Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 Part 9

Especially was this the case in Palestine in 1918, when brand-new native Indian regiments took the place of British troops belatedly summoned to the Western Front after our line had been broken at St.

Quentin. Nevertheless, a Downing Street intrigue was set on foot about the end of April 1918 to subst.i.tute Sir W. Robertson for the commander of the forces in India who had accomplished so much since taking over charge.

Not that there was any desire to remove Sir C. Monro. The object of the shuffle was simply to get Sir W. Robertson out of the country, in view of the manner in which his warnings in connection with strengthening our forces in France had been disregarded and of his having proved to be right. Sir William would no doubt have made an excellent Commander-in-Chief in India; but if ever there was an example of ill-contrived swapping of horses while crossing a stream, this precious plot would have provided the example had it been carried into execution. There would have been a three months' interregnum while the new chief was on his way out and was picking up the strings after getting out--this in the middle of the final year of the war!

The best-laid plans of politicians, however, gang aft a-gley. Sir C.

Monro had stipulated, when reluctantly agreeing to give up command of his army on the Western Front in the autumn of 1916 and to proceed to Bombay, that this Indian appointment was to be a permanent one, and not a temporary one such as all other appointments came to be during the war. He did not feel disposed to fall in with the Downing Street project when this was broached. Is it to be wondered at that military men regard some of the personnel that is found in Government circles with profound suspicion?

CHAPTER X

THE MUNITIONS QUESTION

Mr. Asquith's Newcastle speech -- The mischief that it did -- The time that must elapse before any great expansion in output of munitions can begin to materialize -- The situation a.n.a.logous to that of a building -- The Ministry of Munitions took, and was given, the credit for the expansion in output for the year subsequent to its creation, which was in reality the work of the War Office -- The Northcliffe Press stunt about sh.e.l.l shortage -- Its misleading character -- Sir H. Dalziel's attack upon General von Donop in the House -- Mr. Lloyd George's reply -- A discreditable episode -- Misapprehension on the subject of the army's preparedness for war in respect to material -- Misunderstanding as to the machine-gun position -- Lord French's attack upon the War Office with regard to munitions -- His responsibility for the lack of heavy artillery -- The matter taken up at the War Office before he ever raised it from G.H.Q.

-- His responsibility for the absence of high-explosive sh.e.l.l for our field artillery -- A misconception, as to the role of the General Staff -- The serious difficulty that arose with regard to this ammunition owing to prematures -- The misstatements in "_1914_" as to the amount of artillery ammunition which was sent across France to the Dardanelles -- Exaggerated estimates by factories as to what they would be able to turn out -- Their estimates discounted as a result of later experiences -- The Munitions Ministry not confined to its proper job -- The incident of 400 Tanks -- Conclusion.

Who reads the platform addresses of political personages, even the most eminent and the most plausible? Some people evidently do, or such utterances would not fill the columns of our newspapers. If one had ever felt tempted to peruse the reports of these harangues in the piping times of peace, one a.s.suredly had neither the inclination nor yet the leisure to indulge in such practices during the early days of the Great War. To skim off the cream of the morning's news while at breakfast was about as much as a War Office mandarin could manage in the way of reading the daily papers during that super-strenuous time.

One morning, however--it must have been the morning of the 22nd of April 1915--I met an a.s.sistant with a journal in his hand, as I was making my way along the corridor to my room in the War Office. "Seen this what Squiff says about the sh.e.l.l, general?" he asked, handing me the paper with his finger on the pa.s.sage in the Prime Minister's Newcastle speech, denying that there was an ammunition shortage.

The report of that discourse took one flat aback. For weeks past letters from G.H.Q., as also the fervent representations made by visitors over on duty or on leave from the front, had been harping upon this question. Lord Kitchener had informed the House of Lords on the 15th day of March that the supply of war material was "causing him considerable anxiety." There was not the slightest doubt, even allowing for the tendency of men exposed to nerve-racking experiences or placed in positions of anxious responsibility to find fault, that our army in France and Flanders was at a terrible disadvantage as compared to that opposed to it in the matter of artillery ammunition.

The state of affairs was perfectly well known, not merely to the personnel of batteries constantly restricted in respect to expenditure, but also to the infantry and to other branches of the service deprived of adequate gun support. Into the controversies and recriminations which have taken place over the subject of how this extraordinary statement came to be made at Newcastle, it is not proposed to enter here. There is at all events no controversy as to whether the statement was true or not, in substance and in fact. It is common knowledge now, and it was indeed fairly common knowledge at the time, that the statement was in the highest degree misleading. It did a great deal of mischief amongst the troops in the war zone, and it caused serious injury to those who were responsible for the provision of munitions in this country.

A p.r.o.nouncement of that kind, published as it was in all the newspapers, was bound to arouse comment not merely at home, but also amongst officers and men confronting the enemy between Dixmude and the La Ba.s.see Ca.n.a.l. These latter, who were only too well aware of the realities of the case, resented such a misstatement of facts, and they were also inclined to jump to the conclusion, not altogether unnaturally, that the serious ammunition shortage, the crying need for additional heavy ordnance, and so forth, were being deliberately ignored by those responsible for supply at home. The inferiority of our side in the field in respect to certain forms of munitions as compared to the enemy, came to be attributed to indifference and to mismanagement on the part of the Master-General of the Ordnance's department and of Lord Kitchener. Even the majority of artillery officers had not the slightest conception of what an expansion of output of munitions on a huge scale involved. Still less were staff officers in general and officers of other branches of the service in a position to interpret the situation correctly. They did not realize that before you can bring about any substantial increase of production in respect to sh.e.l.l, or fuses, or rifles, or machine-guns, or howitzers, you have to provide the machinery with which the particular form of war material is to be manufactured, and that you probably have to fashion some extensive structure to house that machinery in. It takes months before any tangible result can be obtained, the number of months to elapse varying according to the nature of the goods.

Dwellers in great cities will often note what happens when some ancient building has been demolished by the house-breaker. The site is concealed by an opaque h.o.a.rding. For months, even sometimes for years, nothing seems to follow. The pa.s.ser-by who happens to get an opportunity of peeping in when some gate is opened to let out a cart full of debris, only sees a vast crater at the bottom of which men, like ants, are scurrying about with barrows or are delving in the earth. All the time that the ground is being cleared and that the foundations are being laid, those out in the street know nothing of what is going on, and they wonder why some effort is not made to utilize the vacant s.p.a.ce for building purposes. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, scaffolding begins to rear its head. A few weeks later bricklayers and their work begin to show above the h.o.a.rding; and from that moment things at last are obviously on the move. The edifice grows from day to day. Within quite a short s.p.a.ce of time workmen are already putting on the roof. Then down comes the scaffolding, windows are put in, final touches are given to the interior, and, within what seems to be no time at all from the day when the scaffolding first was seen, the building is ready for occupation. So it is with the manufacture of munitions--experience in the United States in connection with output for us and also in connection with output for Russia, was exactly the same as in the United Kingdom in this respect.

An interminable time seems to elapse before the output begins; but once it has fairly started it grows by leaps and bounds.

At the time of the Newcastle oration, and for some months subsequently, the work of expansion on a colossal scale which the Master-General of the Ordnance had undertaken was still, speaking generally, rather on the footing of the building of which the foundations are only beginning to be laid even if the excavations have been completed and the debris has been cleared away. There was as yet comparatively little to show. The results did not begin to make themselves apparent until a date when the Ministry of Munitions had already come into being some time. That Department of State gained the benefit. Its Chief took the credit for work in connection with which it had for all practical purposes no responsibility beyond that of issuing what predecessors had arranged for. The full product of the contracts which the Master-General of the Ordnance had placed, of the development he had given to existing Government establishments, and of the setting up of entirely new ones by him, with Lord Kitchener ever using his driving power and his fertility of resource in support, only materialized in the winter of 1915-16, at a stage when the Ministry of Munitions had been already full six months in existence.

If the army in general failed to understand the position, it is hardly to be wondered at that Parliament and the less well-informed section of the Press should not understand the position, and that the public should have been deceived. Very shortly after the Newcastle speech, and no doubt largely in consequence of it, the Northcliffe Press stunt of May 1915 on the subject of sh.e.l.l shortage was initiated. Up to a certain point that stunt was not only fully justified, but was actually advantageous to the country. It made the nation acquainted with the fact that our troops were suffering severely from insufficiency of munitions. It stirred the community up, and that in itself was an excellent thing. But it succeeded somehow at the same time in conveying the impression that this condition of affairs was due to neglect, and in consequence it misled public opinion and did grave injustice. We must a.s.sume that, owing to fundamental ignorance of the problems involved, to a neglect to keep touch with industrial conditions, and to lack of acquaintance with the technicalities of munitions manufacture, these newspapers (which usually contrive to be extremely well informed, thanks to the great financial resources at their back) were totally unaware that a sudden expansion of output on a great scale was an impossibility; to suggest that this aspect of the problem was deliberately suppressed would be highly improper. The Northcliffe Press had also maybe failed to become acquainted with the great increase that had taken place in the forces at the front, as compared to the strength of the original Expeditionary Force which had provided the basis of calculation for munitions in pre-war days, an increase for which there was no counterpart in the armies of our Allies or of our enemies. Or the effect that this must have in accentuating munitions shortage may have been overlooked, obvious as it was. Be that as it may, the country readily accepted the story as it stood, and was in consequence grievously misinformed as to the merits of the question. The real truth has only leaked out since the cessation of hostilities, and it is not generally known now.[6]

[Footnote 6: So late as the 21st of April 1920 _The Times_ included the following pa.s.sage in a leading article: "Every gunner officer on the Western Front during the winter of 1914-15 knows that there was a grave and calamitous deficiency of sh.e.l.ls, and that no satisfactory attempt was made to rectify it until the matter was exposed in _The Times_."

Dragging in the "gunner officer" at the front (who could not possibly tell what steps were being taken to rectify the deficiency) does not alter the fact that this pa.s.sage amounts to an accusation that no satisfactory attempt was made to rectify the deficiency until after the Northcliffe Press stunt.

_The Times_ may have been so ill-informed as to the actual facts in 1915 as to suppose that this was true. _The Times_ cannot have been so ill-informed as to the actual facts in 1920 as to suppose that it was true.]

After the Government had decided to create a Munitions Ministry with Mr. Lloyd George at its head, one of the first incidents that occurred was an unsavoury one. In the course of the discussions in the House of Commons over the Bill setting up this new Department of State, Sir H.

Dalziel, a newspaper proprietor and a politician of long standing, delivered on the 1st of July a violent diatribe directed against Sir S. von Donop, the Master-General of the Ordnance. The honourable member no doubt quite honestly believed that the lack of munitions was due to neglect on the part of the War Office since the beginning of the war. It is clear that he was totally unqualified to express an opinion on the subject, and that he was ignorant of the manufacturing aspects of the problem. He had heard stories of mistakes made here and there, such as was inevitable at a time of tremendous stress. He probably had not the slightest conception that the primary cause of the sh.e.l.l shortage was the neglect of the Government of pre-war days (which had recognized his party services by conferring on him the dignity of a Privy-Councillorship) to give support to the establishments for manufacturing armaments that existed in the country. It is not with his performance on this occasion that one feels a disposition to quarrel, but with that of the newly created Minister of Munitions.

Mr. Lloyd George could not plead ignorance of the facts. He had been installed for a month or so. He must have known that it had been totally impossible to produce, within ten months of the outbreak of the war, the munitions that were required for an army in the field three or four times greater than had ever been thought of prior to mobilization.[7] He had actually given some pertinent information with regard to manufacturing difficulties when he was introducing the bill, which clearly demonstrated that he had grasped the general principles governing the problem of munitions output. But what was his att.i.tude?

Instead of following the honourable and chivalrous course, the course sanctioned by long-established precedent and practice on the part of Ministers of the Crown, of protecting, or trying to protect, the public servant who had been a.s.sailed, he contented himself with pointing out that the public servant ought to be given an opportunity of stating his side of the question--which was manifestly impossible in time of war--and that the onslaught was unexpected! There is not a man in the United Kingdom better able to protect himself, or anybody else, in speech and in argument in face of sudden attack than Mr.

Lloyd George. Had he been willing to do so he could have disposed of Sir H. Dalziel, who in reality had no case, with the utmost ease.

[Footnote 7: On the 1st July we had 23 divisions (exclusive of Indian divisions) in the field, and one on the water. The "Expeditionary Force"

consisted of six divisions, but a vague sort of organization for a seventh had also existed on paper.]

But that line apparently did not suit the book of the Minister of Munitions. He must have been well aware that a great improvement in output was already beginning to take place, and that, thanks entirely to the labours of the Ordnance Department of the War Office and of Lord Kitchener, the output would within a few months reach huge figures. If it were represented to the House, and through the House to the country, that this question of munitions had been grossly neglected up to the time that he took charge, and if it became apparent subsequently that from the hour of his becoming Munitions Minister a rapid improvement set in, then the thanks of the nation would go out to him and he would be canonized. This is the only explanation that I can find for a most discreditable incident. For he made no attempt to meet the attack, and he contrived to convey the impression by his remarks that the attack was fully justified. I have, moreover, good reason for believing that on that day there was present on the Treasury bench a representative of the War Office, not a Cabinet Minister, who was ready and willing to defend the Master-General of the Ordnance and who was acquainted with the facts, but that the Minister of Munitions, being in charge of the House, refused to sanction his speaking. Happily such occurrences are rare in the public life of this country.

That reply of Mr. Lloyd George's on the 1st of July 1915--anybody can look it up in Hansard--left an uncommonly nasty taste in the mouth.

The taste was made none the less nasty by his unblushing a.s.sumption on later occasions of the credit for the improvement in munitions output that took place from the summer of 1915 onwards. In my own case, although I was nowise concerned with munitions output then, neither pleasant a.s.sociation with Mr. Lloyd George at later dates in connection with various war problems, nor yet the admiration for the grit and courage displayed by him during the last three years of the great contest which is felt by us all, could wholly remove that nasty taste.

Much misapprehension--a misapprehension fostered by reckless and ignorant a.s.sertions made on the subject in Parliament and in the Press--exists in regard to the state of preparedness of our army for war in the matter of armament. Rightly or wrongly--most people probably now think wrongly--H.M. Government of pre-war days merely contemplated placing in the field for offensive purposes a force of six, or at the outside, seven divisions, with their complement of mounted troops. Leaving the Germans out of consideration, our Expeditionary Force of six divisions was upon the whole as well equipped in respect to armament (apart from ammunition reserves) as any one of the armies that were placed in the field in August 1914. It only failed in respect to two items, heavy ordnance and high-explosive sh.e.l.l for the field-guns, and in respect to field-howitzers and heavy field-guns (the 60-pounders) it was better off than any, including the German forces.

It will perhaps be urged that we were deplorably badly-off for machine-guns, and so in a sense we were. But what were the facts? The Expeditionary Force was better fitted out with this cla.s.s of weapon than any one of the embattled armies at the outset of the war, with the exception of the German. Ex-Kaiser William's hosts enjoyed a tremendous advantage in respect to machine-guns, but they enjoyed that advantage to an even greater extent over the French and Russian legions than over ours. No action on the part of the German Great General Staff before the conflict reflects greater credit upon their prescience, than does their recognition in the time of peace of the great part that the mitrailleuse was capable of playing in contemporary warfare. The quant.i.ties of these weapons with which our princ.i.p.al antagonist took the field was a complete surprise to all; these were far in excess of the "establishment" that had been acknowledged and which was the same as our own. As a matter of fact we were better off for them, relatively, than the French, or Austro-Hungarians, or Russians. To say that the question of machine-guns had been neglected by us before the war either from the point of view of tactics or of supply, is almost as unfair as it would be to allege that the question of Tanks had been neglected by the Germans before the Battle of the Somme. In the course of the debate in the House over the Munitions Bill in the early summer of 1915, Sir F.

Cawley stated that we were short of machine-guns at the beginning of the war, and that none had been provided; the first charge was made under a misapprehension, and the second charge was contrary to the fact because a number of entirely new units had been fitted out with the weapons. Mr. Lloyd George's statement, made a week before, that it takes eight or nine months to turn out a machine-gun from the time that the requisite new machinery is ordered, was ignored.

This brings us to the question of heavy ordnance and of high-explosive ammunition for field-guns, and in this connection it is necessary to refer to the violent attacks made upon the War Office in respect to the supply of munitions, which find place in Lord French's "_1914_."

The Field-Marshal has not minced matters in his references to this subject. He says of Mr. Lloyd George's work that it "was done in the face of a dead weight of senseless but powerful opposition, all of which he had to undermine and overcome." He speaks of the "apathy of a Government which had brought the Empire to the brink of disaster,"

although his att.i.tude towards the head of that Government hardly betrays this. He devotes his last chapter to "making known some of the efforts" that he "made to awaken both the Government and the public from the apathy which meant certain defeat." His book appeared in the summer of 1919, three and a half years after he had returned from France, three and a half years which had given him ample time to examine at home into the justice of views which he had formed during critical months when confronting the enemy. His att.i.tude relieves one of many scruples that might have otherwise been entertained when discussing the statement which he has made.

"_1914_," possibly unintentionally, leaves it to be inferred in respect to heavy howitzers and similar ordnance, that the question of supplying artillery of that type was first raised by Lord French himself during the Battle of the Aisne. For the absence of any such pieces from the Expeditionary Force when it started, no one, in my opinion, was more responsible than the Field-Marshal. Plenty of gunner officers were advocates of the employment of such ordnance in the field, although none probably fully realized the importance of the matter; but what evidence is there of encouragement from the Inspector-General of the Forces of 1907-12 and C.I.G.S. of 1912-14, who had been controlling the manoevres of the regular army for the half-dozen years preceding August 1914? The question was taken up within the War Office three or four weeks before the commencement of the Battle of the Aisne--as soon, in fact, as the effect of the German heavy howitzers against Liege and Namur came to be realized. I spoke to Sir C. Douglas on the subject myself--I believe before the retreat from Mons began. A Committee was set up, to which I contributed a member from amongst the gunners in my branch. The immediate construction of a very large--although not nearly large enough--number of 8-inch, 9.2-inch and 12-inch howitzers was recommended by this body. Lord Kitchener approved its recommendations on the spot, and the Master-General of the Ordnance started work. All this, I believe, took place before Sir J. French raised the question at all. But past neglect could not be overcome at a moment's notice. Experiments had to be carried out, and designs had to be approved. To construct a big howitzer with its mounting takes time even after you have the machinery available, and in 1914 the machinery had to be got together in the first instance. How the ex-First Member of the Army Council comes to be unaware of the extent to which the factor of time enters into the construction of armament, I do not pretend to understand.

To a retired officer of artillery who had kept himself acquainted with military progress, it did seem strange that after the Balkan War of 1912-13, which had clearly demonstrated the value of high-explosive ammunition with field-guns, the War Office should continue to depend entirely upon shrapnel for our 18-pounders, instead of following the example of all other European countries that spent any considerable sums on their armies. No very intimate acquaintance with technical details was needed to realize that there were difficulties in the way, and that high-explosive is awkward stuff to deal with--a gun of my own 5-inch battery in South Africa was, shortly after I had left the unit to take up other work, blown to pieces by a lyddite sh.e.l.l detonating in the bore, with dire results to the detachment. To secure detonation is more difficult in a small, than in a big sh.e.l.l; but other countries had managed to solve the problem in the case of their field-guns somehow.

On joining at the War Office on mobilization, and before any fighting had taken place, I asked about the matter, but was not wholly convinced that there was adequate excuse for our taking the field without what our antagonists and our Allies alike regarded as a requisite. Ever since I joined the Army in 1878--and before--there had been a vein of conservatism running through the upper ranks of the Royal Artillery. (When my battery proceeded from India to Natal to take part in the first Boer War in 1881, we actually had to change our Armstrong breech-loading field-guns for muzzle-loaders on the way, because breech-loaders had been abandoned at home and there was no ammunition for them.) Of late years a progressive school had come into being--technically described as "Young Turks"--who had tried hard to secure the introduction of four-gun batteries and other up-to-date reforms, but without having it all their own way by any means. Whether the Young Turks favoured high-explosive or not, I do not know; but its absence somehow did rather smack of the reactionary, and, with the exception of one of its members, the personnel of the Expeditionary Force appeared to have some grounds for complaint at its field-batteries having none of this form of ammunition. The one exception was, in my opinion, its commander-in-chief.

Lord French's account of his achievements in this matter is artless to a degree. He informs his readers that he was always an advocate for the supply of high-explosive sh.e.l.l to our horse and field artillery, but that he got very little support; that such support as he got was lukewarm in the extreme, and, finally, we are told that the "Ordnance Board was not in favour of it." Here we have the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and First Military Member of the Army Council advocating the adoption in our army of what practically all other armies had already adopted or were adopting, the adoption of a form of munitions the value of which had been conclusively demonstrated in encounters of which the General Staff must have had full cognizance, and he is turned down by the "Ordnance Board"! If this represents the Field-Marshal's conception of the position and the duties of the General Staff and its head, then it is not surprising that, under another chief, Tanks were dismissed with ignominy by a technical branch of the War Office in January 1915 without the General Staff ever having been consulted. The pre-war C.I.G.S. was in a dominating position amongst the Military Members of the Army Council in virtue of his high rank and his distinguished antecedents. He was very much more than a _primus inter pares_. He was a field-marshal while the Master-General of the Ordnance was a colonel with temporary rank of major-general. Surely, if he had pressed this matter before the Army Council, he would have received support? I feel equally sure that, supposing the Army Council had refused to listen to his urgings, he would have received satisfaction on representing the matter to the Committee of Imperial Defence.

As a matter of fact, it was only after more than one representation made by General von Donop that G.H.Q. agreed to take some high-explosive ammunition, and so it was introduced--in small quant.i.ties--very soon after fighting began, and when the urgent need of it had become apparent. But the output was necessarily very restricted for a long time, and no amount of talk and of bounce, such as the Minister of Munitions was wont to indulge in from the summer of 1915 onwards for several months, would have increased it. Here was a case of an entirely new article, for the provision of which no steps had been taken before the war. There happened to be special technical difficulties in the way of producing the article, _e.g._ the hardness of the steel necessary for this type of sh.e.l.l, and devising a safe and effective fuse. There is, moreover, one matter in connection with this question of high-explosive for our 18-pounders which should be mentioned, but to which no reference finds a place in "_1914_."

Some months after this ammunition first came to be used in the field it began to give serious trouble. Something was wrong. The sh.e.l.l took to bursting in the bore of the gun and to bulging, or wholly destroying, the piece, although these disasters fortunately did not generally involve loss of life. Between August and October 1915, no less than sixty-four of our 18-pounders were thus rendered unserviceable--very nearly double the number lost during the retreat from Mons, and considerably more than the complement of one of our divisions. We could not comfortably afford this drain upon our supply of field-guns at a time when New Army divisions were still in some cases gun-less, and when the Territorial division were still armed with the virtually obsolete 15-pounder. Accidents of this character, moreover, have a bad effect upon the personnel of batteries, for the soldier does not like his weapon, be it a rifle, or a hand-grenade, or a sabre that crumples up, to play tricks on him. The difficulty was not got over until elaborate experiments, immediately set on foot by the War Office (which still dealt with design and investigation, although actual manufacture was by this time in the hands of the Ministry of Munitions), had been carried out. But before the end of the year it had been established that the failures were due to faults in manufacture, and from that time forward these _contretemps_ became extremely rare in the case of the 18-pounder. The question caused acute anxiety at G.H.Q. and in the War Office for some weeks; the French had had a very similar experience, but on an even worse scale.

The difficulty arose just after the Ministry of Munitions became responsible for manufacture, and I do not suggest that the destruction of the guns was the fault of that department, for the ammunition used in the field during that period and for many months later was ammunition ordered by the Master-General of the Ordnance. But similar trouble arose later in the case of the field howitzer; there were no less than 25 of these damaged between April and June 1916, nearly a year after the Munitions Ministry had been set up.

It should be mentioned that some other statements regarding munitions which appear in "_1914_" are inaccurate. In discussing Lord Kitchener's memorandum written at the beginning of January 1915, which intimated that H.M. Government vetoed the Belgian coast project, Lord French declares that two or three months later, viz. in March and April, "large train-loads of ammunition--heavy, medium, and light--pa.s.sed by the rear of the army in France _en route_ for Ma.r.s.eilles for shipment to the Dardanelles." The Admiralty may possibly have sent some ammunition by that route at that time, but it is extremely unlikely. As for munitions for Sir I. Hamilton's troops, the Dardanelles force did not land till the end of April, and its war material was sent by long sea from the United Kingdom; very little would have been gained, even in time, by adopting the route across France. No great quant.i.ties of ammunition were sent from the United Kingdom across country at any juncture to the Gallipoli Peninsula, but G.H.Q. in France was once called upon to sacrifice some of its reserve, and Lord French makes especial reference to this incident.

He says that on the 9th of May--the date on which he launched his political intrigue--he was directed by the Secretary of State for War to despatch 20 per cent of his reserve supply of ammunition to the Dardanelles. Now, what are the facts? Sir I. Hamilton had urgently demanded ammunition for a contemplated offensive. A vessel that was loading up at Ma.r.s.eilles would reach the Aegean in time. To pa.s.s the consignment through from the United Kingdom (where a large supply had just come to hand from America) would mean missing the ship. G.H.Q.

were therefore instructed to forward 20,000 field-gun rounds and 2000 field-howitzer rounds to the Mediterranean port, and were at the same time a.s.sured that the rounds would straightway, over and above the normal nightly allowance sent across the Channel, be made good from home. Sent off by G.H.Q. under protest, the field-gun rounds were replaced _within twenty-four hours_ and the others within four days, but of the engagement entered into, and kept, by the War Office, "_1914_" says not one word. Lord French was evidently completely misinformed on this matter.

It should be added that the amount of heavy artillery included in the Dardanelles Expeditionary Force was negligible, and that the amount of medium artillery was relatively very small. Large train-loads of ammunition for such pieces were never required, nor sent. Inaccurate statements of this kind tend to discredit much of Lord French's severe criticism of Lord Kitchener and the department of the Master-General of the Ordnance, for which there is small justification in any case.

One point made in the "Ammunition" chapter in "_1914_" deserves a word of comment. Lord French mentions that the supply of sh.e.l.l received at the front in May proved to be less than half of the War Office estimate. That kind of thing went on after supply had been transferred from the War Office to the Ministry of Munitions. I had something to say to munitions at a subsequent period of the war, as will be touched upon later, and used to see the returns and estimates. The Munitions Ministry was invariably behind its estimates (although seldom, if ever, to the extent of over 50 per cent) right up to the end. There you have our old friend, the Man of Business, with his intolerable sw.a.n.k. Some old-established private factories, as well as some new factories set up during the war, were in the habit of promising more than they could possibly perform. Certain of them were, indeed, ready to promise almost anything. Their behaviour, I happen to know, caused some of our Allies who placed contracts with them and were let in, extreme annoyance. The names of one or two of them possibly stink in the nostrils of certain foreign countries to this day, although that sort of thing may also be common abroad. Those in authority came to realize in the later stages of the war how little reliance could be placed on promises, and they became sceptical. The Ministry of Munitions, one can well imagine, discounted the estimates that they got from their manufacturing establishments. The War Office certainly discounted the estimates that it got from the Ministry of Munitions.

Commanders-in-chief in the field consequently no longer miscalculated what they might expect, to the same extent as Sir J. French did in May 1915.

I only became directly a.s.sociated with armament questions in the summer of 1916, and then came for the first time into contact with the Ministry of Munitions. Such questions are matters of opinion, but it always seemed to me that this Department of State would have done better had it stuck to its proper job--that of providing what the Army and the Air Service required. The capture of design and inspection by the Ministry may have been unavoidable, seeing that this new organization was improvised actually during the course of a great war and under conditions of emergency; but the principle is radically wrong. It is for the department which wants a thing to say what it wants and to see that it gets it. As a matter of fact, the Munitions Ministry occasionally went even farther, and actually allocated goods required by the Army to other purposes. When a well-known and popular politician, after spending some three years or so at the front with credit to himself, took up a dignified appointment in Armament Buildings, the first thing that he did was to promise a trifle of 400 tanks to the French without any reference to the military authorities at all. Still, who would blame him? His action, when all is said and done, was merely typical of that "every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost" att.i.tude a.s.sumed by latter-day neoteric Government inst.i.tutions. But even the most phlegmatic member of the community will feel upset when the trousers which he has ordered are consigned by his tailor to somebody else, and on this occasion the War Office did gird up its loins and remonstrate in forcible terms.

With regard to the War Office and munitions, it only remains to be said again in conclusion that the country was never told the truth about this subject until some months after the armistice, when the nation had ceased to care. Never was it told till then, nor were the forces which had been fighting in the field told, that the great increase in the output of guns, howitzers, machine-guns, and ammunition, which took place from the autumn of 1915 onwards up to just before the Battle of the Somme, was the achievement, not of the Ministry of Munitions but of the War Office. The Munitions Ministry in due course did splendid work. Chancellor of the Exchequer become lord-paramount of a great spending Department of State, its chief was on velvet. "Copper" turned footpad, he knew the ropes, he could flout the Treasury--and he did. But it is a pity that unwarrantable claims should have been put forward on behalf of the department in not irresponsible quarters at a time when they could not be denied, claims which have tended to bring the department as a whole into undeserved disrepute amongst those who know the facts.

CHAPTER XI

COUNCILS, COMMITTEES, AND CABINETS

The responsibilities of experts at War Councils -- The Rt. Hon.

A. Fisher's views -- Discussion as to whether these meet the case -- Under the War Cabinet system, the question does not arise -- The Committee of Imperial Defence merged in the War Council early in the conflict -- The Dardanelles Committee -- Finding a formula -- Mr. Churchill backs up Sir I. Hamilton -- The spirit of compromise -- The Cabinet carrying on _pari pa.s.su_ with the Dardanelles Committee -- Personal experiences with the Cabinet -- The War Council which succeeded the Dardanelles Committee -- An ill.u.s.tration of the value of the War Cabinet system -- Some of its inconveniences -- Ministers -- Mr. Henderson -- Sir E. Carson -- Mr. Bonar Law -- The question of resignation of individuals -- Lord Curzon -- Mr. Churchill -- Mr. Lloyd George.

Before proceeding to refer to a few personal experiences in connection with the Ministerial pow-wows at which the conduct of the war was decided, there is one matter of some public importance to which a reference will not be out of place. That matter is the question of responsibility imposed upon experts at gatherings of this kind. Are they to wait until they are spoken to, no matter what folly is on the tapis, or are they to intervene without invitation when things become serious? My own experience is that on these occasions Ministers have such a lot to say that the expert is likely to be overlooked in the babel unless he flings himself into the fray.