Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  In 1868, after ten years in business, Henry Campbell was elected to the House of Commons as Member for Stirling. Three years later, he changed his name. A rich uncle, Henry Bannerman, died leaving a large inheritance to his nephew on condition that he add "Bannerman" to his name. Campbell agreed although he came to regret it. "I see you are already tired, as I long have been, of writing my horrid long name," he wrote to a friend. "I am always best pleased to be called Campbell and most of my friends do so… An alternative is C.B." His wife, even less pleased by the change, for years went on signing herself simply "Charlotte Campbell."

  C.B. rose slowly in Liberal Party politics. He spent seventeen years in the House of Commons before ascending to Cabinet rank in 1885 as Secretary of War. To his dismay, he found himself at his first Cabinet meeting seated next to the seventy-six-year-old Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone. "I sat down timidly," recalled Campbell-Bannerman, "on the edge of the chair, like a fausse marquise, abashed to be under the wings of the great man." C.B. remained at the War Office through the balance of Gladstone's third government, returned when the Grand Old Man came back to form a fourth government, and stayed on through the brief term of Gladstone's mercurial heir, the Earl of Rosebery.

  Inadvertently, Campbell-Bannerman was the cause of the fall of Rosebery's government. The Liberal majority in the Commons had been declining; Rosebery had replaced Gladstone without an election and the voters did not like a Gladstone ministry without Gladstone. For weeks, the government had been stumbling with majorities of seven or eight. On June 21, 1895, the subject, Army Estimates, was one which usually emptied the House, leaving only a handful on the opposing benches. The government's case was in the hands of C.B. as War Minister. Suddenly, in a move carefully plotted by Unionist leaders, the opposition moved a one-hundred-pound reduction of Campbell-Bannerman's salary on the grounds that he had not provided the army with a sufficient reserve of cordite. C.B. replied that, in the opinion of his expert advisors, the reserve was ample. He refused to give the figures in public but offered to show them in private to opposition leaders. They were not interested.

  Balfour and Chamberlain appeared on the scene to join in the attack. Liberal whips rushed to locate and rally members but when the vote was taken, the government was short by seven votes. Rather than continue its hand-to-mouth existence, the Rosebery government resigned. The Queen sent for Lord Salisbury. C.B. was defiant about the alleged shortage of cordite: "As to the censure, I am very proud of it. It was a blackguard business. We have too much ammunition rather than too little."

  The early years of Lord Salisbury's long rule were difficult for the Liberal Party. Leadership was uncertain: Gladstone, well up in his eighties, lived in restless retirement; Lord Rosebery, Gladstone's successor as Prime Minister, remained leader of the opposition, but his grip on the party was weak. He was an earl, young, handsome, stylish, an eloquent orator, and the darling of the press. His marriage

  to a Rothschild brought him £100,000, with which he kept a racing stable and a yacht. During the sixteen months he was Prime Minister, two of his horses won the Derby in successive years. Rosebery was immensely proud, almost more so than of any political

  achievement. The turf world loved him, but rank-and-file Liberals, stern Nonconformist followers of Mr. Gladstone, looked askance at the spectacle of a Whig aristocrat distracted from the Premiership by cheering a horse. But Rosebery had greater political handicaps than his passion for the track. To many, he seemed in the wrong party; on South Africa, on Home Rule, on land and tax policies, his views were more Tory than Liberal. Gladstone, who appointed him Foreign Secretary, summed up his opinion by saying that "Rosebery was one of the ablest as well as one of the most honorable men he had ever known, but that he doubted whether he really possessed common sense."

  Out of office, still party leader, Rosebery sulked. Gladstone, in his eighty-seventh year, continued to speak in public, attracting huge crowds. Rosebery complained that this undermined his position; eventually, finding himself "in apparent difference with a considerable mass of the Liberal Party… and in some conflict of opinion with Mr. Gladstone," he resigned the party leadership. Sir William Harcourt, Liberal leader in the Commons, succeeded for one year and then, he too withdrew. The party whips offered the leadership to Herbert Henry Asquith, the most accomplished orator in the party, but Asquith, forty-six, needed to earn a living at the bar to support his family; he urged that the post go to Campbell-Bannerman, sixteen years his senior.

  C.B. accepted reluctantly. He was a solid, reassuring figure, a conciliator, faithful, humorous, shrewd, kind, good-natured. He had been faithful, but not especially active on the front bench. Beatrice Webb described him as "well-suited to a position of sleeping partner in an inherited business." He had no ambition to succeed to the leadership. His health was uncertain; his wife's health was poor. That he would harness himself to the heavy and constant burdens of the leadership seemed improbable. C.B. did so because, there being no one else, he saw it as his duty. In the beginning, this situation conferred certain advantages: he did not want the job and could not be accused of snatching it from anyone else. He had no enemies; all were grateful. In 1898, Gladstone died, removing the great figure which had shadowed every other Liberal statesman for forty years. Some Liberals missed the brilliance and charm of Lord Rosebery, others were glad that the haze of doubt surrounding the party leader's intentions had finally lifted. There was nothing enigmatic about C.B. He stood stoutly for Liberal ideas in their simplest form and worked avowedly to bring the Liberal Party back to power. It was said that "Campbell-Bannerman's great advantage was that he always seemed to be in the battle while Lord Rosebery always seemed to be above it." During the seven years of C.B.'s leadership before the Liberals returned to power in 1905, he modestly said that the question of who should be Prime Minister in the next Liberal government should be decided only when the moment came. For part of this time, C.B. told friends that Rosebery could have the leadership back any time he wanted it. "The door has always been open for Lord Rosebery's return," he said.

  The issue that made Rosebery's return impossible and so deeply divided the Liberal Party that it could not transform itself into a government was the Boer War. From the beginning, Camp-bell-Bannerman realized that the war would wreak havoc on party unity. The majority in the party, following the tradition of Gladstone, was against the war. This included C.B., Morley, and Lloyd George, among the leadership. They opposed imperialism, as Gladstone had, and viewed the Empire as much as an instrument of intimidation and exploitation as a civilizing influence. In this instance, they found the cause of the war in the iniquity of certain government ministers, primarily Chamberlain. The Colonial Minister, in alliance with Rhodes, had engineered a squalid intrigue in the interests of a gang of profiteers who wished to use the power of a large nation to squelch the liberty and steal the treasures of a small and helpless one. The Boers, from this perspective, were "a small people, struggling to be free," and Kruger's ultimatum was a desperate challenge into which the Boer President had been trapped by an astute course of provocation.

  Rosebery rejected this position and, on the issue of the war, supported the government. The former Prime Minister had drifted so far away from the mass of the party, however, that his views had little impact. More significant was the position taken by three active younger Liberal leaders, H. H. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and Richard B. Haldane, who, while remaining firmly pledged to the party, supported the government on South Africa. Fifty Liberal backbenchers stood with this triumvirate; together the group was called the Liberal Imperialists. For Asquith, a former Home Secretary and the most prominent of this faction, the key point was, Who started the war? For him, the decisive acts were the Boer ultimatum and invasion of adjacent British territories. "We [the Liberal Imperialists] held that the war was neither intended nor desired by the Government and the people of Great Britain but that it was forced upon us without adequate reason and entirely against our will," he explained. Grey
wholeheartedly agreed: "We are in the right in this war; It is a just war. It is a war which has been forced upon this country," he said. Campbell-Bannerman did not dispute that, in the sense, the Boer ultimatum had made war inevitable. "The Boers have committed an aggression which it is the plain duty of all of us to resist," he declared. His complaint was that the situation had been inflamed by British government policy. As C.B. put it, he was "anti-Joe, but never pro-Kruger." In the middle, standing between the Liberal Imperialists and the Liberal pacifists, was Campbell-Bannerman, who respected Asquith, if not Asquith's position. For [the other Liberal Imperialist leaders, he had contempt. Applying the term "Master" to people he disliked, C.B. referred to "Master Haldane" and "Master Grey," but never to "Master Asquith."

  The political reckoning of the Boer War came in September 1900 after the British Army, having recovered from its early defeats, had occupied Pretoria and Johannesburg. Chamberlain persuaded Salisbury to call a general election to take advantage of the euphoria of victory and exploit the split among the Liberals. C.B.'s divided party had no chance. Chamberlain, a master political propagandist, pounced on the theme that Liberal candidates were friends of the nation's enemies and would undermine British policy and stab British soldiers in the back. The election was a test of patriotism, Unionist orators relentlessly proclaimed; the issue was patriotism versus treason. "A vote for the Liberals is a vote for the Boers," screamed placards and speakers around the country. This attack aggravated the deep split in the Liberal Party. Liberal candidates found themselves condemning each other, not the Unionists, while Chamberlain rode triumphantly over both, declaring that even the slightest Liberal success would weaken the hand of the government in ending the war and dealing with the rebellious Boers. Campbell-Bannerman's situation was hopeless. He was aware that many voters resented the tone of Unionist oratory and knew that calling an election at that point was a political trick. He also understood that many of these same voters believed that defeat of the government would be considered by the Boers and by foreign powers as a rejection of the South African policy into which the nation had poured a torrent of blood and wealth.

  Chamberlain, exulting in his anticipated victory, sought not just to defeat but to destroy his former party. He asked for a landslide which would sweep away the Liberals. The vote, when it came- 2,428,492 to 2,105,518-was not the hoped-for annihilation; indeed, by Chamberlain's definition, over million British voters had proclaimed themselves "traitors." The Khaki Election, fought on a single issue, ensured the Unionist Party another six years of rule. From Campbell-Bannerman's practical point of view, this was not entirely bad; the Liberal Party, still in the throes of internal division, was unready to govern.

  Politics was only one part of Campbell-Bannerman's life. He gave seven months a year to London, the Liberal Party, the House of Commons, and government office. During these months, he gave himself completely, weekends included. He was not invited to dinner parties and late-night suppers and did not go to the great house parties which lured Balfour and Asquith. In compensation, C.B. demanded five months away for his wife and himself. Three of these months were spent at his home in Perthshire: Belmont, a rambling Victorian mansion furnished with soft carpets, deep leather armchairs, and big, open fireplaces. Outside, a broad expanse of lawn stretched to a circle of giant ash, beech, spruce, and pine trees. On arrival at Belmont, C.B.'s first concern was to visit his trees, sometimes bowing to them and bidding them "Good morning." To one magnificent specimen, he always raised his hat and, in a courtly manner, inquired after "Madame's health." Nothing unfamiliar was permitted at Belmont. There were no motorcars, only old horses, old carriages, old dogs-many dogs, his and hers-and old servants. C.B. was loyal; what had served him well would not be put by. He had a large collection of walking canes. Each day, as he chose the one to be given an outing, he would murmur affectionately to the others, consoling them for being left behind. A drawer in his desk contained a mass of pencil stubs-old friends, he explained, "who deserved to be decently cared for when their day was done."

  Every year, Campbell-Bannerman and his wife spent two months on the Continent, travelling through France, Switzerland, Italy, or Spain, always arriving punctually in Marienbad, where Charlotte could rest and take a cure, at the beginning of August. C.B loved France and would often be seen sitting in a restaurant or poking through shops in Paris. Sometimes, he would escape from London to Dover to sit on the pier and watch the Channel steamers come and go. Occasionally, he improved on this pastime by taking the‹morning boat to Calais, enjoying an excellent lunch at the Gare Mantime, and returning to England in the afternoon. Among his papers, he always carried a novel by Balzac, Flaubert, Anatole France, or Zola, but his primary pleasure was to sit and look at people. Few looked at him, and to the end he scorned the idea that he was a person of importance.

  The Unionist government's claim of victory in South Africa was hollow. Although the Union Jack waved in Johannesburg and Pretoria and triumphant beacons illuminated the hills above Balmoral, Boer fighting men were still in the field. They were no longer organized into regiments; instead, they assembled secretly as guerrilla commandos, small bodies of horsemen who struck suddenly at slow-moving British infantry detachments and supply columns, then vanished into the veldt. Orthodox military tactics were useless; by the time; a force of British or Imperial cavalry came up to pursue, the guerrillas had transformed themselves into peaceful Boer farmers, plowing the land in the same baggy work clothes in which they had fought a few days before. Their weapons were hidden in their houses, and the swift work ponies that made the raids possible were grazing in their fields.

  Kitchener, who succeeded Lord Roberts as Commander-in-Chief in December 1900, addressed this problem with brutal logic: if he could not pin down twenty thousand Boer horsemen with 250,000 British troops in a war of movement, he would reduce and then eliminate the commandos' ability to maneuver. Eight thousand corrugated iron and stone blockhouses were stretched first along the railway lines, then across the countryside. Eventually, the veldt was laced with a network of small blockhouse forts, linked by barbed wire, within rifle shot of one another. Once the countryside was compartmentalized, Kitchener swept through in the manner of a pheasant shoot in Norfolk. The language of Kitchener and his intelligence officers was that of the hunt: so many "drives" and "bags" and "kills." Sweeping everything before them, the army "sanitized" the ground behind. All crops, potential food for the commandos, were burned. Every farm which could be used as a shelter or rendezvous point was burned. Every rural inhabitant caught in the net, mostly women and children, was uprooted, hustled into a wagon, and driven off to one of twenty-four concentration camps built and administered by the army. The camps, hastily constructed tent cities, were exposed to sun and rain in summer and icy winds in winter, and had inadequate latrines and insufficient fresh water. Because the inmates were reckoned to be the families of Boer guerrillas still in the field, they were given reduced-scale army rations. There was no meat, no vegetables, no milk for children, no soap; the water was contaminated. Typhoid appeared. Over fourteen months, during which the population of the camps bulged to 117,000, 18,000 to 28,000 inmates, most of them women and children, died.

  Britain learned about these horrors from the testimony of an impassioned middle-aged woman, Emily Hobhouse, who toured the camps and returned to England. She went to see St. John Broderick, the Unionist Secretary of State for War, who listened politely but refused to commit himself. Then she went to see Campbell-Bannerman. The Liberal Party leader sat quietly as she poured out her story: "wholesale burning of farms… deportations… a burnt-out population brought in by the hundreds of convoys… deprived of clothes… semi-starvation in the camps… fever stricken children lying… upon the bare earth… appalling mortality." C.B. decided to speak. A week later, on June 14, at a Liberal dinner at Holborn Restaurant, he talked about the nature of war. "A phrase often used [by the government] was that 'war is war,' but when one came to ask about it one was told
that no war was going on, that it was not war. When was a war not a war? When it was carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa."

  A storm of anger burst over his head. He was denounced in the popular press, excoriated in private clubs, excluded from polite society. The leader of the Liberal Party, a former War Secretary, had appallingly defamed the British Army. Pro-Boerism had reached the point of treason. Obviously, this man could never become Prime

  Minister. Campbell-Bannerman did not flinch. Three days later he repeated his words in the House of Commons. He absolved the soldiers who carried out the orders: "I never said a word which would imply cruelty or even indifference on the part of officers or men of the British Army. It is the whole system I consider, to use a word I have already applied to it, barbarous." The repetition inflamed both Unionists and Liberal Imperialists. Haldane rose to regret that the word "barbarous" had been used and to disassociate himself and his colleagues from their party leader. In the division that: followed, fifty Liberals, including Asquith, Grey, and Haldane, abstained from voting. Three days later, Asquith gave his reply in a speech at Liverpool Station Hotel. "We have not changed our view," he said. "We do not repent of it… and we shall not recant it." Public dinners and counter-dinners followed; one observer described this contest as "war to the knife-and fork." A dinner for Asquith was planned; C.B. appealed to Asquith to postpone it and substitute a unity dinner over which he himself would preside. Asquith declined. Rosebery spoke at a luncheon, attacking C.B.'s "methods of barbarism" phraseology but not aligning himself with Asquith. "I must plough my furrow alone," he told his audience. "That is my fate, agreeable or the reverse. But before I get to the end of that furrow it is possible that I may find myself not alone." By the spring of 1902, Asquith and Rosebery still were apart, but both had repudiated Campbell-Bannerman's leadership of the party.