Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War
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McKenna's argument was based on the German building program. The keel of the first German dreadnought, Nassau, had been laid in July 1906. In the summer of 1907, within a few weeks of one another, three additional German dreadnoughts, Westfalen, Posen, and Rheinland, each similar in most characteristics to the first eight British dreadnought battleships, had been laid down. The German 1907 program also included the first German dreadnought battle cruiser, Von der Tann, with its eight eleven-inch guns and twenty-five-knot speed a match for the British Invincible. In 1908, the Reichstag authorized four more German dreadnoughts, the battleships Thuringen, Helgoland, and Ostfriesland, and the battle cruiser Moltke. In 1909, the German Navy Law called for three more battleships and another battle cruiser to be laid down.
Within two years, beginning in the summer of 1907, Germany had laid down or ordered nine dreadnoughts. Beginning in 1905, Great Britain had ordered twelve dreadnoughts over four years. If the British and German programs for 1909 each included four new ships, then in 1912, when all these ships were completed, Germany would possess thirteen dreadnoughts and Britain sixteen. This did not seem to McKenna and the Sea Lords a sufficient margin on which to rest British naval supremacy. It rendered illogical Asquith's statement that the Two Power Standard, to which he said Britain remained committed, required "a preponderance of ten percent over the combined strengths in capital ships of the next two strongest powers."
More ominous from McKenna's viewpoint were Admiralty suspicions that the Germans were accelerating secretly: gathering essential shipbuilding materials, acquiring guns, turrets, and armor well in advance of actually building the hulls. Reports reached London that dreadnought keels were being laid down months before the dates scheduled by the German Navy Law-in advance even of the appropriating votes in the Reichstag. For several years, it had been evident that Germany's shipbuilding capacity was significantly expanding. By 1908, seven shipyards in the Reich were capable of constructing dreadnoughts.* From keel-laying to launching required an average span of one year. Immediately after the hull was launched and towed to a fitting-out dock for installation of turrets, guns, and propulsion machinery, a new keel could be laid on the building way. Theoretically, the German Navy could begin seven new dreadnoughts every year. In fact, there was a brake on this
* Wilhemshaven Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven; Weser Works in Bremen; Vulcan Works in Stettin; Blohm and Voss in Hamburg; Schichau Works in Danzig; and Germania Works and Howaldt's Works in Kiel.
tempo. The governing factor in rate of dreadnought construction was not the time required to build a hull, but the time needed to manufacture the guns, gun mountings, and armor that transformed a floating hill into a fighting ship. The date of laying down could therefore be delayed without affecting the date of completing a vessel, provided work was proceeding on these more intricate components.
The making and accumulation of these components was much easier to hide than the laying of a keel and the building of a hull. Naval guns, mountings, and armor for the German Navy were made in the workshops of Krupp of Essen. Krupp, already the largest business enterprise in Europe, was expanding rapidly, from 45,000 workers in 1902 to 100,000 in 1909. There were rumors that Krupp was secretly buying quantities of nickel, a metal essential to the process of hardening steel and therefore integral to the manufacture of guns and armor. It was said that rows of huge naval gun barrels lined the sheds at Essen, awaiting shipment to the naval shipyards.
Contracts for three German dreadnoughts in the 1909 program were supposed to have actually been placed with shipyards ahead of the dates scheduled by the Navy Law and before the Reichstag had authorized the money to pay for them. If these reports were true, the British Admiralty was being stripped of a guideline for predicting the future size of the German Fleet. The Admiralty had assumed an average building period for German dreadnoughts of three years. Now, it seemed, ships were being laid down ahead of time and constructed more quickly because guns, gun mountings, and armor had been manufactured in advance. The three years might be shrinking to two and a half, or even two, which was the average time Britain allowed for construction of a dreadnought. (England, as the world's most advanced industrial power, had always been able to build ships faster than any other nation. Even when another power began a ship of advanced design, Britain had always been able to adapt and overtake.) Using the published Navy Law schedules, the dreadnought ratio in 1912 would be 16:13. But if the Germans had laid down early and were accelerating construction, the Admiralty declared, as "a practical certainty" Germany would have seventeen dreadnoughts in 1912. And, if the maximum capacity of German shipyards were utilized, the High Seas Fleet could have twenty-one dreadnoughts in 1912 to pit against Britain's sixteen.
McKenna presented these fears to Grey on December 30, T908:
My dear Grey:
… The argument… may be summarized as follows: German shipbuilding is in excess of the monetary provision for it made under the Fleet Law and the Estimates… Hence the terms of the Law are no guide to the dates when the ships will be completed. We are bound therefore to look at the German capacity to build, and we can best judge what they can do by what they are doing… If by any spurt Germany can once catch us up, we have no longer any such superior building capacity as would ensure our supremacy…
Four days later, on January 3, 1909, the First Lord wrote to Asquith:
My dear Prime Minister:
… It seemed to me that an examination of the German Naval Estimates might prove helpful in showing how far Germany is acting secretly and in apparent breach of her Law… I am anxious to avoid alarmist language, but I cannot resist the following conclusions which it is my duty to submit to you:
1) Germany is anticipating the shipbuilding program laid down by the law of 1907.
2) She is doing so secretly.
3) She will certainly have 13 big ships in commission in the spring of 1911.
4) She will probably have 21 big ships in commission in the spring of 1912.
5) German capacity to build dreadnoughts is at this moment equal to ours.
The last conclusion is the most alarming, and if justified would give the public a rude awakening should it become known.
This closing shot in McKenna's letter was shrewdly placed. The First Lord knew that a consummate political animal like Asquith would be influenced by a sense of political risk. Already the country was uneasy, knowing that Germany had laid down four ships in 1908 to Britain's two. Once McKenna's worries reached the Unionist M.P.'s and the Unionist press, a howl of alarm would rise up. The First Lord's recommendations therefore could not-as Asquith might dearly have wished-be ignored.
On the Liberal side of the House and in the Liberal press, any increase over the planned four dreadnoughts would be strongly opposed. "I will not dwell upon the emphatic pledges given by all of us before and at the last General Election to reduce the gigantic expenditure on armaments built up by the recklessness of our predecessors," Lloyd George wrote to Asquith. "Scores of your most loyal supporters in the House of Commons take these pledges seriously and even a three million pound increase will chill their zeal for the Government… an increase of five to six million will stagger them." Churchill also did not accept McKenna's case: "I found the Admiralty's figures exaggerated," he wrote. "I did not believe the Germans were building dreadnoughts secretly in excess of their published laws." Germany had a constitution; dreadnoughts could not be built without a vote of money by the Reichstag. If the German Navy was building in secret from England, it was also building in secret from the Reichstag; Churchill thought this unlikely. Thus, he concluded, "I believed four ships sufficient."
In January 1909 the Admiralty, instead of paring down from six to four, suddenly asked for two additional dreadnoughts, raising the total requested to eight. On January 3, Lloyd George warned Churchill: "The Admiralty mean to get their six dreadnoughts… the Admiralty have had very serious news from their Naval Attache in Germany since our last Cabinet meeting and… McK
enna is now convinced we may have to lay down eight dreadnoughts next year." He had feared "all along this would happen," the Chancellor said. The struggle continued through January and most of February. Lloyd George and Churchill, supported by Morley, Burns, and others, wanted four. Grey and Haldane wanted six. McKenna wanted at least six, possibly eight. The Liberal press warned against "Panic-mongers"; Conservative papers attacked "Pacifists," "Little En-glanders," and "Economaniacs." Personalities became involved. "What are Winston's reasons for acting as he does in this matter?" asked Knollys, the King's private secretary. "Of course it cannot be from conviction or principle. The very idea of his having either is enough to make anyone laugh." Resignations were in the air. "The economists are in a state of wild alarm, and Winston and Lloyd George by their combined machinations have got the bulk of the Liberal press into the same camp," Asquith wrote to Margot on February 20. "They… go about darkly hinting at resignation (which is bluff)… but there are moments when I am disposed summarily to cashier them both."
The Cabinet was deadlocked and the Prime Minister faced loss either of his Foreign Secretary and First Lord, or of his Chancellor and Board of Trade President. On February 24, a special meeting was called in Grey's room at the Foreign Office. The Sea Lords were present. Lloyd George rose from his chair and began to pace the room. When the discussion turned to Krupp's increased capacity for making gun turrets, the Chancellor burst out, "I think it shows extraordinary neglect on the part of the Admiralty that all this should not have been found out before. I don't think much of any of you admirals." McKenna, who now violently disliked Lloyd George, held his temper and replied calmly, "You know perfectly well that these facts were communicated to the Cabinet at the time we knew of them, and your remark [then] was, 'It's all contractor's gossip.' " There seemed no way out of the impasse, when Asquith suddenly made a proposal which satisfied everyone: the government would ask for four dreadnoughts in the 1909 Estimates, two to be laid down in July and two in November. In addition, it would seek authority to build four additional dreadnoughts to be laid down no later than April 1, 1910, if careful monitoring of the German construction program proved them necessary. The contingent four, as well as the first four, would be completed in 1912, the British "danger year" as seen by the Admiralty. And, if the contingent four were built, this would have no effect on the regular 1910 program, under which it was assumed that still another four dreadnoughts would be ordered.
Although all in the Cabinet agreed to the four-now, perhaps-four-later compromise, it displeased extremists on either side. Lloyd George and Churchill, realizing that they were outmaneuvered, suddenly expressed willingness to vote for six. It was too late. Meanwhile, McKenna, Fisher, and the Sea Lords worried that they had been tricked and that the six they had demanded and the eight they had hoped for all would vanish in Parliament. "We are placing our whole and sole trust in you that these two jugglers [Lloyd George and Churchill] don't outwit us," Fisher wrote to McKenna. "There was a certain sweet certainty about 'six'… which is lacking in a bill with possibly evading phrases capable of being twisted against us, but I've no doubt of your seeing to it." McKenna took the Admiral's case to Asquith, saying that if the four-plus-four bill "is rejected either in the Commons or the Lords, I understood from you yesterday that you would instantly resign." Asquith replied, "I do not see how it is possible for me to say more than that I regard my personal and public honor pledged… My one predominant desire is to attain the end which we both have in view. I have never before made-as I make to you now-so clear and direct an appeal for trust and confidence."
Fisher, fighting for eight, sent to McKenna (who forwarded it to the Prime Minister) a report from an Argentinian naval mission which had just visited the Krupp works and a number of German shipyards. Hoping to attract orders, the Germans had shown their visitors everything. According to Fisher, the visitors were overwhelmed by the size and capacity of the German plant and shipyards. They reported twelve capital ships on the building ways and, at the Krupp plant in Essen, they counted one hundred eleven-inch and twelve-inch barrels nearing completion. The lesson, the First Sea Lord said, was that "nothing less than eight ships would do."
Asquith adhered to the four-plus-four compromise. McKenna put it before the House of Commons on March 16. When the First Lord rose, members listened intently and for the most part silently. Tea hour came and nobody left. The Prince of Wales sat in the Peers' Gallery, his head thrust forward to catch every word. Fisher was present, sitting behind the Speaker's Chair. McKenna's speech was blunt: "No matter what the cost, the safety of the country must be assured. We do not know, as we thought we did, the rate at which German construction is taking place." He spelled out the possibilities from the grimmest to the least grim. The House listened, mostly in silence. Balfour followed, then Asquith. Both supported McKenna. When Asquith sat down, the Speaker looked at the House and the House looked at the Speaker and for several minutes no one got up. Nothing further was heard of a motion to reduce the Estimates, made by the 140-member Little Navy group.
The country, which, like the House, had heard only rumors about the battle going on inside the Cabinet, was stunned by McKenna's speech. The Liberal press, despairing at the damage increased dreadnought building would do to social programs, took the position that if the four contingent ships were to be laid down, they must be credited against the 1910 naval budget; it was intolerable that Britain might pay for eight dreadnoughts in a single year. But Asquith could manage the Liberals. The real attack on the Estimates came from the Unionists. Before March 16, Conservatives had agreed that six new ships would be enough. Now, facing the threat of possible German acceleration as revealed by the First Lord, Conservatives in the Commons, the Lords, the press, and the country demanded that all eight ships be laid down at once. "We want eight and we won't wait!", a slogan coined by M.P. George Wyndham, became the battle cry of the Unionist Party. Accusations of incompetence and of abdicating supremacy at sea were flung at the government, at the Admiralty, and at Fisher himself. "Citoyens, la patrie est en danger!" declared the Daily Telegraph. "We are not yet prepared to turn the face of every portrait of Nelson to the wall." The National Review described Fisher as the "reincarnation of Marshal Leboeuf," the French Minister of War who boasted on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War that the French Army was ready to the last gaiter button! When Asquith refused to pledge himself to the immediate building of the four contingent ships, the Daily Telegraph pronounced that "since Nero fiddled there has never been a spectacle more strange, more lamentable, than the imperilling of the whole priceless heritage of centuries to balance a party budget." On March 19, Balfour gave notice of a motion of censure: "In the opinion of this House, the declared policy of His Majesty's Government respecting the immediate provision of battleships of the newest type does not sufficiently secure the safety of the Empire."
On March 29, another packed house heard the debate on Balfour's censure motion. Grey, rather than McKenna or Asquith, was the principal government speaker. His speech ranged widely, from the crushing burden of armaments on all countries, to the essential role of the navy in Britain's security, the state of Anglo-German relations in general, and the Admiralty's fears that Germany's expanding capacity, rather than her moderate intentions, might govern German naval construction: "The great countries of Europe are raising enormous revenues and something like half of them are being spent on naval and military preparations… [which are], after all, preparations to kill each other. Surely… this expenditure… becomes a satire… on civilization… If it goes on… sooner or later I believe it will submerge civilization."
Britain, Grey argued, could not unilaterally drop out of the arms race: "If we, alone among the great powers, gave up the competition and sank into a position of inferiority, what good should we do? None whatever… We should cease to count for anything amongst the nations of Europe, and we should be fortunate if our liberty was left, and we did not become the conscript appendage of some stronger power."
Anglo-German relations, Grey believed, were friendly and would remain so as long as both Powers respected each other's vital interests: "I see a wide space in which both of us may walk in peace and amity… In my opinion two extreme things would produce conflict. One is an attempt by us to isolate Germany. No nation of her standing and her position would stand a policy of isolation assumed by neighboring powers… Another thing which would certainly produce a conflict would be the isolation of England attempted by a great Continental Power so as to dominate and dictate the policy of the Continent. That has always been so in history."
Where did Grey find the road to peace?
"If I was asked to name the one thing which would mostly reassure… Europe… I think it would be that the naval expenditure in Germany would be diminished, and that ours was following suit… On what basis would any arrangement have to be proposed? Not the basis of equality. It must be the basis of a superiority of the British Navy. No German, so far as I know, disputes that that is a natural point of view for us."