Part 29 (1/2)
The halting, hesitating, vacillating ”wait-and-see” policy which seems to be revealed in such startling vividness by Mr. Seton-Watson causes a deep thinker to ponder further. Is it not possible that Sir Edward Grey, like the late Lord Kitchener, may not have been his own master? That he in turn may have been held down and dictated to by the one man whose own valuation of his personal services so greatly exceeded the worth put upon them by the nation at large?
It is easy to state in the House of Commons, ”I accept entire responsibility,” as Mr. Asquith did when the Gallipoli disaster was questioned, but he surely ought then to have been the questioner! _His statement_, which the members of the House were bound down by national loyalty not to attack as they would have liked to have done, _proved_ that the Prime Minister had been _meddling with military matters_ which should have been left absolutely and entirely to military experts. Hence it was that the nation learnt that the halting, hesitating, vacillating ”wait-and-see” policy had paralysed not only the whole Gallipoli campaign, but particularly the Suvla Bay expedition, which if properly exploited would undoubtedly have given our arms one of the greatest victories of the war.[18]
FOOTNOTES:
[15] As evidence in support of this, see the papers seized from von Papen at Falmouth, December, 1915; the papers seized at Salonika, January, 1916; the reports from Was.h.i.+ngton, U.S.A., 1915-6; and the numerous paragraphs in the Press to date since November, 1914.
[16] Cotton was not made absolute contraband until 381 days after the war had broken out, August 20th, 1915. Sir Edward Grey, speaking in the House of Commons on January 7th, 1915, said: ”His Majesty's Government have never put cotton on the list of contraband; they have throughout the war kept it on the free list; and on every occasion when questioned on the point they have stated their intention of adhering to this practice.”
[17] ”Romany Rye,” chapter 39.
[18] It has been said by those who were there that the English troops were kept back and permitted to play about on the beach bathing and building camp, etc., for three days after the first landing, thus giving the Turks more than sufficient time to bring up opposing forces and successfully dig themselves in where required, whereas it was but nine miles across the peninsula, which could presumably have been straddled in a few hours with little, if any, opposition at the time of landing.
Was this the suppressed episode ”within a few hours of the greatest victory of the war,” which the Right Hon. Winston Churchill referred to in his memorable speech, and which has been the subject of so much surmise and comment?
CHAPTER XX
THE SHAM BLOCKADE
SECRET SERVICE PROTEST AGAINST THE OPEN DOOR TO GERMANY--ACTIVITY OF OUR NAVAL ARM NULLIFIED--LORD NORTHCLIFFE'S PATRIOTISM--BLOCKADE BUNk.u.m--POSITION OF DENMARK--HUGE CONSIGNMENTS FOR GERMANY--THE DECLARATION FIASCO--BRITISH MINISTERS' GULLIBILITY IN COPENHAGEN--GERMAN BANK GUARANTEEING THE BRITISH AGAINST GOODS GOING TO GERMANY--BRITISH NAVY PARALYSED BY DIPLOMATIC AND POLITICAL FOLLY--STATISTICS EXTRAORDINARY--FLOUTING THE DECLARATION OF LONDON--SIR EDWARD GREY'S DILATORINESS AND PUERILE APOLOGIA--LORD HALDANE PUSHED OUT--LORD FISHER'S EFFICIENCY UNRECOGNISED--LORD DEVONPORT'S AMAZING FIGURES ON GERMAN IMPORTS--FURTHER STARTLING STATISTICS--BRITISH THE GREATEST MUDDLERS ON EARTH--n.o.bLE SERVICE BY AUSTRALIAN PREMIER, W. H.
HUGHES--HOLLOW SHAM OF THE DANISH AGREEMENT AND THE NETHERLANDS OVERSEAS TRUST--BLOCKADE MINISTER, LORD ROBERT CECIL, AND HIS FEEBLE FUTILE EFFORTS--MORE STATISTICS--THE TRIUMVIRATE--ASQUITH THE UNREADY, SIR EDWARD GREY THE IRRESOLUTE, AND LORD HALDANE THE FRIEND OF THE KAISER--DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, THE SAVIOUR OF THE SITUATION--HOW HE PROVED HIMSELF A MAN--A NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITY.
During the first year of the war Secret Service agents busied themselves much concerning the vast stream of goods, necessities and munitions in the raw state which poured into Germany direct and through neutral countries like the waters of a rising flood over weirs on the Thames.
Night and day these ever-restless beings flitted as shadows along the secretly or openly favoured trade routes. Persistently and energetically they followed up clues and signs of the trails of enemy traders, from ports of entry to original sources. Week by week, almost day by day, they flashed home news of then present and future consignments of such importance and value to the enemy that he paid exorbitant prices and ridiculous commissions to help rush them over his frontiers. Seemingly all was in vain. These efforts were but wasted. The work was apparently unappreciated and unresponsively received. England, to all intents and purposes, was slumbering too soundly to be awakened. Meanwhile, during every hour of the twenty-four, unending processions of trade s.h.i.+ps of every shape, make and rig sneaked along the coasts of neutral waters, as near to land as safety permitted, on their way to the receiving ports of Germany.
Observers, stationed in lighthouses or on promontories, who watched this abnormal freighting activity, could not but help noticing that, whenever smoke showed itself upon the horizon seawards, consternation at once became manifest on the decks of these cargo carriers. They would squeeze dangerously insh.o.r.e, lay to, or drop anchors, bank up their fires and damp down every curl of smoke which it was possible to suppress; in short, they adopted every conceivable ruse to conceal their presence and ident.i.ty.
If this trade was honest and legitimate, why should these tactics be followed, and these precautions taken? _Res ipsa loquitur._
As the year 1915 progressed and the inertia of the British Government became more and more realised abroad, the captains of freighters grew bolder and bolder, and the confidence of the thousands upon thousands of get-rich-quick-anyhow dealers ash.o.r.e increased and multiplied accordingly. No one, except the Germans themselves, knew or could get to know the actual extent of this enormous volume of their import trade.
The chattels came from so many different countries and were consigned through so many channels that accurate records were rendered impossible; whilst the greater part was s.h.i.+pped in direct.
The English Press, which had been so self-denying and loyal to the Government in spite of the shameful manner in which it had been gagged and bound down, until the Censor's blue-pencilling amounted almost to an entire suppression of news, began to grumble and to hint very broadly that the bombastic utterances of our Ministers regarding the effectiveness of our blockade and the starvation of the Central Powers were exaggerations and not facts. Men who had always put their country before any other consideration began to proclaim that the so-called blockade was a delusion; whilst they quoted figures of imports to neutral countries which were embarra.s.sing to the Government. Something therefore had to be done. The notorious Danish Agreement[19] was accordingly framed in secret (in secret only from the British public), and a very highly-coloured and altogether misleading interpretation of its limitations and effectiveness was hinted at in Parliament. In spite of terrific pressure upon Ministers by members of both Houses, not a clause of this extraordinary doc.u.ment was permitted to be published, although its context was freely circulated or commented upon in the Press of neutral countries and the whole Agreement was printed _in extenso_ on December 12th, 1915, in the _Borsen_, at Copenhagen. What a sham and a farce this whole arrangement turned out to be will be seen later.
It has ever been the proud boast of Englishmen that Britannia rules the waves. Until this war the British Navy had been supreme mistress of the seas, and no loyal person within the Empire whereon the sun never sets has grudged a penny of the very heavy taxation which has been necessary to keep up the efficiency of our Fleet. From the commencement of the war, however, our Fleet was tied up body and soul, shackled in the intricacies of red tape entanglements woven round its keels, guns, and propellers by lawyer politicians who never could leave the management of naval affairs to the Navy, any more than they could leave the management of military affairs to the Army. In theory these pedantic illusionists may be superb, whilst some of them even stated (1915-16) that if they were removed from office during the continuance of the war it would be a calamity. But in practice the British public has seen proved too vividly--and at what a cost!--only an incessant stream of terrible disasters and mishaps; ”milestones” in their policy of makes.h.i.+ft, dawdle and defeat.
The first chapter in this book shows that our party system Government was probably directly responsible for the war itself, or at least for our being precipitated unprepared into it. Without a shadow of a doubt it is solely accountable for the wild and riotously extravagant waste, for our colossal supererogation, and for our excessive losses.
What would have happened to the Mother Country and to her extensive Colonial Possessions had not Lord Northcliffe, through the powerful newspapers he controls, stepped in from time to time and torn off the scales which had been plastered and bandaged upon the eyes of an all-too-confiding British public, and just in the nick of time to save disaster upon disaster too awful to contemplate?
It is not necessary to enumerate the many and vital matters which Lord Northcliffe helped an indignant and a deluded public to consider and discuss, whereby the Government was roused from its torpor and pushed into reluctant activity, but the greatest of all canards which it had attempted to foist upon Europe does very much concern the subject-matter of this volume, hence it must be separately dealt with. It is this so-called blockade, which amongst Teuton traders in Northern neutral countries was looked upon as the best of all ”war jokes”!
It seems to be universally believed that had the British Fleet been given a free hand and its direction left to the discretion of a good, business-like, fighting Sea Lord, the war would have been over within eighteen months from the first declaration. As it has happened, the freedom of action of our Fleet has been so hampered that our enemies have actually been permitted to draw certain food supplies not only from our own Colonies, but from the United Kingdom itself. How can it be argued that this suicidal policy has not helped to drag out the war and add to its terrible and unnecessary wastage of life and wealth, with the aftermath of woe and misery consequent thereon?
For our Ministers to affirm that Germany has been starved by our blockade is as untrue as it is ridiculous. The bunk.u.m which has filled the thousands upon thousands of Press columns in different countries on this subject has been mere chimerical effort, in great part subsidised from indirect pro-German sources of more or less remote origin in accordance with the value of the publication used.
Now for a dissection of the facts concerning the main subject.
Pa.s.sing over innumerable paragraphs in the Press which hinted at much more than they disclosed, attention should be given to an article which appeared in the January (1916) number of the _National Review_ (pp.