The Great Coup of 1916: 5 The Sacrilege Of Peace

As the Monday Night Cabal and Milner’s wider circle of friends and associates continued their manoeuvres through much of 1916, the issue which above all others fired their fears, was talk of peace. To the Secret Elite who had invested in the war, who had funded the war and who facilitated the war, this was a pivotal moment. Their aims and objectives were nowhere in sight. Indeed, cessation of the war would a greater disaster than the huge loss of life if it continued.

The bloodletting across the western front was suitably reducing the masses who might be induced to rise against the middle-class plutocracies, but even in 1916 there was still a sense of denial about the human cost in the purified air of the upper echelons. In early February, Sir Edward Grey told President Wilson’s emissary from America, Colonel House, that Britain had not been seriously hurt by the war, ‘since but few of her men had been killed and her territory had not been invaded.’ [1] Whether this was a stupid lie or callous disregard for the tragedies suffered in every part of the land we will never know, but in that same month (February, 1916) the Times carried column after column of the lost legions of dead and missing every day. [2]

The cost of peace did not bear contemplation. Think of the massive and unprecedented loans that could only be repaid if there were spoils of victory to plunder. Think of the manufacturers whose investments in new plant, new infrastructure and expanded capacity was predicated upon a long war. There were billions of pounds and dollars to be made from extortionate prices, but that only followed a period of sustained and costly investment. The profiteers had initially bought into procuring the loans and providing the munitions because they had been promised a long war. Such are the prerequisites of greed

Nor would a negotiated peace safeguard the future of the Empire. Indeed it would have had the opposite effect. If Great Britain and the Empire and all of the Allies could not defeat the German/Austro-Hungarian/Ottoman powers, then the message would reverberate across the world that the old order had passed.

Given the massive loss of life already inflicted on the troops from Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, the outcry against a feeble Mother country that had given up the struggle would grow to a clamour. Any notion of a commonwealth of nations would dissolve in cynical spasms of derision. [3] And a negotiated peace would leave Germany free to continue her plans of expansion into the Near and Far East. The real reasons for war, the elimination go Germany as a rival on the world stage, would not be addressed at all. Peace would be a calamity for the Elite under such circumstances. To talk of it was sacrilege.

The flying of ‘Peace Kites’, as Maurice Hankey described Colonel Houses’s approaches, brought one benefit for Milner’s intriguers. Those members of Asquith’s coalition who were attracted to a negotiated peace exposed their lack of commitment to the ultimate goal. Reginald McKenna, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, felt that Britain would gain a ‘better peace now [January 1916] than later, when Germany is wholly on the defensive.’ [4] The Secret Elite were watching and listening. Literally.

As Asquith’s personal confidante and permanent secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence,[5] Maurice Hankey was privy to many confidences but even he was surprised to learn that the Director of Naval Intelligence, Captain Blinker Hall, [6] had in his possession American diplomatic codes and was monitoring the telegrams sent from Colonel House to President Wilson. What the Americans claimed was that they would broker ‘a reasonable peace’ [7] and call a conference. If Germany refused to attend, the USA would probably enter the war on the side of the Allies. [8] Note that the promise was definitely not absolute.

In late January, Hankey went to Hall at the Admiralty on another pretext [9] and discovered to his horror that Colonel House’s visit was a ‘peace stunt’. 1916 was, after all, an election year, and President Wilson had to appear to be a serious peace-broker. It was a sham. Worse still, Sir Edward Grey had given the Americans an assurance that he would trade Britain’s blockade, euphemistically called the ‘freedom of the seas’, against an end to German militarism. Hall claimed that this priceless secret information had not been shared with Arthur Balfour, First Lord of the Admiralty, which begs the question, with whom was it shared? The Foreign Secretary had made promises behind the backs of his cabinet colleagues, and we are expected to believe that Captain Hall told no-one? Grey was clearly mentally exhausted. Fearful that he might miss an opportunity to ‘get a decent peace’, if the war ‘went wrong’ Sir Edward Grey brought the American proposals before the War Committee in March 1916. They ignored it. When the Americans again pressed for a decision on the President’s offer to intervene in May 1916, the Cabinet was split. Asquith, Grey, McKenna and Balfour were apparently in favour; Lloyd George and the conservative leader Bonar Law, were against.

Alarm bells sounded. The Army Council, a body whose admiration for Alfred Milner could hardly have been stronger, threatened to resign if the War Council insisted on discussing ‘the peace question’, [10] but the threat had not passed.

Asquith was prepared to accept that ‘the time has come where it was very desirable’ to formulate clear ideas on proposals for peace and at the end of August suggested that individual members of his cabinet put their ideas on paper for circulation and discussion.[11] In September E. S. Montagu, then Minister for Munitions, advised that it was not safe to ignore the possibility of a sudden peace since no-one was more likely to ‘get out’ when the fight was up, than the Germans. [12] He also asked what an unqualified victory might mean. The General Staff brought forward their own Memorandum [13] which erroneously claimed that the French Prime Minister, Briand, would likely have ‘very decided views worked out, under his direction, by very clever people who swerve him and who do not appear on the surface of political life.’ They also offered their opinion on how an armistice might be managed to Britain’s advantage.

Foreign Office papers which were shared with the Cabinet in October 1916, showed that Germany was prepared to offer peace to Belgium irrespective of Britain’s position. Herbert Hoover who was running the scandalous Belgian Relief programme, [14] warned the Foreign Office that the German government intended to negotiate with the Belgian government in exile. He alleged that the Germans would evacuate the country, guarantee complete economic and political liberty and pay an indemnity for reconstruction purposes. Furthermore, in order to end the conflict with France, they were prepared to cede the whole of the province of Lorraine under the condition that the French would promise to supply five million tons of iron ore each year to Germany. Their ‘terms’ also included independence for Poland and an unspecified ‘arrangement’ in the Balkans. [15]

(A knowledgeable observer will have noted that in combining the Belgian Relief agency with the supplies of iron and steel from Briey and Longwy, two of the biggest scandals of the First World War were rolled together as a lure to peace.) [16] Hoover had no truck with such suggestions. When he next went to Brussels, the German-American member of the Belgian Comite Nationale, Danny Heinemann, approached him to try to find out what the British terms for peace might be. Hoover claimed that ‘he was not in the peace business’. He most certainly was not. He was in the business of profiteering from war. [17]

The more circumspect Lord Lansdowne, a member of Asquith’s coalition cabinet as Minister without Portfolio, asked a telling question on 13 November, 1916: ‘… what is our chance of winning [the war] in such a manner, and within such limits of time, as will enable us to beat our enemy to the ground and impose upon him the kind of terms we so freely discuss?’ [We might well read this as a ‘get-real’ moment, but when he continued by regretting that the Allied cause remained ‘partly vindictive and partly selfish’ to the extent that any attempt to get out of the impasse of a stalemate was viewed in negative terms, Lansdowne’s immediate future in politics was decidedly limited. [18]

Kitchener’s timely and suspicious death in June 1916 brought to an end any chance of his interference in what he looked forward to as a just peace, [19] but for the Secret Elite, their immediate problem focussed on politicians who clearly lacked the commitment to crush Germany. Asquith had run his course. His prevarications and capacity to ‘wait and see’ had no place at a time when the Secret Elite needed decisive firmness to see it through. Although Asquith went to considerable lengths in Parliament in October 1916 to shun any notion of a settlement, it was too late. His pain was heartfelt [20] when he declared:

‘The strain which the War imposes on ourselves and our Allies, the hardships which we freely admit it involves on some of those who are not directly concerned in the struggle, the upheaval of trade, the devastation of territory, the loss of irreplaceable lives—this long and sombre procession of cruelty and suffering, lighted up as it is by deathless examples of heroism and chivalry, cannot be allowed to end in some patched-up, precarious, dishonouring compromise, masquerading under the name of Peace.’ [21]

Less than two months later the men who had even considered defining peace had gone from government: Asquith, Grey, Lansdowne, Montagu and McKenna were disposed of. They had committed sacrilege. Their unforgivable sin was the contemplation of peace. There would be no peace.

[1] Edward Mandell House and Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 1915-1917, p.175.
[2] By this time there were daily examples of the horrendous waste of life on the Western Front. one example amongst hundreds can be found in The Times 1 February, 1916, p.10.
[3] Alfred Milner and his associates in the Round Table group in Britain had from 1905 onwards worked tirelessly to promote the Empire and indeed prepare the Empire of r ‘the coming war’. See Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the first World War, pp. 153-160.
[4] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Volume 1, 1877-1918, p. 245.
[5] This secretive committee was originally formed in 1902 to advise the prime minister on matters of military and naval strategy. Maurice Hankey had been Assistant Secretary since 1908 and was the immensely authoritative Secretary from 1912 onwards.
[6] The nerve centre of British intelligence was in Room 40 at the Admiralty where the highly secretive Captain (later Rear- Admiral) William ‘Blinker’ Hall monitored radio and telegraphic messages from Germany and German ships. Britain had had possession of all German codes from the first months of the war. See Blog; Lusitania 1: The Tale of there Secret Miracles, 28 April 2015.
[7] House and Seymour, The Intimate Papers, p. 135.
[8] Ibid., p. 170.
[9] Allegedly, Hankey visited Hall on 27 January 1916 to discuss a ploy to put false German banknotes into circulation and the conversation just happened to wander into Mandell House’s visit to Sir Edward Grey. So they would have us believe. Roskill, Hankey, p. 247.
[10] CAB 42/14/12.
[11] CAB 42/18/ 8.
[12] CAB 42/18/ 7.
[13] CAB 42/18/10.
[14] See Blog; Commission For Relief in Belgium 13: As If It Had Never Happened. posted on 25 November 2015.
[15] FO 899 Cabinet Memoranda 1905-1918, Memorandum by Lord Eustace Percy, 26 September 1916.
[16] See our four Blogs on Briey from 12 November 2014 onwards.
[17] See Blog; Commission For Relief in Belgium 12: Hoover, Servant Not Master, posted on 18 November 2015.
[18] Harold Kurtz, The Lansdowne Letter, History Today, Volume 18 issue 2 February 1968.
[19] Randolph S Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, p. 210.
[20] Asquith had lost his son Raymond, on 15 September 1916, at the Somme. It was a crushing personal blow.
[21] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 11 October 1916, vol 86 cc95-161.

The Great Coup of 1916: 2 The Start of the Process; May 1915

Nine and a half months into the war, no decisive military success had been registered, and public enthusiasm which overflowed in August 1914 began to wane [1] By May 1915 the protagonists had been entrenched in a stalemate on the Western Front for around six months and the Dardanelles Campaign was beginning to feel like a very costly failure. Churchill had promised that the Germans would be on their knees after  nine months of naval blockade [2] but his wild claims were exaggerated lies. How could they be otherwise? The Admiralty was nominally in charge of the tiny blockading force, the 10th Squadron, out in the North Atlantic, but it was the Foreign Office which  nullified their best efforts to deny Germany the key resources for war. Behind the backs of the British people, in blatant defiance of the will of the British Parliament and widely accepted international law, ‘the process of stopping ships that were carrying contraband … was completely undermined by influences inside the British Foreign Office through an invention called the Contraband Committee.’ [3] It was part of a greater lie to dupe the populace into believing that war was being pursued by every possible means. It was not.

Failure risks accountability, but it is rare indeed that the real culprits are ever brought to trial. Mismanagement on the battlefield was glossed over by loud support in the newspapers for Sir John French, Sir Henry Wilson and General Haig. There were however, politicians who could be replaced without any appreciable detriment to the cause of war. To Lord Milner and his Secret Elite cabal, the management of the war lay in the hands of hapless party politicians. Asquith, Grey and Haldane had certainly delivered the war on Germany, but the other liberals inside the Cabinet had no idea how a war should be effectively pursued. We have repeatedly shown that the Secret Elite were contemptuous of the British parliamentary system and held an absolute belief that elected democratic government was no alternative to the ‘rule of the superiors’. [4] They meant, of course, themselves.

Milner knew what was needed; he had managed a successful war in South Africa, a war he deliberately caused while making it appear that the Boers were the perpetrators [5] The war against Germany had to be managed. Ultimate victory in a long and punishing conflict had to be properly planned. Manpower had to be organised and one of the problems caused by Kitchener’s success was that voluntary enlistment disrupted many essential industries. The international financiers would provide the money and in the long term such loans would have to be repaid. International armaments combines would provide the weapons of destruction at huge cost, and that too would require financial commitment beyond the scope of previous ministries. This would take time to deliver.

Advised as he was by the City money-men in London, and linked to the New York bankers through Morgan / Grenfell / Rothschild, David Lloyd George was the only member of Asquith’s government who agreed that a new kind of management was required. As he put it, ‘the war was not being treated either with sufficient seriousness or adequate energy.’ [6] What these platitudes actually meant was that he considered himself the serious and energetic leader who was prepared to front the Secret Elite’s drive to destroy Germany in the manner they approved … providing he was in charge of the government. Lloyd George did not lack conceit. Strong control over all aspects of the conflict was the prerequisite for success, and the only success the Secret Elite were interested in was the total destruction of Germany. While they were set on a prolonged war, they needed to find scape-goats.

Parliamentary government was not geared to war. Ministers guarded their departments like fiefdoms, refusing to share knowledge or give detailed explanations of their strategies to either House of Parliament. Communications were hampered by an over-exaggerated ‘need to know’. Kitchener had spoken in the House of Lords on only 34 occasions between 1914-16 [7] making ‘Olympian pronouncements upon military policy’. [8] In other words he appeared to make pronouncements like one of the ancient gods without expecting to be subjected to any questions.

Kitchener was a law unto himself. He did not trust the discretion of most of Asquith’s cabinet, claiming that they were ‘leaky’, and added, ‘if they will only divorce their wives…I will tell them everything.’ [9] He had cause to be cautious. The prime minister’s wife Margot was a notorious gossip in London society and Asquith’s intimate relationship with the much younger Venetia Stanley was completely out of order. He wrote to her daily, sometimes twice a day, and confided information of such sensitivity that his indiscretion broke every law on secrecy in wartime. [10]

Parliament averaged only 8 meetings per month in the first nine months of the war. [11] That was bad enough, but the War Council, the select group of senior ministers and their military and naval advisors was not established until the end of November 1914. Although it comprised the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, The Chancellor, Lloyd George and its increasingly influential secretary, Maurice Hankey, an unexpected anomaly had ‘evolved’. The Army was directly represented by the Secretary of State for War and Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener, while the Navy, the much revered ‘senior service’, was represented by a politician, Winston Churchill.

In the five and a half weeks between 6 April and 14 May 1915,  the War Council was not convened. It was as if leadership was ‘in a coma’. [12] Consider the events that took place over that timescale;  [13] dangerous reversals on the Eastern Front, the Second Battle of Ypres, Allied landings at Gallipoli, the sinking of the Lusitania and the publication of the highly prejudicial, anti-German propaganda report from Lord Bryce on ‘atrocities’ in Belgium. [14] Yet there was apparently no need for a meeting of the War Council? Who was in charge? At times it appeared that the answer was no-one but do not be fooled. Beyond the scope of the officially elected government powerful men continued to pursue their long-term objectives and the person whose influence was most telling at this juncture was Viscount Alfred Milner.

 Milner [15] stood at the head of a mighty and resourceful network of secret intelligence. Politicians, academics, industrialists, soldiers, journalists and newspaper editors wrote to him to ensure that he knew about their grievances. The reader should be aware that after the crisis in Ulster in 1914, [16] the men who led the British army did not trust the Prime Minister [17] but held Lord Milner in the highest esteem.

Senior army officers wrote to him confidentially and told him their highly suspect version of the ‘truth’ about the desperate state of the war as it progressed. General Sir Henry Wilson had crossed to France on 14 August 1914 as a key member of General Sir John French’s GHQ and within a week was complaining about the  ‘cowardly ignorance’ of his superiors in London. Lord Roberts complained to Milner that the army command was disjointed. Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, kept him informed about all manner of events that could not be officially reported because of censorship. Leo Amery, Milner’s most ardent acolyte, wrote to him from France and from Lemnos during the Gallipoli campaign, ensuring that he knew more about the failings of the British Army than any member of Asquith’s government, except, perhaps, Kitchener. [18]

From March till the end of May 1915, there was a buzz of intrigue around Westminster. Lloyd George wrote that a fear was growing in the corridors of power  ‘that we could lose the war’, [19] though he above all knew that too much had already been invested by the American Establishment to allow such a disaster. Britain was never at risk of losing the war. Indeed, as we have demonstrated, a range of cleverly contrived arrangements allowed Germany to survive the so-called ‘blockade’ and enabled her to continue her military-industrial output. Lloyd George voiced what the Secret Elite believed the problem to be; a crisis of commitment to war. Most of his colleagues had no stomach for it. They had to go.

Milner knew that serious pressure had to be put on the Asquith government to shake out those ministers whose commitment to a prolonged war was suspect. But he was not yet prepared to lead the opposition publicly. [20] That was not his style. What was wanted was a government with the courage to break away from the laissez-faire attitude to enable greater control of the entire war effort to be given to men who would take his instruction. The Secret Elite knew that victory in a protracted struggle depended on the most efficient exploitation of the resources and manpower of the country. The answer lay in taking over government departments.

While those above him in the corridors and smoke-filled clubs for the privileged pushed for key changes in government, Lloyd George was the only Cabinet member convinced of this necessity. [21] Four years before, in 1910, he had shown himself willing to work in coalition with the Conservatives [22] and, in conjunction with Arthur Balfour, had openly accepted the value of compulsory military service. These were words close to Lord Milner’s heart. He and the former Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, had argued for many years in favour of  conscription as a much more effective way of providing a professional army. Once more, the word ‘coalition’ was being secretly whispered in the select private clubs frequented by the real power-brokers. Some even called it a  ‘National Government’.

Historians have repeatedly analysed the events of May 1915 and concluded that the political crisis ‘arose with extra-ordinary suddenness’ as if to suggest that by some strange mixture of expediency and good fortune, Asquith’s government was transformed overnight into an all-party alliance. The great historical guru of the 1960s, A J P Taylor, claimed that the emergence of a ‘National Government’ was  ‘one of the few political episodes of the First World War on which solid evidence is lacking’. [23] These are words which should raise alarm. If evidence is lacking, it is because it has been destroyed. Experience proves that to be fact. Lloyd George’s verdict was that ‘political crises never come out of the blue’, and he knew precisely what was going on. [24] Asquith’s government was teetering towards collapse because the old-fashioned Liberals did not have the necessary backbone to see a prolonged war through to its end. Circumstances at home provided the cover to manipulate the change.

Admiral Jackie Fisher, whom Churchill had brought from retirement to become First Sea Lord resigned his post over the Dardanelles fiasco. He believed that vital warships were exposed to unnecessary danger in this theatre of operations. Fisher was beside himself with rage at Churchill whom he called ‘a mad gambler’. [25] The Conservative party in parliament hated Winston Churchill whom they regarded as a turn-coat in politics and an amateur in war. [26] They had a point. On 17 May 1915, Andrew Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, met secretly with Lloyd George at the Treasury. They had been personal friends for years and according to the Chancellor, on friendlier terms ‘than is usual between political adversaries…’ [27] Lloyd George received the proposal to form a national government with open arms. When confronted by this united front, Asquith caved in and made no attempt to stand his ground and defend his cabinet. Why? Many have tried to find a suitable answe. He had been emotionally upset by Venetia Stanley’s sudden split from him … an unexpected turn of events in itself. Was he ordered to accept the inevitable given the formidable combination of the second minister in his government joining forces with the leader of the Opposition?

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

But which enemy? Churchill? Yes, he was despised by the Conservatives in parliament, and the newspapers had begun to question his judgement. Kitchener? Yes, but his national status placed him above criticism, and the army had to be supported at all costs. Asquith? Not so easy. To sack him would have thrown the government and possibly the country into chaos. Above all, the genuine unwitting liberals who had accepted their role in government, but who had no great enthusiasm for war, had to be wiped out. Democracy would be dismantled and what better way to start the process than under the guise of national unity?
[1] Alfred Gollin, Freedom or Control in the First World War,  (The Great Crisis of May 1915)  Historical Reflections, Vol. 2, no. 2, Winter 1975, pp. 135-155.
[2] The Times, 10 November 1914.
[3] George F S Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 173.
[4] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 55-6.
[5] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War p. 115.
[6] Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, p. 133.
[7] http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/mr-horatio-kitchener/1914
[8] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 249.
[9] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, vol 1, 1877-1918, p. 216.
[10] Michael and Eleanor Brock, H H Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley. A typical example may be found on page 266 where he discloses the position of Sir Henry Rawlinson’s troops on the road to Bruges and Ghent before sharing Kitchener’s thoughts on an impending stalemate.
[11] http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/sittings/1914/
[12] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 134.
[13] http://www.firstworldwar.com/timeline/1915.htm
[14] See blogs published 3 and 10 September 2014.
[15] Alfred Milner’s power base is best explained in Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 84-88.
[16] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History,  pp. 301-319.
[17] Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 251.
[18] Letters from these correspondents are included in what remains of the much-culled Milner papers at the Bodleian Library (special section) at Oxford.
[19] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 133.
[20] Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, pp. 251-2 .
[21] A J P Taylor, Lloyd George, Rise and Fall, p. 23.
[22] John  Grigg, Lloyd George, The People’s Champion, pp. 362-8.
[23] A J P Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p. 31.
[24] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 133.
[25] Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, p. 174.
[26] Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 258.
[27] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p.135.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 10: The Final Reckoning

The previous nine blogs have presented the reasons why the men of secret power wanted rid of Herbert Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War from 1914-1916… but were unable to manoeuvre him from office. He had threatened the smooth running of Trans-Atlantic finance, had interfered with, and apparently delayed, the enormous growth in armaments and munitions, and did not agree that the war would be won by the nation which fired most shells across the barren pot-holes of the Western Front. His phenomenal contribution to voluntary recruitment could not go on forever. Its initial success in the early months of the war was unsustainable. Conscription had to be introduced in March 1916 when the Military Service Act came into force [1] just as the parliamentarians had wanted, and Kitchener did not trust politicians. He was justified in his mistrust of gossiping Cabinet colleagues. Prime Minister Asquith, for example, shared secret confidential information with his paramour [2] Venetia Stanley on a daily basis. [3] He famously stated that he would give Cabinet ministers all they information they sought ‘if they would only divorce their wives.’ [4] In this, as in many of his other beliefs, Kitchener was absolutely right. London society was a hotbed of unbridled war-gossip especially in the first two years of the conflict.

What Kitchener failed to understand was that neither he, nor the British Cabinet, called the tune. The elite Bankers and financiers, the owners of the military-industrial complex, the manipulators of power and influence, the newspaper moguls and the academic guardians of historical record, the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic had ordained the war to crush Germany and amass even greater fortunes in the process. The Secret Elite whom we have identified by name in Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, [5] and further expanded in previous blogs, [6] held this as their sole objective.

An early end to the war was not to be contemplated. Nor was the notion of a just and fair peace about which Kitchener had been talking. What use was a compromise which would have allowed German commerce and industry to remain intact with all of the advantages through which modern business practice thrived? It was inconceivable that they would allow the war to end before the American government joined the conflict. The United States had to be drawn into the war in order to offload the enormous private loans and debts accrued by the Morgan / Rothschild/ Rockefeller empires through their monopolies on arms, munitions and international loans. Had Kitchener influenced a move for peace in 1916, the burden of debt would not have been shouldered by US taxpayers, and likewise, British and French tax-payers, but by the financial institutions. An honourable peace would have left Germany strong and independent. Germany had to be made to pay for a war they had never wanted. Lord Kitchener’s threatened intervention imperilled every aspect of the Secret Elite’s aim.

He knew he had enemies, clearly.

Though he himself was a very loyal servant to King and Country, Herbert Kitchener had to struggle against professional jealousy and disloyalty from his senior staff. Sir Henry Wilson, the Principal Liaison Officer between the allied forces in France, was a regular correspondent with Lord Alfred Milner, the acknowledged leader of the Secret Elite, and acted as a high level informant behind the backs of Kitchener and Asquith. The Prime Minister wrote that both he and Kitchener considered Wilson a constantly intriguing serpent [7] so there was little love lost on either side.

The Secretary of State’s enemies amongst the press included editors of the Morning Post and the National Review, but his loudest critic was Lord Northcliffe at The Times and The Mail. Ever close to the Secret Elite, The Times, through their privileged correspondent Charles Repington, had tried to bring Kitchener into public disrepute by fanning the flames of the so-called munitions crisis in 1915. [8] Far from weakening Lord Kitchener, their accusations against him damaged their reputation and underlined the strength of public support he continued to enjoy. [9] Thus Horatio Kitchener was a man with many enemies, not in the trenches, the workplace or the ordinary home, but inside the core of the Establishment. That he understood. What he could not grasp was the grand plan which had been constructed above the realm of public politics.

Asquith was obliged to shake-up his Cabinet in May 1915 and the net impact of the reorganisation was to bring more members of the Secret Elite into public office. Professor Carroll Quigley [10] identified eleven members of Asquith’s ‘coalition’ Cabinet as members of this cabal including Lords Lansdowne and Curzon, Andrew Bonar Law, the Conservative Party leader, Sir Edward Carson, FE Smith, Walter Long, the Earl of Selborne, Robert Cecil and most importantly, Arthur J Balfour, former Prime Minister, as First Lord of the Admiralty. The man whom they dearly wanted removed, Lord Kitchener, stood firm. Though in private they all wanted rid of him, in public he could not be criticised.

For as long as they could find reason to tolerate him, especially once his powers over munitions had been shifted wholesale into Lloyd Geoge’s court, Kitchener remained an asset both as the international figure-head for the British military and as a buffer between the Prime Minister and his detractors. However, once he began to speak privately about his role as a peace-maker at the end of the war, and share his ideals with leading figures in both the military and the government, [11] Kitchener’s days were numbered. The asset had become a liability. But how could they get rid of him? You might construct a long list of possibilities – ‘heart-attack’, ‘suicide’, a full range of ‘natural causes’ might have been actioned. Any public suggestion of his alleged homosexuality would certainly have ruined him but what possible good would have come from trashing the name and reputation of the hero of the Empire? None. Though the military and political agents of the Secret Elite schemed behind his back, it was in the interests of all to protect Kitchener’s public reputation. He had to be removed with a subtlety which brooked no backlash. What were the odds against Herbert Kitchener dying in a naval tragedy, lost at sea? No-one could have anticipated such a scenario or possibly suspect unlawful practice. Surely?

Before anyone rushes to close the account with the dismissive and entirely unfair claim that this is simply another conspiracy, re-read the volume of evidence, actual and circumstantial, which we have already presented. [12]

We have clearly established that there was no immediate need for Herbert Kitchener to visit Russia. Knowing that the Somme offensive would begin in July, he threatened to pull out of the venture as late as 2 June 1916 rather than have it postponed. [13] The central Secret Elite place-man at the Czar’s court in Petrograd (St Petersburg) was Sir John Hanbury-Williams, a close friend and associate of Alfred Milner. [14] Williams’s position as Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia from 1914-1917 was consolidated by ancestral diplomatic connections with the Empress Catherine the Great, which granted him a special place in the Czar’s more intimate circles. [15]

The Secret Elite network spun a spider’s web of influence across the globe. Hanbury-Williams had conjured the Grand Duke’s supposed appeal to the British to attack the Dardanelles [16] in 1915, and it was he who co-ordinated Kitchener’s visit to Russia in 1916. His diary shows that the Czar ‘talked over the proposed visit of Lord Kitchener with the greatest keenest and interest’ before Hanbury-Williams organised the details with the British Ambassador and the military attache, Sir Alfred Knox. [17] The plan to send Kitchener to Russia emanated from Britain, not Russia. Indeed Hanbury-Williams’s published record omitted detailed reference to the background preparations for what was transformed into ‘Kitchener’s’ visit. Allegedly, when Lord Kitchener insisted that any postponement of his visit would result in its cancellation, Hanbury-Williams took immediate steps to stress Czar Nicholas’s personal wish that the visit go ahead. [18] The plans devised by Hanbury-Williams were transposed into the Czar’s wishes. So ran the web of deceit.

Everyone personally connected with the Secret Elite whose name had been associated with the ‘mission’ to Russian withdrew. To add to this co-incidence, their reaction to the news of Kitchener’s death on HMS Hampshire was in its own right, suspicious. Lloyd George claimed that he heard the ‘startling’ news on his way to a War Council in Downing Street on 6 June. When he entered the Cabinet Room he described ‘the Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Mr Balfour and Sir Maurice Hankey sitting at a table all looking stunned’. This was indeed an inner circle of powerful men who understood what had happened, yet they were unable to talk about the consequences? Remarkably, given the enormity of what had just taken place, ‘Sir Maurice and I quite forgot for the moment that had it not been for the Irish negotiations, we would have shared the same fate.’ [19] That is untrue. From the outset Hankey said he would not go, and Lloyd George’s refusal had nothing to do with Ireland. [20] How many people would have reacted with such sang-froid? He and Hankey ‘quite forgot’ that they should have been on that same ill fated ship? [21] It defied human nature.

Indeed, without breaking step or pausing for a moment to contemplate the many contributions of the now deceased Secretary of State for War, Lloyd George knew that ‘the passing of Lord Kitchener left an empty place at the War Office. I realised that this place might be offered to me.’ [22] This man of many plots, of endless carping behind the backs of others, who briefed the press, especially Northcliffe, against Kitchener, displayed an almost callous cynicism. Lloyd George did indeed accept that office on 4 July, but not before ensuring that all the powers that had been systematically stripped from Kitchener were reinvested in the new Secretary of State for War.

On hearing of Kitchener’s death, Northcliffe is reported to have burst into his sister’s drawing room declaring, ‘Providence is on the side of the British Empire’ [23] Fawning tributes dripped from the mouths of the guilty. Admiral Jellicoe solemnly declared that the navy’s grief for ‘a soldier’ whose loss ‘we deplore so deeply. It was our privilege to see him last; he died with many of our comrades’. [24] No mention was made of Admiralty culpability or unswept channels.

Look again at the depth of that culpability. HMS Hampshire was barely fit for service and its loss added little to the Navy’s post-Jutland woes. Jellicoe and his masters at the Admiralty approved the ship’s route into a known minefield. Naval intelligence at Room 40 had carefully monitored all U-Boat activity. References to the minefield and the sinking of the trawler, Laurel Rose were removed or altered to suit the cover-up ‘explanation’ when difficult questions were raised about the fate of the Hampshire. The official report was kept secret. Key documents have still never seen the light of day.

Kitchener’s murder was covered with dripping platitudes and cynically penned obituaries. In the House of Lords, Lansdowne proclaimed that Kitchener’s death ‘was a great and dignified exit from the stage upon which he had played so prominent a part during the long years of his life.’ [25] The two-faced Asquith lamented ‘his career has been cut short while still in the full tide of unexhausted powers and possibilities.’ [26] The Secret Elite’s John Buchan ordained that ‘in a sense his work was finished’ and ‘his death was a fitting conclusion to the drama of his life.’ [27] ‘Bollocks’ may not be a recognised historical assessment, but ‘bollocks’ it remains. They peddled lies as fraudsters do.

The full panoply of State and Church gathered at St Paul’s Cathedral on 13 June to hold a service of remembrance for Lord Kitchener and his staff. The King and Queen accompanied by Queen Alexandra, the Lord Mayor in his black and gold robes, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and assorted Aldermen and Sheriffs all gathered to pay their final respects to the former Secretary of State for War and champion of the Empire. They sang ‘Abide with me’, recited the ‘De Profundis’, read from the liturgy, said Prayers for the Country at War and thanked God for a brave and courageous life. The service ended with all three verses of God Save the King. [28] Thus with a great sense of theatre, Kitchener’s memory was consigned to the annals of received history. How quintessentially British.

No-one has ever been held to account for the murder of Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener and over 700 other men.

[1] Conscription: the First World War – UK Parliament
http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private…/conscription/
[2] Asquith’s complex relationship with the much younger Venetia Stanley has intrigued commentators over the century. Whether or not they were lovers remains unproven.
[3]Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock, H H Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, Oxford University Press, 1982.
[4] Viscount Hankey, The Supreme Command, Vol. 1, p. 221.
[5] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, Mainstream, 2013 pp. 12-16 onwards, Appendix 1, p. 362 and Appendix 2, pp. 363-9.
[6] Secret Elite, Blogs 1-3, posted June 15-17, 2014.
[7] Brock and Brock, H H Asquith, Letters, p. 342, (Asquith to Venetia Stanley 28 Dec 1914.)
[8] see blog; Munitions 6: Crisis, What Crisis? posted 8 July 2015.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Professor Carroll Quigley, author of The Anglo-American Establishment, initially identified and named the secret cabal who controlled British foreign policy from the early years of the twentieth century.
[11] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, pp. 209-10.
[12] previous blogs posted from 4 May, 2016 – 29 June 2016.
[13] George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, Volume 3, pp. 350-1.
[14] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 56.
[15] John Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, as I knew him, p. 1.
[16] See blog, Gallipoli 9, posted 20 March 2015.
[17] Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, p. 94.
[18] Ibid., pp. 98-9.
[19] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol.1, p. 456.
[20] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Vol. I, p. 269.
[21] Hankey Diary 6 June 1916, quoted in Roskill, Hankey Vol 1, pp. 279-80.
[22] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 456.
[23] J Lee Thomson, Politicians, the Press and Propaganda, Lord Northcliffe & The Great War, 1914-1919, p. 101.
[24] The Times, 14 June 1914.
[25] Lord Lansdowne , Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 June 1916 vol 22 cc315-22.
[26] House of Commons Debate, 21 June 1916 vol 83 cc145-51.
[27] John Buchan, Episodes of the Great War, pp. 246-7.
[28] The Times 14 June 1914.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 8: What Happened? None of Your Bloody Business

On 5 June 1916, at 7.45 pm GMT, an urgent telegraph was sent from Birsay Post Office to Kirkwall and Stromness. It read ‘Battle cruiser seems in distress between Marwick Head and the Brough of Birsay.’ Twenty minutes later the words ‘vessel down’ followed. [1] The cruiser was about a mile and a half from shore in tempestuous swells but clearly visible to the naval watching-post on land. Marwick Head is a jagged coastal fortress of cliffs and unwelcoming rocks. If there is such a place as the perfect ambush point for a ship such that the chances of survival are minimal, then it’s Marwick Head. The escort vessels, having failed to keep pace with the faster cruiser in such awful weather, had been ordered back to Scapa Flow. [2] There were witnesses. Joe Angus, a gunner in the Orkney Territorial Forces shore patrol [3] saw a great cloud of smoke and flame bursting up behind the bridge of the Hampshire, and it was he who set off the alarm. [4] Having been alerted, Corporal Drever, who manned the naval watching post, raced to the post office. [5] What followed beggars belief. If at the end of this blog you still consider what happened that evening as a mere catalogue of misunderstanding and error, then the official explanation will suffice. If not, you will be forced to conclude that dark forces were at work. Examine the time-scale:

5 June, 1916, 7.45 [GMT] pm [6]

The Hampshire had been set on a course North, thirty degrees East. [7] It struck a mine which exploded just behind the bridge. [8] but did not sink immediately. In the ensuing mayhem only twelve out of around seven hundred men [9] survived both the floundering ship and the wrath of the angry North Sea gale. Of these, nine survivors specifically reported that a single explosion ripped the ship apart. William Bennet, officer on watch in the engine room, thought there were two or even three. They had to overcome the poisonous smoke and suffocating fumes to reach the deck. Estimates of the time between explosion and sinking, ranged from ten to twenty minutes. Confusion added to the howling wind and booming seas. Lifeboats could not be launched because the ship’s power had been lost. Boats cut free were dashed to pieces in the cold, debilitating waters. Men with lifebelts jumped in desperation. Only the Carley safety floats offered any chance of survival. [10]

5 June, 1916, 8.00 [GMT] pm onwards

Stoker Walter Farnden was one of an estimated forty men who clung to No. 3 raft with its cork-reinforced edges and rope handles. One by one they disappeared into the deep, frozen, exhausted unable to steer towards anyone still holding onto life amongst the debris. Stoker Farnden later described the torture he and his comrades endured: ‘An hour passed, two hours, and nearer and nearer to land the storm hurled us. Men were still dying in the agony of it all until there were but four of us alive.’ [11] Hundreds of men died in the wild seas because no-one was on hand to help. This human tragedy unfolded one and a half miles from the coast, witnessed and reported to the authorities at Scapa Flow within minutes, yet these poor men were left to die; abandoned outside the largest natural anchorage in the Empire. Why?

At the moment when possibly hundreds of men might have been rescued by a prompt response to the emergency call, the navy failed its own. Later a pathetic excuse was offered blaming the initial telegram for inaccurate detail. That ceased to have any relevance when the 8.20 message read ‘Vessel down.’ By 8.35 a third despairing message read: ‘Four funnel cruiser sunk 20 minutes ago. No assistance arrived yet. Send ships to pick up bodies.’ Men had been in the water for almost an hour, but still the Admiralty dithered.

Vice-Admiral Brock at the Longhope station on Orkney was informed of the 8.20 message that a vessel was down. Despite all that he knew, Brock did not immediately order out a rescue flotilla. Time was wasted confirming the telegrams from Birsay. Brock had been one of the guests at the special lunch hosted in Kitchener’s honour by Admiral Jellicoe that day. Brock knew of the late change to the Hampshire’s course. He knew about Kitchener’s mission to Russia. His failure to take immediate action remains incomprehensible. There was only one warship on that exclusive route. He must have known that the stricken ship was HMS Hampshire. [12] Of course he knew. His delay undoubtedly cost the lives of many dozens of potential survivors. Had Kitchener been in the water, he too would have been lost.

Rear Admiral Osmond Brock ended his career as Admiral of the Fleet. [13]

Orcadians who witnessed the tragedy could see that there were survivors amongst the bloated bodies but the seas were a natural bulwark between the desperate sailors and safety. Unless there were secret orders in place, what followed remains a tale of incompetence, panic and bewilderment on a scale that fails to make any sense. At every point the reader must remember that the sinking took place just one and a half miles from the Orkney coast – an area bristling with naval activity- the home of the Grand Fleet itself.

In Stromness, news of the cruiser’s loss was quickly relayed to the Royal National Lifeboat Institute whose secretary G L Thomson immediately rushed to alert the naval authorities and launch the life boat. He was stunned when told not to even try to do so. He demanded to speak with the senior officer only to be told that it was ‘none of his bloody business’, and warned very clearly and very specifically that he would be charged with mutiny if he attempted to launch the life boat. Matters got so heated that he and his crew were threatened with being put into custody. [14] Lifeboats exist to assist those in peril on the seas. Their purpose is to save lives. Their history around the coasts of Britain is of great self-sacrifice and valour. That the navy should order the grounding of a lifeboat makes no sense. Had the Admiralty ordained that there should be no survivors?

In Birsay, the few locals who knew about the disaster wanted to help, but in some cases ‘were forcibly prevented [from trying to get to survivors] under dire threats’ and even ordered to stay away from the shore or they would be fired on. The local people were certain that had they been allowed to take immediate action, fifty more lives could have been saved. [15] Ponder that awful fact. Local people could not fathom the inaction, the secrecy and the lack of tangible assistance for those despairing souls on the water.

5 June, 1916, 9.45 [GMT] pm. to midnight.

It took over two hours for a tug and two trawlers to make their way out of Stromness, and then at 10.pm four destroyers followed. Observers on the island of Birsay recalled that none of these reached the scene of the disaster before midnight. At around 1pm, one of the Carley rafts washed up on the rocks of a small creek half a mile north of Skaill Bay. It carried around 40 men when it left the stricken Hampshire, picked up another 30 from the chilling seas, but only 6 men had survived the debilitating exposure when it smashed into the rocky cliffs. Fifteen minutes later a second life raft reached the shore just north of the first with four living men amongst the 40 – 50 bodies. Can you imagine their physical and mental exhaustion? And none was yet safe. They faced the black cliffs with no-one in sight to offer assistance, throw down ropes or guide their hands as they climbed blindly upwards. One or two men reached a farm house, exhausted and barely alive.

6 June 1916, 10.30am [GMT]

Initially, the authorities were unaware of survivors, and the following official statement was issued to the press at 1.40 pm. on 6 June;

‘The Secretary of the Admiralty has received the following telegram from the Admiral Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet [Jellicoe] at 10.30 am this morning:

I have to report with deep regret that HMS Hampshire (Capt. Robert J Savill, R.N.) with Lord Kitchener and staff on board was sunk last night about8 pm. to the west of the Orkneys, either by mine or torpedo. Four boats were seen by observer on shore to leave the ship. The wind was N.N.W. and heavy seas were running. Patrol boats and destroyers at once proceeded to the spot and a party was sent along the coast to search but only some bodies and a capsized boat have been found up to present. As the whole shore has been searched, I fear there is little hope of there being any survivors. No report has yet been received from the search party on shore. The Hampshire was on her way to Russia.’ [16]

The cover-up had begun. The Empire had been informed that ‘there is little hope of survivors’ and the instant histories, like War Illustrated bluntly stated that ‘Lord Kitchener … on board HMS Hampshire, had been drowned together with his staff and the whole complement of that cruiser.’ [17] The Times carried news from a special correspondent which inferred immediate assistance was sent. ‘vessels which were instantly summoned to make a search found no trace of the sunken warship, or even, for a time, of any floating bodies.’ [18] The first announcements were erroneous. Incredibly, there were survivors. However, no vessels had instantly been summoned. Rear Admiral Brock had seen to that. That was possibly the greatest lie of all.

The Aberdeen trawler Effort passed the spot where the Hampshire sank two hours after the disaster. In the option of the crew, the sea was a not so rough as to prevent small boats being launched, but nothing was seen of the wreck. By that time the weather had moderated. Strangely the report from Aberdeen added that ‘the only craft observed was a Dutch vessel, which was steaming very closely.’ [19] Where did that come from? This mystery ship has never been identified.

Over the next days local Orcadians reported seeing two lorry loads of bodies arriving at Stromness Pier, barely covered, the lifeless crew piled high in open view, some almost naked as they were shunted down onto a waiting tug and taken for burial at Lyness. [20]

Take a second, please to review the main points. HMS Hampshire was sighted from land after an explosion had ripped her apart. Such was the violence of the explosion that her electrical system failed catastrophically and no mayday signal went out. However, a telegram was sent almost immediately from a watch point on the island of Birsay to alert the authorities at Scapa Flow. According to explanations announced by the Admiralty, vessels were immediately sent to the Hampshire’s assistance, but despite gallant efforts, there were no survivors. Later it was discovered that a dozen men survived the mountainous waves and freezing seas.

We now know that no ships were sent to find survivors until hours later. The log books from HMS Unity and HMS Victor, the two destroyers originally sent back from escorting the Hampshire show that they put to sea again at 9.10pm [21] and took an hour and a half to reach the area of wreckage . [22] Critically, and some might say, criminally, Vice Admiral Brock, who knew every detail of the Hampshire’s course, chose not to take immediate action to send assistance.

This was not, however, how these events were explained in the Admiralty’s official explanation.

[1] Jane E Storey.http://www.bjentertainments.co.uk/js/THE%20Orcadian.htm The Arcadian, New Light On Hampshire Tragedy.
[2] Philip Magnus, Kitchener, Portrait of an Imperialist. p. 373.
[3] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 374.
[4] Joe Angus, Stromness, ‘World War One’, Orkney Public Library, Kirkwall, interview for Sound Archive by Eric Marwick.
[5] Jane E Storey.http://www.bjentertainments.co.uk/js/THE%20Orcadian.htm The Arcadian, New Light On Hampshire Tragedy.
[6] The timings used are at Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is used throughout the world. British Summer Time (BST) , or delight saving time, is one hour in advance of that, viz GMT+1.
[7] Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 372.
[8] Evidence of Petty Officer Samuel Sweeney. All of the following statements were sent by telephone from O.C.W.P. at 2.pm on 6 June 1916.
[9] The precise number may never be known, Royle puts it at 655 (p. 375). Orkney Heritage Society put the number at 737 to include men killed in the loss of the Laurel Crown. http://www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/ohs/index.asp?pageid=592610
[10] The Carley float was formed from a length of copper or steel tubing surrounded by a buoyant mass of cork. The American produced raft was rigid and could remain buoyant, floating equally well with either side uppermost. The floor of the raft was made from a wood or webbed grating. Commonly used on British warships in World War 1.
[11] The Great War- I Was There, Walter Farnden, part 15. pp. 604-7.
[12] Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 375.
[13] W. S. Chalmers, ‘Brock, Sir Osmond de Beauvoir (1869–1947)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32079
[14] Jane Storey; http://www.bjentertainments.co.uk/js/THE%20Orcadian.htm
[15] Ibid.
[16] The Times, 7 June 1916. p. 10.
[17] The War Illustrated, Volume 4, 17 June 1916, p. 410.
[18] The Times, 10 June, p. 8.
[19] The Times, 9 June 1916, p. 9.
[20] The Royal Naval Cemetery at Lyness on the island of Hoy is the resting place for 445 Commonwealth naval personnel, 109 of whom died in the First World War.
[21] National Archives ADM 53/66480 and ADM 53/67364.
[22] Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 371.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 7: Death on the High Seas

At around 7.45pm on 5 June 2016, Field Marshal The Earl Kitchener was drowned just off the west coast of Orkney in Scotland. His death shocked ordinary men and women across the British Empire who could not fathom why he was at sea. Disbelief was followed by a short period of criticism and enquiry. Numerous theories of spurious conspiracy were spread by the press which muddied the waters successfully in the weeks immediately afterwards, but a greater horror soon followed at the Somme and Kitchener’s demise became but one calamity in a summer of tragedies.

We know that key members of the Secret Elite wanted rid of him. His views on a fair peace and his self-ordained aims for the end of the war were unacceptable. [1] But how to get rid of him? Having demonstrated in previous blogs that his mission to Russia was not particularly important, that he was not invited by the Czar as several historians have claimed [2] and that he had considered postponing the visit, we have to critically re-examine Kitchener’s death. Was it simply an act of good fortune for those who wanted him gone or were there more disturbing undercurrents? Consider the sequence of events.

Herbert Kitchener left for his visit to Russian in good spirits. Critics of his performance as Secretary of State for War had been quashed in a failed censure motion in parliament on 31 May [3] and on 1 June he met with over 200 MPs to give them the opportunity to hear his views on the war to date. He answered their questions openly and the parliamentarians responded with warm and prolonged applause. [4] That evening he had a farewell audience with King George V and went from Buckingham Palace to Downing Street for a lengthy one-to-one meeting with Prime Minister Asquith. With hindsight it had the feel of a farewell tour.

At that very moment, out in the North Sea, near Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula, the only full-scale clash between the British Grand Fleet and the German Imperial Fleet was erupting. Both sides claimed victory, though the British suffered heavy losses including six cruisers and eight destroyers. [5] Almost immediately afterwards Admiral Sir John Jellicoe ordered an enquiry into the loss of so many cruisers [6] and as the fleet returned to Scapa Flow, bruised and damaged, the blame game began. While the loss of 6,097 men was a serious blow to Admiralty prestige, the German Fleet, which suffered 2,557 losses, [7]was afterwards more or less confined to port for the duration of the war. Both sides claimed victory, but Jellicoe’s reputation never recovered. He was already under great strain, both physically and mentally. [8]

And in the midst off this naval trauma, the most iconic soldier in the Empire arrived at Scapa Flow. Kitchener and his staff had travelled the 700 mile journey north to Scotland overnight by train on a special coach from King’s Cross station. Next day, Monday 5 June 1916, he arrived at the port of Scrabster near Thurso and made the rough two hour crossing to Orkney on the destroyer, HMS Oak. What is pertinent to all that transpired thereafter was that the Secretary of State for War was entirely in the hands of the Admiralty, and the Admiralty was in the hands of the Secret Elite’s Arthur Balfour. [9] It was Admiral Jellicoe who allocated the old coal-fired armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire to carry their precious passenger to Archangel in Russia even although she was reported to have sustained light damage in the Jutland battle. It was Jellicoe who issued the initial orders on 4 June to the Hampshire’s Captain, Herbert Savill, who had sailed the Orkney passages for over a year. Crucially, it was Jellicoe who changed these instructions at the last moment directing the cruiser up the western coasts of the Orkney islands, allegedly a safer more protected route. There was no protection from a cyclonic storm around Orkney save the stout safety of Scapa Flow harbour.

The weather was foul. In fact it was about as bad as it could be in June. According to the local newspaper, the Orcadian, a force 9 gale, the wildest summer storm Orkney had experienced for years, raged over the island. Alexander McAdie, Professor of Meteorology at Harvard University later destroyed the claim that Jellicoe and his staff could not have anticipated the raging gale which circulated around Orkney that day. A clearly identified cyclone was passing from the Atlantic to the North Sea and was on the point of recurve before heading into the Artic regions. He stated that ‘the forecaster in London would have warned against starting under such conditions…the counsel of the weatherise would have been to wait and follow the depression rather than try to precede it.’ [10] Apologists for the Admiralty and Jellicoe blamed ‘bad judgement and complacency’. [11] In 1923, McAdie destroyed such a notion by claiming that ‘the lack of definite knowledge of the storm’s position seems inexcusable.’ [12]

We are talking here about the British Admiralty, with its centuries of experience in weather and seamanship. The Admiralty knew about the organisation of Kitchener’s visit because they were responsible for its detailed planning. Jellicoe was the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet. He knew Scapa Flow and its cyclonic storms and gales. He was in regular contact with London. Indeed Jellicoe telegraphed the Admiralty to seek permission to permit HMS Hampshire to remain at Archangel for the duration of Kitchener’s visit and received approval at 6.08 pm on 5 June, once the Hampshire was underway. [13] Surely, as Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, Jellicoe could have made such a decision on his own. Why did London have to approve it? Undeniably communications were exchanged between the Orkneys and London that concerned the Hampshire before it was blown apart. It is therefore impossible to sustain an argument based on ‘confusion and poor communications’ between the Admiralty in London and Jellicoe in Scapa Flow. They knew and approved the detail of Kitchener’s last journey. There was no confusion.

Questions were soon raised about the choice of HMS Hampshire to carry Kitchener on the Artic route to Archangel. An angry Portsmouth vicar wrote to The Times on 9 June: ‘Is no explanation to be given to us why the most valuable life the nation possessed was risked in an old ship like HMS Hampshire, unattended by any escort?’ [14] This is a valid question. The Hampshire was a thirteen year old Devonshire armoured cruiser which might well have been scrapped had war not found use and purpose for virtually every ship on the high seas. Unlike her sister ship, the Carnarvon, which had been partially fitted to burn oil and coal, the Hampshire was solely coal-fired and consequently, with a bunkering capacity of 1,600 tons, sat low in the water. In February 1914, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty supplied a written Commons answer to a parliamentary enquiry which listed two hundred and fifty two vessels, ranging from Battleships to Torpedo Boat Destroyers which were oil fired, soon to be oil-fired or partially fitted for both power sources. HMS Hampshire was not included. [15] Yet the old coal-fired, four-funnelled cruiser was Jellicoe’s choice. She would hardly be inconspicuous when steaming at full speed.

Thus, HMS Hampshire slipped her moorings in the relative safety of Scapa Flow at 4.45pm on 5 June 1916 and headed west then north into the teeth of a storm. She was to be escorted by two destroyers, Unity and Victor, [16] neither of which had the capacity to cope in the vicious head-on gale. They joined the Hampshire at 5.45 pm and went through the motions of providing initial support for the cruiser. For thirty-five minutes Unity struggled against the odds to stay close, but even with Captain Savill’s speed reduced twice, it was a forlorn hope in the mountainous swell. She was ordered to return to Scapa at 6.20. Victor lasted a further ten minutes in the severe gale, then turned back. By 6.30 pm, the Hampshire was plunging a lonely slow furrow, her decks battened down save for the hatch to 14 mess, like a floating coffin with a single air-vent. Channelled down Jellicoe’s chosen route, past Hoy Sound, tossed and battered by the merciless storm, the given official account would have us accept that ‘unconnected co-incidences’ [17] drew the ill-fated ship into an unknown German mine-field, laid by U-75 just off Marwick Head. Only twelve men survived. Kitchener was not one of them.

That an ‘unknown’ German mine-field lay to the west coast of the Orkney Islands demands examination. Evidence now available demonstrates that vital messages about submarine activity on the precise route that Jellicoe had ordained the Hampshire must take, had arrived at the Naval Headquarters at Longhope on the Orkney island of South Wallis on the afternoon of 5 June. Apparently no-one paid attention. [18] The most prestigious passenger ever landed on Scapa Flow was already at the base and no-one had given instructions to update the commander-in-chief, Admiral Jellicoe, or his senior staff about submarine activity that day on the chosen route? This is unbelievable. Submarine activity in the proximity of Scapa Flow was always given high priority. Few places in the world were more conscious of the danger posed by a submarine. Given the vulnerability of the Grand Fleet after the Battle of Jutland, the disposition of U-Boats was of absolute importance. Failure to immediately alert the senior officers of the fleet to U-Boat dangers was a dereliction of duty which would have merited court martial. No-one was taken to task.

As we have previously shown [19] the Admiralty in London had gained possession of the three major codes used by the Imperial German Navy to transmit information to their ships and submarines before the war was even four months old. The decoders in Room 40 were able to decipher every naval wireless transmission and from these, plot German ship movements and build up detailed profiles on U-Boat commanders. [20] As the German preparations for what would be known as the Battle of Jutland took shape, three ocean-going submarine minelayers were sent to the sea lanes off the Firth of Forth, the Moray Firth and Orkney.

The commander of U-75, Kurt Beitzen duly laid his mines in five groups of four across the sea-bed on the precise route which Jellicoe selected for the Hampshire. Back in Room 40 at the Admiralty, U-75’s course, and that of its two sister ships, had been detected and decoded. Take stock of this statement. When Kitchener’s journey was being planned and approved at the Admiralty they knew of the risks caused by submarine activity. So too did Jellicoe. Two intercepts from 31 May and 1 June placed the new ocean-going minelaying U-75 west of Orkney. On 3 June, U-75’s movements were transmitted to the Longhope station, and Admiralty records show that three messages logged on 5 June, all timed and dated from the Cape Wrath station, identified a submarine, U-75, at 2.40 pm, 5.15 pm and 7.15 pm. [21] Hampshire had put to sea at 4.45 pm, but was in radio contact with Longhope. Undeniably, Jellicoe had instructed HMS Hampshire to sail into a section known to have been occupied by a mine-laying U-Boat. [22]

These were not the errors of some raw recruit or the hapless mistakes of an inexperienced trainee. Each of these decisions was dictated by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander in chief of the Grand Fleet. It is claimed that Kitchener had been keen to press on with his journey despite the weather, and consequently the Hampshire’s departure was not delayed. [23] Really?

Are we to believe that had Admiral Jellicoe not taken time to explain the debilitating effect of a force 9 storm, Kitchener would have over-ruled his advice? In fact, there was no such discussion. Jellicoe latter wrote that, in his opinion, ‘I did not consider the delay necessary as I should not have hesitated, if need had arisen, to take the Grand Fleet to sea on the same night and on the same route…’ [24]  Of course Kitchener wanted to get underway, but was sufficiently astute to understand the adage ‘more haste less speed’. He was a poor sailor. Claims that blame lay with Kitchener’s blind determination to sail through the cyclonic storm ring hollow. The same might be said of the choice of HMS Hampshire. Of all the options available to Jellicoe, the old armoured cruiser was the least-cost option. Her coal-burning boilers generated both power and steam and had she made Petrograd safely, how many submarine packs might have lain in wait for the return voyage.

In the weeks and months that followed, a great deal of heat was generated by allegations and conjecture about who, outside Britain, may or may not have known about Kitchener’s proposed visit to Russia as if that had bearing on the outcome. One factor, and one alone, did. Whoever knew about the U-75 and its minelaying activity around Orkney, knew that the passage to Marwick Head was a death-trap. Whoever instructed Captain Savill to take the route, must bear some responsibility. But did Jellicoe act alone? How far does the trail of complicity stretch? At the Admiralty there was one man in the inner circle of the Secret Elite whose authority over-rode all else. That was the First Lord, Arthur J Balfour.

But the mystery deepened when the Orcadians shared their shocking experience with the world, and ten years later, when the Admiralty Inquiry was eventually made public.

[1] Kitchener’s interference in munitions and his belief in a fair peace alarmed the Secret Elite leader, Lord Milner and his political allies, Leo Amery, Andrew Bonar Law, Sir Edward Carson and many others. Asquith and Lloyd George wanted rid of him quickly as did the press baron, Lord Northcliffe . These men represented the poisoned tip of an anti-Kitchener lobby which had no public support.
[2] Sir George Arthur, The Life of Lord Kitchener, pp. 349-50, is typical of the misleading notion that the Secretary of State for War was invited by the Czar to go to visit him in Russia.
[3] The Times 1 June 1916, p. 10.
[4] John Pollock, Kissinger, p. 475.
[5] The Times, 3 June 1916, p. 8.
[6] Nicholas A Lambert, Our Bloody Ships or Our Bloody System? Jutland and the loss of the Battle Cruisers, 1916. Journal of Military History, vol. 62, no. 1, January 1998, p. 47.
[7] http://www.battle-of-jutland.com/jutland-gains-losses.htm
[8] S W Roskill, The Dismissal of Admiral Jellicoe, Journal of Contemporary History, vol.1, no. 4 (October 1966) p. 69.
[9] Arthur Balfour was at that point First Lord of the Admiralty. His Secret Elite credentials placed him in the inner core of the secret society. See Carol Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp.17-18 and 312.
[10] George H Cassar, Kitchener, Architect of Victory, p. 476.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Alexander McAdie, ‘Fate and a Forecast’, Harvard Graduate Magazine, September 1923, p. 46.
[13] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 364.
[14] Rev C H Hamilton, The Times, Letters to the Editor, 9 June 1916, p. 9.
[15] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 18 February 1914 vol 58 cc961-3W
[16] Both vessels were listed in Churchill’s lists of 252 ships to be oil-fired.
[17] The Times, 10 August, 1926, p. 9.
[18] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 367.
[19] See blog: Lusitania 1: The Tale of the Secret Miracles, posted 28 April, 2015.
[20] Patrick Beesly, Room 40 British Naval Intelligence 1914-1918, pp. 21-33.
[21] National Archives ADM137 / 4105.
[22] Royale, Kitchener Enigma, pp. 369-70.
[24] George H Cassar, Kitchener, Architect of Victory, p.476. or Royle, Kitchener Enigma, p. 480.
[25] Viscount Jellicoe, The Grand Fleet(1914-1916): Its Creation, Development and Work p.427.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 6: What’s To Be Done With A Serious Liability?

Inner-core members of the Secret Elite were very concerned. They had erred in their judgement about Kitchener. Lord Milner, especially so. Yes, he had pushed him into the post of Secretary of State for War in August 1914 expecting an entirely different approach from that of the Boer War and in most respects he had been correct. Kitchener was a member of Asquith’s Cabinet and theoretically subject to both collective responsibility and the authority of the Prime Minister. Had Milner been lulled into complacency by Kitchener’s reassurance that the war would take three years or more? He had been the first to predict a long war. Now Kitchener was reported to be talking about a fair peace. He had said so to Sir William Robertson and confided his intentions to Sir Douglas Haig. Worse still he talked about being one of the ‘English delegates when Peace was made’ to Lord Derby. [1] There were no circumstances in which this could be allowed.

Milner had held a grudge against Kitchener that dated back to his Boer War years. He wrote then, ‘Kitchener, a man of great power, is stale. Worse than that, he is in a hurry. Now the essence of the business in its present form [ending the Boer war] is that it must be done gradually’. These words were penned in 1900 in reference to a different war, [2] but in terms of the Secret Elite’s fundamental aim to crush Germany, Kitchener clearly retained a capacity to interfere about which Milner was deeply suspicious.

What was worse, Kitchener had taken it upon himself to promote a peaceful settlement to the Boer War rather than the clear-cut military victory for which Milner had so yearned. He had wanted an outright victory in South Africa so that he could recast that country just as Bismark had recast Germany. The idea of peace disgusted Alfred Milner. Peace meant compromise, and there was no room for compromise; not with the Boers in 1902, [3] and not with the Germans in 1916. The Secret Elite wanted to recast Germany and re-affirm the primacy of the British Empire. Kitchener’s whispered ambition put all of that, and more, at risk. He had become a very serious liability. But what could be done?

Lord Kitchener knew that the government wanted him out of the way [4] which naturally made him wary of any design which meant he had to leave the country. At the end of April 1916, Asquith first suggested a political mission to Russia to discuss munitions and stiffen the Czar’s resolve to stand firm against Germany. Originally, he nominated Lloyd George to head the visit and it was suggested that Maurice Hankey might accompany him. [5] Not likely.

That same day Hankey claimed to have heard from the War Office that Kitchener wanted to go to Russia [6] and began lobbying to that effect. He wrote in his diary that ‘K[itchener] likely to accept and likely to ask me [to accompany him] – but I shan’t go.’ [7] Hankey stood his ground and refused. Absolutely; but at the same time he actively lobbied for support inside the War Committee in favour of Kitchener. Keep in mind that theoretically Hankey was just the secretary to the Committee. We now know that he was a key figure inside the Secret Elite [8] whose influence grew by the day. Consider the sequence of events. A mission which began as a putative political visit to Russia by the Secret Elite’s men, Lloyd George and Maurice Hankey began to change its shape and purpose. According to his biographers, Kitchener ‘suddenly announced that he would like to head the mission.’ [9] How convenient. Was this really Kitchener’s idea?

Strange forces were at work and not one of them was sudden. The Secret Elite’s man in Petrograd, Sir John Hanbury-Williams, [10] took steps to encourage Kitchener to travel to Russia. He wrote directly to the Secretary of State for War on 12 May to underline the Czar’s ‘pleasure’ on hearing that Kitchener might come to Russia. [11] That was precisely two whole weeks before the War Committee approved the mission. King George V was the surprised recipient of an upbeat telegram from the Czar on 14 May describing Lord Kitchener’s coming visit to Russia as ‘most useful and important’. Someone had jumped the gun. The King demanded clarification. Twelve days would pass before such a decision was ratified. In the meantime, it was suggested that the Russian Ambassador, having heard that Kitchener might visit Russia, had presented the rumour as fact to the Czar’s court in Petrograd.[12]

By all accounts, written, of course, after the fact, and written to suggest that the Germans knew that Kitchener was destined for Petrograd, his impending visit was allegedly common knowledge by the third week in May. [13]

Interesting. In fact no firm decision had been taken by the War Committee in London. When it was, the arrangements were substantially different. Firstly, Lloyd George was removed from the equation. Out of the blue, Asquith decided that he needed Lloyd George to go to Ireland to settle the aftermath of the Easter Rising. [14] He wrote a very brief note to him in secret on 22 May urging him to ‘take up Ireland: at any rate for a short time’. [15] How strange. Lloyd George had never been involved in Irish matters before.

In consequence, he made a brief attempt to forge some consensus in Ireland, promising the Unionists that Ulster would be excluded from Home Rule and the Nationalists that any such arrangement would only be temporary. [16] The serpent spoke with false tongue, and slithered out of his Russian commitment. As he put it: ‘Much against my own inclination, I decided that I could not refuse Mr Asquith’s request [to switch his priority from Russia to Ireland.]’ [17] Lloyd George never did anything that was not in his own best interest. Thus, by 26 May it had been decided that Kitchener would go alone accompanied by his personal staff. [18] Allegedly, this was already common knowledge in Petrograd. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Final authorisation for Kitchener’s mission to Russia was approved on 26 May by the War Committee. One day later, Hanbury-Williams was given notice that Lord Kitchener and his staff (including three servants) would set sail for the Russian port of Archangel. [19] Kitchener was clearly keen to meet the Czar but was suspicious of the government’s intentions once he was out of the country. He left Lord Derby with a private code by which he could be informed of any further changes which might take place while he was away. [20] He had every right to suspect dirty deeds. Alerted in early June to the possibility that his proposed visit to Russia might have to be put back several weeks to accommodate the Russian Finance Minister, Herbert Kitchener almost abandoned the mission. He wrote to Hanbury-Williams warning that ‘ owing to the military situation’ he could not spare time later in the year and if the visit was postponed, it would have to be abandoned altogether. [21]

He knew the timing of the proposed summer offensive in France and was determined to be back at his desk in the War Office before the action began. Here was an unexpected twist. Kitchener was prepared to abandon the mission unless it remained set in its allotted time frame. Hanbury-Williams moved fast. He immediately assured Kitchener that he had spoken to the Czar who ‘repeated twice that he wished you to come’ and thought ‘your visit one of importance and would be of benefit to both countries.’ [22] They desperately wanted Kitchener to go to Russia. But why? If Kitchener was in position to call off the visit to Russia as late as 3 June 1916, [23] it could hardly have been deemed important.

Look what had happened. The so-called political mission by Lloyd George and Hankey to Russia had been transformed into a personal visit to the Czar by Field Marshal the Earl Kitchener. What’s more, the mission was represented as the Czar’s idea. On 26 May Kitchener informed the Russian Ambassador that the War Council had agreed that he should accept the Czar’s invitation to Russia.[24] How clever. At a stroke, should anyone ask awkward questions about the purpose of Kitchener’s visit, the answer was that he had been personally invited by Czar Nicholas II.

The Secret Elite agents who had originally been asked to lead the mission had slipped away to concentrate on other ‘priorities’. Kitchener was to go alone. Why?

[1] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, pp. 209-10.
[2] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 469.
[3] Ibid. p. 551.
[4] Churchill, Lord Derby, p. 210.
[5] Stephen Roskill, Hankey Vol. I, 1877-1918, p. 268.
[6] ibid. p. 269.
[7] Nationals Archives, CAB 42/13 4/5/16.
[8] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 153-60 and p. 313.
[9] That it suddenly became Kitchener’s idea is promoted by several historians including Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma p. 356 , and in John Pollock, Kitchener, p. 469.
[10] Sir John Hanbury-Williams was Lord Milner’s military secretary in South Africa before becoming secretary to the Secretary of State for War in 1900. He acted as Chief of the British Military Mission to Russia (1914-1917 ) and was instrumental in requesting that Britain attacked the Dardanelles on behalf of the Czar’s government. See blog
[11] PRO 30/ 57/ 67.
[12] Pollock, Kitchener, p. 469.
[13] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 357.
[14] This was an unexpected request which temporarily took Lloyd George out of the equation for the proposed trip to Russia. He had absolutely no experience of Irish matters. He had always voted in favour of Home Rule and his strange intervention in 1916 changed nothing. According to the Irish historian, Jonathan Brandon, his duplicity sealed the fate of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
[15] Secret letter from Asquith to Lloyd George, 22 May 1916, quoted in Lloyd George’s War Memoirs, p. 419.
[16] Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, p. 450.
[17] Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 420.
[18] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 357.
[19] PRO 30/57/67, 27 May 1916.
[20] Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, p. 210.
[21] Sir John Hanbury-Williams, The Emperor Nicholas II, as I knew him, p. 98.
[22] Ibid., p. 99.
[23] Ibid., pp. 98-99.
[24] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 358.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 5: An Act Of Heresy

Kitchener was not a man who relished being sidelined, despite which he remained in office after his role as Secretary of State for War was deliberately subverted by his enemies and detractors in 1915, when he went to Gallipoli to assess the situation on the government’s behalf. Decisions were taken behind his back. As The Times noted, ‘in the absence of Lord Kitchener’ a small War Committee had been set up to co-ordinate the government’s organisation for war. [1] It comprised, Asquith, A J Balfour, Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Reginald McKenna, with Sir Edward Grey available when required, and Kitchener when he returned from his visitation to Gallipoli and the Near East. [2] By late 1915, he knew exactly what he was up against. In terms of armaments, Lloyd George had grasped control of the War Office’s ordnance remit and subsumed it into a new department, the Ministry of Munitions. [3] Strategically, Sir William Robertson was appointed Chief of the General Staff on 21 December, effectively taking charge of strategy on the Western Front. Robertson’s focus was exactly in line with the ultimate aim of the Secret Elite. He advocated the concentration of war in Europe in order to bring Germany down. While lack of success on the Western Front and the failure at Gallipoli reduced Kitchener’s standing inside Cabinet, his popularity within the mass of the populace did not waver. In stripping Kitchener of major responsibility for strategy, Asquith was sufficiently astute to retain him in office.

Maurice Hankey, [4] the Secret Elite’s central cog inside 10 Downing Street, was the prime minister’s confidant and most valued advisor. Hankey had been secretary of the powerful think-tank Committee of Imperial Defence since 1908, and was the most knowledgeable and experienced strategist in the country. In Hankey’s diary for 8 December 1915, he noted that Asquith wanted to be rid of Kitchener who, ‘darkens his counsel and is a really bad administrator, and he evidently wants to find some way of fitting K. [Kitchener] into his scheme so that the Govt. can still use his great name and authority as a popular idol … Personally I can see no way of fitting him in without making him a cipher in every sense.’ [5] This was the problem. How could the high priests remove the people’s idol without losing their credibility? The only answer was to find him high profile but marginal tasks to keep him distanced from the centre of power.

But Kitchener had always been his own man. He cared nought for politicians and cast doubt on their capacity to act wisely. He expressed these concerns to Sir William Robertson with honest clarity: ‘I have no fear as to our final victory, but many fears as to our making a good peace.’ [6] Such intentions shook the Secret Elite and especially Alfred Milner. Alarm bells rang in the memory of those who served with Lord Milner in South Africa. Kitchener had interfered then, at the end of the Boer War, to bring about his peace. It had taken all of Milner’s considerable influence to stop Kitchener agreeing a date for the restoration of Boer self-government. [7] Milner had gone to war against the Boers to break the mould and recast the country, not negotiate a political peace. Peace terms implied compromise. Milner had admitted to his acolytes that there was no room for compromise in South Africa. But Kitchener ‘paralysed’ Milner, and in his view, betrayed the peace. [8] Consider again the main objective of the Secret Elite. They wanted to break the mould of Germany and recast the country and its colonies so that it would never again pose as a threat to the British ascendency. Surely Kitchener was not thinking about interfering in a European peace – in 1916?

Did Kitchener really see himself as the arbiter of a good peace? Yes, he did. And there was one very important source which corroborated Kitchener’s intentions. Lord Derby, [9] reflected on Herbert Kitchener’s state of mind in his diary in 1938. [10] Had this been published in the years immediately after the war when the official censor edited, withdrew or destroyed information that the government wanted to keep secret, Derby’s evidence would have been buried. Herbert Kitchener held very strong views that he intended to push to the fore when peace was eventually negotiated. Kitchener confided his philosophy to Lord Derby over dinner some three or four days before he sailed on his final journey. Derby took notes immediately afterwards so that he did not have to rely on memory at a later date. He recorded Kitchener’s absolute belief that ‘whatever happened’, at the end of the war, the peace negotiators should not ‘take away one country’s territory and give it to another’. The fate of Alsace and Lorraine was included in his statement: ‘I think if you take Alsace and Lorraine away from Germany and give them to France there will be a war of revenge.’ He was insistent that Germany’s colonies should not be taken from her on the basis that ‘if they have colonies they would go there peacefully and not want to engage in war for new territory.’ [11] His sense of a ‘good peace’ had nothing in common with the complete destruction of Germany.

Can you imagine the impact these words would have had inside the closed corridors of the Foreign Office. Kitchener’s sentiments ran contrary to all that the Secret Elite had worked towards. Leave Alsace and Lorraine as part of Germany? Let them keep their colonies? Good grief, would he next advocate the restoration of the Ottoman Empire? He still held influence in these eastern parts, and the British government had great ambitions for Persia after the war. Surely not. Kitchener spoke heresy. Such sentiments stood to undo the war against Germany which the Secret Elite had so carefully planned  [12]

Kitchener had also confided in Sir Douglas Haig [13] that only a decisive victory against Germany followed by a fair peace treaty, would prevent further wars in Europe. He had come to the conclusion that the war should not be about the conquest of Germany. [14] In the eyes of the Secret Elite, he had completely lost focus. Imagine if the concept of a ‘fair peace’ had been leaked to the men in the trenches. That the great man himself was thinking ahead towards peace, had implications for the murderous continuation of war. And not just peace, but a fair peace? To the powers behind the government it was unthinkable. Unimaginable. Consider the impact which Kitchener’s words would have had amongst his armies if in recognising that the war had become a stalemate, he advocated an end to hostilities. If it was put about that the commander-in-chief thought that enough was enough they would have cheered him to the echoes. It would have acknowledged that he thought more of the safety and survival of his own men than the continuation of a bitter struggle to the death with Germany, Kitchener had become more than just a liability. He was a danger to the Secret Elite’s ambitions. His future intentions put everything at risk.

Matters were exceptionally sensitive in 1916. There was much talk of peace and peace conferences. Most of it originated from America where President Wilson had an election to win and ‘peace’ was a vote-catcher. The war had reached a point of deadlock; victory was only likely to be achieved by the ‘guerre d’usure’, the war of exhaustion. Certainly, Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, was in regular touch with the President through the controlling offices of his White House minder, Edward Mandell House, [15] but peace was not an issue that any of the warring nations could be seen to contemplate. Yet a deal took shape. Mandell House and Grey jointly drafted a confidential memorandum on 22 February 1916 which was confirmed by the President. It proposed the restoration of Belgium, the surrender of Alsace and Lorraine to France, the acquisition of an outlet to the sea for Russia, and compensation to Germany in territories outside Europe. If Britain and France thought the time was right, President Wilson would propose that a ‘Conference should be summoned to put an end to the war. Should the Allies accept this proposal and Germany refuse it, the United States would probably enter the war against Germany.’ [16] Sir Edward Grey had actually worked with Edward Mandell House to construct a memorandum which by definition was a basis for a negotiated peace. [17] By the end of the year Grey would be replaced as Foreign Secretary by Arthur Balfour who was in the inner core of the Secret Elite. [18]

But what to do with Kitchener? He was an enigma indeed. After the horrendous casualties at Loos in September 1915, nine cabinet ministers urged Kitchener to force Asquith to accept conscription, but he would not be disloyal. The Prime Minister warned his Secretary of State for War that this move had been instigated by Lloyd George (whom Kitchener loathed) to undermine him, but added confidently ‘so long as you and I stand together, we carry the whole country with us. Otherwise the deluge.’ [19] He needed Kitchener to take the flack.

In June 1916, Asquith accused him behind his back of abdicating his responsibilities and lying. Undoubtedly it suited the prime minister’s purpose to deflect criticism away from himself. He derided Kitchener’s tortuous speech and his repetitive presentations [20] but was obliged to defend him in Parliament in a brief but brilliant oration which was cheered from all sides. [21] Kitchener, for his part, kept faith in Asquith. Lord Derby wrote in his diary that Kitchener was devoted to the prime minister and liked him very much indeed, which may partly explain why he stayed his post. [22] As Asquith sat down in Parliament on 1 June, the conservative leader Bonar Law leaned forward and whispered; ‘That was a great speech, but how after it shall we ever get rid of him?’ [23]

How indeed?

[1] The Times, 12 November, 1915, p. 9.
[2] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 338.
[3] See blog Munitions 4: Lloyd George And Very Secret Arrangements. Posted on 24 June 1915.
[4] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[5] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Vol. 1, 1877 – 1918. p. 237.
[6] Sir George Arthur, Kitchener vol. III, p. 299.
[7] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 570.
[8] Ibid., p. 551.
[9] Lord Derby, Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl aided Kitchener in promoting recruitment. In October 1915, as Director General of Recruitment, he introduced a scheme which included enlistment and conscription. Asquith made him Under-Secretary of State for War after Kitchener’s death. Derby was one of the few politicians whom Kitchener trusted.
[10] Randolph S Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, p. 210.
[11] Ibid.
[12] The complete history of the Secret Elite’s drive to create a war with Germany is contained in Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, published 2013.
[13] PRO 30/57/53 Kitchener Papers.
[14] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 348.
[15] Edward Mandell House was President Wilson’s eminence grise in the White House. closely associated with the Morgan financial empire in New York, House was very much an anglophile who advised the President on all aspects of the war in Europe.
[16] Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, Vol III, p 63.
[17] Ibid., pp. 68-71.
[18] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[19] John Pollock, Kitchener, p. 453.
[20] George Casssar, Kitchener: Architect of Victory, p. 474.
[21] The Times, 1 June, 1916, p. 10.
[22] Churchill, Lord Derby, p. 210.
[23] Pollock, Kitchener, p. 471.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 4: Immoveable Object Meets Unstoppable Force

According to official histories of the First World War there was a great shell crisis in Britain in 1915. [1] In truth, the phenomenon was universal. The French army became acutely aware of the problem caused by lack of munitions as early as 24 September 1914. By November, the German gunners around Ypres were instructed to cut their daily barrage and their commander, General Falkenhayn reckoned that there were only enough shells for four more days of German bombardment in Flanders. [2] Whatever the preparations for war in Europe, no-one had anticipated its rapid descent into a stalemate of entrenchment accompanied by wasteful daily artillery barrages whose only purpose appeared to be stultifying proof that the enemy was still there. Never in the history of warfare had so many resources been wasted on futile exchanges of explosives to such little effect, nor so much profit made by those who provided the ammunition.

There are two schools of thought governing Kitchener’s attitude to increasing the supply of munitions. The first is that he obstructed the verve and purpose shown by Lloyd George as Chancellor, to ramp up the purchase of much needed munitions. In truth, that was Lloyd George’s view, jaundiced by his antipathy towards the Secretary of State for War and bolstered by his selective use of information from the ghost-written History of the Ministry of Munitions. [3] The second is that Kitchener refused to be influenced by agencies outside the War Office because there was no crisis. His judgement was that his commanders in the field cried wolf too often and used the excuse of shell shortage to cover their own inadequacies. He was correct.

Before the ill-fated offensive at Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915, Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief in France, had assured the War Office that he had sufficient ammunition for the assault [4] and he had written a letter to Kitchener on 2 May stating; ‘the ammunition will be all right.’ [5] But Aubers was an unmitigated disaster for the British army. No ground was won and no tactical advantage gained. On that single day, 9 May 1915, 11,000 British casualties were sustained and it took three days to process the wounded through the Field Ambulances. [6] Can you even begin to imagine the horror and excruciating pain of the men sacrificed for a cause they did not comprehend? German losses were reported to be under 1,000. After the disaster Sir John French deflected attention from his own poor leadership by telling The Times correspondent, Charles Repington, whom he had personally invited to witness what he anticipated as ‘one of he greatest battles the world has ever seen’, [7] that it had failed because of a shortage of shells. [8] This wasn’t just disloyalty; it was a miserable lie.

Kitchener had enemies outwith his military subordinates. His behaviour and style angered vested interests inside the Secret Elite, particularly the financial – armaments sector which backed Lloyd George’s free-market, unrestricted approach to enhancing their profits. When the desperate need for armaments and munitions was fully realised in the first months of the war, and steps were being taken to utilise American industrial power, Kitchener and the War Office considered it an effrontery when the Treasury set up such facilities without his knowledge or approval.

The British Cabinet Committee meeting on 21 October 1914 agreed to contact the War Office agent in America with a request for 400,000 rifles and three days later sent their representative, Captain Smyth-Pigott to New York. They did not know that Lloyd George, whom the Secret Elite had determined would have ultimate control, had already acted independently. He had sent his most able Treasury expert, Basil Blackett, to America to evaluate the logjam that had built up in military procurement. First reports insisted that the War Office and the Admiralty had to start co-ordinating their purchasing strategies because suppliers were raising prices and playing one off against the other. [9] What did they expect? It was business in time of war. Profits were there to be made.

In November 1914, the Chancellor of the Exchequer contacted his acquaintance, Edward Charles Grenfell, senior partner of Morgan-Grenfell & Co., and director of the Bank of England, to discuss whether rifle production in the United States could be increased and engineering production switched to munitions manufacture. The line of contact started in the Treasury with Lloyd-George, through Edward Grenfell to J.P. Morgan & Co., the largest investment banking firm in America and back through the same channel to London. Morgan immediately promised to liaise with two firms, Remington and Winchester, ‘friends’ of his group, and an understanding was reached. [10] Delivery would however take eleven months, [11] though considerable quantities of rifles and munitions were carried regularly by the Lusitania. [12] Trusted Secret Elite agents had created a very pro-British accord which would benefit them all.

But Kitchener would not have it. The War Office complained loudly about this civilian arrangement and Kitchener contacted J P Morgan directly, demanding that the order be cancelled. In his view, munition supply was War Office business and no-one else’s. Lloyd George was furious; Edward Grenfell, outraged. Kitchener had crossed swords with the Anglo-American establishment. The carefully-planned transatlantic accord would have been smothered by Kitchener’s intervention, but the Chancellor had powerful friends on both sides of the ocean. Grenfell complained bitterly that ‘the manner in which the War Office have dealt with the proposed rifles contract with Morgan, Grenfell and Co, will have a detrimental effect on public opinion in America.’ [13] It was always a good line to take. American public opinion mattered to the British government. That same day, Lloyd George smoothed Edward Grenfell’s ruffled feathers by stating that Kitchener’s communication to Morgan was based on a regrettable ‘misapprehension’ and asked for Morgan’s cooperation’. [14] Subsequent orders were placed with Morgan’s chosen men without War Office interference.

In fact, though Kitchener had a good record of using civilian businessmen in procuring munitions, he did not move fast enough for Lloyd George. The two never acted in tandem. Kitchener set up a Armament’s Output Committee under George Booth, a director of the Bank of England, in April 1915, but at the same time Lloyd George brought together a Munitions of War Committee. Within a month, his persistence won the day. The Chancellor was determined to take control, although it was to be some time before all the relevant responsibilities were removed from the War Office. [15] Letters of complaint and detailed memoranda were sent to Asquith from Arthur Balfour [16], Winston Churchill, Edwin Montagu and others, berating Kitchener and his War Office staff for their ‘bigoted, prejudiced reluctance buy rifles or to increase the munitions of war’. [17]

Kitchener was defiant. Despite his obvious worth in correcting the public mind-set to the duration of the war and his dynamic appeal to volunteers for the rank and file in his new armies, his disdain for politicians and business devalued his standing in the eyes of the Secret Elite. Their agents in the press to begin an assault on Kitchener, and indeed on prime minister Herbert Asquith whose government they believed, had served its purpose. Consequently, Lord Northcliffe’s powerful newspaper empire unleashed an unwarranted attack on the Secretary of State for War. On 14 May, 1915, headlines in The Times screamed of the ‘Need for Shells and Lack of High Explosives’. The piece began with the blunt statement that ‘The want of an unlimited supply of high explosives was a fatal bar to our success [at Aubers].’ [18] The dam was burst. Northcliffe maintained the pressure on Kitchener through his Daily Mail which wrote of the folly of using shrapnel against the powerful German earthworks and wire entanglements, claiming that it was as effective as using a peashooter. [19]

On 21 May Northcliffe threw all caution to the wind and wrote the editorial for the Daily Mail, headlined, Lord Kitchener’s Fatal Blunder. He pulled no punches; ‘Lord Kitchener has starved the army in France of high explosive shells. The admitted fact is that Lord Kitchener ordered the wrong kind of shell – the same kind of shell which he used largely against the Boers in 1900. He persisted in sending shrapnel – a useless weapon in trench warfare. He was warned repeatedly that the kind of shell required was a violently explosive bomb which would dynamite its way through the German trenches and entanglements and enable our brave men to advance in safety. This kind of shell our poor soldiers have had has caused the death of thousands of them.’ [20] It was a salvo intended to destroy Kitchener’s reputation which exploded in Northcliffe’s face.

At the front, soldiers were ‘raised to a pitch of fury’ by the ‘perfectly monstrous’ attack on Kitchener. Major General Sir Henry Rawlinson lambasted the ‘diabolical plot’ to focus attention on high explosive shells stating that: ‘the true cause of our failures is that our tactics have been faulty, and that we have misconceived the strength and resisting power of the enemy. To turn round and say that the casualties have been due to the want of H.E. [high explosive] shells for the 18-pounders is a perversion of the truth’. [21] Instead of ruining Kitchener’s career, Northcliffe damaged his own public standing. The Services Clubs in Pall Mall barred The Times and Daily Mail from their doors. Subscriptions were cancelled; advertising slumped. Copies of the Daily Mail and The Times were burned on the floors of the London Stock Exchange, the Liverpool Provision Exchange, the Baltic Exchange in London and the Cardiff Coal and Shipping Exchange. There were ulterior motives for this public display of stockbroker indignation, [22] but it all added to Kitchener’s teflon-laced reputation

Kitchener may no longer have been an asset to the Secret Elite, but he was the public face of Britain’s fighting best. Asquith could not sack him for fear of the public back-lash and so tried to move him away from real decision-making. Kitchener was sent on a tour of inspection to Gallipoli and the Near East in the hope that he would stay there, but he did not. When he returned at the end of October 1915, the Secretary of State for War found Sir Archibald Murray had been appointed as the new Chief of Imperial Staff. His was a brief appointment for Sir William Robertson took his place in December with over all responsibility for strategy. He alone was to advise the government and issue orders to commanders in the field. Kitchener’s authority was more or less reduced to matters of manpower and recruitment.

As he himself put it, he was ‘curtailed to feeding and clothing the army’. [23] The same men who had dragged Kitchener into the War Office in 1914 had effectively stripped him of his power but did not want his resignation. Each time he offered or threatened to resign, Asquith persuaded him that it was his duty to serve the King. [24] Essentially, Kitchener provided a buffer between the prime minister and his critics. Why did he not force the issue and resign, despite Asquith’s insistence that he stayed? Kitchener was a proud man, yet he stood stripped of meaningful power like a glorified quartermaster. He had a good working relationship with Douglas Haig who had been promoted to commander in chief in France and with Robertson to whom he confided ‘I think I shall be of real use when peace comes. I have little fear as to our final victory – but many fears as to making a good peace.’ [25]

So Kitchener had good reason not to resign. He saw purpose in his holding on to office; great purpose. He imagined that he would be permitted to step back onto the centre-stage of world politics to ‘make a good peace’. That could never be allowed to happen.

[1] The full story has already been recorded in our blog Munitions 6: Crisis? What Crisis?, 8 July 2015.
[2] Hew Strachan, The First World War, pp. 993-4.
[3] Peter Fraser, The British Shells Scandal of 1915, Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 18. no.1 1983, p. 85.
[4] Hugh Cecil and Peter H Liddle, Facing Armageddon, The First World War Experienced, p. 42.
[5] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 292.
[6] http://www.1914-1918.net/bat11.htm
[7] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 290.
[8] Cecil and Liddle, Facing Armageddon, p. 42.
[9] Kathleen Burk, War and the State, The Transformation of British Government 1914-18, p. 89.
[10] Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, p. 14.
[11] J P Morgan, New York, to E C Grenfell, 11 November 1914, PRO LG/C/1/1/32.
[12] See blog: Lusitania 8: The Anglo-American Collusion. posted 18 May 2015.
[13] Edward Grenfell to Mr Lloyd George, 13 November, 1914, PRO, LG/C/1/1/33.
[14] Lloyd George to Mr Grenfell, PRO LG/C/1/1/34.
[15] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, pp 97-127.
[16] Arthur Balfour had previously been prime minister (1902-1905) and was identified by Carroll Quigley as a member of the inner core of the Secret Elite, the Society of the Elect.
[17] Lloyd George, Memoirs, p. 109.
[18] The Times,14 May 1915, p. 8.
[19] Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth, Northcliffe, p. 477.
[20] Daily Mail, 21 May 1915. See also Daily Mail Historical Archives at http://gale.cengage.co.uk/daily-mail-historical-archive/subjects-covered.aspx
[21] John Pollock, Kitchener, pp. 443-4.
[22] The city editor of the Daily Mail, Charles Duguid, had become so concerned about the high cost of dealing shares on the London Stock Exchange, that he decided to launch the Daily Mail’s own cut-price share service. Demand was so heavy that Duguid had to establish a small bureau to handle the administrative burdens of running a do-it-yourself stock market. The  Stockbrokers did not burn Northcliffe’s papers out of patriotic loyalty to Kitchener. Theirs was an act of spiteful revenge. But it caught the popular mood. Sales of the Daily Mail on the morning of the attack on Kitchener topped 1,386,000 copies and overnight slumped to 238,000.
[23] A J P Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p. 79.
[24] Pollock, Kitchener, p. 458.
[25] Sir George Arthur, Kitchener, Vol III, p. 299.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 3: A Difficult Man To Control

When Kitchener first stepped into the War Office, two hours before he had even been formally given the seal of office from King George V, he is reported to have said, ‘There is no army!’ [1] His exasperation was genuinely felt but somewhat misleading. The full strength of the British army was 700,000 men of whom 110,000 were serving in India or some other station in the Empire. The Expeditionary Force totalled around 120,000 men specifically trained for the war against Germany. Kitchener’s outburst had considerable merit for he grasped immediately that, in a fight to the death, Britain needed a real, fully trained and equipped army.

To the shock of those who thought that war could be waged with limited liability, Kitchener dismissed the lame belief that it would be over by Christmas. He immediately laid his plans for an army of seventy divisions, calculating that its maximum strength would be reached during the third year of the war, when the enemy began to suffer from a reduction in its manpower. [2] In other words, briefed as he had been by the men who ran the Committee of Imperial Defence, Kitchener embraced the need for a long war. It would take time to train and arm an army of millions, which was the only way by which Germany could be definitively beaten. Yet, even these calculations were based on a crude estimate of available manpower, not strategic requirements. [3] Asquith had ruled out compulsory military service, anathema to Liberal thinking, so Kitchener took matters into his own hands.

He decided to expand the regular army by raising a new component – wartime volunteers. Each man was required to sign up for new ‘general service’ terms of three years or the duration of the war (whichever the longer). ‘Your King and Country need you: a call to arms’ was published on 11 August 1914. [4] It explained the new terms of service and called for the first 100,000 men to enlist. This figure was achieved within two weeks. [5] Kitchener’s recruitment scheme in 1914 was a resounding success. Alfred Leete’s famous cover picture of him pointing his finger over the slogan ‘Your Country Needs You” was a masterpiece of propaganda. [6] The recruitment poster became iconic. Margot Asquith, the Prime Minister’s wife is widely quoted as claiming that ‘if Kitchener is not a great man, he is at least a great poster’. He was of course aided and abetted by the Secret Elite’s propaganda campaign supported by the Church of England and  justified by the intellectual brigades marshalled in Oxford University.

Kitchener considered himself untouchable, and he was, certainly in the first year of the war when his position as Commander-in-Chief and Cabinet Minister made him pre-eminent. Men in the trenches carried his words with them in a printed address in their Active Service Paybook, ‘Do your duty bravely. Fear God and Honour the King.’ [7] They revered him even when he issued dire warnings about the consequences of troops catching venereal disease, as he had to his troops in India. [8] He in turn, took orders from no-one under the King, allegedly putting the Prince of Wales in his place when he tried to sneak up to the front line. Angry that Kitchener had banned his being anywhere near danger, the Prince confronted the Commander in Chief . ‘I don’t care if I get killed. I’ve got four brothers.’ Kitchener, with his accustomed disdain, put the young Royal in his place by retorting: ‘I’m not in the slightest worried about you being killed, Sir; what we cannot afford is to have you taken prisoner.’ [9]

An herein lay Kitchener’s critical worth to the Secret Elite. It mattered not whether the tale of the Secretary for War and the Royal Prince was true or apocryphal. Such stories emphasised his popularity. He was the commander. Kitchener’s presence in the public eye made war popular. He looked the part. His military record read like a roll-call of imperial victories. The essence of heroism washed over him. In an age before public relations, Herbert Kitchener was the dream-ticket. Richard Haldane, whom Asquith would have preferred as Secretary for War, could never have aspired to such popularity even had he not been dubbed pro-German by the press. Unfortunately for him, the Northcliffe press was rabidly anti-German and to have such a man as the most senior war office politician made little sense to the public. This may explain why Haldane, an  experienced and  faithful agent of the Secret Elite was literally abandoned by them.   Would he have had the stomach for the complete destruction of an enemy race from whom he had genuine sympathies? Herbert Kitchener was their preferred choice. He would be the Secretary of State who could promote a long and successful war to crush Germany and keep it popular.

But he was a qualified risk. In September 1914, Alfred Milner wrote to an army friend ‘I hope your Chief stands it well. We all depend on him and it is the greatest mercy that he is at the head of things.’ [10] This was true. Kitchener had dismissed any likelihood of a short war, had plainly stated that total victory would take time and unqualified effort. Victory would come at a cost. He connected with the nation in his appeal to raise a new army and stood apart from the politicians who placed their faith in democracy. But he also had enemies who wrote and spoke privately behind his back; enemies in the General Staff and in the Cabinet. The struggle in which Kitchener found himself embroiled was to be as all-embracing as that on the Western Front, but at the onset of war, he was the Ace in the pack.

Kitchener never quite grasped the concept of collective responsibility inside a British Cabinet. According to the diaries of Charles Hobhouse the War Office had been informed that the decision to finally dispatch every division of the BEF to France had been delayed because of Cabinet reticence despite Kitchener’s insistence, whereas in truth he had been given immediate and unquestioned approval was soon as he asked for it. [11] He kept his Cabinet colleagues ignorant of the true extent of war losses, but his early achievements outshone criticism. Voluntary recruitment was a staggering success, though its methodology was often questionable. [12] The immoral pressure from ‘The White Feather Girls’ [13] and the assaults from the pulpits on those who did not join up, remain largely forgotten. By January 1915, The Times declared that Britain was a nation in arms thanks to Kitchener and his portrait. [14] though in the House of Lords, complaint was voiced that he was ‘very economical in his information’ relating to certain theatres of war. [15]

Spectacular recruitment figures continued to enhance his reputation. 175,000 men volunteered in the single week ending 5 September; by the end of that month 750,000 men had enlisted. From August 1914 until June 1915, the average number of recruits ran at 125,000 per month. Two and a half million souls pledged their loyalty to the King through voluntary recruitment before it had to be replaced with compulsory service in March 1916. And here-in lay another problem. The existing military machine could not cope with these numbers. There were insufficient barracks, rifles, qualified sergeants to train the recruits or uniforms to clothe them. Yet Kitchener’s exhortation that ‘Your Country Needs You’ reverberated from street corners and station platforms. He agreed to the proposition to form ‘Pals’ Battalions’ which embraced young men from their employment, shipyards and coal mines, schools and transport companies, sports clubs and close communities. The great adventure on which these lads embarked in 1914 reaped a bitter harvest on the killing fields of Loos and the Somme. They were the cannon-fodder, sacrificed in useless attacks on well prepared defences. [16]

Critically, Kitchener associated himself absolutely with his men. They were his armies. Indeed the War Office code for the various intakes of recruits was K1, K2 and so on. [17] He made a point of inspecting each new battalion before it embarked for war. He considered it his duty to see them in person. No matter the weather conditions, there he was bestowing an almost apostolic blessing on the passing ranks. His pride in them was clear. His loyalty to them was reciprocated. His prestige brought into being the greatest volunteer force ever raised any country and each new parade added to his momentous prestige. [18] Yet his judgement, viewed from afar, was not without prejudice.

Kitchener backed a decision which was to hasten the ultimate division and separation of Ireland. There, the two tribes in Ulster and the South had built their own private armies, the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers, both formed to defend their respective stance on Home Rule. Though they were equally anxious to be embodied in the British Army, the Secret Elite and, in this instance, Kitchener himself, favoured the Ulster battalions. He accepted the Ulstermen as a unit and rejected the Home Rulers, refusing to allow them to form a discrete division. [19] If you consider the immensity of this decision and its political importance you will realise that Kitchener had to have been influenced by the Secret Elite.

Desperate to impress the British establishment that Ireland would play her part loyally in defence of Belgium, and concerned that she would be dishonoured if the Nationalists did not support the war against Germany, John Redmond, the leader of the Home Rule Party went to meet Kitchener at the War Office on 6 August, 1914. [20] His reception was cold and friendless. [21] No-one took up Redmond’s generous offer that his Volunteers should defend the island’s coasts and the first of many opportunities to treat Ireland with a new found confidence and respect was rejected. [22] Much more was to follow. The preferential treatment which the Ulstermen had always enjoyed from the British State continued to manifest itself.

Prime Minister Asquith promised a new approach when he addressed a great rally in Dublin on 25 September. He declared: ‘We all want to see an Irish Brigade or better still an Irish Army Corps…’ [23] Clearly he had not discussed this matter with Kitchener who would not countenance a distinctive Irish division with its own badge and colours, based on the Irish volunteers.  An official request from Redmond that at least one of these battalions be trained in Ireland to encourage recruitment and pride, was summarily refused. [24]  Kitchener believed, as did the cabal which had pushed for his appointment,  [25] that if the Volunteers were trained, armed and kept together in coherent units, there would be civil war once the crusade against Germany was over, with no advantage to Ulster. It was not the will of the prime minister which prevailed.
These same arguments were not applied to Carson’s Ulster Volunteers. They were treated with distinct preference and in consequence the Ulster Volunteers metamorphosed into the 36th (Ulster)  Division with their own distinctive uniform and badges. Not since Cromwell’s ironsides had a military force been united by such political unity and religious fervour. [26] It was a decision which rebounded on the British state in the years following 1916.

Kitchener treated his military allies in France with much more balanced consideration than he ever demonstrated in Cabinet. When the leading British ministers met with their French counterparts at the first inter-allied conference in Calais in 1915, Kitchener alone was fluent in French. He dominated proceedings. The British Cabinet had previously decided that there would be no fresh initiatives on the Western Front until 1916 and, anticipating objections, were surprised that the French agreed. What they did not know was that Kitchener had fixed a private arrangement behind their backs with Joffre, based on French support for the attack on Gallipoli, so when the autumn offensive was approved in military circles, the cabinet was not informed.

Lloyd George became increasingly frustrated by the conduct of the War Office and its manipulation of fact and figures. Even Kitchener’s reports to the Cabinet about the progress of the war did not present a clear picture about what was happening. Kitchener’s distrust of politicians was such that, as Lloyd George put it, ‘his main idea … was to tell the politicians as little possible of what was going on and get back top his desk at the War Office as quickly as he could decently escape.’ [27] And this was essentially Herbert Kitchener’s drawback. Despite his immense value in promoting recruitment, he would not be controlled. He frequently knew more than his field commanders and had a better grasp of strategy. His natural prejudices against Irish Home Rule was in accord with Secret Elite thinking but he would not brook overt political interference with the War Office. That was to be a problem.

[1] Sir George Arthur, Kitchener, Vol III, p. 7.
[2] Ibid., p. 8.
[3] A J P Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p. 47, footnote 3.
[4] The Times, 11 August 1914, p. 2.
[5] Army Order 324, dated 21 August 1914, then specified that six new Divisions would be created from units formed of these volunteers, collectively called Kitchener’s Army or K1. Subsequent increases were labelled K2 / K3 and so forth.
[6] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 264.
[7] The Times, 19 August, 1914, p. 6.
[8] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 217.
[9] Max Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Great War, p. 142.
[10] Arthur, Kitchener, Vol III, p. 13.
[11] Edward Davis, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, pp. 188-9.
[12] A J P Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p. 48.
[13] https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/nicoletta-f-gullace/white-feather-girls-womens-militarism-in-uk
[14] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 264.
[15] The Times, 7 Jan, 1915, p. 9.
[16] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, pp. 168-9.
[17] http://www.1914-1918.net/kitcheners.htm
[18] Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p. 49.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-1916, pp. 113-4.
[21] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 272.
[22] Freeman’s Journal, 2 September 1914.
[23] The Times, p.10, 26 September 1914.
[24] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 18 October 1916, vol. 86 cc581-696.
[25] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 240.
[26] Howard Green, Kitchener’s Army, Army Quarterly, April 1966, vol LXXXXII, no.1, p. 93.
[27] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 51.

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 2: The Icon And His Critics

The first problem which the Secret Elite and their agents faced in bringing Kitchener into the Cabinet in August 1914 was that he was a serving soldier, not a politician. He did not take orders; he gave them. His appointment lent credence to the view that with his presence inside the Cabinet, Kitchener guaranteed the Liberal government ‘an aura of professional military competence which earned [them] widespread public approval.’ [1] The people in the streets and factories were delighted at his appointment. However, if any insider assumed that he would embrace the collective responsibility of cabinet membership, they were to be sorely tested. [2]

The second problem stemmed from Kitchener’s comparative lack of association with the military hierarchy which had been groomed at Camberley. [3] His world had been centred on the Empire. He was more at home as proconsul in Egypt or Commander-in-Chief in South Africa during the later stages of the Boer War, and again in India, [4] than in the confines of the War Office and the Cabinet Office. While Kitchener was hailed throughout Britain as a decisive and iconic figure, he had a more limited impact on his own staff. [5] Despite all of the careful preplanning carried out by the Committee of Imperial Defence and so clearly explained to Churchill, Lloyd George, Grey, Haldane and Asquith in 1911 [6] by Henry Wilson (at that point a General), the newly formed War Council [7] began to reconsider options. To Wilson’s horror they started to quibble over the number of divisions from the British Expeditionary Force which should be sent to France. He had assumed that the whole force would be sent immediately on mobilisation. That was what had been secretly agreed with the French army. The implications of failing to do so appalled him and he complained bitterly to senior military commanders, and prominent individuals like Leo Amery and Lord Alfred Milner, [8] both of whom were inner circle members of the Secret Elite.

If Kitchener required a quick lesson on how difficult rule by committee can be when strong-minded individuals feel the need to express contrary or optional views, this was a baptism of fire. The War Council could not decide where the BEF should be headquartered or how many division should be sent to France. Sir John French favoured switching headquarters to Antwerp rather than Maubeuge, as had been planned and agreed with the French army. Kitchener preferred Amiens, but wanted to have further intelligence from the French before settling the question. The meeting should have been held in Bedlam. Some War Council members thought that Liege was in Holland, not Belgium. In Henry Wilson’s view, they discussed strategy like idiots. It was, he rasped, ‘an historic meeting of men mostly entirely ignorant of their subject’. [9] And he included Kitchener in that wild generalisation.

Every day of indecision was a day irrevocably lost to the advancing Germans. On 5 August a further War Council meeting took place at 10 Downing Street. [10] Kitchener had decided that two divisions from the BEF should be withheld to protect the east coast of Britain from German attack and Asquith approved the action. According to Henry Wilson, when the prime minister backed Kitchener in withholding two divisions, he was more concerned about internal disorder than invasion, fearing that ‘the domestic situation might be grave’. [11] He still had one eye on Ulster and knew that there was a sizeable opposition to war amongst some members of the Labour and Trades Union movement. Whatever the reason, Kitchener approved the sending of only four divisions [12], and eventually, after bitter argument on 12 August, agreed that the BEF Headquarters be established at Maubeuge. Later, historians claimed that Kitchener’s final decision was indeed fortunate. Had all six divisions been thrown at the German army in Belgium, losses would probably have been far worse and the whole British army destroyed. [13]

The personal relationship between Lord Kitchener and Brigadier-General Henry Wilson soured markedly when the Secretary of State for War discovered that Wilson had met with the French intermediary, General Huguet, informed him of current British thinking and allowed him to return to France without meeting Kitchener on 7 August. Wilson’s diary records a most acrimonious meeting at which he spoke his mind to Kitchener, insisting that he would not be bullied ‘especially when he [Kitchener] talks such nonsense as he did today.’ We have only his word on such insubordination. In Wilson’s eyes, Kitchener had ruined the carefully designed plans which had been agreed with the French army by diluting the BEF’s strength in France. [14] Consequently, relations between Wilson and Kitchener remained toxic for the first eight months of the war.

Wilson continually undermined Kitchener’s vulnerable position, isolated as he was in the War Office, criticising his ‘colossal ignorance and conceit.’ [15] The Imperial General Staff had decamped to France with Sir John French in overall command, Sir Archibald Murray as Chief of General Staff, Sir William Robertson as Quartermaster and Wilson himself, ‘reduced’, as he saw it, to Brigadier General of Operations. [16] After a personal protest, Wilson’s position was redefined as ‘Sub-Chief.’ [17] Such vainglorious emphasis on titles rather than substance revealed the near ubiquitous pettiness and conceit among the outdated, outmoded and, soon to be very evident, incompetent military hierarchy of the Roberts Academy. Kitchener was thus left isolated in London where a substantial power vacuum developed between the war planners (the General Staff in France) and the policy makers, essentially the Cabinet advised by Kitchener.

General Sir Henry Wilson had much deeper and more extensive roots within the Secret Elite than Kitchener could ever have appreciated and regularly sent private letters of complaint about the conduct of the war to his mentor and Secret Elite leader, Lord Alfred Milner. Within a week of crossing to France, Wilson condemned the ‘cowardly ignorance’ of his superiors in London – meaning Asquith and Kitchener. He blamed the retreat from Mons on the ‘initial blunder’ (that would be Kitchener’s blunder, approved by the prime minister) of depleting the BEF’s original strength by keeping two divisions in Britain. [18] Blaming others was a tactic repeatedly employed by Henry Wilson. Any military failure was always someone else’s fault.

Despite the criticism of disloyal colleagues, both in the military and the Cabinet, Kitchener had a far greater grasp of the prerequisites for warfare and the appropriate application of sound strategy than most around him. What did not help was his overbearing and dismissive manner. [19] He alone amongst the military hierarchy recognised that Britain had to be committed to a prolonged war.

Historians have glibly accepted the idea that Herbert Kitchener first began to consider the impact of war in Europe in the short days of August immediately before his appointment as Secretary of State for War. What nonsense. While in Japan on his world tour in 1909, Kitchener was joined by his old friend Henry Rawlinson who had served on his staff in Sudan and South Africa. He was informed of the secret arrangements for combined action between the British and French in the event of war with Germany. Kitchener did not like the arrangement because it meant being tacked-on to the French, which ‘might not suit’. [20] After a joint military and naval conference in Malta in 1912, he and Churchill ‘used to talk over Imperial Defence topics when from time to time we met.’ [21] Kitchener also discussed Germany’s likely strategy in Belgium with Winston Churchill on 28 July. [22] To suggest that he was ignorant of the imminence of war in August 1914 is completely at odds with the evidence.

While the German plans for defence, should they be attacked from east and west simultaneously, the Schleiffen Plan, was widely known throughout Europe, Schleiffen’s original designs had been refined over the previous decade. The advance of the whole first army through Belgium had not been envisaged by Wilson and his entourage. This concerned Kitchener. He correctly concluded that the German plan of attack was to sweep around Belgium north of the River Meuse – which was why he had deep reservations about placing the BEF headquarters at Maubeuge. For all the years of detailed preparations which Sir Henry Wilson had spent laboriously mapping and planning along the Belgian – French border, he had never considered that his small force would face the full might of Von Kluck’s 1st German army, nor spend the next three weeks in retreat, struggling to keep in touch with the disheartened French.

Indeed as a soldier experienced in several wars, Kitchener’s grasp of the immediate situation before him was far more circumspect than that of anyone at GHQ in France. [23] He was under no illusion that the Expeditionary Force was completely inadequate to the task of taking on the vast resources and overwhelming manpower of the German and Austrian forces. He saw that the small British force had little value as an independent unit and consequently it became an auxiliary wing of the retreating French army.

Kitchener’s fears proved justified. Sir John French, a commander whose enthusiasms plummeted between unbound optimism and deep despair, had to be commanded not to retire to Le Havre with the remnants of the BEF. Perturbed by his commander in the field’s intention to withdraw, Kitchener was immediately sent by a small coterie of the Cabinet, including Asquith, Winston Churchill and Lloyd George ‘to unravel the situation and if necessary, put the fear of God into them all.’ [24] With his mind already poisoned by the bitter Wilson, Sir John French took Kitchener’s presence as a personal insult. He was even more upset when Kitchener appeared in the uniform of Field Marshall. Jealous of Kitchener’s superior rank, political authority, linguistic skills (his fluency in French gave him an advantage in discussion with the French high command,) [25] Sir John French resented the Secretary of State for War with a vengeance.

All of which begs the question – why did the Secret Elite pursue his appointment as Secretary of State for War with such insistence? What did Kitchener possess which made him integral to the pursuit of a very long war?

[1] Hew Strachan, The First World War, Vol 1, p. 203.
[2] Keith Jeffery, Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, A Political Soldier, p. 132.
[3] Kitchener was an imperial soldier and proconsul. Several of his staff members during the Boer War served or commanded the Military Staff Training College at Camberley, but Herbert Kitchener was never one of Lord Robert’s entourage who dominated the upper echelons of the British army. He operated independently, and had his heart set on becoming the next Viceroy of India before war broke out. Thus he was an ‘outsider’ compared to the near masonic brotherhood which Roberts dominated inside his ‘Academy’. [ See Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the first World War, Chapter 15, p. 194 – 202.]
[4]  Strachan, The First World War, Vol. 1, p. 203.
[5] Jeffrey, Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, 132.
[6] Winston Churchill, World Crisis, pp. 38-9.
[7] For details see previous blog.
[8] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics p. 244.
[9] C E Callwell and Marshal Foch, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson VI: His Life And Diaries. p. 159.
[10] PRO CAB 22/1/1.
[11] Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock, H H Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 159.
[12] PRO CAB 22/1/2.
[13] John Terraine, Mons, p. 88.
[14]  Callwell and  Foch, Wilson Diaries:  p. 160.
[15] Jeffrey, Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, p. 133.
[16] Callwell and Foch, Wilson Diaries, p. 157.
[17] Jeffrey, Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson, p. 132.
[18] Milner Papers held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, quoted in A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 242.
[19] George H Cassar, The Tragedy of Sir John French, p. 252.
[20] George H Cassar, Kitchener, Architect of Victory, p. 160.
[21] Churchill, World Crisis, pp. 125-6.
[22] Ibid., p. 101.
[23] Callwell and Foch, Wilson Diaries, p. 161.
[24] Brock and Brock, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 213.
[25] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 310.