“Lord Kitchener’s personal qualities and position played at this time a very great part in the decision of events. His prestige and authority were immense. He was the sole mouthpiece of War Office opinion in the War Council. Every one had the greatest admiration for his character, and every one felt fortified, amid the terrible and incalculable events of the opening months of the war, by his commanding presence. When he gave a decision, it was invariably accepted as final. He was never, to my belief, overruled by the War Council or the Cabinet in any military matter, great or small. No single unit was ever sent or withheld contrary, not merely to his agreement, but to his advice. Scarcely any one ever ventured to argue with him in Council. Respect for the man, sympathy for him in his immense labours, confidence in his professional judgment, and the belief that he had plans deeper and wider than any we could see, silenced misgivings and disputes, whether in the Council or at the War Office. All-powerful, imperturbable, reserved, he dominated absolutely our counsels at this time.”[11]
These sentences accurately express the ideal of Lord Kitchener as conceived by the public mind. His large but still active frame, his striking appearance, and his reputation for powerful reserve, in themselves inspired confidence. His patient and ultimately successful services in Egypt, the Soudan, South Africa, and India were famed throughout the country, which discovered in him the very embodiment of the silent strength and tenacity, piously believed to distinguish the British nature. Shortly before the outbreak of war, Mr. Asquith as Prime Minister had taken the charge of the War Office upon himself, owing to Presbyterian Ulster’s threat of civil war, and the possibility of mutiny among the British garrison in Ireland, if commanded to proceed against that rather self-righteous population. When war with Germany was declared, it so happened that Lord Kitchener was in England, on the point of returning to Egypt, and Mr. Asquith handed over to him his own office as Secretary for War. The Cabinet, and especially Lord Haldane (then Lord Chancellor, but Minister of War from 1905 to 1912), the most able of army organisers, urged him to this step. But he needed no persuasion. He never thought of any other successor as possible. As he has said himself:
“Lord Kitchener’s appointment was received with universal acclamation, so much so indeed that it was represented as having been forced upon a reluctant Cabinet by the overwhelming pressure of an intelligent and prescient Press.”[12]
By the consent of all, Lord Kitchener was the one man capable of conducting the war, and by the consent of most he remained the one man, though he conducted it. Yet it might well be argued that the public mind, incapable of perceiving complexity, accepted a simple ideal of their hero which he himself had deliberately created. A hint of the mistake may be found in Mr. Asquith’s speech.[13] He admitted that Lord Kitchener was a masterful man; that he had been endowed with a formidable personality, and was by nature rather disposed to keep his own counsel. But he maintained that he “was by no means the solitary and taciturn autocrat in the way he had been depicted.” One may describe him as shy rather than aggressive, genial rather than relentless, a reasonable peacemaker rather than a man of iron. Under that unbending manner, he studiously concealed a love of beauty, both human and artistic. Under a rapt appearance of far-reaching designs, his mind was much occupied with inappropriate detail, and could relax into trivialities. He was distinguished rather for sudden flashes of intuition than for reasoned and elaborated plans. During the first year of the war, his natural temptation to occupy himself in matters better delegated to subordinates was increased by the absence in France of experienced officers whom he could have trusted for staff work. He became his own Chief of Staff,[14] and diverted much of his energy to minor services. At the War Council he acted as his own expert, and Sir James Murray, who always attended the meetings as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was never even asked to express an opinion. The labours thus thrown upon Lord Kitchener, or mistakenly assumed, when he was engaged upon the task of creating new armies out of volunteers, and organising an unmilitary nation for war while the war thundered across the Channel, were too vast and multifarious for a single brain, however resolute. It is possible also that the course of years had slightly softened the personal will which had withstood Lord Milner in carrying through the peace negotiations at Pretoria, and Lord Curzon in reforming the Viceroy’s Council at Simla. Nevertheless, when all is said, all-powerful, imperturbable, reserved, Lord Kitchener dominated absolutely the counsels of the war’s first year, and his service to the country was beyond all estimate. It raises his memory far above the reach of the malignant detraction attempted after his death by certain organs of that “intelligent and prescient Press” which had shrieked for his appointment.[15]
MR. ASQUITH AS PRIME MINISTER
Second in authority upon the War Council and with the nation, but only second, stood Mr. Asquith. For six years he had been Prime Minister—years marked by the restlessness and turbulence of expanding liberty at home, and abroad by ever-increasing apprehension. Yet his authority was derived less from his office than from personal qualities which, as in Lord Kitchener’s case, the English people like to believe peculiarly their own. He was incorruptible, above suspicion. His mind appeared to move in a cold but pellucid atmosphere, free alike from the generous enthusiasm and the falsehood of extremes. Sprung from the intellectual middle-class, he conciliated by his origin, and encouraged by his eminence. His eloquence was unsurpassed in the power of simple statement, in a lucidity more than legal, and, above all, in brevity. The absence of emotional appeal, and, even more, the absence of humour, promoted confidence, while it disappointed. Here, people thought, was a personality rather wooden and unimaginative, but trustworthy as one who is not passion’s slave. No one, except rivals or journalistic wreckers, ever questioned his devotion to the country’s highest interests as he conceived them, and, as statesmen go, he appeared almost uninfluenced by vanity.
Balliol and the Law had rendered him too fastidious and precise for exuberant popularity, but under an apparent immobility and educated restraint he concealed, like Lord Kitchener, qualities more attractive and humane. Although conspicuous for cautious moderation, he was not obdurate against reason, but could sing a palinode upon changed convictions.[16] Unwavering fidelity to his colleagues, and a magnanimity like Cæsar’s in combating the assaults of political opponents, and disregarding the treachery of most intimate enemies, surrounded him with a personal affection which surprised external observers; while his restrained and unexpressive demeanour covered an unsuspected kindliness of heart. In spite of his lapses into fashionable reaction, most supporters of the Gladstonian tradition still looked to him for guidance along the lines of peaceful and gradual reform, when suddenly the war-cloud burst, obliterating in one deluge all the outlines of peace and progress and law. The Tsar who, with assumed philanthropy, had proposed the Peace Conferences at The Hague; the ruler to whom the ambition of retaining the title of “Friedenskaiser” was, perhaps honestly, attributed; the President who had known how passionately France clung to peace; the Belgian King who foresaw the devastation of his wealthy country; the stricken Emperor who, through long years of disaster following disaster, had hoped his distracted heritage might somehow hang together still—all must have suffered a torture of anxiety and indecision during those fateful days of July and August 1914. But upon none can the decision have inflicted deeper suffering than upon a Prime Minister naturally peaceful, naturally kindly, naturally indisposed to haste, plagued with the scholar’s and the barrister’s torturing ability to perceive many sides to every question, and hoping to crown a laborious life by the accomplishment of political and domestic projects which, at the first breath of war, must wither away. Yet he decided.
MR. CHURCHILL’S IDEA
Third in influence upon the War Council (that is to say, upon the direction of all naval and military affairs) stood Mr. Winston Churchill. In his evidence before the Commission, Mr. Churchill stated:
“I was on a rather different plane. I had not the same weight or authority as those two Ministers, nor the same power, and if they said, This is to be done or not to be done, that settled it.”[17]