Exactly what line the General Staff would have taken up had they been called upon, say at the beginning of July, to give a considered opinion in the form of a carefully prepared memorandum as to the course that ought to be followed in connection with the Dardanelles and Serbia, it is hard to say. That there was considerable risk of Serbia being assailed in force by the Central Powers before long was manifest. On the other hand, there we were, up to the neck in the Dardanelles venture, and strong reinforcements were at this time belatedly on their way out to Sir I. Hamilton from home. The position was a decidedly awkward one. To despatch further contingents to this part of the world, over and above those already on the way or under orders, was virtually out of the question, unless the Near East was to be accepted as the Entente's main theatre of war—which way madness lay. To divert the Dardanelles reinforcements to Salonika destroyed such hopes as remained of the Gallipoli campaign proving a success after all. Human nature being what it is, there would have been a sore temptation to adopt the attitude of "wait and see" which might perhaps have commended itself to Mr. Asquith, to let things take their course, to be governed by how Sir I. Hamilton's contemplated offensive panned out, and to trust to a decision in that quarter taking place before isolated Serbia should actually be imperilled. But in those days the General Staff never was asked to give a considered opinion. At the Dardanelles Committee which had all these matters in hand, one seldom, if ever, was given an opportunity of expressing views on the broader aspects of any question. The methods in vogue on the part of that body are indeed well illustrated by the following incident.

One evening in August, about 7 P.M., just when I was getting to the end of my work for the day, Colonel Swinton, who for many months past had been acting as "Eye-Witness" with Sir J. French's forces, turned up unexpectedly in my room. My pleasure at meeting an old friend, recently from the hub of things in France and whom I had not seen for a long time, gave place to resentment when he explained what he had come for. It appeared that he had a short time previously arrived in the United Kingdom to act temporarily as Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence (which practically meant the Dardanelles Committee at the moment), and he had been called upon, right off the reel, to prepare a memorandum on the Dardanelles situation, which was to be ready next morning. Knowing comparatively little about the Dardanelles, he had come to consult me. In the first instance I absolutely declined to oblige. I had no authority from Lord K. or the C.I.G.S. to express views on this subject on paper for the benefit of the Committee. Furthermore—and perhaps this weighed more heavily in the scale than did official considerations—I was "fed up." One generally was by 7 P.M. at the War Office. The very idea of starting at this hour upon a memorandum about anything, let alone the Dardanelles, was infuriating.

Swinton, however, eventually prevailed upon me to lend a hand on the distinct understanding, pressed for by me, that it remained a hidden hand. After all, this intrusion of his did provide some sort of opportunity for putting the situation plainly before the Committee, and for expressing a vertebrate opinion. We proceeded to the club and dined together, and thereafter, refreshed and my equanimity restored by a rest and hearing the news from across the water, we grappled with the subject in the C.I.D. office. "Ole Luke Oie" could be trusted to put a thing tersely and with vigour once he knew what to say, and the document did not take long to draft. We took the line that in the Gallipoli Peninsula it was a case of getting on or of getting out. The core of this memorandum is quoted in the "Final Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, where it is pointed out that no mention is made of a middle course. That was intentional. A middle course was regarded by us as wholly unjustifiable, although it was the one which the Dardanelles Committee adopted; for that body did not take our advice—it neither got on nor got out.

The situation in the Near East as a whole became a more anxious one than ever after the failure of Sir I. Hamilton's August offensive, because by this time Russia's collapse was complete, and the legions of the Central Powers which had been flooding Poland, Grodno and Volhynia, impeded by sparsity of communications rather than by the resistance of the Grand Duke Nicholas's ammunitionless army, had become available for operations in a new direction. The portents all pointed to an attack upon Serbia. If Serbia was to receive effective aid at the hands of the Western Powers, that aid must be well in motion before the enemy hosts should gather on the northern and western frontiers of our threatened Ally, otherwise the aid would assuredly be late owing to the difficulty of moving troops rapidly from board ship in Salonika roads, up to the theatre of operations. Hopes still existed, on the other hand, at least in the minds of some of the members of the Dardanelles Committee, that by sending additional reinforcements to Sir I. Hamilton a success might be obtained even yet in that quarter. The French for a week or two contemplated despatching four divisions which were to operate on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont; but the situation on the Western Front put an end to this design. There were two stools, the Dardanelles and Salonika, and among us we contrived to sit down between them. For while all this was in debate the danger to Serbia grew apace, and intelligence sources of information now made it certain that the German Great General Staff had not only planned, but had already made nearly all the preparations for, a great stroke in the direction of the western Balkans.

In this distressing state of affairs Bulgaria was always the uncertain factor. Her attitude could not be gauged with certainty, but it was extremely suspicious throughout. A pro-Bulgar element had for some months been listened to by our Foreign Office with greater respect than it deserved, although nobody, pro-Bulgar or anti-Bulgar, entertained any trust in Tsar Ferdinand's integrity. Had Serbia even at this late hour been willing to relinquish Macedonia, it is conceivable that Bulgaria might have remained neutral, and that Ferdinand might have broken such engagements as he had secretly entered into with the Central Powers. But utter distrust and bitter hatred of Bulgaria prevailed in Serbia. Our Ally perhaps hardly sufficiently realized that national aspirations ought rather to direct themselves towards the Adriatic and the regions inhabited by Serb stock under Austro-Hungarian rule, than towards districts peopled by mixed races on the shores of the Aegean. Be that as it may, the idea of delivering up Macedonia to the traditional Eastern enemy was scouted at Belgrade. We hoped that at the worst Greece would, in accordance with treaty obligations, take sides with Serbia should Bulgaria throw in her lot with the Central Powers against the Serbs. Then came the attack of the German and Austro-Hungarian forces, synchronizing with the mobilization of the Bulgarian army.

The Nish Government—Belgrade had been quitted by this time—entertained no illusions whatever regarding Bulgarian intentions, and wished to assume the offensive promptly eastwards while this very suspicious mobilization was still in progress. Our Government—I am not sure what attitude the French, Russian, and Italian Governments took up—realized that Serbia's seizing the initiative put an end to all hopes of Greece lending a hand, and they virtually vetoed the project, as has already been mentioned in Chapter IV. That, as it turned out, was an unfortunate decision, because it fatally injured the Serbian prospects of preventing their territory being overrun before the French and we could intervene effectively, while it did not secure Greek adhesion. We virtually staked on King Constantine, and we found too late that our King was a Knave.

Just at this awkward juncture Lord Kitchener instructed me to be prepared to proceed to Salonika, and all the necessary steps for starting on the journey were promptly taken; but it was not clear what capacity I was going in. It seemed a mistake, although one was naturally heartened at the prospect of activities in a new sphere, even if these were only to be of a temporary character. But, as it turned out, the Dardanelles Committee (or the War Council, I am not sure of the exact date when the Dardanelles Committee deceased) intervened, wishing me to remain at my post. In view of what followed, one was well out of intimate contact with the Macedonian imbroglio on the spot, because, as everybody knows now, the Franco-British forces arrived too late to save Serbia from reverses which amounted to an almost overwhelming disaster at the hands of the great hosts which the Central Powers and Bulgaria threw into the scale.

We and the French had, judged by results, made a hideous mess of things between us. The Allies were late at a critical juncture—and in war that is the unpardonable sin. Sir E. Carson, who had for a brief period proved himself a tower of strength on the Dardanelles Committee, resigned from the Cabinet in disgust. Lord Milner, independent man of affairs at the time, spoke out strongly on the subject in the House of Lords. But although the opinion of either of them is well worth having on most questions, and although both know their own minds, I doubt whether they, either of them, had any clear idea then as to what ought to have been done to avert the catastrophe, and I doubt whether they, either of them, have a clear idea now. Subsequent to May we were confronted with a horribly complex military and political situation in the Near East (and by that time military forces were already committed to the Dardanelles venture); because it was only then that the position of affairs on the Eastern Front and in the Near East became transformed owing to the Russian debacle—a debacle which turned out to be considerably greater than the available information as to our Ally's munition difficulties had led us to anticipate.

It is easy to say now, after the event, that we ought to have come away from the Dardanelles in June, and to have transferred the force there, or part of it, to Serbia, which was obviously placed in peril by Russia's collapse. But in June reinforcements were already earmarked for the Gallipoli Peninsula, and Sir I. Hamilton was confident of achieving a substantial success after they should arrive. It is easy to say now, after the event, that, immediately the offensive from Anzac and Suvla in August miscarried, we ought to have come out of the Gallipoli Peninsula and to have transferred the force there, or some of it, to Serbia. But in the latter part of August the French were disposed to send a substantial contingent to the Asiatic side of the Straits, we were supposed to have troops to spare for that part of the world, and it was not until early September that all this was dropped in view of events on the Western Front. It is easy to say now, after the event, that the Entente ought to have foreseen that King Constantine would throw Serbia over in any case, and that therefore we ought not to have prevented the Serbs from attacking Bulgaria while she was still mobilizing. But we trusted a King's word, and we knew that M. Venizelos was heart and soul on our side. It is easy to say now that we ought to have insisted on Serbia buying off Bulgar hostility by handing over Macedonia. But Serbia might have refused despite our insisting, and, when all is said and done, Serbia has succeeded in keeping Macedonia after all. Ought we to have come out of the Dardanelles in September, as soon as it was decided that neither the French nor British would send reinforcements thither, and to have transferred the troops to Salonika? Assuredly we ought then to have come away from the Gallipoli Peninsula. But the evacuation must have been a ticklish business, and to have aggravated its difficulties by despatching its war-worn garrison simultaneously to Salonika and Serbia, just when great enemy contingents were gathering on the Danube and the Save, would have thrown a tremendous strain upon staff, upon troops, and upon the shipping resources of all kinds actually on the spot.

No. Leaving out of consideration the blunder of having drifted into the Dardanelles enterprise at all, the real mistake lay in not abandoning that enterprise when it became apparent that the troops originally detailed could not accomplish their purpose, when it became apparent that gaining a footing on the Gallipoli Peninsula meant gaining a footing and no more and that no aid was to be expected from Bulgaria or from Greece. It was just at that juncture that Russia began to give out and that the tide turned in favour of the Central Powers on the eastern side of Europe. The matter was primarily one for H.M. Government, because the French were not deeply committed to the effort against the Straits; but H.M. Government at that moment happened to be in a state of flux. The staff at G.H.Q., St. Omer, were no doubt not absolutely unprejudiced judges; but I was hearing constantly from General H. Wilson between August 1914 and the end of 1915, and he always wrote in the same strain about the Dardanelles from April onwards: "Cut your losses and come out."

Some mention has already been made of M. Briand's inclination for Entente efforts based on Salonika. In the autumn of 1915 that eminent French statesman was head of the Government in Paris, and his Cabinet took up a very strong line indeed over this question. We all agreed that neither the city, linked as it was by railway with Central Europe, nor yet its spacious land-locked haven must fall into enemy hands. Our naval authorities were in full agreement with the French naval authorities on that point. But when it came to projects for planting down large military forces in this area, with the idea of ultimate offensive operations northward ever in the background, we of the General Staff at the War Office demurred, and we were, at all events in principle, supported by the majority of the War Council. Lord Kitchener left for the Aegean at this time; but both before going and after his return he always, as far as I know, deprecated locking up fighting resources in Macedonia. Our Allies across the Channel were, however, somewhat insistent. Two conferences took place: one, a military one at Chantilly at the very end of October, and a more authoritative one a few days later in Paris, both of which I attended. More will be said about these reunions in Chapter XII. General Joffre, with some of his staff, also paid a visit to London in connection with the matter. The upshot was that the French practically forced us into the policy of maintaining a large force about Salonika. But H.M. Government were placed in a difficult position in the matter, seeing that their pet project (or at all events the pet project of the pre-Coalition Government), that of attacking the Dardanelles, had so completely failed.

One could not altogether escape from the impression at the time that, in the determined attitude which our friends over the water adopted on this point, they were at least to some small extent actuated by anxiety to maroon General Sarrail, who had been sent off in command of the French troops already despatched, and also to keep him quiet by investing him with the supreme command in this new theatre of war—as was later arranged. Why the strong political support enjoyed in certain French quarters by this prominent, and in the opening days of the war highly successful, soldier should have been taken so seriously, it was hard for anybody on our side of the Straits of Dover to understand. One wonders whether M. Clemenceau might not have been somewhat less discomposed on the subject had he been at the head of affairs. But the attitude adopted on the point became extremely inconvenient at a later date when, after an offensive on a large scale undertaken on the Salonika front had miscarried completely, owing largely, if not entirely, to a lamentable lack of co-ordination between the various contingents engaged, a change in the chief command did not instantly follow. Unsatisfactory as was the policy of interning large bodies of British and French troops that were badly wanted at the decisive point, in a sort of cul-de-sac in the Near East, it was made all the more unsatisfactory by the way the military situation was dealt with locally for more than a year and a half.

In view of certain criticisms of the General Staff to which the lack of information concerning the Gallipoli Peninsula when it was needed in 1915 has given rise, it is worth mentioning that at my suggestion General Joffre sent one of his trusted staff-officers over from Chantilly in November 1915 to put up with us for a few days, particularly in connection with Macedonian problems. This representative of the French General Staff was astonished to find that we possessed numbers of detailed military reports concerning that part of the world, with full information as to railways and communications, and he was most complimentary on the subject. "Your England is an island, my general," he remarked to me; "you have not had the eastern frontier always to think of like France. How could we devote attention to Macedonia?" It was not here a question of reconnaissance work or of costly backstairs methods in a carefully watched fortified area of prime strategical significance like the environs of the Hellespont. Getting information about Macedonia had merely been a matter of sending out experienced military observers to look about them and to report.

When I left the General Staff at the War Office at the end of the year, the position of affairs at Salonika was a thoroughly unsatisfactory one, although the General Staff could fairly claim that for this it was not responsible. A great Allied army was collected in this quarter, inert and virtually out of the game. Our antagonists had very wisely abandoned all idea of attacking, and of thereby justifying the existence of, that great Allied army. The Bulgars had, with some assistance from German and Austro-Hungarian troops, secured possession of the mountainous region of the Balkans; and the Central Powers had thus acquired just that same advantageous strategical and tactical position on the Macedonian Front as they had for a year and a half been enjoying on the Italian borders—the advantageous position of having roped in Nature as a complaisant ally. The Entente had had an uncommonly difficult hand to play in the Near East, but, as things turned out, the Governments concerned had played it about as badly as was feasible.

Except in the matter of equipping the Greek forces at a very much later date, I was not directly concerned in what followed for weary months on the Salonika Front. During the few weeks when I was acting temporarily as Deputy C.I.G.S. in 1917, things happened to be pretty well at a standstill in Macedonia, except that just at that time one British division was transferred from that theatre to Palestine, where there was some prospect of doing something. I remained in touch with the General Staff, however, until the end of the war, and throughout was to a great extent behind the scenes.

Only one valid military excuse can be put forward for imprisoning a great field army for three years in the Salonika area, a plan to which the General Staff was consistently opposed from the outset. It enabled our side to employ some 150,000 Serbian and Greek troops, whom it might have been difficult to turn to good account elsewhere; at the very end the Greek contingents were, moreover, being substantially increased. In what was to a great extent a war of attrition this was a point of some importance. But that great field army was for all practical purposes immobilized for the whole of the three years. It was immobilized partly by inferior bodies of troops—mainly Bulgarian, whom the German Great General Staff would have found it hard to utilize in other theatres. It was immobilized partly by having before it a wide zone of rugged uplands which were in occupation of the enemy, and which forbade the employment of masses of men. That great field army never at any time pulled its weight, and its presence in Macedonia threw a severe and unwarranted strain upon our naval resources owing to the difficulty of safeguarding its communications against submarines in a water area exceptionally favourable for the operations of such craft.

At the end of the three years that great field army did carry out a remarkably successful offensive, in which the Serbs played a gallant and prominent part. But, without wishing to disparage the fine work performed by the various contingents in that offensive of September 1918—British, French, Italian, Serb and Greek—the fact remains that the Bulgars were defeated not in Macedonia but in Picardy and Artois. Exhausted by years of hostilities—they had been at it since 1912—they knew that the game was up before the offensive ever started, knew that their side had lost the war, knew that there was no hope of succour from Germany. Considering the hopelessness of the situation from the point of view of the Central Powers, it is surprising that the Sofia Executive did not throw up the sponge at a somewhat earner date.

The Macedonian side-show is a typical example of the kind of side-show which cannot be justified from the broad point of view of military policy. In the next chapter a number of other side-shows which had their place in the Great War will be touched upon. In it the fact will be pointed out that side-shows are sometimes unavoidable, and it will be suggested that most of those on which the British Government embarked between 1914 and the end of the war were justifiable, even when they were not absolutely unavoidable.



CHAPTER IX

OTHER SIDE-SHOWS

Three categories of side-shows — The Jackson Committee — The Admiralty's attitude — The Pacific, Duala, Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam, Oceania, the Wireless Stations — Kiao Chao — The Shatt-el-Arab — Egypt — Question whether the Australasian forces ought to have been kept for the East — The East African operations — Our lack of preparation for a campaign in this quarter — Something wrong — My own visit to Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam in 1908 — The bad start of the campaign — Question of utilizing South African troops to restore the situation — How this was managed — Reasons why this was a justifiable side-show — Mesopotamia — The War Office ought to have interfered — The question of an advance on Baghdad by General Townshend suddenly referred to the General Staff — Our mistake — The question of Egyptian defence in the latter part of 1915 — The Alexandretta project — A later Alexandretta project propounded by the War Cabinet in 1917 — Its absurdity — The amateur strategist on the war-path — The Palestine campaign of 1918 carried out almost entirely by troops not required on the Western Front, and therefore a legitimate side-show — The same principle to some extent holds good with regard to the conquest of Mesopotamia — The Downing Street project to substitute Sir W. Robertson for Sir C. Monro, a miss-fire.

"There must have been a baker's dozen of them," writes Lord Fisher in his Memories in reference to what he calls the "wild-cat expeditions" on which troops were engaged while he was First Sea Lord in 1914-15. There were a baker's dozen of them, and more, if the occupation by Australasian contingents of certain islands in the Indian Archipelago and the Pacific are included. But a correct appreciation of the merits and of the demerits of our numerous side-shows of those and later days is not covered by ejaculatory generalizations. Some of the very greatest of soldiers—Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington—all countenanced side-shows that were kept within limits.

The truth about side-shows is that they may be divided up roughly into three categories: (1) The necessary, (2) the excusable, (3) the unjustifiable and mischievous. But there is no sharp dividing-line between the three categories. Of those for which we made ourselves responsible in the Great War, the majority undoubtedly come within the first category. Most of the remainder may, upon the whole, be classed as excusable. Unfortunately the small number which come under the third heading were just those which absorbed the greatest military effort, and which were the only ones that really reckoned as vital factors in influencing the course of the conflict as a whole. Amongst the necessary and unavoidable side-shows were those which were undertaken, at all events in the first instance, in the interests of sea power. Amongst the side-shows which may be regarded as justifiable, although not unavoidable, may be mentioned the continuation of the Cameroons operations after the taking of Duala, the continuation of the operations in "German East" after the capture of Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam, and the continuation of the operations in "German South-West" after the great wireless station had been dealt with; in each of these cases the forces and resources of various kinds absorbed were, for various reasons, of no great relative importance, and the conquest of the Boche territories involved was desirable. Two unjustifiable side-shows have already been discussed, the Dardanelles and Salonika; another that comes within this third category was Mesopotamia subsequent to the securing of the Shatt-el-Arab and the Karun oil-fields, and yet another is represented by the excessive resources which were devoted to Palestine operations during certain periods of the war.

A special interdepartmental committee, an offshoot of the Committee of Imperial Defence, was set up on the outbreak of the war, virtually as an expansion of the already existing Colonial Defence Committee. By a stroke of good fortune, its chairman was Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, who was attached to the Admiralty for special service at the time; the Colonial Office and the India Office, as well as the Admiralty were represented on it, and I was the War Office delegate. It was on the recommendations of this body that the operations against Togoland, the Cameroons, and "German East" were initiated, that every encouragement was given to the projects set on foot by the Australasian Governments for the conquest of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Samoa, and other localities in Oceania, and that similar encouragement was given to the Union Government of South Africa in respect to its plans for wresting "German South-West" out of the hands of its possessors and oppressors. The Admiralty attached extreme importance to Duala, and considerable importance to Dar-es-Salaam and Tanga, as also to some of the ports in Oceania owing to the presence of Von Spee's squadron of swift cruisers in the Pacific. They likewise were anxious that the German wireless stations of great range and power in Togoland, the Cameroons, "German South-West," and "German East" should be brought to nought.

Then there was also Kiao Chao. The capture of that enemy naval stronghold in the Far East was regarded as eminently desirable, and although the Japanese were ready and willing to take the thing on alone it seemed expedient that we should contribute a small contingent to assist, very much on the same principle as the French and Italians liked to have small contingents fighting under the orders of General Allenby during his triumphant operations in Palestine and Syria. Our military garrisons at Tientsin and Hong-Kong could easily find a couple of battalions, and from our British point of view this contribution may be set down as coming within the category of an excusable, if not an unavoidable, side-show. Apart from East Africa, none of these minor sets of operations absorbed more than insignificant military forces, which in most cases were composed largely of Colonial coloured troops who were hardly fitted for fighting on the Western Front at that stage. In almost all of them, except "German East" and Kiao Chao, the object had been achieved within a few weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, and even the bitterest foes of the side-show in the abstract will admit that the end justified the means.

The question of an expedition to the Shatt-el-Arab was first raised by the India Office. Such an undertaking could indeed hardly suggest itself during the first few weeks of the war, seeing that the Ottoman Empire did not become involved until some weeks had elapsed. The object of this Mesopotamia side-show, which ultimately developed into one of the greatest campaigns ever undertaken by a European Power in a region beyond the seas, was, to start with, simply the seizure of the water-way for the length that this is navigable by ocean-going ships together with the port of Basrah, and to secure the safety of the oil-fields of the Karun. The operation incidentally could hardly fail to exercise considerable political effect around the Persian Gulf, which was all to the good, and the project did not call for the employment of a large force to effect the purpose that was in view at the start. Most military authorities would surely class this as a thoroughly justifiable, if perhaps not an absolutely necessary, side-show.

Then, thrusting itself into prominence about the same time as the Shatt-el-Arab affair developed, came the question of Egypt. The Turks would assuredly contrive a stroke at the Khedive's dominions from the side of the Isthmus of Suez sooner or later, the attitude of the tribes in the vast regions to the west of the Nile valley could not but give grounds for some anxiety, and there was a fair chance of effervescence within the Nile Delta itself. Maintaining the security of Egypt was hardly more a side-show than was the provision of garrisons for India; but the defence of Egypt at a later stage more or less merged into offensive operations directed against Palestine. The question of giving that defence a somewhat active form by undertaking expeditionary enterprises in the direction of the Gulf of Alexandretta came to be considered quite early in the war, as has already been mentioned in Chapter III. But during the first six months or so Egypt only in reality absorbed military resources which for various reasons could not appropriately have been utilized elsewhere. The British regulars were withdrawn from Cairo and Khartum and helped to form divisions for the Western Front, considerable bodies of Native Indian troops were transported to Suez from Bombay and Kurrachee, the East Lancashire Territorial Division was sent out from home, and the newly constituted contingents from the Antipodes secured a temporary resting-place in a region which climatically was particularly well suited for their purpose. Anxiety as to Egypt was as a matter of fact in great measure allayed in January 1915, owing to the Osmanlis pressing forward to the Suez Canal, sustaining a severe rebuff near its banks at the hands of the defending force, and disappearing eastwards as a beaten and disorganized rabble.

The Palestine operations will be touched upon later; but there is a subject in connection with the contingents from the Antipodes, referred to above, which, although it has nothing to do with the principle of side-shows in the abstract, may perhaps not inappropriately be discussed here. Was it right ever to have employed those contingents on the Western Front, as they were employed from an early date in 1916 onwards to the end of the struggle? The result of their being so disposed of was that, covering a space of nearly three years, troops from the United Kingdom were perpetually passing eastwards through the Mediterranean while Australasian troops were perpetually passing westwards through the Mediterranean. Military forces belonging to the one belligerent Empire were, in fact, crossing each other at sea. This involved an avoidable absorption of ship-tonnage, it threw an avoidable strain upon the naval forces of the Entente, and it imposed an avoidable period of inaction upon the troops concerned. Look upon the Anzacs simply as counters and upon the Great War as a Kriegspiel, and such procedure becomes ridiculous. Whatever there is to be said for and against the Dardanelles, Salonika, Palestine, and Mesopotamia side-shows, they did undoubtedly absorb military forces in excess of those which Australia and New Zealand placed in the field, and they provided active work in eastern regions far nearer to the Antipodes than was the Western Front.

This, however, entirely ignores sentiment, and sentiment can never justly nor safely be ignored in military matters. The Anzacs would have bitterly resented being relegated to theatres, of secondary importance so to speak. Their Governments would have protested had such a thing been even hinted at, and they would have protested in very forcible terms. No other course than that actually followed was in reality practicable nor, as far as I know, ever suggested. As a matter of fact, however, none of the Australasian mounted troops, apart from some quite minor exceptions, ever did proceed west of the Aegean. After performing brilliant service in the Gallipoli Peninsula acting as foot soldiers, the Anzac Horse spent the last three years of the war in Egypt, where they seized and made the most of opportunities for gaining distinction under General Allenby such as would never have been presented to them in France.

I was a good deal concerned in the operations in East Africa during the first year and a half of the war, a period of scanty progress and of regrettable misadventures. We enjoyed the advantage, when this question came before Admiral Jackson's committee, of having Lieut.-Colonel (now Major-General Sir A. R.) Hoskins present, who at the time was Inspector-General of the King's African Rifles and was consequently well acquainted with our own territories in that part of the world. From the outset, Hoskins was disinclined to regard operations in this quarter as a sort of picnic, and the event proved that he was right. It was, however, settled that the whole business should be handed over in the main to India to carry out, and that the commander and staff for the contemplated offensive, as well as the reinforcements needed for the purpose, should come across the Indian Ocean from Bombay.

At a very early stage it became apparent that our information concerning the enemy districts nearest to the frontier between German territory and British East Africa was defective, while information as to the districts on our own side was not all that might be wished, and I gathered from Hoskins at the time (and also later on from Colonel G. Thesiger, Hoskins' predecessor, who brought home his battalion of the Rifle Brigade from India during the winter of 1914-15 and who was killed when commanding a division at Loos in the autumn of 1915) that the prosecution of active intelligence work had received little encouragement from home during their terms of office. That is the worst of a corps like the King's African Rifles being under the Colonial Office instead of under the War Office, although there are adequate reasons for that arrangement; but I cannot help thinking that if the General Staff had pressed the matter, not much difficulty would have been encountered in altering the Colonial Office's point of view, and that both no doubt were to blame. It may also be remarked incidentally that the Colonial Office probably has no secret service funds at its disposal. Still, be that as it may, there was something amiss.

Here we were, with British soil actually in contact with an extensive province in the hands of a potential enemy and known to be garrisoned by a considerable body of native troops. Everything pointed to the need for extensive reconnaissance work in the borderland districts with a view to possible eventualities. Numbers of active, intelligent, and adventurous young British officers, admirably fitted for acquiring military information, were stationed on our side of the frontier. And yet when the storm broke we were unprepared to meet it. We had plans worked out in the utmost detail for depositing the Expeditionary Force at its concentration points in French territory. Our naval policy was to all intents and purposes framed with a German war as its ultimate goal. The probability of a conflict with the Boches had for some years past virtually governed our military policy. But in East Africa we were in a measure caught napping.

There had been lack of foresight. I had been guilty of this myself, so that I have the less hesitation in referring to it; for I had been at both Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam early in 1908. At the first-named port our ship only spent a few hours, so that any kind of reconnaissance work would have been out of the question. But we lay for four days on end in Dar-es-Salaam harbour, and yet it never occurred to me to examine the place and its immediate surroundings from the point of view of possible attack upon it in the future—this, moreover, after having just given over charge of the strategical section in the War Office. Even allowing for the fact that war with Germany was not looming ahead to the same extent in 1908 as it was from 1909 onwards, there was surely something wrong on that occasion.

The start that was made in East Africa in 1914 can only be described as deplorable. Following a custom which to my mind is more honoured in the breach than in the observance, the mortifying results of the attempted maritime descent upon Tanga which ushered in the hostilities, were for a long time kept concealed from the public. That reverse constituted a grave set-back—a set-back on a small scale perhaps, but as decided a one as we met with during the war. Our troops not only lost heavily in casualties, but they also suffered appreciably in moral. For months subsequent to that untoward event we were virtually on the defensive in this theatre of war, although we unquestionably enjoyed the advantage in actual numbers, and although the maritime communications were open to our side and closed to that of the enemy. The enemy enjoyed such initiative as there was. Bodies of hostile troops used to cross the border from time to time and inflict unpleasant pin-pricks upon us. The situation was an eminently unsatisfactory one, but what was to be done?

That "German East" was just the very place to utilize South African troops in, became apparent at a comparatively early stage of the proceedings. Even before General Botha and his men had completed his conquest of "German South-West," one had already begun to dream dreams of these same forces, or their equivalent, coming to the rescue on the farther side of the Dark Continent, and of their getting our Indian and native African contingents, with their small nucleus of British regulars, out of the scrape that they were in. Being in constant communication with General C. W. Thomson, who was in command of the exiguous body of British soldiers left at the Cape, I was able to gauge the local feeling out there fairly correctly, and became convinced that we should be able to rely on securing a really high-class contingent of improvised units for "German East" out of South Africa, of units composed of tough, self-reliant, experienced fighting men who might not be disposed to undertake service on the Western Front. The special character of the theatre of war in East Africa, the nature of the fighting which its topography imposed on the contending sides, its climate, its prospects for the settler, and its geographical position, were all such as to appeal to the dwellers on the veldt. But when the subject was broached once or twice to Lord K. during the summer of 1915 he would have nothing to do with it. Once bitten twice shy. The War Minister looked on side-shows with no kindly eye. Nor could he be persuaded that this was one which would only be absorbing resources that could hardly be made applicable to other quarters.

Mr. Bonar Law, who was then Colonial Minister, was very anxious to have the military situation in this part of the world cleared up, and I rather took advantage of Lord K.'s absence in the Near East in November to bring the whole thing to a head. Sir A. Murray quite agreed that South Africa ought to be invited to step in and help. So it came about that the business was practically settled by the time that the Chief came back from the Dardanelles, and although he was by no means enthusiastic, he accepted the situation and he chose Sir H. Smith-Dorrien for the command. Whether this was, or was not, a justifiable side-show is no doubt a matter of opinion. But a very large proportion of the troops who eventually conquered "German East" under Generals Smuts, Hoskins and Van Deventer would scarcely have been available for effective operations in any other theatre, and the demands in respect to artillery, aircraft, and so forth were almost negligible as compared to the resources that were in being even so early as the winter of 1915-16. Perhaps the most powerful arguments that could be brought forward against the offensive campaign that was initiated by General Smuts in German East Africa were its cost and the amount of ship-tonnage that it absorbed. The primary object for which operations in this region were undertaken, the capture of Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam so as to deprive the enemy of their use for naval purposes, had rather dropped out of consideration owing to the seas having been cleared of enemy non-diving craft in the meantime.

The Mesopotamian operations during the first year and a half were conducted entirely by the India Office and India, and, up till after Sir W. Robertson had become C.I.G.S., we had no direct responsibility in connection with them in the War Office. I had a subsection that dealt entirely with Indian matters; this kept watch, noted the telegrams, reports, and so forth, dealing with what was going on on the Shatt-el-Arab and beyond, and it could at any moment supply me with general information as to the situation. From time to time I used to ask how the operations were progressing, and, without ever going carefully into the matter, was disposed to look somewhat askance at the procedure that was being adopted of continually pressing forward from place to place—like the hill-climber who on reaching one crest ever feels himself drawn on to gain the next—far beyond the zone which had in the first instance been regarded as the objective of the Expeditionary Force. The meteor of conquest appeared to be alluring "D" Force too far. Without examining the position of affairs closely, it was obvious that the farther our troops proceeded up the Tigris the longer became their line of communications, the shorter became that of the Turks, and the greater must inevitably become the contingents put in the field by our side. What had started as a limited-liability and warrantable side-show was somehow imperceptibly developing into a really serious campaign in a remote region.

Looking back upon those months in the light of later experience, the attitude which one felt disposed to assume, the attitude that as this was an India Office business with which the War Office had nothing to do it was their funeral, was a mistaken one. The War Office could not, of course, butt in unceremoniously. But Lord Kitchener was a member of the Government in an exceptionally powerful position in all things connected with the war, and had one represented one's doubts to him, he would certainly have gone into the question and might have taken up a strong line. I, however, have no recollection of ever speaking to him on the subject of Mesopotamia during the period when "D" Force was working right up into Irak, moving first to Amarah, then to El Gharbi, and then on to Kut, thus involving the Empire in a regular offensive campaign on an ambitious scale in the cradle of the world.

Then came that farther advance of General Townshend's from Kut to Azizieh, the project for an advance right up to Baghdad assumed shape at Army Headquarters on the Tigris, in Simla, and at the India Office, and it was then that the General Staff, now with Sir A. Murray in charge, was suddenly called upon to give a considered opinion concerning this ambitious scheme for the information of the War Council. Now it is an interesting fact that just at that very same time we were called upon to give a considered opinion on the subject of the best plan of rendering Egypt secure, and that this necessarily raised the question whether the plan should favour an active form of defence involving an expedition to Alexandretta or thereabouts, or whether it should take a more passive form of holding positions away back near the Suez Canal. The two Memoranda were as a matter of fact printed in the one secret document.

As regards Alexandretta we had no doubts whatever, although, as already mentioned on p. 79, Lord K. and the experts in connection with Egypt favoured operations in that direction. We made up our minds without the slightest difficulty, and pronounced dead against a forward policy of that kind at such a time. But in reference to Baghdad we all of us, I think, felt undecided and in a quandary. Unacquainted with General Townshend's views, assuming that the river transport upon which military operations up-Tigris necessarily hinged was in a reasonably efficient condition, ignorant of the obstacles which forbade a prompt start from Azizieh, we pictured to ourselves a bound forward at a very early date. Actually the advance did not materialize for more than a month, and in the meantime the Turks were gathering reinforcements apace. The city might have been occupied had General Townshend been able to push forward at once; for an army (favoured, it is true, by incomparably more effectual administrative arrangements) did sixteen months later reach the place within seven days of quitting Azizieh, although strongly opposed. But so exiguous an expeditionary force could not have maintained itself in that isolated situation in face of swelling hostile numbers. In falling back to his advanced base its leader would have been faced with nearly double the distance to cover that he compassed so successfully in his retreat from Ctesiphon. The little army would almost certainly have been cornered and compelled for lack of supplies to surrender in some advanced position in Irak five months earlier than, as it turned out, Kut hauled down the flag.

But, be that as it may, we made ourselves to some extent responsible for the disaster which occurred to General Townshend's force, owing to our not taking a decided line on the subject and not obeying the elementary principle that resources must not in war be wasted upon unnecessary subsidiary enterprises. Whether it was or was not feasible to get to Baghdad at the time was a matter of some uncertainty. But that the whole business of all this pouring of troops into Mesopotamia was fundamentally unsound scarcely admitted of dispute. That ought to have determined our attitude on the minor Baghdad point.

Egypt gave rise to little anxiety during the spring and summer of 1915 in consequence of the signal discomfiture which the Turks had suffered on the Canal early in the year; the arid tract known as the Sinai desert indeed provided a satisfactory defence in itself during the dry months. But as autumn approached, the prospect of Ottoman efforts against the Nile Delta had to be taken into serious consideration, the more so that neither the Dardanelles Committee nor the War Council which took its place could disguise from themselves that the abandonment of the Dardanelles enterprise was at least on the cards, and that this would liberate Osmanli forces for efforts in other directions. There had been a school of thought in Egypt all along that the best defence of that region against Turkish invasion was by undertaking operations on the Syrian or Palestine coast, based on the Gulf of Iskanderun for preference, but possibly based on Beirut or Haifa. As the situation in the Near East grew rapidly worse during September, the War Council began to dream of diversions in new directions, quite apart from the Gallipoli Peninsula and Salonika, and some of them pitched upon the shores of the Gulf of Iskanderun, the strategical importance of which was unquestionable. A force landed in that quarter would give the enemy something to think about, would afford excellent protection to Egypt, and would indirectly assist our troops, which had been gradually penetrating along the Tigris right up into Mesopotamia.

On this project the General Staff was called upon to report, as already mentioned in Chapter IV, and as stated above, and the General Staff rejected the project without hesitation. This was a very different scheme from that which had been regarded with approval in the winter of 1914-15. Then the enemy resources in these environs had been insignificant, the Turkish communications leading thither had still been interrupted by the Taurus Mountains, and there had been no U-boats in the Mediterranean. Now the enemy was fully prepared in this quarter and would be on the look-out for our troops, the tunnels through the Taurus had been completed, and warships and transports could not possibly have lain moored in the roadstead of Alexandretta for fear of submarines. The landing would have had to take place in the inner portion of the Gulf of Iskanderun, Ayas Bay, where there were no facilities, where the surroundings were unhealthy, and where it would be particularly easy for the Turks to put up a stolid resistance. Our view was that for any operation of this kind to be initiated with reasonable safety, a very large body of troops would be necessary, that as far as Egypt was concerned the Nile Delta could be rendered absolutely secure with a much smaller expenditure of force, and that the inevitable result of embarking on a campaign in this new region would be to withdraw yet more of the Entente fighting resources from the main theatre of war in France. It would have been a side-show for which very little could be said and the objections to which seemed to us manifest and overwhelming. The War Council took our advice and dropped the scheme, although Lord Kitchener, who was out in the Aegean, favoured it. Any anxiety that prevailed as to Egypt settled itself shortly afterwards owing to the Gallipoli troops, so skilfully withdrawn from Anzac, Suvla and Helles, all assembling in the Nile Delta, where they were refitted and obtained some rest after their terribly arduous campaign in the Thracian Chersonese. This practically synchronized with the time of my leaving the War Office for the time being and proceeding to Russia.

As will be mentioned in Chapter XIV., one heard more about Alexandretta while out in that country. I, moreover, became indirectly concerned in that same old question again at a considerably later date. For, early in October 1917, the War Cabinet hit upon a great notion. On the close of the Flanders operations a portion of Sir D. Haig's forces were to be switched thither to succour Generals Allenby and Marshall in their respective campaigns, and were to be switched back again so as to be on hand for the opening of active work on the Western Front at the beginning of March 1918—a three months' excursion. This scheme seems to have been evolved quite au grand serieux and not as a joke. At all events, a conference (which I was called in to attend as knowing more about the Dardanelles business from the War Office end than anybody else) assembled in the Chief of the Imperial General Staff's room one Sunday morning—the First Sea Lord and the Deputy First Sea Lord with subordinates, together with General Horne who happened to be over on leave from his First Army, and prominent members of the General Staff—and we gravely debated the idiotic project.

Nobody but a lunatic would, after Gallipoli experiences, undertake serious land operations in the Alexandretta region with less than six divisions. To ship six divisions absorbs a million tons. There were United States troops at this time unable to cross the Atlantic for want of tonnage, and, allowing for disembarkation difficulties on the Syrian coast, two soldiers or animals or vehicles could be transported from America to French or English ports for every one soldier or animal or vehicle that could be shifted from Marseilles or Toulon to the War Cabinet's fresh theatre of operations, given the same amount of shipping. Our Italian allies were in sore straits over coal for munitions and transportation purposes, simply because sufficient tonnage could not be placed at their disposal. Our own food supplies were causing anxiety, and the maintenance of the forces at Salonika afforded constant proof of the insecurity of the Mediterranean as a sea route. But fatuous diversion of shipping represented quite a minor objection to this opera-bouffe proposal. For, allowing for railing troops from the Western Front to the Cote Azure and embarking them, and for the inevitable delays in landing a force of all arms on a beach with improvised piers, the troops at the head of the hunt would already have to be re-embarking in Ayas Bay by the time that those at the tail of the hunt came to be emptied out on the shores of the Gulf of Iskanderun; otherwise the wanderers would miss the venue on the Western Front.

Had this been suggested by a brand-new Ministry—a Labour Cabinet, say, reviewing the military situation at its very first meeting—nobody could reasonably have complained. People quite new to the game naturally enough overlook practical questions connected with moving troops by land and sea, and do not realize that those questions govern the whole business. Any third-form boy, given a map of Turkey-in-Asia and told of campaigns in Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and of the bulk of enemy resources being found about Constantinople and in Anatolia, who did not instantly perceive how nice it would be to dump an army down at Alexandretta, would, it is earnestly to be hoped, be sent up to have his dormant intelligence awakened by outward applications according to plan. Quite knowledgeable and well-educated people call this sort of thing "strategy," and so in a sense it is—it is strategy in the same sense as the multiplication table is mathematics. If you don't know that two added to two makes four, and divided by two makes one, the integral calculus and functional equations will defeat you; if it has never occurred to you that by throwing your army, or part of it, across the route that your opponent gets his food and his ammunition and his reinforcements by you will cause him inconvenience, then your name is not likely to be handed down to posterity with those of the Great Captains. But the War Cabinet of October 1917 contained personages of light and leading who had been immersed up to the neck in the conduct of hostilities ever since early in 1915.

The Royal Navy could always be trusted to play the game on these occasions. When you cannot get your own way in the army, you beslaver the local martial Esculapius with soft words and prevail upon him to back you up. "Oh, if the medical authorities pronounce it necessary," thereupon declare the Solons up top who have been sticking their toes in, "it's of course got to be done." Similarly, when the amateur strategist gets out of hand, you appeal to the sailors to save the situation. "Just look at what these owls are after now," you say; "they'll upset the coach before they've done with it. You won't be able to do your share in the business, and we——" "Not do our share in the business? Why not? Of course we——" "Yes, yes, I know that; but you really must help us. One of those unintelligible masterpieces of yours all about prostitution of sea-power, and periscopes and that sort of poppy-cock with which you always know how to bluff the lubbers." "Well, we'll see what we can do"—and the extinguisher is dexterously and effectually applied. Co-operation between the two great fighting services is the master-key opening every impeditive doorway on the path to victory.

The operations which brought about the occupation of Palestine and Syria constituted a side-show on a very important scale indeed, and they at one period swallowed up contingents of British troops that were somewhat badly needed on the Western Front, just as the Salonika business did. Troops of that character, troops fit to throw against the Hindenburg Line, however, represented quite an insignificant proportion of the forces with which General Allenby achieved his startling triumphs in the year 1918. The urgent need of increasing our strength in France and Flanders during the winter of 1917-18 was fully realized by the General Staff at the War Office, and efforts were made to induce the War Cabinet to consent to withdraw some of the British troops from Palestine. But nothing was done in the matter until after the successful German offensive of March, when the enemy almost drove a wedge through the Allies' front near Amiens. After that the bulk of General Allenby's British infantry were taken from him and rushed off to France, native troops from India which had been created by Sir C. Monro since he had taken up the chief command there in 1916, together with some veteran Indian companies from Mesopotamia, being sent in their place. The brilliant offensive which carried our flag to Damascus and on to Aleppo after utterly defeating the Turks was executed with a soldiery of whom the greater part could be spared from the decisive theatre. The conquering army was composed almost entirely of mounted men for whom there was little scope in France, or of Indian troops. Even had the results been infinitely less satisfactory to the Entente in themselves than they actually were, a side-show run on such lines was a perfectly legitimate undertaking.

The same principle to some extent holds good in respect to the conquest of Mesopotamia by Sir S. Maude and Sir W. Marshall. The troops which won such striking successes in that theatre of war included a considerable proportion of units which would not have been employed on the Western Front in any case. The army was to a large extent a native Indian one, and latterly it included its quota of the freshly organized units which General Monro had created. The fact remains, however, that from April 1916 (when Kut fell) until the end of the war, a considerable force of British white troops was continuously locked up in this remote region, engaged upon what can hardly be called a necessary side-show.

In connection with the remarkably successful efforts made by the Commander-in-Chief in India to expand the local forces during the last two years of the conflict, there is a matter which may be mentioned here. That the victorious campaigns in Palestine and in Mesopotamia in 1917 and 1918 were in no small degree attributable, indirectly, to what General Monro had accomplished by energy and administrative capacity, is well known to all who were behind the scenes, and has been cordially acknowledged by Lord Allenby and Sir W. Marshall. Especially was this the case in Palestine in 1918, when brand-new native Indian regiments took the place of British troops belatedly summoned to the Western Front after our line had been broken at St. Quentin. Nevertheless, a Downing Street intrigue was set on foot about the end of April 1918 to substitute Sir W. Robertson for the commander of the forces in India who had accomplished so much since taking over charge.

Not that there was any desire to remove Sir C. Monro. The object of the shuffle was simply to get Sir W. Robertson out of the country, in view of the manner in which his warnings in connection with strengthening our forces in France had been disregarded and of his having proved to be right. Sir William would no doubt have made an excellent Commander-in-Chief in India; but if ever there was an example of ill-contrived swapping of horses while crossing a stream, this precious plot would have provided the example had it been carried into execution. There would have been a three months' interregnum while the new chief was on his way out and was picking up the strings after getting out—this in the middle of the final year of the war! The best-laid plans of politicians, however, gang aft a-gley. Sir C. Monro had stipulated, when reluctantly agreeing to give up command of his army on the Western Front in the autumn of 1916 and to proceed to Bombay, that this Indian appointment was to be a permanent one, and not a temporary one such as all other appointments came to be during the war. He did not feel disposed to fall in with the Downing Street project when this was broached. Is it to be wondered at that military men regard some of the personnel that is found in Government circles with profound suspicion?



CHAPTER X

THE MUNITIONS QUESTION

Mr. Asquith's Newcastle speech — The mischief that it did — The time that must elapse before any great expansion in output of munitions can begin to materialize — The situation analogous to that of a building — The Ministry of Munitions took, and was given, the credit for the expansion in output for the year subsequent to its creation, which was in reality the work of the War Office — The Northcliffe Press stunt about shell shortage — Its misleading character — Sir H. Dalziel's attack upon General von Donop in the House — Mr. Lloyd George's reply — A discreditable episode — Misapprehension on the subject of the army's preparedness for war in respect to material — Misunderstanding as to the machine-gun position — Lord French's attack upon the War Office with regard to munitions — His responsibility for the lack of heavy artillery — The matter taken up at the War Office before he ever raised it from G.H.Q. — His responsibility for the absence of high-explosive shell for our field artillery — A misconception, as to the role of the General Staff — The serious difficulty that arose with regard to this ammunition owing to prematures — The misstatements in "1914" as to the amount of artillery ammunition which was sent across France to the Dardanelles — Exaggerated estimates by factories as to what they would be able to turn out — Their estimates discounted as a result of later experiences — The Munitions Ministry not confined to its proper job — The incident of 400 Tanks — Conclusion.

Who reads the platform addresses of political personages, even the most eminent and the most plausible? Some people evidently do, or such utterances would not fill the columns of our newspapers. If one had ever felt tempted to peruse the reports of these harangues in the piping times of peace, one assuredly had neither the inclination nor yet the leisure to indulge in such practices during the early days of the Great War. To skim off the cream of the morning's news while at breakfast was about as much as a War Office mandarin could manage in the way of reading the daily papers during that super-strenuous time. One morning, however—it must have been the morning of the 22nd of April 1915—I met an assistant with a journal in his hand, as I was making my way along the corridor to my room in the War Office. "Seen this what Squiff says about the shell, general?" he asked, handing me the paper with his finger on the passage in the Prime Minister's Newcastle speech, denying that there was an ammunition shortage.

The report of that discourse took one flat aback. For weeks past letters from G.H.Q., as also the fervent representations made by visitors over on duty or on leave from the front, had been harping upon this question. Lord Kitchener had informed the House of Lords on the 15th day of March that the supply of war material was "causing him considerable anxiety." There was not the slightest doubt, even allowing for the tendency of men exposed to nerve-racking experiences or placed in positions of anxious responsibility to find fault, that our army in France and Flanders was at a terrible disadvantage as compared to that opposed to it in the matter of artillery ammunition. The state of affairs was perfectly well known, not merely to the personnel of batteries constantly restricted in respect to expenditure, but also to the infantry and to other branches of the service deprived of adequate gun support. Into the controversies and recriminations which have taken place over the subject of how this extraordinary statement came to be made at Newcastle, it is not proposed to enter here. There is at all events no controversy as to whether the statement was true or not, in substance and in fact. It is common knowledge now, and it was indeed fairly common knowledge at the time, that the statement was in the highest degree misleading. It did a great deal of mischief amongst the troops in the war zone, and it caused serious injury to those who were responsible for the provision of munitions in this country.

A pronouncement of that kind, published as it was in all the newspapers, was bound to arouse comment not merely at home, but also amongst officers and men confronting the enemy between Dixmude and the La Bassee Canal. These latter, who were only too well aware of the realities of the case, resented such a misstatement of facts, and they were also inclined to jump to the conclusion, not altogether unnaturally, that the serious ammunition shortage, the crying need for additional heavy ordnance, and so forth, were being deliberately ignored by those responsible for supply at home. The inferiority of our side in the field in respect to certain forms of munitions as compared to the enemy, came to be attributed to indifference and to mismanagement on the part of the Master-General of the Ordnance's department and of Lord Kitchener. Even the majority of artillery officers had not the slightest conception of what an expansion of output of munitions on a huge scale involved. Still less were staff officers in general and officers of other branches of the service in a position to interpret the situation correctly. They did not realize that before you can bring about any substantial increase of production in respect to shell, or fuses, or rifles, or machine-guns, or howitzers, you have to provide the machinery with which the particular form of war material is to be manufactured, and that you probably have to fashion some extensive structure to house that machinery in. It takes months before any tangible result can be obtained, the number of months to elapse varying according to the nature of the goods.

Dwellers in great cities will often note what happens when some ancient building has been demolished by the house-breaker. The site is concealed by an opaque hoarding. For months, even sometimes for years, nothing seems to follow. The passer-by who happens to get an opportunity of peeping in when some gate is opened to let out a cart full of debris, only sees a vast crater at the bottom of which men, like ants, are scurrying about with barrows or are delving in the earth. All the time that the ground is being cleared and that the foundations are being laid, those out in the street know nothing of what is going on, and they wonder why some effort is not made to utilize the vacant space for building purposes. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, scaffolding begins to rear its head. A few weeks later bricklayers and their work begin to show above the hoarding; and from that moment things at last are obviously on the move. The edifice grows from day to day. Within quite a short space of time workmen are already putting on the roof. Then down comes the scaffolding, windows are put in, final touches are given to the interior, and, within what seems to be no time at all from the day when the scaffolding first was seen, the building is ready for occupation. So it is with the manufacture of munitions—experience in the United States in connection with output for us and also in connection with output for Russia, was exactly the same as in the United Kingdom in this respect. An interminable time seems to elapse before the output begins; but once it has fairly started it grows by leaps and bounds.

At the time of the Newcastle oration, and for some months subsequently, the work of expansion on a colossal scale which the Master-General of the Ordnance had undertaken was still, speaking generally, rather on the footing of the building of which the foundations are only beginning to be laid even if the excavations have been completed and the debris has been cleared away. There was as yet comparatively little to show. The results did not begin to make themselves apparent until a date when the Ministry of Munitions had already come into being some time. That Department of State gained the benefit. Its Chief took the credit for work in connection with which it had for all practical purposes no responsibility beyond that of issuing what predecessors had arranged for. The full product of the contracts which the Master-General of the Ordnance had placed, of the development he had given to existing Government establishments, and of the setting up of entirely new ones by him, with Lord Kitchener ever using his driving power and his fertility of resource in support, only materialized in the winter of 1915-16, at a stage when the Ministry of Munitions had been already full six months in existence.

If the army in general failed to understand the position, it is hardly to be wondered at that Parliament and the less well-informed section of the Press should not understand the position, and that the public should have been deceived. Very shortly after the Newcastle speech, and no doubt largely in consequence of it, the Northcliffe Press stunt of May 1915 on the subject of shell shortage was initiated. Up to a certain point that stunt was not only fully justified, but was actually advantageous to the country. It made the nation acquainted with the fact that our troops were suffering severely from insufficiency of munitions. It stirred the community up, and that in itself was an excellent thing. But it succeeded somehow at the same time in conveying the impression that this condition of affairs was due to neglect, and in consequence it misled public opinion and did grave injustice. We must assume that, owing to fundamental ignorance of the problems involved, to a neglect to keep touch with industrial conditions, and to lack of acquaintance with the technicalities of munitions manufacture, these newspapers (which usually contrive to be extremely well informed, thanks to the great financial resources at their back) were totally unaware that a sudden expansion of output on a great scale was an impossibility; to suggest that this aspect of the problem was deliberately suppressed would be highly improper. The Northcliffe Press had also maybe failed to become acquainted with the great increase that had taken place in the forces at the front, as compared to the strength of the original Expeditionary Force which had provided the basis of calculation for munitions in pre-war days, an increase for which there was no counterpart in the armies of our Allies or of our enemies. Or the effect that this must have in accentuating munitions shortage may have been overlooked, obvious as it was. Be that as it may, the country readily accepted the story as it stood, and was in consequence grievously misinformed as to the merits of the question. The real truth has only leaked out since the cessation of hostilities, and it is not generally known now.[6]

[Footnote 6: So late as the 21st of April 1920 The Times included the following passage in a leading article: "Every gunner officer on the Western Front during the winter of 1914-15 knows that there was a grave and calamitous deficiency of shells, and that no satisfactory attempt was made to rectify it until the matter was exposed in The Times." Dragging in the "gunner officer" at the front (who could not possibly tell what steps were being taken to rectify the deficiency) does not alter the fact that this passage amounts to an accusation that no satisfactory attempt was made to rectify the deficiency until after the Northcliffe Press stunt. The Times may have been so ill-informed as to the actual facts in 1915 as to suppose that this was true. The Times cannot have been so ill-informed as to the actual facts in 1920 as to suppose that it was true.]

After the Government had decided to create a Munitions Ministry with Mr. Lloyd George at its head, one of the first incidents that occurred was an unsavoury one. In the course of the discussions in the House of Commons over the Bill setting up this new Department of State, Sir H. Dalziel, a newspaper proprietor and a politician of long standing, delivered on the 1st of July a violent diatribe directed against Sir S. von Donop, the Master-General of the Ordnance. The honourable member no doubt quite honestly believed that the lack of munitions was due to neglect on the part of the War Office since the beginning of the war. It is clear that he was totally unqualified to express an opinion on the subject, and that he was ignorant of the manufacturing aspects of the problem. He had heard stories of mistakes made here and there, such as was inevitable at a time of tremendous stress. He probably had not the slightest conception that the primary cause of the shell shortage was the neglect of the Government of pre-war days (which had recognized his party services by conferring on him the dignity of a Privy-Councillorship) to give support to the establishments for manufacturing armaments that existed in the country. It is not with his performance on this occasion that one feels a disposition to quarrel, but with that of the newly created Minister of Munitions.

Mr. Lloyd George could not plead ignorance of the facts. He had been installed for a month or so. He must have known that it had been totally impossible to produce, within ten months of the outbreak of the war, the munitions that were required for an army in the field three or four times greater than had ever been thought of prior to mobilization.[7] He had actually given some pertinent information with regard to manufacturing difficulties when he was introducing the bill, which clearly demonstrated that he had grasped the general principles governing the problem of munitions output. But what was his attitude? Instead of following the honourable and chivalrous course, the course sanctioned by long-established precedent and practice on the part of Ministers of the Crown, of protecting, or trying to protect, the public servant who had been assailed, he contented himself with pointing out that the public servant ought to be given an opportunity of stating his side of the question—which was manifestly impossible in time of war—and that the onslaught was unexpected! There is not a man in the United Kingdom better able to protect himself, or anybody else, in speech and in argument in face of sudden attack than Mr. Lloyd George. Had he been willing to do so he could have disposed of Sir H. Dalziel, who in reality had no case, with the utmost ease.

[Footnote 7: On the 1st July we had 23 divisions (exclusive of Indian divisions) in the field, and one on the water. The "Expeditionary Force" consisted of six divisions, but a vague sort of organization for a seventh had also existed on paper.]

But that line apparently did not suit the book of the Minister of Munitions. He must have been well aware that a great improvement in output was already beginning to take place, and that, thanks entirely to the labours of the Ordnance Department of the War Office and of Lord Kitchener, the output would within a few months reach huge figures. If it were represented to the House, and through the House to the country, that this question of munitions had been grossly neglected up to the time that he took charge, and if it became apparent subsequently that from the hour of his becoming Munitions Minister a rapid improvement set in, then the thanks of the nation would go out to him and he would be canonized. This is the only explanation that I can find for a most discreditable incident. For he made no attempt to meet the attack, and he contrived to convey the impression by his remarks that the attack was fully justified. I have, moreover, good reason for believing that on that day there was present on the Treasury bench a representative of the War Office, not a Cabinet Minister, who was ready and willing to defend the Master-General of the Ordnance and who was acquainted with the facts, but that the Minister of Munitions, being in charge of the House, refused to sanction his speaking. Happily such occurrences are rare in the public life of this country.

That reply of Mr. Lloyd George's on the 1st of July 1915—anybody can look it up in Hansard—left an uncommonly nasty taste in the mouth. The taste was made none the less nasty by his unblushing assumption on later occasions of the credit for the improvement in munitions output that took place from the summer of 1915 onwards. In my own case, although I was nowise concerned with munitions output then, neither pleasant association with Mr. Lloyd George at later dates in connection with various war problems, nor yet the admiration for the grit and courage displayed by him during the last three years of the great contest which is felt by us all, could wholly remove that nasty taste.

Much misapprehension—a misapprehension fostered by reckless and ignorant assertions made on the subject in Parliament and in the Press—exists in regard to the state of preparedness of our army for war in the matter of armament. Rightly or wrongly—most people probably now think wrongly—H.M. Government of pre-war days merely contemplated placing in the field for offensive purposes a force of six, or at the outside, seven divisions, with their complement of mounted troops. Leaving the Germans out of consideration, our Expeditionary Force of six divisions was upon the whole as well equipped in respect to armament (apart from ammunition reserves) as any one of the armies that were placed in the field in August 1914. It only failed in respect to two items, heavy ordnance and high-explosive shell for the field-guns, and in respect to field-howitzers and heavy field-guns (the 60-pounders) it was better off than any, including the German forces.

It will perhaps be urged that we were deplorably badly-off for machine-guns, and so in a sense we were. But what were the facts? The Expeditionary Force was better fitted out with this class of weapon than any one of the embattled armies at the outset of the war, with the exception of the German. Ex-Kaiser William's hosts enjoyed a tremendous advantage in respect to machine-guns, but they enjoyed that advantage to an even greater extent over the French and Russian legions than over ours. No action on the part of the German Great General Staff before the conflict reflects greater credit upon their prescience, than does their recognition in the time of peace of the great part that the mitrailleuse was capable of playing in contemporary warfare. The quantities of these weapons with which our principal antagonist took the field was a complete surprise to all; these were far in excess of the "establishment" that had been acknowledged and which was the same as our own. As a matter of fact we were better off for them, relatively, than the French, or Austro-Hungarians, or Russians. To say that the question of machine-guns had been neglected by us before the war either from the point of view of tactics or of supply, is almost as unfair as it would be to allege that the question of Tanks had been neglected by the Germans before the Battle of the Somme. In the course of the debate in the House over the Munitions Bill in the early summer of 1915, Sir F. Cawley stated that we were short of machine-guns at the beginning of the war, and that none had been provided; the first charge was made under a misapprehension, and the second charge was contrary to the fact because a number of entirely new units had been fitted out with the weapons. Mr. Lloyd George's statement, made a week before, that it takes eight or nine months to turn out a machine-gun from the time that the requisite new machinery is ordered, was ignored.

This brings us to the question of heavy ordnance and of high-explosive ammunition for field-guns, and in this connection it is necessary to refer to the violent attacks made upon the War Office in respect to the supply of munitions, which find place in Lord French's "1914." The Field-Marshal has not minced matters in his references to this subject. He says of Mr. Lloyd George's work that it "was done in the face of a dead weight of senseless but powerful opposition, all of which he had to undermine and overcome." He speaks of the "apathy of a Government which had brought the Empire to the brink of disaster," although his attitude towards the head of that Government hardly betrays this. He devotes his last chapter to "making known some of the efforts" that he "made to awaken both the Government and the public from the apathy which meant certain defeat." His book appeared in the summer of 1919, three and a half years after he had returned from France, three and a half years which had given him ample time to examine at home into the justice of views which he had formed during critical months when confronting the enemy. His attitude relieves one of many scruples that might have otherwise been entertained when discussing the statement which he has made.

"1914," possibly unintentionally, leaves it to be inferred in respect to heavy howitzers and similar ordnance, that the question of supplying artillery of that type was first raised by Lord French himself during the Battle of the Aisne. For the absence of any such pieces from the Expeditionary Force when it started, no one, in my opinion, was more responsible than the Field-Marshal. Plenty of gunner officers were advocates of the employment of such ordnance in the field, although none probably fully realized the importance of the matter; but what evidence is there of encouragement from the Inspector-General of the Forces of 1907-12 and C.I.G.S. of 1912-14, who had been controlling the manoevres of the regular army for the half-dozen years preceding August 1914? The question was taken up within the War Office three or four weeks before the commencement of the Battle of the Aisne—as soon, in fact, as the effect of the German heavy howitzers against Liege and Namur came to be realized. I spoke to Sir C. Douglas on the subject myself—I believe before the retreat from Mons began. A Committee was set up, to which I contributed a member from amongst the gunners in my branch. The immediate construction of a very large—although not nearly large enough—number of 8-inch, 9.2-inch and 12-inch howitzers was recommended by this body. Lord Kitchener approved its recommendations on the spot, and the Master-General of the Ordnance started work. All this, I believe, took place before Sir J. French raised the question at all. But past neglect could not be overcome at a moment's notice. Experiments had to be carried out, and designs had to be approved. To construct a big howitzer with its mounting takes time even after you have the machinery available, and in 1914 the machinery had to be got together in the first instance. How the ex-First Member of the Army Council comes to be unaware of the extent to which the factor of time enters into the construction of armament, I do not pretend to understand.

To a retired officer of artillery who had kept himself acquainted with military progress, it did seem strange that after the Balkan War of 1912-13, which had clearly demonstrated the value of high-explosive ammunition with field-guns, the War Office should continue to depend entirely upon shrapnel for our 18-pounders, instead of following the example of all other European countries that spent any considerable sums on their armies. No very intimate acquaintance with technical details was needed to realize that there were difficulties in the way, and that high-explosive is awkward stuff to deal with—a gun of my own 5-inch battery in South Africa was, shortly after I had left the unit to take up other work, blown to pieces by a lyddite shell detonating in the bore, with dire results to the detachment. To secure detonation is more difficult in a small, than in a big shell; but other countries had managed to solve the problem in the case of their field-guns somehow.

On joining at the War Office on mobilization, and before any fighting had taken place, I asked about the matter, but was not wholly convinced that there was adequate excuse for our taking the field without what our antagonists and our Allies alike regarded as a requisite. Ever since I joined the Army in 1878—and before—there had been a vein of conservatism running through the upper ranks of the Royal Artillery. (When my battery proceeded from India to Natal to take part in the first Boer War in 1881, we actually had to change our Armstrong breech-loading field-guns for muzzle-loaders on the way, because breech-loaders had been abandoned at home and there was no ammunition for them.) Of late years a progressive school had come into being—technically described as "Young Turks"—who had tried hard to secure the introduction of four-gun batteries and other up-to-date reforms, but without having it all their own way by any means. Whether the Young Turks favoured high-explosive or not, I do not know; but its absence somehow did rather smack of the reactionary, and, with the exception of one of its members, the personnel of the Expeditionary Force appeared to have some grounds for complaint at its field-batteries having none of this form of ammunition. The one exception was, in my opinion, its commander-in-chief.

Lord French's account of his achievements in this matter is artless to a degree. He informs his readers that he was always an advocate for the supply of high-explosive shell to our horse and field artillery, but that he got very little support; that such support as he got was lukewarm in the extreme, and, finally, we are told that the "Ordnance Board was not in favour of it." Here we have the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and First Military Member of the Army Council advocating the adoption in our army of what practically all other armies had already adopted or were adopting, the adoption of a form of munitions the value of which had been conclusively demonstrated in encounters of which the General Staff must have had full cognizance, and he is turned down by the "Ordnance Board"! If this represents the Field-Marshal's conception of the position and the duties of the General Staff and its head, then it is not surprising that, under another chief, Tanks were dismissed with ignominy by a technical branch of the War Office in January 1915 without the General Staff ever having been consulted. The pre-war C.I.G.S. was in a dominating position amongst the Military Members of the Army Council in virtue of his high rank and his distinguished antecedents. He was very much more than a primus inter pares. He was a field-marshal while the Master-General of the Ordnance was a colonel with temporary rank of major-general. Surely, if he had pressed this matter before the Army Council, he would have received support? I feel equally sure that, supposing the Army Council had refused to listen to his urgings, he would have received satisfaction on representing the matter to the Committee of Imperial Defence.

As a matter of fact, it was only after more than one representation made by General von Donop that G.H.Q. agreed to take some high-explosive ammunition, and so it was introduced—in small quantities—very soon after fighting began, and when the urgent need of it had become apparent. But the output was necessarily very restricted for a long time, and no amount of talk and of bounce, such as the Minister of Munitions was wont to indulge in from the summer of 1915 onwards for several months, would have increased it. Here was a case of an entirely new article, for the provision of which no steps had been taken before the war. There happened to be special technical difficulties in the way of producing the article, e.g. the hardness of the steel necessary for this type of shell, and devising a safe and effective fuse. There is, moreover, one matter in connection with this question of high-explosive for our 18-pounders which should be mentioned, but to which no reference finds a place in "1914."

Some months after this ammunition first came to be used in the field it began to give serious trouble. Something was wrong. The shell took to bursting in the bore of the gun and to bulging, or wholly destroying, the piece, although these disasters fortunately did not generally involve loss of life. Between August and October 1915, no less than sixty-four of our 18-pounders were thus rendered unserviceable—very nearly double the number lost during the retreat from Mons, and considerably more than the complement of one of our divisions. We could not comfortably afford this drain upon our supply of field-guns at a time when New Army divisions were still in some cases gun-less, and when the Territorial division were still armed with the virtually obsolete 15-pounder. Accidents of this character, moreover, have a bad effect upon the personnel of batteries, for the soldier does not like his weapon, be it a rifle, or a hand-grenade, or a sabre that crumples up, to play tricks on him. The difficulty was not got over until elaborate experiments, immediately set on foot by the War Office (which still dealt with design and investigation, although actual manufacture was by this time in the hands of the Ministry of Munitions), had been carried out. But before the end of the year it had been established that the failures were due to faults in manufacture, and from that time forward these contretemps became extremely rare in the case of the 18-pounder. The question caused acute anxiety at G.H.Q. and in the War Office for some weeks; the French had had a very similar experience, but on an even worse scale. The difficulty arose just after the Ministry of Munitions became responsible for manufacture, and I do not suggest that the destruction of the guns was the fault of that department, for the ammunition used in the field during that period and for many months later was ammunition ordered by the Master-General of the Ordnance. But similar trouble arose later in the case of the field howitzer; there were no less than 25 of these damaged between April and June 1916, nearly a year after the Munitions Ministry had been set up.

It should be mentioned that some other statements regarding munitions which appear in "1914" are inaccurate. In discussing Lord Kitchener's memorandum written at the beginning of January 1915, which intimated that H.M. Government vetoed the Belgian coast project, Lord French declares that two or three months later, viz. in March and April, "large train-loads of ammunition—heavy, medium, and light—passed by the rear of the army in France en route for Marseilles for shipment to the Dardanelles." The Admiralty may possibly have sent some ammunition by that route at that time, but it is extremely unlikely. As for munitions for Sir I. Hamilton's troops, the Dardanelles force did not land till the end of April, and its war material was sent by long sea from the United Kingdom; very little would have been gained, even in time, by adopting the route across France. No great quantities of ammunition were sent from the United Kingdom across country at any juncture to the Gallipoli Peninsula, but G.H.Q. in France was once called upon to sacrifice some of its reserve, and Lord French makes especial reference to this incident.

He says that on the 9th of May—the date on which he launched his political intrigue—he was directed by the Secretary of State for War to despatch 20 per cent of his reserve supply of ammunition to the Dardanelles. Now, what are the facts? Sir I. Hamilton had urgently demanded ammunition for a contemplated offensive. A vessel that was loading up at Marseilles would reach the Aegean in time. To pass the consignment through from the United Kingdom (where a large supply had just come to hand from America) would mean missing the ship. G.H.Q. were therefore instructed to forward 20,000 field-gun rounds and 2000 field-howitzer rounds to the Mediterranean port, and were at the same time assured that the rounds would straightway, over and above the normal nightly allowance sent across the Channel, be made good from home. Sent off by G.H.Q. under protest, the field-gun rounds were replaced within twenty-four hours and the others within four days, but of the engagement entered into, and kept, by the War Office, "1914" says not one word. Lord French was evidently completely misinformed on this matter.

It should be added that the amount of heavy artillery included in the Dardanelles Expeditionary Force was negligible, and that the amount of medium artillery was relatively very small. Large train-loads of ammunition for such pieces were never required, nor sent. Inaccurate statements of this kind tend to discredit much of Lord French's severe criticism of Lord Kitchener and the department of the Master-General of the Ordnance, for which there is small justification in any case.

One point made in the "Ammunition" chapter in "1914" deserves a word of comment. Lord French mentions that the supply of shell received at the front in May proved to be less than half of the War Office estimate. That kind of thing went on after supply had been transferred from the War Office to the Ministry of Munitions. I had something to say to munitions at a subsequent period of the war, as will be touched upon later, and used to see the returns and estimates. The Munitions Ministry was invariably behind its estimates (although seldom, if ever, to the extent of over 50 per cent) right up to the end. There you have our old friend, the Man of Business, with his intolerable swank. Some old-established private factories, as well as some new factories set up during the war, were in the habit of promising more than they could possibly perform. Certain of them were, indeed, ready to promise almost anything. Their behaviour, I happen to know, caused some of our Allies who placed contracts with them and were let in, extreme annoyance. The names of one or two of them possibly stink in the nostrils of certain foreign countries to this day, although that sort of thing may also be common abroad. Those in authority came to realize in the later stages of the war how little reliance could be placed on promises, and they became sceptical. The Ministry of Munitions, one can well imagine, discounted the estimates that they got from their manufacturing establishments. The War Office certainly discounted the estimates that it got from the Ministry of Munitions. Commanders-in-chief in the field consequently no longer miscalculated what they might expect, to the same extent as Sir J. French did in May 1915.

I only became directly associated with armament questions in the summer of 1916, and then came for the first time into contact with the Ministry of Munitions. Such questions are matters of opinion, but it always seemed to me that this Department of State would have done better had it stuck to its proper job—that of providing what the Army and the Air Service required. The capture of design and inspection by the Ministry may have been unavoidable, seeing that this new organization was improvised actually during the course of a great war and under conditions of emergency; but the principle is radically wrong. It is for the department which wants a thing to say what it wants and to see that it gets it. As a matter of fact, the Munitions Ministry occasionally went even farther, and actually allocated goods required by the Army to other purposes. When a well-known and popular politician, after spending some three years or so at the front with credit to himself, took up a dignified appointment in Armament Buildings, the first thing that he did was to promise a trifle of 400 tanks to the French without any reference to the military authorities at all. Still, who would blame him? His action, when all is said and done, was merely typical of that "every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost" attitude assumed by latter-day neoteric Government institutions. But even the most phlegmatic member of the community will feel upset when the trousers which he has ordered are consigned by his tailor to somebody else, and on this occasion the War Office did gird up its loins and remonstrate in forcible terms.

With regard to the War Office and munitions, it only remains to be said again in conclusion that the country was never told the truth about this subject until some months after the armistice, when the nation had ceased to care. Never was it told till then, nor were the forces which had been fighting in the field told, that the great increase in the output of guns, howitzers, machine-guns, and ammunition, which took place from the autumn of 1915 onwards up to just before the Battle of the Somme, was the achievement, not of the Ministry of Munitions but of the War Office. The Munitions Ministry in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury—and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a whole into undeserved disrepute amongst those who know the facts.