British Secret Service During the Great War Part 29

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]

FOOTNOTES:

[15] As evidence in support of this, see the papers seized from von Papen at Falmouth, December, 1915; the papers seized at Salonika, January, 1916; the reports from Washington, U.S.A., 1915-6; and the numerous paragraphs in the Press to date since November, 1914.

[16] Cotton was not made absolute contraband until 381 days after the war had broken out, August 20th, 1915. Sir Edward Grey, speaking in the House of Commons on January 7th, 1915, said: "His Majesty's Government have never put cotton on the list of contraband; they have throughout the war kept it on the free list; and on every occasion when questioned on the point they have stated their intention of adhering to this practice."

[17] "Romany Rye," chapter 39.

[18] It has been said by those who were there that the English troops were kept back and permitted to play about on the beach bathing and building camp, etc., for three days after the first landing, thus giving the Turks more than sufficient time to bring up opposing forces and successfully dig themselves in where required, whereas it was but nine miles across the peninsula, which could presumably have been straddled in a few hours with little, if any, opposition at the time of landing.

Was this the suppressed episode "within a few hours of the greatest victory of the war," which the Right Hon. Winston Churchill referred to in his memorable speech, and which has been the subject of so much surmise and comment?

CHAPTER XX

THE SHAM BLOCKADE

SECRET SERVICE PROTEST AGAINST THE OPEN DOOR TO GERMANY--ACTIVITY OF OUR NAVAL ARM NULLIFIED--LORD NORTHCLIFFE'S PATRIOTISM--BLOCKADE BUNk.u.m--POSITION OF DENMARK--HUGE CONSIGNMENTS FOR GERMANY--THE DECLARATION FIASCO--BRITISH MINISTERS' GULLIBILITY IN COPENHAGEN--GERMAN BANK GUARANTEEING THE BRITISH AGAINST GOODS GOING TO GERMANY--BRITISH NAVY PARALYSED BY DIPLOMATIC AND POLITICAL FOLLY--STATISTICS EXTRAORDINARY--FLOUTING THE DECLARATION OF LONDON--SIR EDWARD GREY'S DILATORINESS AND PUERILE APOLOGIA--LORD HALDANE PUSHED OUT--LORD FISHER'S EFFICIENCY UNRECOGNISED--LORD DEVONPORT'S AMAZING FIGURES ON GERMAN IMPORTS--FURTHER STARTLING STATISTICS--BRITISH THE GREATEST MUDDLERS ON EARTH--n.o.bLE SERVICE BY AUSTRALIAN PREMIER, W. H.

HUGHES--HOLLOW SHAM OF THE DANISH AGREEMENT AND THE NETHERLANDS OVERSEAS TRUST--BLOCKADE MINISTER, LORD ROBERT CECIL, AND HIS FEEBLE FUTILE EFFORTS--MORE STATISTICS--THE TRIUMVIRATE--ASQUITH THE UNREADY, SIR EDWARD GREY THE IRRESOLUTE, AND LORD HALDANE THE FRIEND OF THE KAISER--DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, THE SAVIOUR OF THE SITUATION--HOW HE PROVED HIMSELF A MAN--A NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITY.

During the first year of the war Secret Service agents busied themselves much concerning the vast stream of goods, necessities and munitions in the raw state which poured into Germany direct and through neutral countries like the waters of a rising flood over weirs on the Thames.

Night and day these ever-restless beings flitted as shadows along the secretly or openly favoured trade routes. Persistently and energetically they followed up clues and signs of the trails of enemy traders, from ports of entry to original sources. Week by week, almost day by day, they flashed home news of then present and future consignments of such importance and value to the enemy that he paid exorbitant prices and ridiculous commissions to help rush them over his frontiers. Seemingly all was in vain. These efforts were but wasted. The work was apparently unappreciated and unresponsively received. England, to all intents and purposes, was slumbering too soundly to be awakened. Meanwhile, during every hour of the twenty-four, unending processions of trade ships of every shape, make and rig sneaked along the coasts of neutral waters, as near to land as safety permitted, on their way to the receiving ports of Germany.

Observers, stationed in lighthouses or on promontories, who watched this abnormal freighting activity, could not but help noticing that, whenever smoke showed itself upon the horizon seawards, consternation at once became manifest on the decks of these cargo carriers. They would squeeze dangerously insh.o.r.e, lay to, or drop anchors, bank up their fires and damp down every curl of smoke which it was possible to suppress; in short, they adopted every conceivable ruse to conceal their presence and ident.i.ty.

If this trade was honest and legitimate, why should these tactics be followed, and these precautions taken? _Res ipsa loquitur._

As the year 1915 progressed and the inertia of the British Government became more and more realised abroad, the captains of freighters grew bolder and bolder, and the confidence of the thousands upon thousands of get-rich-quick-anyhow dealers ash.o.r.e increased and multiplied accordingly. No one, except the Germans themselves, knew or could get to know the actual extent of this enormous volume of their import trade.

The chattels came from so many different countries and were consigned through so many channels that accurate records were rendered impossible; whilst the greater part was shipped in direct.

The English Press, which had been so self-denying and loyal to the Government in spite of the shameful manner in which it had been gagged and bound down, until the Censor's blue-pencilling amounted almost to an entire suppression of news, began to grumble and to hint very broadly that the bombastic utterances of our Ministers regarding the effectiveness of our blockade and the starvation of the Central Powers were exaggerations and not facts. Men who had always put their country before any other consideration began to proclaim that the so-called blockade was a delusion; whilst they quoted figures of imports to neutral countries which were embarra.s.sing to the Government. Something therefore had to be done. The notorious Danish Agreement[19] was accordingly framed in secret (in secret only from the British public), and a very highly-coloured and altogether misleading interpretation of its limitations and effectiveness was hinted at in Parliament. In spite of terrific pressure upon Ministers by members of both Houses, not a clause of this extraordinary doc.u.ment was permitted to be published, although its context was freely circulated or commented upon in the Press of neutral countries and the whole Agreement was printed _in extenso_ on December 12th, 1915, in the _Borsen_, at Copenhagen. What a sham and a farce this whole arrangement turned out to be will be seen later.

It has ever been the proud boast of Englishmen that Britannia rules the waves. Until this war the British Navy had been supreme mistress of the seas, and no loyal person within the Empire whereon the sun never sets has grudged a penny of the very heavy taxation which has been necessary to keep up the efficiency of our Fleet. From the commencement of the war, however, our Fleet was tied up body and soul, shackled in the intricacies of red tape entanglements woven round its keels, guns, and propellers by lawyer politicians who never could leave the management of naval affairs to the Navy, any more than they could leave the management of military affairs to the Army. In theory these pedantic illusionists may be superb, whilst some of them even stated (1915-16) that if they were removed from office during the continuance of the war it would be a calamity. But in practice the British public has seen proved too vividly--and at what a cost!--only an incessant stream of terrible disasters and mishaps; "milestones" in their policy of makeshift, dawdle and defeat.

The first chapter in this book shows that our party system Government was probably directly responsible for the war itself, or at least for our being precipitated unprepared into it. Without a shadow of a doubt it is solely accountable for the wild and riotously extravagant waste, for our colossal supererogation, and for our excessive losses.

What would have happened to the Mother Country and to her extensive Colonial Possessions had not Lord Northcliffe, through the powerful newspapers he controls, stepped in from time to time and torn off the scales which had been plastered and bandaged upon the eyes of an all-too-confiding British public, and just in the nick of time to save disaster upon disaster too awful to contemplate?

It is not necessary to enumerate the many and vital matters which Lord Northcliffe helped an indignant and a deluded public to consider and discuss, whereby the Government was roused from its torpor and pushed into reluctant activity, but the greatest of all canards which it had attempted to foist upon Europe does very much concern the subject-matter of this volume, hence it must be separately dealt with. It is this so-called blockade, which amongst Teuton traders in Northern neutral countries was looked upon as the best of all "war jokes"!

It seems to be universally believed that had the British Fleet been given a free hand and its direction left to the discretion of a good, business-like, fighting Sea Lord, the war would have been over within eighteen months from the first declaration. As it has happened, the freedom of action of our Fleet has been so hampered that our enemies have actually been permitted to draw certain food supplies not only from our own Colonies, but from the United Kingdom itself. How can it be argued that this suicidal policy has not helped to drag out the war and add to its terrible and unnecessary wastage of life and wealth, with the aftermath of woe and misery consequent thereon?

For our Ministers to affirm that Germany has been starved by our blockade is as untrue as it is ridiculous. The bunk.u.m which has filled the thousands upon thousands of Press columns in different countries on this subject has been mere chimerical effort, in great part subsidised from indirect pro-German sources of more or less remote origin in accordance with the value of the publication used.

Now for a dissection of the facts concerning the main subject.

Pa.s.sing over innumerable paragraphs in the Press which hinted at much more than they disclosed, attention should be given to an article which appeared in the January (1916) number of the _National Review_ (pp.

771-780), in which a naval correspondent gives record of a startling amount of supplies of cotton, copper, oils, foodstuffs and other commodities that were permitted to pa.s.s into Germany by permission of our benevolent Government.

The _Edinburgh Review_ of the same month also contains an article worthy of perusal upon the same subject. Many other periodicals directly and indirectly touched upon it, but for proof positive and authentic evidence the reader is referred to the files of the _Daily Mail_. That paper, in its persistent and praiseworthy patriotism, by pushing forward everything it honestly believed to be for the Empire's good, or which it hoped might help shorten the war, determined to get to the bottom of the matter. In order to ascertain how far this alleged supplying of Germany was permitted it arranged for one of its Special Commissioners to visit Scandinavia for the express purpose of collecting evidence on the spot and for publication in its columns. The author has taken the liberty of extracting freely therefrom. On January 12th, 1916, the special series of articles commenced as follows:

"In setting out the facts I will try hard to keep from my presentation of them any distortion due to the disgust and burning anger that they evoked in me, as they must do in every patriot of this Empire.

"Lest even for a moment a wrong and cruel suspicion rest upon little Denmark--namely, that she is unfriendly towards the Allies and has been 'two-faced' in the many tokens of friendliness and respect she has shown us, I say with conviction that there is not a truer or deeper love for England and the English than exists to-day in Denmark. These Danes, forefathers of so many of our race, warm still to Britain and the British. Their hearts glow to our successes, yearn to our reverses. Deep down they are for us through and through. The best Danes revolt at the work Denmark is now forced to do. A big and greedy German fist hangs over her--threatening, bullying, driving. 'So far as in you lies,' says the bully behind that fist, 'you must be useful to us--as useful at least as you are to our enemy'--(aside, 'even more useful if we can make you so')--'and should you fail by one iota to yield us such surplus food commodities as you produce and such food commodities as you can get'--(aside, 'by hook or by crook')--'from abroad, then the consequences for you will be serious. We shall seize Denmark.'"

Here follow several columns of statistics relating to the importation of foodstuffs to Denmark, showing increases in some instances of upwards of 1,000 per cent. upon her normal supplies.

Denmark's total population is under 3,000,000, and to argue that she would, or even could, use these commodities herself is mere foolishness.

Extracting further:

"The vast bulk of Denmark's pork goes to Germany--either directly, by train or ship, or _via_ Sweden, where obliging workmen, dignified _pro tem_. with the t.i.tle 'merchant consignee' (but whose whole stock-in-trade consists perhaps of a hammer, some nails and a batch of labels), change the labels on the goods and perhaps turn upside down the marked ends of the packing-cases, and then re-consign the goods to Germany.

"And they may even leave Sweden in the very railway trucks and cases in which they have arrived and travel to Germany back through Denmark in sealed trucks over which the Danish Customs have no control. Or there may be no need to trouble to send them to Sweden.

They may leave Copenhagen docks direct for Lubeck, Warnemunde, Stettin, or Hamburg, in direct steamers, of which some 500 sailed during the year. Or they may go by train. Huge trains leave every day. The trains and ferries and boats connecting Denmark and Germany are so full that there is compet.i.tion for room. How often may one see the Danish shippers, in advertising their sailings for German ports, add the significant words, 'Cargo s.p.a.ce already full'

days before the actual date of sailing!

"Now more Swedish traffic than ever crosses the water from Malmo or Helsingborg and makes its way to Germany across Denmark by rail. I have stood about the railways at many points in the two countries and watched truck after truck go by--all to cross the German frontier below Kolding, in Jutland. The great wagons were closed and a little seal gleamed red on their black doors. I have stood, too, on the quays at these ports and watched the dock cranes lifting and lowering sack after sack, box after box, and barrel after barrel, from the quays to German-bound steamers, to German words of command, and on the main or mizzen-mast of the steamer would be as often as not the gloomy little German flag, black and white and red, still blacker and gloomier with the smoke drifting from the funnel before it.

"On the quays at Copenhagen I watched the steamers _Hugo Stinnes_, of Hamburg, _Esberg_, _Snare_, _Haeland_, _Hever_, and others, of Sweden, loading wine from Spain and Portugal; oil, lard, coffee and petroleum from America; meat from Denmark, and many other goods, _all for German ports_. I travelled to Malmo, in Sweden, with a cargo of oils and fats and iron and boxes with no marks on them, and at Malmo saw these things put ready on the quay to await the next German steamer. At the same port I saw pork in boxes, meatstuffs in boxes and barrels labelled 'Armour and Co.,' oils and fats bearing the names Swift or Morris or Harrison or Salzberger, and some of them adding the information that the contents were 'guaranteed to contain 30 per cent. of pure neat's-foot oil'; also petroleum of 'Best Standard White' and other brands; pork 'fat backs,' and many other things besides, _all labelled 'Lubeck'_ and going into lighters for transport thither. Fussing tugs, with a litter of 400-ton lighters behind, may be seen travelling these waters all hours of the day bound for Germany, and no one can say what mysterious cargoes slip from country to country at night. The glut of traffic at these link-points is tremendous. _At some ports there is such a glut of stuff that Danish traders complain that they cannot get their own Danish produce over to Germany 'because of the amount of foreign stuff' there is to be ferried over._ A pretty position, indeed!

"And it is we in Great Britain who are allowing all this 'foreign stuff' to reach these countries. It is British licences and permits and recommendations which make possible this pouring of the world's goods into Germany. Little wonder the Danish merchants and other onlookers less friendly to us look with wonder upon us. 'My word, but you are truly a Christian people,' they say. 'You love your enemies all right--well enough to feed them. And if you, England, will allow the stuff over, it is not for us, little Denmark, to stand in Germany's way.'

"But how is all this possible, you may ask, this feeding of Germany through neutral Scandinavian countries? Are there not strict undertakings and promises and guarantees given to England against these goods, supplied from outside, ever reaching our enemy, Germany?

"Our Navy does its part. Ships are hauled into ---- and searched.

Guarantees are exacted and forthcoming. And the whole performance, admirably and bravely done, is so much waste of effort. _For the guarantees are not worth the ink they are written with_; they are not worth a single tinker's expletive. To show this will be a little intricate, perhaps, but it is worth trouble to follow.

"Goods leave Great Britain and America, Spain and other countries for Danish ports. The shipper, now wary of the British Fleet, which has done wonderful police duty on the high seas, generally exacts a declaration that the goods are not for export to an enemy country.

The declaration is signed right willingly, for the consignor can quite easily believe, or pretend to believe, that his goods are merely for Denmark. A British warship overhauls the boat, and perhaps takes her into ---- (a certain British port) for examination.

"The declaration with each consignment is in order. But, not satisfied (the Navy all through have been suspicious, and rightly), the officer communicates with London. 'The s.s. _so-and-so_ has big consignments of foodstuffs for Copenhagen under the names So-and-So. Can we release them?' London communicates with our Legation at Copenhagen, in whose hands they are in this matter.

'Can we let through consignments to So-and-So in your capital?' And our Copenhagen Legation replies with a list of the Danish people whose consignments must be let through and a list of those (if any) whose goods must be stopped or forwarded only on declaration that the goods must not leave Copenhagen Harbour or Copenhagen City. It all looks admirable--most businesslike; quite systematic and thorough. _It is so much nonsense. For in point of fact the ideas of our Legation at Copenhagen on the good faith of some Danish traders and the bad faith of others are childish beyond words.

Their rulings are the laughing-stock of Denmark._ And the joke would be all the more appreciable were it not that there is so much anger caused by the arbitrariness of the Legation's trade rulings and the baiting of some honest men, while less honest go free and trade with impunity. Struck by the frequency with which one or two names appeared in the Copenhagen importers' lists, I made some calculations, then some personal inquiries. I found that 'X' alone had imported during the year 4,000,000 lbs. pork, 3,000,000 lbs.

lard, 2,500,000 lbs. oleo, 1,000,000 lbs. other pork and meat. 'Y,'

another man, imported in September, October and November alone, 1,045,000 lbs. of cocoa. Neither of these men was engaged in these trades before the war. They were men of quite humble business attainments. _Yet both enjoyed the full confidence of our trusting British Legation at Copenhagen_, who would have taken solemn affidavits, no doubt, that neither of these men traded with Germany. I would have done the same myself. But these men traded with others who did trade with Germany, either directly or through third and fourth and maybe fifth parties.

"What is the result? You have in Copenhagen that amazing modern war phenomenon the trader of the _n_th degree. Plain Trader imports his goods and basks and grows fat under the aegis of the British Legation in Copenhagen. Trader 2 buys from Plain Trader under a 'guarantee' not to sell to Germany, and if he does not dare to break that guarantee himself he sells to Trader 3 or Trader 4 or Trader 5, one of whom will undoubtedly do it. And the less money that Trader 5 has the better, because then, even if he is caught, which is not likely, for n.o.body worries, no one can squeeze him for the amount of the guarantee because he has not got it.

"The result is that every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry of Copenhagen is a trader--from the _bona fide_ merchant downwards. Your hotel porter may be trading with a Hungarian for flour or rice or fat; the "Boots" can get you a ton or two of meal. Imagine the amazement of the Danish housewife when her maid came in one day and, with hands clasped in enthusiasm, said, 'Oh, madam, I've got three wagon-loads of marmalade to sell'! And that happened in Copenhagen not long ago.