Mr. Asquith also was miasma-ed; and it’s not allowable to describe the discussion that he, I, and Mr. Churchill had in the Prime Minister’s private room, except so far as to observe that Mr. Churchill had been strongly in favour of military co-operation with the fleet on the Belgian Coast, and Sir John French, on three different visits to the War Council, had assented to carrying out the operation, provided he had another Division added to his Force. This project—so fruitful as it would have been in its results at the early stage of the war—was, I understand, prevented by three deterrents: (1) Lord Kitchener’s disinclination; (2) The French didn’t want the British Army to get into Belgium; (3) The Dardanelles came along.
I objected to any Naval action on the Belgian Coast without such military co-operation. Those flat shores of the Belgian coast, enfiladed by the guns of the accompanying British Fleet, rendered that enterprise feasible, encouraging and, beyond doubt, deadly to the enemy’s sea flank. Besides preventing Zeebrugge from being fortified and the Belgian Coast being made use of as a jumping-off place for the air raids on London and elsewhere, with guns capable of ranging such an enormous distance as those mounted in the Monitors, we could have enfiladed with great effect all attacks by the Germans.
When we got to the Council table—the members having been kept waiting a considerable time—the Prime Minister gave the decision that the Dardanelles project must proceed; and as I rose from the Council table Kitchener followed me, and was so earnest and even emotional[8] that I should return that I said to myself after some delay: “Well, we can withdraw the ships at any moment, so long as the Military don’t land,” and I succumbed. I was mad on that Armada of 612 vessels, so generously fostered by Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill and sustained by the Prime Minister. They were of all sorts and sizes—but alas! as they reached completion they began to be gradually perverted and diverted to purposes for which they were unfitted and employed in waters to which they were unsuited. Nevertheless they made (some of them) the Germans flee for their lives, and with such a one as the gallant Arbuthnot or the splendid Hood, who gave their lives for nothing at Jutland, we might have had another Quiberon.
To resume: I gave Lord Cromer, the Chairman of the Dardanelles Commission a précis of the Dardanelles case. It doesn’t appear in the Report of the Dardanelles Commission. I forgive him that, because, when in his prime, he did me a good deed. It is worth relating. I entreated him to cut a channel into Alexandria Harbour deep enough for a Dreadnought; and he did it, though it cost a million sterling, and thus gave us a base of incalculable advantage in certain contingencies.
I will now shortly pass in review the Dardanelles statement that I gave Lord Cromer. Those who will read this book won’t want to be fooled with figures. I give a figurative synopsis. Of course, as I told the Dardanelles Commission (Cromer thought it judicious to omit my comment, I believe), the continuation of the Dardanelles adventure beyond the first operations, confined solely to the ships of the fleet which could be withdrawn at any moment and the matter ended—the continuation, I explained to the Dardanelles Commission, was largely due to champion liars. It must ever be so in these matters. I presume that’s how it came about that two Cabinet Ministers—no doubt so fully fed up with the voice tube, as it has been described—told the nation that we were within a few yards of victory at the Dardanelles, and so justified and encouraged a continuance of that deplorable massacre. However, no politician regards truth from the same point of view as a gentleman. He puts on the spectacles of his Party. The suppressio veri and the suggestio falsi flourish in politics like the green baize tree.
Sworn to no Party—of no Sect am I:
I can’t be silent and I will not lie.
Before the insertion of the following narrative prepared by me at the time of the Dardanelles Commission I wish to interject this remark: When sailors get round a Council Board they are almost invariably mute. The Politicians who are round that Board are not mute; they never would have got there if they had been mute. That’s why for the life of me I can’t understand what on earth made David say in the Psalms “A man full of words shall not prosper on the Earth.” They are the very ones who do prosper! It shows what a wonderful fellow St. Paul was; he was a bad talker and yet he got on. He gives a bit of autobiography, and tells us that his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible, though his letters were weighty and powerful. However, in that case, another Gospel was being preached, where the worldly wise were confounded by the worldly foolish.
While my evidence was being taken before the Dardanelles Commission, the Secretary (Mears) was splendid in his kindness to me, and my everlasting gratitude is with the “Dauntless Three” who broke away from their colleagues and made an independent report. They were Mr. Fisher—formerly Prime Minister of Australia, (a fellow labourer), Sir Thomas Mackenzie (High Commissioner for New Zealand), and Mr. Roch, M.P. Their Report was my life-buoy; a précis of their Report, so far as it affects me and which I consider unanswerable, establishes that it is the duty of any Officer, however highly placed, to subordinate his views to that of the Government, unless he considers such a course so vitally antagonistic to his Country’s interests as to compel him to resign. I know of no line of action so criminally outrageous and subversive of all discipline as that of public wrangling between a subordinate and his superior, or the Board of Admiralty and an Admiral afloat, or the War Office and their Commander-in-Chief in the Field.
This Dardanelles Commission reminds me of another “cloudy and dark day,” as Ezekiel would describe it, when five Cabinet Ministers, at the instigation of an Admiral recently serving, held an enquiry absolutely technical and professional on matters about which not one of them could give an authoritative opinion but only an opinion which regarded political opportunism—an enquiry neither more nor less than of my professional capacity as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty. The trained mind of Mr. McKenna only just succeeded in saving me from being thrown to the wolves of the hustings. But it has inflicted a mortal wound on the discipline of the Navy. Hereafter no mutinous Admiral need despair (only provided he has political and social influence) of obtaining countenance for an onslaught against his superiors; and we may yet lose the decisive battle of the world in consequence.