British Secret Service During the Great War Part 32

Next he admitted that "Germany had, in effect, treated food, when she found it, as absolute contraband since the first outbreak of war."

This admission gave one much to ponder over.

On the point of a stricter blockade Sir Edward Grey suggested that "if a rigorous blockade had been established the whole world would have been against us."

Such a contingency, put into legal parlance, is too ridiculously remote for further consideration. Why did he not explain why our Fleet was not allowed to limit particular imports to neutral countries to certain fixed totals per month, or per annum? It is unthinkable to suppose that any country would seriously threaten war in face of former well-known precedent and because such limits were imposed by a blockading Fleet.

More particularly so if any such affected country happened to have been one of the parties to the Treaty of the Hague, which affirmed the integrity of poor innocent, unoffending Belgium; the country which, without justification or excuse, was violated, and ravished, outraged by the barbarian Hun invaders, and which so many other countries watched aghast without attempting to help England to protect or to avenge.

Admittedly it would have been easy for us to close the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Why did we not do so? We could then have regulated to each country not at war its full and fair average annual complement of necessities plus an extra and a generous margin for contingencies. The Government of each recipient country would have seen to it that its own respective countrymen reaped full benefits; leaks to the Central Powers would have automatically stopped.

What countries would such a course of action have forced into war against us?

Possibly Sweden, doubtfully Holland, remotely Denmark.

America had boasted she was "too proud to fight." She might have favoured us with a "note," but her love of trade would have been an absolute bar to the possibility of any cessation of supplies and munitions.

No other country would have demurred except Greece, and the vacillating tactics of the Greeks were but the harvest which could have been expected from the seed of "wait-and-see" diplomatic sowing. This is clearly shown by the utterances of King Tino, who said: "I fear the Germans. I do not fear the English." The Greeks have similarly expressed themselves. "We know the Germans would rob, murder, and outrage our land and our people without any hesitation. The English are quite incapable of anything of that kind."

It had been proved that Consulates in Greece had been nests of espionage and a.r.s.enals of munitions, and the Islands bases for submarine murderers; and yet their King actually sent us a protest against our movement at Salonika to a.s.sist the persecuted Serbians whom he and his country had pledged themselves to uphold and protect; a solemn treaty they had long ago undertaken, but so conveniently forgotten and lamely excused themselves out of as soon as called upon to carry it into active force.

As a general answer to the direct charges of the Press that the Foreign Office had not kept faith with the nation in doing all that could be done to make an effective blockade, as an explanation to sweep on one side the overwhelming ma.s.s of evidence relating to the extraordinary number of German agents and dealers who swarmed throughout Scandinavia and Holland, their amazing advertis.e.m.e.nts, their suddenly acc.u.mulated wealth, the balance sheets showing large profits of neutral companies dealing in Germany's requirements, the alleged wholesale dealers of imported goods so suddenly sprung up from the ranks of hotel porters, clerks, typists, adventurers, caretakers, and even charwomen and servant-girls, our own inflated home prices of necessities and commodities--Sir Edward Grey's answer to all this was: The Government had lately sent Lord Faringdon to examine the position in Holland and Scandinavia and he reported that on the whole things were very satisfactory and that all was being done that could be done to prevent the enemy obtaining supplies.

Well might the fat stomachs of the "Goulashes"[23] extend and shake in merriment when they read these comfortable words!

Sir Edward Grey concluded his speech with this stirring peroration: The whole of our resources were engaged in this war, and our maximum effort was at the disposal of our Allies in carrying on this conflict. With them we should see it through to the end and we should slacken no effort in the common cause. We should exert all our efforts to put the maximum possible pressure upon the enemy, and part of that pressure must be doing the most we could to prevent supplies going to or from the enemy, _using the Navy to its full power_ ... and in common with our Allies sparing nothing, whether it were military, naval, or financial effort, which this country could afford, to see the thing through with them to the end.

In the loud cheering with which the House of Commons received the speech no thought was given to the famous words of Napoleon: "Put no faith in talk which is not borne out by action"; whilst future events went to show that Napoleon truly forecasted England's present-day weakness when he wrote: "Feebleness in its Government is the most frightful calamity that can befall a nation."

Contrast Sir Edward Grey's eloquent words and diplomatic evasiveness upon the treatment of neutrals with the plain, outspoken, thoroughly English opinion of Lord Fisher, who is credited with having said:

"There are no such things as neutral powers. Powers are either with us or against us. If they are friendly they will put up with some inconvenience; if they are unfriendly they will squeal. Let them squeal."

Had we acted throughout on this dictum the war would most probably have been over well inside of eighteen months. Men of the calibre of this grand old Sea Lord, whose farsight, foresight, and second sight have endeared him to the nation and made him unique and incomparable, would soon have made short work of the war. Yet they were not wanted by the then present-day party-system Government. They were much too blunt and honest and energetically active.

The nation will also remember that when Lord Kitchener of Khartoum returned from the East in the early days of the then present Government, it had no use for his invaluable services. He was actually permitted to accept a directorship of one of our poorest railway companies on the south coast for want of a better occupation.[24] But the Press and the public soon brought the Government to book, as it seemingly had to do in every matter of real national importance.

The Government tried to keep Lord Haldane installed at the War Office, but the Press would have none of it. It also insisted on K. of K. being placed in his proper place and kept there. More's the pity that he was not given a free hand to do as he liked.

The Press also clamoured for Lord Fisher as First Lord of the Admiralty.

The nation knows how he was treated. A captain in the Navy aptly described the unwanted and slighted Admiral expert in _John Bull_, February, 1916, as follows:

"Lord John Fisher is to-day our second Nelson--a diplomatist among diplomats and a strategist unequalled in our history. What has Lord John Fisher done?

"He sc.r.a.pped 162 obsolete warships which were rotting in harbour at great expense--for which the Government tried to reprimand him.

"He introduced the water-tube boilers, which, as every engineer and seaman knows, raise a full head of steam in twenty minutes, instead of twenty hours, as formerly.

"He introduced the steam turbine, which was adopted by every nation.

"He introduced oil fuel into the Navy, thus making destroyers capable of steaming further, a great benefit being the almost total absence of smoke. He also applied it to battleships and other large craft.

"He introduced the Dreadnought, the bulwark of Britain, and the ship that baffled the German nation and made the Kiel Ca.n.a.l useless for years. The oil-burning, water-tubed destroyer, and the _Queen Elizabeth_--the Secret Service ship and the monitor--all emanated from his brain.

"He introduced the battle-cruiser, against the will of a timorous Government whose cry was ever, 'Cut down armaments,' 'Cut down the Army and Navy.' Had Fisher listened, the Germans would to-day have outraged our wives and crucified our children.

"He planned the Falkland Islands battle, and sent the Secret Service ships to chase the German submarines out of the Channel. He fought hard against the Dardanelles expedition.

"He was Sea Lord when we sank the _Blucher_, the German destroyers in the North Sea, the German Fleet at the Falklands.

"He is a great man, who seems never to have made a mistake."

Whilst Sir Edward Grey was giving his explanations in the House of Commons, Lord Devonport was busy in another place. He is one of our shrewdest and most experienced business men. As Chairman of the Port of London Authority and former Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade, he would not be likely to go into figures lightly.

He had given notice to ask the Government for its official figures of Holland's imports of ore (metal) during 1915.

The Duke of Devonshire replied that the figures provided him were only 650,000 tons. It was admitted that Holland had virtually no smelting plant, nor coal to feed it if it had, and the Government was virtually bound to confess that at least this amount of contraband had mostly gone straight through to Germany.

Lord Devonport clearly stated that in reality one and a half million tons of metal ore had been imported; whilst he produced statistics showing the name of every ship, the date of entry, the place from which the cargo came, the quant.i.ty and character of the ore carried, and the agents to whom each was consigned.

To summarise shortly the total shipments for the period named by Lord Devonport, August, 1914, to January 15, 1916, it appears that 298 ships carrying 1,414,311 tons of metal ore entered Rotterdam. The countries from which the ore came included Sweden, Norway, Spain, Algeria, Russia, and Great Britain. The totals shown monthly are as follows:

ORE CARGOES.

1914. No. of Ships. Tons.

August 38 174,162 September 11 61,679 October 10 47,900 November 8 37,300 December 14 63,900 ------ Total 384,941

1915.

January 17 76,200 February 17 79,700 March 13 85,800 April 22 123,800 May 17 68,100 June 21 95,350 July 21 89,150 August 19 82,300 September 19 92,400 October 22 105,270 November 13 59,700 December 12 48,300 Total 1,006,070

1916.

To January 15 4 23,800 ------- Grand Total 1,414,311

Two hundred and fifty eight ships carried 1,321,456 tons of iron ore; 25 ships carried 41,830 tons of zinc ore, the remainder taking copper ore, pyrites, nickel, manganese, and calamine.

Lord Devonport added:

"What has come of the much-vaunted order in Council declaring that no goods should either enter or leave Germany? What is the ultimate destination of these cargoes? There is no concealment about the matter. Every captain knows exactly. There are no facilities in Holland for converting ore into pig-iron; not a single blast-furnace, and no coal to feed it even if there were.

"The cargoes are transhipped into barges and carried up the Rhine to a place in easy communication with Essen, where Krupp's works are situated. Sweden is the main source of the supply. _It is astounding to me that the British Government should sit still while these ores are sent to the enemy_ from mines which are virtually the property of the Swedish Government.

"Great though _the imports of ore into Rotterdam have been, they are insignificant compared with the importations in German ports_ in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea--Lubeck, Stettin, Swinemunde, Emden and others. _From May 1st to December 31st, 1915, the total of those imports were 556 cargoes and 2,089,000 tons of ore._ The question is going to become critical for, _though the country has been tolerant and long-enduring, things have not gone too well_.

The sheet-anchor of the situation is the British Fleet."