The Great Coup of 1916, 7: The End Of Democracy

Lloyd George immediately accepted the King’s invitation to form a government on 7 December 1916. His own version of events dripped insincerity, giving the impression that the onerous task of leading the government was thrust upon him suddenly, as if by magic. ‘As soon as the King entrusted me with the task of forming an Administration in succession to the Ministry that had disappeared, I had to survey the tasks awaiting me …’ [1] What arrant nonsense. ‘The ministry that had disappeared.’ This was not a Harry Potter. Perhaps he was thinking more in terms of a mafia ‘disappearance’. He would have been at home with the Mafiosa.

One of Lloyd George’s first moves was to summon Maurice Hankey to the War Office to ‘have a long talk about the personnel of the new Govt., the procedure of the select War Ctee., and the future of the war.’ [2] He asked Hankey to write a memo giving his view on the state of the war and as early as 9 December, Hankey spent the whole day with the new War Cabinet. [3] How more central could he have been to all of the discussions which finally approved Lloyd George’s decisions? [4] Unlike many of his contemporaries, Maurice Hankey was not surprised to find that Milner had been appointed directly to the inner-sanctum of Britain’s war planning. Unelected, unknown to many ordinary men and women, Lord Milner appeared as if out of the ether to take his place among the political elite charged with managing the war to ultimate victory. [5] Lloyd George claimed, laughably, that ‘I neither sought nor desired the Premiership’ and explained Milner’s inclusion as representing the ‘Tory intelligentsia and Die-Hards.’ [6] What lies. Lloyd George had always exuded unbridled ambition and had been plotting the coup against Asquith with Milner’s cabal for months. [7] His premiership was conditional on their support. Lord Milner was to have a place by his side.

The myth of Lloyd George’s ‘lightening rapidity’ in assembling around him ‘all that is best in British Life’ was coined by Lord Northcliffe in an article printed by the international press on 10 December. [8] Northcliffe had been highly influential in supporting Lloyd George, largely, but not exclusively through his editor at the Times, Geoffrey Dawson.

Although he thought nothing of telephoning the new prime minister in person, [9] the owner of the Times could not stop other influences obligating Lloyd George to retain what Northcliffe called ‘has-beens’ in cabinet posts. [10] His Daily Mail and Evening News called for the removal of Arthur Balfour and his cousin, Lord Robert Cecil to no avail. Did Northcliffe not know that both men were deeply entrenched inside the Secret Elite?

Let there be no doubt, the coup was devised and executed by members and agents of the Secret Elite. Once Asquith had been replaced, they permeated the new administration with Milner’s acolytes and associates from top to bottom, and on all sides as well. [11] Let Lloyd George be the figurehead, but the Monday Night Cabal and their Secret Elite supporters were absolutely determined to place themselves and their trusted allies in all of the major offices of state. Furthermore, Lloyd George was subtly but securely scrutinised at every turn. He would not be given free rein. Thus their chosen men were placed in key positions, with a smattering of useful Conservative and Labour MPs given office in order to guarantee that the government could survive any parliamentary vote. On his return to London on 10 December, Hankey ‘had to see Lord Milner by appointment’. He noted in his diary ‘I have always hated his [Lord Milner’s] politics but found the man very attractive and possessed of personality and [we] got own like a house on fire’. [12] Of course they did. Hankey would not have survived otherwise. He was well aware of Milner’s power and influence.

Another myth still widely accepted is that Lloyd George’s very special cabinet, which literally took control of every strand in the prosecution of the war, was assembled at break-neck speed by the Welsh genius. It had taken months of deliberation and consultation before appointments and tactics were finally agreed inside the closed ranks of the Monday Night Cabal. The final selection which bore Lloyd George’s alleged stamp reflected the Secret Elite’s approval of men in whom they had faith. The War Committee initially comprised prime minister Lloyd George, who had been in the Secret Elite’s pocket since 1910, [13] Viscount Alfred Milner, the most important influence inside that secret movement [14] George Curzon of All Souls and twice Viceroy of India, [15] Andrew Bonar Law, still the formal leader of the Tories and the Labour MP Arthur Henderson, an outspoken champion of the war effort. [16] This central core took charge. They held daily meetings to better manage the war. Sometimes two and three meetings took place in a single day. These five men alone were supposedly the supreme governors of the State. [17] But they were not in any sense, equals.

The old order of senior Liberal politicians was mercilessly purged. Out went Asquith despite his years of loyal service. Sir Edward Grey had forfeited his right to office when he began to consider possibilities of peace with the Americans. He was put out to pasture. Reginald McKenna, long a thorn in Lloyd George’s side was dismissed. Lord Crewe remained loyal to Asquith and was not considered. To his great disappointment, Winston Churchill was not deemed suitable.  He had many enemies in the Tory  party. One Liberal Party stalwart, Samuel Montagu, who took over at the Ministry of Munitions when Lloyd George moved to the War Office in July 1916, had to go in order to find room for other appointees, but his patience was to be rewarded some short months later when he was made Viceroy of India. [18] This is precisely how the Secret Elite adjusts its favours and looks after its own. It still does.

The Secret Elite stamped their authority over every important level of government. With Sir Edward Carson at the Admiralty and Arthur Balfour at the Foreign Office, Lord Derby became Secretary of State for War and Lord Robert Cecil continued in his position as Minister of Blockade. Home Secretary, Sir George Cave took office barely months after he and FE Smith had successfully prosecuted Sir Roger Casement and refused his right to appeal to the House of Lords. [19] Secret Elite agents, every one.

Milner ensured that his close friends were given positions of influence and authority. Take for example the meteoric rise of Rowland Prothero. He claimed to know only two men ‘prominent in public life’. [20] It transpired that these were Lords Milner and Curzon. In 1914 Prothero was first elected to parliament as one of Oxford University’s MPs. In late 1915 he served on a Committee on Home Production of Food with Alfred Milner. In 1916, Milner’s friend was given the cabinet post of President of the Board of Agriculture. [21] It took him a mere two and a half years to move from new recruit to cabinet minister. In addition, Arthur Lee, who had accommodated many of the secret meetings which foreshadowed the coup, was appointed Director-General of food production. Other known members and supporters of the Secret Elite who shamelessly benefitted from the coup included H.A.L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education, [22] Walter Long as Colonial Secretary and Sir Henry Birchenough at the Board of Trade. [23] They were everywhere … and not just politicians.

Lloyd George had risen to high office through the unseen patronage of the Secret Elite. His performance at the Board of Trade [24] guaranteed him the benevolent approbation of leading figures in shipping and ship-building. As Chancellor he laid claim to saving the City [25], took advice from Lord Rothschild, financiers and insurance brokers, linked the British economy to America through Morgan-Grenfell and met and socialised with the great mine-owners and manufacturers of the time. In December 1916 he revolutionised government control of production by bringing businessmen into political office. Unfortunately the appointment of interested parties to posts from which their companies could reap great profit was not a success.

Sir Joseph Maclay was appointed in charge of shipping. As a Scottish ship-owner and manager, Maclay had been critical of the government’s concessions to trade unions and he opposed the nationalization of shipping. The Admiralty treated Maclay with deep hostility, and opposed his idea of convoys after the onset of Germany’s unrestricted submarine offensive in February 1917. Maclay was proved right [26] though shipowners still reaped unconscionable fortunes.

The new prime minister made Lord Devonport food controller. Chairman of the Port of London Authority (1909-25), he broke the dockers’ strike in 1912, causing great distress and hardship in East London. Imagining that his hard-man image equated to strength of character, Lloyd George appointed Minister of Food Control. [27] Not so. Devonport protected his own grocery interests and resisted the introduction of rationing until May 1917. 

Lord Rhondda, the Welsh coal magnate and industrialist was entrusted with the Local Government Board and his popularity grew when he was asked to take over the role of the incompetent Devonport as minister of food control. He grasped the nettle, by fixing food prices and ensuring government purchases of basic supplies. [28] Compared to the others, he was a shining light.

Westman Pearson, later Viscount Cowdrey, was placed in charge of the Air Board. Pearson had acquired oil concessions in Mexico through his questionable relationship with the Mexican dictator, Diaz. [29] His ownership of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company (which became part of Royal Dutch Shell in 1919) guaranteed Pearson vast profits throughout the war.

Sir Alfred Mond, elevated by Lloyd George in 1916 to Commissioner of Works was the managing director of the Mond Nickel Company and a director of the International Nickel Company of Canada. Nickel hardens armour and special steels. Basically it is a strategic material which came to the fore in the so-called naval race prior to 1914. [30]

The Mond companies made great profits during the prolonged war. In 1915 Britain sent twelve times the amount of nickel to Sweden that it had in 1913. [31] There, it was either manufactured into war materials and sold to Germany, or re-exported in its raw state. Incredibly, the Chairman of one of the Empire’s most important metal processing and exporting businesses, which was directly and indirectly supplying Germany, was created Commissioner of Works. Questionable deals were subsequently negotiated between the British government and the British-American Nickel Corporation which were strongly criticised in parliament [32] but Alfred Mond ended his career as Lord Melchett of Landforth. You couldn’t make this up.

In addition, Milner and his Secret Elite associates literally took over Lloyd George’s private office. As early as 10 December Hankey realised that he was not to be the only member of the new prime minister’s secretariat. At Milner’s request, Leo Amery, his loyal lieutenant in South Africa, was unaccountably placed on the staff of the War Cabinet, but not as joint Secretary. Hankey remained secure in Lloyd George’s trust in charge of the War Cabinet organisation. [33]

A curious new chapter in Downing Street’s history was created outside the prime minister’s residence. Literally. Temporary offices were constructed in the Downing Street garden to accommodate a select group of trusted administrators who monitored and directed all contact between Lloyd George and departments of government. [34] The man in charge throughout its existence was Professor W.G. S. Adams, an Oxford Professor and member of Milner’s entourage [35] who later became editor of War Cabinet Reports and Warden of All Souls in Oxford. [36] This appointment was swiftly followed by that of two former members of Milner’s famous Kindergarten; [37] Philip Kerr became Lloyd George’s private secretary and Lionel Curtis, another of Milner’s loyal acolytes, was also drafted into service. It did not stop there. Waldorf Astor and Lord Northcliffe’s younger brother, Cecil Harmsworth followed shortly afterwards.

To complete the pack, Milner insisted that Lloyd George reconsider appointing John Buchan to his staff after Haig’s apologist had been turned down for a post. In a private letter which has survived because it comes from the Lloyd George archives, rather than Milner’s much culled and carefully shredded papers, he wrote:
‘My Dear Prime Minister, Don’t think me too insistent! I wish you would not turn down John Buchan, without seeing him yourself…. I am not satisfied to have him rejected on hear-say, & ill informed hear-say at that.’ [38]
Buchan was appointed to the prime minister’s staff as Director of Information. And historians would have us believe that these were Lloyd George’s appointments.

It was as if the Monday Night Cabal had kidnapped the prime minister. Just as Alfred Milner had captured, then captivated, the nascent talent of young imperialists from Oxford University at the turn of the century and taken them to South Africa to help him govern and renovate the post Boer-War Transvaal and Cape colonies, so now, the very same men ‘guided’ Lloyd George and filtered the information which flowed to Downing Street. They were not Lloyd Georg’s men … they were Lord Milner’s. He was in charge.

To the anguish of Asquith’s political allies, this new bureaucracy had metamorphosed into an undemocratic monster fashioned by Alfred Milner. They could see it and railed against it. What we need to know is, why has this wholesale coup d’etat been studiously ignored by mainstream historians? Why do they continually write about Lloyd George’s government and Lloyd George’s secretariat when his very position was bound and controlled by Milner and his Garden Suburb minders? The radical journalist, H W Massingham published a vitriolic attack on Milner’s organisation in early 1917:

‘… A new double screen of bureaucrats is interposed between the War Directorate and the heads of [government] Departments, whose responsibility to Parliament has hitherto been direct … The first is the Cabinet Secretariat … the second is a little body of illuminati, whose residence is in the Prime Minister’s garden …These gentlemen stand in no sense for a Civil Service Cabinet. They are rather a class of travelling empirics in Empire, who came in with Lord Milner … The governing ideas are not those of Mr. Lloyd George … but of Lord Milner … Mr George has used Toryism to destroy Liberal ideas; but he has created a Monster which, for the moment, dominates both. This is the New Bureaucracy which threatens to master England …’ [39]

It was indeed. This was the Secret Elite’s most successful coup so far, accomplished by the critical silence and complicity of a compliant press. Elected parliamentary government had been purged. The Secret Elite spurned democracy because they ordained that democracy did not work. Their dictatorship was masked by Lloyd George, happy to pose and strut as the man who would win the war. Perhaps you were taught that he did? It is a self-serving myth. He operated inside a political straitjacket and fronted an undemocratic government.

And the sacrifice of youth continued.  And the profits of war grew ever larger.

[1] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 620.
[2] Hankey, Diary 10 December 1916.
[3] War Cabinet 1, CAB 23/1/1 discussed the cost of loans from America which were running at $60 million per week. Messrs. Morgan, Grenfell and Co. continued as the conduit for all American payments. Hankey also recorded in these minutes that the Press had been informed that the War cabinet would meet every weekday.
[4] Lord Vansittart recorded that Hankey ‘progressively became secretary of everything that mattered. He grew into a repository of secrets, a chief Inspector of Mines of information.’ Robert Gilbert Vansittart, The Mist Procession, p. 164.
[5] While Lloyd George spends many pages expressing his opinion on most of his colleagues, he curiously omits a pen-picture on Lord Milner. Possibly the Censor removed it. Either way it is interesting to note how carefully Milner’s contribution to Lloyd George’s ascent to the premiership has been airbrushed.
[6] Lloyd George, Memoirs, p. 596.
[7] See blog, The Great Coup of 1916: 4 The Monday Night Cabal, 3 August 2016.
[8] The Times estimated that Lord Northcliffe’s lengthy article in praise of Lloyd George had been carried in one thousand American, Australian, Canadian, South African, French, Italian and other journals. [Times 11 December, 1916]
[9] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 329.
[10] The Times, 11 December 1916, p. 4.
[11] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 376.
[12] Ibid., p. 329.
[13] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 164-5.
[14] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 6-9 and pp. 140- 47.
[15] The place of All Souls college at Oxford as the centre of the Secret Elite intelligentsia in Britain was identified by Professor Quigley. See The Anglo-American Establishment pp. 20-26.
[16] In August 1914 Arthur Henderson had been outspoken in his objection to war, but he changed his position absolutely within weeks.
[17] Gollin, Proconsul, p. 391.
[18] E.S. Montagu was both a friend of Asquith’s and respected colleague of Lloyd George. To most observers his omission from Asquith’s cabinet in 1916 spelled the end of his political career. But this is not how the Secret Elite work. In stepping down temporarily, Montagu earned the right to be promoted to the prestigious position of Viceroy of India in 1917.
[19] Thomas S. Legg, Marie-Louise Legg, ‘Cave, George, Viscount Cave (1856–1928)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[20] Lord Ernle, Whippingham to Westminster, p. 248.
[21] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 27.
[22] Ibid., p. 312.
[23] Ibid.
[24] President of the Board of Trade was Lloyd George’s first cabinet post in 1906. During his tenure there he became popular with the business class whose interests he often championed.
[25] Lloyd George, Memoirs, p. 61.
[26] Ibid., pp. 688-95.
[27] Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘Kearley, Hudson Ewbanke, first Viscount Devonport (1856–1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[28] John Williams, ‘Thomas, David Alfred, first Viscount Rhondda (1856–1918)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[29] Geoffrey Jones, Westman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdrey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[30] Gordon H. Boyce, Co-operative Structures in Global Business, pp. 84-5.
[31] Rear Admiral MWWC Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, p. 201.
[32] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 14 January 1918 vol. 101 cc5-6.
[33] Maurice Hankey, Supreme Command, vol. II, p. 590.
[34] John Turner, Lloyd George’s Secretariat, p. 1.
[35] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[36] Ibid., pp. 91-93. All Souls College in Oxford has been closely associated with the Rhodes/Milner group so integral to the Secret Elite in England.
[37] The title Milner’s Kindergarten was given to the group of young Oxford University graduates whom Milner attracted to help him rebuild South Africa after the Boer War. They subsequently enjoyed stellar careers in journalism, politics, banking and finance every area of Secret Elite influence. Further reading – Walter Nimocks, Milner’s Young Men.
[38] Milner to Lloyd George 17 January 1917, in the Lloyd George Papers.
[39] H.W. Massingham, The Nation 24 February, 1917.

The Great Coup of 1916, 4: The Monday Night Cabal

Asquith’s Coalition government of May 1915 changed little in terms of Britain’s war management. It was hardly likely to given that it was a basic reshuffle of old faces and older politics. Alfred Milner was well aware that this would be the case, and as such, it suited the Secret Elite to bide their time before catapulting their leader into front-line politics. Milner was initially stirred into action over Asquith’s inability to make clear decisions, and criticised the ‘contradictions and inconsistencies which have characterised our action as a nation’. [1] He began to turn the screw on the prime minister in the House of Lords early in 1916 and Sir Edward Carson did likewise in the Commons. [2] Carson had originally been the protege of Alfred Balfour, and was a fellow member of the Secret Elite. It did not take long for the unnatural coalition of conservatives and liberals to unravel inside the Cabinet.

Within the context of 1916, the British nation had no respite from disaster. The Somme [ref] produced heavy losses made more unpalatable by negligible gains. In the War Committee, Curzon and Balfour waged a bitter and prolonged inter-departmental dispute over the future of the Air Board [3] to the detriment of other critical business. Without Kitchener, the General Staff appeared complacent and Maurice Hankey feared the generals were ‘bleeding us to death’. [4] He warned Lloyd George that the British Army was led by ‘the most conservative class in the world, forming the most powerful trades union in the world’ [5] It was an astute observation. The Staff ‘ring’ (and these were Hankey’s words) which had been brought together under the pre-war influence of Milner’s great ally, and former head of the Army, Lord Roberts, [6] was indeed a closed union of former cavalry officers, so self satisfied and complacent that they ignored the views of others. [7] Whatever the obscene consequences of their mistakes, they continued to repeat them with the arrogance of those who are convinced that they know better.

Confirmed in their view that the democratic process had failed to provide the leadership and organisation which was needed to win the war on their terms, Milner and the Secret Elite began the process of completely undermining the government and replacing it with their own agents. In January 1916 a small group of Milner’s closest friends and disciples formed a very distinctive and secret cabal to prepare the nation for a change so radical, that it was nothing less than a coup; a planned take-over of government by men who sought to impose their own rule rather than seek a mandate from the general public. [8] Having ensured that the war was prolonged, they now sought to ensure that it would be waged to the utter destruction of Germany.

The men behind the carefully constructed conspiracy were Alfred Milner, Leo Amery, Sir Edward Carson, Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, F.S. Oliver the influential writer who believed that war was a necessity, [9] and Waldorf Astor, the owner of The Observer. They met regularly on Monday evenings to formulate their alternative plans for war management over dinner. These men were drawn from the inner-circle of Milner’s most trusted associates. [10] Others who were invited to join them included, Lloyd George, Sir Henry Wilson, (at that point a corps commander on the Western Front) Philip Kerr, another of Milner’s proteges from his days in South Africa, and Sir Leander Starr Jameson, the man who almost brought down the British government in 1896 in the wake of his abortive raid on the Transvaal. [11] Could anyone have anticipated that Jameson would have reemerged in London inside a very powerful conspiracy some twenty years after he had almost blown Cecil Rhode’s dream apart? [12] But then he was always the servant of the mighty South African arm of the Secret Elite.

On the rare occasions that this clique has been mentioned by historians, it is usually referred to as a ‘Ginger Group’. Yet another veneer of deception. Their objective was not to spice up the opposition to Herbert Asquith but to rule in his place. It was, as Alfred Milner’s biographer put it, a very powerful fellowship devoid of party hacks and faceless civil servants, [13] Carson, still the hero of Ulster Unionists, was the foremost of the Tory critics in the House of Commons; Dawson at The Times was probably the most influential journalist in the Empire and had the full backing of its owner, Lord Northcliffe; Astor’s Observer added hugely valuable weight to Milner’s battalions in the press; Oliver was fanatical in his disdain of grovelling peacemakers. He proposed that the whole nation rather than the armed forces must be conscripted. [14]

Alfred Milner was the undisputed leader of this ‘Monday Night Cabal’. [15] The agenda notes for one of the meetings in February demonstrated clearly that they planned to demolish the widely held notion that there was no alternative to a combination of Asquith and Bonar Law. Their solution was to repeat ‘in season and out of season’ that the current coalition was having a paralytic effect on the conduct of the war and it was absurd to believe that there was no alternative.  [16] They were the alternative.

Here we find one of the few examples of precisely how the Secret Elite worked to influence and dominate British politics. The cabal comprised the key players at the core of the opposition to Asquith. They instructed their supporters and agents to lobby both inside and outside parliament for the policies that were determined over their private dinners. The rank and file were never invited to these exclusive gatherings which remained the preserve of the select. [17] A second assault-route was through the press, whose influential leaders were also at the heart of the Monday Night Cabal. Public opinion had to be turned against the Asquith coalition. One of he most successful influences which the Secret Elite still wield is the power to make the public believe that they want the changes expounded by a corrupted press.

Geoffrey Dawson led the attack from his lofty office at The Times. Instructed in the Milnerite catechism of Coalition failure, his editorials began the campaign to champion Alfred Milner into high office without the niceties of a political mandate. On 14 April his leading article was the first salvo in that offensive:

‘Let there be no mistake about it. What the country want is leaders who are not afraid to go to all lengths or undergo also sacrifices, party or personal, in order to win the war… We believe that in Lord Milner they possess yet another leader whose courage and character are needed in a national crisis. It is a most damning indictment of the coalition, and especially of those Unionist leaders who had a free hand to strengthen its composition, that such a man should be out of harness at such a time.’ [18]

The plot which had been carefully constructed over months of detailed planning was promoted in a series of newspaper editorials which advanced Milner’s intentions. Their new mantra was that change was needed; change was vital to save the country from disaster. But not everyone would be sacrificed. No. Not at all. What was proposed was far more subtle. They proposed that the Secret Elite’s chosen men in Cabinet (Balfour etc.) needed the support of a more organised system (behind them) and there was ‘no reason whatsoever why they should not continue…’. However, those who had served their purpose, who ‘were encrusted in the old party habit, worn out … by a period of office which has lasted continuously in some cases for more than a decade … are a sheer danger to the State.’ [19] Translated into personalities their targets were Herbert Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Lansdowne, Walter Runciman and the remnants of the original Liberal government.

Dawson rampaged against the ‘weak methods’ and ‘weak men’ who were failing the country. Unresolved problems of man-power, of food control and food production, of conflict over the output of aircraft and merchant ships were attributed to a system where, according to the clique, the country was being governed by a series of debating societies. He was disgusted that the War Committee had reverted back to the old habits of ‘interminable memoranda’ and raged about the impossibility of heads of great departments having additional collective responsibility for correlating all of the work of a war government. Every design which the Monday Night Cabal had agreed was promoted by Dawson at The Times.

Popular newspapers ensured that their message was unrelenting. Tom Clarke, then editor of the Daily Mail wrote in his diaries that he was instructed by Northcliffe in December 1916 to undermine the Prime Minister. He was told to find a smiling picture of Lloyd George and underneath it put the caption, “Do it Now” and get the worst possible picture of Asquith and label it, “Wait and See”. [20] It was to be billed as if it was Action-Man against the ditherer.

The major beneficiary from the conclusions of the Monday Night Cabal was David Lloyd George. Since the day he was given his first government post as President of the Board of Trade in 1905, Lloyd George had pursued his career with the singular intention of rising to the top. His firebrand oratory which made him a champion of the people not matched by his machiavellian self interest. While basking in the credit for providing pensions in old age, he befriended the leaders of industry, the bankers and financiers in the City, the money-men in New York and newspaper owners like Northcliffe and Max Aitken. (Lord Beaverbrook) The Secret Elite had identified Lloyd George many years before [21] as the man most likely to front popular appeal for their policies, but his negotiations between the conspirators in 1916 had to be carried out well away from prying eyes.

They chose Arthur Lee [22] as the facilitator for many of the secret meetings between Lloyd George, Maurice Hankey, Alfred Milner and Geoffrey Dawson at Lee’s house in the Abbey Garden at Westminster. [23] An opponent of Lloyd George in previous times, Lee had married into the New-York financial elite and his wife Ruth inherited a substantial fortune. He was a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt with whom he corresponded frequently. [24] Lee had apparently become increasingly frustrated with the conduct of the war by the Asquith government and sought out David Lloyd George as the one member of the government whom he considered had ‘sufficient courage and dynamic energy … to insist upon things being done’ [25]. Note how Lee offered his services to Lloyd George who invited him into the Ministry of Munitions as parliamentary military secretary. Later, in his War Memoirs, Lloyd George went out of his way to praise Lee’s ‘untiring industry, great resource, and practical capacity’, [26] without mentioning his role as co-conspirator in Asquith’s removal.

On Lloyd George’s move to the War Office, Lee became his personal secretary. He was also a member of the Unionist war committee which acted as a focus of back-bench opposition to the Asquith coalition in 1916. [27] Whether he was aware of it or not, the Secret Elite ensured that Arthur Lee was well placed to watch over Lloyd George in the critical months leading up to the coup.

Safe from prying eyes, the conspirators drew an ever compliant Lloyd George to the centre of their web. His closest aide ensured that they could contact him with ease without rousing the suspicion of mere mortals. They organised their policies, decided their tactics and picked their chosen men. The Secret Elite were poised to take over the governance of the war and run it along their lines, but the old order had to be removed. As ever with Alfred Milner, he required his opponent, in this instance, Asquith, to make the first unforgivable mistake.

[1] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 December 1915 vol 20 cc696-744.
[2] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 320.
[3] Memorandum for the War Committee, Doc. 658, November 1916 and Reply to The First Report of the Air Board, Doc.658, November 1916 in Cabinet Memoranda 1905-1918, vol. IV, F.O. 899.
[4] Maurice Hankey, Diary entry 28th October 1916, quoted in Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, p. 312.]
[5] Ibid.
[6] For a detailed examination of the influence which Lords Roberts exerted over the British Military Establishment see Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, chapter 15, The Roberts Academy, pp. 194-203.
[7] Gollin, Hankey, p. 313.
[8] Ibid., pp. 323-4.
[9] F.S. Oliver , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, author, Richard Davenport-Hines.
[10] Alfred Milner, Leo Amery, Philip Kerr, Waldorf Astor and Geoffrey Dawson were specifically placed inside what Carroll Quigley called The Society of the Elect in his work, The Anglo-American Establishment, while Leander Starr Jameson was placed in the outer circle. [pp. 311-313.] We have enlarged the group under the collective title of the Secret Elite. [
[11] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, Prologue, pp. 1-5.
[12] Sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment for his involvement in the infamous Jameson Raid, he served barely three before being pardoned. His career flourished thereafter. From 1904-1908 Jameson was prime minister of the Cape Colony. He returned to England in 1912 and remained one of Alfred Milner’s trusted confidantes.
[13] Gollin, Hankey, p. 324.
[14] Davenport-Hines, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. See above.
[15] It is often interesting to consider the manner in which historians entitle events. In A.M. Collin’s Proconsul in Politics, he boldly christened Milner’s group as The Monday Night Cabal – which it certainly was, while Terence O’Brien, in his work, Milner, stepped away from controversy by calling it the Monday Night Group, thus omitting any hint of conspiracy. [Terence O’Brien, Milner, p. 266.]
[16] Amery Papers, “Notes for Monday’s Meeting, 19th February 1916.”
[17] Gollin, Hankey, p. 325.
[18] The Times, 14 April, 1916, p. 9.
[19] The Times, 1 December 1916, p. 9.
[20] Tom Clarke, My Northcliffe Diary, p.107.
[21] Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, chapter 12, Catch a Rising Star, pp. 161-171.
[22] Later Viscount Lee of Farnham. Typical of many Secret Elite associates, his loyalty was rewarded with political appointments including Director General of Food Production from 1917-18, President of the Board of Agriculture, 1919-21 and first Lord of the Admiralty, 1921-22. He donated Chequers, still the country residence of British prime ministers, for that purpose.
[23] Gollin, Hankey, p. 348 and p. 354.
[24] A. Clark, A Good Innings: the private papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham, p. 92.
[25] Ibid., p.140.
[26] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 346.
[27] V.W. Baddeley, ‘Lee, Arthur Hamilton, Viscount Lee of Fareham (1868–1947)’, rev. Marc Brodie, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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.

John Buchan 3: Lies and Propaganda

John Buchan had known many of the prominent generals who held key commands during the First World War since his days in South Africa; Kitchener in particular. The Secretary of State for War had been ushered into post in August 1914, but was neither a team player nor a man to bow to the will of politicians. Many influential powerbrokers including Lord Northcliffe at The Times wanted him removed from office. Kitchener died onboard HMS Hampshire, an outdated pre-war battleship which had been selected to carry him on a mission to Russia in June 1916. Buchan noted that by 1916, how uncomfortable the minister for war was around politicians, and added ‘his friends were beginning to dread that a great career might close to an anti-climax, until in that June night when the Orkney seas put an end to such forebodings.’ [1]

What an odd choice of words. Why the need for a metaphor? It wasn’t the Orkney seas that killed Kitchener; it was either a submarine or a mine or sabotage. But the Secretary of State for War was no more, to the relief of a great many men of power. Kitchener had served his purpose. Buchan wrote that ‘in a sense his work was finished, for more than any other man he had the credit of building up that vast British force which was destined to be the determining factor in the war.’ [2] That sentiment ended with what sounded like an epitaph: ‘His death was a fitting conclusion to the drama of his life’. [3] Such ready acceptance, such calm unemotional, carefully crafted words ring hollow. Kitchener had become more than an irritation to the same men who had, in 1914, urged him into power at the War Office.

They feared that he was losing his commitment. Kitchener, however, remained untouchably popular. He retained the complete confidence of the British public and the soldier in the trenches. The propaganda machine managed Kitchener’s death with sublime professionalism, framing his loss like the passing of an elderly sage whose days simply ran out. No beating of breasts or wailing and lamenting. When propaganda makes so great an effort to bury the dead quickly and quietly, the suspicion must remain that something more sinister lurks in the shadows. We will examine this further in future blogs.

Although Buchan’s autobiography is empty of meaningful reference to his intelligence or foreign office work, other sources help fill in some of the blanks. Clearly the official censor cleansed his memoirs as rigorously as he did Lloyd George’s and Sir Edward Grey’s. What we know for certain is that John Buchan moved in and out of all the centres of power; his own department, Downing Street, The Admiralty, the War Office, and even on occasion, Buckingham Palace. [4] He knew exactly what was happening. He had access to all of the first hand reports and evidence of spectacular failures. He was literally the insider’s insider. And herein lies the problem. He knew the truth and covered it up. John Buchan was the author, the historian, the propagandist, the intelligence officer, the Milner acolyte and the Secret Elite go-to man. It would be ridiculous to believe that he did not know what he was doing; that he confused his writing of history with his writing of novels about the war. He earned his money by peddling lies.

Buchan met every foreigner of note who visited London during the crucial 1916-18 period. He knew that the Secret Elite’s inner-circle was operating and influencing events behind the scenes. He hinted of his privileged access to the real decision-makers, stating: ‘ I saw something of the veiled prophets who are behind the scenes in a crisis – Colonel House [5] and Lord Esher, [6] and especially Northcliffe’. [7] His conclusions were startling:

‘I saw at close quarters the intricate mechanisms which directed the War at home, one of the strangest mixtures of amateur and professional, talent and charlatanry, the patriot and the arriviste, which history has known, and behind it the dynamic figure of the Prime Minister, generating heat and somehow turning it into power.’ [8]

Tantalisingly he left it there. Or the censor did.

Furthermore there is an additional problem. John Buchan wrote his memoirs as if he was the observer of people and events, and not personally involved. The director of information did not meet and greet international visitors from America, the Dominions and indeed Russia, without judging their usefulness and their susceptibility to British influence or forwarding reports and making value judgements on how best they could be manipulated. In his reminiscences, Buchan is able to vaguely remember a dinner in the Spring of 1916 with guests such as the Secret Elite’s Arthur Balfour and representatives from the Russian Duma including Professor Pavel Milyukov, the Russian Foreign Minister in the provisional government of 1917. It was he who promised that ‘Russia would continue the crusade for annihilation of German militarism…. to prevent all possibility of war in the future.’ He failed. [9] His other Russian dinner guest was Alexander Protopopov, [10] the Minister of the Interior from 1916-17, whose friendship with Rasputin earned him imprisonment and a Bolshevik bullet. Not a word about their discussions, or indeed their subsequent fate. He had plenty of time to reflect on these events because his autobiography was not published until 1940. [11] Like many within the Secret Elite, Buchan had tales to tell that were buried with him.

One politician who was not impressed by John Buchan was David Lloyd George, who as prime minister, found himself hemmed in by Secret Elite personnel. Lloyd George took great exception to an account in Buchan’s  A History of the Great War which depicted a meeting between the prime minister and the French Commander-in-chief, General Nivelle in 1916. Buchan claimed that the prime minister ‘heard of Nivelle’s plan – limitless objectives, the end of trench fighting, victory within two days – and naturally fell in love with it.’ [12] Even in describing Buchan’s account, Lloyd George felt he had to rewrite it, accusing him of ‘lapsing into his fictional mood, giving a fanciful picture of my meeting with General Nivelle at the Gare Du Nord’ where, having heard of the Frenchman’s plans for the forthcoming offensive in 1917, ‘I instantly caught fire.’ [13] In fact John Buchan neither identified the Paris station nor used such florid language, but facts did not stop the Welshman putting Buchan in his place:

‘when a brilliant novelist assumes the unaccustomed role of a historian it is inevitable that he should now and again forget that he is no longer writing fiction, but that he is engaged on a literary enterprise where the narration is limited in its scope by the rigid bounds of fact. Had he taken the trouble to read the documents which were in the possession of the War Office, and therefore available to him, he would have known … that the Nivelle plan had been revealed to me by 25 December … that at the Rome Conference I had expressed my doubt about an offensive in France … and at the Paris station I had refused to discuss the plan … in the absence of Sir Douglas Haig. Three fundamental inaccuracies in a single sentence are not a bad achievement even for a writer who has won fame by inventing his facts. The real explanation is that Mr Buchan found it so much less troublesome to repeat War Office gossip than to read War Office documents.’ [14]

Fact or fiction? Lloyd George’s own Memoirs fall into the same confusion at times. Truth to tell, Lloyd George had backed the wrong plan. The Nivelle Offensive failed miserably and the shattered French army was consequently riven by mutiny later that summer. [15] Clearly he had his own  personal axe to grind for he considered Buchan to be little more than Haig’s mouthpiece. [16] His unqualified attack on John Buchan’s professionalism and integrity was exceptional by any standards. The difference between the two as writers of ‘history’ was that Buchan was not attempting to glorify himself. He was attempting to protect his friends and acquaintances. If it was as Lloyd George claimed, ‘War Office gossip’, it  suited John Buchan and the Secret Elite to paint the prime minister  as the villain.

Simply put, Lloyd George didn’t much care for John Buchan and snubbed him at the end of the war by omitting his name from the honour’s list. Not that that in itself caused Buchan any disquiet. He had friends in high places who would deal with such matters in due course.

Propaganda was the work for which John Buchan should be remembered, not his novels and histories. A week after the Armistice in 1918, one of his departing colleagues summed up the importance of their labours: ‘Public opinion was undoubtedly influenced, we have proof upon proof of that. And public opinion just meant everything to the Allied cause. [17] A euphemism of course, for lying about those  who were sacrificed and to those who, having survived these terrible years, had to pay the cost of war.

After the war, Buchan was swiftly ensconced at Elsfield Manor some four miles from Oxford, and appointed to a minor post as Curator of the University Chest by Lord Curzon, Chancellor of Oxford University. From this vantage point, he was in a position to recognise and groom future Oxford luminaries who would be welcomed into the society of the elite. In 1927, Buchan accepted the Conservative nomination for a seat in Parliament representing the Scottish Universities, and the Church of Scotland appointed him to the the position of  High Commissioner in 1933 and 1934. Pleasant though this was, the post had no political importance, though as the King’s representative, Buchan was treated in royal style, living at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, holding garden parties and being addressed as ‘Your Grace’. [18] He clearly enjoyed this role, and took pride in being the first son of a Free Church minister to become High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland.

What made John Buchan’s next elevation to great office so remarkable was its unprecedented nature. No-one in the history of the British Empire had been raised from ordinary member of parliament and former High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland to Governor-General of the Dominion of Canada. Yet, astoundingly, this commoner, the first of his kind, was appointed by King George V to one of the truly significant imperial  positions in the British Empire. This was not the usual order of promotion. It was stellar and owed nothing to Buchan’s prowess as a writer.

The prime minister of Canada, W L Mackenzie-King, a man who greatly admired Alfred Milner, [19] advised the King on this pinnacle of Crown appointments, and John Buchan one of the Secret Elite’s most valued members joined the nobility as Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Militia and Naval and Air Forces of Canada. Honours dripped on his head in honied reward. In quick succession Buchan was made a Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George, Privy Counsellor, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, Honorary Fellow of Oxford University and awarded nine honorary degrees from Oxford, Canada, America and his native Scotland. Eat your heart out, David Lloyd George.

These honours had nothing to do with writing novels. John Buchan had proved his worth to the Secret Elite with his loyalty to their aims, had won their trust and gratitude, and was placed at the heart of the Empire because of this. The propagandist was well paid. He still is.

[1] John Buchan, Memory Hold the Door, p. 173.
[2] John Buchan, Episodes of the Great War, pp. 246-7.
[3] Ibid., p. 247.
[4] Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan and his world, p. 65.
[5] Colonel Edward Mandell House was one of the most important powers behind the scenes in President Woodrow Wilson’s government. Mandel House was his appointed advisor on just about everything. Linked to the J.P. Morgan organisation in New York, House was an Anglophile American. He regularly visited London and was close to Sir Edward Grey, Arthur Balfour and the senior ranks of the Secret Elite.
[6] Lord Esher was a founder member of the secret cabal organised by Cecil Rhodes in 1891. He remained at the heart of the Secret Elite all of his life. As close advisor to the monarchy, including Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and King George V, he held a unique status. His permanent appointments included membership of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
[7] Buchan, Memory Hold the Door, p. 169.
[8] Ibid., p. 170.
[9] New York Times, 20 April, 1917.
[10] Buchan, Memory Hold the Door, p. 171.
[11] Memory Hold The Door was first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1940. It might better have been entitled: selective-memory, hold the door.
[12] John Buchan, A History of the Great War, vol III, p. 436.
[13] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol.1 pp. 886-7.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Kate MacDonald, Reassessing John Buchan chapter by Hew Strachan, John Buchan and The First World War: Fact Into Fiction, p. 77.
[16] Ibid. p. 83.
[17] Smith, John Buchan and his world, p. 68.
[18] Ibid., p.87.
[19] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 145.

 

What, No Christmas Adverts About The Trenches In 1915?

Sainsbury’s 2014 Christmas advert based on the first noel in the Flanders trenches has not been repeated this year despite the outrageous success it registered in 2014. This year, it’s ‘let’s ignore history and get back to basics’. Marks and Spencer’s Art of Christmas advert celebrates middle-class excess; John Lewis has produced a heart-tugging mini-story with a gift-ridden solution to loneliness. Asda promises glitter and traditional nonsense, Lidl offers a School of Christmas and Waitrose jazzes up Heston Blumethal. [1] More pertinently, Sainsbury’s has abandoned the trenches in favour of a feline children’s book character called Mog. [2] The British Expeditionary Force has served its commercial purpose and can once more fade into history.

The reason for the short lived homage to the Western Front will not be analysed in our blind and biased media. Memories of Christmas 1915 are to be buried with the hundreds of thousands already sacrificed in a miserable war of attrition that raged across Europe in December of that fateful year.

Of course the Northcliffe press did their best to minimise the disaster. On Christmas Eve they rejoiced that the Royal Family would again be at Sandringham and soldiers on leave were to be found pushing ‘through civilian crowds in cheerful groups, happy in their holiday’. [3] Without the slightest trace of sarcasm the Times decided that ‘The merriest centres of entertainment in the country will be the place where the troops of the new armies are at present stationed, for it is a paradox of war that most men throw off care when they put on uniform’. Finally, in order to stress the normality of Christmas in Blighty, it reported that the display of poultry at Smithfield was a wondrous sight … with the supplies of British and Irish Turkeys described as plentiful. With just a bit of imaginative manipulation, Sainsbury’s might have made something of this. British and Irish turkeys, indeed.

The reality was frightening. In France the murderous fighting in the Vosges mountains of Alsace gave rise to claims from both sides that they possessed the strategic ridge which had been the object of so many assaults over 1915. The French attacked the summit of the Hartmannsweilerkopf from December 21-23 [4] with no thought of a seasonal peace. On Christmas Eve an official message from Berlin claimed that ‘we have completely recaptured Hartmannsweilerkopf’, while on Christmas Day a French communique insisted that the Germans had launched a violent attack … but had been everywhere repulsed.’ [5]

Flanders had already descended into a quagmire ill-fitted for celebration of humanity and hope. There were no exchanges of carols or gifts between the brotherhood of man. On Christmas Eve 1915, the order was clearly understood. ‘Our men will have no fraternising tomorrow.’ [6] The British Commanders ensured that there would not be a repeat of the dangerous nonsense of the previous year. As the Times correspondent wrote: ‘Christmas Day began with rain … the aqueous roads were crowded with the traffic of war. Screened by shrubbery, I began my Christmas in the trenches by discovering the bottom of the mud too late …’ He found the salvos from British Howitzers roaring methodically from their lairs, screaming across no-man’s land towards enemy positions,‘exhilarating’. [7] Orders from the top brass ensured that there would be footballing rematches in 1915.

In an unusually frank and compassionate ending, the Times correspondent described a view which Sainsbury’s would never have attempted to commercialise. ‘We splashed and squeezed about between those stacks of hard grey bags, and ooze was everywhere, repulsive to touch and to smell. Within dark recesses of the bags I saw recumbent figures covered with new mud, fast asleep; others jammed themselves against the muck to allow us to pass as cleanly as possible … Through the indirect eye of a cautious mirror I could make out beyond the still land, ominous in its astonishing quietude, with some fantastic ruins beyond, through which showed the forlorn light of this Christmas Day.’ [8] Not the cosy image that sells product, I’m afraid.

The disaster of the Dardanelles also hung over the British Empire towards the final months of 1915 awaiting the unkind apportioning of blame. In November, with the Russians no longer a threat to Constantinople, Kitchener gave the order to abandon Gallipoli and 93,000 troops, 200 guns and more than 5,000 animals had to be spirited away from the vulnerable shores of that ill-judged target. Another sacrifice in a miserable litany of sacrifice. [9] The evacuated Australian troops celebrated their salvation that Christmas on the island of Lemnos, far from home. One miserable irony marred their brave attempt to find solace in the seasonal act of giving and receiving.

Each man was presented with a ‘Christmas Billy’ but the picture on its exterior showed a Kangaroo on the map of Gallipoli, with his tail knocking a Turk into the sea. The words beneath said THIS BIT OF THE WORLD BELONGS TO ME. Not so, though those they left behind might have made such a claim. [10] To make such misery even worse, the entire Gallipoli strategy had been a ploy to assuage the Russians and keep them in the war. [11] The loss of tens of thousands of Australian, New Zealand, Irish, French and British troops had been but the residual cost of a greater lie. Pity the dead, but even more, the widows and families torn asunder by a prolonged war.

One particular voice from the front deserves our attention. Ben Keeling, (Frederick Hillersdon Keeling) a militant socialist in his undergraduate days at Cambridge and disciple of George Bernard Shaw wrote insightful letters to friends and family from the western front. [12] These told a far different tale from the usual tripe dished out by the propaganda machines like Northcliffe’s newspapers. Keeling was a patriot, devastated by Britain’s ‘madness’ to side with France and Russia against Germany. He had no personal quarrel with Germany and ‘firmly believed that Russia had provoked the war … These accursed barbarians, Jew-baiters and upholders of gross medieval Christianity … [Russians] may stand for culture but are the enemies of civilisation.’ [13] Wait a minute. Wasn’t Britain and the Empire fighting to save Civilisation? Isn’t this the diatribe still gushing from the mouths of contemporary warmongers and First World War co-celebrants?

At Christmas 1915 Ben Keeling told it as it was in a letter to his friend R C K Ensor [14] ‘We are in a camp of tents with a very few mud huts. By the way the Chronicle published some time ago some rot from some blithering correspondent who, I suppose, drives about in GHQ motor-cars and thinks it is a wonderful thing to come under shell-fire, to the effect that all the troops are comfortably housed for the winter in nice warm huts. That sort of thing makes men swear out here. … It is a bloody shame to deceive the public and say we are in comfortable huts when we aren’t. Till the autumn we hadn’t even got tents, but generally just our waterproof sheets as roofs for bivvy shelters … In our brigade a man is damned lucky if he gets a dozen hour’s sleep in three days in the trenches … And then people think that it is mud and wet we mind; that is nothing, absolutely nothing compared with the nerve-wracking hell of bombardment.’ [15]

Consider his words. Life at the Front at Christmas 1915 was barely tolerable, but the stories published back home devised images of comfort and warmth. This was no misrepresentation; it was a damned lie. It was a myth concocted to assure the public that all was well and the troops were content in their safe sanctuaries. And it was a lie promulgated from the pulpit. The great prelates of England struggled with the concept of Peace on Earth, interpreting the message of Christmas 1915 as a reinforcement of the propaganda about righteousness, honour and truth. The Archbishop of Canterbury peddled the promise that victory would make ‘no such fighting either necessary or possible in years to come.’ [16] A century on such words must be embarrassing; best not to ponder that Christmas message as we lay plans to rip Syria apart at Christmas 2015.

Dean Inge of St Paul’s, the Church of England’s personal military recruiter rallied his congregation with a timely reminder of the duty of sacrifice, as in – other people being sacrificed. The Church did not approve of Chaplains at the front. [17] With the certainty of a race-patriot he extolled the qualities of ‘our race at its best’ and took a swipe at the militant unions and ‘cliques, factions and classes’ who made plots against public order. Bishop Inge did not clarify whether he meant the engineering strikes, the rent strikes which protested against mothers and their children being thrown onto the streets while their men folk fought in the trenches, [18] or the conscientious objectors.

Bearing all this in mind, we can appreciate why Sainsbury’s have not turned to Christmas 1915 in their latest advert. Images of hellish bombardment, physical and mental deprivation or soldiers cursing those who deliberately misrepresented their plight will not sell the merchandise they so desperately need to protect their market share. So it’s back to Christmas schmaltz. Mog might just prove to be a winner. Simple economics, you see. Last years’s romanticising of the unofficial Christmas ‘truce’, was simple economics, not patriotism. It was made for profit, as was the miserably prolonged first world war.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11970490/Watch-Waitrose-Christmas-advert-2015-why-emotion-makes-the-tills-ring.html
[2] http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Watch-Sainsbury-s-just-beaten-John-Lewis-battle/story-28179081-detail/story.html
[3] The Times, Friday 24 December 1915, p. 3.
[4] John Howard Morrow, The Great War: An Imperial History p. 75.
[5] http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/59981658
[6] The Times, 27 December 1915, p. 7.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com Gallipoli Blogs 1-19 posted from 4/2/2015 to 24/4/2015
[10] http://www.gallipoli.gov.au/anzac-timeline/events-of-the-gallipoli-campaign/november-december-1915.php
[11] Gallipoli, The Untold Story, in New Dawn, No. 149, March-April 2015.
[12] F.H. Keeling, The Keeling Letters and Recollections, with forward by H.G. Wells, https://archive.org/details/keelinglettersre00keeliala
[13] Ibid. p. 181.
[14] Robert Ensor worked for the Daily Chronicle during the war and was later commissioned to write a volume of the Oxford History of England covering 1870-1914.
[15] Keeling, The Keeling Letters and Recollections, pp. 258-9.
[16] The Times, 27 December 1915, p.10.
[17] firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com The Unholy Spirit, Blog posted 24/9/2014
[18] The Glasgow Rent Strikes of 1915 were an embarrassment to Asquith’s Liberal government
[https://remembermarybarbour.wordpress.com/mary-barbour-rent-strike-1915/] as were the demands from unions involved in Munitions. The prime minister had to send Lloyd George in person to try to calm the agitation amongst engineers and munitions workers on Christmas Day 1915.†

Munitions 7: The Man Who Would Control

 

The Ministry of Munitions Act, which received Royal assent on 9 June 1915, was followed by an Order in Council which transferred the main functions of the War Office in ordnance contracts, supply and inspection to a discrete department of government headed by the man who wanted it most, David Lloyd George. The Defence of the Realm Act of 1915 (No. 2 March 1915) also allowed his ministry to take over any factory and its labour force to prioritise war production. Keen to be remembered as the man who saved the day by rescuing munitions from its ‘crisis’, the egocentric Lloyd George described his task as politically, ‘ A wilderness of risks with no oasis in sight’. [1] In reality, he had the full backing of the powers that operated behind the scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. In the process of advancing his political career, the once principled Welshman comprehensively sold his soul and proved himself devoid of all moral qualities. [2] Let there be no doubt, Lloyd George was in the political ascendency and through him, the Secret Elite expanded their stranglehold on output and production. The one-time pacifist was indecently eager to give them the chance to make huge profits providing they gave him the shells. [3]

In moving from his stewardship of the nation’s finances to master of munitions, Lloyd George entered a world where he was free to spend unlimited amounts of money on provisions of war which were never subject to targets or upper limits. The public perception was that more shells equalled certain victory, and any voice contrary risked accusations of treachery. He is reputed to have estimated the shell requirement by the following proposition; ‘Take Kitchener’s maximum; square it, multiply that by two; and when you are in sight of that, double it for good luck’. [4] What he did went well beyond the wildest dreams of the Armament’s Trusts. He once again cast himself in the role of the friend of big business and the industrial-financial elite whose favour he had curried at the Board of Trade in 1906. [5]

Lloyd George gathered round him men from business and industry, including Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, a Ruskin-adherent and old Oxford University acquaintance of Secret Elite leader Alfred Milner. Smith had been responsible for the system of war-risk insurance to protect shipping company owners, and in 1915 played a crucial role in wresting munitions supply policy from the War Office. He later developed Lloyd George’s wartime manpower policy [6] into a shape approved by Milner. Sir Percy Giraud, managing director of the Elswick Works of armaments giant Armstrong, Whitworth, became director-general of munition supply, and was succeeded by Sir Frederick Black, Director of Naval Contracts. It was to Black that George Macaulay Booth had reported when he advised that J.P. Morgan should be appointed sole purchaser for Britain in the American market. [7] Morgan, as we have seen was a close associate of the Secret Elite. While so many names may at first be overwhelming, they demonstrate the links between influential businessmen, American bankers, trusted high ranking civil servants and Secret Elite agents who pervaded Lloyd George’s munitions department.

His supporters in the national press, especially Northcliffe’s, hailed Lloyd George’s appointment as a decision that would ‘satisfy the country’, [8] and the owner of The Times sent him a personal note dramatically claiming that he (Lloyd George) had taken on the ‘heaviest responsibility that has fallen on any Briton for 100 years.’ [9] A Punch cartoon depicted the Welshman boldly controlling the twin horses of capital and labour as he rode to the army’s rescue with a carriage full of the munitions of war, under the banner of ‘Delivering The Goods’. [10] The general perception was put about that, in terms of the provision of shells for the western front, it was, ‘War Office, Bad; Ministry of Munitions, Good’, but the legend that Lloyd George saved the day in 1915 and the early months of 1916 is preposterous. [11] Raw statistics appeared to justify this self-proclaimed achievement. He took up office on Whit-Monday 1915 and by 31 December shell deliveries totalled 16,460,501, the vast majority of which arrived late in the year. In fact 13,746,433 of these had been ordered beforehand by the War Office [12] and had nothing to do with the rush to ‘rescue the situation’ as painted by Lloyd George’s friends and sponsors. In truth, these impressive statistics were the result of the steady conversion and expansion of war industry since August 1914,[13] an expansion that was primarily set in place by Lord Kitchner.

Unquestionably Lloyd George appointed some able organisers. Sir Eric Geddes, who epitomised his ‘man for the job’ approach, became  deputy director of munitions supply, responsible for rifles, machine guns, field guns, motor lorries, field kitchens, and innumerable other items. As head of the gun ammunition department he earned undying gratitude for improving shell output in time for the opening of the Somme offensive. [14] The additional supplies of heavy artillery enabled the generals to continue their awesome wastage and ironically it was Lloyd George’s radical drive which enabled the orthodox military policies to continue. [15] Over six days almost two million shells were fired at German positions at the Somme before the doomed infantry attack.You might even believe that it was a striking victory  if viewed in terms of the profligate use of munitions rather than the awful carnage and wasteful sacrifice of mutilated armies.

Lloyd George achieved the Secret Elite ideal to replace politicians and traditional career civil-servants with businessmen who, in his own words, ‘had touched the industrial life of the country and of the Empire at every point.’ [16]  The War Office caution was cast aside in favour of business managers and innovators. The ministry of munitions conducted a national survey of engineering resources, divided the country into manageable regions and put the issuing of contracts into the hands of local boards of management. While Lloyd George appeared to nationalise the munitions industry, he did nothing of the sort. A number of state factories were established with considerable fanfare but most of the local boards opted for a system of contracts placed under the management of the major arms firms. [17] This was a clever move because the ministry’s relationship with the Armaments Trusts remained mutually positive and productive. In many cases the national factories were integrated with or attached to existing firms, and prices still remained excessively high.

The Secret Elite’s need to control went deeper and further than the issue of armaments.  Powerful trades unions had to be brought into line. Lloyd George began a campaign to convince the country that war work was second only to that of the fighting forces of the Empire. Brooking no objections and fearing no-one, he set out on a crusade to tame industrial unrest, backed as ever by Northcliffe’s newspapers. The Times naturally supported his call for a relaxation of trades union practices and the employment of women in munitions. [18] In the full glare of national publicity he rapidly visited factories and Town Halls in Manchester (3 June 1915), Liverpool (4 June), Cardiff (10 June), and Bristol (12 June), knowing full well that every word he uttered would be front page news. Sometimes, as in Liverpool, he had private and unreported meetings with employers first, before addressing the massed battalions of dockworkers and declaring that there was no room for slackers. [19] Though he was cheered to the rafters, the Times noted three days later that there were just as many absentees from work in Liverpool on the following Saturday.

Lloyd George’s repeated warnings that he had powers under the Defence of the Realm Act that he might be forced to use, presaged the action he intended to take. A special conference was convened in private on 10 June with 75 representatives from 22 major workplace unions at the new ministry, and on 16 June a second conference at the Board of Trade was held with over 40 representatives from trade union associations. Lloyd George had the courage to make it personal, to meet the workers and their leaders and, in his own words, ‘tell you the truth’. [20] The truth and Lloyd George had long been distant bedfellows, but his rhetoric appealed to the masses and thrilled the employers.

He went to Cardiff to set up a national munitions factory in South Wales and, though he always found room to warn about the necessity of compulsory powers, Lloyd George urged his audience to ‘plant the flag on your workshop; every lathe you have, recruit it.’ [21] In Bristol the exhortation was to let the men in the trenches ‘hear the ringing in the forges of Great Britain, of the hammer on the anvil…’ [22] A deputation of workers from Wm. Beardmore and Co. and the Dalmuir shipyards on the Clyde had been sent to France to visit front-line troops and returned urging ‘more shells, and more high explosive shells.’ [23] Let it be clearly understood; Lloyd George was the only national politician who could have carried off the most all-encompassing restrictions planned on personal freedom and choice in Britain since Oliver Cromwell, without a revolt. He was an invaluable operator for the Secret Elite.

The Munitions of War Act (2 July, 1915) stamped an unprecedented control over the British worker. Despite its innocuous title, the new law introduced  draconian limitations on the rights of the working man and woman. Arbitration in disputes about wages, hours and conditions of work became compulsory. Factories could be deemed ‘Controlled Establishments’ whose profits were to be limited by a munitions levy or tax and no wage increases were allowed without the consent of Lloyd George’s ministry. While apologists hailed this move as evidence of a fair-minded approach, [24] the notion that profits were henceforth restricted to just 20% more than the average of the last two years of peace missed the point that pre-war profits were already exorbitant and the orders were now so vast that enormous gains continued to be made. However, on the face of it, the law appeared to demand an equal sacrifice from capitalist and labour, [25] and that was his message.

Strikes and Lockouts were prohibited. Workers could no longer move from one part of the country to another without explicit permission, and anyone attempting to relocate had to have a ‘leaving certificate.’ The Minister himself could organise war munitions volunteers, demand the removal of labour from non-munitions work and issue or withdraw badges identifying men who should remain in armaments production rather than volunteer. Workers were obliged to take certain jobs and work overtime, paid or unpaid.  Fundamentally, workers in the munitions industries remained civilians bound by quasi military restrictions on their personal rights. Munitions Tribunals were set up in the workplace to dispense local justice, and individual rights were taken by force of law and held in abeyance for the duration of the war. Not that it all went smoothly. [26] In more than a quarter of the cases where workers appealed to the Glasgow Tribunal against their employers’ refusal to grant them a  certificate to move to another workplace, the tribunal found against the employer. Almost immediately after the passing of the Act, the South Wales miners went out on strike and it took Lloyd George’s personal intervention to persuade them to return. Three workers at Fairfield shipyard on the Clyde were given prison sentences for the non-payment of a fine which led to a strike-call. It was only avoided when a mysterious donor paid the fines. Social unrest was not dispelled by the force of Lloyd George’s personality, and by August 1917 the provision was abandoned. [27]

Towards the end of 1915 the Glasgow Rent Strike erupted into a popular protest against greedy landlords who abused the housing shortage by raising rents in seriously sub-standard tenements whilst the family breadwinners were fighting and dying on the Western Front. That landlords and their factors could treat the suffering poor with such heartless war-profiteering and widespread evictions, stirred resentment to action. Protests were widely supported by left-wing groups in and around Glasgow and Clydeside including the Labour Party and trade unions, but mainly women left to protect their own. [28] Forced by the impact the protest was having on the massive armaments workshops, engineering factories and ship-yards arrayed along the banks of the Clyde, where imminent disruption to production was threatened in favour of the women’s resistance, the government  passed a Rent Restriction Act. [29] This once liberal government was moved not by social justice, but by the threat to war production.

Lloyd George suffered the embarrassment of being summoned to Glasgow to meet with three thousand exasperated union officials and armaments workers crammed into St Andrew’s Hall on Christmas Morning 1915. Problems of labour dilution by which less skilled workers were permitted to take on more skilled work,  and  their consequent loss of status, was a serious concern throughout the engineering industry. But the Minister of Munitions was determined to drive forward his plans for 80,000 new workers in ‘state-owned, state-erected, state-controlled, state equipped factories with no profits for any capitalists.’ [30] What arrant nonsense, but it sounded good. He faced down the cat-calls and the singing of the Red Flag with typical self-assurance, and earned praise from the Northcliffe papers. What cannot be denied is that lies and propaganda from a fawning press ensured that Lloyd George emerged from his time as Minister of Munitions as a national hero, basking in the success of his business colleagues, and fortunate in his dealings with the unions. His public profile was such that he outshone everyone else in the government, including Kitchener, and his stock rose even further with the Secret Elite. It certainly propelled him from offices in Whitehall Gardens to Downing Street.

What was studiously covered up, however, was his disreputable relationship with the international arms-dealer and merchant of death, Basil Zaharoff an agent of a different kind, whose contribution we will consider in our next blogs.

[1] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, p. 144.
[2] George H Cassar, Kitchener, Architect of Victory, p. 343.
[3] Donald McCormick, The Mask of Merlin, pp. 100-101.
[4] Hew Strachan, The First World War, Vol. 1 The Rush To Arms, p. 1077.
[5] McCormick, The Mask of Merlin, p. 102.
[6] Rodger Davidson, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36147
[7] Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, p. 18.
[8] Daily Mail, 26 May, 1915.
[9] J. Lee Thomson, Northcliffe, Press Baron in Politics, 1865-1922, p. 242.
[10] Punch 21 April 1915.
[11] George A B Dewar and J H Boreston, Sir Douglas Haig’s Command, vol. 1, p.69.
[12] Ministry of Munitions, vol. 1 , Pt. 1 p. 150.
[13] Strachan, The First World War, Vol. 1, p. 1069.
[14] Keith Grieves, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33360
[15] Chris Wrigley, The Ministry of Munitions: An Innovatory Department, in War and the State, edited by Kathleen Burk, p. 39.
[16] David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 150.
[17] Strachan, The First World War, Vol. 1, pp. 1079-80.
[18] The Times, 1 June 1915, p. 5.
[19] Ibid., 5 June, 1915 p. 9.
[20] Ibid., 4 June, p.9.
[21] Ibid., 11 June, p. 9.
[22] Ibid., 14 June, p. 8.
[23] Ibid., 18 June, p. 5.
[24] R J Q Adams, Delivering The Goods: Reappraising the Ministry of Munitions: 1915-1916,  Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol.7 no. 3 (autumn 1975) pp.232-244.
[25] Rules For The Limitation of Profits In Controlled Establishments, PRO MUN /5/100/360/13.
[26] Conciliation And Arbitration, Monthly Labour Review, Vol. 10, no. 4 (April, 1920) p. 233.
[27] Niall Ferguson, The Pity Of War, p. 273 and ref. 123, p. 519.
[28] http://sites.scran.ac.uk/redclyde/redclyde/rceve5.htm
[29] T C Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830-1950, pp. 268-9.
[30] The Times, 27 December, 1915, p.3.

Munitions 6: Crisis, What Crisis?

Rumours about military set-backs circulated in Fleet Street and lists of casualties grew by the day through the spring of 1915. Blame was not laid at the feet of those in the field, and certainly not on their commanders in France. Months of propaganda had reinforced an expectation that ‘our lads’ would sweep all before them and what better reason to explain failure than the accusation that the government had not provided sufficient armaments? There were localised shortages, an imbalance between high explosives and shrapnel and, as we have shown, the navy claimed and received a priority in explosive shells over the army. [1] The impression from those at the front was that, if anything, British artillery fire on German trenches was increasing, and in February 1915 Captain James Jack of the Cameronians recorded his great joy in watching British shells smash through German parapets on he western front, adding that ‘these days we shell the Germans more than they do us.’ [2] Yet history would have it that in May 1915, there was a shell crisis. But how real was this ‘crisis’ and to what extent were events driven by other political objectives?

The Northcliffe-dominated press, in particular The Times and the Daily Mail, began a very personal attack on Lord Kitchener after the ill-fated offensive at Aubers Ridge on 9 May. [3] 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. [4] German losses were reported to be under 1,000.

This dreadful failure has been blamed on Kitchener’s inability to provide high explosive shells. But, was that really the case? Prior to the attack, Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief in France, had assured the War Office that he had sufficient ammunition [5] and he had written a letter to Kitchener on 2 May stating; ‘the ammunition will be all right.’ [6] After the disaster Sir John French deflected attention from his own poor leadership by telling The Times correspondent, 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 lie. The attack at Aubers was preceded by an intense and prolonged artillery barrage which those present thought heralded ‘the complete destruction of the enemy’s lines’. [9] It did not.

The ‘crisis’ of the shell ‘shortage’ was blown into a furore to address political objectives. Observe its origins. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Repington, The Times war correspondent, played a major role in creating the ‘crisis’ in conjunction with Lord Northcliffe, and The Times editor, Geoffrey Dawson, a Secret Elite inner-core member. [10] They planned to release Repington’s exclusive story behind the failure of Aubers in order to bring down the Asquith government and discredit Lord Kitchener and the War Office. If the general public could be turned against Kitchener and his ability to run the war, then control of armaments would be wrested from him and given to the trusted Lloyd George.

The Secret Elite organised and supported the attack on Kitchener. Geoffrey Dawson shared the plan with Lord Milner, their undisputed leader, [11] who was equally determined to bring down Asquith’s liberal government. This deeply contrived ‘shell shortage’ added to the problems the government was facing over Gallipoli and riots in the streets after the sinking of the Lusitania. Milner told his close friend, and member of the Secret Elite’s inner core, Sir Harry Birchenough [12] that the ‘chickens are indeed, coming home to roost.’ [13] But there was a major stumbling block. The conditions imposed through the Defence of the Realm Act meant that before any news from the front was published, it had to be given formal approval by the censor. On 11 May, Repington sent a private letter to Geoffrey Dawson with the curious message that his report would be stamped ‘passed by the censor’, though he (the censor) would not have seen it. [14] In other words an un-named source was about to fabricate official permission from the censor so that The Times could print French’s lie. It was a criminal act dressed as a duty to expose the ‘truth’ in order to undermine Kitchener and Asquith.

On 14 May, 1915, headlines in The Times screamed of 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].’ [15] 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. [16] On 21 May Northcliffe threw all caution to the wind and wrote the editorial for the Daily Mail with the headline, 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.’ [17]

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. shells for the 18-pounders is a perversion of the truth’. [18] In the trenches, soldiers were likewise disgusted by the press attack at a time when everyone should have been working against the enemy. Douglas Haig made nothing of shell shortages, advocating that heavier guns be tried in the future. He stressed that accurate observation of the effect of a bombardment should be made before an infantry attack was launched. [19]

Instead of stirring public outrage against Kitchener, Northcliffe’s tirade provoked a torrent of loathing against him and his newspapers. ‘It shocked the public, shook Whitehall and threw Northcliffe’s critics into paroxysms of rage.’ [20] Reaction was swift. 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. Though the Westminster Gazette praised ‘the manly and honourable impulse’ of the stockbrokers who cheered for Kitchener and booed Northcliffe, [21] there was more than just a whiff of payback about this allegedly impulsive demonstration.

Three years earlier, 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, with Northcliffe’s blessing, to launch the Daily Mail’s own cut-price share service. Readers with stock to sell would write to the City Editor who then printed a small ‘ad’ that matched-up the buyers and sellers. 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. When the London Stock Exchange closed its doors to trading on 31 July 1914, the Daily Mail Exchange took out half-page adverts in the Financial Times and the Financial News declaring it was open for business. [22] The Stockbrokers did not burn Northcliffe’s papers out of patriotism. Theirs was an act of spiteful revenge. But it caught the popular mood. Kitchener was an untouchable; a national icon whom the masses still revered. And, neither he nor Asquith resigned. 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] This was not the effect that Northcliffe expected, but he did not desist or retract.

What makes this turn of events even more significant is that, in rejecting Northcliffe’s claims, the public refused to treat shell shortage as a ‘crisis’, though the supply of armaments remained a high priority. Official historians later adopted Northcliffe’s line and consequently the concept of a ‘crisis’ took root.

There were however, important consequences. Herbert Asquith was unable to hold together a government that had been elected in 1910 with no inkling of war, no experience of managing a war, and increasing tensions between ministers on how best to achieve victory in that war. Had there been a general election, Liberals feared that the Conservatives would be swept into power, and Asquith surrendered to a multitude of pressures from outside parliament to agree a swift and dramatic coalition [24] We have examined the pressures on Asquith in previous blogs, [25] but the Secret Elite were reminded that public opinion had to be carefully manipulated to achieve major change. It could not be taken for granted. They did have one outstanding success. Overall control of munitions was taken away from the still popular, Lord Kitchener.

A Ministry of Munitions was created as a discrete department inside the coalition government of 1915, and it was headed by their worthy agent, David Lloyd George. It may have looked like a side-ways step for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it was not. In many ways it was the most important post he could have held. The Secret Elite sought complete control of all war production to maximise their profits under the guise of sustaining the war effort. Lloyd George had proved his worth to them at the Board of Trade where his business-friendly approach was very profitable. [26] Once a committed pacifist who had preached arms-control, the popular Welsh MP was the one man who could have led a successful concerted opposition to war in August 1914, but sold-out to the Money Power.

His access went beyond the political realm and his association with businessmen and financiers in Britain and America gave him power and status greater even than the prime minister. Lloyd George had developed close relationships with men who should have been political enemies. He regularly consulted Arthur Balfour, the former conservative party leader and prime minister, and through him had the confidence of Bonar Law who fronted the opposition party in 1915. Milner, consumed by the certainty that national conscription was the only way forward, considered Lloyd George the most able man in the government. [27] Knowing full well how to manipulate the Welshman, Milner noted; ‘if properly handled, [he] will end up going for it [conscription] and he is the only man who could carry it, if he could be induced to try.’ [28]

How well the Secret Elite played Lloyd George, pandered to his ambitions, and understood his public value. Together, they had plotted a complete take over of Asquith’s Liberal government in 1915, but had only a partial success. Asquith did not surrender the key posts in his Cabinet to the men who would strangle Laissez-faire and impose the kind of conditions that the Secret Elite knew were essential to their ultimate aim, the crushing of Germany and the Anglo-American domination of the civilised world. They would have to prepare the ground more carefully.

[1] See previous blog.
[2] John Terraine, General Jack’s Diary, War on the Western Front, 1914-1918, p. 99.
[3] The battle is variously known as Festubert, Givenchy and Fromelles. See A M Gollin, Freedom or Control in the First World War, Historical Reflections, 1976, p. 148.
[4] http://www.1914-1918.net/bat11.htm
[5] Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle, Facing Armageddon, The First World War Experienced, p. 42.
[6] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 292.
[7] Ibid., p. 290.
[8] Cecil and Liddle, Facing Armageddon, p. 42.
[9] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 290.
[10] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312. and pp.101-106.
[11] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 50.
[12] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 13.
[13] Milner Papers, Milner to Birchenough, 13 May, 1915.
[14] A.M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 253.
[15] The Times,14 May 1915, p.8.
[16] Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth, Northcliffe, p. 477.
[17] Daily Mail, 21 May 1915. See also Daily Mail Historical Archives at http://gale.cengage.co.uk/daily-mail-historical-archive/subjects-covered.aspx
[18] John Pollock, Kitchener, pp. 443-4.
[19] Haig, Private Papers, 11 May 1915. as cited in http://www.1914-1918.net/bat11.htm
[20] Pound and Harmsworth, Northcliffe, p. 478.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Alex Brummer, Daily Mail, 28 Dec 2012, citing research from Professor Richard Roberts, Kings College, London.
[23] Pound and Harmsworth, Northcliffe, p. 479.
[24] Edward David, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, p. 242.
[25] See blogs, 25 and 27 May 2015.
[26] Donald McCormick, The Mask Of Merlin, p. 102.
[27] J. Lee Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 315.
[28] Milner to Gwynne, 10 May 1915; in Thompson, Forgotten Patriot, p. 315.

Gallipoli 19: Anzac Day; Perpetuating The Myth

In 1916, when the British government set up the Dardanelles Commission, they turned first to the most important member of the Secret Elite, Viscount Alfred Milner. Prime Minister Asquith and conservative leader, Bonar Law, both asked him to be its chairman, [1]  but Milner turned the offer down in favour of more immediate work with Lord Robert Cecil at the Foreign Office. [2] Anyone could supervise a whitewash. Alfred Milner’s influence want well beyond that of a commission chairman and he could ensure the conclusion without the need for his personal involvement. They turned to another friend and associate of the Secret Elite, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, who accepted the position knowing full well that ‘it will kill me’. [3] And kill him it did. He died in January 1917 and was replaced by Sir William Pickford.

Others volunteered willingly. The position of Secretary to the Commission was taken by barrister Edward Grimwood Mears, who agreed to the post provided he was awarded a knighthood. [4] He had previously served on the Bryce Committee which falsified reports and generated volumes of lies about the extent of German atrocities in Belgium. [5] The British Establishment trusted Mears as a reliable placeman. Maurice Hankey, Cabinet Secretary and inner-circle member of the Secret Elite [6] ‘organised’ the evidence which politicians presented to the Commission. He rehearsed Lord Fisher’s evidence, and coached Sir Edward Grey, Herbert Asquith and Lord Haldane. [7] Asquith insisted that War Council minutes be withheld and thus managed to cover up his own support for the campaign. Churchill and Sir Ian Hamilton collaborated on their evidence and planned to blame the disaster on Lord Kitchener. [8] Unfortunately for them, that strategy sank in the cold North Sea when Kitchener was drowned off the coast of Orkney in 1916, and was henceforth confirmed for all time as a great national hero; an untouchable.

Churchill informed the Commission that Vice-Admiral Sackville-Carden’s telegram (in which he set out a ‘plan’ for a naval attack) was the most crucial document of all, [9] but there is no acknowledgement in the Commission’s findings that Churchill had duped Carden into producing a ‘plan’ or had lied when telling him that his ‘plan’ had the overwhelming support of ‘people in high authority.’ [10] Every senior member of the Admiralty had advised Churchill that a naval attack on its own would fail, but he made no reference to that and scapegoated the ineffective Carden. General Hamilton conveniently added that the only instructions he had received from Kitchener before his departure was that ‘we soldiers were clearly to understand that we were string number two. The sailors said they could force the Dardanelles on their own, and we were not to chip in unless the Admiral definitely chucked up the sponge.’ [11]

Criticisms in the Commission’s interim report in March 1917 were ‘muted and smudged’. The War Council should have sought more advice from naval experts; the expedition had not succeeded but ‘certain important political advantages’ had been secured. In the final report, delayed until the peace of 1919, criticism was again polite, bland and vague. ‘The authorities in London had not grasped the true nature of the conflict’ and ‘the plan for the August offensive was impractical.’ [12] Stopford received a mild reprimand. Major-General De Lisle suggested that politicians were trying to pin the blame on the soldiers. The Commission ostensibly investigated the campaign’s failings, but effectively suppressed criticism, concealed the truth and neither wholly blamed nor vindicated those involved.

Far more important than covering up individual culpability, the greatest fear of the London cabal was that, should the report come close to the truth, it would irrevocably damage imperial unity. Gallipoli had served to lock Australia more firmly into the British Imperial embrace. Before the final report was published, Hamilton warned Churchill that it had the potential to break up the Empire if it ‘does anything to shatter the belief still confidently clung to in the Antipodes, that the expedition was worth while, and that ‘the Boys’ did die to a great end and were so handled as to be able to sell their lives very dearly. …If the people of Australia and New Zealand feel their sacrifices went for nothing, then never expect them again to have any sort of truck with our superior direction in preparations for future wars.’ [13] This was the crux of the matter, even in 1919. The truth would threaten the unity of the Empire, run contrary to the Anzac mythology and expose the lies that official histories were presenting as fact. Prior to the final report, Hamilton wrote again to Churchill that the Commission’s chairman, Sir William Pickford, should be warned about the imperial issues at stake. He, Churchill, should ‘put all his weight on the side of toning down any reflections which may have been made.’ [14] In other words, it had to be a whitewash. The warning was heeded. The following year, Pickford was raised to the peerage as Baron Sterndale. It was ever thus for those who served the Secret Elite.

The truth about Gallipoli was buried and pliant historians have ensured that it stayed that way for nearly a century.

Surely a whitewash was impossible given that the Dardanelles Commission included Andrew Fisher, former Australian Prime Minister and then High Commissioner in London? But he too had bought into the big lie and made no attempt to question or refute its conclusions.

According to historian Les Carlyon, the Australian government did not welcome an inquiry into the disaster because ‘the Anzac legend had taken hold and Australia didn’t want officialdom spoiling the poetry.’ [15] The ‘poetry’, the ‘heroic-romantic’ myth, was created in the first instance by writers such as Charles Bean, Henry Nevison and John Masefield who glorified the Anzac sacrifice within the myth of Gallipoli. [16] Masefield’s effusive cover-up stated, ‘I began to consider the Dardanelles Campaign, not as a tragedy, nor a mistake, but as a great human effort, which came more than once, very near to triumph …That the effort failed is not against it; much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things and noble men have failed. …This failure is the second grand event of the war; the first was Belgium’s answer to the German ultimatum.’ [17] Of Suvla Bay, where thousands died from thirst and dehydration, Masefield made the astonishing assertion: ‘The water supply of that far battlefield, indifferent as it was, at the best, was a triumph of resolve and skill unequalled yet in war.’ [18] This British apologist and purveyor of nauseating historical misrepresentation was rewarded with gushing praise from Lord Esher, member of the Secret Elite’s inner-core, together with a Doctorate of Literature by Oxford University, the Order of Merit by King George V and the prestigious post of Poet Laureate.

The British, French and Anzac troops who perished at Gallipoli are portrayed by mainstream historians as heroes who died fighting to protect democracy and freedom, not as ordinary young men duped by a great lie. Barely mentioned are the quarter million dead or maimed Ottoman soldiers who defended Gallipoli and the sovereignty and freedom of their homeland against aggressive, foreign invaders. The myths and lies that saturate the Gallipoli campaign are particularly prevalent in the Antipodes. ‘No-one could pass through the Australian education system without becoming aware of Gallipoli, but few students realise that the Anzacs were the invaders. Even after all these years, the Anzac legend, like all legends, is highly selective in what it presents as history.’ [19] And it is a well preserved and repeatedly inaccurate account that is force-fed to these impressionable youngsters.

Commemoration should respectfully educate people about what really happened at Gallipoli, but strategic analyst and former Australian Defence Force officer James Brown writes angrily about a cycle of jingoistic commemoration rather than quiet contemplation, with individuals, groups and organisations cashing in on Anzac Day. ‘A century after the war to end all wars, Anzac is being bottled, stamped and sold. …the Anzac industry has gone into hyperdrive. …What started as a simple ceremony is now an enormous commercial enterprise. …Australians are racing to outdo one another with bigger, better, grander and more intricate forms of remembrance.’ Even the Australian War Memorial has devised an official “Anzac Centenary Merchandising Plan” to capitalise on “the spirit.”’ [20] The myth has been rebranded to mask the pain of the awful reality of Gallipoli. The emaciated, dehydrated victims have been turned into the bronzed heroes of Greek mythology.

A number of Australian historians remain deeply concerned about the relentless militarisation of Australian history, and how the commemoration of Gallipoli has been conflated with a mythology of white Australia’s creation and the ‘manly character’ of its citizens. That mythology is submerging the terrible truth about why so many were sacrificed and has become so powerful and pervasive that to challenge it risks the charge of inexcusable disrespect for the dead. ‘To be accused of being “anti-Anzac” in Australia today is to be charged with the most grievous offence.’ [21] A few brave historians have dared to voice their deep disquiet.

Professors Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds believe that Australian history has been ‘thoroughly militarised’, and their aim is ‘to encourage a more critical and truthful public debate about the uses of the Anzac myth.’ Dissent, they say, is rarely tolerated and ‘to write about what’s wrong with Anzac today is to court the charge of treason.’ Anzac Day has ‘long since ceased to be a day of solemn remembrance and become a festive event, celebrated by backpackers wrapped in flags, playing rock music, drinking beer and proclaiming their national identity on the distant shores of Turkey.’ [22] Their forefathers were duped into volunteering a century before at a cost they never foresaw. It is clear that many of those young Australians who travel en-masse to the shores of Gallipoli every April have also been duped. Should there not be a moral outrage against these obscene celebrations; a moral outrage that these young people have been so misled by the Gallipoli myth that the irony of guzzling beer on the shores where their forefathers died from thirst and dehydration is lost on them.?

Professor Lake revealed that after a radio broadcast, she was subjected to personal abuse and accusations of disloyalty. Harvey Broadbent, another Australian historian who questions the myth, has also been subject to similar comments by some fellow Gallipoli historians that ‘has come uncomfortably close to abuse.’ Like us, Broadbent proposes that ‘it was the intention of the British and French governments of 1915 to ensure that the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Campaign would not succeed and that it was conceived and conducted as a ruse to keep the Russians in the war and thus the continuation of the Eastern Front.’ [23] Exactly. Their aim was to keep Russia in the war but out of Constantinople. And they succeeded, but at a terrible cost.

The heroic-romantic myth, so integral to the cult of remembrance, has survived, perpetuated by compliant historians and politicians. As James Brown has written, Gallipoli and the Anzac sacrifice, is like a magic cloak which ‘can be draped over a speech or policy to render it unimpeachable, significant and enduring.’ [24] Norman Mailer pointed out that ‘Myths are tonic to a nation’s heart. Once abused, however, they are poisonous.’

Gallipoli was a lie within the lie that was the First World War, and peddling commemoration mythology as truth is an insult to the memory of those brave young men who were sacrificed on the merciless shores of a foreign country. The Australian government is outspending Britain on commemoration of the First World War by more than 200 per cent, and commemorating the Anzac centenary might cost as much as two-thirds of a billion dollars. Just as in Britain, the Government of Australia seeks to be the the guardian of public memory, choreographing commemoration into celebration. [25] Nothing attracts politicians more than being photographed, wrapped in the national flag, outbidding each other in their public display of patriotism.

These hypocrites ritually condemn war while their rhetoric gestures in the opposite direction. [26] The War Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park proudly exhorts, ‘Let Silent Contemplation Be Your Offering’, yet the deafening prattle of political expediency mocks the valiant dead with empty words and lies. Don’t be fooled.

Those young men died at Gallipoli not for ‘freedom’ or ‘civilisation’, but for the imperial dreams of the wealthy manipulators who controlled the British Empire. They died horribly, deceived, expendable, and in the eyes of the power-brokers, the detritus of strategic necessity.

Please remember that when you remember them.

[1] Milner Papers, Bonar Law to Milner, 25 July 1916.
[2] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, pp. 350-1.
[3] Roger Owen, Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul, pp. 388-9.
[4] Jenny Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, p. 27.
[5] see previous blog;  The Bryce Report…Whatever Happened To the Evidence? 10 September 2014.
[6] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[7]  Stephen Roskill, Hankey, p. 294.
[8] Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, pp. 28-9.
[9] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, p. 248.
[10] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 40.
[11] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, p. 347.
[12] L A Carlyon, Gallipoli  p. 646.
[13] Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, p. 33. [14] Ibid. [15] L A Carlyon, Gallipoli, pp. 645-7.
[16] Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, p. 4.
[17] John Masefield, Gallipoli p. 2.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Kevin Fewster, Vecihi Bagram, Hatice Bagram, Gallipoli, The Turkish Story, pp. 10-11.
[20] James Brown, Anzac’s long Shadow, The Cost of Our National Obsession, pp. 17-20. [21] Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, What’s Wrong with Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History, p. xxi.
[22] Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
[23] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, One Great Deception? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-24/30630
[24] James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow, p 29.
[25] Ibid., pp. 19-22.
[26] Lake and Reynolds, What’s Wrong With Anzac?, p. 8.

Gallipoli 18: Keith Murdoch And The Great Witch-Hunt

Popular wisdom and official histories would have us believe that Sir Ian Hamilton’s career and the Dardanelles offensive were brought to an end by an unknown junior Australian journalist, Keith Murdoch. [1] In Australia, his role has been given iconic status amongst the myths surrounding Gallipoli, but as we have detailed in the previous blog, the decision to remove Hamilton had already been taken on the recommendation of Maurice Hankey, aided and abetted by Major Guy Dawnay. The intervention of Keith Murdoch did play a vitally important role in that it deflected attention away from Hankey and the Secret Elite, making it appear that the truth about the Gallipoli disaster was suddenly exposed by a tenacious journalist. As Alan Moorehead observed in his masterly history, Murdoch’s ‘entry into the explosive scene is one of the oddest incidents in the Gallipoli campaign.’ [2]

So who was Keith Murdoch and how was he able to gain access to the heart of the British Establishment? A Son of the Manse, his father was a Scottish Presbyterian Minister who had emigrated to Melbourne in 1884. Murdoch sought a career in journalism but was handicapped by a serious speech defect. He went to London in 1908 in an attempt to break into Fleet Street and have his impediment cured, but unlike any other young aspirant newspaperman he had ‘ a sheaf of introductions’ from the Australian Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. [3] One year earlier, Deakin had attended the Colonial Conference in London and was befriended by Alfred Milner with whom he formed a close bond. [4] Milner was the acknowledged leader of the Secret Elite and the most influential spokesman on Imperial affairs. Given his own journalistic connections, Alfred Milner would have been a natural contact to advance the young Murdoch’s career. On his return to Australia in November 1909, Keith Murdoch became Commonwealth parliamentary reporter for the Sydney Evening Sun and was soon in close contact with Deakin’s successor as Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, and other leading Labour Party Ministers. He helped found the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) in 1910 and was totally sympathetic to the developing ideas of Milner and his Round Table associates. [5]

Murdoch had sought the position of Australian Press War Correspondent but was beaten into second place in the AJA election by Charles Bean who later became the official Australian War Historian. Disappointed by this failure, Murdoch sought new horizons, and was ‘told privately’ that a job associated with The Times in London was his if he wanted it. [6] The 29 year-old, left Melbourne again on 13 July 1915 to become editor of the United Cable Service at The Times offices in London.

Official accounts relate that he was asked by the Australian government to break his journey at Egypt in order to enquire into complaints about delays in soldiers’ mail. It was odd that for such a unremarkable task, Murdoch carried letters of introduction from both the Australian Prime Minister (Andrew Fisher) and Minister of Defence (George Pearce). The Prime Minister’s letter specifically stated that ‘Mr. Murdoch is also undertaking certain enquires for the Government of the Commonwealth in the Mediterranean theatre of war.’ [7] How peculiar. A journalist had been asked to conduct an investigation on behalf of his government rather than his employers. There were many Australians at Gallipoli who could have undertaken such a mundane inquiry, which begs the question of Murdoch’s real purpose. What was he sent out to do? What were his private instructions from the Australian government?

On arriving at Cairo in mid- August, he wrote to Sir Ian Hamilton and was duly given permission to visit  Gallipoli and speak to the Australian troops. Hamilton somewhat gullibly wrote in his diary that Murdoch ‘seems a sensible man’ [8] but wondered why his duty to Australia could be better executed with a pen than with a rifle. [9] Keith Murdoch spent four days there and met Charles Bean and two other Australian Journalists. Given that there were at least three other independent Australian journalists already there, why was Murdoch given his rather bizarre task of investigating mail? More pertinent to all that followed, he held confidential meetings with Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, the British war correspondent. According to Murdoch’s biographer, Desmond Zwar, Ashmead-Bartlett was disgusted by Hamilton’s handling of the campaign and asked Murdoch if he would take a sealed letter addressed to Prime Minister Asquith and post it when he arrived in London. [10] Ashmead-Bartlett, on the other hand, related a different story. According to his recollections, Murdoch, fearful of the impact on Australian morale of a winter campaign, ‘begged’ him to write a letter to the authorities which he would carry uncensored to London. Ashmead-Barlett coached Murdoch on what to say when he reached England, ‘but he wants something definite under my own signature.’ [11] Why did Murdoch need a signed statement, and what had any of this to do with the mail?

On 8 September Ashmead-Bartlett agreed to write a letter to Asquith informing him of the true state of affairs at Gallipoli. Men had been sacrificed in impossible conditions. No adequate steps had been taken to keep them supplied with water. ‘In consequence many of these unfortunate volunteers went three days in very hot weather on one bottle of water, and yet were expected to advance carrying heavy loads, and to storm strong positions.’ Within four weeks, nearly fifty thousand men were killed, wounded or missing. The Army was in a deplorable condition and the men thoroughly dispirited. ‘The muddles and mismanagement beat anything that has ever occurred in our military history… At present the Army is incapable of a further offensive… I am convinced the troops could be withdrawn under cover of the warships without much loss… We have not yet gained a single acre of ground of any strategical value.’ [12] This was not news to the British Cabinet or War Office, for Hankey and Dawnay had already revealed the full extent of the disaster.

When Murdoch reached Marseilles he was met by a British intelligence officer with an escort of British troops and French gendarmes and ordered to hand over Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter. [13] It has been suggested that another journalist, Henry Nevison, was eaves-dropping during their private conversation and betrayed them to the authorities, but to this day no convincing explanation has been forthcoming as to how British Intelligence learned of the letter. Murdoch arrived in London on 21 September, made his way directly to the offices of  The Times, and began typing up a report for his own Prime Minster which was highly critical of Sir Ian Hamilton. [14] His first contact just happened to be The Times editor, Geoffrey Dawson, a man at the inner-core of the Secret Elite. [15] According to the Australian historian, Les Carlyon, Murdoch ‘might just as well have been walking around with the sign ‘Pawn’ on his back. Powerful men who wanted Britain out of the Dardanelles, would push him all around the board’. [16] While Carlyon is correct about the powerful men behind the scenes, was Murdoch simply an unwitting pawn or had he already bought into their witch-hunt against Hamilton?

Over the following days Keith Murdoch met with numerous individuals who had been responsible for initiating the Gallipoli disaster including Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Kitchener, Sir Edward Carson and Winston Churchill.

In an accompanying letter to Asquith, Murdoch criticised Hamilton and the General Staff for ‘disastrous underestimations and stubbornly resisting in the face of hopeless schemes’ and ‘gross wrongdoings’. [17] No mention was made of Hamilton being starved of the men and munitions needed to successfully undertake the campaign or the countless requests that Kitchener studiously ignored. Without checking the accuracy of Murdoch’s accusations, or giving Hamilton a chance to respond, Asquith had them printed on Committee of Imperial Defence stationary and distributed to the Cabinet. [18] Consider the implications. Members of the Cabinet were formally issued with Murdoch’s unsubstantiated report to his own Prime Minister in Australia, as if it was an official British Government document. Was this not fraud?

Murdoch may well have played the role of willing pawn in the Secret Elite’s grand game, but one fact remains irrefutable. From 1915 onwards he was intimately connected to the most powerful men in the British Empire; men who valued his contribution and whose values he shared.

Meantime, Ashmead-Bartlett had been ordered home by General Hamilton, and on his arrival in London immediately met with Lord Northcliffe, another powerful figure closely associated with the Secret Elite. [19]  ‘The snowball was now gathering momentum.’ [20] The witch-hunt continued. He told Ashmead-Bartlett  that a great responsibility rested on his shoulders to inform the government, and the country, of the true state of affairs at Gallipoli.  [21]

On 11 October 1915 Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, and a direct route was opened between Germany and Turkey. It was time to get out. Three days later in the House of Lords, Lord Alfred Milner gave his blessing to a withdrawal from Gallipoli: ‘To speak quite frankly, I should have thought that whatever evils had resulted from the disastrous developments in the Balkans there was at least this advantage, that it might have given us an opportunity which may never recur of withdrawing from an enterprise the successful completion of which is now hopeless.’ [22] Milner had spoken. That very night the Dardanelles Committee decided to recall General Hamilton because ‘he had lost the confidence of his troops,’ [23] Hands were reaching down to push him under the water [24] and ’Kitchener was asked to do the drowning.'[25]

On 17 October the chief scapegoat boarded HMS Chatham to begin the long journey home. He was replaced by General Sir Charles Monro who almost immediately recommended evacuation. When Hamilton returned to England he received a very cold reception and people ‘cut’ him and his wife in the street. [26] The Secret Elite made a spectacular gesture in recalling Hamilton and ensuring through their pawns, Murdoch and Ashamed Bartlett, that his career was over. He was dubbed the man responsible for the disaster; responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of men. In truth, no one could have succeeded at Gallipoli under the conditions that Kitchener and the rest of the cabal imposed. But remember, the plan was set to fail. Constantinople could not be given to the Russians.

In the event, the nightmare was not yet over. Kitchener went in person to Gallipoli in early November and saw for the first time the impossibility of the task. He advised General Birdwood that ‘quietly and secretly’ a scheme should be devised to withdraw the allied forces. [27] On 23 November the War Committee officially decided to evacuate the whole peninsula on military grounds. Three days later the troops, who were still without winter kit, were faced with hurricane force winds and the heaviest rainfall and blizzards to hit the Dardanelles in forty years. Sentries froze to death still clutching their rifles, and five thousand men suffered frostbite. Flood water filled the Allied trenches carrying the rotting corpses of pack horses and Turkish soldiers washed out from their shallow graves. Two hundred British troops drowned. ‘Survivors could think of nothing but getting away from that accursed place.’ [28] On 12 December the men at Suvla and Anzac were told for the first time that they were being taken off. By 9 January the last man stepped safely onto a boat at Helles.

Questions remain unanswered about how the withdrawal was completed without a single casualty.

[1] Denis Winter, Haig’s Command, A Reassessment, p. 291.
[2] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 305.
[3] http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murdoch-sir-keith-arthur-7693%5D
[4] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, pp. 136-7.
[5] The Round Table was the name given to Milner’s organisation which promoted imperial ideals and aimed to influence the Dominions and other territories.
[6] Desmond Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, p. 20.
[7] Ibid., p. 22.
[8] Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary Vol. II, 2 September, 1915.
[9] Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, p. 25.
[10] Ibid., p. 28.
[11] Ellis Ashmead-Barlett, The Uncensored Dardanelles, p. 239.
[12] Ibid., pp. 240-243.
[13] Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 309.
[14] Travers, Gallipoli, p. 274.
[15] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[16] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 599.
[17] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore, p. 246.
[18] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 496.
[19] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 146-7.
[20] Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, pp. 40-41.
[21] Ellis Ashmead-Barlett, The Uncensored Dardanelles, pp. 254-5.
[22] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 14 October 1915 vol 19 cc1045-62.
[23] Travers, Gallipoli, p. 275.
[24] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 502.
[25] Ibid., p. 503.
[26] Ibid., 504.
[27] Ibid., p. 619.
[28] Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 327.

Selling The Big Lie (2) Press Censorship In 1914

Censorship of news was reluctantly accepted by the British press. Initially, they surrendered their right to freedom of information and expression with barely a noticeable whimper. Again it was left to Churchill, who gloried in being the front-man, to make the announcement in Parliament on 7 August. He praised the editors and proprietors who had deliberately  turned a blind eye to the discreet preparations for mobilisation by the Admiralty and the War Office barely ten days earlier and announced the formation of an all-powerful Press Bureau under the command of the Secret Elite’s legal colossus, F E Smith. [1] It’s purpose, he claimed was to provide,

‘a steady stream of trustworthy information supplied both by the War Office and the Admiralty … which, without endangering military or naval interests, will serve to keep the country properly and truthfully informed from day to day of what can be told, and what is fair and reasonable; and thus, by providing as much truth as possible, exclude the growth of irresponsible rumours.’ [2]

Perhaps the clue lay in the words ‘as much truth as possible’. Out of nowhere, a Press bureau was created under the all-pervading arm of the Defence of the Realm Act which allowed the government to impose very powerful social controls on the population. Freedom to access news about the war that had just begun was removed. Journalists were not allowed to travel to and report from the front line in August 1914, but newspapers were promised absolute accuracy from the War Office and Admiralty liaison officers.

The truth is that the press sold its prestige and degraded its conscience by surrendering to government propaganda, in abandoning its critical faculty throughout the war and in willingly taking part in the deliberate deception of the public. Northcliffe and his Secret Elite acolytes dominated the British press to an extent that no national newspaper stood against them. They have much to answer for, even a century later. They carried the slogans, their editors and leader-writers provided the invective, and they gloried in the malice they concocted against Germany. That those who survived the war were misled about its purpose and meanings is, on its own, deplorable, but that millions of fighting men died under the misconception that their cause would have some long term impact on the future of civilisation is surely one of the most poignant of all historic tragedies.  [3]

To the upper echelons of the Secret Elite, control over the population, how and what it thought, and what it was allowed to know, was central to their philosophy. Freedom of thought was not acceptable. Dissent was deemed unpatriotic.  Their disdain for democracy was raised to a new level. The masses would be told only what the masters allowed. But implementing these draconian measures proved difficult. F E Smith was thrust into a new role in charge of the Press Bureau for which there was no precedent and for which there was no experienced staff. [4] He had no previous Cabinet experience, and belonged to the more right-wing school of the Secret Elite. He was closely associated with the Milner/Roberts/Northcliffe group which favoured conscription to the armed services rather than a volunteer force.

Denied first hand accounts of what was happening in northern France and Belgium, from experienced and reliable journalists, the information vacuum had been filled with patriotic nonsense. For approximately three weeks the public were force-fed a series of preposterous stories in which half of the German army had been killed and the others had taken flight. Every day reports boasted that the German soldiers were cowards, and that they ran away at the sight of the bayonet, or surrendered ignominiously. What made matters worse was that the public had been solemnly promised that they would be given the absolute truth through the Press Bureau. The accounts they read about German soldiers virtually inferred that fighting was mere child’s play. [5] No-one anticipated a military disaster. The public had been fed a diet of cheerful nonsense that raised high expectation of imminent victory. The Daily News produced chatty reports from correspondents ‘at the front’, with stories of ‘Kippers for Tea’, ‘Toothache in the Trenches’, and ‘The Lieutenant’s Morning Tub’, [6] reassuringly encouraging  and anodyne in nature, but completely at odds with what was happening in northern France and Belgium. Little wonder many of the earliest recruits harboured a fear that the war might be over before they got to France Suddenly the brutal nature of modern warfare slapped middle-class Britain in the face over Sunday breakfast on 30 August.

The truth was devastating. The first shots fired by the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) in Belgium on 23 August near the city of Mons, [7] gave the B.E.F. a brief sense of superiority, but wave after incessant wave of German infantry bore down on the greatly outnumbered British who were forced to retreat in the face of an onslaught. On 26 August the BEF fought the famous delaying action of Le Cateau with wonderful courage against an enemy ‘double their numbers and double their artillery’, but lost 8,000 men before continuing the retreat.  [8] Though they battled with consummate distinction, the B.E.F. was confronted by a well disciplined and armed host which in places was three times its size. The retreat which lasted for thirteen days of unparalleled anxiety covered one hundred and sixty miles, over which the British regulars sustained huge losses. General Sir John French became convinced that the B.E.F. which he described as ‘shattered’ would have to be withdrawn behind the River Seine [9] He was overruled.

Details of this serious reverse were not given to the press until the Times received a dispatch from one of its most reliable correspondents in the early evening of Saturday 29 August. It came as a bolt from the blue, and they instantly sought permission to print the story. Surprisingly, the Press Bureau replied within three hours, removed some minor details and gave permission to print. Confident of their source, and with F E Smith’s approval, the Times carried the news of ‘a retreating and broken army…a terrible fight…broken bits of many regiments’. [10]  It was a disaster. The British people were aghast. Had the B.E.F. been destroyed?  The effect was stunning. The moment was later caught perfectly by H G Wells in his novel Mr Britling Sees It Through (published in 1916) ‘it was as if David had flung his pebble – and missed!’

And it was a Northcliffe exclusive.

The following day The Times and the Daily Mail ‘suppressed the articles from their Monday editions.’ [11] The Times revised its position with a damage-limitation editorial to prevent widespread panic and defuse accusations of disloyalty made against it in Parliament. [Instead of focussing on the retreat of a ‘broken army’ they turned truth on its head by writing:

‘The British Army has surpassed all the glories of its long history, and has won fresh and imperishable renown. It has inflicted terrible losses on the German army and has repeatedly held its own against tremendous odds. Though forced to retire by the overwhelming strength and persistence of the foe, it preserves an unbroken if battered line…’ [12]

It was an indefensible lie. The B.E.F. was by 30 August retreating south towards the River Marne leaving behind it a trail of broken wagons, tattered, abandoned equipment and rations and piles of supplies dumped by the roadside. Anything else that could ease the marchers’ burden apart from their arms and ammunition was left behind. [13]

What the Times initially revealed had blown a gaping hole in effective censorship and forced Kitchener to claim that ‘for every man lost, two more have reached the front’. The Times ‘rejoiced to receive the assurance that British troops are still facing North with “undiminished strength and undaunted spirits.” Another lie.

Had the Censor got it so badly wrong in allowing the truth to surface or was there another motive? Outrage at Northcliffe and his flag-ship newspaper was short lived when it became apparent that F E Smith, the censor himself, had not only cleared the article, but included a comment which Northcliffe duly printed. Convinced that the serious losses sustained by the B.E.F had to be used to rally support for Kitchener’s drive for volunteers, Smith approved the article and admitted in Parliament next day that following discussions with Kitchener, he had been asked by him to ‘obtain recruits for his army.’ The words he had added to the original dispatch were, ‘we want reinforcements, reinforcements and still more reinforcements’. [14] Smith had briefly breeched his own draconian censorship and for the first time the fear of defeat was used to bolster recruitment.

Meanwhile, the first person to fall foul of the censorship law was a newsboy who was thrown into jail for ‘calling out false news’ on the streets of the Scottish Capital on 30 August 1914. [15]

[1] F E Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, was a close friend of Alfred Milner and Sir Edward Carson of the Secret Elite.
[2] Hansard, HC Deb 07 August 1914 vol. 65 cc2153-6.
[3] J. S. Ewart, Roots and Causes of the Wars,  p.30.
[4] HC Deb 10 September 1914 vol. 66 cc726-752.
[5] Dillon, The Times and the Press Censor, House of Commons Debate 31 August 1914, vol. 66, cc454-511.
[6] Irene Cooper Willis, England’s Holy War, p. 179.
[7] John F Lucy, There’s a Devil in the Drum, p.74.
[8] C R Cruttwell, A History of the Great War 1914-1918, p. 23.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Special edition of the Times, 30 August 1914.
[11] Hansard, HC Debate 31 August 1914, vol. 66 cc497-8.
[12] The Times 31 August 1914, p.9.
[13] Paul Greenwood, The British Expeditionary Force August-September 1914. http://1914ancien.free.fr/bef_1914.htm
[14] Hansard, HC Debate 31 August 1914, vol. 66 cc498-9.
[15] Hansard, HC Debate 31 August 1914, vol. 66 cc372-4.