Blockade 8: Scandinavian Scandals

Germany produced only a fraction of the resources needed for the complex manufacture of her munitions industry, dominated as it was by the Krupp company. Nickel, manganese, aluminium, copper, wool and flax, and all of its requirements in rubber, oil, saltpetre and jute had to be sourced from abroad and imported at considerable cost. A survey by the German navy in 1913 confirmed that on average, munitions companies held only sufficient resources for three months production, though some might have lasted longer. Their calculations indicated that, due to the lack of raw materials, the production of the weapons of war in Germany would slump after that point. But no such collapse took place. According to Professor Sir Hew Strachan, ‘Germany’s most significant import for military purposes, iron ore, seemed relatively impervious to maritime intervention’ [1] ‘Seemed relatively impervious’? What a meaningless phrase. Was there some mystery? None at all. The undisputed fact is that for at least the first two years of the war, Germany was allowed to import the raw materials for her war industries despite Britain’s overwhelming ability to stop it. The Oxford historian and British government favourite refuses to acknowledge this.

The reader may recall previous blogs on the non-defence of Briey (12 November-3 December 2014) which explained how, throughout the war, the French gifted Germany much of her vital iron ore from the Briey basin on the Franco-German border. She also obtained vast quantities of ore from Sweden, supplies which the Allies were perfectly capable of stopping. High quality ore was one of Sweden’s natural resources and the top grade steel it produced was used in ship-building, and in particular, U-boats. Germany’s iron imports increased immediately war broke out, and Montagu Consett, the British Naval Attache in Scandinavia, warned the Admiralty that this must be stopped. What outraged him most was that ‘the haulage of ore from the mines to the the coast was carried out to a large extent by the Swedish railways with British coal; its further transport by steamer across the Baltic was also (certainly for the first two years) effected by British coal.’ [2]

Much of the Swedish ore was carried to Germany by Danish ships which served effectively as a replacement for the German merchant fleet stranded in ports on both sides of the Atlantic. Such loyal service came with an added bonus. Not a single vessel belonging to the Danish owned East Asiatic line was sunk by German submarines during the war, and the company was able to pay a 30% dividend to its shareholders in 1916. [3] Fired by British coal they shipped between four and five million tons of Swedish ore into Germany per year. Consett stated bluntly, ‘Nothing would have hastened the end of the war more effectively than the sinking of ships trading in ore between Sweden and Germany, or by economic pressure brought to bear on the Swedish ore industry. [4] As we have previously explained, a British ban on coal exports would also have had a major impact.

Sweden sent other valuable ores and metals across the Baltic to Germany including copper, which was required for every phase of naval and military warfare. Although there was no indigenous production of copper in Sweden, she increased her imports on the outbreak of war then re-exported to Germany more than three times the amount she had formerly purchased from abroad. The authorities in London were aware of this, but rather than banning British exports of copper to Sweden, they permitted them to be doubled from 517 tons in 1913 to 1,085 tons in 1915. Throughout that same period, Sweden’s exports of copper to Germany increased well beyond her normal peacetime levels. [5] Two years into the war, supplies of these commodities were still pouring from the Baltic into Germany. [6] Two years of desperate struggle on the western front against the explosive power of German howitzers was literally sustained on the back of these unchallenged imports to Scandinavia. Copper was carried into Britain from America and elsewhere across the world in British ships burning British coal. Considerable quantities of it were then exported to Sweden in British ships using British coal. Much of that copper was then sent on to Germany in ships which were, once again, powered by British coal. Quite apart from the drain on Britain’s coal supplies, scarce British merchant ships and the valuable time of their crews were being used to assist the German war effort. It defies belief.

The British government argued that it dared not halt exports to Sweden lest the Swedes retaliate by banning exports of her own products essential to Britain and the war effort. This was but one more sham excuse that collapsed under investigation. A shortage of materials like pit-props or paper could be sourced either from home or the Empire. Sweden offered nothing that could not be found elsewhere by the Allies. Britain was not dependant on Sweden. Quite the reverse. Sweden was dependent on Britain and neutral nations for a wide range of imports including coal, cereals, lubricants, petroleum, fodder and fertilisers. [7] Had it wanted to, the British government could have exerted tremendous pressure on Sweden to stop all exports to Germany, but took no definitive action until very late in the war. If Sweden had appealed to the international courts about her loss of trade, it would have been perfectly feasible for Britain and her allies to allay such fears and purchase everything that was bound for Germany. It was not to be.

Sweden also exported zinc, steel and other essential metals to Germany, in addition to wire, machinery, timber and large quantities of food. As if that was not sufficient, Britain sent Sweden more than twice her pre-war imports of the most valuable of all ingredients for strengthened steel, nickel. In 1915, of Sweden’s total imports of 504 tons of nickel, 65 per cent came from Britain and her Empire. Of this, 70 tons were sent directly to Germany. The remainder was used in Sweden to manufacture war materials for Germany. The furious British naval attache reported that ‘We sent Sweden twelve times the amount of nickel in 1915 that we did in 1913’, [8] and all of it to the benefit of the enemy.

There was a further scandal that the government tried desperately to keep from public knowledge. Crucial supplies of nickel were regularly exported to Germany from Norway. Nickel is a very hard metal essential for the manufacture of strengthened steel for guns, ships and armaments of various type. A small amount of nickel, 2% to 4%, was all that was required to harden the metals, so the ore itself was very valuable, and few countries had good natural supplies. [9] Most known deposits of nickel were already in Allied hands through the Mond Nickel Company in Canada and the great deposits in the French Dependency of New Caledonia in the Pacific. Germany’s stock of nickel in 1914 was meagre. She had sufficient only for a short war and, apart from the nickel supplied by Britain through Sweden, Germany had to rely on Norway as her sole supplier. There was only one factory in Norway capable of producing the amount Germany needed, the Kristiansand Nikkel Raffineringswerk, known as the K.N.R, which smelted about 60 tons of nickel per month, almost all of which went to Germany.

The British government agreed a contract with K.N.R by which they paid the company £1 million to limit their export of nickel to Germany to 80 tons per month. [10] While the tactic of trying to restrict German imports of nickel was understandable, the deal itself caused yet another damaging allegation. It was fraudulent. The agreed 80 ton limit was greater than the company’s total output, so Germany continued to import her full quota, and Britain received no benefit from the deal. Basically, K.N.R was handed £1 million for a contract that did not interfere in any way with its exports to Germany. [11] Consett angrily claimed that by applying appropriate pressure, Britain ‘could have prevented the export of the larger part of the nickel to Germany, or could have stopped the production of the nickel itself.’ His official and repeated representations to the Admiralty to have the nickel traffic stopped were to no avail. [12]

If the British government was unwilling to take action, others, closer to hand, were. Norwegian ships had been sunk by German U-boats using torpedoes made from steel hardened with Norwegian nickel, and there was a deep and bitter feeling of enmity towards Germany. Norwegian patriots took matters into their own hands and blew up the works in May 1917. [13] Though hardly worth a mention in the British press, this act of defiance was a serious blow to the German shell production and a major rebuilding programme was quickly underway. Then the K.N.R scandal deepened. Newspaper articles in Canada revealed a connection between the British Government, the British American Nickel Corporation and K.N.R. The accusation was that, though nominally Norwegian, K.N.R was in fact controlled by a German company in Frankfurt. [14] The claims were entirely justified. But it went much deeper than was realised. The murky world of international armaments and munitions reeked of scandal and collusions which linked compliant governments with powerful agencies and cartels often referred to as the merchants of death. When we turn our spotlight onto this dark history in the months to come, we will return to the corrupt nickel story with a vengeance.

It is absolutely unquestionable that the quantity of essential war materials that were exported from Britain, her Empire and elsewhere, through Scandinavia was vast, almost unmeasureable. There is no conclusion to be drawn other than the horrifying realisation that millions were needlessly sacrificed and the war knowingly prolonged.

[1] Hew Strachan, The First World War vol. 1, pp. 1018-9.
[2] M W W P Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces (1914-1918), p. 80.
[3] George Seldes, Iron, Blood and Profits, p. 89.
[4] Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, p. 80.
[5] Ibid., pp. 190-93.
[6] Ibid., p. 141.
[7] Ibid., pp. 84–85.
[8] Ibid., p. 201.
[9] Ibid., p. 198.
[10] Seventh Report from the Select Committee on National Expenditure, 21. December, 1920.
[11] Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, pp. 197-199.
[12] Ibid., p. 199.
[13] Ibid.
[14] The Times, 24 January, 1918, p. 8.

Blockade 7: Coal – Digging For The Enemy

Thanks to the secret Contraband Committee, trade between neutral nations and Norway, Sweden and Denmark flourished as never before. Despite the blockade that nominally operated in the North Sea, the scandalous decisions of the Contraband Committee in London meant that trade in the supplies, commodities and material vital to the continuation of the war continued virtually unchecked for over two years and Scandinavia prospered. From the very first days of war, merchants and importers in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Helsingborg and Malmo found themselves inundated with orders from Germany to supply thousands of tons of animal feed, foodstuffs, ores, cotton and coal. Purchased from the Americas, North and South, from Britain and the British Empire, from other neutral countries world-wide these imports literally bounced from the quay-sides and dockyards to the goods trains and canal boats that ferried them to their final destination. Germany.

Scandinavian merchants made profits beyond their wildest dreams because Germany was willing to pay grossly inflated prices to guarantee these vital supplies. [1] Denmark, and Holland too, became Germany’s sea-based importers while Sweden served additionally as her workshop. In an international game of charades, neutral ships were moderately inconvenienced in the north sea gateways to and from the Atlantic, but the loss of time was more than compensated by the immense profits that were made in America, in Scandinavia, and in Britain, for British merchants also traded unashamedly, but secretly, with the enemy.

The volume of trade that was permitted to pass across the North Sea exceeded all previous quantities. It literally saved Germany from starvation and allowed her to continue to fight the war. British trade with Scandinavia was justified by the British government on the grounds that guarantees were in place to ensure that Germany would not benefit by these exports, but the given pledges were worthless. The Secret Elite in London knew full well what was taking place for the straightforward reason that they were facilitating it. They controlled the Contraband Committee and it in turn controlled the gateways to trade. Government departments like the Foreign Office, the Admiralty and the Board of Trade knew precisely what was happening. The evidence was presented to them, but to no avail. As the British Naval attache in Scandinavia stated, ‘All representations, facts and trustworthy analysis presented to the British government about what was happening were disregarded.’ [2]

In addition to its naval supremacy, Britain boasted another strategic advantage. She held vast reserves of the next most important weapon for waging war, coal. Scandinavia had little or none. Germany had stockpiles sufficient to cover only a limited period and their shortage of coal soon gave cause for grave concern. Some was available from outside her borders. None of the Belgian coal mines had been destroyed by their retreating army, and Germany was ‘able to extricate herself from a very difficult position with Belgian coal.’ [3] But that in itself was insufficient.

The hot summer of 1914 had resulted in a surplus of British coal available for export and initially no national embargo was placed on it. Coal merchants were asked by the Admiralty not to supply ships suspected of trading on the enemy’s behalf, but that was the only restriction placed on them before May 1915. An appeal to patriotism, to do the decent ‘British’ thing, was considered sufficient, but the moral compass of the profiteer had no place for such a sentiment. British coal was always in high demand.

It was recognised across the world as a high quality product, especially for the purpose of generating steam power. The boilers in warships were designed for burning Welsh coal, and railway locomotives for English coal. Consett records that in Denmark alone, State railways, gas works, electrical light and power stations, even breweries were dependent almost entirely on British coal. [4] The irony here is that Britain was supplying coal to Denmark, and Danish and German locomotives were carrying food and war materials to the heart of Germany in trains fuelled by British coal.

Coal was power. And it was a power that the British government could well have used to good effect if its export to Scandinavia had been immediately curtailed. Admiral Consett wrote of

‘Special fast trains packed with fish, the staple diet of many of the Danes, carried it to Germany, when fish was unprocurable in Denmark; incidentally, be it mentioned, the trains were run on British coal, and the fishing tackle was supplied by Great Britain.’ [5]

Most of the merchantmen in the Atlantic depended on British coal, and bunkering stations were scattered widely around the world to provide the necessary supply to the fleets of the Empire. An effective and instant blockade could have been introduced in August 1914 simply by denying coal to any ship suspected of trading directly or indirectly with the enemy. The Scandinavians expected that British coal supplies would be restricted or perhaps even entirely cut off on the outbreak of war, and were well aware that industrial and military disorganisation would rapidly ensue. The curtailment of coal supplies at the very start of the war would have had the most deadly effect. No coal meant no power, limited transport, no heat, no factory production. It spelled disaster for Germany.

Swedish factories and manufacturers were in the main working for Germany, yet no effort was made in Britain to control or limit the supply of coal which continued to be exported to them until the end of 1915. Indeed, British coal fuelled the transport of Sweden’s invaluable iron ore to Germany, yet it was not until the spring of 1918 that any serious attempt was made to compel Sweden to reduce her exports to Germany. The Germans continued to purchase all the necessary imports for weapons production until the end of the war ‘through the prodigal supplies of coal from her foolish and gullible enemy.’ [6] It beggars belief. And all the while the government was exhorting British coal miners to do their patriotic duty and work harder digging coal for the British war effort.

Rear-Admiral Consett had no idea that it was not foolishness and gullibility that led to this, but a very deliberate policy of the British government. He noted that ‘Throughout the war, and particularly during the first two years, large numbers of German railway trucks were to be seen in all three countries. These trucks were hauled to and from Germany with British coal. According to various newspaper reports the State railways were handling so much traffic to and from Germany that local requirements had frequently to be neglected. Not only were we actively assisting German trade in Scandinavia, but we were performing valuable transport services for the enemy.’ [7]

There was another side to this raw profiteering. The loss of coal to exports impacted on the ordinary people of Britain. In 1915, Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, was alarmed at the exorbitant coal prices that were crushing the poor in the great cities of Britain, especially London. In February of that year The Times reported that coal bought at 21 shillings per ton at the pit mouth sold in London for 32 shillings per ton with further rises imminent. [8] Concerned MPs talked of the privileged class of colliery owners who, even with fixed prices at the pit head, had become millionaires. [9] Unquestionably coal owners controlled the price and, certainly in London, the London Coal Exchange coal-ring ensured that prices remained excessive. [10] While tens of thousands of miners, around twenty per cent of the workforce, volunteered for Kitchener’s army, the families they left behind were faced with coal price increases of a criminal nature.

The poor were at the mercy of coal merchants and hawkers who went round the streets selling small quantities of coal at exorbitant prices. Living hand to mouth, and having to make critical decisions between food or fuel, the poor city dweller bore the brunt of the mercenaries’ callous profiteering. [11] On the other hand, as was pointed out by MP Sir E Markham, the rich could easily buy however much coal they needed from Harrods (acting as the middleman) because they could afford the price. [12] Yet the politicians would have it that ‘we were all in this together.’ We were not. As ever it was the poor who bore the brunt.

Despite the desperate need at home, British coal continued to be exported to neutral countries. In September 1914, Sweden alone received 633,000 tons, a seventh of her whole yearly requirement. Scandinavian ships, using British bunkers, began to pour millions of tons of re-exports into Germany via Scandinavian ports. [13] The total amount of British coal exported to Scandinavia, from the outbreak of war up to the end of 1917, was 21,632,180 tons. [14] How many innocents froze to death in slums and hovels during those awful war winters, victims too of the mercenary instincts of the war profiteer?

That is another point which has been long neglected. Britain’s success in the bitter struggle against Germany depended on two factors, man power and the blockade. In other words the country had both to use its own working capacity to the utmost for war purposes, and reduce the enemy’s productivity and resources by means of the blockade. Britain’s policy on the export of coal conflicted with both these conditions. The argument could be made that our man-power was being employed indirectly for the benefit of the enemy. Hard working miners, struggling against the odds to increase output with a much decreased labour force, were, in effect, helping to maintain the enemy’s productivity because much of their coal ended up in Germany. [15] Had they known that they were digging for the enemy, the government would have fallen. The scandal of cotton was matched only by that of coal. Indeed a powerful case could be argued. that those who permitted it betrayed their nation and were guilty of a vile form of treason.

[1] George F S Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 193.
[2] M W W P Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, pp. x-xvi.
[3] Ibid., pp. 113-4.
[4] Ibid., p. 118.
[5] Ibid., p. xiii.
[6] Ibid., pp. 119–122.
[7] Ibid., pp. 127-8.
[8] The Times, 18 February, 1915.
[9] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 22 July, 1915, vol. 73, cc1674-1794.
[10] Hansard, House of Commons Debate 19 July 1915, vol. 73, cc1196-272.
[11] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 27 July 1915, vol. 73, cc2159-84.
[12] Hansard, House of Common Debate 19 July 1915, vol. 73, cc1196-272.
[13] Consett, Triumph of Unarmed Forces, p. 119.
[14] Ibid., p. 130.
[15] Ibid., pp. 131-2.

Blockade 6: Cotton – Rich Pickings, Horrific Consequences

Almost two years before the outbreak of war, the Secret Sub-Committee set up in Whitehall to advise the prime minister, the Committee of Imperial Defence, considered how Britain should approach trading with the enemy in what they knew to be the approaching war. Its conclusions put raw cotton at the top of a list of goods prohibited from export to Germany. [1] This was not what the Foreign Office had intended so an appendix was drafted by their representative C.J.B. Hurst highlighting the risks involved in alienating America by such a policy [2] Cotton was consequently removed secretly from the initial list of contraband with calamitous effect for Allied troops on the Western Front.

During the first year of the war cotton was not included in the contraband list, and the blockading squadron had no authority to stop its transportation to Germany. Comprising 90 per cent cellulose, cotton was essential for explosives production. Cellulose is inflammable, but when treated with nitric and sulphuric acid it becomes the basic substance for a large group of explosives and propellants. Cotton was to the munitions industry what bricks were to the housing trade. When war broke out Germany immediately imported as much cotton as possible through her neighbouring neutral Scandinavian countries. In the pre-war years Sweden, Norway and Denmark maintained relatively constant annual imports of the material, but from August 1914, these suddenly and dramatically increased.

Though there was incredulity at the decision, the British government confirmed in October 1914 that cotton would not be declared contraband. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British Ambassador in Washington was instructed to reassure the American Secretary of State on the matter. He immediately sent a letter to William Jennings Bryan with an assurance given on behalf of Sir Edward Grey that, ‘Cotton has not been put in any of our lists of contraband, and, as your department must be aware, it is not intended to include it in our new list of contraband. It is, therefore, as far as Germany is concerned, on the free list and will remain there.’ [3] So there can be no doubt. The British government held open the door for Germany to import the most vital of constituents for explosive projectiles, and ensured that the Americans could continue to export cotton without fear of retribution.

Thereafter, the United States shipped 3,353,638 one-hundred pound bales of cotton to Scandinavia and Holland during the first five months of 1915 while previous shipments to these countries had averaged only 200,000 bales. The vast bulk of the excess was forwarded to Germany. British businessmen were quick to take advantage of the bonanza and made large profits by boosting the cotton trade to neutral countries which bordered Germany. Huge amounts of American cotton were also imported into Britain for munitions manufacture, but between January and May 1915, cotton dealers in England re-exported 504,000 one-hundred pound bales of that cotton to Scandinavia. This was around fifteen times higher that a comparative five month period. For example, between April and May 1915, Sweden imported 17,331 tons of cotton (pre-war imports for the same time-period averaged 3,900 tons) of which 1,500 tons came directly from Britain. Holland virtually doubled her cotton imports during the month of April to 16,217 tons, of which 5,352 tons were exported from Britain. At the same time British re-exports to countries which did not border Germany were considerably reduced. [4] It was a scandal.

Millions of German shells rained death on Allied troops on the front line propelled by high explosives that were dependant on cotton purchased from Britain. Sweden’s total importation of cotton in 1913 was 24,800 tons, of which 1,940 tons came from Britain and the Empire. In 1915 there was a five fold increase to 123,200 tons with 10,300 tons exported from Britain. Sweden’s export of cotton to Germany increased from 236 tons in 1913 to 76,000 tons in 1915. [5] Before any finger is pointed at others who profiteered from the war, the first and most disgusting culprits came from Britain herself.

Though Britain generously contributed to German cotton imports by ensuring its re-export through Scandinavia, most of the produce came from America where the right to sell cotton to any buyer was steadfastly defended, and cotton millionaires prospered as never before. The British Government had been offered the option to buy up much of the 1914 crop from the United States at a comparatively low price, but the proposition was never taken up. [6] Asquith’s government made no attempt to challenge the Cotton Lobby in America. Indeed Lord Robert Cecil, under-secretary for foreign affairs in the coalition government, and a member of the Secret Elite, [7] insisted in Parliament on 12 July 1915 that Britain had a responsibility ‘to respect the legitimate rights of neutrals’ and take into consideration the needs of both America and the Scandinavian countries. [8] His excuse was that if the cotton supply to neutrals was cut off it ‘would land us in international difficulties.’ Members of parliament ‘could not understand this cowardly policy in keeping cotton out of the contraband list.’ [9] No-one could. The British public was outraged and feeling was so strong that Lord Cecil was called a ‘murderer of his own countrymen.’ [10]

Commander Keble Chatterton of the Royal Navy could not hide his disgust that the government continued to ignore the loud demands that cotton supplies to Germany be stopped.

‘It was pathetic to know that Germany had obtained practically all she wanted of the last American cotton crop via neutral countries, though we could have stopped almost the whole lot… So long as the Blockading Fleet was left alone to do its persistent duties, Germany was doomed… She had gambled on a short, quick victory – and lost. Nothing could now save her from eventual collapse except some further folly that might issue from Whitehall.’ [11]

Germany should have been doomed. The blockading squadrons were doing their duty but, as we have demonstrated, were repeatedly obstructed by Foreign Office intervention. And, of course, there were further ‘follies’, but what transpired was much more sinister than mere folly. In late June 1915, British delegates were sent to an Anglo-Swedish conference on cotton in Stockholm, and the result was that Britain permitted Sweden to import even more cotton. Despite all of the clamour raised against cotton exports, the Secret Elite continued to have their way.

The Foreign Office historian Archibald Bell recorded that, in complete contrast, the government in France consistently urged that cotton should be declared contraband. The French were astonished to learn through their ambassador that Sir Edward Grey had actually recommended that the British cabinet relax the blockade. The American ambassador at London, Walter Hines Page, a man ‘on intimate terms’ with Sir Edward Grey, reported to Washington in mid-July: “I think that the government will make a vigorous effort to resist the agitation to make cotton contraband, with what result I cannot predict.” [12]

Such was the wide-ranging clamour against cotton being exempt from contraband that The Times published a letter on 20 July 1915 from ‘A Neutral’ which raised the issue to a higher level. It hit a chord with public anguish by reporting that, ‘the mothers of French soldiers think it inconceivable that you should her supplying the enemy with the means of killing the sons of your allies. French people are continually asking, “What is the English fleet doing to allow cotton to go into Germany?” [13] Next day The Times responded through its editorial pages and raised the question of exportation of cotton and rubber to Germany, and of the ‘inadequacy of the steps so far taken by the British government to prevent these vitally important products from reaching an enemy destination,’ which was arousing serious anxiety both at home and abroad. A further alarming point was raised by the Consulting Chemist to the Crown, Bertram Blount, that ‘there can be no doubt that if cotton had been made absolute contraband from the start the Russians would not now be retreating. If the proper steps had been taken at the beginning of the war to prevent Germany from obtaining supplies of cotton, the British and French troops would now be operating on German soil.’ [14] Here, from the pen of a government scientist was proof that the allies had been denied a quick victory. He had no notion that the war was being deliberately prolonged.

Despite the widespread disgust in Britain that cotton was being allowed into Germany to make the bombs and bullets that were killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, the government repeatedly stated they they could not place it on the contraband list for fear of losing American support. They held out against the swell of public opinion and attempted to justify their inaction. Figures were later produced to make it appear that the cotton exports were not as great as had been widely reported. Lord Lansdowne, former Conservative Foreign Secretary and trusted member of the Secret Elite, told the House of Lords:

‘Take the import of cotton to Scandinavia and Holland. The figure for 1913 is 73,000 tons. The figure for 1915 is 310,000 tons. That is a very alarming figure – an increase nearly fourfold. But if you make the comparison that I conceive ought to be made, and compare the year, not as a whole, but month by month, you will find – I put it this way for convenience sake – that in the last six months of 1913 the amount was 49,000 tons and for the last six months of 1915 was 52,000 tons.’ [15]

This was supposed to demonstrate an important turning point to the advantage of the Allies, but Rear-Admiral Consett worked through the statistics properly. He proved that while it could be argued that the last six months of the year comparison showed only a 3,000 ton increase, the growth in the first six months of the year was from 24,000 tons in 1913 to a stunning 258,000 tons in 1915. [16] Lansdowne omitted to point out that the availability of cotton depended on the harvest. It took place in the autumn and through the latter part of the year, and consequently was only ready for exportation in the early months of the following year. There was always going to be a massive difference between statistics at different points in the cycle, but the Government manipulated the facts to indicate an improving situation.

Other factors intervened. The implications for maintaining the status quo were staggering. The men in the trenches, the families of those already sacrificed, the ordinary people in Britain and France would not have allowed the government to continue their ludicrous policy. Feelings were running high. It had been all very well for the leader of the Secret Elite, Alfred Milner, to instruct his supporters to ‘disregard the screamers’ [17] during the Boer War, but in an era of total war such high-handed disregard for public opinion was critically dangerous. In 1914 it had been simple to neutralise opposition to the war. One year on the climate had changed. When MPs like the Liberal Sir Henry Dalziel refused to be muzzled on the cotton scandal no matter the implication for his career, [18] the writing was on the wall. The Secret Elite urgently needed an exit strategy. Their solution was to announce that the Americans no longer objected to cotton as a contraband.

Suddenly the claim was made that the munition contracts placed in America by Britain and France had increased their domestic consumption of cotton to the extent that loss of the German market would hardly be felt by big business. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British ambassador at Washington reported that President Wilson was ‘quite satisfied’ that cotton should now be placed on the contraband list. [19] It smacked of the ‘old pal’s act.’

On 21 August 1915 , Alfred Milner, gave an interview to the New York Times in which he ‘supposed’ that the British government and their advisers ‘did not realise in the early months of the war that a vast demand for cotton for military purposes would arise.’ [20] What puerile nonsense. The Committee of Imperial Defence had put cotton at the top of the list of contraband in 1912. Its subsequent removal had been a deliberate act approved by the Secret Elite.

Raw cotton, cotton waste and cotton yarn were finally placed on the contraband list on 22 August 1915.

[1] PRO CAB 16/18A, p. 45.
[2] PRO CAB 16/18 pp. 424-6.
[3] Archibald Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany. http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/blockade/bgy15.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] Rear Admiral Montague Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces (1914-1918), p. 221.
[6] Lord Sydenham of Combe, Studies of An Imperialist, London 1928 p. 3.
[7] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313
[8] Hansard House of Commons Debate 12 July 1915, vol. 73, cc719-20.
[9] E. Keble Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 167.
[10] Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/blockade/bgy15.html
[11] Chatterton, The Big Blockade, pp. 166-167.
[12] Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany. http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/blockade/bgy15.html
[13] The Times 20 July 1915, p. 7.
[14] The Times 21 July, 1915, p. 8.
[15] Lord Lansdowne House of Lords Debate, 22 February 1916 vol 21 cc97-98.
[16] Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, pp. 264-5.
[17] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 53.
[18] Hansard House of Commons, 12 July, 1915 vol. 73 cc712-13.
[19] Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany. http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/blockade/bgy15.html
[20] Viscount Milner, Cotton Contraband, libcudl.colorado.edu/wwi/pdf/i73516569.pdf

Blockade 5: “A Strange And Sudden Invention”

In their efforts to render the blockade ineffective, the Secret Elite faced two major obstacles, the Royal Navy and the Prize Courts. The officers and men of the blockading forces were absolutely determined to stop any supplies getting through to Germany, and risked life and limb to do so. ‘From August 1914 to the end of 1917, the 10th Cruiser Squadron intercepted 8,905 ships, sent 1,816 into port under armed guard and boarded 4,520 fishing craft.’ [1] Over the years of the blockade very few transatlantic steamers and merchant ships or fishing boats escaped their attention. The North Atlantic blockading force ordered thousands of vessels to heave to, no matter the mountainous seas or freezing temperatures, and sent crews in small open boats to examine the cargoes, inspect their permits and papers and ascertain their destinations. It was dangerous work. There was ‘a perilous interlude when engines had to be stopped before lowering away or picking up the boat with its boarding party; and these moments when the cruiser lay rolling in the swell were more than enough for a U-boat’s captain to send his torpedo straight for the cruiser’s side.’

As early as 15 October 1914, HMS Hawke of the 10th Cruiser squadron was torpedoed by a U-Boat in the North Sea, turned over and sank with the loss of 525 lives. [2] These men were the unsung heroes of war, living on the knife-edge of uncertainty in a daily battle to deny solace to the enemy. 10th Cruiser Squadron was permanently on the alert but was constrained both by its outdated ships and unbelievable decisions made deep in the heart of the Foreign Office.

Suspicious cargoes were immediately seized by the boarding party and taken for inspection to the Orkney or Shetland islands. Thereafter the process should have been straightforward. Had the blockade operated within the dictates of international law, a Prize Court would have examined the cargoes and prevented onward passage if anything was deemed to be ultimately bound for Germany by way of Scandinavia. This was known as the doctrine of ‘continuous voyage’. In other words, if the cargo was being shipped to Stockholm and unloaded there, only to be transported on to Germany, it would be confiscated. The integrity of British Prize Courts had never been questioned and if ‘cargoes were proved to be of enemy destination or origin, they would be condemned by the Prize Court and there would be no appeal except to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.’ [3] On paper this system was flawless and fair. Given the acknowledged zeal and professionalism of the Royal Navy’s blockading fleet, very little contraband should have reached Germany from August 1914 onwards. That is what the public, the press and parliament in general believed. Winston Churchill had promised that the blockade would bring Germany to her knees in months. Not a word of dissent was voiced, yet powers greater than government ensured that the Prize Courts were neutered.

Behind the backs of the British people, in blatant defiance of the will of the British Parliament and widely accepted international law, the Prize Courts were sidelined and a more sinister authority created to exercise the real power over the blockade. As the former Admiralty lawyer George Bowles wrote in sheer exasperation in 1926, ‘The process of stopping ships that were carrying contraband, bringing them before the Prize-Court judiciary so that international law could be applied and stripping them of illegal cargoes, was completely undermined by influences inside the British Foreign Office through an invention called the Contraband Committee.’ Bowles believed that lawful processes ‘from first to last were checked, tripped up, manipulated and prevented from working by a deliberate and considered removal of the whole essential conduct of the war at sea from the Fleets and Prize Courts to the Foreign Office.’ [4] Look at the language Bowles used. There was no question of error or misunderstanding. Lawful process was hi-jacked and deliberately sabotaged.

Conjured by Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, a small, carefully selected Contraband Committee was set up in secret as a barrier between the Navy and the Prize Courts. While the Royal Navy stopped and searched every merchant ship in the North Sea and and sent all suspicious cargoes into Kirkwall, the Contraband Committee ensured that very few of these were ever taken before a Prize Court. Under the guise of ‘freeing neutral shipping from all avoidable delay and inconvenience’, the Contraband Committee made the final decision on virtually every ship stopped by the blockading squadron. This compact group of five or six shadowy figures made apparently arbitrary decisions as to what was considered contraband or not, and determined which cargoes should be allowed to proceed to their given destinations. [5] Their decisions were not arbitrary. They consistently rejected the Royal Navy’s actions and released millions of tons of vital supplies that were ultimately bound for the German war effort.

The fate of the American oil tanker, the SS Llama, provided a typical example. With some difficulty the 10th Cruiser Squadron chased and captured the fully loaded tanker and an armed guard escorted her into Kirkwall. ‘But by a mysterious mentality someone in authority had ordered her release and allowed her to proceed on her way to Germany. She duly arrived at Swinemunde, where her most welcome cargo fetched a high price.’ Admiral de Chair thought it ‘incredible that after a year’s war experience we should deliberately allow supplies to reach the enemy after the carrying-ships had been intercepted.’ [6] The Llama was at that time owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey and was part of J D Rockefeller’s fleet. He himself was closely linked to the Secret Elite in London and on Wall Street. [7] When the Llama repeated the voyage she was again stopped by the 10th Cruiser Squadron and sent to Kirkwall. Ironically, she hit a reef and sank.

The Contraband Committee’s action, like its very existence, was a complete abrogation of the law. The rules were clearly set and did not include interference from committees or any other parties. According to international law,

‘Every belligerent Power must appoint and submit to the jurisdiction of a Prize Court… which administers international as opposed to municipal law. Only if there should be a gross miscarriage of justice would there ever be need for political intervention. If the Prize Court were under the direction of the Foreign Office, it could not more than nominally administer the law of international obligation.’ [8]

Commander George Bowles’s angry broadside summed up the Foreign Office’s illegal Contraband Committee:

‘This hitherto unheard of jurisdiction consisted, not, of course, in any form of open Court, but in a strange and suddenly invented Committee of persons nominated for the purpose by the officials concerned … It acted, deliberated, and decided in secret. It was in continuous touch with Foreign Office opinion. It was bound by no law, custom, precedent, treaty, rules of evidence, rules of procedure, or legal restraint. It maintained upon the seas, against the rule of the Law of Nations, the rule of the Department; and it was used by that Department to ensure the prompt execution of its wishes in cases in which the Prize Courts of England could not be trusted to carry them out.’ [9]

Commander Bowles’s assessment of the deliberate disruption of the blockade was perfectly valid, but he had no knowledge of the Secret Elite or their control of the politicians and mandarins within the Foreign Office. The secret cabal had assumed absolute control of the Foreign Office in 1905 when Sir Edward Grey was installed as Foreign Secretary. His minders, Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir Charles Hardinge and Sir Arthur Nicolson were proven Establishment men closely associated with the Secret Elite. These were the powerful individuals who actually ran the Foreign Office while Grey fronted and deflected questions in Parliament. [10] They sat in Whitehall offices by day, and dined in their private London clubs of an evening. They and the Contraband Committee made a mockery of the tireless efforts of the brave men of the 10th Squadron out on the cruel, unforgiving seas of the freezing North Atlantic.

Virtually every ship and cargo sent into port by the Royal Navy was kept out of the Prize Court by the Contraband Committee. According to the prolific maritime writer Commander Edward Keble Chatterton, the end result ‘allowed cargoes obviously intended for Germany to continue to their destination, whereas the blockaders had no sort of doubt, and the Prize Courts would certainly have condemned such cargoes… Today (he was writing in 1932) we know all too well how this misguided rule of allowing supplies to reach the enemy had the effect of prolonging the war.’ [11]

In December 1914 the worn-out warships of the 10th cruiser squadron were replaced by a mixed fleet of twenty-four armed merchant vessels ranging from 2,876 to 21,040 tons. Some were passenger ships from the major shipping lines, others were cargo vessels, and several had been used in the banana trade. All of their captains had been hand-picked by Admiral de Chair. The Executive Officer and Gunner on each ship also came from the Royal Navy, but the remainder of the officers and crews largely comprised merchant seamen. De Chair spoke of the outrageous conditions in which his men struggled to keep the nation safe. They faced blizzards of snow and hail and towering waves which made rest or sleep impossible. His praise for them was absolute. ‘It brought out the highest qualities of seamanship and navigation on the parts of the Captains, officers and seamen and there was no denying the remarkable discipline, devotion to duty, and firm resolve on the part of everyone.’ [12]

On 2 January two sailors of the blockading fleet were lost while attempting to rescue the crew of a Norwegian barque foundering in mountainous seas in a force 9 gale. A month later, on 3 February 1915, Clan MacNaughton of the blockade squadron went down with her entire 284 officers and crew. In those dangerous raging seas the cruisers of the Northern patrol intercepted dozens of vessels every week. Between March 1915 and December 1916 an average of 286 ships per month were stopped. [13] Ten ships per day; every day. All the while, despite their heroic attempts to prevent vital supplies reaching the enemy, Secret Elite agents in the Foreign Office and Contraband Committee continually released ships with cargoes bound for Germany which brave men had risked their lives to impound.

Was it any wonder that the blockaders felt indignation and resentment at the way in which the Foreign Office undid their very best efforts? And how did Commander Chatterton later see it? They were allowing supplies through to the enemy and so prolonging the war. Bear that in mind please. They were prolonging the war.

[1] E Keble Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 279.
[2] Ibid., pp. 43-46.
[3] Ibid., p. 25.
[4] George F S Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 173.
[5] Ibid., p. 176.
[6] Chatterton,The Big Blockade, p. 214.
[7] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History,The Secret Origins of the First World War pp. 215-217.
[8] Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 148.
[9] Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 176.
[10] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, p. 114.
[11] Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 61.
[12] Ibid., p. 75.
[13] Arthur J Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, vol. 11, p. 373.

Blockade 4: Lame Excuses

For centuries, halting seaborne commerce to an enemy by means of a blockade had dealt a tremendous blow to its fighting power, and had proved to be ‘the most systematic, regularised and extensive form of commerce-destruction known to war.’ [1] Throughout the first world war the Royal Navy had the absolute power to isolate Germany from international trade and stop seaborne goods from entering her ports but, for at least the first two years of the conflict, the very best efforts of the blockade fleet were effectively sabotaged by Sir Edward Grey and the Foreign Office.

The German merchant fleet had been effectively bottled up in harbours across the world, but despite the blockade, food and raw materials of every conceivable kind were exported to Germany across the Atlantic from North and South America in British, American and other neutral vessels. Since the cargoes could not be carried directly into Germany, they were conveyed to neutral Scandinavian ports then re-routed into Germany. That in itself was contrary to the international laws of blockade, since the doctrine of ‘Continuous Voyage’ meant that, even if the ships were docking and unloading in neutral Scandinavian ports, it was the ultimate destination of the cargo that was the test of contraband. Massive quantities of food and essential war materials were sent to Scandinavia after August 1914. Though fully aware that much of it was immediately being transferred onto trains bound for Germany, the Foreign Office allowed this scandal to go unchecked.

The British government’s the lame excuse was that it dared not interfere with the transatlantic trade between neutral states because it would risk losing the support of America, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. In reality, there was never any likelihood of that happening. Official trade statistics show that direct trade between the United States and Germany declined from $169 million in 1914 to $1 million in 1916, [2] but the figure is misleading. America certainly lost direct access to the German markets, but regained much more by trading indirectly with Germany through neutral countries. Desperate German importers were willing to pay high prices, and ruthless American, Scandinavian and even British traders were willing to abandon any sense of propriety or patriotism to take advantage of the rich pickings. In addition,between 1914-1916, American trade with the Allies rose from $824 million to $3 billion. [3]

American industry produced whatever goods the Allies wanted and business boomed. Financial credit was duly arranged through Wall Street banks linked to the Secret Elite, and the United States became ‘the larder, arsenal and bank’ [4] for Britain and France. The United States thus acquired a direct interest in an Allied victory, and any other outcome would have spelled disaster for American business and finance. The British government’s perennial excuse that they could not implement a strict blockade for fear of losing American support has been perpetuated by mainstream war historians.

‘The blockade would have achieved much more had the government enforced it more rigorously. But fearful of embittering neutral opinion and driving the neutrals, especially the United States, into Germany’s arms, they often released neutral ships containing meat, wheat, wool etcetera that the Navy had, sometimes at considerable risk, sent into port for examination.’ [5]

The suggestion that the United States might ally itself with Germany was ludicrous in the extreme. That possibility was never considered in the corridors of power in Washington. ‘Neutral’ America invested heavily in an Allied victory, fully supported Britain and France and, irrespective of the blockade, business thrived. Thousands of new millionaires were created year on year through war profiteering. The United States quickly professed her neutrality, but with equal alacrity accrued a vested interest in the allied cause with a myriad of financial loans and munitions supplies that were initiated through Secret Elite links with the J P Morgan’s financial empire on Wall Street.

President Woodrow Wilson made the obligatory protests about Britain’s interference with American trade. That was no more than a charade played out on both sides of the Atlantic. Wilson’s election in 1912 had been facilitated by the Wall Street bankers and big business who were themselves closely associated with the Secret Elite in London. [6] Not only had these financiers put their man in the White House, they gave him a minder, Edward Mandell House. The American historian and journalist Webster Tarpley described him as a ‘British-trained political operative’. [7]

Woodrow Wilson was indeed President of the United States of America but this shadowy figure, with his own suite of rooms in the White House, stood by his side ‘advising’ his every move. [8] At every turn, Mandell House liaised and co-operated with the Secret Elite in London to ensure that, no matter the protests, they were always acting in concert. London knew that there was never any fear of losing American support. President Wilson played his part by issuing a series of protest notes which leant credence to the spurious notion that Britain should not implement a proper blockade for fear of alienating America.

For example, on 3 November 1914 the British Admiralty issued a proclamation to maritime shipping that a blockade was in operation in the North Sea and all ships were warned that they entered it at their peril. Scandinavian countries objected, but the United States government initially refused to join their protest. When American exporters and shipping companies complained to the State Department, a protest note was eventually sent to London on 26 December, but it was couched in very conciliatory language. Furthermore, prior to the note being sent, Mandell House discussed it with the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, so that any phrases that might upset British susceptibilities could be removed. [9]

Had a strict blockade been in place, the impact on American traders would only have temporarily stopped their exports to Scandinavia. In consequence, the war would have been over by 1915 and the disruption short-lived. In addition, the Americans would never have risked breaking the blockade at the cost of a consequent ban from the huge British, French and Russian markets. Likewise, fears that neutral Scandinavia would side with Germany if Britain implemented a strict blockade were rootless. Sweden alone showed some pro-German sympathies, but there was a strong and vocal movement there which had enjoyed 100 years of peace. Neutrality was the only option. Sweden had long stood by its non-interventionist policy and its trade dependence on both Britain and Germany laced any other position with poisonous danger. On 3 August 1914 the Swedish government proclaimed the country neutral and the majority of Swedes supported that policy. Some in the upper classes were pro-German, but ‘there was a difference between admiring Germany, or identifying with German culture, and being prepared to side with Germany in war.’ [10] The so-called risk of driving the Scandanavian countries into Germany’s arms was likewise a charade to justify British policy.

Rear-Admiral Montagu Consett, the British Naval Attaché in Scandinavia from 1912 to 1918, dismissed the suggestion that these small neutral states might have sided with Germany if the blockade had properly been implemented. A staunch English patriot, Consett spoke with considerable knowledge of Scandinavian opinion:

‘It was the universal belief that, should England become involved in a European war, Scandinavia would have to be prepared to make sacrifices. That all supplies from England would be cut off was not expected, but it was felt certain that bare requirements of domestic consumption would in no case be exceeded… The prestige of this country [Britain] never stood at so high a level. The name of England was …mentioned with real respect. When war broke out the stream [of food and war materials] that poured into Scandinavia, amazed the Scandinavians.’ [11]

The Scandinavians admired and respected Britain and were prepared to make sacrifices to support her in the war. The suggestion put about by the British government that Norway, Sweden and Denmark would support Germany if they applied a strict blockade was a scurrilous lie. As Rear Admiral Consett correctly stated, ‘It is certain Germany was neither prepared nor equipped for a struggle of four years duration.’ The impact of a blockade which leaked like a sieve meant that the war ‘was prolonged far beyond the limits of necessity.’ [12] If a proper blockade had been enforced, knowledgeable contemporaries estimated that war on continental Europe would have been effectively over within 6-8 months. [13]

[1] E. Keble Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 18.
[2] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, p. 337.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Arthur J Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol. 11. pp. 374-5.
[6] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 221-2.
[7] Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush, The Unauthorised Biography, p. 330.
[8] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 222.
[9] Joseph Ward Swain, Beginning the Twentieth Century, p. 472.
[10] http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-Sweden-2014-10-08.pdf
[11] M W W P Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, 1914-1918, p. xv.
[12] Ibid., p. vii.
[13] George F S Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 173.

Blockade 3: The Obsolete But Gallant 10th

On 4 August 1914, when Britain declared war on Germany, a Royal Proclamation on trading with the enemy was issued. Goods were divided into three categories: absolute contraband, which covered articles for military purposes only; conditional contraband, or articles for either military or civilian use; and a free list, which included food. Only the first could be seized by a belligerent who declared a blockade. The second could be seized only if enemy destination was proved, and the third not at all. To the disgust of many, the free list included raw cotton, oil and rubber. Germany would be prevented from importing guns and explosives, but would be allowed to import the raw materials necessary for making them and much of it would come from America via neutral countries. The Admiralty protested vehemently. What use, they enquired, was it to deny freedom of the seas to the enemy if neutrals were to be allowed to supply him with all his needs? [1]

Next day, a second Proclamation was issued to prevent British shipping carrying contraband to any port in Northern Europe. British coal merchants were asked by the Admiralty not to supply bunker coal for steamships to any merchant vessel suspected of trading on the enemy’s behalf. On 20 August an Order in Council was issued which stated that it was the government’s intention to adopt the provisions of the Declaration of London ‘so far as may be practicable’. [2] The Declaration favoured the neutrals’ right to trade as against the belligerent’s right to blockade and despite all of the well versed public and naval opposition to it, and the fact that parliament had rejected it, the foreign office decided that the navy would abide by it. Neither the democratic process of decision-making nor public opinion ever stood in the way of the Secret Elite. As oft times before, they paid lip service to government and implemented their own policies.

Having summarily dismissed Admiral Fisher’s call for a close blockade, allegedly because of the threat of mines and U-boats, the Royal Navy was tasked with an immensely difficult distant blockade. There were two routes by which goods might enter Germany by way of the northern neutrals; through the Straits of Dover or round the north of Scotland. A large minefield was laid in the Straits which compelled all vessels into a narrow passageway between the Goodwin sands and the coast of Kent, and every ship that passed through to or from Dutch or Scandinavian ports could be readily stopped and searched. Such a procedure was impossible in the case of the northern route which stretched 450 miles from the north of Scotland to Iceland, and then a further 160 miles to Greenland. The Northern Patrol was given the hugely difficult task of covering this 610 mile line of storm-tossed north Atlantic seas. [3]

On the high seas, two blockading squadrons were assembled. One, the Southern Squadron, had the straightforward task of policing the English Channel. The challenge for the Northern blockade was much more formidable. This task fell to the 10th Cruiser Squadron, which, unlike the grand fleet had been dispersed after the naval review at Spithead in the latter half of July. How strange that every naval preparation by the Admiralty had been perfectly pre-planned, save for the vital blockading squadrons. The 10th Cruiser Squadron was recalled and had to assemble, piecemeal, at Scapa Flow in Orkney. Headed by a tremendously capable leader, Rear Admiral Sir Dudley de Chair, what had previously been a Training Squadron was turned into the principle instrument of the British naval blockade. Eight of the oldest small cruisers in the British navy, ships of around 7,000 tons, HMS Edgar and Royal Arthur (built in 1890), the Endymion and Hawke (built in 1891), Grafton, Theseus, Gibraltar and Crescent (all built in 1892) were dispatched north to stop and examine neutral vessels exiting or entering the Atlantic from the North Sea approaches. [4] Given that it was responsible for patrolling the North Sea from the Shetlands to Iceland and beyond, the ageing, virtually obsolete coal-fired force was totally inadequate for the job. At best only six of the eight ships were available for action at any one time, the others having to return to port for coal in close sequence. When engines failed or unexpected damage was caused by the raging north Atlantic seas, even fewer were available for action. By November the storms had battered these craft into near submission.

They crawled through mountainous seas putting duty first, risking life and limb to stop neutral vessels and send search parties over in small open boats to check their cargoes for contraband. By December 1914 it was finally acknowledged that the enormous task was beyond these gallant little ships. [5] Given the years of planning that Churchill, Admiral Jellicoe and the Admiralty staff had undertaken to master a proposed blockade, it seems ridiculous that the first blockade squadron was so antiquated and unfit for purpose. What’s more, the captains and crews became increasingly disheartened. Not by the state of their antiquated cruisers but by the fate of most of the neutral ships they boarded, caught with contraband, and sent in to the contraband control base at Kirkwall. The legal framework in which the navy believed they were working, assumed that any neutral vessel suspected of carrying contraband to Germany could be detained and taken before a judicial board or Prize court with the powers to confiscate the cargo and impound the vessel. This was fine in theory but rarely happened in practice.

As the American Ambassador to Britain, Walter Page explained, Britain would ‘go to any length to keep our friendship and good will. And she has not confiscated a single one of our cargoes even unconditional contraband. She has stopped some of them and bought them herself, but confiscated not one.’ [6] Time and again the crews put their lives at risk in rough seas only to receive orders from London to release the captive ships and let them proceed. This despite the fact that they were sure the cargo was destined for Germany.

These brave men became increasingly disheartened and could not fathom why such cargoes were being allowed through the blockade after the immense effort that had been put in to stopping them. Walter Page, a very close friend of Sir Edward Grey, knew that the blockade was a sham. American ship-owners, traders, suppliers of foodstuffs, raw materials and all of the materiel of war, and the bankers and financiers who underwrote their businesses and financed the international trade were free to supply Germany and make huge profits.

And Winston Churchill stood on the Guildhall platform and promised the nation that an effective blockade was in place, the results from which would bear fruit in six to nine months. The public believed that Germany was being blockaded but knew nothing of the complex work of the men and ships that formed the blockading squadron. What was actually happening was shielded from view by the convenience of official secrecy. The inference was that any details of the squadron’s work would have assisted the enemy, though as Admiral de Chair later acknowledged, ‘the Germans knew more about the Squadron than did our own people.’ [7] The men of the 10th squadron knew well that Churchill was misleading the public. They knew that the blockade was a mirage, a charade, a nonsense, and they deeply resented the tokenism in which they were involved [8]

[1] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, p. 333.
[2] Thomas Baty and John Hartman Morgan, War: Its Conduct and Legal Results, p. 538.
[3] Arthur J Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol. 11. pp. 372-3.
[4] E Keble Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 33.
[5] Ibid., pp. 56-7.
[6] Burton J Hendrick, The Life and Letters of Walter H Page, vol. 1 p. 380.
[7] Chatterton, The Big Blockade, p. 5.
[8] Ibid., p. 53.

Blockade 2: Britannia Waives The Rules

Before August 1914, every act of preparation for war, every advantage that naturally accrued to Britain through her unparalleled maritime strength, argued in favour of a close blockade of Germany. It never happened. By the end of August the situation had altered dramatically and the raw statistics remain breath-taking. At least one half of the world’s sea carrying capacity sailed under the British flag. The British fleet dominated every sea-gate in Europe, the North Sea, the Atlantic, the narrow Gibraltar Straits passage to and from the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. ‘The actual and physical power of the Fleets of England to cut off from the armies and inhabitants of the German Block all supplies whatever from oversea was undoubted.’ [1]

Germany was effectively barred from these seaways and, apart from the battle of Jutland, for most of the war the German High Seas Fleet remained in harbour behind their protective screens of mines. Ships of the Imperial German navy which were at sea when war was declared, were systematically hunted down and destroyed. The German light cruiser Emden, which independently raided across the Indian Ocean sinking or capturing some thirty Allied ships, was engaged in battle on 9 November 1914 by the Australian navy cruiser Sydney. With a third of his crew killed in the engagement, Captain Muller ran his ship aground on the Cocos Islands. On 8 December 1914 a large British squadron came out of Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands to engage and destroy the powerful German squadron of Vice Admiral von Spee. Just one week earlier, von Spee had defeated a Royal Navy squadron off Coronel in Chile. The battle of the Falklands put an end to raids on merchant shipping by German surface vessels, and international trade between Britain and the Americas successfully carried on until the advent of the German U-boat blockade later in the war.

Like Britain, international trade was also vital to Germany’s survival as a modern industrial nation and her balance of trade deficit was largely accounted for by the importation of foodstuffs and raw materials. [2] Without sufficient imports of food, Germany would be starved into submission. When war was declared, over 600 German ships took refuge in neutral ports. All German and Austrian vessels in British, French and Russian ports were immediately impounded, so that, by the end of August 1914 Germany’s maritime trade ceased to operate, with the important exception of the Black Sea and Baltic Sea. [3]

Almost a quarter of a million tons of German shipping was stranded in New York harbour, including the Vaterland, the largest passenger ship afloat, and three Norddeutschcher Lloyd liners all capable of steaming at over 19 knots across the Atlantic. Another Hamburg-Amerika liner was laid up for the duration of the war at Boston. It was particularly important to Britain’s maritime safety that these five powerful ships remained bottled up in American ports for fear they could be transformed into armed cruisers and cause havoc on the Atlantic passages. Although a Ship Registry Act that would have allowed these vessels to be transferred to the American flag was signed by President Wilson on 18 August, it was not ratified by Congress and these great German liners were doomed to see out the war as prisoners in the safe haven of American harbours [4] The Vaterland, however, was seized by the US government when America entered the war in April 1917, renamed SS Leviathan, and used as an American troop carrier.

As detailed in the preceding blog, with Germany’s entire merchant fleet out of action, Churchill boldly informed the Guildhall banquet on 9 November 1914 that a blockade by sea would quickly bring Germany and her allies to their knees. It did not. Why? The rules of naval blockade had long been an extremely contentious issue. For centuries privateers – privately owned, armed pirate ships authorised by the Crown to attack and seize foreign merchant vessels during time of war – had been a means by which the Crown could mobilize armed ships and sailors at no cost to government. The plundered ships and their cargoes legally became Crown property, and their value assessed by an Admiralty ‘Prize Court.’ When a vessel and its cargo were sold, the prize money was shared between the captain, his crew and any individuals who had invested in the privateer ship.

Privateering was abolished by the Paris Declaration of 1856 Respecting Maritime Law which was ratified by fifty-five states. It was replaced with regulations on what constituted contraband of war and what was or was not liable to capture. The warships of a country at war were now entitled to stop and examine the cargo of any neutral merchant ship on the high seas. Neutral goods were exempted from seizure, but any material on the contraband list that might aid the enemy, such as weapons, gunpowder, cotton, army uniforms, could legally be seized.

The Paris Declaration was not a treaty, nor was it signed by Britain or America, and so rules for stopping, searching and apprehending merchant vessels remained unclear. Discussions between the major maritime nations took place in London in 1908 and the consequent ‘Declaration of London’ on ‘The Laws of Naval War’ was issued on 26 February 1909. The British foreign office had been instrumental in organising the conference, and foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey put great personal store in the declaration. It recommended the establishment of an International Prize Court, laid out guidelines on contraband and issued directives on how neutral countries should be allowed to trade with combatant nations.

Material that should be considered contraband was defined in two levels: (1) Absolute contraband included weapons of all kinds and their distinctive component parts. Projectiles, charges, and cartridges of all kinds, and their distinctive component parts. Powder and explosives specially prepared for use in war. Gun-mountings, limber boxes, limbers, military wagons, field forges, and their distinctive component parts. Clothing and equipment of a distinctively military character. (2) Conditional contraband included Foodstuffs. Forage and grain suitable for feeding animals. Barbed wire. Clothing. Fabrics for clothing and boots and shoes suitable for use in war. Fuel, lubricants and explosives. In the event of war the contraband list had to be declared to the governments of enemy Powers, with a notification to all neutral powers after the outbreak of hostilities.

The Declaration of London ruled that the following would not be declared contraband and therefore not subject to seizure in a blockade: (a) Raw cotton, wool, silk, jute, flax, hemp, and other raw materials of the textile industries, and yarns of the same. (b) Oil seeds, nuts and copra (the dried kernel of coconut used to extract oil). (c) Rubber, resins and gums. (d) Raw hides, horns, bones, and ivory. (e) Natural and artificial manures, including nitrates and phosphates for agricultural purposes. (f) Metallic ores. [5]

Sir Edward Grey and the Secret Elite were well pleased with the outcome of the conference they had organised, but generally it proved to be highly contentious in Britain. What sense did it make that the British government would agree to contraband regulations that would allow Germany in time of war to import cotton for her explosives manufacture, oil for her nitro-glycerine and dynamite, jute for her sand bags, iron, copper tungsten and other ores for production of her guns, rifles, bayonets, and shells, rubber for tyres and wool for military uniforms? [6] Little wonder that detractors dubbed it a ‘sea-law made in Germany’. [7]

Many observers, especially those associated with the Royal Navy, were outraged at the stupidity of the greatest sea-power on earth agreeing to clauses and conditions that could only serve to strengthen its foes. Serious tension developed between the Admiralty and the foreign office and 120 ‘Admirals’ signed a written objection which was circulated to all members of the House of Commons. [8] Opposition was fierce and although the Declaration was approved by the House of Commons, it was summarily thrown out by the House of Lords in December 1911 [9] Since it failed to be ratified by the British government, it failed to have any legal standing within Britain or the Empire or indeed the United States which also rejected it. [10] From March 1911 until it produced a secret report in February 1913, the Committee for Imperial Defence had a sub-group examine the implications of Trading with the Enemy in war time. [11] This secret sub-committee comprised high-level civil servants from various government departments, and included both the Director of Naval Intelligence and the Chief of the War Staff at the Admiralty.

Lord Esher and Maurice Hankey, both members of the inner circle of the Secret Elite, attended as ‘advisor’ and secretary respectively. Esher warned the group on the impact of public opinion and expectations of the general public which would assume that the navy would blockade every avenue of approach to Germany by sea. [12] He advised that it was likely that Germany would be ‘hermetically sealed’ by the priorities of waging war. With an effective blockade of the North Sea ports, sea-borne trade in Europe would be ‘so danger-swept as to be practically closed to commerce’. Lord Esher thus concluded that there was no need for parliamentary legislation. It could, he said, be taken for granted that in the event of war trade of any kind between Britain and Germany would be so limited as to be negligible. All that would be required was a proclamation at the outbreak of war warning British subjects of their responsibilities and liabilities. [13] Everyone expected a blockade, everyone knew not to trade with the enemy, so parliament need not be troubled. As we shall see, the reality was that the Secret Elite wanted a door left ajar through which Germany would be able to trade and access essential foodstuffs and war materiel. Esher and Hankey of the Secret Elite were adamant that there was no need for legislation making cotton and other important war materiel absolute contraband, because everything was already in place.

At a meeting of that secret sub-committee on 20 January 1912, Rear-Admiral Troubridge, chief of the war staff at the Admiralty, lashed out. As far as the navy, and indeed the army, was concerned, it was outrageous to assume that while the armed forces would be focussed on crushing the enemy, neutrals would be allowed to supply Germany with the necessary resources to maintain her fighting forces and weapons production. He stressed the Admiralty view that every possible obstacle should be placed on trade with Germany to stifle economic life, and make them so desperate that they would take dangerous risks that would lead to defeat. [14] No-one would openly refute such an obvious statement of fact. It would have been tantamount to treason. But agencies were afoot, even two years before war was declared, to thwart the best intentions of the Admiralty to mount an effective blockade that would bring war to a quick and successful conclusion. The navy may have assumed that it would be in control of any blockade, and the secret sub-committee may have assumed that its recommendations on goods to be prohibited would be fully absorbed into war policy, but powers greater than they exerted would come into effect.

Despite Esher and Hankey’s exhortations, the sub-committee’s most important proposal was that British ships should be banned from carrying cargoes of cotton from America to neutral ports close to Germany without clear and absolute proof that it was not destined for Germany. Cotton was crucial. It was the essential element in gun-cotton, the first high explosive requirement for artillery shells, projectiles, machine guns and rifles. It was such an important element for armaments and ammunition that it headed the sub-committee’s list of prohibited exports. [15]

Without cotton, the great howitzers would have been unable to rain down their massive destruction on fortifications, towns and trenches. The front-line troops, huddled in their muddied trenches would have been spared the merciless bombardments and millions of lives would have been spared. Cotton, turned by science into gun-cotton, was a priceless element and both Britain and Germany depended on its importation, mainly from America. Implementation of the proposal from the sub-committee on Trading With The Enemy to stop British ships from carrying American cotton across the Atlantic to neutral ports (from where it was anticipated they would be sold on to Germany) would have given Britain a powerful advantage and seriously limited Germany’s capacity to manufacture shells and bullets. Yet, from the bowels of the Secret Elite lair in the Foreign Office, moves were afoot to abort this very straightforward but highly effective cotton embargo.

The sub-committee wasn’t falling into line with Esher and Hankey’s Secret Elite wishes, and the first salvo across the bows of those members who wanted a ban on cotton trade was fired by the legal assistant-advisor to the foreign office, Sir Cecil Hurst. Though relatively unknown at that juncture, Hurst, [he was knighted in 1913] was later identified by Professor Quigley as a close associate of Alfred Milner and the Secret Elite’s Round Table group. [16] His argument ran as follows; the United States had a relatively small merchant marine fleet and depended on British ships to carry its cotton exports to Europe. Germany was a substantial importer of cotton and a blanket ban would ruin the Southern U.S. planters. If such trade was closed to British merchant ships, and the fair assumption was made that the German flag would disappear from Atlantic voyages, there would be insufficient neutral tonnage to carry cotton exports. Freight prices would rise and British ship owners would be tempted to transfer their vessels to the American flag in order to take advantage of the grossly inflated profits available under such conditions. In other words the American cotton manufacturers desire to maintain their markets and make a substantial profit from the demand for cotton in wartime, linked to the unrestrained greed of British ship-owners to take advantage of the situation, would ensure the transfer of many British vessels to American owners. Loyalty to the cause? Obligation to the state or the crown? Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori? Forget it. Raw capitalism was stronger than any bond of blood or race, and raw cotton was worth more than its weight in diamonds to the profiteers.

Note the connection between the parliamentary rejection of the Declaration of London by the House of Lords in December 1911 and the foreign office appendix to the sub-committee on Trading With The Enemy presented by their legal advisor Cecil Hurst in 1912. When their Lordships threw out the ratification of the Declaration of London, they threw out the immunity for cotton as contraband. When Hurst presented his paper to the sub-committee, he, as a Secret Elite agent, placed it secretly back on the agenda. Basically the message was that Parliament could reject whatever it liked, but behind its back, the foreign office had every intention of proceeding as Sir Edward Grey and the Secret Elite ordained. And they did. They knew exactly what they were doing when they undermined the Committee of Imperial Defence plans to ban cotton exports to Germany immediately war began.

Questioned by New York Times journalists in August 1915 on why cotton had not been declared contraband Lord Alfred Milner, the central figure at the heart of the Secret Elite, could only only reply, “I do not suppose it was realised by the government or their advisers in the early months of the war that a vast demand for cotton for military purposes would arise.” [17] Such spurious nonsense beggars belief. The British government knew all there was to know about the military need for cotton. Their own advisory committee had advised that it be the very first item on the contraband list. Without cotton, Germany could not have continued to rain down murderous shells on the beleaguered Allied troops on the Western Front. Without cotton Germany could not have continued in the war beyond 1915.

[1] George F.S. Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 162.
[2] C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger, The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915-1919. p. 36.
[3] Ibid., p. 37.
[4] H.H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 181, note 5.
[5] The Declaration of London, Norman Bentwich, 1911, http://www.archives.org. eBook and Texts, California Digital Library.
[6] The Great War, ed. Hammerton and Wilson vol. 7. p. 122.
[7] Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces (1914-1918), p. 23.
[8] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 29 June 1911 vol 27 cc574-696.
[9] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 12 December 1911 vol 10 cc809-95.
[10] George F.S. Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 163.
[11] National Archives, Cabinet Papers PRO CAB16/18A
[12] PRO CAB16/18A, p. 429.
[13] PRO CAB16/18A, pp. 429-30.
[14] PRO CAB16/18A, p. 74.
[15] PRO CAB16/18A, p. 45.
[16] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 158.
[17] Viscount Milner, Cotton Contraband, New York Times, 21 August 1915.

Blockade 1: Empty Promises

Over the course of the next eight blogs we will be examining Britain’s early strategy of a war time naval blockade of Germany. A carefully planned and well executed blockade would have led to a quick victory, but the ruling oligarchy in London were not interested in a speedy conclusion to the war. We ask you to consider here a concept that is totally at odds with mainstream history, and difficult to grasp. It forms the central theme of our book, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War. The First World War was caused by a small clique of British conspirators who deliberately lengthened the war by supplying Germany during the conflict. The complete and utter destruction of Germany as an industrial, economic and imperial competitor was their goal, and they knew that it would require a prolonged miserable war of attrition to achieve that. They also knew, however, that Germany, virtually surrounded as she was with her enemies, could not sustain a long conflict without help.

During the war, Britain and France had free access to the global markets and throughout 1914-18 imported huge amounts of foodstuffs, weapons, chemicals essential for armaments production, oil and much else. Germany, on the other hand, was cut off from those markets by the proverbial ring of steel, and her entire merchant fleet confined to port by the might of the Royal Navy. By 1914 Germany had been almost self-sufficient in food production but home grown food rapidly declined because large numbers of farm workers and horses were called up for the war effort, and the chemicals used in artificial fertilizer production were used instead for the manufacture of armaments. Paradoxically, to ensure Germany’s total destruction she had to be provided with the means to import food, oil, chemicals and all other essential materials that would enable her to continue in the war.

In previous blogs we have seen how the iron ore and smelters of the Briey basin were surrendered to Germany without a bullet being fired and allowed to continue in full production throughout the war. In this next series we reveal how the British naval blockade of Germany between 1914-1916 was a mere charade that was never intended to succeed. It had to appear that a blockade was in operation. It was deemed to be such an essential weapon of war that had a blockade not been implemented, the public would have seen it as a gross dereliction of duty. The London cabal was faced with the difficult problem of running a ‘blockade’ which appeared to be effective, but in reality was a sham.

A blockade by one nation against another has been a strategy of war throughout history. In different epochs, different tactics have been employed to achieve similar ends, namely, defeat of the enemy by stopping its trade in necessary foodstuffs and resources, excluding it from the benefits of international exchange, and bringing about its ruin and defeat. [1] The physical capacity of the Royal Navy to cut off the sea trade routes between Germany and her markets throughout the world was unquestioned. [2] It was taken as an axiom of truth by the British public that after war began, a blockade would seal Germany off, prevent food and war materiel from entering, and swiftly bring her to her knees. As The Times put it some seven months into the war, the nation retained ‘supreme and unquestioning confidence in the Royal Navy.’ [3] Given the huge percentage of Gross Domestic Product spent on warships and dreadnoughts, anything other than full confidence in the fleet would have been extremely demoralising.

On 23 August 1911, it had been evident to a small coterie of trusted ministers who attended a special meeting of the Committee for Imperial Defence that the Royal Navy’s plans for the coming war with Germany were, compared to the army, ill considered. Equally worrying was the fact that no strategic plan had been agreed between the two wings of the armed forces. [4] Part of the fall-out from that particularly disturbing meeting was the appointment of Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. He brought the rigour of his own certainty to the position and, inspired largely by Admiral Lord John (Jacky) Fisher, the recently retired First Sea Lord, he introduced a more modern approach to that bastion of tradition, including building more oil powered warships. He did not, however, share Admiral Fisher’s views on how and where to operate a naval blockade.

Fisher advocated an aggressive close blockade of the German coast by destroyers in order to bring matters quickly to a head. In addition to putting a stop to German importation of food and essential war materiel via the Atlantic trade routes, close blockade would also prevent imports via local coastal shipping from the Scandinavian countries or neutral Spain. In Fisher’s plan, the British Grand Fleet of dreadnoughts and cruisers would be ever on standby to protect the destroyers from German warships should the need arise. An additional benefit of a close blockade of ports on the Jade and Elbe estuaries would be the hemming in of the German fleet, hence the threat of a German invasion of Britain, or possibility of a German attack on British trade routes, would be removed. [5]

Faced with imminent maritime strangulation, the Imperial German Fleet might have been forced out of its safe harbours and into action, but Fisher was adamant that it would then be crushed by the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy’s capital ships. On the other hand, those who argued against a close blockade claimed that while the enemy’s warships might well be hemmed in, Germany could use mines, torpedoes and submarines to destroy the blockading vessels. Fisher said that this was a spurious argument because submarines would have insufficient depth of water in which to operate and, in any case, would not attempt to attack destroyers. [6]

Destroyers were specifically adapted to deal with the U-boat menace. They had the speed to intercept them, strengthened bows to ram them, and the fire power and torpedoes to sink them. They carried hydrophones for identifying them and depth charges to destroy them. Destroyers were perhaps the submariner’s greatest fear. In any case, at the start of the war Germany had only 29 submarines to Britain’s 73, and so a close blockade could deal with that small number.

It has been suggested recently by Professor Hew Strachan of Oxford University that Fisher’s close blockade plan “rested on an overestimation of the destroyer and an underestimation of the submarine” and would lead to a suicidal over-extension of naval resources. Britain, he states “had fewer destroyers than did Germany: forty-two to eighty-eight in 1914.” Professor Strachan also maintains that “The blockading destroyers would have to return to coal every three three to four days. As the nearest British port was 280 miles from the German coast, the blockading fleet would require three reliefs – one on station, one in port, and one en-route – or twice as many destroyers as Britain possessed.” [7] Professor Strachan’s figures and assertions are wrong on all counts. In reality, by August 1914 the Royal Navy had a strength of 221 destroyers. [8]

Fisher believed that a close blockade was of crucial importance to winning the war quickly. Had that been the true intention a great many more than 42 destroyers could have been allocated to the task. With regard to Strachan’s assertion that two-thirds of the force would be absent at any given time through the need to take on coal, it must be remembered that by then, a large number of destroyers in the Royal Navy were powered by oil. Admiral Fisher had introduced oil fired boilers and steam turbines to all destroyers built after 1905, apart from a temporary reversion to coal in the Beagle class of 1908. In a written parliamentary reply in February 1914 about the numbers of naval ships of all classes which were ‘fitted or to be fitted’ for oil fuel only, Winston Churchill cited 109 destroyers and 252 vessels in total. [9] Had oil-fired destroyers been used in a close blockade, coaling issues would have been irrelevant. In the event such coaling problems gravely limited the efficiency of the antiquated British cruiser fleet sent to perform the distant ‘blockade’ that was finally agreed upon.

Oil provided twice the thermal content of coal and was a great strategic advantage to warships. While nine hours might be required for a coal-fired ship to reach full power, it would take only minutes with oil. Oil offered increased speed and endurance, with the radius of action of an oil-powered vessel up to four times as great as coal. Crucially, in this case, oil offered the ability to refuel at sea so that all destroyers would have been able to remain on station and effectively maintain a close blockade.

As things stood in early August 1914, had a short sharp defeat of Germany been genuinely desired, a close blockade of North Sea ports at the point when Britain had a large numerical advantage even in submarines, provided the very best chance of bringing it about. That was not what the Secret Elite intended. The utter destruction of Germany required much more than a quick military victory and an armistice. The aim was not merely to destroy the German army, but the country’s entire financial commercial and industrial infrastructure, and that required the long war.

To that end the Secret Elite’s men in the Admiralty and the Foreign Office decided on a distant blockade of the North Sea approaches from the Atlantic Ocean and a similar blockade of the Atlantic approaches south of Ireland. It gave Sir Edward Grey and his fellow Secret Elite members in the Foreign Office far more power to control how a ‘blockade’ would be managed. To the general public it mattered not. They had been assured of a quick, successful and punitive war and initially paid little heed to how the blockade was being run. They trusted Churchill. He personally raised the level of confident expectation across Britain and the Empire that an iron grip would be effectively placed on German sea trade by the Grand Fleet which would slowly but surely strangle her economy and bring the war to a victorious conclusion. He addressed a meeting of bankers, financiers, politicians and senior military personnel at the Guildhall banquet on 9 November, 1914 in the company of prime minister Asquith and minister of war, Lord Kitchener. Churchill loved such high profile occasions, and did not disappoint his audience, definitively assuring them and the nation that an effective naval blockade was in operation. In his accustomed stentorian manner he claimed;

‘The punishment we inflict is very often not seen and even when seen cannot be measured. The economic stringency resulting from a naval blockade requires time to reach its full effectiveness. Now you are only looking at it at the third month. But wait a bit. Examine it at the sixth month, and the ninth month, and the twelfth month, and you will begin to see the results – results which will be gradually achieved and silently achieved, but which will spell the doom of Germany as surely as the approaching winter strikes the leaves from the trees.’ [10]

It was an empty promise full of sound and fury, and it signified deception. That there was no effective blockade in 1914 or 1915 was not down to a failure of the Royal Navy itself, but the masters in London who controlled it. Many British sailors braved the worst storms the North Atlantic could throw at them to try to implement a blockade, but were totally betrayed. While the people of Britain and the Empire believed as fact all of the lies and misleading claims about the enemy’s growing enfeeblement and its lack of war materials and food, what difficulties Germany faced in the early years of the war were not caused by a blockade. Indeed, far from restricting German supplies, evidence presented in the 1920s proved that British commerce and trade continued to assist the German war effort to the extent that the war was prolonged ‘far beyond the limits of necessity’. [11] It is this evidence of a sham first blockade between 1914-1916 that will be examining in close detail in forthcoming blogs.

[1] M. Parmalee, Blockade and Sea Power: The Blockade, 1914-1919, p. 7.
[2] George F.S. Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 162.
[3] The Times, 16 Feb, 1915.
[4] Winston Churchill, World Crisis, pp. 38-9.
[5] Hew Strachan, The First World War vol.1, pp. 394-5.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyBritishDestroyers.htm#1914
[9] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 18 February 1914, vol. 58 cc 961.
[10] The Times, 10 November, 1914.
[11] Rear-Admiral M.W.W.P. Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces (1914-1918), preface, p. vii.