The Prologue of Armageddon—The “Prince Henry” Race—Bernhardi—“England and the Next War”—“Danger”—General Sir H. Wilson—The Channel Tunnel—Naval Defects—Rubber Collars—Mines—Willie Redmond.
For a long time I never seriously believed in the German menace. Frequently I found myself alone, in a company of educated Englishmen, in my opinion that it was non-existent—or at worst greatly exaggerated. This conclusion was formed on two grounds. The first was, that I knew it to be impossible that we could attack Germany save in the face of monstrous provocation. By the conditions of our government, even if those in high places desired to do such a thing, it was utterly impracticable, for a foreign war could not be successfully carried on by Great Britain unless the overwhelming majority of the people approved of it. Our foreign, like our home, politics are governed by the vote of the proletariat. It would be impossible to wage an aggressive war against any Power if the public were not convinced of its justice and necessity. For this reason we could not attack Germany. On the other hand, it seemed to be equally unthinkable that Germany should attack us. One failed to see what she could possibly hope to gain by such a proceeding. She had enemies already upon her eastern and western frontiers, and it was surely unlikely that she would go out of her way to pick a quarrel with the powerful British Empire. If she made war and lost it, her commerce would be set back and her rising colonial empire destroyed. If she won it, it was difficult to see where she could hope for the spoils. We could not give her greater facilities for trade than she had already. We could not give her habitable white colonies, for she would find it impossible to take possession of them in the face of the opposition of the inhabitants. An indemnity she could never force from us. Some coaling stations and possibly some tropical colonies, of which latter she already possessed abundance, were the most that she could hope for. Would such a prize as that be worth the risk attending such a war? To me it seemed that there could be only one answer to such a question.
I am still of the same opinion. But unhappily the affairs of nations are not always regulated by reason, and occasionally a country may be afflicted by a madness which sets all calculations at defiance. Then, again, I had looked upon the matter too much as between Great Britain and Germany. I had not sufficiently considered the chance of our being drawn in against our will in order to safeguard Belgium, or in order to stop the annihilation of France. It was so perfectly clear that Britain by her treaty obligations, and by all that is human and honourable, would fight if Belgium were invaded, that one could not conceive Germany taking such a step with any other expectation. And yet what we could not conceive is exactly what happened, for it is clear that the delusions as to our degeneration in character had really persuaded the Germans that the big cowardly fellow would stand by with folded arms and see his little friend knocked about by the bully. The whole idea showed an extraordinary ignorance of the British psychology, but absurd as it was, it was none the less the determining influence at the critical moment of the world’s history. The influence of the lie is one of the strangest problems of life—that which is not continually influences that which is. Within one generation imagination and misrepresentation have destroyed the Boer republics and Imperial Germany.
One of my most remarkable pre-war experiences, which influenced my mind deeply, was my participation in the amateur motor race called the Prince Henry Competition. It was rather a reliability test than a race, for the car had to go some 150 miles a day on an average at its own pace, but marks were taken off for all involuntary stoppages, breakdowns, accidents, etc. Each owner had to drive his own car, and I had entered my little sixteen horse-power landaulette. There were about forty British cars and fifty German, so that the procession was a very considerable one. Starting from Homburg, the watering-place, our route ran through North Germany, then by steamer to Southampton, up to Edinburgh and back to London by devious ways.
The competition had been planned in Germany, and there can be no doubt in looking back that a political purpose underlay it. The idea was to create a false entente by means of sport, which would react upon the very serious political development in the wind, namely, the occupation of Agadir on the south-west coast of Morocco, which occurred on our second day out. As Prince Henry, who organized and took part in the competition, was also head of the German Navy, it is of course obvious that he knew that the Panther was going to Agadir, and that there was a direct connection between the two events, in each of which he was a leading actor. It was a clumsy bit of stage management and could not possibly have been effective.
The peculiarity of the tour was that each car had an officer of the army or navy of the other nation as a passenger, to check the marks. Thus my wife and I had the enforced company for nearly three weeks of Count Carmer, Rittmeister of Breslau Cuirassiers, who began by being stiff and inhuman, but speedily thawed and became a very good fellow. The arrangements were very peculiar. Some British paper—the “Mail” if I remember right—had stated that the Competition was really a device to pass a number of German officers through Great Britain in order to spy out the land. I think there may have been some truth in this, as our good Count when we reached London went off to a hotel down in the East End, which seemed a curious thing for a wealthy Junker to do. This criticism seems to have annoyed the Kaiser, and he said—or so it was reported—that none but junior officers should go as observers. I should think that ours was the senior of the lot, and the others were mostly captains and lieutenants. On the other hand, the British Government, out of compliment to Prince Henry, had appointed the very best men available as observers. If there had been a sudden crisis over Agadir, and Germany had impounded us all, it would have been a national disaster and would have made a difference in a European war. Speaking from an imperfect memory, I can recall that we had General Grierson, Charles Munro, Rawlinson, I think, Captain—now General—Swinton of Tanks fame, Delme Ratcliffe, Colonel—now General—Holman, Major—now General—Thwaites, and many other notables both of the Army and Navy.
From the first relations were strained. There was natural annoyance when these senior officers found that their opposite numbers were youngsters of no experience. Then, again, at Cologne and Munster I understand that the German military did not show the proper courtesies, and certainly the hospitality which the whole party received until we reached England was negligible. The Germans themselves must have felt ashamed of the difference. Personally the competitors were not a bad set of fellows, though there were some bounders among them. We were not all above criticism ourselves.
Of the Competition itself little need be said, as I have treated the sporting side of it elsewhere. Some of the Germans seemed to me to be a little mad, for they seemed consumed by the idea that it was a race, whereas it mattered nothing who was at the head of the procession or who at the tail, so long as you did the allotted distance in the allotted time. I saw a German bound into his car after some stoppage: “How many ahead? Three Englishmen! Forwards! Forwards!” he cried. They barged into each other, dashed furiously round corners, and altogether behaved in a wild fashion, while our sedate old fellows pursued their course in a humdrum fashion and saved their marks. There were, however, some good fellows among the Germans. I have not forgotten how one of them, anonymously, used to place flowers in my wife’s corner every morning.
But as an attempt at an entente it was a great failure. The British officer who was compelled to spend weeks with a carload of Germans was not expansive and refused to be digested. Some of the Germans, too, became disagreeable. I saw a large German car—they were all Benz and Mercédès, generally 70-80 horse-power—edge a little British car right off the road on to the grass track beside it. The driver of the British car was a pretty useful middle-weight boxer, but he kept his temper or there might have been trouble. There was very little love lost on either side, though I, as one of the few German-speaking competitors, did my very best to bring about a more cordial atmosphere. But war was in the air. Both sides spoke of it. Several of the British officers were either of the Intelligence branch, or had special German experience, and they were unanimous about it. My attempts towards peace were rejected. “The only thing I want to do with these people is to fight them,” said Colonel Holman. “Same here,” said the officer with him. It was a deep antagonism on either side. They were not only sure of the war, but of the date. “It will be on the first pretext after the Kiel Canal is widened.” The Kiel Canal was finished in June, 1914, and war came in August, so that they were not far wrong. There was some little German chaff on the subject. “Wouldn’t you like one of these little islands?” I heard a German say as we steamed out past Heligoland and the Frisian Belt.
It was this experience which first made me take the threat of war seriously, but I could have persuaded myself that I was misled, had it not been that I read soon afterwards Bernhardi’s book “Germany and the Next War.” I studied it carefully and I put my impression of it into print in an article called “England and the Next War,” which appeared in the “Fortnightly Review” in the summer of 1913. It lies before me now, as I write, and it is interesting to see how, as I projected my mind and my imagination over the possibilities of the future, I read much aright and some little wrong.
I began by epitomizing Bernhardi’s whole argument, and showing that, however we might disagree with it, we were bound to take it seriously, since he was undoubtedly a leader of a certain class of thought in his own country—that very military class which was now predominant. I demurred at his assumption that the German Army in equal numbers must overcome the French. “It is possible,” I remarked, “that even so high an authority as General Bernhardi has not entirely appreciated how Germany has been the teacher of the world in military matters and how thoroughly her pupils have responded to that teaching. That attention to detail, perfection of arrangement for mobilization, and careful preparation which have won German victories in the past may now be turned against her, and she may find that others can equal her in her own virtues.” I then examined Bernhardi’s alleged grievances against Great Britain, and showed how baseless they were, and how little they could hope to gain by victory. I quoted one poisonous sentence: “Even English attempts at a rapprochement must not blind us to the real situation. We may at most use them to delay the necessary and inevitable war until we may fairly imagine that we have some prospect of success.” “This last sentence,” I remarked, “must come home to some of us who have worked in the past for a better feeling between the two countries.”
I then gave an epitome of Bernhardi’s plan of campaign as outlined in charming frankness in his volume, and I sketched out how far we were in a position to meet it and what were the joints in our armour. My general conclusions may be given as follows:—
1. That invasion was not a serious danger and that the thought of it should not deflect our plans.
2. That if invasion becomes impossible then any force like the Territorials unless it is prepared to go abroad becomes useless.
3. That we should not have conscription save as a very last resource, since it is against the traditions of our people.
4. That our real danger lay in the submarine and in the airship, which could not be affected by blockade.
In discussing the submarine I said: “What exact effect a swarm of submarines, lying off the mouth of the Channel and the Irish Sea, would produce upon the victualling of these islands is a problem which is beyond my conjecture. Other ships besides the British would be likely to be destroyed, and international complications would probably follow. I cannot imagine that such a fleet would entirely, or even to a very large extent, cut off our supplies. But it is certain that they would have the effect of considerably raising the price of whatever did reach us. Therefore, we should suffer privation, though not necessarily such privation as would compel us to make terms. From the beginning of the war every home source would naturally be encouraged, and it is possible that before our external supplies were seriously decreased, our internal ones might be well on the way to make up the deficiency.”
This did, I think, roughly outline the actual course of events.
5. That the submarines would affect military operations should we send a force to France or Belgium.
6. That therefore the Channel Tunnel was a vital necessity.
7. That all unnecessary expenses should be at once cut down, so that British credit should stand at its highest when the strain came.
These are only the general conclusions. The article attracted some attention, but I do not suppose that it had any actual influence upon the course of events. To reinforce it I wrote an imaginary episode called “Danger” in the “Strand Magazine,” to show how even a small Power might possibly bring us to our knees by the submarine. It was singularly prophetic, for not only did it outline the actual situation as it finally developed, but it contained many details, the zig-zagging of the merchant ships, the use of submarine guns, the lying for the night on sandy bottoms, and so forth — exactly as they occurred. The article was sent round in proof to a number of high naval officers, mostly retired, for their opinions. I am afraid that the printed results, which I will not be so cruel as to quote, showed that it was as well they were retired, since they had no sense of the possibilities of the naval warfare of the future.
One result of my “Fortnightly” article was that General Henry Wilson, late Chief of the Staff College as he then was, desired to see me to cross-question me, and a meeting was arranged at the house of Colonel Sackville-West, Major Swinton being also present. There, after luncheon, General Wilson machine-gunned me with questions for about an hour. He was fierce and explosive in his manner, and looked upon me, no doubt, as one of those pestilential laymen who insist upon talking of things they don’t understand. As I could give reasons for my beliefs, I refused to be squashed, and when the interview was over I went straight down to the Athenæum Club and wrote it all down from memory. It makes such curious reading that I give it exactly as I reported it that day, in dialogue, with one or two comments from Colonel Sackville-West. After saying with some asperity that I had made many statements which I could not substantiate, and so might give the public far too optimistic a view of the position, he said: “Why do you say that we would never pay an indemnity to Germany?”
A. C. D. It is a matter of individual opinion. I go upon history and upon the spirit of our people.
GEN. W. Had not France equal spirit in 1870? How is it that they paid an indemnity?
A. C. D. Because Germany was sitting on top of them, and she had to pay to get from under.
GEN. W. Why may she not sit on top of us?
A. C. D. Because we live on an island and she cannot occupy us in the same way.
COLONEL S.-W. I believe a little pressure on London would cause us to pay an indemnity.
A. C. D. The man who suggested it would get hanged.
COLONEL S.-W. They would hang the man who made the war.
A. C. D. No, they would back him but hang the traitor.
GEN. W. You say that they would gain nothing by war. What about the carrying trade of the world?
A. C. D. The carrying trade depends on economic questions and upon geographical situation. For example, the Norwegians, who have no fleet, are one of the principal carriers.
GEN. W. At least they could starve us out if they held the seas.
A. C. D. Well, that is where my tunnel would come in; but of course I am entirely with you as to the need of holding the seas.
GEN. W. Well, now, you admit that we must go to the help of France?
A. C. D. Certainly.
GEN. W. But what can six divisions do?
A. C. D. Well, my point is that six divisions with a tunnel are better than six divisions without a tunnel.
COLONEL S.-W. If we have a tunnel we must have a force worth sending to send through it.
A. C. D. If you are going to couple the tunnel with compulsory service, you will get neither one nor the other.
GEN. W. I think, so far as submarines go, that the British patrols would make it a very desperate service. Some desperate man might get his boat through.
A. C. D. Some desperate man might command a flotilla and get it through.
GEN. W. Many things seem possible theoretically which cannot be done in practice, but no doubt there is a danger there. In your view the Territorials are simply a support for the fighting Army?
A. C. D. Yes.
GEN. W. But they are too untrained to go into action.
A. C. D. They would be reserves and have time to train.
GEN. W. Your idea of troops coming back in case of a raid through the tunnel is impossible. You could not withdraw troops in that way from their positions.
A. C. D. Well, with all respect, I do not believe either in a raid or in an invasion.
GEN. W. A war with Germany would be short and sharp—seven months would see it finished.
A. C. D. You mean, no doubt, the continental part. I could imagine the naval part lasting ten years.
COLONEL S.-W. If your fleet was crushed, you would have to give in.
A. C. D. A fleet can never be annihilated as an army is. There always remain scattered forces which can go on fighting. I don’t think we need give in because the fleet is crushed.
GEN. W. You don’t suppose that the Englishman is a better soldier by nature than the Frenchman or the German?
A. C. D. At least he is a volunteer.
GEN. W. How would that affect the matter?
A. C. D. I think he would rally better if he were beaten. There would be no end to his resistance, like the North in the American War.
GEN. W. Don’t you think, if war were declared with Germany, that the public, fearing an invasion, would clamour against any regular troops going abroad at all?
A. C. D. I think the public would leave it to the War Office. In the South African War they allowed our troops to go 6,000 miles away, and yet there was a danger of a European coalition.
COLONEL S.-W. But our Navy was supreme then.
A. C. D. Not against a coalition.
GEN. W. When Cervera’s fleet got loose, the Americans would not allow their troops to embark.
COLONEL S.-W. Even the Pacific coast was terrified.
A. C. D. Well, surely that is the reductio ad absurdum.
COLONEL S.-W. Still, the fact remains.
GEN. W. If we could send fifteen divisions we could stop a war.
A. C. D. But that means compulsory service.
GEN. W. Why not?
A. C. D. Because I am convinced that you could not get it. I have twice stood for Parliament, and I am sure no candidate would have a chance on such a platform.
GEN. W. Our descendants will say, “Well, you saw the danger, and yet you made no effort.”
A. C. D. Well, we have doubled our estimates. Surely that is an effort and must represent power somewhere.
We parted quite good friends, but the General’s evident desire to rope me in as a compulsory-service man was vain. I venture to think that Lord Roberts’ efforts in that direction were a great mistake, and that if he had devoted the same great energy to the line of least resistance, which was the Territorial force, we could have had half a million in the ranks when war broke out.
From the time that I was convinced by my experiences at the Prince Henry race and by carefully reading German literature that a war was really brewing, I naturally began to speculate as to the methods of attack and of defence. I have an occasional power of premonition, psychic rather than intellectual, which exercises itself beyond my own control, and which when it really comes is never mistaken. The danger seems to be that my own prejudice or reasonings may interfere with it. On this occasion I saw as clearly as possible what the course of a naval war between England and Germany would be. I had no doubt at all that our greatest danger—a desperately real one—was that they would use their submarines in order to sink our food ships, and that we might be starved into submission. Even if we won every fleet action, this unseen enemy would surely bring us to our knees. It all worked out in exact detail in my mind—so much so that Admiral Capelle mentioned my name afterwards in the Reichstag, and said that only I had accurately seen the economic form which the war would assume. This was perhaps true, so far as the economic side went, but Sir Percy Scott had spoken with far more authority than I on the growing power of the submarines in warfare.
I was made very uneasy by this line of thought, and all the more so because I asked several naval officers for some reassurance and could get none. One of them, I remember, said that it was all right because we should put a boom across the Channel, which seemed to me like saying that you could keep eels from going down a river by laying a plank across it. Among others I spoke to Captain Beatty, as he then was, whom I met at a week-end party at Knole, and though he could give me no reassurance about submarines he impressed me by his vivid and alert personality, and I felt that a Navy with such men in command was safe enough where fighting was concerned. It could not, however, fill the platter if there was no loaf to place upon it. I pondered the matter, and could only see three palliatives, and no cure.
The first was to encourage home growth by a bonus or by a tariff. But here our accursed party politics barred the way, as I had learned only too clearly after spending a thousand pounds in fighting the Hawick Burghs in order to get some form of agricultural protection.
The second was to meet submarines by submarine food-carriers. I think that this may prove the final solution, but the ships were not yet planned, far less launched.
The third and most obvious was the Channel Tunnel, or tunnels for preference. I had supported this scheme for years, and felt that as a nation we had made fools of ourselves over it, exactly as we did over the Suez Canal. If we were an island the size of the Wight such timidity would be intelligible, but the idea of a great country being invaded through a hole in the ground twenty-seven miles long seemed to me the most fantastic possible, while the practical use of the tunnel both for trade and for tourists was obvious. But now I saw that far more serious issues were at stake, for if we were held up by submarines, and if France was either neutral or our ally, we could land all the Eastern portion of our supplies, which is not inconsiderable, at Marseilles and so run them safely to London without breaking bulk. When I put this forward in the press some military critic said: “But if the submarines could hold up the Channel they could hold up the Mediterranean also.” This did not seem a good argument, because Germany was the possible enemy and it had no port in the Mediterranean, while the radius of submarine action at that time was not great enough to allow them to come so far. So strongly did I feel about the need for a Channel Tunnel in view of the coming war that I remember writing three memoranda and sending one to the Army, one to the Navy, and one to the Council of Imperial Defence. Of course I got no satisfaction of any kind, but Captain—now General—Swinton, who was acting as secretary to the latter body, told me that he had read my paper and that it had “set him furiously thinking.” I wrote to Lord Northcliffe also, without avail. I felt as if, like Solomon Eagle, I could go through London with a burning brazier on my head, if I could only get people to understand the need of the tunnel. The whole discussion had taken the utterly impossible and useless turn towards compulsory service, and the things which were practical and vital were being missed.
I spoke in public about the tunnel when I could, and on one occasion, just a year before the war, I raised a discussion in “The Times,” Mr. Ronald McNeill giving me an opening by declaring in the House that the project was a crazy one. There was also about that time a meeting in the City at the Cannon Street Hotel, where a very influential body of men supported the scheme. My speech, as reported next day in “The Times” in a very condensed form, ran thus:
“Sir A. Conan Doyle said there were possibilities in a future war that rendered it a matter of vital national importance that the tunnel should be constructed without delay. The danger was that we were getting five-sixths of our food supplies from abroad, and submarine craft were developing remarkable qualities which were not generally realized. They were able to avoid a blockade squadron, and to pass under a patrol line of torpedo-boats without their existence being even suspected. If they were sent to the line of our commerce and told to sink a ship, they would torpedo that ship for a certainty. What would be the condition of our food supplies if there were twenty-five hostile submarines off the Kent coast and twenty-five in the Irish Channel? The price of food would reach an almost prohibitive figure. The Military Correspondent of ‘The Times’ was a great opponent of the Channel Tunnel and was always running it down and mocking at it. But the other day he wrote an article on the Mediterranean, and, forgetting the Channel Tunnel, he said: ‘We must remember that more than half the food supply of this country now comes from the Mediterranean.’ If it came through the Mediterranean, and if it got to Marseilles and we had the Channel Tunnel, it was only a matter of management to get it through to London.”
The Military Correspondent of “The Times,” who was presumably Colonel Repington, had an article next day deriding the scheme, and making light of my picture of submarines in the Channel. Well, we have lived to see them, and I wish my argument had proved less sound. Colonel Repington has proved himself so clear-sighted an observer and commentator in the last war that he can be forgiven if, for once, he was on the wrong side; but if the Channel Tunnel had been put in hand at once after that meeting and rushed to completion, I wonder if it would be an exaggeration to say that a hundred million pounds would have been saved, while what it would have meant in evacuating wounded and in communications in stormy weather could not be represented in words. Imagine the convenience and saving of time and labour when munitions could be started at Woolwich and landed at Amiens without a break.
It has been argued that if the tunnel had been built the first swoop of the Germans would have brought them to the end of it and it would have been destroyed. But this will not bear examination, for it is based on the idea that we should have left the end unprotected. It would as a matter of fact have been the most natural fortress in the world, the strongest and the strangest, for it would be the only fortress where you could increase or withdraw your garrison at will, and introduce any supplies at any time you might desire. A very few forts and trenches on those convenient chalk slopes with their wide, smooth fields of fire, would hold the tunnel. In stretching their right wing as far as Amiens the Germans were very nearly cut off, and it was by a very great effort that Von Kluck saved it. If instead of Amiens he had reached Calais with sufficient forces for a siege he would have been unable to get away. An argument based upon the supposition that we should leave the mouth of the tunnel in Picardy as unprotected as the mouth of a coal mine in Kent is surely an unsound one. Now, in 1924, they are talking of building the tunnel. I wonder what our descendants will think of the whole business—probably what we think of the men who opposed the Suez Canal.
It is a most singular thing that our Navy, with so many practical and clever men in it, with a genius like Winston Churchill at the head, and another genius like Lord Fisher in continual touch, did not realize, until faced with actual results, some of the most important and surely most obvious points in connection with naval warfare. It came, I suppose, from the iron bonds of tradition, and that there were so many things to supervise, but the fact remains that a perfectly overwhelming case could be made out against the higher brain department of our senior service. A war with Germany was anticipated, and, as the public imagined, was prepared for, but save for the ship-building programme, which left us a narrow margin of safety, and for the concentration of our distant squadrons into British waters and the elimination of many useless craft which consumed good crews, what evidence is there of foresight? It was known, for example, that Scapa Flow and Cromarty were the two possible anchorages of the Fleet in a long-distance blockade, and yet no attempt had been made to mount guns or to net the entrances, so that for months there was a possibility of a shattering disaster; and Jellicoe, with the prudence which always distinguished him, had to put to sea every night lest his fleet should present a sitter to a torpedo attack. We showed intelligence in sticking always to the heavier guns, but our mines were wretchedly inefficient, our range-finders were very inferior, and our shells proved to have less penetrating and explosive force.