INDEX

[1]. Prince Henckel von Donnesmarck.

[2]. Von Tirpitz’s account is quite direct. “At his [von Kiderlen-Wächter’s] suggestion the Chancellor dispatched the gunboat Panther to the Moroccan port Agadir on July 1, 1911, and left the British Government, when it asked the reason, completely in the dark and without a reply for many weeks. The result was that on July 21 Lloyd George delivered a speech which had been drawn up in the British Cabinet, in which he warned Germany that she would find British power on the side of France in the event of a challenge.”

[3]. The work had been begun by Lieutenant-Colonel Adrian Grant-Duff, afterwards killed on the Aisne.

[4]. The italics are mine.

[5]. The close blockade of the German ports was prescribed in the war orders of 1909, during Lord Fisher’s term of office. Sir Arthur Wilson did not reveal any modification, which he had made in consequence of new conditions to anyone.

[6]. Sir Charles Ottley: at that time Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence.

[7]. The memorandum abridged can be read in Appendix A.

[8]. Admiral Mahan.

[9]. Sir Julian Corbett.

[10]. Reflections on the World War, v. Bethmann-Hollweg, p. 48.

[11]. It was not in fact completed till August, 1914.

[12]. By later decision a Squadron of British Battle-cruisers was stationed in the Mediterranean.

[13]. i.e. The Entente.

[14]. The final published text of the law provided for 72.

[15]. Sir Francis Hopwood, now Lord Southborough, the Additional Civil Lord.

[16]. A doubtful gem! They could have coaled only in a few ports with special appliances.

[17]. This is the biggest gun which can be completely worked by hand, the shot being lifted by a single man.

[18]. Lion, Tiger, Queen Mary, Princess Royal.

[19]. Contrary to common opinion and, as many will think, to the proved lessons of the war, I do not believe in the wisdom of the Battle-Cruiser type. If it is worth while to spend far more than the price of your best battleship upon a fast heavily-gunned vessel, it is better at the same time to give it the heaviest armour as well. You then have a ship which may indeed cost half as much again as a battleship but which at any rate can do everything. To put the value of a first-class battleship into a vessel which cannot stand the pounding of a heavy action is false policy. It is far better to spend the extra money and have what you really want. The battle-cruiser in other words should be superseded by the fast battleship, i.e. fast strongest ship, in spite of her cost.—W.S.C.

[20]. The Third Sea Lord.

[21]. Director of Admiralty Contracts.

[22]. An approximate estimate of the return obtained by His Majesty’s Government on their original investment of £2,200,000, in the Anglo-Persian Oil Co., Ltd.:

(1) The original Government investment of £2,200,000 in £1 Ordinary Shares has become one of 5 million shares, and the appreciation in value of these at current prices represent approximately some£16,000,000
(2) The Government has received in dividends, interest, Income Tax, Excess Profits, Duty and Corporation Tax, over6,500,000
(3) The supply contract has enabled the Government Departments to save on the purchase price of oil as compared with current prices, about7,500,000
(4) It may also be claimed that the prices of oil supplied by other companies have been brought down by the competition of the Anglo-Persian Company, though to what extent must be a matter of opinion: and further, that the saving on oil prices under the supply contract may be expected to continue throughout the currency of the contract. It would not be unfair to estimate the effect of the last two factors at an additional10,000,000
Total£40,000,000

[23]. Actually four.

[24]. Kiel and Jutland, by Commander George von Hase.

[25]. Rear-Admiral Briggs was at this time Controller or Third Sea Lord.

[26]. No one can form any idea of the difficulties the Admiralty encountered in securing adequate defences for Eastern harbours. Coast Defence was in the province of the War Office and paid for on their estimates. They needed every penny for their Field Army and Expeditionary Force, and naturally marshalled all their experts against expenditure on fortifications in Great Britain. In consequence expert opinion was always divided. The discussions evaporated in technicalities, and the lay members of the Committee were rarely convinced of the unwelcome need of spending money. To such a point was the dispute carried, that Prince Louis and I undertook in desperation to fortify Cromarty ourselves, arm it with naval guns and man it with marines. And this was the only new work completed when the war broke out.

[27]. Mr. Marsh and Mr. (now Sir James) Masterton Smith.

[28]. I have inconsistently adopted the familiar spelling of this ship’s name instead of Göben.

[29]. Later in the morning I learnt that Lord Fisher was in the office and I invited him into my room. I told him what we had done and his delight was wonderful to see.

Foolish statements have been made from time to time that this sending of the Fleet to the North was done at Lord Fisher’s suggestion. The interview with me which Lord Fisher records in his book is correctly given by him as having taken place on the 30th. The Fleet had actually passed the Straits of Dover the night before. I think it necessary to place on record the fact that my sole naval adviser on every measure taken prior to the declaration of war was the First Sea Lord.

[30]. Now Lord Birkenhead.

[31]. Dryden, Threnodia Augustalis.

[32]. The minute constituting the Division is printed in Appendix A.

[33]. Appendix B.

[34]. Admiral Scheer, p. 13.

[35]. Appendix C. I hope it may be read.—W. S. C.

[36]. See map to face p. 274.

[37]. The Flight of the Goeben, Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne.

[38]. See Official Naval History, pp. 60, 61.

[39]. At the Falklands the two British battle cruisers used up nearly three-quarters of their ammunition to sink only two weaker antagonists, using 12–inch guns against 8·8–inch. The Goeben single-handed would have had to have sunk four, using 11–inch guns against 9·2–inch.

[40]. The italics are mine.—W. S. C.

[41]. General Lanrezac—‘Le plan de Campagne Français,’ p. 110.

[42]. General von Kluck—‘The March on Paris,’ p. 38.

[43]. Committee of Imperial Defence.

[44]. The Fourth Division (the Fifth to go).

[45]. The Fourth Division (fifth in order of embarkation) arrived on the field at the beginning of the battle of Le Cateau.

[46]. Actually called the 6th Army.

[47]. In fact, however, it was the 1st Middlesex (19th Infantry Brigade attached to 4th Division), who captured the guns at Néry, the Guards being miles away at Villers Cotterets.

[48]. The italics are new.

[49]. The Third German Army took Rheims and were bombarded in the town by the Second Army.

[50]. Official History Appendix 22, p. 473.

[51]. The correspondence on this subject is printed in the Official History of the War, Appendix 22, p. 471.

[52]. See map to face p. 328.

[53]. See Appendix.

[54]. The old battleships in question were actually “Canopuses”—the class above “Majestics.”

[55]. The underlining denotes approximately the comparative values of the units.

[56]. Only those ships of the Japanese Navy who took part in the operations are included.

[57]. Encounter went instead of Melbourne.

[58]. They went without escort and without mishap.

[59]. Admiral Scheer, p. 52.

[60]. See also Appendix.

[61]. Dupont, ‘Haut Commandment Allemand en 1914,’ p. 92.

[62]. The Naval torpedo school centre.

[63]. The first design of the Tank made at my request by Admiral Bacon in September, 1914, carried a bridge in front which it dropped on arriving at a trench, passed over, and automatically raised behind it.

[64]. An officer of the General Staff who had been attached, at my request in 1913, to the Admiralty War Staff in order to promote an effective liaison between the two staffs. This very gifted officer rendered us invaluable service. He died prematurely after the hardships of the war, throughout the whole of which he served with distinction in situations of responsibility and danger.

[65]. Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles.

[66]. ‘The loss on September 22,’ wrote Mr. Gibson Bowles, ‘of the Aboukir, the Cressy and the Hogue, with 1,459 officers and men killed, occurred because, despite the warnings of admirals, commodores and captains, Mr. Churchill refused, until it was too late, to recall them from a patrol so carried on as to make them certain to fall victims to the torpedoes of an active enemy.’

[67]. But see Lord Esher: ‘One night he (Kitchener) was in bed asleep, when Mr. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, bursting into the room, pleaded for the War Minister’s permission to leave at once for Antwerp. In spite of the late hour, Sir Edward Grey arrived in the middle of the discussion, and while he was engaging Lord Kitchener’s attention, Mr. Churchill slipped away. He was next heard of when a telegram from Antwerp was put into Lord K.’s hands, in which his impetuous colleague asked bravely to be allowed to resign his great office, to be given command of a Naval Brigade, and pleading that reinforcements should be hurried out to those “forlorn and lonely men,” as he called them, who were vainly trying to hold on to the Antwerp lines. Lord K. was not upset, but he was not unmoved, etc....’—The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener, p. 67.

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray; for during the war I showed him the text of the telegrams printed in this chapter and now made public for the first time. We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness forbade him to forsake fiction for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.

W. S. C.

[68]. Commanders Marix and Spenser-Grey.

[69]. It was perhaps an unconscious recognition of the naval significance of Antwerp that all three great Powers—Germany, France and Britain—used in its attack and defence Naval Brigades formed since the outbreak of war.

[70]. Rawlinson’s Force was so styled.

[71]. The heavy losses of the 7th Division have often been attributed to their attempt to relieve Antwerp. In fact, however, these losses did not begin until after they had joined the main army.

[72]. i.e. The absence of a greater French effort.

[73]. A battleship.

[74]. A curious coincidence or foreboding. Almost at that moment the Audacious was moving to her doom.

[75]. War Office.

[76]. This will be discussed in the second volume. The alternatives are here only mentioned to explain the context.

[77]. This energetic and practical officer, whom I had employed during the previous eighteen months to supervise the fortification of Cromarty, had already designed a type of anti-submarine boom which he was actually installing at Cromarty.

[78]. I have slightly abridged this minute.

[79]. .sp 2

October 28, 1914.

Dear Mr. Churchill,—

I have lately been driven to the painful conclusion that at this juncture my birth and parentage have the effect of impairing in some respects my usefulness on the Board of Admiralty. In these circumstances I feel it to be my duty, as a loyal subject of His Majesty, to resign the office of First Sea Lord, hoping thereby to facilitate the task of the administration of the great Service, to which I have devoted my life, and to ease the burden laid on H.M. Ministers.

I am,

Yours very truly,

Louis Battenberg,

Admiral.

October 29, 1914.

My dear Prince Louis,—

This is no ordinary war, but a struggle between nations for life or death. It raises passions between races of the most terrible kind. It effaces the old landmarks and frontiers of our civilisation. I cannot further oppose the wish, you have during the last few weeks expressed to me, to be released from the burden of responsibility which you have borne thus far with so much honour and success.

The anxieties and toils which rest upon the naval administration of our country are in themselves enough to try a man’s spirit; and when to them are added the ineradicable difficulties of which you speak, I could not at this juncture in fairness ask you to support them.

The Navy of to-day, and still more the Navy of to-morrow, bears the imprint of your work. The enormous impending influx of capital ships, the score of thirty-knot cruisers, the destroyers and submarines unequalled in modern construction which are coming now to hand, are the results of labours which we have had in common, and in which the Board of Admiralty owes so much to your aid.

The first step which secured the timely concentration of the Fleet was taken by you.

I must express publicly my deep indebtedness to you, and the pain I feel at the severance of our three years’ official association. In all the circumstances you are right in your decision. The spirit in which you have acted is the same in which Prince Maurice of Battenberg has given his life to our cause and in which your gallant son is now serving in the Fleet.

I beg you to accept my profound respect and that of our colleagues on the Board.

I remain,

Yours very sincerely,

Winston S. Churchill.

[80]. Throughout this chapter the map facing page 476 and the table of ships on page 478 will be found useful.

[81]. The rocks of Abrolhos off the Brazilian Coast were our secret coaling base in these waters.

[82]. Details relating to colliers, supply ships and mails have been omitted, unless of significance to the account.

[83]. The table of ships on page 478 will be found useful.

[84]. Official History of the War: Naval Operations, Vol. I, p. 344.

[85]. All the ships in small capitals fought eventually in the battle of the Falkland Islands.

[86]. Here the reader should certainly look at the map facing page 476, which deals directly with this situation.

[87]. All the above telegrams had to be sent by various routes and most were repeated by several routes, as of course we could not communicate direct across these great distances. But I omit the procedure to simplify the account.

[88]. See opposite page 474.

[89]. Only Dreadnoughts had tripods.

[90]. The Grand Fleet, by Sir John Jellicoe, p. 31.

[91]. See Appendix D., p. 566.

[92]. I was in France for thirty-six hours.—W. S. C.

[93]. Battle cruiser.

[94]. Appendix E.

[95]. Two had had to be removed from each of the five ‘Queen Elizabeths,’ owing to spray interference.

[96]. See map to face page 518.

[97]. i.e. about 80 miles West of Heligoland.

[98]. It must be explained that in these days the wireless communication with destroyers and still more submarines was not as perfect as it became later on. The Firedrake had therefore been stationed in the morning midway between the submarines and Harwich to pass on messages. She had late in the afternoon, after the orders to take the submarines into the Bight had reached her, rejoined Commodore Keyes and the link was, for the time being, broken.

[99]. The whole of this operation is described in minute detail in the official British Naval History, and should be studied with the excellent charts by those who are interested in its technical aspect. So complicated is the full story that the lay reader cannot see the wood for the trees. I have endeavoured to render intelligible the broad effects.—W.S.C.

[100]. See map to face page 518, ‘The Dawn Situation.’

[101]. See map facing this page, ‘The Noon Situation.’

[102]. The Dresden and two armed merchant cruisers were alive for a few weeks more, but in complete inactivity.

[103]. In peace.

[104]. In war.