Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

  Another prime minister might have resented his home secretary’s active interest in military issues. Asquith didn’t. Indeed, he had good reason to encourage it. Churchill, one of his ablest ministers, was no longer comfortable or suitable in the Home Office, and the Royal Navy needed a forceful hand at the tiller. As first lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna was far too easygoing; he had been unable to overcome the resistance of his first sea lord—the equivalent of the U.S. chief of naval operations—to the formation of a naval war staff. Asquith pondered having them switch jobs. Apart from Churchill, the only other strong candidate for the Admiralty was the secretary for war, Lord Haldane, who had just completed a brilliant reorganization of the army. In September 1911 the prime minister invited both men and their wives to be his guests at Archerfield, his Scottish estate on the East Lothian coast. The Churchills would arrive late, because Winston had to visit Balmoral first. It was customary for each senior minister to spend a few days there with the King each year. Clementine passed those days with her grandmother in Airlie Castle—wives were not received at Balmoral on such occasions—and on September 25 she wrote: “I hope you are happy my sweet Pug and that you are being properly petted, & that you will secure a huge stag. I am very happy here—Granny is become much kinder with age…. She sends her love & is looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday for luncheon which is at 1.30 to the second by Greenwich time. Afterwards we fly away to Archerfield in the new motor.” The automobile, a £610 red Napier, had been delivered to Churchill at Balmoral. He drove over to pick Clementine up, and before they left the castle he told her he was afraid Asquith would pick Haldane. She opened her grandmother’s Bible to the one hundred seventh Psalm. “I know it’s all right about the Admiralty,” she said, and read: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.”143

  She was right. Asquith had already made his decision. Churchill would run the navy. Asquith wrote Haldane: “The main and, in the longer run, the deciding factor with me has been the absolute necessity for keeping the First Lord in the Commons.” Clementine was absent at the great moment. After a round of golf with Asquith, Winston approached Violet, who was just finishing tea, and asked her to join him for a walk. In his face, she wrote, she saw “a radiance like the sun.” Did he want tea? she asked. He shook his head. They had hardly left the house when he blurted out: “I don’t want tea, I don’t want anything—anything in the world. Your father has just offered me the Admiralty.” He looked sea-ward, and in the fading light of evening watched the silhouettes of two battleships steaming slowly out of the Firth of Forth. It was a full moment for him. He said: “Look at the people I’ve had to deal with so far. Judges and convicts! This is a big thing—the biggest thing that has ever come my way—the chance I should have chosen before all others. I shall pour into it everything I’ve got!” Just as Clementine had opened a Bible in Airlie Castle, so, that night at Archerfield, did he. He found himself reading from the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself…. Understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the Lord hath said unto thee.”144

  The next day he and Clementine rode to London in the Napier, and in the morning he and McKenna changed guard. McKenna came over to the Home Office and Churchill introduced him to everyone there; then they crossed to the Admiralty, where Winston met his new board, senior officers, and departmental heads. That afternoon he convened a board meeting. The secretary read the letters patent confirming the new first lord’s appointment. Thereupon Churchill, in the words of the order-in-council, became “responsible to Crown and Parliament for all the business of the Admiralty.” In 1923 he would write: “I was to endeavour to discharge this responsibility for the four most memorable years of my life.”145

  His new office was accompanied by many perquisites, in all of which he reveled. There has always been a certain panache to England’s service ministries, and because the Admiralty is the senior service, the navy, in an old expression, “always travels first class.” Among other things, the first lord decides who launches ships. Seven weeks after his appointment Clementine christened the battleship Centurion at Devonport, and shortly thereafter Jennie baptized its sister ship, the Benbow. The first lord had at his disposal a luxurious steam yacht, the Enchantress. In Churchill’s words, this vessel became “largely my office, almost my home.” His time aboard was mostly work time; he visited every important ship and every dockyard, shipyard, and naval establishment in the British Isles and the Mediterranean. But for Clementine it was mostly fun. There was one memorable cruise up the coast of Scotland, on which her sister Nellie and her sister-in-law Goonie accompanied them. Another took them to Venice, where the crew caught a huge turtle; the cook asked, “Which evening would madam prefer turtle soup?” and was dismayed when his mistress, as fond of pets as her husband, ordered the tortoise returned to the sea. On a third voyage, they anchored in Cardigan Bay and visited the Lloyd Georges in Criccieth, their Welsh home. Because Clementine knew that Winston hated meals at which nothing of importance was accomplished, most guests were men who could be useful to the Admiralty, and she scored a real coup by suggesting they entertain Kitchener, now a field marshal and agent-general in Egypt. “By all means ask K to lunch,” Winston said. “Let us just be à trois. I have some things to talk to him about.” So the long feud finally ended.146

  These were golden days for Clementine. Motherhood had brought her a new tranquillity, and she had learned to suppress her objections to some of her in-laws. Winston wrote that they had received an invitation from Lady Wimborne, and asked her to accept: “I have a great regard for her—& we have not too many friends. If however you don’t want to go—I will go alone. Don’t come with all your hackles up & your fur brushed the wrong way—you naughty.” She replied: “I will write tomorrow to Aunt Cornelia—I would like to go, & I will be very good I promise you, especially if you stroke my silky tail.” She didn’t even demur when seated next to Asquith at meals, though the prime minister was a notorious peerer down Pennsylvania Avenue. Now in her late twenties, Clementine attracted many a lustful eye. After a day at Broadstairs with the Churchills, an artist friend wrote: “Winston went off to dig castles in the sands and the rest of us bathed. It was a broiling day and the water was heavenly. Clemmie came forth like the reincarnation of Venus re-entering the sea. Her form is most beautiful. I had no idea she had such a splendid body.”147

  Yet she was jealous of Violet Asquith, feeling, according to her daughter Mary, “an understandable reserve toward this well-ensconced friend of Winston’s.” And soon Violet would be practically living next door. In addition to his yacht, the first lord was provided with a magnificent eighteenth-century residence, Admiralty House, with a superb view of St. James’s Park. Winston wrote Clementine: “I am sure you will take to it when you get there. I am afraid it all means vy hard work for you—Poor lamb.” Sir Edward Grey wanted to sublet their Eccleston Square house, but she fought the move, pleading economy. Because the government was providing them with a home, Churchill’s salary was cut by £500, and Admiralty House meant increasing their servants from five to eleven or twelve. Confronted with this argument, he was, as always, vulnerable. In one helpless note he agreed with her that “money seems to flow away.” A few days later he cheerfully wrote that he was “preparing a scheme which will enable us to clear off our debts & bills & start on a ready money basis. We shall have to pull in our horns.” He couldn’t do it, though. That same week she was off to visit France, and he wrote: “If you have anything left out of the £40, spend it on some little thing you like in Paris.” Finally, after she had reduced the staff to nine by sealing off the first floor of Admiralty House, the move was ma
de. Violet rejoiced. Winston, she wrote, had now become “our nearest neighbor. Only the width of the Horse Guards Parade separated the Admiralty from the garden door of No. 10 and it was often crossed hot-foot. It was a joy to see him buoyantly engaged in his new context, tasting complete fulfillment. I remember telling him that even his brooding had assumed a different quality. He travailed almost with serenity. ‘That is because I can now lay eggs instead of scratching around in the dust and clucking. It is a far more satisfactory occupation. I am at present in process of laying a great number of eggs—good eggs, every one of them.’ ”148

  He spent long days in his new nest. Eddie Marsh wrote a friend: “Winston stays until at least 8 every day…. Even Sundays are no longer my own, as I have spent 3 out of the last 4 on the Enchantress. We have made a new commandment. ‘The seventh day is the Sabbath of the First Lord, and on it thou shalt do all manner of work.’ ” Officers at the Admiralty were on duty twenty-four hours a day, alert for a surprise attack. In Churchill’s office hung a large chart of the North Sea with flag pins marking the position of every German warship; he studied it each morning on first entering the room “to inculcate in myself and those working with me a sense of ever-present danger.” The Pall Mall Gazette described him as “quite” a naval enthusiast, and after he had visited a submarine the Daily Express reported: “He had a yarn with nearly all the lower deck men of the ship’s company, asking why, wherefore, and how everything was done. All the sailors ‘go the bundle’ on him, because he makes no fuss and takes them by surprise. He is here, there, and everywhere.” Everything about the Admiralty excited him, from the twin stone dolphins guarding the building’s entrance to the furniture within, each piece of which was adorned with golden dolphins dating from Nelson’s time. His delights, like Antony’s, were “dolphin-like.”149

  Like Antony he was also accustomed to infusing his public roles with high drama. But this time it was appropriate. What had been absurd at the Colonial Office—depicting a dubious African chief as a martyr—became sublime at the Admiralty. It is arguable that the first lord’s burden was greater than the prime minister’s. He was answerable for England’s safety. Only the fleet could protect the island from invasion, move British troops to the Continent, bring regiments home from India, replace them with territorials, and prevent what an Admiralty paper called Britain’s likeliest peril: “the interruption of our trade and destruction of merchant shipping.” Two-thirds of England’s food was imported. The British merchant vessels which fetched it still accounted for over half the world’s seaborne trade. Enemy sea raiders, unless held at bay, could sink every one of them. Afterward Churchill wrote of the Royal Navy that its ships “were all we had. On them, as we conceived, floated the might, majesty, dominion and power of the British Empire. All our long history built up century after century, all the means of livelihood and safety of our faithful, industrious, active population depended on them. Open the sea-cocks and let them sink beneath the surface… and in a few minutes—half an hour at the most—the whole outlook of the world would be changed. The British Empire would dissolve like a dream; each isolated community struggling by itself; the central power of union broken; mighty provinces, whole Empires in themselves, drifting hopelessly out of control, and falling a prey to others; and Europe after one sudden convulsion passing into the iron grip of the Teuton and of all that the Teutonic system meant.”150

  He had no doubts about the identity of England’s enemy. His mission, he said at the outset, was to put the fleet into “a state of instant and constant readiness for war in case we are attacked by Germany.” Looking back, he wondered how he could ever have been gulled by Berlin’s protestations of peaceful intent. In 1900, when he had been first elected to Parliament, the kaiser already presided over the most powerful army in Europe. That year Seine Majestät had proclaimed: “In order to protect German trade and commerce under existing conditions, only one thing will suffice, namely, Germany must possess a battle fleet of such strength that even for the most powerful naval adversary a war would involve such risks as to make that Power’s own supremacy doubtful.” Nautically, only one nation could be this “most powerful adversary.” Since 1889 Britain had been committed to what was called the “two-power naval standard,” meaning that England’s navy must be as great as any two other navies combined. Its supremacy posed no threat to the Second Reich. England had nothing to gain on the Continent. But sea power was its lifeline, and throughout the Edwardian years the kaiser’s shipbuilding program had put it at increasing hazard. In a note to Grey on January 31, 1912, four months after taking over as first lord, Churchill wrote that while “at present… several of the German Dreadnts are vy often the wrong side of the Kiel Canal wh they can’t pass & therefore must make a long detour,” that consolation was only temporary: “The deepening of the Canal by 1915 will extinguish this safety signal.” Then he submitted a formal memorandum to the Committee of Imperial Defence: “The whole character of the German fleet shows that it was designed for aggressive and offensive action of the largest possible character in the North Sea or the North Atlantic…. The structure of the German battleships shows clearly that they are intended for attack and for fleet action. They are not a cruiser fleet designed to protect colonies and commerce all over the world. They have been preparing for years, and continue to prepare… for a great trial of strength.”151

  To end this insanity, Haldane visited Berlin early in 1912. He seemed the right man to send; a barrister with a passion for German philosophy, he was known at the War Office as “Schopenhauer among the generals.” But the first lord was better informed about the Reich’s new naval program, due to be introduced in May. The kaiser, in the naive assumption that their friendship transcended geopolitics, had sent him a copy via Sir Ernest Cassel. On February 7, with Haldane still on the Wilhelmstrasse, the Churchills were in Victoria Station, waiting for a train, when Winston picked up the late edition of an evening newspaper and read the German emperor’s speech opening the Reichstag. One sentence struck him: “It is my constant duty and care to maintain and strengthen on land and water the power of defence of the German people, which has no lack of young men fit to bear arms.” Two days later, after comparing this with the kaiser’s May plan, Churchill spoke out in Glasgow. “This island,” he said, “has never been, and never will be, lacking in trained and hardy mariners bred from their boyhood up in the service of the sea…. We will face the future as our ancestors would have faced it, without disquiet, without arrogance, but in stolid and inflexible determination.” He could not understand the kaiser’s motives: “The British Navy is to us a necessity and, from some points of view, the German Navy is to them more in the nature of a luxury.”152

  Had he understood their beastly language, he would have used another word. The German press translated it as Luxus, which has other implications; it denotes extravagance, or sumptuousness. In the Reich, as Churchill later wrote, it became “an expression passed angrily from lip to lip.” In London the Tories were critical; even the Daily News, which had been one of his most ardent supporters, commented: “It is difficult to reconcile Lord Haldane’s mission with Mr Churchill’s speech at Glasgow…. Lord Haldane is on a mission to cultivate good feeling between the Governments and peoples of England and Germany…. Mr Churchill will pass and be forgotten. What we trust will remain and work is Lord Haldane’s mission and determination to come to an understanding with Germany which doubtless it represents.” The kaiser, told of Winston’s statement, realized that he had miscalculated. Feeling betrayed by a former guest and protégé, he demanded an apology. None was forthcoming. Asquith said that although his first lord’s choice of language had perhaps been unfortunate, he had nevertheless made “a plain statement of an obvious truth.” And Haldane, upon his return from Berlin, told the cabinet that, “so far from being a hindrance” in his negotiations, “the Glasgow speech had been the greatest possible help.”153

  Regrettably, he added bleakly, it had not been enough to crown h
is efforts with success. He had talked to the emperor, to Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg, and to Grossadmiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Their price for accepting Britannia’s rule of the waves had been exorbitant—an English pledge of neutrality in the event of war between Germany and France. Haldane had concluded that once “the war party got into the saddle” in Berlin, they would push “not merely for the overthrow of France or Russia but for the domination of the world.” None of them seemed to realize that the English were as sensitive on the naval issue as the French on Alsace-Lorraine. They vigorously supported the German Navy League, whose hundred thousand members, corps of paid lecturers (paid by Krupp, shipbuilders to Seine Majestät), and magazine Die Flotte were flooding the Reich with chauvinistic literature and posters with such slogans as “England the Foe!” “Perfidious Albion!” “The Coming War!” “The British Peril!” “England’s Plan to Fall on Us in 1911!” Apparently Bernard Shaw was right; the Germans were a people with contempt for common sense.154

  Or perhaps their problem was their critical adoration of authority. Haldane was convinced that the root of it was the kaiser, der hohe Herr. It was he who had told them: “Germany’s future is on the water.” Apparently someone had given him a book by an American, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power upon History. Reading it, he had become convinced that his empire could never be truly great until it had mastered the seas. In addition, der hohe Herr had become paranoid. That was the explanation for his mischief-making and saber rattling. He believed his enemies were encircling the Reich and saw a powerful German fleet as a cleaver to cut through that investment. His navy, he predicted, “will bring the English to their senses through sheer fright,” after which they would “submit to the inevitable, and we shall become the best friends in the world.”155