by Mark Baker
Polly Howard was also in his thoughts. A card addressed to ‘Mrs. Howard, “Polly”’ was sent from Larkhill with a printed verse of greeting from the young soldier ‘on active service’:
I send you thoughts and Christmas greeting
You—perchance—will think of me
May our thoughts—together meeting
Bridge dividing legions of sea.
Polly was certainly thinking of Phillip Schuler across those dividing legions as she nursed their year-old son and her secret love. Whether Schuler even knew of his child is and will always remain unknown.
Finally, at the end of November, the 3rd Division began to mobilise for France. The operation would take six days and, for the first leg of the journey, 87 trains. The Divisional Train was among the first units to move. At 4 p.m., Schuler’s 22nd Company departed for Southhampton and the waiting HMT Hunscraft. Early the next morning they were disembarking at Le Havre. From there it was another train to Ballieul and then by truck to Armentières, on the Belgian border.
Just a few days before they embarked, Schuler had received the first copies of his finished book from the publisher. He immediately posted one back home to Melbourne. On the flyleaf he wrote in his stylish copperplate script, ‘To My Father, In Affectionate Regard, From his Son.’ Eight years after the bitter falling out over Phillip’s refusal to finish law, their reconciliation was complete.
15
The Blame Game
There is nothing certain about war except one side won’t win. The winner is asked no questions—the loser has to answer for everything.
Sir Ian Hamilton1
The evacuation of the last troops from Gallipoli in January 1916 had presaged a disastrous year for Britain’s Asquith government that would end in its defeat. Humiliation at the Dardanelles was followed by the Easter Rising in Dublin, the fall of Kut-al-Amara in Mesopotamia in April and the wholesale slaughter of the Battle of the Somme in July. The first day of fighting on the Somme saw 60,000 British casualties, a third of them killed—almost as many Allied deaths as there had been during the entire eight-month campaign at Gallipoli. In a desperate attempt to stave off defeat in the House of Commons, the government bowed to pressure and convened two commissions of inquiry. One was to examine the disaster in Mesopotamia, the other Gallipoli. Both commissions would meet in closed session and be denied access to sensitive official papers, but still the hearings were an extraordinary indulgence for a nation in the depths of war.
The Dardanelles Commission was established in July 1916 and, in its first phase, took evidence on 89 days between late August and September 1917. The hearings considered all aspects of the planning and implementation of the operations at Gallipoli. Inevitably, a key focus was the conduct of Sir Ian Hamilton as commander-in-chief. The commission’s first chairman was Evelyn Baring, the Earl of Cromer, who had been Britain’s consul-general in Egypt for 24 years until 1907. After Baring’s death in January 1917, Sir William Pickford, an eminent judge and privy councillor, took the chair. The other commissioners were politicians, diplomats and senior military officers.
From the outset, the Gallipoli jury appeared to be stacked against Hamilton. The four MPs were uncontroversial appointments but the diplomats and senior officers were anything but. New Zealand High Commissioner Sir Thomas Mackenzie was joined on the panel by his Australian counterpart, Andrew Fisher—Keith Murdoch’s long-time friend and the man who, as prime minister, had given Murdoch his commission to go to Egypt. Admiral of the Fleet Sir William May took his seat alongside Field Marshal William Nicholson, a peer and former Chief of the Imperial General Staff who had been recalled from retirement at the start of the war to serve on the Committee of Imperial Defence. Irascible and sharp-tongued, ‘Old Nick’ was also a career rival and antagonist of Ian Hamilton dating back to their Boer War days. Hamilton shared his apprehension with Walter Braithwaite, his former chief of staff:
Nick’s appointment caused me to shiver. On the surface he has always been a friend; under the surface he has been, I know, a persistent crabber of your humble servant. In any case his delight in mischief-making will certainly find scope in the Commission. But there is one side of his mind which may save us. He hates K. [Kitchener] a great deal more than he hates me. Not that I think he hates me at all, but he has been jealous of me and has always had a mischievous delight in trying to put a spoke in my wheel.2
The new Australian government of Billy Hughes, who had succeeded Fisher as prime minister in October 1915, was opposed to the establishment of the commission and to the appointment of Fisher as a commissioner. They thought the inquiry, even behind closed doors, was a sign of weakness in wartime and they were concerned about the impact on army recruitment of any negative attention on the Gallipoli campaign and the already burgeoning legend of Anzac heroism. In the end, Hughes agreed to accept the inquiry but on condition that the Australian government was not officially involved. Asquith then confirmed Fisher’s appointment on the basis that he was ‘a nominee of the home government and did not represent Australia’.3 The major Australian newspapers shared the government’s hostility towards the commission. The Age, under the editorship of Frederick Schuler, attacked the move and blamed a ‘series of intrigues, engineered by a group of mischievous political busybodies’.4
Hamilton had lobbied against Fisher’s appointment as a commissioner, writing to Asquith questioning his impartiality and pointing out Fisher’s close relationship with Keith Murdoch:
Mr A.K. Murdoch was introduced to me by Mr Fisher. He would never have got to the Dardanelles had it not been for my respect for Mr Fisher. His letter deprecating the conduct of British generals, staff officers and troops was addressed to Mr Fisher. Mr Fisher is a friend of Mr Murdoch’s. Therefore, the judgment of Mr Fisher might hereafter be held to have been biased in advance.5
The plea got short shrift at 10 Downing Street. Sir Maurice Bonham Carter, Asquith’s principal private secretary, told Hamilton that while his point about the relationship between Fisher and Murdoch had occurred to the prime minister, the Australian government ‘had behaved very well in the matter of Mr Murdoch’s report’. Fisher’s character was such that Asquith ‘does not think he need be biased by Mr Murdoch’s opinions’. Yes, Prime Minister, indeed.
For both Hamilton and Winston Churchill—whose career had also been derailed, temporarily, by the failure at Gallipoli—the Dardanelles Commission was a crucial opportunity to defend their actions and argue the culpability of others. But a naval disaster on the eve of the hearings would constrain the ability of both men to press their case that the failure of the leadership in London to properly support the campaign had denied the success they remained convinced had been within their grasp.
On 5 June 1916 HMS Hampshire hit a German mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands in Scotland with the loss of 650 lives. Among those drowned was Field Marshal Lord Kitchener who was heading to Russia on a secretive mission to meet the Tsar. The military setbacks of the preceding months had significantly eroded support for Kitchener within the government and there was gathering momentum for his removal as Secretary of State for War, but the hero of Khartoum remained an untouchable god in the eyes of most Britons. His sudden and dramatic death made it untenable for those appearing before the commission to argue directly that it was Kitchener’s failure to send sufficient men and matériel at the outset, and his failure, or inability, to properly reinforce Hamilton’s army as the campaign unfolded, that played a pivotal part in the defeat. Hamilton had already been reluctant to criticise his friend and mentor. Now he saw that it was personally and politically impossible to do so, as he counselled Churchill:
I should be utterly done for in my lifetime if any act of mine were to draw out a Government defence of Kitchener. Once my defence becomes looked upon as an attack on a dead hero it would be better for my reputation to lose than to win. Further, although our lines are not quite parallel, I am also quite certain the popular fury thus raised would react against your own c
ase too. It is simply not good enough. As a matter of fact, I don’t mean to attack Kitchener at all although the figures will prove that, wittingly or unwittingly, he did me very badly.6
Hamilton, who still harboured ambitions for another fighting command in a war that clearly had a long way to run, worked hard behind the scenes and at the hearings in defence of his actions at Gallipoli—and in defence of the reputations of his trusted senior officers and the men in the trenches. He saw his task as not about defending or explaining fatal errors but about convincing those now sitting in judgement on the campaign of what had been achieved and what more might have been achieved had the government held its nerve. The challenge, he told Birdwood, was to fight ‘tooth and nail’ for ‘our good name and reputation’:
I have been fated to have to fight for an idea—for a might-have-been. I have been forced in fact to fight before this Commission in vindication of what you and I achieved with our brave troops and also in proving how much more we might have achieved had we been properly supported.7
Hamilton was invited by the commission’s secretary, Grimwood Mears, to propose a number of witnesses who should be summoned to give evidence. High on his list was Phillip Schuler. ‘I put his name into my category of important witnesses, who should without fail be called—not as my witnesses but as the best witnesses,’ Hamilton told Schuler’s close friend Colonel Richard Dowse.8 And he expressly told the commission that Schuler’s evidence would be needed to balance that of Keith Murdoch:
Mr K.A. Murdoch is one of two civilian pressmen who came to the Dardanelles in the capacity of guests. His views have been selected as being worthy of being printed and circulated amongst Cabinet Ministers. I now ask that the other be also given a hearing. His name is Mr Phillip Schuler. He is the son of the Editor of the ‘Age’ newspaper of Melbourne. The only difference between his qualifications and those of Mr Murdoch are that he stayed longer on the Peninsula; that he saw fighting, and that he has since joined and is serving in the ranks.9
In the end, all the witnesses Hamilton proposed were called—except for Schuler. No reason was given. When Schuler wrote to Hamilton from France expressing his disappointment at not being invited to appear, the general made a fresh request to the commission, in mid 1917, for him to be brought to London to give evidence. Again the request was refused without explanation. Had he succeeded, Hamilton later lamented, it might not only have reinforced the case against Murdoch but also have saved Schuler’s life. ‘Why he was not sent for I can only surmise, and I think myself it is probable that the fact that his evidence would have clashed with that of Mr K.A. Murdoch may have had something to do with it.10
At the outset, Hamilton urged the commission to table the letters of both Ashmead-Bartlett and Murdoch, arguing that these ‘were the final causes of a momentous and, I believe, ruinous decision’ to withdraw from the Dardanelles. His request was not granted. By the time Hamilton was called to give evidence in early January 1917, Murdoch’s actions had still not been a focus of the hearings. The general now faced a dilemma: should he go on the offensive in his testimony or avoid giving standing to the machinations of his arch critic.
Despite a warning from Braithwaite that he ‘should not lightly dispense with evidence against Murdoch otherwise you are likely to be had behind your back’, Hamilton prevaricated. In the end he did not mention Murdoch or Ashmead-Bartlett during the two days he appeared as a witness. His decision appears to have been influenced by a charm offensive from Andrew Fisher—who would soon show his hand decisively in defence of his journalist friend. After his first day as a witness, Hamilton told Braithwaite that Fisher had been ‘exceedingly agreeable’ and had asked him no questions:
On leaving the room he shook me warmly by the hand; said I had had a long and tiresome day but—and here he nodded his head and smiled in a sort of way to make me understand I had come out of it splendidly. I have a sort of impression that this is his way of saying, ‘You leave Murdoch alone and I will be nice about you’. Well, if this is so, would I not be wise to play up to his hint? He may sell me, of course, in the secrecy of the conference and go against me all the same.11
Keith Murdoch had his day in court on 5 February 1917. It was a humiliating moment for the journalist who, in the eighteen months since delivering his letter to Andrew Fisher, had propelled himself into a position of remarkable power and influence in London. While his day job involved running a nondescript Antipodean news service in a corner of the London Times office, Murdoch had by late 1916 become in effect Australia’s de facto high commissioner. The ailing Andrew Fisher might have been a long-time friend and the prime minister who had given Murdoch his initial passport to power, but the journalist was quick to usurp Fisher’s London role as soon as the opportunity arose. Billy Hughes had been unhappy with Murdoch’s Gallipoli escapade and the inquiry it helped trigger—and had demanded that in future no Australian correspondents be permitted to visit the front lines without prior approval of the Australian government. But, as Murdoch biographer Desmond Zwar would later write, Hughes saw the journalist and his growing connections to the all-powerful Lord Northcliffe and a clutch of senior politicians and officials as more likely than Fisher to advance his ambitious agenda in Britain:
Hughes had replaced Fisher as Prime Minister and the weary Fisher had gladly accepted the sinecure in London of Australian High Commissioner. Hughes, though, saw the office as having been ill-equipped to project Australia’s image in Britain and turned to Murdoch, not only to have Australia’s voice heard in Fleet Street, but as his personal publicist, guide-to-the-British-mind, fixer, speech writer and errand boy.12
When Hughes arrived in March 1916 at the start of a four-month visit to Britain, Murdoch hosted a private dinner for the prime minister at his apartment. It was attended by a group of the most powerful men in London: David Lloyd George, Lord Northcliffe, Chief of the Imperial General Staff General William Robertson, Colonial Secretary Andrew Bonar Law and Times editor Geoffrey Dawson. As soon as Hughes established his headquarters in a grand suite at the Hotel Cecil, Murdoch was brought in as a key assistant, publicist and political advisor. But several hours of intense questioning before the Dardanelles Commission would expose the shallow foundations on which that prestige had been built. Fortunately for Murdoch, it would be years later before the full details became public.
On the Monday of Murdoch’s appearance before the commission—its 43rd sitting day—chairman Sir William Pickford was joined by Field Marshal Nicholson, Andrew Fisher, Admiral May, Sir Thomas Mackenzie and Welsh MP Walter Roch. If Sir Ian Hamilton had been diffident about directly challenging Murdoch’s conduct when he gave evidence a month earlier, Pickford had no such qualms. The venerable judge quickly assumed the role of prosecutor. After reading verbatim the undertakings Murdoch had given Hamilton to ‘faithfully observe’ any conditions imposed in return for permission to ‘record censored impressions in the London and Australian newspapers’ at Gallipoli, Pickford drew the first of a series of highly damaging admissions from Murdoch about his limited knowledge and expertise in composing the letter to Fisher.
Sir William Pickford: You reported, and I daresay quite properly, to Mr Fisher a good many things that were said. What we chiefly want is what you know of your own knowledge.
Keith Murdoch: I do not think I can help you much because I only formed impressions. That was all I ever claimed to have. While I was there I formed one exceedingly strong impression on which I acted to my utmost power. As to the military operations and even the condition of the army at that time I should think you would be able to get very much sounder and fuller evidence from other people.13
Murdoch claimed that during his ‘four or five days’ ashore at Anzac Cove he had spoken to ‘almost all’ the Australian generals, other Australian officers and men, and ‘some’ English officers. They had left him with the strong impression that ‘the expedition had wholly failed, the armies were in a parlous position, and that the situation was not receiving due cons
ideration in London’. When pressed to elaborate on his sources, Murdoch conceded that he had not obtained information from any British general that the expedition was in serious trouble and that he had not met the English generals whose character and competence he had most severely criticised.
Pickford: It was what you heard other people say about them?
Murdoch: To a large extent, yes—of course, solely it was the impression I formed from the observations of other people. That was inevitable, of course. I could not meet them.
Pickford: Are these criticisms entirely from what you were told by generals and people in responsible positions?
Murdoch: No, I should think, so far as I remember, not a single Australian general criticised a British officer in my hearing.
Pickford: Then was this information from soldiers or from correspondents?
Murdoch: It was from soldiers, and also it was the opinion of some of the correspondents, I think.
Pickford: Did these criticisms come, at any rate to some extent, from information from other correspondents?