior is a miracle of inconvenience, on the most cloudless of days its apartments are wrapped in gloom, and no decorator has been permitted to pass its portals since it was declared fit for occupation in some forgotten age. But Mr. Lloyd George, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at this time, is ever like a ray of sunshine illumining otherwise dark places, and on this occasion he was at his very brightest. He had made a discovery. He had found on a map that there was quite a big place—it was shown in block capitals—called Salonika, tucked away in a corner of the Balkans right down by the sea. The map furthermore indicated by means of an interminable centipede that a railway led from this place Salonika right away up into Serbia, and on from thence towards the very heart of the Dual Monarchy. Here was a chance of starting an absolutely new hare. The Chancellor, allegro con fuoco, was in a buoyant mood, as was indeed only to be expected under such circumstances, and he was geniality itself when I appeared in the apartment where Sir E. Grey and Hankey were awaiting me together with himself. We should be able to deal the enemy a blow from an entirely unexpected direction, the days of stalemate in the half-frozen morasses of Flanders would be at an end, we would carry the Balkans with us, it would be absolutely top-hole. Although obviously interested—it could hardly be otherwise when the words "Near East" were mentioned—the Foreign Secretary was careful not to give himself away. You have to make a practice of that when you are Foreign Secretary.

Now, it so happened that I had been at Salonika more than once, and also that I had travelled along this very railway more than once and had carefully noted matters in connection with it so long as daylight served. Much more important than that, there were in the archives of my branch at the War Office very elaborate reports on the railway, and there was moreover full information as to the capabilities and the incapabilities of the port of Salonika for the discharge of what was animate and what was inanimate. It was a case of an extensive haven that provided shelter in all weathers for ocean-going ships, but possessing most indifferent facilities for landing merchandise, or animals, or persons, considering the importance of the site. And it was, moreover, a case of one single line of railway meandering up a trough-like valley which at some points narrowed into a defile, a railway of severe gradients with few passing stations, a railway which assuredly would be very short of rolling stock—although this latter disability could no doubt be overcome easily enough. One somehow did not quite picture to oneself an army of many divisions comfortably advancing from Belgrade on Vienna based on Salonika, and depending upon the Salonika-Belgrade railway for its food, for its munitions, and for its own means of transit from the Mediterranean to its launching place. Besides, there were no reserves of troops ready to hand for projecting into the Balkans at this juncture. Only a very few weeks had passed since those days of peril when Sir J. French and the "Old Contemptibles" had, thanks to resolute leadership and to a splendid heroism on the part of regimental officers and rank-and-file, just managed to bring the German multitudes up short as these were surging towards the Channel Ports. Fancy stunts seemed to be at a discount at the moment, and I found it hard to be encouraging.

Some statesmen are ever, unconsciously perhaps but none the less instinctively, gravitating towards the line of least resistance, or towards what they imagine to be the line of least resistance. This, peradventure, accounts to some extent for the singular attraction which operations in the Near East, or Palestine, or anywhere other than on the Western Front, always seemed to present to certain highly placed men of affairs. The idea that the actual strategical position in those somewhat remote regions was such as to constitute any one of them the line of least resistance from the Entente point of view, was based on a complete misreading of the military situation. That theory was founded on the fallacy that the Western Front represented the enemy's strongest point. It was, on the contrary, the enemy's weakest point, because this front was from its geographical position the one where British and French troops could most easily be assembled, and it was the one on which a serious defeat to the enemy necessarily threatened that enemy with a grave, if not an irretrievable, disaster. It is true that for the comparatively short period during which Russia really counted, that is to say during the early months before Russian munitions gave out, the Eastern Front—the Poland Front—was a weak point for the Germans. But the Russian bubble had been pricked in the eyes of those behind the scenes long before the great advance of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies over the Vistula and into the heart of the Tsar's dominions began in the early summer of 1915.

Scarcely had the Salonika venture been mooted than the Dardanelles venture cropped up and was actually embarked on; so that for the nonce the advocates of an advance through Serbia—I am not sure that there was more than one at the time—abandoned that project. But although the Serbs had succeeded early in the winter of 1914-15 in driving the Austro-Hungarian invading columns ignominiously back over the Save and the Danube, the position of this isolated Ally of ours was giving grounds for anxiety from an early period in 1915, and it always presented a serious problem for the Entente. Colonel Basil Buckley, my right-hand man with regard to the Near East, had it constantly in mind.

It is always easy to be wise after the event; what in the world would become of the noble army of critics if it were not so? Still, looking back in the light of the sequel upon the political and strategical situation that existed in the Near East early in 1915, it does look as if the right course for the Western Powers to have adopted then (so soon as there were troops available for another theatre without hopelessly queering the Entente pitch on the Western Front) would have been to use those troops for lending Serbia a hand instead of despatching them to the Dardanelles. Even a weaker force than that with which Sir I. Hamilton embarked on the Gallipoli venture (nominally five Anglo-Australasian and two French divisions) would have proved an invaluable moral, and an effective actual, support to the Serbs; and its arrival on the Morava and the Save could hardly have failed to influence to some extent the attitude of Bulgaria and Roumania, and assuredly would have caused the Austro-Hungarian monarchy some heart-burnings. It has been said that M. Briand (who did not assume the premiership in France until a somewhat later date) advocated the despatch of Entente troops to Serbia in the spring of 1915, and that the question was discussed between the British and French Governments; but I know nothing of this, only having come to be behind the scenes of the Near Eastern drama at a somewhat later date.

Objections to such a course undoubtedly existed, even leaving out of account the fact that our Government was, with the approval of that of Paris, committing itself at the time more and more definitely to the Hellespont-Bosphorus-Black Sea project. In the first place, Salonika happened to be in the hands of neutral Greece, although that difficulty would probably have been got over readily enough then. In the second place, the despatch of a Franco-British force to Serbia in the spring would have been playing the enemy's game to the extent of virtually tying up that force and of condemning it to inactivity for the time being, so as to provide against a danger—hostile attack on Serbia—which might never materialize, and which actually did not materialize until the autumn. In the third place, there was always, with amateur strategists about, the grave risk that a measure taken with the object of safeguarding Serbia as far as possible, might translate itself into a great offensive operation against the Central Powers from the south, absorbing huge Anglo-French forces, conducted under great difficulties in respect to communications with the sea, and playing into the hands of the German Great General Staff by enabling that wide-awake body to make the very fullest use of its strategical assets in respect to "interior lines." Finally, we could not depend upon Bulgaria siding with the Entente, nor even Roumania; and although Italy would certainly not take up arms against us she had not yet declared herself an Ally.

The above reference to Bulgaria introduces a question which added greatly to the perplexities of the Near Eastern problem then and afterwards, perplexities that were aggravated by the well-founded suspicion with which Bulgaria's monarch was on all hands regarded. The Bulgars coveted Macedonia. But the greater part of Macedonia happened as a result of the Balkan upheavals of 1912 and 1913 to belong to Serbia, and the rest of it belonged to Greece. Into the ethnographical aspect of the Macedonian problem it is not necessary to enter here. The cardinal fact remained that Bulgaria wanted, and practically demanded, this region. While we might have been ready enough to give away Greek territory which did not belong to us, we really could not give away Serbian territory which did not belong to us seeing that Serbia was an Ally actually embattled on our side and with a victorious campaign already to her credit. Macedonia at a later date upset the applecart.

Things were already from our point of view in something of a tangle in the Balkans by the vernal equinox of 1915; but they had got into much more of a tangle by the time that spring was merging into summer. At that stage, the failure of our naval effort against the Dardanelles had been followed by our military effort coming to a disconcerting standstill, and the Bulgarian and Greek Governments in common with their military authorities made up their minds that the operation against the Straits was doomed. That was bad enough in all conscience, but worse was to follow. Because then the Russian bubble was suddenly, dramatically, and publicly pricked, the Tsar's stubborn soldiery, without ammunition and almost without weapons, could not even maintain themselves against the Austro-Hungarian forces, much less against the formidable German hosts that were suddenly turned loose upon them, and within the space of a very few weeks the situation on the Eastern Front, which at least in appearance had been favourable enough during the winter and the early spring, suddenly became transformed into one of profoundest gloom from the Entente point of view. Even a much less unpromising diplomatic situation than that which had existed in the Balkans between December and May was bound to become an untoward one under such conditions. Our side had come to be looked upon as the losing side. No amount of skill on the part of our Foreign Office nor of the Quai d'Orsay could compensate for the logic of disastrous facts. The performances of H.M. Government in connection with Bulgaria and Greece at this time have been the subject of much acid criticism. But in time of war it is the victorious battalions that count, not the wiles of a Talleyrand nor of a Great Elchi. The failure in the Dardanelles and the Russian collapse settled our hash in the Near East for the time being, and no amount of diplomatic juggling could have effectually repaired the mischief.