Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

by William Manchester

  Violence erupted in Llanelly when rioters stormed a train and two were shot. The lord mayor of Liverpool telegraphed Churchill, asking him to requisition a warship and bluejackets to man the Mersey River ferries. H.M.S. Antrim was dispatched. But the larger issue was the railroad strike. Until August 17 the home secretary, though goaded by Tories and his sovereign, clung to the same position he had held at Tonypandy. Law enforcement was the responsibility of policemen, who were encouraged to enroll special constables. This attitude was not unappreciated; Ben Tillet, the leader of the London longshoremen, called Winston’s influence moderating and responsible. In his “History of the London Transport Workers’ Strike,” a leaflet published by the transport workers’ union in 1911, Tillet wrote that before the crisis he had thought of Winston as a “ferocious man of blood and iron,” but when they met in the lobby of the House he found him “as amiable as the gentlest shepherd on earth,” a man who “in quite convincing manner assured us he heartily agreed with all our views.” Tillet added: “If patience and courtesy, if anxious effort and sincerity count for respect, then Winston Churchill is entitled as a man to gratitude…. We found an urbane young Cabinet Minister apparently fully alive to the duties and responsibilities of his office.”

  Unfortunately, Churchill’s approach had produced no results. He was in a dilemma. Liberal politicians, including every member of the cabinet except the chancellor of the Exchequer, shied away from the use of force, and soldiers could not be legally used in any domestic dispute without specific requests from local authorities. On August 19 Winston decided to break this precedent. He alerted fifty thousand troops and announced: “The Army Regulation which requires a requisition for troops from a civil authority is suspended.” Asquith remained silent. Lloyd George acted; he persuaded the railroad employers to recognize the union, and the men went back to work. Churchill believed his own order had cut the knot because it proved “that any Government must exert itself to prevent… catastrophe, and because it was certain that in taking such action they would be supported by the good sense and resolution of the whole mass of the people.” King George concurred; he wired him: “Feel convinced that prompt measures taken by you prevented loss of life in different parts of the country.”132

  Nonetheless, he had set a questionable example. In addition, he had again offended the left, whose powerful ally he had been at the Board of Trade. Masterman charged Churchill with “whiff-of-grapeshot” tactics, even with a “longing for blood.” Labour MP Ramsay MacDonald called the mobilization “diabolical” and went on: “This is not a mediaeval state, and it is not Russia. It is not even Germany…. If the Home Secretary had just a little bit more knowledge of how to handle masses of men in these critical times, if he had a somewhat better instinct of what civil liberty does mean… we should have had much less difficulty during the last four or five days in facing and finally settling the problem.” One observer concluded that Churchill’s “reputation with organized labour suffered a severe blow.” Even the Manchester Guardian, until now Winston’s warmest admirer in the press, was outraged when, despite the absence of any request from the lord mayor, troops appeared and occupied Manchester’s railroad stations.133

  The speed with which Churchill’s reforms were forgotten is puzzling. It is almost as though the radicals had felt uncomfortable with him in their midst. Henceforth he would be regarded as a conservative. He had always felt ties to the past, and there is an inevitable connection between a public man’s performance and the psychic baggage which is his unshakable companion. But the politicians of the left had pushed him rightward, just as the Tories had pushed him in the opposite direction seven years earlier. His own view was evocative of Robert E. Lee’s: “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another.” Essentially Churchill was unaltered. It was England which had shifted direction. The awakening of the working class, which he himself had stirred, had altered the political climate. In Victoria’s reign, or even during her son’s early years on the throne, workmen would never have conspired to bring the country to its knees over a union issue. But neither would a chancellor have imposed a supertax on the rich, nor a party have humiliated the peers. Social stability was wobbly, and civility diminished. The easy cordiality which had marked the rivalry between Joe Chamberlain and young Winston would soon be a rarity. Enemies were implacable. Friendships became exhausted, reservoirs of goodwill drained, public men used up. The disturbances of 1910–1911 had damaged Churchill’s credibility in the Home Office, and Asquith decided to shake up his cabinet. The rift within the Liberal-Labour coalition over the use of force in industrial disputes was one reason. The other lay in Europe. The kaiser, so welcome at Edward’s funeral, had been behaving outrageously. Germany was now regarded as a menace to the long European peace.

  Churchill had met the kaiser on September 8, 1906, when he was still undersecretary at the Colonial Office. He had sought an invitation to the German army’s military maneuvers that year in Silesia, and as a member of Britain’s ruling class he was welcome. Count von der Schulenberg, military attaché at the emperor’s London embassy, informed him that an officer would meet his train in Breslau; he would stay at the Hofmarschallamt as the personal guest of Seine Majestät. Winston didn’t speak a word of German—“I’ll never learn the beastly language,” he growled, “until the Kaiser marches on London”—but like most upper-class Britons of the time, he assumed that every civilized man knew English.134 His chief problem was finding an appropriate uniform. Von der Schulenberg had specified levee dress for a state dinner, and he hadn’t any. He thought he could borrow the leopard skin and plume of the Oxfordshire Hussars from his brother, but Jack had turned the skin into a hearthrug six years earlier. Finally Sunny rooted around in Blenheim’s attic and found his.

  Winston witnessed the kaiser’s “entry into the city of Breslau at the beginning of the manoeuvres. He rode his magnificent horse at the head of a squadron of cuirassiers, wearing their white uniform and eagle-crested helmet… surrounded by Kings and Princes while his legions defiled before him in what seemed to be an endless procession.” On September 14 Churchill wrote Elgin from Vienna: “I had about 20 minutes talk with H.I.M. at the Parade dinner. He was vy friendly & is certainly a most fascinating personality.” They had bantered over a recent issue. Rebellious natives in German Southwest Africa had recently fled into the Cape Colony; German police had crossed the frontier in hot pursuit, and the kaiser, Churchill told Elgin, “was pleased to be sarcastic about ‘his design of flying across the deserts to seize Cape Town’ wh he suggested we attributed to him; & he said that if a native rising took place all over S.A. ‘those people (in Cape Town) would be vy glad of my troops.’ He enlarged on the fighting qualities of the Hereros, & I said in reply that in Natal on the contrary our chief difficulty had not been to kill the rebellious natives, but to prevent our Colonists (who so thoroughly understood native war) from killing too many of them.” Still, Winston had been impressed by the “massive simplicity & force” of the Prussian military machine. He told his aunt Leonie: “I am very thankful there is a sea between that army and England.”135

  Wilhelm remembered him, and was aware of the Churchills’ prestige in England. Over a year later, in December 1907, Jennie wrote Winston that the kaiser, meeting Leonie at a Clarence House luncheon, “asked a great deal after me & said he remembered me in Berlin with R[andolph]. He also spoke of you.” In the summer of 1909, with his reputation growing, Churchill was asked to return to Germany for another visit. He wrote his mother: “The German Emperor has invited me to the Manoeuvres as his guest, and I am to be at Wurzburg, in Franconia, on the 14th of September.” He wrote Clementine that the kaiser, who appeared “vy sallow—but otherwise looks quite well,” was “vy friendly—‘My dear Winston’ & so on.” His imperial host warned him “to guard against ‘disagreements on party politics’ & chaffed about ‘Socialists’ in a good-humoured way.” Winston was treated as an exalted guest:
“I have a vy nice horse from the Emperor’s stables, & am able to ride about wherever I choose with a suitable retinue. As I am supposed to be an ‘Excellency’ I get a vy good place.”136

  Churchill and Kaiser Wilhelm at German maneuvers in 1909

  He was troubled by the Teutonic character: “These people are so amazingly routinière that anything at least [sic] out of the ordinary—anything they have not considered officially and for months—upsets them dreadfully…. With us there are so many shades. Here it is all black & white (the Prussian colours). I think another 50 years will see a wiser & gentler world. But we shall not be spectators of it. Only the P.K. will glitter in a happier scene.” This time he was even more awed by the kaiser’s martial juggernaut. He described it as “a terrible engine. It marches sometimes 35 miles in a day. It is in number as the sands of the sea—& with all the modern conveniences…. How easily men could make things better than they are—if they only all tried together! Much as war attracts me & fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations—I feel more deeply every year—& can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms—what vile & wicked folly & barbarism it all is.” He treasured his family all the more: “Sweet cat—I kiss your vision as it rises before my mind. Your dear heart throbs often in my own. God bless you darling & keep you safe & sound. Kiss the P.K. for me all over. With fondest love—W.”137

  Back in England he once more persuaded himself that war between the two empires was unthinkable; it would be too ghastly; no sane authority could countenance it. He counseled the new King to take a conciliatory line, writing him on May 13, 1911, “Mr Churchill thinks that Your Majesty’s references on Tuesday next to the German Emperor will be very warmly welcomed by the Peace party in the country, & will do a lot of good to public sentiment here & in Germany.”138 Then, less than seven weeks later, came Churchill’s greatest volte-face, transforming him from a dove into a hawk. It was triggered that July by the incident at Agadir, an obscure port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

  The Germans had been late entrants in the race for colonies, and by the time they reached Africa all the prizes were gone. After the Tangier incident in 1905, Germany and France had agreed that neither would annex Morocco, but unrest there spread into French Algeria, and French troops, in another hot pursuit, crossed over onto Moroccan soil. The kaiser, on the advice of his aggressive foreign minister, decided to make an issue of it. He dispatched a gunboat, the Panther, to Agadir. Wilhelm expected the French to grab Morocco, which they did, and had no intention of contesting it; his goal was acquisition of a bargaining chip which would win him concessions in the Congo. He got them, but the arrival of the Panther on July 1, 1911, was destined to set off a murderous chain reaction. While Paris and Berlin were haggling, the Italians took advantage of the diversion by invading Tripoli. Tripoli was part of the Turks’ Ottoman Empire. Discontented nationalities in the Balkans decided that if Italy could take on the Turks, so could they. The immediate results were the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, followed by the rise of Serbia, Austria-Hungary’s fear of a strong Serbia, and Russia’s alliance with the Serbs, a consequence of the czar’s determination to preserve his credibility in the Balkans. Russia’s growing military presence in the region threatened Austria-Hungary and Germany, Austria-Hungary’s powerful ally. The kaiser liked his cousin in Saint Petersburg, but he believed that if he ever allowed him time to mobilize and arm Russia’s countless millions, they would be unbeatable. Therefore he began to contemplate pre-emptive war. Meanwhile, all the great European powers, engaging in a deadly quadrille, rearmed at a furious pace.

  These sequelae were unrevealed to the Britons of 1911. No man, not even the wisest statesman, can see across the horizon, and in the barbarous 1980s the appearance of a small warship in an African harbor does not seem provocative. But it was then. Diplomacy was different in the years before 1914. A studied insult, even an unanswered note, could make governments tremble. The display of naked force—the Panther—had been shocking. It simply was not done. By doing it, the Germans changed a lot of minds, among them that of Lloyd George. Obviously, George told Churchill, Berlin believed that London would never intervene, whatever the kaiser did. He said, “People think that because I was pro-Boer I am anti-war in general, and that I should faint at the mention of a cannon.” He meant to correct that impression at once, and he did, in the chancellor’s annual address to the City bankers at the Mansion House. He said: “If a situation were forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure.” The German ambassador, who had described George as a pacifist, was recalled in disgrace.139

  Churchill was also reappraising his position. His opposition to the Admiralty’s dreadnought program had been based upon his faith in Germany’s good intentions. Now, in an undated memorandum on Home Office stationery, he set down his thoughts. “Germany’s action at Agadir,” he wrote, “has put her in the wrong & forced us to consider her claims in the light of her policy & methods.” He believed that England must give France diplomatic support. “If no settlement is reached between F. & G. & deadlock results we must secure Brit interests independently…. If Germany makes war on France in the course of the discussion or deadlock (unless F. has meanwhile after full warning from us taken unjustifiable ground) we shd join with France. Germany should be told this now.” Asquith appointed him to the cabinet’s Committee of Imperial Defence, formed in 1904. There Sir Edward Grey revealed his 1906 pledge to defend France. On August 30 Winston wrote Grey that if “decisive action” became necessary, Britain should join France and Russia in “a triple alliance,” guarantee Belgium’s frontiers, “aid Belgium to defend Antwerp,” and plan “a blockade of the Rhine.”140

  Beginning that summer of 1911, after the disappointments of Tonypandy, the siege of Sidney Street, and the railroad strike, preparation for war was never far from Churchill’s thoughts. “Once I got drawn in,” he later wrote, “it dominated all other interests in my mind.”141 He was horrified when, at a Downing Street garden party, the commissioner of police informed him that the Home Office was responsible for guarding the magazines in which all England’s reserves of naval cordite were stored. Rushing from the party to the War Office, he persuaded the duty officer to post sentries at the depots until he could organize parties of constables. In mid-August he sought peace in the country. He was sitting on a hilltop, overlooking green fields, when he realized that lines from Housman’s Shropshire Lad were running through his head:

  On the idle hill of summer,

  Sleepy with the flow of streams,

  Far I hear the distant drummer

  Drumming like a noise in dreams.

  Far and near and low and louder

  On the roads of earth go by,

  Dear to friends and food for powder,

  Soldiers marching, all to die.

  On August 23 he submitted a prescient memorandum to the Imperial Defence Committee. Assuming that Britain, France, and Russia were attacked by Germany and Austria-Hungary, he predicted that on the twentieth day of the war the kaiser’s armies in France would break through the Meuse defense line. The French would then fall back on Paris. By the fortieth day, however, Germany would “be extended at full strain both internally and on her war fronts,” and with each passing hour this pressure would become “more severe and ultimately overwhelming” unless they could force an immediate decision. Denying them that would require “heavy and hard sacrifices from France.” Whether France could make them would depend on British military support, “and this must be known beforehand.” He proposed a contingency plan under which Britain would send 107,000 troops across the Channel at the outbreak of war, with another 100,000 men from India reaching M
arseilles by the all-important fortieth day. General Henry Wilson told the committee that Winston’s prediction was “ridiculous and fantastic—a silly memorandum.” But three years later the Germans lost the battle of the Marne on the war’s forty-second day.142

  Churchill at British army maneuvers, September 1913

  By September 1911 Churchill had tired of the Liberals’ growing polarization between left and right, the internal struggle in which he was being ground up, and was again pondering the Victorian policy of Splendid Isolation. He had cherished it as part of his political legacy. But now he studied a Foreign Office paper written in 1907 by Eyre Crowe. Crowe had held that England must preserve Europe’s balance of power by forging an alliance with the second-strongest nation on the Continent. Brooding over this thesis, Winston was struck by the thought that although earlier generations of Englishmen had never put it on paper, they had in fact always pursued it. This grand strategy, he believed, had been the key to the Elizabethans’ rout of the Spaniards, Marlborough’s defeat of Louis XIV, and Wellington’s triumph over Napoleon. Following the same line of reasoning, he concluded that England must now embrace France, even hold joint maneuvers with France. As a candidate three years earlier, he had told audiences in Manchester and Dundee that the German threat was a figment of Tory imagination. After Agadir he became the cabinet’s most ardent advocate of intervention.