SERBIA
“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”—Abraham Lincoln, 1863.
Mr. Lloyd George now turned from the disappointments and tragedies of the Near East to look more closely into the situation at home.
The opening of 1915 was a season of hope in Great Britain. The great effort to force the Dardanelles filled the public mind with visions. That attempt was then most lyrically applauded by those who afterwards rushed to denounce it. The whole outlook was magically irradiated with the mirage of that golden promise.
Here was a quick cure for all our troubles.
Men dreamt of a speedy blow that would cut off the Central Powers from Turkey, and open to Russia an easy door to the West.
They thought little at that moment, and knew less, of the blows which Germany was preparing for Russia.
The story of the Dardanelles expedition has been fully told.[[72]] We all know the origin and history of that expedition, and can apportion with some fairness the proper spheres of blame and praise. Mr. Lloyd George took little active personal part in the planning and preparations for it, though he was a member of the War Council, and later in June, became a member of the Dardanelles Committee.[[73]] His own proposal had been frustrated by events. Here was an alternative, hatched by other brains, inspired by other hopes. It was a serious thing to oppose it outright. His attitude from the beginning was one of suspended judgment.
“Whatever you do, do thoroughly; if you do it at all, put your full strength into it”—that may be summed up as his constantly reiterated counsel in regard to the Dardanelles.
If this advice had been adopted perhaps even that ill-starred enterprise might have met with better fortune.
But meanwhile, on other fields of war a situation was developing even more menacing to Europe as a whole. The great Teutonic attack on Russia began to develop with terrible success in the early spring; and Mr. Lloyd George took from the first a most serious view of this tremendous onslaught.
In the middle of February vast new armies of Germans, prepared in the winter, advanced to the invasion of Courland, Poland, and Galicia. The Russian armies still in Eastern Prussia had been speedily driven back across the frontier in wholesale defeat; and the northern German armies began to advance on to Russian soil. In the centre of Eastern Europe the Germans advanced victoriously to within fifty miles of Warsaw before they met with a serious check. In the south the Austrians drove the Russians from Bukovina. The whole German-Austrian line was advanced throughout the length of Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian Mountains; and the hosts of the Central Empires were preparing for that great dramatic thrust which in May drove the Russians clean out of Galicia.
Such was the situation which British statesmen had now to face. It was impossible to regard it with indifference.
Mr. Lloyd George refused to be deceived by any rosy hopes either in East or West. His own view was that a firm grasp of reality was the first step to success. Unless they looked facts in the face, they could not grapple with them.
He came to be regarded as the Cassandra of the war; but, as Lord Morley once remarked, the worst thing about Cassandra was that she proved to be in the right!
Surveying the prospects of the great war in Europe as a whole, Mr. Lloyd George was seriously concerned about several vital matters.
The most important of these was that, comparing the available military man-power on both sides in this great contest, the Entente Allies were at that moment hopelessly outnumbered.
Germany and Austria at that moment had under arms or preparing to be armed—according to the intelligence supplied to the Government—no less than 8,700,000 men. Turkey had 500,000; she was soon, indeed, to supply a far greater number of her population as mercenaries to Germany.
On the other hand were France, Great Britain, Russia, and Serbia. Italy had not yet come into the war; and America was still afar off. The trouble with Russia was that, though she had such an immense population, she had many exemptions and few rifles. France was always doing her very best; but her census figures spoke for themselves. Great Britain was doing wonders with her voluntary system. But the question now for the first time faced him full front—Would our voluntary system suffice to keep up our armies, much less to supply the still greater armies that might be required for victory?
He still, at that moment, clung to the voluntary system. He thought that the necessary men could be still obtained by the voluntary system if it were properly applied. His own idea at that moment was that the best method of obtaining these men along voluntary lines was to follow the quota system. He was in favour of letting each county and town know clearly what was the proper proportion of men for them to supply for the national need, and then to leave the rest to local pressure and local patriotism. He firmly believed that if, for instance, it was officially announced that a particular county ought to supply, say, 10,000 men, and if that county had hitherto supplied 6,000, the remaining 4,000 would be forced to come in by the strength of local pride.
That scheme was never really tried. For some reason or other, there were forces at work against the territorial system of recruiting ever since the beginning of the war; and thus one of the greatest springs of national energy remained untapped.
It was also his opinion that at that time the Dominions would send far larger forces of men if they were fully informed about the real facts of the situation, instead of being fed by news from agencies whose chief motive seemed to be to feed the popular vanity. That sensible policy was afterwards so strongly urged by Dominion statesmen that it was to some small extent adopted.
Such were broadly Mr. Lloyd George’s views and feelings in February, 1915. He was still leaning to the Eastern field of war and looking out anxiously for any chance of resuming his Eastern plan if Greece should become more friendly or Bulgaria repent of her Teutonic affections. But in the British scheme of war the plan of breaking through in the West had now resumed its hold on military minds; and in March the new armies made their first great attempt in the attack known as the battle of Neuve Chapelle. The valour and heroism of our troops in that splendid effort broke against the tangled defences of the German hosts; and in April and March our armies were once more fighting for their bare existence in the second battle of Ypres. In May came Dunajec, the smashing climax to the onslaught of the Germans on the Russians in Galicia.
Tremendously occupied as he was through the spring and summer with the great national effort to supply our armies with adequate munitions, Mr. Lloyd George was never blind or indifferent to the general trend of what followed.
Events began to succeed one another with fearful rapidity. In May and June the Russians were cleared out of Galicia. Then began that great rush forward of the central German armies which swept over fortress after fortress “like castles of sand,” and submerged all the fairest towns of Western Central Russia.[[74]]
To these disasters there were, indeed, compensations in other fields of war. On May 23rd Italy declared war against Austria. In July Botha conquered South-West Africa. In the West the British and French troops still held on against the overwhelming forces of Germany attempting to snatch the Channel coast with every devilish device of gas and flame.
But, on the whole, the balance was against the Allies. The fact that stared Mr. Lloyd George in the face, wherever he looked at the fields of war, was that the Allied armies were outnumbered by the stupendous and unexpected man-power of Central Europe.
It was this fact that led him in this autumn to give to the public the first intimation that he, hitherto a convinced voluntaryist, was now being converted, against his will, to compulsory military service. The intimation was given in the preface written to a collection of his early war speeches.[[75]]
In the burning words of that remarkable address to the nation he communicated the views which he had slowly formed from a close and prolonged study of the facts throughout the summer:
“I know what we are doing: our exertions are undoubtedly immense. But can we do more, either in men or material? Nothing but our best and utmost can pull us through. Are we now straining every nerve to make up for lost time? Are we getting all the men we shall want to put into the fighting line next year to enable us even to hold our own? Does every man who can help, whether by fighting or by providing material, understand clearly that ruin awaits remissness?”
Then came the dramatic climax:
“If the nation hesitates, when the need is clear, to take the necessary steps to call forth its manhood to defend honour and existence; if vital decisions are postponed until too late; if we neglect to make ready for all probable eventualities; if, in fact, we give ground for the accusation that we are slouching into disaster as if we were walking along the ordinary paths of peace without an enemy in sight—then I can see no hope. But if we sacrifice all we own, and all we like for our native land; if our preparations are characterised by grip, resolution, and a prompt readiness in every sphere—then victory is assured.”
The meaning of this appeal was obvious. “To call forth its manhood,” could only mean conscription for the war; and it was to that policy, indeed, that Mr. Lloyd George had been driven by what seemed to him the inevitable logic of the terrible events in the fields of war. In no other way, indeed, did he think that the effort could be sustained.
There was no man who had thrown himself more vigorously into the volunteer recruiting campaign; there was no man who had more sincerely believed in it. His speech to the young men at the City Temple on November 10th, 1914, is a splendid expression of that appeal. It is still the best attempt to argue with that extreme pacifist spirit which he has always treated with respect—with that imaginative sympathy which understands while it condemns.[[76]]
But now he had come—reluctantly but irrevocably—with the terrible honesty of a man up against facts—to the conclusion that the voluntary system would not suffice against this tornado. “You cannot haggle with an earthquake.” Here was a thing that transcended all theories—a convulsion of nature itself.
Having reached this conclusion, he never veered. He stood by silent through all the experiments of those days—the “Derby scheme,” the quarrel between the married and the single, the “starring” and “unstarring”—until slowly the whole of the Ministry swung round to his point of view. Assailed by old friends with a hurricane of abuse—maligned and misinterpreted by men who season peace with venom—he yet held on steadily to his view. There are many things one has to dare and endure for country and fatherland. Perhaps the hardest thing of all in this country is to profess a change of opinion.
“They say—let them say.” He paid little attention to these assaults. More terrible things were absorbing his attention.
The failure of the purely naval attack on the Dardanelles on March 18th (1915) had been followed by the military preparations and landing on April 25th, and the subsequent great military offensive on the heights of Gallipoli. By the end of July that offensive had failed. At this point in the development of events—at the end of July—Mr. Lloyd George now definitely again urged on his colleagues in the Government to consider once more the plan of going to the assistance of Serbia as alternative to going further forward with the Gallipoli attack. At this time he was very busy with his munition campaign in the country. But on the few occasions when he was able to take part in the deliberations of the Dardanelles Committee his attitude always was—the Germans are going to break through Serbia as soon as they can; so either make certain of getting to Constantinople quickly, or consider whether you ought not to go to the assistance of Serbia with all the strength you can command. The forces on Gallipoli were obviously the nearest available for such a rescue. The alternative adopted of a renewed attack on Gallipoli by way of Suvla Bay in August only resulted in a more tragic and wasteful failure.
His forebodings in regard to Serbia were destined to be very quickly fulfilled, for in October (1915) began that dastardly combined attack on Serbia which Mr. Lloyd George had foreseen since the beginning of the year. The Germans had now finished for the moment with Russia. With deadly method they turned to their next victim; and now the Bulgarians from the south and the Teutons from the north closed on that unhappy little country.
Mr. Lloyd George witnessed this assault with an anguish of soul inevitable to one born and bred in a little nation himself. Even at this last hour he did his utmost to rescue Serbia from her fate. He racked his brains to devise some method of saving Serbia. He pressed the military authorities with a vehemence inconvenient in a world of steady routine and disciplined ideas. He agitated, argued, pleaded.
But by this time the facts were too strong even for him. Between us and Serbia lay a Royalist Greece now indifferent if not actually hostile, coldly resolved to abandon her pledged word. Rumania was still hesitating and fearful. Russia was for the moment exhausted. No help was near enough to hand to save the doomed victim.
So the British Government were compelled to stand by helpless while the very nation on whose account the war broke out was conquered and outraged, her armies scattered, her population enslaved, and her children scattered like sheep through the mountains.[[77]] No more tragic chapter is recorded in the annals of Europe.
But the mischief did not end there. Not only did the conquest of Serbia give to Germany the great link with the East for which she yearned, but it completely destroyed all our remaining chances of success on Gallipoli. The very enterprise which had already taken the place of the Serbian expedition became futile from the moment of the Serbian disaster. In the beginning of October the Turks had been running so seriously short of ammunition that success for our arms seemed near at hand. By the end of the month they were fully replenished. The enterprise became plainly impossible from the moment that Germany, having now, by the conquest of Serbia and the coming in of Bulgaria, achieved a direct route to Constantinople, could pour through as much ammunition and as many big guns as the Turks required for their defence.[[78]]
On December 19th began the withdrawal from that fatal peninsula, and on January 8th of the following year not a single British soldier remained on those bloodstained shores.
Is it not possible that the more chivalrous and vigorous action on behalf of Serbia for which Mr. Lloyd George had so importunately pressed might have been also the best policy for the prosperity of the Allies in the war as a whole?
[72] In two Reports, 1917—Cd. 8490 6d and Cmd. 371, 2s (Part II). The second, dealing with the military operations, is very sensational, and has not received enough attention.
[73] The Dardanelles Committee, which took over the control of the war from the War Council on June 7th, 1915, consisted of eleven members of the Coalition Government. The War Council were all Liberals. That was superseded on November 3rd, 1915, by the War Committee, consisting of seven Ministers. Mr. Lloyd George was a member of all these Committees.
[74] Swallowing up Warsaw on August 4th, Ivangorod on August 5th, Siedlce on August 12th, Kovno on August 17th, Novo-Georgievsk on August 19th, Brest-Litovsk on August 25th, and Grodno on September 2nd.
[75] Through Terror to Triumph. Arranged by F. L. Stevenson, B.A. (Lond.) (Hodder & Stoughton.)
[76] “To precipitate ideals is to retard their advent. . . . The surest method of establishing the reign of peace on earth is by making the way of the transgressor of the peace of nations too hard for the rulers of men to tread.”
[77] Some 30,000 Serbian boys were sent across the mountains to the sea to escape from the invader. Less than half reached the sea.
[78] See Lord Kitchener’s final telegram of November 22nd, 1915, which decided the War Cabinet to evacuate (p. 57 of Pt. II, the Final Report of the Dardanelles Commission).