Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Even as signs of Germany’s defeat multiplied – such as on 20 November, when the captured U-boat fleet assembled off Harwich to head for Scapa Flow – the British mood was ugly, and vindictive. That morning the press published the provisional casualty figures for the war. ‘We must go back to Tamerlane, or Genghiz Khan, for slaughter to compare with that done by the disciples of Kultur,’ The Times observed.141 Demands to hang the Kaiser, and expropriate reparations from the Germans, were widespread, and irresistible for politicians to exploit. The cabinet decided on 28 November to try the Kaiser because, as Wilson (who was present) noted, ‘the surest way to prevent a repetition of frightfulness was personal responsibility and punishment.’ It would be easier said than done, now he was in neutral Holland. In Newcastle on 29 November Lloyd George said the law officers had agreed that by invading Belgium the Kaiser ‘was guilty of an indictable offence for which he should be held responsible.’142 It would come to nothing, but was a useful pose until the election was won; this was a moment when Lloyd George’s lack of scruples and honesty could be given full rein. Keynes described his behaviour as ‘a sad, dramatic history of the essential weakness of one who draws his chief inspiration not from his own true impulses, but from the grosser effluxions of the atmosphere which momentarily surround him.’143 The thirst for vengeance – fed by tales from emaciated prisoners of war returning home after a long captivity – became stronger. Eric Geddes told an election meeting in December that ‘we will get out of her all you can squeeze out of a lemon and a bit more … I will squeeze her until you can hear the pips squeak.’144 Keynes described this as ‘the grossest spectacle’.

  Lloyd George sought to create an impression of dynamism during the campaign, especially in addressing social issues that, if left unattended, might harm his popularity. He put Geddes in charge of demobilisation, an operation whose scale the government was only just beginning to comprehend, with not just troops but also superfluous munitions workers to redeploy in civilian life. Lloyd George hoped to impress employers worried about getting back key workers as quickly as possible, to begin peacetime production. Meanwhile, Churchill arranged for railway companies to place orders for equipment and materials for the refurbishment of the permanent way, to use capacity in munitions factories. A fear of unemployment was worrying not just likely victims, but also politicians anxious to avoid discontent. However, the distraction of the election campaign removed any prospect of Lloyd George seriously addressing the problem.

  The people were run-down, and not just those who had served, with their wounds, mutilations and shell shock. Auckland Geddes had compiled a report on the physical condition of the people, which had shown the dire effects of poverty and poor diet on the working classes, and why so many men had been passed unfit for military service, even with the bar set low. In districts with cotton mills men showed signs of decay at thirty that most would not exhibit until their fifties. ‘I shall make it plain,’ Lloyd George had told Riddell in August, ‘that I shall not be party to the continuance of such a condition of affairs. It is useless to fight this war unless the condition of the poorer classes is to be improved.’145 But Lloyd George’s lack of focus showed how naturally he put his self-interest before the public interest. Amery told his wife on 26 November that ‘the great British people are not the least interested in Social Reform or Reconstruction, but only in making the Germans pay for the war and punishing the Kaiser.’146

  The election campaign required self-promotion, for which the end of the war provided spectacular opportunities, not all in ideal taste. Lloyd George decided there should be a ceremonial drive through London on 1 December that would include himself, Clemenceau and Orlando (the prime minister of Italy), and senior officers from those three nations. Haig was invited – Foch was taking part – but heard he would be riding in the fifth carriage ‘along with General Henry Wilson. I felt this was more of an insult than I could put up with, even from the Prime Minister.’ He ranted in his diary: ‘For the past three years I have effaced myself … I have patiently submitted to Lloyd George’s conceit and swagger, combined with much boasting as to “what he had accomplished, thanks to his foresight” … The real truth, which history will show, is that the British Army has won the war in France in spite of LG and I have no intention of taking part in any triumphal ride with Foch, or with any pack of foreigners … mainly in order to add to LG’s importance and help him in his election campaign.’147 The lack of self-knowledge this diary entry reveals is breathtaking. When Haig’s diary and his other private papers were finally published in 1952 Beaverbrook described him as having ‘committed suicide 25 years after his death.’148

  Downing Street explained Haig’s absence from this triumph by announcing that the King required his presence in France, where he was visiting the troops. The King, too, was appalled such an event should be held while he was abroad, and in an election campaign. Haig had his own official homecoming on 19 December. He was met at Charing Cross by the Duke of Connaught and Lloyd George with a guard of honour, and a band that played ‘See, the Conquering Hero Comes’, before being taken off in a royal carriage to lunch with the King at Buckingham Palace. Given Haig’s largely deserved posthumous reputation as a butcher, it is worth noting that The Times felt there was a ‘single and joyous’ emotion on the streets of London at his return.149

  The final statement of coalition policy appeared on 11 December, three days before the election. It had five points: ‘Punish the Kaiser; Make Germany pay; Get the soldier home as quickly as possible; Fair treatment for the returning soldier and sailor; Better housing and better social conditions.’150 Some candidates were more direct: Albert Martin, the Coalition Liberal candidate for Romford, put up posters that simply read: ‘MAKE GERMANY PAY FOR THE WAR AND HANG THE KAISER’.151 Lloyd George reinforced the five points with a speech in Bristol, in which he confirmed an immediate end to conscription. A month of loud campaigning by Northcliffe in his newspapers had left its mark on him and his colleagues, who had become wary of departing too far from the line of the Daily Mail and, to a lesser extent, The Times. Keynes, who interpolated a sixth point – that of ‘punishment of those responsible for atrocities’ – dismissed the manifesto as ‘food for the cynic’.152 Northcliffe’s approach angered Lloyd George, who sent him the rebuke: ‘don’t always be making mischief.’153 However, the coalition’s final words to the electorate, in this last general election before the advent of broadcasting, echoed Northcliffe’s demands. Wilson’s infatuation had worn off after witnessing the campaign. ‘The bribing of [sic] Lloyd George at this election is simply disgusting,’ he noted on 13 December. ‘I won’t vote tomorrow.’154

  The results of the election were not published until 28 December. Of the 159 Liberals with the coupon 136 were returned: only 54 had voted for Asquith after the Maurice debate. Without the coupon, the Unionists would have crushed them. Just 29 un-couponed Liberals won, 8 unopposed by a couponed candidate. There were 333 Conservatives and 9 National Democrats. Only one candidate supporting veterans, James Hogge, who ran as an independent Liberal, was elected, the press having largely ignored their campaign. The plan for soldiers overseas to vote by post – which had delayed the results – had limited success, many spoiling their papers by writing across them: ‘Send us home and we will vote’, or ‘Wait until we are demobilised.’155 The lesson about the slowness of demobilisation was not quickly learned.

  Asquith, who admitted that the possibility of defeat had hardly occurred to him, lost the seat in East Fife he had held since 1886; as he drove round on polling day he noted Conservative posters proclaiming: ‘Asquith nearly lost you the War. Are you going to let him spoil the Peace?’ McKenna, Samuel, Simon and Runciman all lost too. Labour ended up with sixty-one seats after some independents took their whip. Most of the party’s leading figures, including Henderson, Snowden and MacDonald, also lost their seats after an election in which the largest-ever electorate – ten and a half million – had participated. Hankey noted that Lloyd G
eorge ‘was almost stunned by his overwhelming victory and seemed really upset by Asquith’s defeat’ – the latter, though, being an inevitable consequence of his not having had the coupon, hence presumably Hankey’s deployment of ‘almost’.156 He also recorded that Law ‘admitted he was not elated, but greatly sobered’.

  Lloyd George may have been prime minister, but he was now under the control of a Conservative majority, and living on borrowed time. Austen Chamberlain, who had been joined in the Commons by his half-brother Neville, voiced the views of many when he noted that ‘the Govt would do better if it had a stronger Opposition in front of it.’157 But that was never the point of the coupon system; electing Lloyd George was.

  The outcome of the election in Ireland signalled a profound break with the past, and augured darkly for the future. The Irish Nationalists had tried to insist, in the last days of the war and of the 1910 Parliament, that no new settlement in Europe could be made unless the Irish were given Home Rule, which had to follow on rapidly from the Armistice. The government had refused to commit itself, relying still on the argument that the convention it had appointed to sort the matter out could not agree; and the argument returned to that of the pre-war stalemate, about whether Nationalist Ireland would be coerced, or Ulster. Shortt, six days before the Armistice, had stressed that the failure to agree to partition was paralysing any initiative; thus the way was opened to the two and a half years of bloodshed that followed the 1918 general election, and the extinction of the Irish Nationalists.158

  The youngest MP in the House, Captain John Esmonde, who had succeeded his father as Member for North Tipperary on his death while serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915, had in a debate on the government of Ireland six days before the Armistice powerfully condemned this abandonment of what he regarded as an obligation consistent with Britain’s war aims: ‘I have seen myself buried in one grave 400 Irish Nationalist soldiers killed in one fight; I have seen the last resting place of a once distinguished Member of this House; and I ask you are all these lives, are all these Irishmen to lose their lives and shed their blood in order that every nation of Europe should be made free while Ireland is to be left under a system of coercion and oppression?’159 His words had a massive impact on fellow MPs, of all parties, but not on the government.

  The situation in Ireland now turned out to be as bad as the Nationalists had warned Lloyd George it would be. Dillon had told Scott in August that an election would lead to, at most, ten Nationalists being elected, while Sinn Féin swept the country and would refuse to take their seats in Parliament. In fact, after an election marked by a ruthless propaganda battle, in which exaggerated claims were made about the amount of money in taxes expropriated by Britain, and newly enfranchised women were urged to vote ‘as Mrs Pearse will vote’, Sinn Féin won 73 of the 105 Irish seats, including all but six previously held by Nationalists.160 One of its victors was Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to the United Kingdom Parliament; though like her comrades she did not take her seat. Dillon, standing in East Mayo, lost by 4,500 votes: de Valera beat him.

  ‘The result,’ Dillon told Scott, ‘was brought about by a system of intimidation – the most ferocious and elaborately organised I have ever known of … Armed bands were brought from other counties – 400 or 500 from Clare – and the people were threatened with death if they voted for me.’161 The story was repeated all over Ireland, with men in Volunteer uniform canvassing for Sinn Féin candidates. Intimidation was not entirely responsible for the Sinn Féin landslide, but Dillon was right to say it had played its part. Nationally, the party had 48 per cent of the vote, but outside the six counties of what would become Northern Ireland, it was 68 per cent.162 Sinn Féin had been carried to victory by being the anti-British party rather than by having a coherent programme beyond demanding independence. Father Michael O’Flanagan, a priest from Roscommon who had, as a party vice president, been in charge of propaganda, allegedly said: ‘The people have voted Sinn Féin. What we have to do now is explain to people what Sinn Féin is.’163

  Dillon blamed Redmond for letting the party’s machine lapse during the war; but even that would have been no match for armed groups threatening to kill anyone not voting the approved way. The Irish Nationalist Party had severed any connection it had with the young: Dillon believed that generation ‘are ignorant of what our movement achieved for Ireland’, but knew it was the party’s fault for not having enlightened them.164 The real culprits had been Asquith, for mishandling the Rising, and Lloyd George, for his absurd pursuit of Irish conscription. The government’s position before the election was that there could be partition in Ireland once matters calmed down; but now the Nationalists were not the representatives of Ireland. Sinn Féin confirmed its policy of abstaining from Westminster, and – pending an appeal to President Wilson for support – proposed its own assembly in Dublin. Many who would sit in it were in prison or interned, and Ireland expected Britain to release them, given the election result.

  French had proposed a formal veterans’ organisation in Ireland to welcome back and support ex-soldiers, and land grants to recognise their service. It came to nothing. That it did not foretold the broken promises and unfulfilled rhetoric that would take the lustre off the peace for the men and women who had won it. Those broken promises would not be confined to Ireland.

  CHAPTER 12

  AFTERMATH

  I

  A paradox of the 1914–18 war was that its profound effects often became more apparent to the British people once it had ended. Hundreds of thousands of households had had one member or more who would never come home. In churchyards and cemeteries the volleys of firing parties rang out at the military funerals of those who had died of wounds after the Armistice. In the winter of 1919 the streets were filled with ex-soldiers, wrapped in the Army-issue greatcoats they had been allowed on demobilisation to keep against the cold, as they slowly returned home and went looking for work. A mentality of the war years had also taken root, of an unlimited reservoir of public money for any purpose enjoying popular support: this accounted for the high expectations of those who had fought and survived, and the families who had endured their absence. A doctrine of redistribution and state provision entered the national psyche after the Great War, not with its even more murderous second act, even though it would not be until the late 1940s that it was extensively acted upon. Public spending would, however, never be as low again as it was before 1914, partly because of the need to satisfy political expectations, but mostly because of the obligation to repay debts.

  Bertrand Russell said that as a result of the war ‘I changed my whole conception of human nature.’1 So did others of less profound philosophical bent. The misery of the preceding years fed secularism; obedience to social superiors and institutions was questioned. The people’s century had begun, not just in the revolutionised former empires and despotisms of Europe, but in a Britain of near-universal suffrage in which rulers had learned at close quarters that they held their places by popular consent and not by right of heredity or caste. The age of deference was not dead, but was dying. Among the poor bloody infantry returning home, there was much cynicism about the governing class, who had directed the slaughter they had survived; that, and the broken promises of the Lloyd George coalition, would be a great recruiting sergeant for the Labour Party. Class divisions, relatively rigid until 1914, had been profoundly undermined not in that the discrete classes ceased to exist – they palpably still did – but in the increasing failure to see that someone deserved respect simply because he or she occupied a superior social station. These were the greatest changes wrought by four years of war; and they were far from complete.

  Nowhere was the unprecedented upheaval caused by the end of total war more apparent than in the position of women. With millions of men resuming work, and no further need for the army of females making munitions – there were 950,000 at the time of the Armistice – the country would have to be recalibrated. By the end of the war 4
6.7 per cent of the munitions workforce was female; in January 1918 women had made up 75.8 per cent of employees in the government’s National Shell Factories. The total number of working women rose by 22.5 per cent during the war, to 7.3 million.2 Within two months 750,000 had been made redundant.3 Despite the numbers of women leaving factories there was a shortage of domestic servants; scores of thousands might no longer have jobs, but the war had hardened the attitudes of both sexes against taking a job that required subservience. Many who left domestic service in 1914 for the front or industry never returned below stairs; 13 per cent of women worked in service in 1914; by 1931 only 8 eight per cent did.4 Middle-class families, used to having a housemaid or cook, had to learn that doing without was not just a wartime measure, but permanent.

  One predominantly female vocation had risen further in status because of the war: that of nurse. To maintain the profession’s high standards, to encourage more women to join it and to reflect the government’s desire to improve public health, legislation was introduced in March 1919 to begin state registration of nurses. It would be a key underpinning of the welfare state whose creation had, almost by stealth, been begun. Politicians had to take careful account of the needs of women for the first time for the simple reason that those over thirty had the vote. After their contribution in factories and on the land, and in bearing the burden of rearing families without men, the place of women and the regard in which society held them was being transformed. Some would be happy to return to domesticity; many would not, but would compete with men for work in an age when women’s pay was routinely less, and there was no legal redress for a woman denied work for no reason other than her gender. Enlightenment still had far to go, for all the progress of the preceding four years.