A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  The British admiral who received Churchill’s order did not carry it out immediately and, in consequence, Turkey was unaware that Britain had gone to war against her. In Constantinople, Enver still feared that the Turkish apology to Russia might be accepted. To prevent that from happening, he again foiled the intentions of his Cabinet colleagues by inserting into the Turkish note an outrageous allegation that Russia had provoked the attack.24 Predictably the Czar’s government rejected the allegation, issued an ultimatum to the Porte, and on 2 November declared war.

  British naval forces commenced hostile operations against the Ottoman Empire on 1 November. At a dramatic meeting of the Ottoman Cabinet on the night of November 1–2, even the Grand Vizier’s peace faction was obliged to recognize that the empire was now at war, like it or not. Yet no declaration of war was issued from London.

  On 3 November, on instructions from Churchill, British warships bombarded the outer forts of the Dardanelles. Critics later charged that this was a piece of childish petulance on Churchill’s part which alerted Turkey to the vulnerability of the forts. There is no evidence, however, that Turkey responded to the warning. At the time, the chief significance of the bombardment seemed to be its demonstration that hostilities had commenced.

  On 4 November, Asquith confided that “we are now frankly at war with Turkey.”25 The formalities, however, were neglected. It was not until the morning of 5 November that, at a meeting with the Privy Council, the proclamations of war against the Hohenzollern and Habsburg empires were amended to include the Ottoman Empire.

  The relative casualness with which the British drifted into the Ottoman war reflected the attitudes of British Cabinet ministers at the time: it was not a war to which they attached much importance, and they made no great effort to prevent it. They did not regard Turkey as an especially dangerous enemy.

  V

  In London it was still not known—indeed it would not be known until years later—that Enver had taken the initiative in proposing, negotiating, and executing a secret treaty of alliance with Germany before the Admiralty had seized the Turkish battleships. It also was not known that it was the Porte that had seized the Goeben and Breslau, and that it had done so over German protest. In Downing Street the official account was believed, according to which the Kaiser had initiated the transfer to Turkey of the German vessels to replace the Osman and Reshadieh in order to win over to Germany the Turks whom Churchill had alienated.

  It was the common view, therefore, that it was Churchill who had brought about the war with Turkey. Indeed, Lloyd George continued to level the charge against him as late as 1921.26 Souchon and Enver had in fact started the war between Turkey and the Allies, but in the public imagination of the British it was Churchill who had done so.

  Churchill, for his part, began to point out in August 1914—and continued to point out thereafter—that having the Ottoman Empire for an enemy had its advantages. Free at last to cut up the Ottoman Empire and to offer portions of its territory to other countries at the eventual peace settlement, Britain could now hold out the lure of territorial gains in order to bring Italy and the Balkan countries into the war on her side.

  Italy, a latecomer to the pursuit of colonial empire, had come to see the vulnerable Ottoman domains as the principal territories still available for acquisition. She remained anxious to acquire even more Ottoman territory. Eventually, the lure of acquisition helped to bring her into the war on the Allied side.

  The Balkan countries, too, coveted additional territorial gains. For Britain to forge an alliance with all the Balkan countries by the promise of Ottoman territory required the reconciliation of some of their rival ambitions; but if this could be achieved, such a combination would bring powerful forces to bear against the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, and offered the prospect of helping bring the war against Germany to a swift and successful conclusion.

  Already on 14 August, Asquith noted that “Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, has a great scheme on foot for a federation of Balkan States against Germany and Austria…”27 On 21 August, Asquith characterized a number of his ministers as looking to Italy, Rumania, or Bulgaria as potential allies of importance; Lloyd George as being “keen for Balkan confederation” and “Winston violently anti-Turk.” He himself, however, was “very much against any aggressive action vis-à-vis Turkey wh. wd. excite our Mussulmans in India & Egypt.”28 Churchill was not so impetuous as that made him sound. In fact he had taken the time and trouble to communicate personally with Enver and other Ottoman leaders who were hoping to keep their country neutral. He had given up on them two months too soon; but it was only when he had become convinced that there was no chance of keeping Turkey out of the war that he had swung around to pointing out the advantages of having her in it.

  By the end of August, Churchill and Lloyd George were enthusiastic advocates of the Balkan approach. On 31 August Churchill wrote a private letter to Balkan leaders urging the creation of a confederation of Bulgaria, Serbia, Rumania, Montenegro, and Greece to join the Allies. On 2 September he initiated private talks with the Greek government to discuss the form that military cooperation between their two countries might take in an offensive operation against the Ottoman Empire.

  At the end of September, Churchill wrote to Sir Edward Grey that “in our attempt to placate Turkey we are crippling our policy in the Balkans. I am not suggesting that we should take aggressive action against Turkey or declare war on her ourselves, but we ought from now to make arrangements with the Balkan States, particularly Bulgaria, without regard to the interests or integrity of Turkey.” He concluded his additional remarks by adding that “All I am asking is that the interests and integrity of Turkey shall no longer be considered by you in any efforts which are made to secure common action among the Christian Balkan States.”29

  Grey and Asquith were more cautious in their approach, and less enthusiastic about the proposed Balkan Confederation than were Churchill and Lloyd George, but in at least one respect their thinking evolved in a parallel way. In order to persuade Turkey to remain neutral, the representatives of the British government eventually had been instructed to give assurances that, if she did so, Ottoman territorial integrity would be respected. From this there followed a converse proposition, that Grey had made explicit as early as 15 August, “that, on the other hand, if Turkey sided with Germany and Austria, and they were defeated, of course we could not answer for what might be taken from Turkey in Asia Minor.”30

  When the Ottoman Empire entered the war—pulled into it by Churchill as it seemed then, pushed into it by Enver and Souchon as it seems now—the conclusion that British policy-makers drew therefore seemed to be inescapable. In a speech delivered in London on 9 November 1914, the Prime Minister predicted that the war had “rung the death-knell of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe, but in Asia.”31

  Earlier in 1914, Sir Mark Sykes, the Tory M.P. who was his party’s leading expert on Turkish affairs, had warned the House of Commons that “the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire must be the first step towards the disappearance of our own.”32 Wellington, Canning, Palmerston, and Disraeli had all felt that preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was of importance to Britain and to Europe. Yet in a little less than a hundred days the British government had completely reversed the policy of more than a hundred years, and now sought to destroy the great buffer empire that in times past British governments had risked and waged wars to safeguard.

  The Cabinet’s new policy was predicated on the theory that Turkey had forfeited any claim to enjoy the protection of Britain. In the turmoil of war the Asquith government had lost sight of one of the most important truths about traditional British foreign policy: that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire was to be protected not in order to serve the best interests of Turkey but in order to serve the best interests of Britain.

  In turn, the British decision to dismantle the Ottoman Empire finally brought into play the assumption that Europeans had shared about the Midd
le East for centuries: that its post-Ottoman political destinies would be taken in hand by one or more of the European powers.

  Thus the one thing which British leaders foresaw in 1914 with perfect clarity was that Ottoman entry into the war marked the first step on the road to a remaking of the Middle East: to the creation, indeed, of the modern Middle East.

  PART II

  KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM LOOKS AHEAD

  8

  KITCHENER TAKES COMMAND

  I

  During the summer and autumn of 1914, as the Ottoman Empire was drifting into the war, an important new governmental appointment in London was beginning to affect British policy in the Middle East. It began, as so many things did, with Winston Churchill.

  On 28 July 1914, the same day that he initiated the seizure of the Turkish vessels, Churchill head a luncheon meeting with Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener to discuss the deepening international crisis. As proconsul in Egypt, the veteran commander of Britain’s imperial armies was responsible for the security of the Suez Canal and of the troops from India who were to be transported through it in the event of war. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, was responsible for the naval escort of the troopships on their long voyage to Europe; and over lunch the young politician and the old soldier exchanged views.

  Churchill told Kitchener that “If war comes, you will not go back to Egypt.”1 It was not what the field marshal wanted to hear. Kitchener had come to Britain intending to stay only long enough to attend the 17 July ceremonies elevating him to the rank and title of Earl Kitchener of Khartoum; he was anxious to return to his post as British Agent and Consul—General in Egypt as soon as possible. His eyes had always been turned toward the East; he told King George that he wanted to be appointed Viceroy of India when that post became available as scheduled in 1915, though he feared that “the politicians” would block his appointment.2 The crusty, bad-tempered Kitchener loathed politicians.

  Even the disintegrating international situation could not keep him in London. Early in August he traveled to Dover to catch a Channel steamer; the plan was that he would take the train from Calais to Marseilles, and there would board a cruiser for Egypt. Shortly before noon on 3 August, he boarded the steamer at Dover, and complained impatiently when it failed to set off for Calais at the scheduled departure time.

  As it happened, his departure was about to be cancelled rather than delayed. The previous evening, in the smoking room of Brooks’s, a London club, someone who fell into conversation with a Conservative Member of Parliament remarked that the War Office was in an absolutely chaotic state and that it was a pity that Kitchener had not been asked to take it over. Later that evening, the M.P. reported his conversation to two of his party’s leaders who were in a semi-private room of the club discussing the international situation. Andrew Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson—the leaders to whom the conversation was reported—took the matter up with Arthur Balfour, the former Conservative Prime Minister, who passed the suggestion on to Churchill, with whom he was on good terms.

  On the morning of 3 August—the day Germany declared war on France—an article appeared in The Times, written by its military correspondent, urging the appointment of Kitchener to head the War Office. That same morning, Churchill saw the Prime Minister and proposed Kitchener’s appointment, though apparently without indicating that the proposal came from the Conservatives as well as from himself. Churchill’s notes indicate that he thought that Asquith had accepted the proposal at the time; but in fact the Prime Minister was reluctant to make the appointment, and decided instead to keep Kitchener in Britain merely in an advisory position.

  On board the Channel steamer, which had not yet left Dover, Kitchener received a message from the Prime Minister asking him to return immediately to London. The field marshal at first refused; and it was with difficulty that he was persuaded to disembark. His fears were justified; back in London he found that Asquith did not seem to be thinking of a regular position for him, let alone one with clearly defined powers and responsibilities. Urged on by his colleagues, Kitchener decided to force the issue; he went to see the Prime Minister for a one-hour meeting on the evening of 4 August—the night Britain decided to go to war, by which time German armies were already overrunning Belgium—and stated that, if obliged to remain in London, he would accept no position less than Secretary of State for War.

  Pushed by politicians and the press, the Prime Minister gave way the next day, and Kitchener was appointed War Minister. As he wrote: “K. was (to do him justice) not at all anxious to come in, but when it was presented to him as a duty he agreed. It is clearly understood that he has no politics, & that his place at Cairo is kept open—so that he can return to it when peace comes. It is a hazardous experiment, but the best in the circumstances, I think.”3 Assuming, as did nearly everybody else, that the war would last no more than a few months, Asquith did not replace Kitchener as Agent and Consul-General in Egypt; he thought that the field marshal would be returning to his post there shortly. On 6 August Kitchener took up his new duties in the War Office in Whitehall.

  Lord Kitchener lived in a borrowed house in London, making it plain that he did not intend to stay.* It was located just off the intersection of Carlton House Terrace and Carlton Gardens, less than a five-minute walk from the War Office, which meant that he could spend almost every waking moment on the job. He arose at 6:00 a.m., arrived at his office at 9:00 a.m., generally took a cold lunch there, returned to his temporary home at 6:00 p.m. to read the evening papers and nap, and then after dinner would read official cables until late at night.4 The glass or two of wine with dinner and the nightly scotch and soda that had been his comforts in Egypt were forsworn; at the request of George V he had pledged to set a national example by drinking no alcoholic beverages during the war.

  Asquith’s reluctance to bring the famous soldier into the Cabinet seems to have been prompted by the fear that, as Secretary for War, Kitchener, rather than the Prime Minister, would emerge as Britain’s wartime leader. No great soldier had served in a major office of state since the Duke of Wellington’s ministry nearly a century before; and no serving army officer had been included in a Cabinet since General George Monk, who in 1660 restored the monarchy and then was rewarded with high office. The principle of civilian authority had been upheld jealously since then; but Asquith felt obliged to subordinate it to his urgent need for Field Marshal Kitchener’s services.

  Kitchener was a figure of legend—a national myth whose photo hung on walls throughout the kingdom. After he took up his Cabinet appointment, large crowds would gather to watch him enter and leave the War Office each day. As the Prime Minister’s daughter later wrote:

  He was an almost symbolic figure and what he symbolized, I think, was strength, decision, and above all success…[E]verything that he touched ‘came off’. There was a feeling that Kitchener could not fail. The psychological effect of his appointment, the tonic to public confidence, were instantaneous and overwhelming. And he at once gave, in his own right, a national status to the government.5

  The public, it was said, did not reason about Kitchener, but simply trusted him completely, saying “Kitchener is there; it is all right.”6

  In the past he had always brought things to a successful conclusion. He had avenged the murder of General Charles George Gordon in the fall of Khartoum by destroying the empire of the Dervishes and reconquering the Sudan. The French had then attempted to intrude upon Britain’s imperial domains, but in 1898 Kitchener firmly confronted them at the fort of Fashoda in the Sudan, and the French contingent backed down and withdrew from the fort. In South Africa the Boer War had begun badly; then Kitchener came to take charge and brought it to a victorious conclusion. As commander of the armies of India in the early twentieth century, he had imposed his will as decisively as he had done in Egypt.

  The far-off outposts of empire in which he won his brilliant victories lent him their glamor. Distance made him seem at once magical and larger-
than-life, like a sphinx presiding over the desert. A lone, insecure, and secretive figure who used a small group of aides as a wall against the world, he appeared instead to be the strong and silent hero of popular mythology. His painful shyness was not seen as such; his fear of his political colleagues appeared to be disdain. A young Foreign Office clerk who watched the field marshal at a gathering with the Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey, and David Lloyd George, recorded in his diary that “Kitchener looked like an officer who has got mixed up with a lot of strolling players and is trying to pretend he doesn’t know them.”7

  Tall, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with bushy eyebrows, bristling moustache, cold blue eyes set widely apart, and an intimidating glower, he towered physically over his fellows and looked the part for which destiny and the popular press had cast him. From his earliest campaigns, he was fortunate in the journalists who followed his career and who created his public image. He was fortunate, too, in the timing of his career, which coincided with the rise of imperial sentiment, literature, and ideology in Britain. Disraeli, Kipling, A. E. W. Mason (author of Four Feathers), Lionel Curtis (a founder of the Round Table, the imperialist quarterly), John Buchan, and others created the tidal wave of feeling on the crest of which he rode.

  George Steevens of the Daily Mail, who was perhaps the leading war correspondent of his time, told his readers in 1900 that Kitchener’s “precision is so unhumanly unerring he is more like a machine than a man.”8 Steevens wrote a book about the Sudan campaign, telling how Kitchener (then sirdar, or commander, of the Egyptian army) led his armies south over nearly a thousand miles of rock and sand, from the waters of the Nile Valley to lands where rain never falls, to conquer a country of a million square miles. Ignoring the episodes in which Kitchener’s generalship was open to criticism, the book dwelt at length on the characteristic organizational ability that derived from the sirdar’s background as an engineering officer. According to Steevens, Kitchener prepared his movements with such care that “he has never given battle without making certain of an annihilating victory…”9 Steevens wrote that “the man has disappeared…there is no man Herbert Kitchener, but only the Sirdar, neither asking affection nor giving it. His officers and men are wheels in the machine: he feeds them enough to make them efficient, and works them as mercilessly as he works himself.”10