Just criticism fell from Lord Milner, who, speaking at Canterbury on October 31st, 1915, said:
"If the worst of our laches and failures, like the delay in the provision of shells and the brazen-faced attempts to conceal it, or the way we piled blunder upon blunder in the Dardanelles, or the phenomenal failure of our policy in the Balkans—if the nation was induced to regard these as just ordinary incidents of war, then we could never expect and should not deserve to see our affairs better managed in the future. Truth all round and clearness of vision were necessary to enable us to win through."
A few days later Mr. Rudyard Kipling in the Daily Telegraph wrote:
"No man likes losing his job, and when at long last the inner history of this war comes to be written we may find that the people we mistook for principals and prime agents were only average incompetents moving all hell to avoid dismissal."
History repeats itself, and George Borrow was not very wide of the mark when he wrote in 1854: "Why does your (English) Government always send fools to represent it at Vienna?"[17]
The work of all foreign Ministers should consist in providing for contingencies long foreseen and patiently awaited. Surely we must have some good and able men who do or can serve us abroad? Or does the fault lie with the Foreign Office at home?
The English Review of February, 1916, contained a serious article entitled "The Failure of Sir Edward Grey," the logic of which causes one to reflect. Its author, Mr. Seton-Watson, argues as follows:
"From the moment that the mismanagement of the Dardanelles Expedition became apparent to the Bulgarians (and it must be remembered that the whole Balkan Peninsula was ringing with the details at a time when the British public was still allowed to know nothing) only one thing could have prevented them from joining the Central Powers, and that was the prompt display of military force, as a practical proof that we should not allow our ally to be crushed.... Prince George of Greece was sent to Paris by his brother, the King, with a virtual offer of intervention in return for the Entente Powers guaranteeing the integrity of Greek territory. The French were inclined to consider the offer, but it was rejected by London on the ground that no attention could be paid to 'unauthorised amateur diplomacy.'
"This astonishing phrase was allowed to reach the King of Greece, and having been applied to his own brother on a mission which was anything but unauthorised, naturally gave the greatest possible offence.
"As a matter of fact, the Treaty was much more comprehensive than is generally supposed. Under its provisions the casus fœderis arises not merely in the event of a Bulgarian attack on Serbia, but also of an attack from any other quarter also; and therefore Greece, in not coming to Serbia's aid against Austria-Hungary in 1914, had already broken her pledge. Hence Sir Edward Grey, who must have been well aware of this fact, was surely running a very grave risk when he relied upon Greek constancy in a situation which his own diplomatic failures had rendered infinitely less favourable. On September 23rd Bulgaria mobilised against Serbia; yet on September 27th Sir Edward Grey practically vetoed Serbia's proposal to take advantage of her own military preparedness and to attack Bulgaria before she could be ready. Next day (September 28th) in the House of Commons he uttered his famous pledge that, in the event of Bulgarian aggression, 'We are prepared to give to our friends in the Balkans all the support in our power, in the manner that would be most welcome to them, in concert with our Allies without reserve and without qualification.' At the moment everyone in England, and above all in Serbia, took this to mean that we were going to send Serbia the military help for which she was clamouring; but on November 3rd Sir Edward Grey explained to an astonished world that he merely meant to convey that after Bulgaria had joined Germany 'there would be no more talk of concessions from Greece or Serbia.' The naïveté which could prompt such an explanation is only equalled by the confusion of mind which could read this interpretation into a phrase so explicit and unequivocal. Greece's failure in her Treaty obligations towards Serbia alone saved Britain from the charge of failure to fulfil her pledge to Greece. Nothing can exonerate Greece's desertion of her ally, but in view of our tergiversation and irresolution, some allowance must be made for King Constantine's attitude towards the Entente. Sir Edward Grey, throwing to the winds all his public pledges to Serbia, definitely urged upon the French Generalissimo complete withdrawal from Salonica and the abandonment of the Serbs to their fate. General Joffre replied with the historic phrase: 'You are deserting us on the field of battle and we shall have to tell the world.' General Joffre carried his point, and in the biting phrase of Sir Edward Carson, 'the Government decided that what was too late three weeks before was in time three weeks after.' But those three weeks, which might have transformed the fortune of the campaign, had been irretrievably lost through Sir Edward Grey's lack of a Balkan policy. Even then our hesitation continued. In Paris the question is being asked on all sides why Sir Edward Grey, after such repeated fiascoes, did not follow his late colleague, M. Delcasse, into retirement, and what everyone is saying in Paris, from the Quai d'Orsay to the Academie Française, surely need no longer be concealed from London. The German Chancellor was unwise enough to hint this in his speech, when he ascribed Germany's Balkan success in large measure to our mistakes. The fall of Sir Edward Grey, as the result of a demand for a more energetic conduct of the war and for still closer co-operation with our Allies, and the substitution of a man of energy and first-rate ability, would be far the most serious and disconcerting blow which the Germans had yet received."
The halting, hesitating, vacillating "wait-and-see" policy which seems to be revealed in such startling vividness by Mr. Seton-Watson causes a deep thinker to ponder further. Is it not possible that Sir Edward Grey, like the late Lord Kitchener, may not have been his own master? That he in turn may have been held down and dictated to by the one man whose own valuation of his personal services so greatly exceeded the worth put upon them by the nation at large?
It is easy to state in the House of Commons, "I accept entire responsibility," as Mr. Asquith did when the Gallipoli disaster was questioned, but he surely ought then to have been the questioner! His statement, which the members of the House were bound down by national loyalty not to attack as they would have liked to have done, proved that the Prime Minister had been meddling with military matters which should have been left absolutely and entirely to military experts. Hence it was that the nation learnt that the halting, hesitating, vacillating "wait-and-see" policy had paralysed not only the whole Gallipoli campaign, but particularly the Suvla Bay expedition, which if properly exploited would undoubtedly have given our arms one of the greatest victories of the war.[18]