by John Fairley
For one thing, there was a main obstacle that all the editor’s screams of triumph could not hurdle. And this was the fact that, contrary to Bottomley’s version, the war was still going on in its desperate, weary way. Continuing to be confronted with this irrefutable evidence that he had got it wrong, having been challenged by much of his Western Front readership on the grounds of inaccurate and incomplete reporting, and having personally encountered the Étaples mutineers, Horatio Bottomley started to shift his ground. By 6 October he was writing:
I asked the boys to jot down the main matters of complaint; and I think they are summarized under the headings of Leave, Pay, Field Punishment, Military Policing, Short Rations, and Cushy Posts at the back which might be filled by wounded officers and others – thus releasing able men for the trenches.
I discussed these, and other questions, with Sir Douglas Haig and various officers – and I am hopeful that good results may follow.
I have also made it my business, since my return, to see Lord Derby personally upon the subject, and I have his assurance that every legitimate complaint – especially in the matter of Leave – shall receive immediate and sympathetic consideration. And I am certain that he is sincere. At any rate, I am proud to be Tommy’s Ambassador.
‘Tommy’s Ambassador’ had listed some of the causes of the Étaples mutiny. But a combination of censorship – despite a later claim that he was set apart from such restrictions – and his own intense desire to push Haig’s line meant that in his first two dispatches from the front he had chosen to keep quiet about the revolt.
However, in the John Bull issue of 13 October, Bottomley, challenged in the interval in letters from incensed soldiers to defy the censor, decided on a course of action that would make it appear that he had done so. One particular letter had dared him to write about the mutiny, his meeting with Toplis and the five other mutiny leaders at Étaples. In a short outburst that broke all the rules of the war game, except those of exact identification, Bottomley let just a hint of the truth slip out.
This is what he published:
Amongst the many letters from soldiers which my recent articles have brought me is this one: ‘Why are you keeping back such a lot? In our Division we all know that you know things that you are not telling us. We know WHERE you went, and with WHOM you talked, and WHAT you saw. Out with it and damn the Censor. You know WHAT I mean.’ My friend is right. I DO know WHAT he means, and I assure him that if the censor were the only thing in the way, I would get over that difficulty somehow. As a matter of fact, I never trouble that mysterious official to read my articles before publication – my view being that if I am incapable of determining what is proper to publish during the war, then I don’t understand my job as editor of this Journal. But that attitude, unique, I believe, in the journalistic world, imposes upon me a serious responsibility of being my own censor. Consequently, I have been constrained to hold back much that I have seen and heard. All the same, that letters haunts me. I don’t like the idea of Tommy thinking that I am ‘keeping anything back’. He must remember, however, that John Bull is very keenly followed in Germany. Every line is scrutinised – and I have reason to believe that, since my visit to the Front, the journal has been subjected to closer scrutiny than ever. I am bound, therefore, to exercise considerable caution in what I say.
Then, under the sub-heading, ‘What I Must Not Tell’, Bottomley proceeded to list innocuous events he had witnessed in France, under separate paragraph introductions reading, ‘I should like to tell you …’ The seventh one read, ‘I should like to tell you how a German plot to spread mutiny in a certain Reinforcement Camp was squelched.’
It was less than half a truth, calculated to restore his standing in the eyes of his mass soldier readership, and at the same time keep faith with their tight-lipped generals. If there had been a suggestion from Whitehall, which there was not, that a mutiny would first have to exist before it could be ‘spread’, Bottomley, a pompous expert in semantics, would simply have retorted that on reflection he should have used the word, ‘create’.
In the event of awkward questions, Bottomley had left Haig with a clear way out, but the first part of his gamble had failed. Too many troops knew the real truth. The high esteem in which the editor had been held, and the circulation of his journal, both started to plummet. Five years later in peacetime England those same troops demonstrated their bitter sense of having been let down. Bottomley, sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for fraud, boasted that at least 25,000 ex-servicemen would march on Whitehall in protest. Not one veteran troubled to turn out.
In October 1917, they knew that Bottomley’s allegation that the Germans had either plotted or attempted to spread the mutiny was false. To this day there is no evidence that the Germans even knew about the mutiny at the time it happened. Even had they done so it is unlikely that they would have been in a position to stir things up further. In the particular week beginning 9 September they were too busy quelling their own mutiny at Wilhelmshaven where German sailors were shot for throwing officers from four warships overboard.
Altogether, the 13 October issue of John Bull was a disastrous one. Having enraged his military readers with a casual dismissal of their mutinous activities, Bottomley went on to depress his civilian readership with a further change of emphasis away from his original, ridiculous standpoint that the war was already won. He wrote:
I should much like to tell you the date at which, and the circumstances in which, in the opinion of Sir Douglas Haig, the war will end.
But to do so would clearly be giving the enemy a hint as to both the time and the nature of the further blows which are in preparation. And I have gone as near as I felt safe in going when I said that nothing has occurred to modify the Field Marshal’s confidence, of a complete, and early victory. For the rest, you must read between the lines and look at those other ‘Lines’ where our boys are making mincemeat of the foe.
Bottomley’s change of tense when referring to the state of the war completed his climb-down. The use of the words ‘will end’, plus a very vague prophecy about a Christmas peace, meant that the growing suspicion of his readers was confirmed. They could settle back again into their state of deep despair. But the talent for self-delusion and the policy of attempting to visit it upon others was not exclusive to Bottomley. The War Cabinet had to keep up its own spirit in those dark days.
It had been the practice of Haig’s personal staff when he visited the front, which was far too seldom, to select thin and hungry-looking German prisoners-of-war for him to inspect. Tough, well-nourished, hard-fighting Prussians were kept well in the background, so creating the impression that the German fighting machine was creaking.
Although Haig played along with this little game by pretending ignorance of it, it was precisely the ploy he adopted when General Sir ‘Wullie’ Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, visited Flanders between 24 and 26 September. As the minutes of the War Cabinet meeting of 27 September recorded, ‘The Prime Minister remarked on the poor condition of the German prisoners-of-war he had seen on the 26th instant, and upon the very good spirits which prevailed among all ranks of our own army that he had seen and conversed with.’
Haig had every right not to want the very alarming story of Étaples to leak to the enemy, or even to his own army in general, but he had no justification for concealing information about the state of morale of his troops from the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. The bishop had suspected correctly when he wrote to the Cabinet, ‘I imagine the Officers in Command are not willing to report such things.’
However, Haig did have very strong personal reasons for taking the risk that his cover-up from the Cabinet en masse might be found out. Lloyd George was still angling for Haig’s dismissal, and seeking support from within the Cabinet towards that end. The Étaples mutiny might have made a platform from which the Prime Minister could have launched a new assault. And Haig knew it.
What
he did not know was that he almost certainly owed his continuation in command to the absence of Lloyd George from the Cabinet meeting of 10 September. On that day, Haig, from his headquarters half a dozen miles up the road from Étaples at Montreuil, was restricting himself to setting up an Étaples ‘Board of Enquiry to collect evidence as to the occurrences on 9th September’. Confronted with serious unrest at Shoreham and elsewhere, the Cabinet was at that moment contenting itself with resolutions calling for train space for troops on the Brighton run, separation from Dominion comrades, and an improvement in the amount and quality of bully beef. A renowned stickler for detail, the chances were that the Prime Minister would have demanded further information about that ‘other place’.
But Haig’s luck held. The Prime Minister was again absent when the minutes were approved at a Cabinet meeting on 12 September. And when he visited France and Belgium later in the month, there was no way in which he would be allowed to catch up on the information.
Like the Prussian prisoners, the Étaples mutineers were kept well to the rear on the day. They were not among the high-morale troops whom David Lloyd George ‘saw and conversed with’.
In Haig’s view all attempts at truth could be abandoned in the cause of war effort, coupled with the necessity of preserving his own image at all costs. Before the Prime Minister landed in France the Commander-in-Chief had seen Commandant Thomson safely off the premises and then issued two public statements denying ‘that any discontent exists in our ranks’ and that ‘armed force has ever been used in France to compel the Chinese labourers to do their work or to remain in any locality’.
Even by his own high standards those two denials amounted to monumental mendacity.
12
Brigadier-General Andrew Thomson unbelievably went on to cause the army further heartache after he was fired from Étaples.
The official reason put out by the High Command for Thomson’s removal from the position of base commandant and his reversion in rank from temporary brigadier-general to colonel was ‘illness’, and in the light of what was known about his drinking habits, this may have been partially true. Thomson left Boulogne on 23 October 1917, and went straight to the Somerset home of his brother-in-law who had just been permanently invalided out of the army on an entirely legitimate basis.
Haig had rightly calculated that Thomson would keep quiet about the true reason for his dismissal. The former commandant had every reason to do so. Three months later he got his reward. He was reinstated to his former rank, and dispatched apparently out of harm’s way as commandant of British prisoners-of-war in neutral Holland. He could hardly be risked on active service and the army was keen to see him out of England.
Thomson’s new Dutch command was the result of one of the ‘side-shows’ of the First World War. The 1,500 British internees whom he arrived to take over in the northern Dutch university town of Groningen were the remnants of Winston Churchill’s ill-starred attempts to save Antwerp from German capture in October 1914: a belated, hopeless, doomed intervention by 6,000 men of the Naval Brigade for which Churchill was subsequently bitterly attacked on the grounds that much prestige was lost by a defeat which was eminently predictable.
In 1914 these men of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, completely without training, had been played on to trains by a brass band at Dunkirk, their only instruction being that of their commandant, Lieutenant-Colonel George Cornwallis West: ‘Remember you are British, and I am sure you will give a good account of yourselves.’ The Naval Brigade tried to do just that. But their weapons were inadequate, their training nonexistent and they arrived too late. They were, moreover, hopelessly engulfed by thousands of fleeing Belgian civilians. Not even a desperate, on-the-spot intervention by the First Lord of the Admiralty himself could save the day.
The astonished troops had encountered their supremo in the midst of confusion on a road outside Antwerp. Churchill had been on his way to confer with Naval Brigade commanders when he was caught up in the maelstrom of fleeing Belgian refugees and British soldiers. He presented an extraordinary sight, dressed in a flowing dark-blue cloak and yachting cap, as he jumped from his car and vainly tried to disentangle the jumble by yelling orders from a vantage point on an embankment. Not even Churchill’s personal presence could stem the retreat from Antwerp. Fifteen hundred members of the Naval Brigade strayed across the border into Holland. There they were interned for the duration.
They lived comfortably enough in comparison with those left to fight on, occupying three large wooden huts known as Timbertown, with adjacent huts serving as bath-houses, recreation hall, workshops. Although they suffered the deprivations common to all long-term prisoners-of-war, together with the acute anxiety caused by the uncertainty of the length of their detention, their fears, frustrations and sense of bitterness were not reflected in the camp’s monthly magazine.
But with the arrival of Thomson at The Hague as their guardian angel, all that was to change. Thomson had evidently learned few lessons from Étaples. He was never mentioned by name in the prisoners’ periodical, but his remote dictatorship immediately made itself felt. In the June 1918 edition of the camp magazine, under the heading EDITORIAL, the whole of page 1 was a blank with just the one word ‘Censored’ printed across the middle. Page 2, however, provided some explanation.
We regret having to insert so many blank pages this month but at the last moment the above article, together with the one on the hunger demonstration that took place during May, has been censored. Why, we do not know, for both contained nothing but bare facts and a decidedly moderate record of the ‘protest’ and the general feeling of the Camp.
While apologizing to our readers, many of whom we know look to us to give a true and concise view of our life here, we trust that they will recognize that our inability to furnish a full account of what has lately happened in our midst is due to the nature of what transpired.
The amazing fact was that the rule of Thomson had provoked another outburst of bitterness and a demonstration of protest. The magazine went on angrily to refer to the ‘isolated minority’ at the top, whose only help was to offer ‘heroic’ expressions such as ‘Grin and bear it’, ‘Be British’. The interned troops were hard hit by inflation and inadequate food, and Thomson’s empty words produced only resentment. As the magazine commented next month:
The whole atmosphere is pregnant with bitterness. It is idle and wrong to say that the rations are sufficient for the physical needs of developing young men, and it is just as wrong to compare our position with that of the Dutch populace at large. Rationed though they may be, they can augment their allowances with foods and delicacies that are beyond the range of our purses: for most of the Camp’s members have to depend upon their one pound a month allotment with which to supplement their scanty rations, while those who are married and possess families are dependent upon less.
The face value of the pound in this country is at present sixteen shillings and four pence, while the cost of foodstuffs has doubled and trebled itself.
And, in October:
We are not whining, and we have no wish to suggest that we are lacking in fortitude and courage, but the common, ordinary obligations we owe to country and self must be consulted and carefully safeguarded.
The extremely serious mood of these editorials threatening further discord and disruption must have got through even to Thomson, in his position as one of the ‘isolated minority’, and made him glad that the war finally came to an end the following month. With the Armistice, the Naval Brigade at last went home to Britain. Brigadier-General Thomson, on the other hand, took his demobilization and departed for Switzerland with his wife. He would never return to his native country.
13
Armistice Day 1918 in Nottingham was subdued compared with the wild scenes which took place in London, or even in the nearby towns of Derby and Leicester. Practical problems prevented, as the local paper put it, ‘the repetition of the orgies associated with the relief of Mafeking’. Ma
ny of the pubs had no beer and shut their doors. The street lights were left shrouded and darkened along all but the main roads as the council did not have enough men to remove the anti-Zeppelin covers. The church bells rang out only intermittently, for many of the change-ringers were still in France. Northern Command announced that fireworks would be permitted. But fireworks were hard to come by.
For too many Nottingham folk, in any case, joy was not the emotion that first rose in their hearts that afternoon. An anonymous parent had reminded them in a letter to that morning’s papers:
It would be a gracious and kindly action on the part of the general public if, when peace is celebrated, they would modify their gaiety in consideration for the feelings of countless numbers who have been so sadly bereaved and for whom there will be no homecoming family reunion but only the memory of a nameless grave.
I am, sir, etc.,
Bereaved of our only child
Others were apprehensive of what the peace might bring. Two of Nottingham’s notable gentry made cautionary speeches. Lord Henry Bentinck told a large gathering in Pennyfoot Street that Nottinghamshire alone had 78,000 men serving in the forces, for whom there awaited few jobs, poor wages and scandalously neglected housing. A few streets away the Duke of Portland announced that there could be no mawkish sentiment towards those who had brought untold horrors upon the world, and that all of them, from the Kaiser downwards, should receive the retribution they deserved. He trusted the government would restrict the flow of undesirable foreigners. Great Britain should not be a dumping-place for those who – he was poised to use strong words – were ‘the scum of the Continent’.