May 1915 2: A Stepping-Stone To The End Of Democracy

The munitions scandal, the Dardanelles embarrassment, open warfare at the Admiralty, stalemate on the Western Front, criticism in the papers, riots in the streets and growing unrest in Parliament brought disruption to the heart of Herbert Asquith’s cabinet in May 1915. To make matters worse, the Prime Minister was in the midst of a personal crisis which consumed his every thought and weakened his capacity to carry through changes that the Secret Elite required.

Venetia Stanley, the young socialite with whom Asquith corresponded so intimately that she would be seen today as a high-level security risk, announced that she intended to marry his friend Edwin Montagu and brought an end to their strange and potentially dangerous relationship. Indeed Churchill viewed Asquith’s relationship with Venetia as ‘England’s greatest security risk.’ [1] For nearly three years an infatuated Prime Minister had written to her on a daily basis, often more than that. He penned love letters between Cabinet meetings, detailing political and national intrigues, sharing private thoughts about his friends and colleagues, revealing state secrets and entrusting her with highly confidential government information.

Distracted by his addiction to the beautiful 27 year-old aristocrat, the Prime Minister was inattentive at Cabinet meetings and important debates in the House of Commons. He actually wrote to her during a crucial Cabinet meeting which was discussing the possibility of Italy entering the war – and just days before the disastrous Gallipoli invasion – admitting, ‘I have never written to you under quite such peculiar conditions: for every 2 or 3 minutes I am constrained to burst or break into the debate, so I think I will bring this to a close now…’ [2]

Consider the sequence of events. On 12 May Asquith was shattered when, out of the blue, Venetia informed him that she intended to marry his friend. Jealousy and despair consumed the 63 year-old father of seven like a spurned, love-sick teenager. Was this part of the reason why the War Council was not convened for five and a half weeks? The government was disorganised at best and incoherent when it came to overall strategy. Asquith was drowning in a sea of self-pity and criticism at a time when the Secret Elite were demanding firm leadership.

There were major riots in Liverpool following the sinking of the Lusitania. On 13 May The Times stirred matters further by carrying a warning about ‘the coming German aerial attack on London’, and riots spread to the streets of the Capital. [3] By the time that the War Council had been assembled on 14 May, the shell shortage crisis had been headlined in the press and Colonel Repington’s report in The Times shook the nation.

The Secret Elite, of course, knew all about the shell crisis well in advance of the public declaration. [4] Milner himself had been forewarned of the report some three days before, and wrote to his life-long friend Harry Birchenough, an inner-circle member of the Secret Elite, [5] that he had had his fill of ‘the tomfoolery of politicians’ and added that ‘we have not much more time to use in fumbling’. [6] Admiral Fisher resigned his post as first Sea Lord on 15 May in disgust at the naval attack on the Dardanelles and the Conservative party homed in on this as a reason to force change on the Prime Minister. Asquith was in a deep depression. He later told Venetia that they were the most miserable days of his life. [7] It was under these constraints that he had to face the fact that the Secret Elite demanded change.

Milner believed that the answer lay in the proper selection of men for key posts in government. [8] His men. For the time being Asquith survived the cull because he epitomised the preservation of national unity. Removing him from the premiership in May 1915 would have required time to manipulate public opinion and time was of the essence. Decisions were clearly taken behind closed doors. The given story is that on 17 May, the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, whom Lloyd George considered a personal friend, [9] met with him at the Treasury, away from the glare of Parliament, to agree their strategy. Thereafter, Lloyd George went to 10 Downing Street to see Asquith in private and presented the arguments for a coalition government. The option that Asquith might resign was never publicly voiced, but given his state of mind over Venetia it surely must have been considered.

Bonar Law was then brought by Lloyd George to the Cabinet Room to talk directly to the Prime Minister. We are told that within fifteen short minutes Asquith had agreed to put an end to ten years of Liberal government and embrace a coalition with the Conservatives. He had no option. Greater men than he had decided on the need for change. While the speed of his capitulation has long raised comment, Asquith had always been part of the establishment cabal. The protagonists – they could hardly be deemed conspirators – went through a charade of sending and replying to official letters in which Bonar Law suggested ‘some change in the constitution of the government…if we are to retain a sufficient measure of public confidence to conduct the war to a successful conclusion’. [10] Thus Asquith retained his dignity by appearing to invite the Conservative leader to ‘join forces in a joint administration’. His words appeared magnanimous. He extended the invitation to join a Cabinet which represented ‘all parties of the State’ including the leaders of the Irish and Labour Parties. [11]

On 19 May he explained his intentions in the House of Commons: ‘Steps are in contemplation which involve the reconstruction of the Government on a broader, personal and political basis.’ He then clarified three points: ‘The first is, that any change that takes place will not affect the offices of the Head of the Government or of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs….The second is, that there is absolutely no change of any kind in contemplation in the policy of the country in regard to the continued prosecution of the War with every possible energy and by means of every available resource. The third and last point …  is this: Any reconstruction that may be made will be for the purposes of the War alone…’ [12]

Bold words, but the political horse-trading for ministries and high office came at the insistence of the Secret Elite. The government had been reshuffled but wholesale change was not an option. For a start, Asquith and Sir Edward Grey remained in post and, distressed though he was by Venetia’s stunning decision, the Prime Minister managed to negotiate many of his own men into the most important offices.

Lloyd George was ‘temporarily’ moved to lead a Ministry of Munitions with virtually unfettered powers to control and organise production. Kitchener, untouchable, remained at the War Office. Churchill was thrown to the wolves. His removal from the Admiralty had been the one absolute condition laid down by Bonar Law. The man who had reorganised the British Army from 1906-11, Richard Haldane, was sacrificed to pubic perception that he was too ‘pro-German’.

Churchill’s replacement was Arthur Balfour, a key member of the Secret Elite’s inner circle. [13] Andrew Bonar Law was made Secretary of State for the Colonies. Few realised the importance of the changes that took place in the lower profile ranks of government. If the clouds which had enveloped Asquith appeared to shift towards a bluer, more placid sky, his long-term outlook in government was darkened by an influx of Milner’s friends and associates from within the ranks of the Secret Elite.

In their first step towards taking over complete, undemocratic control of the British government, the Secret Elite moved other political place men into position. Lord Lansdowne was given a Cabinet post without portfolio. Lord Curzon became Privy Seal. Austen Chamberlain got the India Office, Lord Selborne, the Presidency of the Board of Agriculture. Walter Long the Presidency of the Local Government Board. Sir Edward Carson became the highest law officer in the land as Attorney General. F E Smith was installed as Carson’s second in command in the post of Solicitor General. Lord Robert Cecil became Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office and Arthur Steel-Maitland Under Secretary at the Colonial Office. [14] To a man, each was identified by Professor Quigley as intimately linked to the Secret Elite. Given that Lloyd George had taken overall responsibility for munitions, the most high profile of posts, and the burning issue in the public mind, the Secret Elite emerged from the 1915 reshuffle with its agents in control of much of the war production in Britain. Munitions, shipping, engineering, the railways, farming and local government were in their hands.

Milner took no part in the reconstructed government. He would not be shackled by collective responsibility. Asquith had not been swept away by the confluence of national scandals and personal distress, and Milner felt that the re-shuffling of ministerial places was no answer to either the leadership problem or the determined control needed to win the war and promote the dominance of English values. [15] What had the Prime Minister insisted in Parliament? ‘ No change in Policy.’ That just would not do. Milner’s men contemptuously called Asquith ‘Squiffy’, a reference to his frequent drinking, and resented the fact that he had denied their leader any place in the central direction of war. [16]

Milner himself expressed no such sentiment. He knew that the policies which the Secret Elite were determined to put in place would be unpopular. Asquith still had a role to play fronting a government which could more easily introduce the vital changes which the Secret Elite wanted. One of his key supporters, F S Oliver, wrote, ‘Squiff and Squiffery must go “Liberalism” in the worst sense of that vile word…is dead – dead – dead. Squiff was due to be buried under quicklime (along with all his horrid sort) [17] Yes, Liberalism was dead, but it didn’t know it. By staying out of government Milner was free to attack the last vestiges of laissez faire, and his main objective was to persuade the nation that compulsory conscription was essential for victory. How else could the war effort be controlled? How else could the country retain the engineers and skilled workforce which made the weapons of war?

But first the munitions debacle had to be solved. Lloyd George was tasked with the first and Milner shouldered responsibility for the second. Whether Asquith approved or not, greater changes were on the way. His ‘National Government’ was not a solution; it was simply a stepping stone towards a complete take-over by the Secret Elite.

[1] Annabel Venning, The Priapic PM who wrote Love Letters to his Mistress as he sent a Generation to die in the Trenches, Daily Mail, 27 April, 2012.
[2]  Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, pp. 551-2.
[3]  The Times, 13 May 1915.
[4]  A M Gollin, Proconsul In Politics, p. 257.
[5]  Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[6]  Gollin, Proconsul,  p. 254.
[7]  Brock, Letters,  p. 596.
[8]  Gollin, Proconsul, p. 256.
[9] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, vol. 1, p. 135.
[10] Bonar Law to Asquith, 17 May 1915.
[11] The Great War, The Illustrated History of the First World War, edited by Wilson and Hammerton, vol. 5, pp. 67-8.
[12] Hansard House of Commons Debate 19 May 1915, vol 71 cc2392-3.
[13] Quigley,  The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[14] Ibid., p. 141.
[15] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 266.
[16] Ibid., p. 273.
[17] Amery Papers, Oliver to Amery, 23 July 1915.

May 1915 1: Democracy – Not Fit For Purpose

The Secret Elite have always preferred to remain anonymous and wield power through carefully selected political agents and puppets. Aware that the possession of real power is far more important than the appearance of power on the political stage, it matters little to them which parties sit in government at Westminster as long as they control them. Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Asquith’s government of May 1915 to December 1916, and later chairman of the Midland Bank, admitted, ‘I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create money. … And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.’

As Professor Carroll Quigley revealed, the power of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim to create a world system of financial control held in private hands ‘able to dominate the political system in each country and the economy of the world as a whole.’ [1] Quigley proved that from 1901 to 1922 the Secret Elite [2] was clustered around Alfred Milner and social connections that originated chiefly at Eton and Oxford University. They came from well-to-do, upper-class, frequently titled families and exercised control through a triple-front penetration of politics, education and journalism. They influenced politics and public policy by placing their men in positions of power. [3] Bankers, together with industrial and financial capitalists, coupled with influential and supportive press-barons held enormous influence in 1915, but these hidden powers were concerned that Asquith’s Cabinet lacked the steel to see the war through to its bitter end.

The Secret Elite’s overpowering drive to crush Germany, in what they knew would have to be a long war, had been carefully orchestrated through their place-men in government. These included Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Prime Minister Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill and Lord Chancellor Richard Haldane. They did so without even the pretence of a vote, backed by their allies in finance, industry, academia and the press. [4] The Liberals, re-elected to power in 1910, had formed a minority government propped up by the Irish Home Rulers and held together by a Conservative Party which, in the interests of the elites that they too served, did not try to bring them down. The Secret Elite had bounced the British Empire into a world war, but the political management of that war lay in the hands of rank amateurs. Politics took an altogether different turn in France.

From the outset President Poincare of France – who had been brought to power through Secret Elite bribes [5] – called upon the sacred union (Union sacree) of the French people, and this proved to be much more than an emotional crie de coeur. Centre, right and extreme right wing politicians rallied to Prime Minister Viviani’s government and blurred issues of party politics. Anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic newspapers and politicians lauded the contributions from all faiths. A government of national unity was quickly established. On 26 August 1914 Viviani expanded the government’s base by including more left-wing representatives and left the conduct of the war to men deemed competent such as Minister of War Alexandre Millerand and Commander in Chief, Joseph Joffre. [6]

It was an example that Britain did not follow. Nine and a half months later, no decisive military success had been registered, and the public enthusiasm for war which overflowed in August 1914 began to lose impetus. [7] By May 1915, the Germans were entrenched in France and Belgium, and the Dardanelles Campaign was already proving a very costly and unpopular failure. Churchill had rashly promised that the Germans would be on their knees after  nine months of naval blockade, [8] but his wild boasts came to naught. Russian success on the Eastern Front, boldly predicted in early August, proved illusionary. To Lord Milner and his Secret Elite cabal, the management of the war lay in the hands of hapless party politicians. They were contemptuous of the British parliamentary system and held an absolute belief that elected democratic government was no alternative to the ‘rule of the superiors’. [9] They meant, of course, themselves.

Milner knew what was needed; he had managed a successful war in South Africa, a war he deliberately provoked to make it appear that the victims had been the perpetrators. [10] As Lloyd George put it, ‘the war was not being treated either with sufficient seriousness or adequate energy.’ [11] Strong control over all aspects of the conflict was the prerequisite for success, and the only success the Secret Elite were interested in was the total destruction of Germany.

Parliamentary government was not geared to war. Ministers guarded their departments like fiefdoms, refusing to share knowledge or give detailed explanations of their strategies to either House of Parliament. Kitchener spoke in the House of Lords on 34 occasions between 1914-16 [12] making ‘Olympian pronouncements upon military policy’, [13] but he stood their pontificating while refusing to allow his Under- Secretary for War, Harold Tennant, to address the House of Commons. Since Tennant was the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law it might have been more politic for the Secretary for War to use his under-secretary more sympathetically, but Kitchener was a law unto himself.

Parliament did not sit regularly, and averaged only 8 meetings per month in the first nine months. [14] That was bad enough, but the War Council, the select group of senior ministers and their military and naval advisors was not established until the end of November 1914. Although it comprised the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, The Chancellor, Lloyd George and its increasingly influential secretary, Maurice Hankey, an unexpected anomaly had ‘evolved’. The Army was directly represented by the Secretary of State for War and Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener, while the Navy, the much revered ‘senior service’, was represented by a politician, Winston Churchill.

In the five and a half weeks between 6 April and 14 May 1915,  the War Council was not convened. It was as if leadership was ‘in a coma’. [15] Consider the events that took place over that timescale;  [16] dangerous reversals on the Eastern Front, the Second Battle of Ypres, Allied landings at Gallipoli, the sinking of the Lusitania and the publication of the highly prejudicial, anti-German propaganda report from Lord Bryce on ‘atrocities’ in Belgium. [17] Yet there was no need for a meeting of the War Council? Who was in charge? At times it appeared that the answer was no-one. Little wonder Milner and his Secret Elite associates ranted at the paucity of leadership.

Lord Alfred Milner [18] stood at the head of a mighty and resourceful network of secret intelligence. From the early months of the war, Milner had become the focus of anti-Asquith opposition. Politicians, academics, industrialists, soldiers, journalists and newspaper editors wrote to him to ensure that he knew about their grievances. The reader should be aware that after the crisis in Ulster in 1914, [19] the men who led the British army did not trust the Prime Minister [20] but held Lord Milner in the highest esteem.

They wrote to him secretly and told him the truth about the desperate state of the war as it progressed. General Sir Henry Wilson had crossed to France on 14 August 1914 as a key member of General Sir John French’s GHQ and within a week was complaining about the  ‘cowardly ignorance’ of his superiors in London. Lord Roberts complained to Milner that the army command was disjointed. Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, kept him informed about all manner of events that could not be officially reported because of Censorship. Leo Amery, Milner’s most ardent acolyte, wrote to him from France and from Lemnos during the Gallipoli campaign, ensuring that he knew more about the failings of the British Army than any member of Asquith’s government, except, perhaps, Kitchener. [21]

From March till the end of May 1915, there was a buzz of intrigue around Westminster. Lloyd George wrote that a fear was growing in the corridors of power  ‘that we could lose the war’ [22] though he above all knew that too much had already been invested by the American Establishment to allow such a disaster. Britain was never at any risk of losing the war. Indeed, a range of cleverly contrived arrangements allowed Germany to survive the so-called ‘blockade’ and enabled her to continue her military-industrial output. Lloyd George knew what the problem really was; a crisis of commitment to war. Some of his colleagues had no stomach for the reality of war. They had to go.

An article in the Daily Chronicle headed ‘Intrigue against the Prime Minister’ brought about a clash of accusations and counter-claims between Lloyd George and his cabinet colleague Reginald McKenna, and there was near consensus that Winston Churchill had become infatuated with Conservative MP and former prime minister, Arthur Balfour. [23] Perhaps he had. Perhaps he had worked out that Balfour would make a good ally, given his high standing inside the Secret Elite, for Balfour, like Milner, was a member of the highly select inner-core of the cabal. [24]

Milner knew that serious pressure had to be put on the Asquith government to shake out those ministers whose commitment to a prolonged war was suspect. But he was not yet prepared to lead the opposition publicly. [25] That was not his style. What was wanted was a government with the courage to break away from the laissez-faire attitude to enable greater control of the entire war effort. The Secret Elite knew that victory in a protracted struggle depended on the most efficient exploitation of the resources and manpower of the country. Despite their disdain for the parliamentary process, the answer lay in taking even greater control of government departments.

While those above him in the corridors and smoke-filled clubs for the privileged pushed for key changes in government, Lloyd George was the only Cabinet member convinced of this necessity. [26] Four years before, in 1910, he had shown himself willing to work in coalition with the Conservatives [27] and, in conjunction with Arthur Balfour, had openly accepted the value of compulsory military service. These were words close to Lord Milner’s heart. He and the former Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, had argued for many years in favour of  conscription as a much more effective way of providing a professional army. Once more, the word ‘coalition’ was being secretly whispered in the select private clubs frequented by the real power-brokers. Some even called it a  ‘National Government’.

Historians have repeatedly analysed the events of May 1915 and concluded that the political crisis ‘arose with extra-ordinary suddenness’ as if to suggest that by some strange mixture of expediency and good fortune, Asquith’s government was transformed overnight into an all-party alliance. The great historical guru of the 1960s, A J P Taylor, claimed that the emergence of a ‘National Government’ was  ‘one of the few political episodes of the First World War on which solid evidence is lacking’, [28] but these are words which should raise alarm. If evidence is lacking, it is because it has been destroyed. Experience shows that to be fact. Lloyd George’s verdict was that ‘political crises never come out of the blue’, and he knew precisely what was going on. [29] Asquith’s government was teetering towards collapse because the old-fashioned Liberals did not have the necessary ‘backbone’ to see a prolonged war through to its end. Circumstances abroad provided the cover to manipulate the change.

A convergence of military, naval and political embarrassment had to find public redress. Milner knew that the government had to be firmed up, be resolved to see through unpopular crises, and take greater direction from his Secret Elite agents. The days wasted on propping up the sham of democracy were numbered. Yet ridding the government of it’s deadwood faced the Secret Elite with a difficult quandary. Changes had to be managed carefully. The public had to believe that this was what they wanted. Should public opinion turn against the war and muted cries in favour of peace gain support, Germany would not be crushed. Victory was meaningless unless it broke German industrial and economic power. This wasn’t about winning a battle but destroying an enemy.

But who to blame? Churchill? Yes, he was despised by the Conservatives in parliament, and the newspapers had begun to question his judgement. Kitchener? No, his national status placed him above criticism, and the army had to be supported at all costs. Asquith? Not so easy. To sack him would have thrown political unity into chaos. Above all, the genuine unwitting liberals who had accepted their role in government, but who had no great enthusiasm for war, had to be wiped out. Democracy would be dismantled and what better way to dupe the public than by calling it national unity?

[1] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, pp. 324-5.
[2] See blogs 3-5, published 15-17 June 2014.
[3] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 6-15.
[4] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins Of The First World War, pp. 320-347.
[5] Ibid., p. 203.
[6] Kevin Passmore, The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy, p. 180.
[7] Alfred Gollin, Freedom or Control in the First World War,  (The Great Crisis of May 1915)  Historical Reflections, Vol. 2, no. 2, Winter 1975, pp. 135-155.
[8] The Times, 10 November 1914.
[9] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History,  pp. 55-6.
[10] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War p. 115.
[11] Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, p. 133.
[12] http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/mr-horatio-kitchener/1914
[13] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 249.
[14] http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/sittings/1914/
[15] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 134.
[16] http://www.firstworldwar.com/timeline/1915.htm
[17] See blogs published 3 and 10 September 2014.
[18] Alfred Milner’s power base is best explained in Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 84-88.
[19] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History,  pp. 301-319.
[20] Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 251.
[21] Letters from these correspondents are included in what remains of the much-culled Milner papers at the Bodleian Library (special section) at Oxford.
[22] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 133.
[23] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 495.
[24] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 311-2.
[25] Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, pp. 251-2 .
[26] A J P Taylor, Lloyd George, Rise and Fall, p. 23.
[27] John  Grigg, Lloyd George, The People’s Champion, pp. 362-8.
[28] A J P Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p. 31.
[29] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 133.

The Great Gretna Train Disaster: A Disaster Within The Gallipoli Disaster

Left to official reports, whitewashed investigations and government-influenced findings, the inconvenience of history has regularly been swept aside to be forgotten, ignored or reduced to a marginalised footnote. That might well have been the fate of the tragic events of 22 May 1915 when the greatest railway disaster in British history unfolded just north of Gretna Station at a signal box at Quintinshill. A troop train carrying around 500 officers and men of the 7th Royal Scots bound for Gallipoli, ran headlong into a stationary local train and moments later the entangled wreck was hit by the night express from London. 214 officers and men were subsequently killed and over 220 injured. It was a nightmare which could not be quashed by the Defence of the Real Act, no matter how convenient that might have been to Asquith’s failing government. Journalists from Dumfries and Galloway, and Carlisle [1] reported the awful events in great detail and, with professional determination, gave an unflinching account of a national tragedy that filled newspaper columns. Naturally the consequent Board of Trade investigation and the legal proceedings focussed attention on the railway workers convicted for negligence, but from the War Office to the Caledonian Railway Company, from the elites who had approved the Gallipoli Campaign to the manipulators of the Scottish justice system, it was a disaster whose blame was quickly shifted onto the shoulders of two shattered signalmen.

In April 1915 the Leith Battalion of the Territorials (more properly called the 7th Royal Scots) was relieved of local duties and joined with the 156 Brigade of the Lowland Division at Larbert near Falkirk to prepare specifically for the Western Front. [2] The men expected to be deployed to France, and their preparation was predicated on that understanding, but following the first disastrous landings on Gallipoli, the stalemate obligated a late War Office rethink. As was his want, Kitchener diverted the troops at the last moment, and the fate of the Leith Battalion was sealed. Botched preparations had become synonymous with Gallipoli, but none previously had caused such immediate anguish. The Scottish troops had been ready to move on Wednesday 19 May but a combination of shipping mishap and railway company incompetence delayed their departure for Liverpool. The troop ship Aquitania, scheduled to take the Battalion to Alexandria had run aground in the River Mersey and an alternative had to be found. Furthermore, the Caledonian Railway claimed to have insufficient carriages to transport the troops and a further forty-eight hour delay meant that they did not entrain until 3.42 am on Saturday 22 May, 1915.  The railway network was uncommonly busy and the Caledonian line strained to meet its conflicting duties; the war-effort and profit.

Although the government had assumed control of the railways in August 1914, [3] the individual companies continued to manage their own lines subject to instructions from the executive committee. Indeed the railway companies’ first move on 5 August was to inform passengers that they no longer guaranteed responsibility for goods lost in transit. The Caledonian Railway Company ran the west coast line from Glasgow to Euston Station in London and had full responsibility for the troop trains which ran on its lines. On such a profitable, busy weekend the Caledonian was required to muster four trains to carry the Royal Scots to Liverpool. The ill-fated train was a rag-tag compilation of fifteen coaches in which the soldiers travelled with five trucks for baggage, stores and ammunition  behind. Most of the carriages were ancient rolling stock, [4] lit by high pressure gas stored in cylinders beneath the floors. These were cheap and nasty. Inexpensive compared with alternative sources, the German Pinch gas which they used was clean and clear. Unfortunately it was readily combustible. [5] In every-day parlance, these coaches were not fit for purpose.

The officers were housed in more comfortable coaches, while the ORs (other ranks, such a neat way to differentiate the ordinary soldiers) were squeezed into outdated carriages. Eight or nine fully equipped men were squashed into compartments without a corridor or toilet facility. Even although the troops deserved priority, the train moved haltingly at first, and lost twenty minutes in its proposed schedule. At 6.49 am it crashed into a local train which had been ‘parked’ in the wrong direction just north of Gretna. Under normal circumstances the local train would have been held in one of the loops beside the Quintinshill signal box, but at that moment both loop lines were occupied with goods trains. The troop train overturned and the ancient wooden carriages smashed onto the north-bound track. Fifty-three seconds later the Glasgow-bound express ploughed into the wreckage and the gas cylinders exploded. [6] Carnage ensued. Men dazed and disorientated by the first collision were trapped in a burning inferno, some killed outright, some maimed and burned in horrific circumstances. The sheer hell of war erupted in the quiet Scottish border countryside. Such was the anguish of those trapped at the centre of the flames, unreachable, condemned to agonising death, screaming to be put out of their misery, that at least one officer emptied his pistol chamber into their midst in order to end the suffering. [7] Mercy-killing is not an act that any military man wants to acknowledge but it was a necessary act of compassion for those in extremity. [8]

According to the Royal Scots archives, three officers and 213 other ranks were killed, with five officers and 215 men injured. Only seven officers and 55 men emerged physically unscathed and continued to Liverpool. God only knows what they had witnessed, the trauma they suffered, the anguish and the guilt that they felt.  The survivors, the shocked remnants of a proud, proud fighting division were kept at Quintinshill until 4.00pm before being taken to Carlisle Castle. Denied even a night’s rest they were marched to Citadel Station in Carlisle and shunted off to Liverpool where the Empress of India had replaced the stricken Aquitania. Incredibly, they were put to work to salvage equipment before the War Office, possibly alerted to the public outcry from Scotland, ordered them from the ship. The Royal Scots Regimental History records that it was at the insistence of the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Peebles that all but he, and a handful of officers, returned to Edinburgh. Officers were urgently needed in Gallipoli, but given all that they had been through it was desperately hard on them. [9]

Scotland stood in shock. So great was the impact on Leith, and the Burghs of Portobello and Musselburgh, now firmly attached to the city of Edinburgh, that the whole population was stunned in an unfathomable grief, so horrendous, so numbingly unbelievable that work came to a halt.

Lists of the dead were called out from parish pulpits on Sunday 23rd. Relatives of the missing or injured were taken by special train to Carlisle in the hope of finding their loved ones whole. How could a man be posted missing in his own country? Was he under the wreckage still? No-one could comprehend the depth of this awful tragedy. The coffins were sealed. Permanently. Some held bodies, some bits of bodies, some a mixture of ashes of what once were bodies. The funeral procession in Edinburgh on Monday 24th May, when the first 102 victims were laid to rest in a communal grave, took three hours to pass from the drill hall in Dalmeny Street to the cemetery at Rosebank in Pilrig Street. [10]

All of these young men set out to fight for ‘God, King and Country’ in a war for ‘civilisation’, but they were not considered equal in death. Prejudice against the Catholic population in Edinburgh extended to the grave.  At the close of the Presbyterian service in the battalion’s Drill Hall, Father J. O’Rourke was permitted to recite prayers for the dead, but no consideration was given to any Catholic Church involvement at Rosebank Cemetery where the Moderators of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church conducted the service. [11] On the following day, ‘inasmuch as three were members of the Roman Catholic community,’ a concession was agreed and Canon Stewart was permitted to offer prayers at the graveside. [12]

And who to blame? The authorities had to hand two ready-made culprits, Signalmen James Tinsley and George Meakin. Yes, they had broken company rules. Indeed Tinsley should not have been working due to what  doctors later diagnosed as epilepsy. But the practices used to accommodate the huge volume of traffic pounding along that stretch of railway line were known to their line manager, to the stationmaster at Gretna and railwaymen in general.

The signalmen had no command over the condition of the coaches, the safety of antiquated rolling stock travelling at high speed or the volume of traffic on that particular day. All of these factors contributed to the tragedy. The Board of Trade inquiry and the secret internal Caledonian Railway inquiry, the Coroner’s inquiry and the court hearings in Edinburgh focussed only on the signalmen. Officially it was the fault of Tinsley and Meakin who were sentenced to three years penal servitude and 18 months respectively. Those in power wanted to close the chapter on Quintinshill, file it away under the title  of the  Great Gretna Rail Disaster, and put it all down to culpable homicide. Under serious pressure from the railway-workers’ unions, who knew well that blame should have been fairly distributed elsewhere, the government had Tinsley and Meakin released from prison one year later. Both were re-employed in different capacities by the Caledonian Railway. Strange, indeed. Railway companies did not usually employ ‘convicted criminals’.

There was to be no permanent respite for those who survived. Lieutenant-Colonel Peebles and his five surviving officers sailed for Alexandria with the remainder of the Division and arrived at Gallipoli on 12 June 1915. The other two battalions of the regiment served with distinction in the battle of Gully Ravine on 28 June where  241 officers and men were killed, wounded or missing (presumed dead). Following normal practice, the surviving members of the 7th Royal Scots were merged with the 4th Royal Scots under Lieutenant-Colonel Peebles. On 13 August many of those who had been injured in the Gretna crash arrived at a second blistering hell in Gallipoli and were reunited with their compatriots.

The record shows that on 22 May 1915, 31 officers and 1026 other ranks left Larbert station in good spirit to fight for king and country in far off Turkey. Most had no idea where that was. Next day, only 20 officers and 477 men embarked from Liverpool. Of these 18 officers and 458 men landed in Gallipoli on 12 June. By 15 July only 6 officers and 169 men remained fit for action. In other words the 7th Royal Scots from Leith had an 86% casualty rate taken from their complement before it left Larbert. With the 23 officers and 440 other ranks added as reinforcements, the Regimental War Diary of the 7th Royal Scots states that  casualties at Gallipoli totalled 34 officers and 1,110 men or, astonishingly, 108% of their entrained strength. [13] What loss. It was tragedy layered upon tragedy for the three burghs. It was unwarranted hell for these men.

They were all victims of the lie that is Gallipoli. All sacrificed to keep the Russians out of Constantinople and focused on the eastern front. There were no medals for the brave men who were scalded and burned, desperately trying to save their comrades at Qunitinhill. No medals either for the Royal Scots who, disregarding their own safety, hauled away the ammunition wagons at the rear of the burning train despite the danger of imminent explosion. No lasting consideration for the shattered communities of Leith, Portobello and Musselburgh. No lingering compassion for the grieving friends and families. Almost immediately, Quintinshill was relegated to a footnote in history. Find it, if you can, in Sir Lawrence Weaver’s book, The Story of the Royal Scots, published in 1915. Turn to the chapter on the Dardanelles and there on page 244 you will see the sole reference to the tragic disaster… in a footnote. [14]

[1] Newspapers which have proved invaluable in their coverage of the events are the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, Carlisle Journal, Weekly Scotsman, Edinburgh Edinburgh News ]
[2] http://www.theroyalscots.co.uk/page/the-quintinshill-gretna-train-crash-22-may-1915
[3] Railway Government Control, Hansard House of Commons Debate, 27 August 1914, vol. 66, cc131-2.
[4] Jack Richards and Adrian Searle, The Quintinshill Conspiracy, p. 12.
[5] Peter Sain Ley Berry, The Ill-fated Battalion, p. 20.
[6] http://www.cwgc.org/media/108844/quintinshill_final.pdf
[7] Berry, The Ill-fated Battalion, p. 101.
[8] Richards and Searle, The Quintinshill Conspiracy, p. 30.
[9] Ibid., p. 48.
[10] Edinburgh Evening News, 24 May, 1915.
[11] The Scotsman, 25 May 1915.
[12] The Scotsman, 26 May 1915, p. 9.
[13] http://www.theroyalscots.co.uk/page/the-royal-scots-territorials-in-the-dardanelles-campaign-1915-16
[14] https://archive.org/stream/storyofroyalscot00weavuoft#page/n5/mode/2up

Lusitania 8: The Anglo-American Collusion

Predatory beasts that choose to hunt together often use a very successful tactic. While one catches the attention and focus of the prey, the other strikes the mortal blow and both share the carcass. Such was the modus operandi of the Anglo-American Establishment, the expanding Secret Elite so effectively identified by Professor Carrol Quigley. [1] They placed power and influence into hands chosen by friendship and association rather than merit, and have controlled politics, banking, the press and much else in Britain and the United States for the past century. Sometimes referred to obliquely as ‘the money-power, ‘the hidden power’ or ‘the men behind the curtain’, these men amassed vast profits for their companies, banks and industries through the war against Germany. We refer to them as the Secret Elite, [2] and our book, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War reveals exactly how they came to control politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Their complicity in the sinking of the Lusitania and its immediate cover-up, demonstrates just how far their influence extended inside both Downing Street and the White House.

The influential diplomat and historian, Lewis Einstein captured the Secret Elite’s sense of inter-dependence and mutually assured future perfectly in an article published in 1913 in the London edition of the National Review. [3] He argued cogently that the United State’s share in the world power system meant that America would have to ensure that Britain was not defeated in a war with Germany, and would have to intervene in any future major European war if that was threatened. [4]

These views were shared by the anglophile American historian and correspondent for the Secret Elite’s Round Table Journal, George Louis Beer, [5] Ambassador Walter Hines Page, President Wilson’s personal mentor, Edward Mandell House, the US Ambassador at Berlin, James Gerard, and most importantly in terms of the American involvement with the Lusitania, the up-and-coming presidential advisor, Robert Lansing. [6] Woodrow Wilson was a political puppet of the Secret Elite, and the men surrounding and representing him were entrenched anglophiles who staunchly believed in the ultimate victory of the English-speaking race. The ordinary American may have thought his President and his country neutral, but in the corridors of real power, neutrality was a sham.

The most prominent American politician who attempted to enforce neutrality was Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. In August 1914, he advised President Wilson not to allow the Rothschild-backed bankers, J P Morgan and Co to raise loans and credits for the allies [7] but the bankers soon retaliated through their favoured trade advisor to the President, Robert Lansing. Despite Secretary Bryan’s repeated objections, Lansing and the State Department sided with the bankers and munitions manufacturers to alter the rules on credit and trade. They insisted that an embargo on arms sales by private companies was unconstitutional and enabled the US to become the Entente’s supply base despite the appearance of so-called neutrality. [8]

The Germans knew from their own spy network that the ‘secret’ British purchases of munitions and materiel of war was constant and extensive. J P Morgan Jnr was intimately linked to the Secret Elite, and his banking empire,  J P Morgan and Co. was at the core of the conspiracy to arm the Allies. In January 1915, he signed a contract appointing him sole purchasing agent as well as the Treasury’s primary financial agent. [9] Morgan’s associate, E C Grenfell, a director of the Bank of England, personally acted as a go-between with Washington and London. Britain’s munitions procurer, George Macauley Booth, ( of the Shipping co. Alfred Booth, ) readily gave his support to Morgan. In addition to his pre-eminence in US banking, Morgan controlled a vast tonnage of shipping through his International Mercantile Marine Co. George Booth was well aware that an alliance with Morgan meant that both his ships and Cunard’s would benefit greatly from the huge upsurge in Atlantic trade. [10] Vast profits were made. From the start of the war until they entered in April 1917, quite apart from weapons, the United States sent the Allies more than a million tons of cordite, gun-cotton, nitrocellulose, fulminate of mercury and other explosive substances. British servicemen in civilian clothes were employed in the scheme and customs at both ends turned a blind eye to the illicit trade underwritten by the merchants of death. Unfortunate passengers on the liners which carried the munitions knew nothing of the dangers that lurked in their hold.

On the dock-side in New York, cargoes were inspected by the Admiralty forwarding agent, and the more urgently needed were allocated to faster ships. Cargo manifests were a charade of false names and supposed destinations. Security was tight, but munitions are difficult to disguise, even if the cargo list claimed that raw or gun cotton was ‘furs’, or weapons of war appeared as ‘sewing machines’. It was standard British practice to sail on the basis of a false manifest  with the tacit blessing of the Collector of Customs, Dudley Field Malone, another of the President’s place-men. [11]

A friend and protégé of President Woodrow Wilson, Malone had known and supported him since the beginning of his political career.  In November 1913, after a brief period at the State Department, Malone was appointed to the post of Collector of the Port of New York. This was a political sinecure, paying $12,000 a year for supervising the collection of import duties. [12] It was mere child’s play to have the manifest stamped with the approval of Messrs Wood, Niebuhr and Co., Customs Brokers of Whitehall Street, New York. [13] The Admiralty in London was advised in advance which ships carried what cargo, and of their destination and estimated date of arrival. Such was the understanding between governments that British Consul-General Sir Courtney Bennet, who directed the British counter-intelligence operation in New York, had his own desk in the Cunard general manager’s office. [14] Exports of munitions from America to Britain was so blatant that it should embarrass every historian who denies the practice or claims that the Lusitania was simply a passenger liner.

The sinking of the Lusitania posed a serious problem for President Wilson’s administration. On 9 May 1915, an official statement from the German government stated that the Lusitania was ‘naturally armed with guns…and she had a large cargo of war material’. [15] Alarmed by possible ramifications, President Wilson telephoned Robert Lansing demanding to know precisely what the Lusitania had been carrying.  Lansing had a detailed report from Malone on his desk by noon. It stated that ‘practically all of her cargo was contraband of some kind’ with lists denoting great quantities of munitions. This was political dynamite of the most damning kind. Lansing and Wilson realised that if the public learned that over a hundred Americans had lost their lives because of their abuse of neutrality, they would not survive the inevitable  backlash. [16] Consequently, the official statement from the Collector of the Port of New York stated ‘that Report is not correct. The Lusitania was inspected before sailing as customary. No guns were found.’ [17] The denial was given full coverage by the international press and became the mantra of court historians from that time onward. The real manifest was consigned to obscurity and may never have seen the light of day had not Franklin Delaney Roosevelt, at that time Assistant Secretary at the Navy, not saved it for posterity, [18] and Mitch Peeke and his team not traced it to the FDR Presidential Archives. [19]

The text and terms of the American Note of protest to Germany of 11 May 1915 was a historic and deliberately abrasive document. Omitting the customary diplomatic civilities, Wilson protested that American citizens had the right to sail the seas in any ship they wished even if it was a belligerent and armed merchantman. His words were ‘unanimously approved and commended by the financial community’ where a group of leading bankers and financiers vowed to help finance the Allies in memory of the drowned capitalist, Cornelius Vanderbilt. [20] The official German reply from their Foreign Office regretted that ‘ Americans felt more inclined to trust English promises rather than pay attention to the warnings from the German side.’ [21] Germany deeply regretted the loss of American lives and offered compensation, but British merchant vessels had been instructed by Winston Churchill to ram and destroy German submarines where possible. They refused to concede that the sinking of the Lusitania was an illegal act, and repeated, correctly, that she was a vessel in the British Navy’s merchant fleet auxiliary service and had been carrying munitions and contraband of war.

The final, undeniable proof that the Lusitania had been used contrary to international law came with the resignation of President Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan on 8 June 1915. His resignation statement was clear and unambiguous, though he posed his distaste as a rhetorical question. ‘Why should American citizens travel on belligerent ships with cargoes of ammunition?’ He believed that it was the government’s duty to go as far as it could to stop Americans travelling on such ships and thus putting themselves, and by default, the American nation, at risk. His parting shot clarified what had happened on the Lusitania. ‘I think too that American passenger ships should be prevented from carrying ammunition. The lives of passengers should not be endangered by cargoes of ammunition whether that danger comes from possible explosions within or from possible explosions without. Passengers and ammunition should not travel together.’ [22] He might just as well have said, ‘it matters not whether the Lusitania was sunk by a torpedo or an internal explosion from munitions onboard. The truth is she was carrying munitions.’ Lives had been lost; the truth had to be suppressed by the the American government too. Immediately. To his eternal credit, Bryan would have nothing more to do with the Wilson Administration. He was replaced by the Wall Street champion, Robert Lansing, whose connivance in favour of both the money-power and the Allies in Europe had established his credentials.

Suppression of evidence continued unabated. Wesley Frost, the American Consul in Queenstown obtained affidavits from every American survivor and these were forwarded by him to the State Department in Washington and the Board of Trade in London. Not one of the thirty five affidavits was ever used in British or American inquiries. Nor is there any trace of the copies sent to London save the acknowledgement of their safe receipt. [23] Why? We can only speculate that they would not have corroborated the story about a single torpedo. Charles Lauriat, Jr., for instance, a Boston bookseller, survived the ordeal, and on his safe return to London, met Ambassador Page. Surely his independent testimony would have been very valuable, given an experience which he shared with the Ambassador, but he was convinced that here had been a single torpedo. Lauriat was also angry about the manner in which survivors were threatened by the British authorities at Queenstown. [24] He was not called.

And what of that powerfully influential coterie of American anglophiles who gathered at Ambassador Walter Page’s residence on the evening of 7 May? What did they really know? Just five days before the sinking, Page had written a letter to his son Arthur forecasting ‘the blowing up of a liner with American passengers’. On the same day he wrote ‘ if a British liner full of American passengers be blown up, what will Uncle Sam do?’ Note that the question concerned a ship being blown up, not sunk. Then he added ‘That’s what’s is going to happen.’ [25] What too of Mandell House’s discussions on 7 May both with Sir Edward Grey and King George V? They questioned him directly about the impact on America of a passenger liner being torpedoed, [26] yet House seemed to find nothing suspicious in their foreknowledge. They knew that a disaster was about to happen, because they had been complicit in its organisation and preparation. On both sides of the Atlantic evil men pursued greater profit from human loss.

The official American reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania contained so many lies and went to such a depth to cover government complicity that there can be no doubt whatsoever that they shared in the blame for the dreadful incident. American authorities, bankers, financiers and politicians close to the Secret Elite were obliged to hide the truth that they were supplying Britain and France with much needed munitions in contravention of international law. In addition, they allowed American citizens to act as human shields and defied  public opinion in so doing. Yes, Captain Schweiger of U-20 fired the fateful torpedo but the great liner had deliberately been set up as an easy target or, as the cold, scheming Churchill called it, ’livebait.’ [27]

Newspaper outrage denounced the sinking as the mass murder of innocent American citizens. The New York Times likened the Germans to ‘savages drunk with blood’ [28] and the Nation declaimed that ‘the torpedo that sank the Lusitania also sank Germany in the opinion of mankind’. [29] Stirred though they were, the American people were reluctant to embrace all out war. In a somewhat crude analysis the East coast had been galvanised by the powerful Anglo-American interests whose profits were already mounting in millions by the day. But the further news travelled from New York,  through the Mid-West to the Pacific coast, the sinking of the Cunarder excited less and less attention. The British Ambassador regretfully informed the Foreign Office that the United States was a long way from war with anybody. The British Ambassador at Paris described Americans as ‘a rotten lot of of psalm-singing, profit mongering humbugs’. [30] Changing opinion requires patience and the constant reiteration of propaganda.

The sinking of the Lusitania, and the successful cover-up by two complicit governments, played an important role in bringing about an eventual sea-change in opinion across America. They were also complicit  in the murder of 1,201 men, women and children.

[1] Carrol Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, published 1981, Books In Focus.
[2] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins OF The First World War, p. 18.
[3] Lewis Einstein, The United States and the Anglo-German Rivalry, National Review, LX, Jan. 1913.
[4] Ibid., pp. 736-50
[5] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 168.
[6] Robert E Osgood, Ideals and Self Interest in America’s Foreign Policy, pp.114-34; and 154-50.
[7] Bryan to JP Morgan and Co. 15 August, Library of Congress, Foreign Relations, Supplement 580.
[8] Daniel M Smith, Lansing and the Formation of American Neutrality Policies, 1914-1915, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol.43 No. 1, p. 69.
[9] Kathleen Burk, War And The State, The Transformation of British Government, 1914-1919, p. 89.
[10] Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, pp. 18-19.
[11] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, pp. 49-51.
[12] http://notorc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/dudley-field-malone-1-courage-of-his.html
[13] lusitania.net
[14] Simpson, Lusitania, p. 59.
[15] The United States and War: President Wilson’s Notes on the Lusitania and Germany’s reply, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, vol. XXX (1915).
[16] Simpson, Lusitania, pp. 172-3.
[17] The United States and War: President Wilson’s Notes on the Lusitania and Germany’s reply, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, vol. XXX (1915) p. 47.
[18] Our thanks to Colonel Robert A Lynn, Florida Guard, from personal communication.
[19]See Guest blog, 2 May 2015, Mitch Peeke; The Lusitania Story – The Struggle for The Truth.
[20] The Times, Saturday 15 May, 1915, p. 7.
[21] The United States and War: President Wilson’s Notes on the Lusitania and Germany’s reply, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, vol. XXX (1915) p. 47.
[22] Ibid., p. 48.
[23] Simpson, Lusitania, p. 168.
[24] Lauriat, Charles E.  The Lusitania‘s Last Voyage.  Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1915.
[25] Burton J Hendrick, The Life And Letters Of Walter Page, vol. 1. p. 436.
[26] Edward Mandell House and Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol.1, p. 432.
27] Reported in a letter from George Booth to Alfred Booth, 25 September 1914.
[28] Thomas A Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, p. 626.
[29] New York Nation, 13 May, 1915.
[30] H C Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 170. and footnote 6.

Lusitania 7: Falsehoods And Jaundiced History

RMS Lusitania rests awkwardly nearly 300 feet down on the sea bed some 11.2 miles  south west of the Old Head of Kinsale, a once-proud Queen of the Atlantic, now draped in cobweb-like fishing nets snagged on her wrecked carcass. [1] From the underwater silence of her cold tomb, her secrets have yet to be fully uncovered. Those responsible ensured that evidence was manipulated, falsified or concealed, but thanks to determined researchers one hundred years on, the truth has slowly emerged from the cover-up. What has been presented for generations as historical fact is now being unmasked as propaganda and lies. The action of the elites on both sides of the Atlantic in enabling the disaster, in covering up their complicity, in diverting attention away from critical evidence, was and is despicable.

In 2014-15, the British government struggled to find a chairperson to lead the inquiry into institutionalised child abuse after their first candidate, Baroness Butler-Sloss resigned. Her brother, when Attorney General 30 years earlier, had been accused of a cover up in a paedophile investigation. Second choice, corporate lawyer Mrs Fiona Woolf, stepped down when newspapers revealed her social links to the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, ‘a key figure embroiled in the scandal.’ [2] A century earlier no such justifiable concern was expressed when Lord Mersey was appointed to lead the Inquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania. [3]  Yet Mersey was intimately associated with the government’s ministerial legal team of Attorney-General Sir Edward Carson and Solicitor-General Mr F.E. Smith who appeared on behalf of the Board of Trade and acted as the ‘prosecutors’. Three members of the British Establishment who socialised together and just happened to attend the highly suspicious ‘special dinner’ at the American Ambassador’s residence in London in the hours following the sinking of the Lusitania. [4] Smith and Carson represented a government that was absolutely complicit in the disaster, that ordered the munitions to be transported on the passenger liner, whose Admiralty intelligence knew precisely where U-20 was lurking on 7 May 1915 and facilitated its opportunity to sink the ship.

What transpired was not an independent inquiry, but a quasi-judicial trial which was in effect an attempted prosecution by the State. The man in the dock was not the U-boat captain, but William Turner.

Carson’s opening speech addressed the German government’s accusation that the Lusitania was carrying munitions and contraband, but since the American State Department and US President had publicly rebutted this, he stated that there was no need to discuss it further. We will analyse the inter-government collusion in this cover-up in our next blog. Evidence regarding the ammunition and explosives which we now know was definitely aboard the liner, was effectively squashed. During Captain Turner’s examination Carson referred in passing to the cargo … ‘I will not go into the particulars of the crew and cargo, because we know what it was …’ [5] The lie was given the stamp of truth.

Carson stated as fact that ‘without any warning a German submarine fired a torpedo at the Lusitania and she was struck between the third and fourth funnels. There is evidence that there was a second and perhaps a third torpedo fired, and the ship sank within 20 minutes.’ [6] Again, fiction was presented as fact, undisputed and uncontested. Carson was reading from a memorandum which had been carefully fabricated by Captain Richard Webb, Director of the Trade Division at the Admiralty, to ensure that blame was deflected from them and focused on Captain Turner. [7]

At every level, Carson and Smith sought to suppress the truth. All appeared above board, but witnesses were carefully selected to give credence to the official lies. The Board of Trade had invited passengers to submit evidence and 135 ‘proofs’ were lodged. Of these only five were selected to appear in court; five whose statements corroborated ‘evidence’ that suited the government. All of the questions asked in court had been pre-selected by the Board of Trade and vetted by an ‘Intelligence Advisory Committee’, which duly struck out nineteen of the forty questions. Additionally, of the surviving questions, twenty-one were carefully emasculated. [8]

Key personnel were ignored. For example, there were survivors from all three boiler rooms, none of whom mentioned in affidavits that any explosion had happened in their location. Some reported that water had first entered no.1 boiler room through the bulkhead at the forward end. [9] Such evidence was contrary to the ‘prosecution’ case which falsely placed the impact of ‘torpedoes’ alongside the boiler rooms, so it was never called. Statements which claimed that the torpedoes struck aft, well away from where the ammunition was stored, found favour, even though it was totally inconsistent with the ship sinking by the bows.

Statements from the crew were written up for them in standardised words and expressions and those chosen to give evidence were carefully selected. Quartermaster Hugh Johnston’s comments show how the Lusitania’s crew were pressured to testify that she had been hit by two torpedoes rather than one. This was on the grounds that such evidence would be ‘helpful’. ‘When Johnston (who was at the wheel when the torpedo struck) refused to cooperate, he was still allowed to appear as a witness – as the ships helmsman he could hardly have been omitted – but he was questioned only briefly and, unlike other crewmen, was not asked to comment on the number of torpedoes.’ [10] By instructing witnesses to respond to questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, the prosecutors carefully controlled the ‘evidence’. Lord Mersey’s final report declared that the ship had been struck on the starboard side somewhere between the third and fourth funnels, and that a second torpedo was fired immediately afterwards which also struck the starboard side. Yet another classic example of the manipulation of truth to suit the official lie.

Other evidence was vigorously restricted by Lord Mersey. He allowed no discussion on the ship’s compartmentalisation and construction, or the location of the damage inflicted by the U-boat. Tellingly, this could have led to revelations about the second explosion caused by the munitions. When Alexander Galbraith, the superintending engineer was questioned about the Lusitania’s structure, [11] Mersey quickly put a stop to his statement before he could make reference to the internal changes and alterations which had been made to enhance Lusitania’s capacity to carry illicit cargo. Soon after the declaration of war, she had been withdrawn from service for an Admiralty refit to enlarge the forward cargo hold. [12] Carson denied this absolutely in his opening remarks. ‘There was no such outfitting of the vessel as is alleged and fancied or invented by the German Government …’ [13] Another blatant lie. Drawings and plans of the ship were submitted to the court, but these were of the original construction and bore no relation to the interior design of her hold when she left New York on 1 May 1915.

Worse still was the deliberate misrepresentation employed in presenting Robert Leith on the second day of the trial (it was in reality a trial, not an inquest) as the Marconi wireless telegraphist who had taken crucial telegrams on the morning of 7 May. Leith, however, had worked the early shift from 2.00am until 8.00am before being replaced by his colleague, David McCormick, who had been on duty when the telegrams came in. He had taken receipt of the crucial coded message sent by Admiral Coke instructing Captain Turner to divert immediately to Queenstown. Leith, who understandably had no recollection of the Coke telegram, was asked to give evidence of which he knew nothing, while McCormick was never summoned. Every shred of evidence about the existence of this crucial message that could be found was destroyed by order of the Admiralty.

Vice-Admiral Henry Coke was commander at Queenstown. His prime responsibility was to ensure that 285 miles of coast along the southern shores of Ireland were adequately patrolled [14] A diligent and respected commander, Coke telegraphed his message to the Lusitania under MFA code (Maritime Fleet Auxiliary) just after 11 am on 7 May. Captain Turner decoded it in his cabin. Its content was explicit. He was ordered to divert immediately to the safety of Queenstown rather than continuing his passage to Liverpool. This was not an exceptional instruction. It was ‘standard practice in situations of grave peril’. [15] It came too late. It had been clear for over twenty-four hours that the Lusitania was in ‘grave peril’. The Admiralty had ensured that she was in ‘grave peril’ and Captain Schweiger on U-20 now had the great ship in his sights.

No instruction had emanated from London to protect her, but ignorant of the master-plan, Coke acted on his own initiative. This message explains why Turner turned his ship towards Queenstown and why he was heading closer to land. It destroyed the accusation that he had ignored Admiralty instructions, hence the evidence had to be buried. The page containing this critical signal was removed from the Admiralty signal register and no reference was made to it at Mersey’s inquiry. Though he was at the very heart of the disaster as it unfolded, Vice-Admiral Coke was not called to give evidence. Incredible.

Every effort was made by the Admiralty to undermine and indeed disgrace Captain Turner. He was to be the chief scapegoat. Admiral Fisher had called him a knave and suggested that he be arrested and charged, no matter what the verdict might be. Winston Churchill agreed and sanctioned the falsified memorandum urging that Turner be ‘pursued without check.’ [16] After Churchill was dismissed from the Admiralty, his replacement, the Secret Elite’s Arthur Balfour, tried to exert even more pressure on Lord Mersey, but in the end he became so disillusioned by the entire mismanagement of the case, that Captain Turner escaped from these character-assassins with vague words of faint praise. But he was damaged.

Imagine for a moment how Turner felt when the Lusitania emerged from the Atlantic fog that morning to apparent emptiness. Before departing New York he had been told that a cruiser from the Juno squadron would rendezvous with him ten miles south and 40 miles west of the Fastnet. He had expected to find a Royal Navy cruiser if not an escort of destroyers waiting close by as had been offered on previous runs. He was aware that submarine activity had been reported in the area he had entered, and thought he was taking every precaution. What he did not realise was that the Admiralty had literally cleared the way for U-20 to find his ship unprotected. He could never have anticipated that the Secret Elite’s men would hang him out to dry to deflect.

Having been plucked from the sea, Captain Turner reached Queenstown where he complained bitterly to Admiral Coke about the lack of protection he had expected from the Juno.

Consider the extent of this cover-up. Those involved in fabricating evidence from the Admiralty included Admiral Oliver and Captain Webb, First Sea Lord Fisher and Winston Churchill. The Board of Trade led by Cabinet Minister Walter Runciman knew about the purchasing and transporting of all the munitions orders from America. Kitchener and his staff at the War Office were well aware that their arsenals were being supplied from Bethlehem Steel through Cunard liners. The Bank of England and Morgan Grenfell were organising payments with the knowledge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George. Arms procurer George Booth (another who attended Ambassador Page’s dinner in the company of Lord Mersey, Edward Carson, F.E. Smith and Sir Edward Grey) advised the Treasury and the War Office, and had recommended J.P. Morgan and Co. as Britain’s sole munitions procurer in America. The Foreign Office knew what had been agreed through their embassy in Washington, and Secret Elite mandarins like Sir Eyre Crowe, Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office [17] advised Cunard on how to manipulate custom’s officials. [18] Cunard themselves were implicitly involved. Yet approved and official history denies it all.

Their unforgivable deception worked.  The sinking of the Lusitania was blamed on the villainous German government and used to promote enlistment. Of course U-20 had fired the torpedo, but the responsibility and complicity of British and American officials and politicians in creating and allowing the circumstances behind the attack were buried in denials and falsehood. The propaganda that the Secret Elite spewed over Britain and America spawned riots on the British side, and revulsion on the American. It did not immediately bring America into the war, but it most certainly fanned the flames of resentment there and added to the voices clamouring for action against Germany. What was of vital importance, what mattered above all, was that there was no perceptible change in American attitudes towards providing the munitions which the Allies desperately needed. Criticism of the war remained muted in Britain. A potential crisis passed. History was falsified by political expediency and lives on in the minds of young people who are taught only the lies.

And what of those who served the aspirations of the Secret Elite? Lord Mersey was raised to the rank of Viscount in 1916 and died in 1929. Captain Webb, author of the falsified memorandum for the Admiralty, ended life as Admiral Sir Richard Webb, KCMG, CB. Sir Edward Carson was elevated to Lord Carson in 1921 and was given a state funeral. F E Smith became 1st Earl of Birkenhead and was Secretary of State for India between 1924-28. Such rich pickings from one valuable whitewash. For Vice-Admiral Coke there was no such glory. He was removed from his Queenstown appointment on 27 May 1915, just days before the Mersey Inquiry began.

Captain William Turner never forgave the Admiralty.  When in 1923, Winston Churchill published the first volume of his memoirs of the First World War under the title World Crisis, his criticism of Turner’s actions re-opened old wounds. [19] He again produced the fallacious claims that Captain Turner had disobeyed Admiralty instructions, that U-20 had fired two torpedoes at mid-ship and aft and that the Lusitania’s cargo contained only a small consignment of rifle ammunition and shrapnel shells. [20]

These lies have been repeated in history books and taught in our schools and universities for generations. That is why it is so important to keep publishing the truth.

[1] Robert Ballard with Spencer Dunmore, Robert Ballard’s Lusitania, p. 10.
[2] Mail on Sunday, 6 September 2014.
[3] British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry,  http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/lucy01.php
[4] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, p. 135.
[5] British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, Day 1, Testimony of William Thomas Turner examined by the Attorney-General http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/01turner1.php
[6] Ibid.
[7] Captain Webb’s memorandum can be found in the National Archives at PRO., ADM/137/1058.
[8] Simpson,  Lusitania, pp. 199-200.
[9] Patrick Beesly, Room 40, p. 114.
[10] Diana Preston, Wilful Murder The Sinking Of The Lusitania, p. 457.
[11] British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry,  http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/lucy01.php  Day 1, Alexander Galbraith.
[12] http://www.lusitania.net/chronology.htm
[13] http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/01Header.php  Day 1, 15 June 1915, Attorney-General
[14] Diana Preston, Lusitania, An Epic Tragedy, p. 190.
[15] Mitch Peeke, lusitania.net
[16] PRO ADM/ 137/1058.
[17] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War. p. 364.
[18] Simpson, Lusitania, pp. 60-1.
[19] Winston Churchill, World Crisis, 1911-1918, p. 448.
[20]  Ibid., p. 447.

Lusitania 6: Lord Mersey’s Whitewash

The Board of Trade Inquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania began at Central Buildings, Westminster on 14 June, 1915 under the Wreck Commissioner, Lord Mersey. In the short time between the dinner party in May thrown by Ambassador Page on behalf of President Wilson’s so-called peace emissary, the political landscape in Britain had changed. The newspapers hailed it as a major event, and it was in one sense. A few well-known Cabinet members had been discarded. Churchill was removed from the Admiralty because the Tory Party leaders demanded that he go. His like-for-like replacement was the Secret Elite’s Arthur Balfour. Lloyd George was moved from the Exchequer and given the highest-profile new post, Minister for Munitions. Sir Edward Carson was appointed Attorney General, the most senior legal advisor to the government, and Mr F E Smith was promoted to Solicitor General, the second most senior legal advisor in England. Sir Edward Grey stayed at his post in the Foreign Office. What few people realised was that the major political agents associated with the Secret Elite had begun to move into government. This coalition or National Government had as its most immediate priority to find a solution to the munitions shortage which had been turned into a public scandal. [1] 

Asquith’s new government could ill afford any more public criticism, and Lord Mersey’s Inquiry into the Lusitania had to focus on two highly contentious issues; the role of the Admiralty, and the fact that would be denied for nearly a century, namely that the passenger liner was carrying much needed munitions. [2] Sadly for Captain Turner, a coalition of vested interests, all Secret Elite controlled, set out to make him the scape-goat.

Lord Mersey was privately instructed on the outcome that the Admiralty wanted in a note passed to him inside official papers before the Inquiry began. It simply said that it was ‘politically expedient that Captain Turner, Master of the Lusitania, be most prominently blamed for the disaster.’ [3] The Secrete Elite intended to ruin Captain William Turner. Witnesses were carefully selected. Every surviving member of the crew gave a deposition to the Board of Trade but only 13 of the 289 have survived for public scrutiny. All begin with the identical opening sentence and all claim that the ship was hit by more than one torpedo. Furthermore even the illiterate seamen who signed their statements with the letter X wrongly placed the point of the torpedo’s impact in midship or well-aft. The Board of Trade had stated that passengers who wished to submit evidence to the inquiry should do so. 135 ‘proofs’ were submitted by passengers who wished to testify, but only five were invited to appear before the court. Not one passenger who referred to an explosion further forward than amidships appeared.  [4]

Contrary evidence was unwelcome. The architect, Oliver Bernard was on deck when the U-20’s torpedo struck. His famous eye-witness drawings of the liner as she sank were printed in the Illustrated London News [5] Commissioned in 1916 Bernard became a Captain in the Royal Engineers, and winner of a Military Cross. He was adamant that only one torpedo hit the Lusitania, and therefore, was not called to give evidence. [6] The American consul in Queenstown obtained sworn testaments from all the American survivors and these were sent onwards to the State Department in Washington and copied to the Board of Trade. Neither organisation used them at their respective inquiries, and currently there remains no trace of the copies sent to the British Board of Trade. [7] The reader may begin to sense a theme.

Today we have access to the full proceedings of Lord Mersey’s Inquiry on the internet [8] and over the five days 14-18 June, 1915, it is clear that Captain Turner was subjected to a concerted legal attack from the British Establishment. The Admiralty had concocted its highly prejudicial ‘evidence’ in the form of a memorandum from Captain Richard Webb, Director of the Admiralty’s Trade Division; a memorandum which was seen by Lord Mersey before the sitting began. [9] This secret document shaped the lines of enquiry and directed the assault on Captain Turner, deflecting questions about the cargo and concealing the truth about the telegraphic messages sent (and not sent) to the Lusitania. It was the script approved by the Secret Elite, but it was, by their standards, seriously flawed.

Sir Edward Carson used his persuasive and carefully rehearsed inquisition to undermine Captain Turner on the first day of the Inquiry. With the public removed from the hall, Carson attempted to belittle Turner’s seamanship, trying to get him to admit that he was sailing too close to the coast in contravention of Admiralty instructions. Turner would have none of it. He did not navigate a great liner by approximations and guesswork. [10] More devious tactics were required. Carson began to paint a picture of the Irish Sea ‘infested’ by German submarines, and repeatedly pressurised Turner to admit that he had disobeyed a clear Admiralty directive by failing to steer the Lusitania in a zig-zag manner. Lord Mersey asked Carson to reread the Admiralty advice on zig-zagging which drew some confusion from Captain Turner. He couldn’t quite remember the precise wording; ‘it seems different language’, he complained. And he was right. The instructions which were read out in court had not been given final approval by Winston Churchill until 25 April, and their widespread distribution did not begin until 13 May, five days after the disaster. [11] Turner was deliberately misled, confused by Carson’s determined assertion that he had received orders from the Admiralty about zig-zagging which he had allegedly flouted. We now know that these orders had never been sent. The Court of Inquiry was deliberately lied to by the Attorney General. Surely this is astonishing turn of events in any democracy?

In this mockery of justice, the Crown treated the Inquiry as a trial, and selected its evidence to that end. The single member of naval or Admiralty staff called as a witness, Captain Anderson, was asked only about the merits of travelling at top speed and adopting a zig-zag pattern to reduce any chance of submarine attack. No question was asked about the Admiralty’s plan to protect the Lusitania. Indeed, all questions to be put to the Inquiry had been carefully preselected. Churchill had written on the infamous Webb memorandum that ‘Turner be pursued without check’ [12] and even though he was no longer at the Admiralty in June 1915, his replacement, the Secret Elite’s Arthur Balfour, maintained that course.

But the case, biased, even as it was, collapsed at the last hurdle when Lord Mersey discovered that the evidence with which he had been presented was not the same as that being used by the Solicitor General, Mr F E Smith. Confusion broke out over the alleged telegrams which had been sent to the Lusitania. Though both the Commissioner (Lord Mersey) and the Solicitor General were apparently working from documents headed Lusitania, a memorandum prepared by officials of the Board of the Admiralty, they were not identical. Someone had fouled up. In addition, Lord Mersey realised that having seen the questions to be asked at his inquiry in a previous draft, these had been altered in order to avoid any references to messages received by the Lusitania. [13] It was this fiasco which forced the court to end Captain Turner’s torture.

The Secret Elite made one final bid to change Lord Mersey’s mind. Clearly Sir Edward Carson and Mr F E Smith had failed to strip Captain Turner of his dignity, so they brought forward the heavy artillery. From the Foreign Office, Sir Arthur Nicolson and Lord Crewe let it be known that if Turner was censured, there would be no objection to that being made public; that the new first Lord, Arthur Balfour agreed with that view, and would gladly speak with Lord Mersey’ at some convenient time’. It was a poorly-veiled threat, but Mersey was too long in the tooth to care. Disgusted by what he had been made party to, he wrote to Prime Minister Asquith and resigned from any further government appointment. He is reputed to have told his children that the case of the Lusitania was ‘a damned dirty business’ [14]

His findings amounted to an absolute whitewash. The whole blame for the catastrophe was allotted to ‘ those who plotted and committed the crime’, Germany. Praise was heaped on 18 year old Leslie Morton, the look-out who spotted that two torpedoes hit the ship, before saving nearly 100 lives assisted by his mate, Perry. Seriously, this is recorded in the Inquiry findings, not the Boy’s Own Annual. So, two torpedoes, then, from the U-Boat that fired only one. Not so. Lord Mersey found that a third torpedo had been fired at the port side, and thus ‘proved’ that there was indeed more than one submarine. Mersey directed that no explosives had been on board save about 5,000 cartridges as entered in the manifest. German accusations about the Lusitania’s cargo were deemed ’baseless inventions.’

Incredibly, even amidst this litany of nonsense, Lord Mersey was able to praise the Admiralty who he claimed had ‘diligently collected all available information likely to affect the voyage of the Lusitania’. He heaped on them the highest praise for the way in which they did their work’. No warnings for Captain Turner, no escort or convoy, no clear information about the whereabouts of U-Boat 20, yet they did their work diligently? Amazing. And for Captain Turner there was praise of sorts and not the damning condemnation which the Secret Elite wanted. Mersey concluded that Turner was ‘fully advised’ of the Admiralty’s advice on how to avoid the perils of submarine warfare but had ‘exercised his judgement for the best’.

But finally, it was, as ever, all the fault of the Germans. [15]

It was indeed a damned dirty business, compounded by lies and a legion of ‘lost’ reports, memoranda, documents and telegrams. It has taken a century of investigation to prise open the fragile remains of the evidence they could not cover up. The very credible proof presented by Colin Simpson, Diana Preston, Patrick Beesly, and Mitch Peeke in particular, has destroyed the myths and lies with which the Secret Elite covered their crimes. Like every expendable soldier and sailor, the Lusitania was sacrificed to prolong the war to crush Germany. It was turned into a propaganda coup which bolstered Britain’s standing in the United States. But it had been a risky business. Had the truth been known in the days and weeks after the event, both the American and British governments would have been in crisis. For nearly a century, court historians have held fast to the lie.

Consider these dismissive words from the Imperial War Museum’s own history, War At Sea. ‘Conspiracy theorists have flourished ever since, centred on a plot to allow the Lusitania to be torpedoed to bring America in to the war. Like so many conspiracy theories based on a fantasy world of ignorance and naivety, this one does not stand up.’ [16]

Make up your own mind.

[1] The Times and The Daily Mail, 21 May 1915.
[2] Public Records Office., ADM/137/1058/3621/143.
[3] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, p. 182, citing Lord Mersey’s papers.
[4] Ibid., p. 200.
[5] Eric Saunder and Ken Marschall, RMS Lusitania, Triumph of the Edwardian Age, pp. 46-7.
[6] http://www.rmslusitania.info/people/saloon/oliver-bernard/
[7] Simpson, Lusitania, p. 168.
[8] http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/
[9] PRO ADM/137/1058. Webb’s career blossomed. By the end of the war he had been promoted to Rear-Admiral, made Assistant High Commissioner at Constantinople and knighted in 1920.
[10] Mersey Report Day 1, In Camera, Testimony of Captain Turner   http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/
[11] Patrick Beesly, Room 40, p. 97.
[12] PRO ADM/137/1058
[13] The Mersey Inquiry, Day 4 (Continued)[http://www.titanicinquiry.org/Lusitania/04Header3.php]
[14] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, p.232.
[15] The Lusitania Inquiry, The Times 19 July 1915.
[16] Julian Thompson, The Imperial War Museum’s Book of The War at Sea, 1914-1918, p. 195.

Lusitania 5: Questions Without Answers

Parliamentary scorn added to Churchill’s woes. He was obliged to make a statement to the House of Commons on Monday 10 May, where he spoke so quietly that it was difficult to hear his voice. [1] The aggressive questions openly put to him left little room for manoeuvre. ‘Was the Admiralty aware of the submarine activity prior to the attack on the Lusitania?’ ‘What provision was made to safeguard the steamship Lusitania on her last crossing?’ ‘Was he aware of the sinking of the SS Centurion and Candidate?’ Was he aware that the Admiralty provided destroyers to accompany steamers off the south coast of Ireland carrying horses from the USA to Liverpool? His pathetic response fooled no-one.  “I will, as far as I am able, answer these various questions together…it would be premature to discuss the matter. I should, however, make it plain—first, that in no circumstances will it be possible to make public the naval dispositions for patrolling the approaches to our coast; and, secondly, that the resources at our disposal do not enable us to supply destroyer escort for merchant or passenger ships, more than 200 of which, on the average, arrive or depart safely every day.’ [2] It was a classic non-answer, but clearly he was hiding behind alleged lack of resources. Apparently, Churchill’s memory failed him, so Sir Robert Houston MP provided details of the destroyers which had met the steamship Hydaspes on the south coast of Ireland, laden with horses and escorted it safely to Liverpool. It beggars belief.

Lord Charles Beresford, his long time adversary, asked if it was within Churchill’s memory that he (Beresford) had written a letter on 15 April warning of the perils faced by the Lusitania and why they went unheeded? [3]

Astoundingly, the Prime Minister intervened; ‘They were heeded.’

Beresford’s letter had originally been sent to Asquith ‘and it was carefully studied at the Admiralty…so, far from the warnings being unheeded, a great many measures … have already been applied.’ [4] Consider this statement again. The Prime Minister had been made aware on 15 April by a senior Member of Parliament, and former First Sea Lord, of the potential dangers which Lusitania would face when she returned from the United States. The warnings were heeded. He said so. The Prime Minister and the First Lord of the Admiralty and his officials had carefully discussed Lord Beresford’s suggestions. He told Parliament so. There had been a strategy meeting in the Admiralty about the return of the Lusitania and the result was… the Captain of the Lusitania was not given pertinent information about circumstances ahead of him; he was literally guided towards a predatory U-boat, of whose location Room 40 had precise knowledge.

Incredibly, U-20 had its own ledger entries recorded in complete detail in Room 40. This fact was kept a closely guarded secret by the Admiralty, but the ledger can now be seen in the National Archives at Kew in London. [5] The records begin in September 1914, and by November the ledger clearly shows that transmissions from the U-boat had been intercepted, decoded and recorded down to her exact co-ordinates and location on naval charts. Sheet four, which covers April and May 1915, provides radio signals, area locations and even hourly positions for U-20. The entries give the precise location of the submarine when it disposed of the Earl of Lathom at 51.32 N 8.22 W, off the Old Head of Kinsale on 5 May.

Next day Hall’s men in Room 40 watched as the U-20 proceeded eastwards to the entrance of St. George’s Channel where  she sank the Candidate and Centurion. The Admiralty knew that the U-20 was operating in the middle of the Channel close to Coningberg light vessel in the area through which the Lusitania had been instructed to proceed. [6] Lest there be any doubt, this ledger proves that British Intelligence knew of the U-boat’s actions within minutes of its transmission.

At the same time, roughly two and an half hours away at the port of Milford Haven, on the west coast of Wales, a flotilla of five destroyers, whose exclusive duty was to escort and safeguard valuable cargo, lay idle. The Admiralty sat on its hands and, far from ordering them to attack the U-20, or move immediately to convoy the priceless Lusitania, did neither.  Twenty-four hours earlier the cruiser Juno, which Captain Turner had expected to meet him, was ordered back to Queenstown. The way was cleared, not for the helpless Lusitania, but for the U-20. 

This was the strategy. Lead the Lusitania into an area which the Admiralty lawyers later admitted was ‘infested’ with submarines. She was effectively live bait and what happened thereafter was in the lap of the gods.

U-20 had no notion that the Cunard Liner was approaching. Captain Schwieger’s log and diary show that an unexpected oil shortage had forced him back from Liverpool (his planned location). [7] Schwieger was a cautious captain, aware of the vulnerability of his submarine to gun attack or being rammied. Short of torpedoes, by 7 May there were only  three left, he was surprised to find himself presented with such an unprecedented target. U-20 was a predator out to catch whatever prey that came along. Schwieger was not lying in wait for any particular vessel. He wrote in amazement that, given the sinking of the two steamboats on 6 May, the Lusitania had not been rerouted through the North Channel. [8] Had the Admiralty not ordained a different scenario, she might well have been  rerouted. Nor did Captain Schwieger expect the eventual outcome. His torpedoes were not exactly lethal. He had found it necessary to use both a torpedo and gunfire to sink the 5,000 ton Candidate and two torpedoes to dispatch the 6,000 ton Centurion. [9] Sinking a 44,000 ton Trans-Atlantic Liner with a single torpedo was ambitious, to say the least.

Whether the Secret Elite cared that the Liner would survive a single torpedo is a moot point. American outrage would still have been stirred had she limped into port without loss of life, especially when five days after the Lusitania sank, the propaganda coup was bolstered by the publication of the Bryce Report on alleged German atrocities in Belgium. [10] But all their careful calculations had been ruined by the Coroner’s Inquest at Kinsale.

Turner’s statements transformed him into a targeted man. They could not allow his testament to stand; especially his assertion that only one torpedo hit the liner, followed by what felt like a huge internal explosion. Imagine the outcry if it were proved that the Lusitania had been sunk and American citizens drowned because of explosives and munitions carried as cargo by the liner with the approval of the U.S. customs authorities? The implications would have had devastating political consequences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Silencing the newspapers was comparatively simple. By extending their powers under the Defence of the Realm Act on 17 May 1915, the government forbade the discussion of any cargo carried by either a British or Allied merchantman. [11] Newspaper speculation was crushed; Parliamentary questions, inappropriate. The Admiralty denied any impropriety, the American authorities agreed, and the whole issue of munitions as cargo was squashed. Captain Turner was not so easily dismissed.

Turner had to be disgraced, his character blackened, his opinion ridiculed, or the entire purpose behind the sinking of the Lusitania would be ruined. It was literally him or them. What the Secret Elite required was a monumental cover-up which would appease the doubters in Britain and America. Blaming Turner and burying the truth became a political necessity. A whispering campaign began at once in the Admiralty, questioning William Turner’s judgement and ability. There was even a ridiculous suggestion that he was a German spy.

Within the strange world of alleged coincidences which made the Lusitania’s troubled waters even murkier, a dinner party had been convened by the American Ambassador Walter Hines Page on the evening of the tragedy before the extent of the disaster was fully known. Given in honour of President Wilson’s emissary, Colonel Mandell House, [12] the guest list included Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, The Times legendary Foreign Editor, Henry Wickham Steed, Captain Reginald Hall of Room 40, the Solicitor-General F E Smith, George Booth, the government’s chief munitions procurer, recently back from America and, at House’s request, Lord Mersey, the British Wreck Commissioner, the judge who had overseen the Titanic inquiry. [13]

Winston Churchill had been invited, but chose to be out of London on that date.  How incredibly odd. Here in the one room sat the Admiralty official from Room 40 who knew all about the submarine activity, the government’s arms procurer who knew all about the munitions carried by the Lusitania, the Foreign Secretary who had that very day questioned the impact of such a sinking, the noble Lord Mersey, who chaired wreck inquiries and Mr. F E Smith recently raised to the office of Solicitor General. According to Ambassador Page’s recollection they sat numbed by the news as it came in, and there was ‘ practically no discussion as to the consequences of the crime’. [14] Perhaps House and Grey had forgotten their earlier conversation, or the King’s questions? Perhaps no-one thought to ask Captain Hall from the Admiralty if he had any further information? Clearly no-one would have mentioned munitions cargoes to Britain’s main munitions procurer. No, we are asked to believe that this distinguished select group ate in near monastic silence. How very odd.

Given the intimate relationship that these men had with the the case against Captain Turner, judge, prosecutor, munitions procurer, newspaper correspondent and the Head of the Foreign Office, it is impossible to imagine that a fair trial was in the offing. These were the men in whom the Secret Elite put their trust. In fact the team which was assembled to represent the Admiralty at the Official Board of Trade Inquiry comprised the Secret Elite’s legal rottweilers, Attorney General Sir Edward Carson and Solicitor General FE Smith. Carson had unhinged Oscar Wilde and humiliated him in the infamous trial of 1895. Both he and FE Smith had led the Ulster Volunteers in the months immediately before the war, aided by their mutual friend and admirer, and Secret Eliite leader, Lord Alfred Milner. [15] They meant business.

[1] The Scotsman 11 May 1915, p. 4.
[2] Hansard House of Commons Debate 10 May 1915, vol. 71 cc1359-63.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., cc1362-63.
[5] Part of the ADM 137 series;  specifically, ADM 137/4152.
[6] http://germannavalwarfare.info/02subm/02/U20.html
[7] Thomas A Bailey, German Documents on the Lusitania, Journal of Modern History, vol. 8, no.3, September 1936, p. 322.
[8] Ibid., p. 336.
[9] Ibid., p. 322.
[10] The Bryce Report; Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages. http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/brycereport.htm
[11] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, p. 208.
[12] Burton J Hendrick, Life and Letters of Walter H Page, Vol. II, p. 1-2.
[13] Simpson, Lusitania, p. 135.
[14] Burton J Hendrick, Life and Letters, p. 2.
[15] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 301-319.

Lusitania 4: Abandoned To The Fates

The German authorities had made it plain that they considered the Lusitania an enemy ship; a legitimate target. And, as we have shown in our second and third Lusitania blogs, she was. Notices to that effect were published in all major American newspapers on 30 April 1915, specifically warning that the Imperial German Government considered any vessel flying the British flag as ‘liable to destruction’ and that travellers did so ‘at their own risk’. [1] Like many other papers, The Washington Times splashed a warning from the German Ambassador to the United States, Count Bernstorff, across their front page with an account of ‘scores of prominent passengers receiving anonymous telegrams’  warning that the Lusitania would be sunk. [2] The American State Department responded that Germany would be held strictly accountable for any subsequent action which affected American citizens. [3] It read like a wild-west standoff. Passengers considered it a bluff.

As Captain Turner sailed from New York on 1 May 1915 with 1959 passengers and crew on board, he was fully aware of these dire warnings but confident that the Lusitania could outrun any pursuant. He received his instructions from Cunard’s General Manager in Liverpool, but, like all merchant captains, was subject to Admiralty control under the the rules of the Liverpool and London War Risks Association. This understanding obligated all merchant ships to follow Admiralty instructions. Failure to do so meant that ship owners forfeited their rights to insurance indemnity. [4] Cunard prized Captain Turner as amongst their very best. He was a company man and not a risk-taker. At 11.00am on 7 May, after six relatively uneventful days at sea steaming through thick fog, Lusitania broke  into a crystal clear day off the south of the Old Head of Kinsale in Ireland.

His nemesis, Captain Walther Schwieger lay close by. Schwieger and the U-20 had been actively hunting unsuspecting victims in and around that area for several days. On 5 May he sank the schooner, The Earl of Latham, but not before permitting the 5-man crew to take to their lifeboat and land safely near Kinsale from where news the U-Boat activity was transmitted to Queenstown and on to the Admiralty. U-20 chased but failed to sink the Cayo Romano, a British Steamer flying a Cuban flag. She docked safely and immediately reported the U-boat attack. The crucial point here was that both the naval authorities at Queenstown (now known as Cobh), and the Admiralty in London, knew that U-20 was within 20 miles of the Irish coast and prowling the main shipping lanes for Atlantic trade. Schwieger’s submarine was closely monitored by the decoders in Room 40. They knew the precise areas which were threatened and had identified the specific submarines involved. [5]

The officer in overall charge of naval intelligence, Rear Admiral Henry Oliver was a taciturn workaholic who had a thorough knowledge and understanding of U-boat movements and when they would arrive on station. Indeed, was we will demonstrate in a later blog, they had been monitoring U-20’s every move in precise detail since September 1914. But initial procedures were changed. For some unexplained reason, the previous policy of reporting U-boat locations was not followed in early May 1915, nor were the practices that had been set up to protect major shipping targets. It was as if the Admiralty had revised it operational procedures just as the Lusitania steamed into a highly dangerous shipping lane.

Consider how the Lusitania was treated on her previous voyage from New York in early March. Oliver ordered two destroyers out to sea to escort her, and the first Q-ship, HMS Lyon [6] was sent to cruise Liverpool Bay. [7] In other words Lusitania was given a high priority, even although, on that occasion, the destroyer captains failed to make contact with her because they had not been given the appropriate maritime code. On 7 May matters were entirely different. There were no destroyers or decoy ships to escort her to Liverpool.

There was however, an identified U-boat which was running amok in the crucial sea lane. U-20 was rampant. The day before (6 May) she chased and sank the SS Candidate after forcing the crew to abandon ship. By 3.40pm, they had been rescued by patrol boats and their predicament was relayed to the Admiralty. Schwieger missed the opportunity to sink the 14,000 ton White Star liner Arabic, but in the afternoon sank the SS Centurion, which took an hour and twenty minutes to go down. [8] News of this was sent to Queenstown and the Admiralty before 9 o’clock in the morning, though the decoders in Room 40 had already read the message from U-20 on the day before. Whether or not either of these Harrison Line steamers, Centurion and Candidate, or indeed any of the patrol boats reported the incidents by wireless remains uncertain, because all of the relevant records were ‘lost’. Between 5 and 7 May at least five official radio messages were received and acknowledged by the Lusitania. Copies of these were later sent by the Post Office, which operated the wireless stations, to the Admiralty wherein the documents disappeared for ever, a recurring theme when the official version of the Lusitania’s demise was challenged.

What can be established with absolute clarity is that Rear Admiral Oliver knew by midday on 7 May 1915 that U-20 was in the vicinity of the advancing Lusitania. So too did other key players. Cunard Chairman Alfred Booth, who worked in Liverpool, heard about the sinking of the Candidate and Centurion but could not warn his own ships. That was an Admiralty duty. He was determined to ensure that a warning had been clearly sent to Captain Turner and went in person to see that it was. The Senior Admiralty representative in Liverpool, Admiral Stileman promised to do what he could [9] but no direct warning was ever sent to Captain Turner. Nor was there to be an escort to protect her. Two days earlier the cruiser Juno had been ordered to abandon her mission to accompany the Lusitania through the war zone. Why?  The Admiralty War Diary offers no explanation. Apparently no-one knows who took that decision, but of one thing we can be certain; no-one would have dared give such an order without the explicit approval of Churchill or Fisher. [10] Lusitania was left isolated while destroyers Legion, Lucifer, Laverock and Linnet, in company with Q-Ships Baralong and Lyons sat inexplicably immobile in Milford Haven. Captain Turner was not informed that he was now alone and closing every minute to the U-20. One might begin to suspect a set-up.

On that same morning two very strange conversations took place in London, both with men closely associated with the Secret Elite. Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, asked President Wilson’s personal minder, Edward Mandell House, who was allegedly engaged on a peace mission, about the probability of an ocean liner being sunk by a U-boat. Mandell House believed that the outrage would bring ‘such a sweep of indignation across America’  that she was bound to join in the war. House was a British-trained political political operative who held great influence over the American President. [11] One hour later, in an audience with King George V at Buckingham Palace, the King asked him: ‘suppose they should sink the Lusitania with American passengers on board?’ [12
] How odd. Unless the King had access to a crystal ball, he demonstrated amazingly accurate prior knowledge. That these men should have queried the topic at precisely the time the Lusitania was sailing towards her doom, raises the question of exactly what they knew? Well, everything, for they were party to the Secret Elite plan.

At 2.10pm (Greenwich Mean-time.) U-20 fired a torpedo at the Lusitania from 700 metres. It struck the starboard side and a second very violent explosion tore apart the superstructure. 1,195 civilians, of whom 140 were American died, and with one blow, the doomed liner brought tentative talks of US-brokered peace in Europe to an end. America’s relationship with Germany soured immediately, and the British propaganda machine moved into hyperdrive.

But from the moment the first survivors reached Queenstown, the Admiralty lost control of the script as a coterie of able journalists met survivors and reported the unfolding story. This was not as the Secret Elite had planned.

Queenstown became the centre of uncensored information. Next morning, 8 May 1915, newspaper columns across the globe reported that local people were well aware of the submarine activity. The Scotsman carried the news that the Earl of Letham, had been sunk on Wednesday evening in the same area as the Lusitania and ‘earlier in the day the same submarine discharged a torpedo at the British merchantman, Cayo Romano near Fastnet and missed her stern by a few feet.’ [13] While dwelling on the outrage and speculating on American reaction (first reports claimed that eighty percent of the passengers were American) editors were soon fed Admiralty disinformation. In anticipation perhaps, of accusations to come, The Times bluntly stated that the Lusitania had very little cargo since ‘she was not built for cargo’. [14] Strange that from the outset her cargo should be deemed an issue worth denying. More worryingly for Churchill and the Secret Elite, The Times gave early notice that questions would be raised whether the Admiralty took special measures to protect the vessel, ‘ in view of the threat and of the known presence in the waters she had to traverse of German submarines.’ [15]

Matters raced forward at an unanticipated pace. Before a Board of Trade Enquiry could be announced, a Coroner’s Enquiry opened at Kinsale on the afternoon of Saturday 8 May. This turn of events caught the Admiralty completely off guard. John J Horgan, a local lawyer who doubled as the Kinsale Coroner, travelled to Queenstown, gathered together a jury of local tradesmen, shopkeepers and fishermen, served notice on Captain Turner and had concluded his investigations before the Admiralty instruction to stop the Inquest arrived in the person of the Crown Solicitor. [16] Horgan was an active Sinn Feiner from the Rebel County (Cork) and may have been inspired by devilment, but his precipitant action temporarily blew a hole in the Secret Elite cover-up.

His key witness was the Lusitania’s Captain, William Turner, who had been picked up from the wreckage by the small steamer Bluebell after three hours in the water  [17] Though the liner had literally sunk under his feet, he had not left his post till the end and his bravery shone through the fog which the Admiralty sought to close around the tragedy. Turner chose to appear before the Coroner even though he could have justifiably claimed to be exhausted and disoriented by his near death experience.

Under oath, Captain Turner made it clear that he was fully aware of the German threats made in New York before the Lusitania’s departure. According to a detailed report carried in the Scotsman  on Tuesday 11 May, Captain Turner said that he had not received any message from the Admiralty about the ships sunk off the Old Head of Kinsale. Perhaps he was confused because the Lusitania had been sent a general warning the previous evening about U-boat activity south of Ireland. Critically for all that was to transpire, Captain Turner stated that immediately after the first explosion, there was a second ‘that might possibly have been internal’. He confirmed that no warships had escorted the liner and ‘none were reported to me as having been sent’ . Fair man that he was, Turner added that he had not asked the Admiralty for an escort ‘since that was their business, not his.’ [18] The Coroner ended his inquiry with unstinting praise for Captain Turner, and the jury unanimously charged the U-20s officers, the Kaiser and the government of Germany with wilful and wholesale murder.

Alarm bells rang around all who had prior knowledge of the Lusitania’s possible fate. Captain Turner had not gone down with his ship. His evidence appeared to indicate that the Lusitania had not been informed of the U-boat activity off Kinsale and, most damningly, he was of the opinion that the second explosion was internal. All of this was in the press before witnesses could be bound by the sub-judice rules of an official Board of Enquiry. The stricture that nothing could be said lest it prejudiced the formal findings had not applied to the Coroner’s Inquest. The truth was out.

Churchill’s enemies in Parliament gathered their indignation and wrapped it in very pointed and embarrassing questions. Like many of the Secret Elite before him, Churchill was  ‘out of town’ when the dirty deed was done. His convenient absence  on other secret duties during the critical period has been wrongly used by some historians to deny Churchill’s involvement in the Lusitania’s demise. From 6-8 May he took up privileged residence in the Ritz Hotel in Paris on the basis of his attendance at a conference on the naval aspects of Italy’s participation in the war. [19] His presence there was met with a mixture of amusement and scorn by the French [20] who treated him with ill-disguised contempt. Gallipoli was falling apart, his relationship with Lord Fisher at the Admiralty was deteriorating by the day, and now the Lusitania’s sinking was accompanied by serious accusations of incompetence.

His dalliance in France, where he chose to spend two additional days visiting Sir John French, was derided in Parliament as ‘a joy ride’. [21] Churchill seemed to have no appreciation of how low his stock had fallen. Even King George V made comment on ‘Winston’s joy-rides’. [22] This was not his finest hour.

[1] New York Tribune, 1 May 1915
[2] The Washington Times 1 May 1915, page 1.
[3] United States Library of Congress http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-05-01/ed-1/seq-3/#words=German+EMBASSY+WARNS+GERMAN+Embassy+warning+GERMANY
[4] Diana Preston, Wilful Murder, The Sinking of the Lusitania, p.133.
[5] Patrick Beesly, Room 40, p. 102.
[6] These special service ships were heavily armed merchantmen with hidden guns whose purpose was to lure a submarine into view before revealing her heavier guns, open fire and sink them.
[7] Beesly, Room 40, p. 95.
[8] Colin Simpson, Lusitania, pp. 136-7.
[9] Preston, Wilful Murder, pp. 205-6.
[10]  Colin Simpson, pp. 127-8.
[11] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 222.
[12] Edward Mandell House and Charles Seymouur, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol.1, p. 432.
[13] The Scotsman, 8 May p. 10.
[14] The Times, Saturday 8 May, 1915, p. 9.
[15] Ibid., p. 10.
[16] Simpson, Lusitania, pp.173-4.
[17] http://www.rmslusitania.info/people/deck/william-turner/#bluebell
[18] Report of the Coroner’s Inquiry at Kinsale, The Scotsman, p. 5, Tuesday 11 May 1915.
[19] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, Companion Volume III, p. 852.
[20] Ibid., Maurice Brett letter to Lord Esher, 8 May 1915.
[21] Hansard, House of Commons Debate 12 May 1915, vol. 7, cc1656.
[22] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 487.

Lusitania 3: A Statement Of Intent

In the first six months of the war the German submarine fleet was mainly used on reconnaissance missions and attacks on warships; in total, the U-boat fleet sank only ten British merchant ships. The first was the steamer Glitra on 20 October 1914 off the Norwegian coast. Having been ordered to heave-to, the ship’s company was given time to lower their life-boats and no lives were lost. [1] According to the recognised practice of international law, a submarine commander had to ascertain the identity of the target and make adequate provisions for the safety of crew and passengers before attacking an enemy merchant or passenger ship. Since it was impossible for the cramped submarines to take on board the the numbers present on large ships, the best they could do was stop the ship and give passengers and crew a chance to take to the lifeboats. [3] This was initially common practice. By early 1915 British merchant shipping still operated on a virtual peacetime basis without any reliance on a convoy system. Admiralty  Intelligence assessed that the German Imperial Fleet had no more than 25 submarines capable of blockading the British Isles, and since these could only operate in three reliefs, no more than eight were likely to be active simultaneously. [2]

Although international law was generally recognised by U-boat captains in the first months of the war, changes in British anti-submarine tactics led them to re-asses the risks they faced when surfacing near merchant vessels to give the crew the opportunity to abandon ship. At the outbreak of war, thirty-nine large British merchantmen had been fitted with 4.7-inch deck guns and increasingly more were armed with such weapons. Whereas ships could generally afford to survive several hits, a submarine which had surfaced was very vulnerable to attack and a single hit might make it impossible for her to dive. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill took an aggressive stance against submarine warfare by ordering merchant ships to attempt to ram U-boats on the surface.

In addition, the introduction of armed decoy tramp steamers (later named Q ships) greatly increased the risk to submarines operating from a surface position. With guns carefully concealed as deck-structure, the decoy would suddenly drop the disguised or camouflaged boards which concealed their weapons and then open fire.  This tactic was immediately successful but caused U-boat captains to rethink their strategy. The rules of engagement had been torn up and U-boats remained submerged for their own safety. There would be no warning. The first and only indication a merchant crew might get was a fast, steady stream of tell-tale bubbles heading towards them. Submarine warfare entered a new phase of silent approach and unheralded torpedo attack. In the bitterness of war the struggle for command of the seas brought ever increasing danger to maritime traffic.

On 1 February 1915 the German Chancellor approved a submarine campaign against sea-borne commerce in retaliation for the British blockade of Germany and the illegal tactics used by British merchant ships flying false ‘neutral’ flags. [4] The objective, to cut Britain’s sea communications and starve her into submission, was totally unrealistic given the paucity of U-boats and the volume of international trade.

Three days later the Kaiser approved the action and proclaimed a designated war zone around the coast of Britain and out into the Atlantic. Germany claimed the right to dispense with the customary preliminaries of visit and search before taking action against merchant vessels. They warned that belligerent merchantmen were to be sunk and it was no longer possible to avoid the danger to crews and passengers. Neutral shipping was advised to stay out of the zone from 18 February onwards or face similar consequences. There was an immediate outcry. The Times portrayed the German tactic as a war on neutrals and dismissed the Kaiser’s proclamation as a ‘new piracy’. [5]

Initially the American press dismissed the declaration as ‘bluff’. The Philadelphia Ledger dismissed it as  an ‘intimidation calculated to raise insurance rates and instil fear in shipping circles’ [6] On the other hand, international lawyer Frederic Coudert fumed that it was an ‘absolutely unprecedented stroke of barbarism’ that was ‘not in any way justified by law or morality’. In reality, analysis of the German War Zone decree showed it to be very similar to the earlier British ‘blockade’ on Germany, and government officials in the American State Department realised that the Germans  had executed a clever counter diplomatic stroke. [7] Winston Churchill remained adamant that, ‘no appreciable effect would in fact be produced upon our trade, provided always that our ships continued boldly to put to sea. On the other hand, we were sure that the German declaration and the inevitable accidents to neutrals arising out of it would offend and perhaps embroil the United States.’ [8]

Despite the initial hysteria, the German blockade of the British Isles began as promised on 18 February. That same day a British merchant ship was torpedoed in the Channel and by the end of the first week, eleven British ships had been attacked, of which seven were sunk. But put this into perspective. In the same period no less than 1,381 merchant vessels had safely arrived in, or sailed from, British ports. Trade continued unabated. In April 1915, only twenty-three ships were sunk out of over six thousand arrivals and departures. Six of these were neutrals. At least four U-boats were destroyed in the same period. [9] This was not Armageddon.

Given that the total number of U-boats operating around British shores at any given time was strictly limited, the secret codebreakers in Room 40 had, by February 1915, the capacity to track their wireless messages and follow their general direction as they moved from area to area. Though not yet an exact science, the information was priceless. On 15 February 1915, three days before the German War Zone around Britain took effect, Churchill wrote a top secret memo to the President of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman,  outlining an opportunity which the German tactic presented. It was the kernel of an idea which appealed to both him and the inner-core agents of the Secret Elite;

‘It is of the utmost importance to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope of especially embroiling the U.S. with Germany. The German formal announcement of indiscriminate submarining has been made to the United States to produce a deterrent effect on traffic. For our part, we want the traffic — the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still’ [10]

While the Mediterranean fleet headed towards the Dardanelles, where within four days they would begin a bombardment of the Turkish forts, the Secret Elite in London were plotting to use the German submarine campaign to provide their American counterparts with a reason to entice the United States into the war. Since so very few people knew about its existence inside the Admiralty, Room 40 became a secret weapon on its own with Churchill, a key Secret Elite operative, as its master and commander.

He did not supervise the day to day operations, that was the duty of Captain ‘Blinker Hall’, but all were answerable to him. Arguments have been constructed around the climate of absolute secrecy inside the Admiralty which insist that Churchill did not know all the circumstances surrounding the Lusitania’s voyage. What nonsense. He was obsessed by control; obsessed by his own image; obsessed by the public perception that he was the Admiralty. Of course he knew.

Consider the knowledge and information available to Churchill. In Room 40 the cryptographers knew precisely which U-boats were at sea and actively hunting down merchant shipping. They could follow radio messages from area to area and plot their location. The Admiralty Intelligence Division knew how the German submarines operated and the conditions they required for a successful hit. They were aware of almost every German vessel’s position. The Admiralty Trade Division knew which merchant ships and passenger liners were approaching British waters and which were scheduled to leave. No-one had instant access to these departments, save Churchill, the First Sea Lord, Jackie Fisher and  Admiral Henry Oliver, Chief of Admiralty War Staff.

To have such detailed information to hand put Churchill in a position few leaders have ever enjoyed. He had quickly determined that the information could be used to ‘embroil the U.S. with Germany’. How had he expressed it to Runciman? The greater the traffic, the greater the opportunity for German U-Boats to sink a neutral ship, and ‘better still’ if some American traffic got ‘into trouble’. This wasn’t a chance remark. It was a statement of intent.

And through Churchill’s department, the Secret Elite intended to engineer a crisis that would swing public opinion in the United States towards war. The plan which took shape was not discussed in Cabinet, nor recorded in official papers, but Churchill’s letter demonstrated clearly that the idea of an American ship getting ‘into trouble’ was  considered secretly at the highest level. We will provide evidence that the impact of a U-Boat torpedoing a Trans-Atlantic Liner carrying American passengers was not only  discussed with the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey and even the King, but the means of enabling such a traumatic incident had been agreed. The Secret Elite intended to facilitate an international incident to Britain’s advantage using  German submarines to their own end. Had it not been the Lusitania, another such ship would have served the same purpose, but the Lusitania was the perfect target. She regularly transported the richest of Americans across the Atlantic. The endangering of a hundred migrants or working class souls has long been of less concern that an international millionaire banker or icon from high society. If only they could isolate a target, channel it towards a prowling U-boat and leave the rest to the fates …

[1] Arthur J Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol 11, pp. 342-3.
[2] Winston S Churchill, The World Crisis 1915, p. 283.
[3] Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol 11, pp. 342-3
[4] The Times, February 16, 1915, p.8.
[5] The Times, 19 February, 1915, p. 9.
[6] From the Times Washington correspondent, The Times, 6 February 1915, p. 9.
[7] Walter Millis, Road To War – America, 1914-1917, pp. 134-5.
[8] Winston S Churchill, The World Crisis 1915, p. 284.
[9] Ibid., pp. 291-2.
[10] Martin Gilbert, Churchill on America, p. 57.

Guest Blog. Mitch Peeke; The Lusitania Story – A Struggle For The Truth

It is always an uphill fight to prise the truth from the establishment. Though we as a nation have rights and access to many files and historical documents, we do not have open access, nor are we to be given sight of documents still classified as secret after 100 years and more. [1] A group of genuine and dedicated history enthusiasts combined their efforts to unearth every ounce of source material on the sinking of the Lusitania, and the impressive result can be seen online at http://www.lusitania.net

Their painstaking work has included trawling through original materials at the Cunard Archives, the National Maritime Museum, the Imperial War Museum, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Royal Artillery Historical Trust, the Library of Congress, Museum of the City of New York, Kindle Museum, the BundesMilitararchiv, Cuxhaven U-Boat archive and most importantly, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Archive. They have been assisted by Gregg Bemis, owner of the Lusitania wreck, and many other academics and engineers. They can proudly boast that nothing is included in the website that has not been verified by sight of documentary evidence.

 Mitch Peeke, Steven Jones and Kevin Walsh-Johnson originally published their fascinating history The Lusitania Story, The Atrocity That Shocked The World in 2002, and an updated and extended (2015) centenary edition is now available. What follows is Mitch Peeke’s experience in trying to unearth evidence which we have been unable to access in Britain. It is an essay in tackling obstruction head-on, and as a result he and his colleagues have brought us closer to the truth about the Lusitania’s tragic sacrifice.

This is Mitch’s story, a tribute to dogged determination.

In writing first my biography of Lusitania’s Captain, then the Lusitania herself, I discovered that there are MANY myths, lies and half-truths attending the Lusitania Story. I was always intrigued as to why the Admiralty tried so hard to blame Captain Turner for the loss of his ship when she was lost purely to an act of war.

But my main struggle to find the truth stems from the fact that she was carrying American-made munitions as well as passengers, when she was sunk. As well as the fact that she was carrying three million .303 rifle bullets, I was particularly interested in a consignment of three-inch shrapnel shells, nearly 5,000 of them, shipped in 1,248 crates from the Bethlehem Steel Corp.

The cause of the ship’s sinking in a mere 18 minutes after being hit with just one torpedo has always been left as a “mystery”. This in my opinion, is deliberate. There are those out there who, to this very day, would prefer that the Lusitania keeps her secrets.

At the start of my quest, in 1999, I approached the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, by telephone. I spoke to the Curator who initially seemed willing to answer my questions. That was until he guessed that it was the Lusitania I was talking about. As soon as the ship’s name came up, he changed tack and told me that he must “respectfully refer your enquiry to the Admiralty Records Office in London”. At which point, he hung up.

Undaunted, I contacted the Admiralty Records Office. However, they smelled the rat much more quickly, referred me to the Public Records Office in Kew and pulled the shutters down, pronto.

Now the Public Records Office have a huge collection of files, all of which one assumes would be diligently filed and cross-referenced. Ha! Semi-organised chaos is a better description of what I found there, particularly with such a controversial subject as munitions being shipped aboard transatlantic passenger liners! After an inordinate amount of time and patience had been exhausted, I gained little of any real value. What was valuable, was noting what I couldn’t get out of them!

I couldn’t believe such a place could be so disorganised. Then it struck me. If you want to hide a stolen Christmas Tree, what better place to hide it than in a forest of Christmas trees! Such controversial matter is best hidden in a totally disorganised environment, where it becomes completely impossible to pin it down, yet to all intents and purposes, it remains public.

I needed to find a way around it and I did so by turning the problem on its head. Who was the recipient of those munitions; the end user? It was of course the Royal Artillery and they have their own museum in Woolwich.

The Curator there was extremely helpful, even putting me in touch with the Royal Artillery Historical Trust. Within two weeks I knew how the shipments were packed, who usually supplied them, how they were handled and how each shell was constructed.

It is quite true of Government Agencies that the right hand remains unaware of what the left hand does. Nobody from the Admiralty had told the Army NOT to talk about such things! I got what I wanted in writing!

Next Port of Call was the Imperial War Museum in London. Their Maritime Curator was an expert in ship construction as well as WW1 munitions. By the time I’d finished there, I had a THEORY as to why the ship had gone down so quickly, but it was only a working theory.

The Cunard Archives in Liverpool are similarly organised as those of the Public Records Office, but quite by chance, my research partner had found a cargo stowage plan on one of his visits. The staff refused to let him photocopy it, which aroused his interest so he sent the librarian off on another document hunt whilst he sketched it on plain paper. The original document has since “gone missing during a move” apparently.

I now knew what she was carrying and where in the hold it was stored. From the BundesMilitarArchiv in Germany, I’d obtained a copy of the U Boat’s war diary entry for the attack and I did get some of the more trustworthy statements of the Lusitania’s crew members from the Public Records Office. What I sorely needed was a certified copy of the ship’s cargo manifest.

We went to press in 2002 with not much more than our working theory, backed up by expert opinion from the museum curators I’d spoken to, but the theory made sense and the book was a success. But I knew that manifest existed SOMEWHERE and I wanted it!

Having exhausted all UK sources, I turned to America. I had a computer of my own by then and had mastered the internet and email! I found America a far more accessible place! Nobody pulled the shutters down. In fact, they went the extra mile for me. Having gone through US Customs Archives, The Museum of the City of New York to NARA, The Library of Congress and the New York Times Archives, I was finally rewarded with a suggestion that I try the personal archive of President Franklin D Roosevelt.

When I asked why, I was told that FDR was a man who’d actually wanted to know what skeletons were in the US closet. In 1940, he’d demanded the full copy of the Lusitania’s manifest. He got it. Having read it, he kept it under lock and key.

Having spoken to the staff at the FDR Archives and explained my quest for this particular Holy Grail, I was permitted to pay for the manifest to be digitally photographed, page by page, plus the memo to FDR from the then Collector of Customs in New York. After a little more negotiation, I was given the necessary permission to make my copy public, via our website, in 2012. All this, whilst still holding down a full-time job, changing my career mid-term and being a father! With determination, the truth will out!

Our website has grown immensely since it opened as one page in 1999. It is now used by students the world over, as is our book THE LUSITANIA STORY. The book has been updated with all our new findings and more pictures, in time for the centenary of the disaster.

The website can be found at http://www.lusitania.net

Mitch Peeke.
Lusitania Online. explained

We unreservedly recommend this book to our readers.  [Gerry and Jim]

[1] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, the Origins of The First World War. pp. 348-361.