CHAPTER 43
Naval Estimates and a "Naval Holiday
Like many well-born Britons, Winston Churchill regarded Germans as rustic Continental cousins who had been faithful allies in the great wars against Louis XIV and Napoleon. The new German Empire, powerful but primitive, had been guided by Bismarck along paths that did not appear to threaten Great Britain. Britons, aware of Germany's military strength, were confident that it could not touch England, her empire, her world trade, or her wealth. In Churchill's youth and young manhood, Britain's rivals and potential enemies were France and Russia.
Churchill first saw the Kaiser when he was sixteen. His mother's lover Count Kinsky took the Harrow boy to an exhibition at the Crystal Palace where William was the guest of honor. Describing the occasion for his brother Jack, Winston concentrated on the Emperor's spectacular uniform: "a helmet of bright brass surmounted by a white eagle nearly six inches high… a polished steel cuirass and perfectly white uniform with high boots." Churchill saw the Kaiser again fifteen years later, in 1906, when as Under Secretary for the Colonies, he was invited to attend German Army maneuvers in Silesia. As a personal guest of the Emperor, Churchill-the German Military Attache in London informed him-would need a uniform. Winston, who had none, tried to borrow from his brother the plumed hat and leopardskin cloak of the Oxfordshire Hussars. When Jack replied that the plumes were lost and he had turned the leopardskin into a rug six years earlier, Winston borrowed a uniform from his cousin the Duke of Marlborough.
In Silesia, Churchill found the Kaiser still wearing a "white uniform and eagle crested helmet," and sitting on "a magnificent horse… surrounded by kings and princes while his legions defiled before him in what seemed an endless procession." Churchill "had about twenty minutes talk with H.I.M. [His Imperial Majesty]… He was very friendly and is certainly a most fascinating personality." Churchill was impressed by the "massive simplicity and force" of the German war machine and wrote to an aunt, "I am very thankful there is a sea between that army and England." Because of the sea, Churchill saw no danger to England from Germany and, as a candidate in 1908, told audiences in Manchester and Dundee that the German threat was a figment of Tory imaginations. In 1909, during the Navy Scare battle in the Cabinet, Churchill sided with Lloyd George and economy against McKenna. In the summer of 1909, Churchill again was invited to observe German Army maneuvers. He was even more impressed: the German Army, he said, is "a terrible engine. It marches sometimes 35 miles a day. It is in number as the sands of the sea." This time, the Emperor was even more cordial: It was " 'My dear Winston' and so on," Churchill wrote to his wife.
Agadir altered Churchill's thinking. "Germany's action at Agadir has put her in the wrong and forced us to consider her claims in the light of her policy and methods," he wrote in a memorandum to himself on Home Office stationery. At the peak of the crisis, he sent Lloyd George a letter filled with urgent military proposals: the British Army to move into Belgium to threaten the German flank; the Fleet to move to its war stations in Scotland. "It is not for… Belgium that I would take part in this terrible business," he concluded. "One cause alone could justify our participation-to prevent France from being trampled down and looted by the Prussian Junkers-a disaster ruinous to the world and swiftly fatal to our country."
Once the crisis was over, Churchill-become First Lord of the Admiralty-looked for a way to lessen the rising tension between his country and Germany. The problem was the German Navy. "We knew that a formidable new [German] Navy Law was in preparation and would shortly be declared. If Germany had definitely made up her mind to antagonize Great Britain, we must take up the challenge; but it might be possible by friendly, sincere and intimate conversation to avert this perilous development." Churchill heartily endorsed Sir Ernest Cassel's effort to send a British Cabinet Minister to Berlin to negotiate privately with the Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg, and Tirpitz. "Until Germany dropped the Naval challenge her policy here would be continually viewed with deepening suspicions and apprehension," Churchill wrote to Cassel on January 7, 1912. "But… any slackening on her part would produce an immediate detente with much good will from all England… I deeply deplore the situation for, as you know, I have never had any but friendly feelings towards that great nation and her illustrious sovereign and I regard the antagonism which has developed as insensate. Anything in my power to terminate it, I would gladly do."
Although Churchill favored the Haldane mission, while the War Minister was in Berlin the First Lord made a speech which, thanks to its timing and phraseology, seemed unlikely to smooth Haldane's path. Churchill's address was provoked by the Kaiser's speech opening the Reichstag. In a London railway station, bound for Belfast and Glasgow, the First Lord picked up an evening paper. "One sentence [of William's speech] stood out vividly," Churchill wrote. "It is my constant duty and care," the Kaiser had said, "to maintain and strengthen on land and water the power of defense of the German people, which has no lack of young men fit to bear arms." Two days later, in Glasgow, Churchill riposted: "This island has never been and never will be lacking in trained and hardy mariners bred from their boyhood up in the service of the sea." He went on to spell out the differences between British and German sea power:
"The purposes of British naval power are essentially defensive. We have no thoughts… of aggression and we attribute no such thoughts to other great Powers. There is, however, this difference between the British naval power and the naval power of the great and friendly Empire-and I trust it may long remain the great and friendly Empire-of Germany. 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. Our naval power involves British existence… It is the British Navy which makes Great Britain a great power. But Germany was a great power, respected and honored, all over the world before she had a single ship."
The German press roared angrily at the description of the German Navy as a "luxury" fleet. Churchill himself recorded that in Germany "the expression passed angrily from lip to lip." The First Lord returned from Glasgow to London to find his Cabinet colleagues offended, although Asquith admitted that Churchill had made "a plain statement of an obvious truth." Churchill was relieved when Haldane, reporting to the Cabinet on his return from Berlin, said that "far from being a hindrance, the Glasgow speech had been the greatest possible help. Haldane described how he had read the operative passages in my speech himself to the Emperor and von Tirpitz in proof and confirmation of what he had himself been saying during their previous discussions."
The failure of both the Haldane mission and the subsequent negotiations aimed at slowing the German tempo saddened Churchill. In April 1912, he expressed this feeling to Cassel: "I suppose it is difficult for either country to realize how formidable it appears to the eyes of the other. Certainly it must be almost impossible for Germany with her splendid armies and warlike population capable of holding their native soil against all comers, and situated inland with road and railway communications on every side, to appreciate the sentiments with which an island state like Britain views the steady and remorseless development of a rival naval power of the very highest efficiency. The more we admire the wonderful work that has been done in the swift creation of German naval strength, the stronger, the deeper, and the more preoccupying these sentiments become."
The Kaiser had given Haldane the text of the new German Navy Bill. In May, the Novelle passed the Reichstag. It called for a 1920 navy of five battle squadrons, including three squadrons of dreadnought battleships (twenty-four ships) and eleven dreadnought battle cruisers. The fleet's total personnel would be 101,500. Whatever his hopes for peace and reduced expenditure, the First Lord's duty was "to take up the challenge."
On March 18, 1912, Churchill introduced his first Naval Estimates to the House of Commons. They were largely the work of his predecessor McKenna: four dreadnoughts, eight light cruisers, twenty destroyers, and an unspecified number of submarines. The costs, too, were McKenna's: £44 million,
up £4 million from the previous year. There was a caveat in the First Lord's speech, but to his listeners it seemed routine: "These estimates have been framed on the assumption that the existing programs of other naval powers will not be increased. In the event of such increases, it will be necessary to present supplementary estimates." This was disingenuous. Before submitting the Estimates, Churchill already knew that another power was preparing to add to its existing program. But, as the text of the new German Supplementary Navy Law had been given in confidence by the Kaiser to Haldane, the First Lord could not reveal it to the House.
Churchill prepared Parliament and the British public for the inevitable Supplementary Estimates by altering the traditional measure of British naval strength. For decades, Britain had adhered to a self-proclaimed Two Power Standard: the maintenance of a fleet capable of defeating the combined fleets of any two other naval powers. In his March 18 speech, the First Lord formally abandoned the Two Power Standard. Confronting the German challenge, he said, Britain no longer could afford to build against two powers; henceforward, the goal of her construction would be to maintain a 60 percent superiority in dreadnoughts over the single state which menaced her; for every ten battleships in the High Seas Fleet, the Royal Navy must have sixteen. "We must always be ready to meet at our average moment anything that any possible enemy might hurl against us at his selected moment." And this ratio was to be set against the original German Navy Laws without the 1912 Supplement. For every new keel authorized under the still-unpublished Novelle, Britain would lay down two. "Nothing, in my opinion," Churchill wrote to Fisher, "would more surely dishearten Germany than the certain proof that as the result of all her present and prospective efforts, she will only be more hopelessly behind in 1920." The First Lord was, forceful, but his speech also contained an original idea whose intent was both pacific and thrifty. Why not lessen the burden of naval armaments on both countries by taking a Naval Holiday?
"Let me make it clear that any retardation or reduction of German construction will, within certain limits, be promptly followed here… Take as an instance… the year 1913. In that year… Germany will build three capital ships and it will be necessary for us to build five in consequence. Supposing we were both to take a holiday for that year and introduce a blank page into the book of misunderstanding; supposing that Germany were to build no ships that year, she would save herself between six and seven millions sterling. But that is not all. In ordinary circumstances we should not begin our ships until Germany had started hers. The three ships that she did not build would therefore automatically wipe out no fewer than five British potential super-dreadnoughts. That is more than I expect they could hope to do in a brilliant naval action."
It was an unorthodox idea, the suggestion that an armaments race could simply be halted, frozen in time, leaving two powers with precisely the same balance of weaponry. The proposal was not well received in Germany, where the press reminded readers that Churchill was the British Minister who only a few weeks before had denigrated their navy as a "luxury fleet." The Kaiser was cool, sending word to Churchill through Ballin that "such arrangements were possible only between allies."
Meanwhile Churchill's duty was to preserve Britain's naval supremacy. He could take a practical step which did not require either the passage of time (to build new ships) or the approval of a potential foe (mutually, to stop building them): more ships could be called home. Fisher had begun the process in 1904 when he stripped the China and North America squadrons of their battleships and closed down other stations. Now the rest of the battleships would be summoned. The battleships of the Mediterranean Fleet, based at Malta, were pulled back. Four came home; four were left at Gibraltar from where they could steam either way, north toward the Channel and the North Sea or east into the Mediterranean.
The withdrawal from Malta had many levels of significance. Strategically, the decision was based on Fisher's dictum: "We cannot have everything or be strong everywhere. It is futile to be strong in the subsidiary theatre of war and not overwhelmingly supreme in the decisive theatre." The decisive theater was the North Sea. On May 6, 1912, Churchill wrote to Haldane: "We cannot possibly hold the Mediterranean or guarantee any of our interests there until we have obtained a decision in the North Sea… It would be very foolish to lose England in safeguarding Egypt. If we win the big battle in the decisive theatre, we can put everything else straight afterwards. If we lose it, there will not be any afterwards."
The situation in the Mediterranean had changed with the formation of the Entente. France, the traditional foe, was now Britain's partner. The other two naval powers of the inland sea, Italy and Austria, were nominal allies within the Triple Alliance, but their fleets were building against each other. Even if Italy and Austria did combine against Britain, the argument for withdrawal still held. The six obsolescent pre-dreadnoughts of the British Mediterranean Fleet would be no match for the new Austrian and Italian dreadnoughts. To leave these old ships in the Mediterranean, Churchill told the Cabinet on June 26, "would be to expose a British Fleet, equal to nearly one third of our battleship strength and manned by 12,000 of our best officers and seamen, to certain destruction." Indeed it was consideration of the sailors more than of the ships that motivated the withdrawal; the trained seamen of the Mediterranean Fleet were needed to man the new dreadnoughts coming to the Fleet in home waters.
Churchill pressed this argument vigorously. Its discussion was the primary reason for his visit to Malta on board the Enchantress in May 1912.* Kitchener, then governing Egypt as Agent-General, hammered the table in opposition. The Mediterranean was the lifeline of the Empire, Kitchener insisted. Removal of the fleet would mean loss of Egypt, Cyprus, and Malta, and the erosion of British power in India, China, and Australasia. Asquith, seeking compromise, promised that some capital ships, battle cruisers if not battleships, would be left in the Mediterranean at Malta.
In July, the discussion shifted to the Committee of Imperial Defence, the Cabinet, and the House of Commons. McKenna, supported by Esher, insisted on keeping battleships in the Mediterranean. Churchill persisted in saying that it should not be done. The Mediterranean was not the lifeline of the Empire, he argued; if necessary, food supplies and other trade could go around the Cape of Good Hope, as they had before the Suez Canal was built. The vital point, he insisted-the critical threat to the future of the Empire- lay not in the Mediterranean but in the North Sea. Eventually, however, Churchill acquiesced in Asquith's promise made to Kitchener at Malta: the old battleships would be withdrawn, but a permanent squadron of four new battle cruisers and four of the latest armored cruisers would go to Malta. The battle cruisers, with their twelve-inch guns, would be a potent deterrent force against the pre-dread-nought Austrian and Italian ships. Should the Austrians venture out of the Adriatic, even Churchill believed that the four Invincibles, with cruiser support would be more than a match. And, if the battle cruisers got into trouble against slower but more heavily armored enemy ships, they could simply raise speed and slip away. By 1915, the Admiralty hoped, it would have sufficient new construction to ensure security in the North Sea and to re-enter the Mediterranean with eight modern dreadnoughts.
In arguing for withdrawal, Churchill never took his eye from the primary threat. On July n, he presented this view to the Committee of Imperial Defence: "The ultimate scale of the German Fleet is of the most formidable character… The whole character of the German Fleet shows that it is 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… I do not pretend to make any suggestion that the Germans would deliver any surprise or sudden attack upon us. It is not for us
* It was on this voyage that Churchill and Asquith wooed and won the retired Jacky Fisher in Naples Bay.
to assume that another great nation will fall markedly below the standard of civilisation which we ourselves sh
ould be bound by; but we at the Admiralty have got to see, not that they will not do it, but [that] they cannot do it."
In September 1912, as British battleships were leaving the Mediterranean, the French Admiralty announced that the six battleships of the French Atlantic Fleet would be transferred to the Mediterranean. In 1912, France had a formidable but elderly navy of twenty battleships, fourteen of them pre-dreadnoughts and six semi-dreadnoughts (ships of the Danton class, with four 12-inch and twelve 9.4-inch guns, similar in armament and armor to the British Lord Nelsons). Six of these ships were at Brest. Fourteen were at Toulon, to fulfill the primary mission of France's navy: safeguarding the sea communications between Metropolitan France and the French North African empire, from which flowed food, raw materials, and manpower. The argument for withdrawing the Atlantic ships had a ring similar to the British Admiralty's for withdrawing its Mediterranean battleships: the French Navy was being concentrated in the vital theater; six additional ships would give France superiority over the combined fleets of her two potential opponents, Austria and Italy. Similarly, if left at Brest, the six French pre-dreadnoughts could have been massacred by the modern dreadnoughts of the German High Seas Fleet. The French decision appeared to leave the long French Channel and Atlantic coasts to be defended only by torpedo boats and submarines. A feeling of vulnerability on the part of the citizens of these coasts was urgently communicated to the French Admiralty by their deputies in the Chamber. The response, as discreet as possible, was that an arrangement had been made: the ports and coasts would be defended by the fleet of another, friendly power.
The near-simultaneous realignment of the British and French fleets was too obvious and too convenient to be purely coincidental. Berlin assumed that a bargain had been struck: Britain would guard France's northern coasts while the French looked after British interests in the Mediterranean. In fact, although the French dearly wished for such an arrangement, the British had refused any formal commitment. In the spring of 1912, after the failure of the Haldane mission, French naval authorities began pressing for staff conversations to discuss cooperation in case of war. Churchill had agreed and had himself participated in talks with the Count de Saint-Seine, the French Naval Attache in London. Nevertheless, the First Lord had warned this French officer that "he must clearly understand that no discussion between military or naval experts could be held to affect in any way the full freedom of action possessed by both countries. On such matters, the Foreign Office would express the view of His Majesty's Government… [The French Naval Attache] said that he perfectly understood this and quite agreed with it." Having issued this warning, Churchill went on to observe that French interests would be served by creating strength in the Mediterranean equal or superior to that of Austria and Italy combined, an accomplishment both parties knew could be achieved only by transferring the French Atlantic Fleet to Toulon. Having encouraged France's action, Churchill-along with Asquith and Grey-was concerned that France not believe that it possessed a moral argument to compel Great Britain to act. On the eve of the French announcement that the Brest Squadron would move, the First Lord expressed this concern and his own rationalization of the dilemma in a letter to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary: