[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.