Castles of Steel (87 page)

Underlying the specific reasons Fisher gave for opposing Churchill lay deeper reasons based on personality. His motives for turning against the Dardanelles operation stemmed at least in part from the strange administrative position into which they all had drifted. In November 1914, Asquith had formed the War Council as a select committee of the Cabinet, including Asquith, Haldane, Kitchener, Lloyd George, and Grey, along with some others like Arthur Balfour, the Conservative former prime minister. There was already an imbalance at the top: the secretary of state for war was an eminent soldier and a national hero, while the First Lord of the Admiralty was a civilian with no naval and only early military experience. Churchill was keenly aware of this inequity: “I had not the same weight or authority as those two ministers [Asquith and Kitchener] nor the same power, and if they said ‘This is to be done, or not be done’ that settled it,” said Churchill. This modest statement is not entirely convincing. Churchill possessed unparalleled powers of persuasion and argued with incomparable virtuosity. But in the first year of war Kitchener’s prestige and authority were overwhelming. “All powerful, imperturbable, reserved, he dominated absolutely our counsels at this time,” Churchill said of him. On specific matters of strategy and prosecution of the war, Asquith, an urbane political and parliamentary compromiser, and Churchill, a brilliantly imaginative and articulate forty-year-old, simply could not challenge this colossus.

Below this level of supreme authority stood the generals and admirals present in War Council meetings to advise if called upon. Here, a misconception had hardened into permanence. Ministers assumed that the service chiefs would freely speak their minds, without being invited to do so, but these experts did not consider that they should break in to express opinions or dissent. Asquith, who always presided, never invited the attending service chiefs to speak but rather allowed himself to be wholly guided on military and naval matters by the secretary of state for war and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Fisher rarely spoke and never protested. “I made it a rule that I would not at the War Council kick Winston Churchill’s shins,” he said. “He [Churchill] was my chief and it was silence or resignation.” Thus, whether they agreed with the First Lord or not, the admirals sat silent; unfortunately, this silence was taken as assent. The War Council took it for granted that when Churchill spoke, he had first settled things within his department and was speaking for the entire Admiralty.

There was another imbalance that grated on Fisher. His position was entirely different from Kitchener’s. Unlike Kitchener, he was not a minister; he was only a technical adviser. He could not make policy or vote, even on matters that affected the navy. Yet to the British public Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone was something more than the incumbent First Sea Lord: he
was
the Royal Navy. His reputation was as overwhelming as the dreadnoughts he had built, and he spoke with the blast effect of their massive guns. To Fisher, sitting and listening day after day while Kitchener dominated the War Council with his opinions, it seemed that the imperial war lord was showing an inappropriate disregard—even disrespect—for what in Britain had always been the senior service.

Until mid-January, Fisher did not openly complain about the Dardanelles plan; indeed, it was he who had proposed adding
Queen Elizabeth.
But following the January 13 meeting, Fisher had deeper misgivings. He tried to fix his forebodings about the Dardanelles adventure into some logical argument that would establish his general sense of uneasiness and that he could present to Churchill, whom he enormously liked and admired. But when he tried, Churchill had no difficulty, either privately or publicly, in proving him wrong. Not only did Fisher’s own cherished scheme, a naval campaign in the Baltic, now obviously have no chance—but also, as he saw it, the Grand Fleet, the central pillar of British naval supremacy and war strategy, was now being nibbled away by the devouring demands of the Dardanelles. Fisher, after all, was the First Sea Lord who, ten years earlier, had brought the British navy home and concentrated it against the growing threat from Imperial Germany. Now, returned to office, he insisted that nothing be done to permit the loss of this hard-won supremacy.

Fisher himself precipitated a crisis on January 25 when sent his views in writing to the prime minister with a copy to Churchill. “First Lord,” he wrote in a cover note, “I have no desire to continue a useless resistance in the War Council to plans I cannot concur in, but I would ask that the enclosed may be printed and circulated to members [of the War Council] before the next meeting.” The memorandum pointed to the folly of the whole Dardanelles scheme. “We play into Germany’s hands,” Fisher wrote, “if we risk fighting ships in any subsidiary operations such as coastal bombardments or the attack of fortified places without military cooperation, for we thereby increase the possibility that the Germans may be able to engage our fleet with some approach to equality of strength. . . . Even the older ships should not be risked, for they cannot be lost without losing men and they form the only reserve behind our Grand Fleet. . . . The sole justification of coastal bombardments and attacks by the fleet on fortified places, such as the contemplated bombardment of the Dardanelles forts . . . , is to force a decision at sea, and so far and no farther can they be justified.” Britain, Fisher argued, should be content with maintaining the North Sea blockade of Germany. “Being already in possession of all that a powerful fleet can give a country, we should continue quietly to enjoy the advantage without dissipating our strength in operations that cannot improve the position.” Although Fisher asked that this document be circulated to the War Council, Asquith, on Churchill’s recommendation, refused to do so.

Instead, Churchill replied on January 27, declaring that the central argument in Fisher’s paper was indisputable: the primary responsibility of the Admiralty was to maintain the Grand Fleet at a strength sufficient to ensure defeat of the German High Seas Fleet in battle. This responsibility, the First Lord argued, was being faithfully discharged. Once again, as he had in November and December, the First Lord provided a comparative list of the numerical strength of the two fleets. In addition to everything necessary to ensure victory in a climactic North Sea battle, Churchill pointed out, Britain also had twenty-one old battleships, heavily armed and armored, completely manned and supplied with their own ammunition, lying idle since they were unfit to meet modern German ships. “Not to use them where necessary because of some fear that there would be an outcry if a ship is lost would be wrong,” Churchill insisted.

Meanwhile, planning for the operation continued. By the last week of January, supplies were assembled and ships were under orders. All that was needed was the final approval of the War Council. This was to be given at a meeting scheduled for 11:30 on the morning of January 28. That morning, Churchill found Fisher’s resignation on his desk: “I entreat you to believe that if as I think really desirable for a complete unity of purpose in the war that I should gracefully disappear and revert to roses at Richmond,” Fisher had written. “There will not be in my heart the least lingering thought of anything but regard and affection and indeed much admiration towards yourself.” Knowing that Asquith had refused to circulate his memorandum and that War Council members would be unaware of his views, Fisher also wrote to the prime minister, saying that he did not wish to attend the War Council meeting that day: “I am not in accord with the First Lord and do not think it would be seemly to say so before the Council. . . . I say that the . . . Dardanelles bombardments can only be justified on naval grounds by military cooperation which would compensate for the loss in ships and irreplaceable officers and men. As purely naval operations they are unjustifiable. . . . I am very reluctant to leave the First Lord. I have a great personal affection and admiration for him, but I see no possibility of a union of ideas, and unity is essential in war so I refrain from any desire of remaining as a stumbling block. The British Empire ceases if our Grand Fleet ceases. No risks can be taken.”

The withdrawal of Fisher’s support on the very day that the War Council was scheduled to approve the enterprise was awkward for both Asquith and Churchill. Struggling to keep the old admiral in line, the First Lord insisted that Fisher talk to the prime minister. Arriving with Churchill in Asquith’s Downing Street study a few minutes before the council meeting began, Fisher described to the prime minister his objections to a Dardanelles operation. Churchill urged that it be allowed to continue. Asquith, forced to choose, decided that the attack should go forward. Fisher received this decision in silence and both the prime minister and the First Lord assumed that he had accepted it. Together, the three men then went downstairs to the meeting of the War Council in the Cabinet Room.

Fisher attended this meeting in the belief that in their just completed conversation, Asquith had said that a final decision on the Dardanelles was not to be taken that day. The mood at the council meeting was cheerfully optimistic; Churchill’s continuing enthusiasm had colored the views of his colleagues. The First Lord reported that preparations for the attack on the Dardanelles were well advanced, but that the council must understand that the expedition “undoubtedly involves risks.” As soon as Churchill finished, Fisher intervened to say that “he had understood that this question would not be raised at this meeting and that the prime minister knew his views on the subject.” To this, Asquith replied that “in view of the steps which already had been taken, the question could not be well left in abeyance.” Fisher thereupon stood up and made for the door. Kitchener saw this and, jumping to his feet, succeeded in reaching the door first. Steering Fisher to a window, he quietly asked the admiral what he was going to do. Fisher replied that he would not go back to the table and that he intended to resign as First Sea Lord. Kitchener pointed out that Fisher was the only man present who disagreed with the proposed operation; that the prime minister had made a decision and that it was the First Sea Lord’s duty to his country to accept it and continue in office. Reluctantly, Fisher went back to the table where ministers were competing in optimistic predictions. Kitchener now declared that a naval attack was vitally important; the great merit of this form of offensive action, he said, was that “if satisfactory progress could not be made, the attack could be broken off.” Balfour said that “it was difficult to imagine a more hopeful operation.” Grey said that “the Turks would be paralyzed with fear when they heard that the forts were being destroyed one by one”; that the neutral Balkan powers, all anxious to be on the winning side, would watch the progress of this effort, and that he hoped that success would finally settle the attitude of Bulgaria. Through all of this, Asquith noticed, Fisher maintained “an obstinate and ominous silence.”

The meeting adjourned at 2:00 p.m. to resume in the late afternoon. During this interval, Churchill, who had seen Kitchener talking privately to Fisher, spoke to the old admiral in his room at the Admiralty. The conversation was “long and very friendly,” in Churchill’s phrase, “I am in no way concealing the great and continuous pressure which I put upon the old admiral,” Churchill admitted later, and Fisher often complained to friends about his inability to withstand these tactics. “He always out-argues me,” he said to one. And to another: “I am sure I am right, I am sure I am right, but he is always convincing me against my will. I hear him talk and he seems to make the difficulties vanish and when he is gone I sit down and write him a letter and say I agree. Then I go to bed and can’t sleep, and his talk passes away and I know I am right. So I get up and write him another letter and say I don’t agree, and so it goes on.” Something of this kind happened on the afternoon of January 28. By the end of his talk with Churchill, Fisher had consented to support the Dardanelles operation.

When the War Council reconvened in the late afternoon, Churchill—accompanied by Fisher—was able to announce that everyone at the Admiralty agreed that the navy would undertake the operation. Fisher’s conversion seemed, for the moment, to be complete. “When I finally decided to go in,” Fisher said later, “I went the whole hog,
totus porcus.
” Indeed, Churchill had been so successful that Fisher added
Lord Nelson
and
Agamemnon
as well as
Queen Elizabeth
to the operation. “This I took as the point of final decision,” Churchill wrote. “After it, I never looked back. We had left the region of discussion and consultation, of balancing and misgivings. The matter had passed into the domain of action.”

Fisher, momentarily defeated, remained unconvinced. In his own mind, his position was clear: he had favored a joint attack but he fiercely opposed a purely naval attack. He had made this view clear to the First Lord, to the prime minister, and to his colleagues at the Admiralty. Under pressure, he had been persuaded to support the attack. “When the operation was undertaken, my duty from that time on was to see that the government plan was carried out as successfully as possible with the available means. I did everything I could to secure its success. I put my whole heart into it and worked like a Trojan.” But in private, he never stopped expressing his personal opinion. “The more I consider the Dardanelles the less I like it,” he wrote to Churchill on March 4. At the end of March, he wrote, “A failure or check in the Dardanelles would be nothing. A failure in the North Sea would be ruin.” On April 5, he wrote to Churchill again, “You are just simply eaten up with the Dardanelles and cannot think of anything else. Damn the Dardanelles! They will be our grave!”