Kitabı oku: «The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford», sayfa 24

At that time, it was nearly impossible to obtain accurate official information with regard to naval affairs. I asked for a return of the relative strength of the Fleets of this and other countries; which was granted; and which aroused considerable comment in the Press. The return has since been issued every year; first in my name, then in the name of Sir Charles Dilke, and at present in the name of Mr. Dickenson.

But the first half of the year 1886 was consumed with the Home Rule Bill. Turn to the files of the time, and you shall see precisely the same arguments, declarations, denunciations, intrigues and rumours of intrigues, charges and counter-charges which were repeated in 1893, and which are being reiterated all over again as if they had just been discovered, in this year of grace 1913. We who stood to our guns in 1886 know them by heart. We have been denounced as traitors and rebels because we stand by Ulster, for so long, that we are beginning to think we shall escape hanging at the latter end of it.

I know my countrymen, both of north and south, for I am of both; and they know me. Isaac Butt once asked me to lead the Home Rule party; because, he said, my brother Waterford was widely respected and popular, and was thoroughly acquainted with the Irish question, of which I also had a sufficient knowledge. I might have accepted the invitation, had I believed that Home Rule was what my countrymen needed. But it was not. The settlement of the land question was and is the only cure for Irish ills. Mr. Wyndham with his Land Act did more for Ireland than any Government that ever was; and I say it, who have lost a great part of my income under the operation of the Act.

Not that the Irish would have obtained the Wyndham Act, had they not been incorrigibly intractable. By demanding a great deal more than they wanted, which they called Home Rule, they got what they did want, which was the land. Their avidity for the land never diminished; whereas the cry for Home Rule died down; until, by one of the inconsistencies of Irish politics which so bewilder the Englishman, it was revived by John Finton Lalor and Michael Davitt, who welded the two aspirations together. In order to rid themselves of the Home Rule spectre, the English Government conceded the land. And then, owing to another unexpected twist, they found the spectre wasn't laid after all. For the English had not learned that so long as they permit Ireland to be so superbly over-represented, so long will they have trouble. Sure, they'll learn the lesson some day, if God will; for there's no lack of teaching, the way it is. In the meantime, it is hard for the English people to argue against what appears to be the demand of the majority of the Irish people.

But so far was the Government in power in 1912 from understanding or attempting to understand Irishmen, that the defence of the Home Rule Bill was constantly relegated to two eminent descendants of an interesting Asiatic race; who, however distinguished in their own walk of life, could never in any circumstances know or care anything whatsoever about Ireland. The Ulstermen, at least, resented the proceeding.

One of the Nationalists attacked me with great ferocity in the House. He accused my family for generations past of having committed atrocious crimes, and asserted that I myself had entered Parliament for the sole purpose of escaping active service in case of war with a foreign Power.

"Why did you say all those things?" said I to him in the lobby afterwards.

"Sure, Lord Char-less," says he, "ye're an Irishman, and ye'll understand I didn't mean a word of it."

Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill having been rejected in 1886, Lord Salisbury returned to power with a majority that defied Mr. Parnell and his friends, and so there was no more Home Rule for a while. 'Tis the pure morality of the Home Rule demand that moves the political conscience; and that the morality always acts upon that sensitive organ when there is a controlling Irish vote, and not at any other time, is of course a mere coincidence.

In August, 1886, I was appointed junior lord at the Admiralty, succeeding Captain James E. Erskine.

"No doubt you'll try to do a number of things, but you'll run up against a dead wall. Your sole business will be to sign papers," said Captain Erskine, and so departed.

I speedily discovered that there was at the Admiralty no such thing as organisation for war. It was not in the distribution of business. Lest I should seem to exaggerate, I quote the testimony of the late Sir John Briggs, Reader to the Lords and Chief Clerk of the Admiralty. Referring to the period with which I am dealing, Sir John Briggs writes as follows (Naval Administrations, 1827 to 1892. Sampson Low. 1897):

"During my Admiralty experience of forty-four years, I may safely affirm that no measures were devised, nor no practical arrangements thought out, to meet the numerous duties which devolve upon the Admiralty, and which at once present themselves at the very beginning of a war with a first-class naval Power; on the contrary, there had been unqualified apprehension on the mere rumour of war, especially among the naval members, arising from their consciousness of the inadequacy of the Fleet to meet the various duties it would be required to discharge in such an eventuality."

The fact was that after Trafalgar this country had attained to so supreme a dominance upon all seas, with so high a degree of sea-training acquired in independent commands, that organisation for war was taken for granted. We were living on the Nelson tradition. The change came with the advent of steam, which altered certain essential conditions of sea warfare. The use of steam involved a new organisation. Other nations recognised its necessity. We did not. Nor was it that the distinguished naval officers composing successive Boards of Admiralty neglected their duty, for organisation for war did not form part of their duty, as they conceived it. Moreover, they were wholly occupied with the vast labour of routine business, which developed upon them when the old Navy Board was abolished. The Navy Board, in the old wars, was charged with the provision of all matters of supply, leaving the Lords Commissioners free to conduct war.

That there existed no department charged with the duty of constantly representing what was required in ships, men, stores, docks, under peace conditions, or what would be required under war conditions, was obvious enough. But in the course of the execution of my duties as junior lord, it immediately became equally clear that the Navy was deficient in those very matters and things concerning which it would have been the business of such a department to report. Among them was coal, which was in my charge. Not only was there an immense deficiency in the war reserve of coal, but there was no plan for supplying it.

What my friends used to call my "craze," which they regarded as an amiable form of lunacy, for organisation for war, showed me that without it, all naval force, though it were twice as powerful, would be practically wasted in the event of emergency.

I went to the First Lord and asked him if it would be in order for me to draw up a memorandum on any subject to be laid before the Board. Lord George Hamilton, with his invariable courtesy, replied that any such paper would be gladly considered.

Within six weeks of my appointment to the Admiralty, I had drawn my Memorandum on War Organisation calling attention to the necessity of creating a Naval Intelligence Department at the Admiralty.

In that document, it was represented:

1. That although recent events had revealed approximately our deficiencies in the event of war with a second-rate maritime Power, no measures had been taken to prepare a plan showing how the requirements were to be met.

2. That other countries possessed departments charged with the duty of preparing plans of campaign and of organising their every detail so that they could be instantly carried into execution.

3. That the deficiencies in the numbers of the personnel known to be required, were such and such.

4. That the Medical stores were deficient in such and such respects. (They were kept in bulk, so that in the event of war, the medical stores would have had to be selected and distributed: a system I was able to alter.)

5. That there existed no organisation of any kind with regard to the use of merchant shipping in war for the transport of coal, ammunition, and stores, and for hospital ships.

6. That there existed no organisation for rapidly mobilising the reserves.

7. That in order rightly to fulfil these requirements, there must be designed plans of campaign to meet all probable contingencies.

8. That in order to obtain such plans of campaign, there should be created a new department charged with the duty of drawing them up.

There followed a detailed scheme for a new Intelligence Department, at an increased expense of no more than £2251.

The Memorandum concluded as follows:

"1. Can it be denied that the gravest and most certain danger exists to the country if the facts stated in this paper are true?

"2. Can it be denied that these facts are true?

"3. If not, should not immediate steps be taken to minimise the danger?"

The Memorandum was laid before the Board. My colleagues came to the unanimous conclusion that my statements were exaggerated; and also that, as a junior, I was meddling with high matters which were not my business; as indeed I was. Having been thus defeated, I asked the permission of Lord George Hamilton to show the Memorandum to Lord Salisbury, and received it.

Lord Salisbury very kindly read the document then and there from beginning to end. He pointed out to me that, on the face of it, I lacked the experience required to give force to my representations, and that I had not even commanded a ship of war in a Fleet.

"You must have more experience, on the face of it," he repeated.

And he observed that, practically, what I was asking him to do, was to set my opinion above the opinion of my senior officers at the Admiralty, and their predecessors.

I replied that, since he put the matter in that way, although it might sound egotistical, I did ask him to do that very thing; but I begged him, before deciding that I was in the wrong, to consult with three admirals, whom I named.

A week later, I saw Lord Salisbury again. He told me that in my main contentions, I was right; that he was sure I should be glad to hear that the three admirals had agreed with them; and that the Board of Admiralty had decided to form a new department upon the lines I had suggested.

The new Naval Intelligence Department was then formed.

The Director was Captain William H. Hall. His assistants were Captain R. N. Custance (now Admiral Sir Reginald N. Custance, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.) and Captain S. M. Eardley-Wilmot (now Rear-Admiral Sir S. M. Eardley-Wilmot).

There was already in existence a Foreign Intelligence Committee, whose business it was to collect information concerning the activities of foreign naval Powers. In my scheme the new department was an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Committee, which was to form Section 1, while the duties of Section 2 were "To organise war preparations, including naval mobilisation and the making out of plans for naval campaigns to meet all the contingencies considered probable in a war with different countries, corrected frequently and periodically." The whole of the department was to be placed under an officer of flag rank; a part of my recommendations which was not carried into effect until 1912, when the War Staff was instituted at the Admiralty.

It will be observed that, although I designated the new department the Intelligence Department, it was in fact planned to combine Intelligence duties proper with the duties of a War Staff. What I desired was a department which reported "frequently and periodically" upon requirements. But as it was impossible to know what those requirements would be without plans of campaign which specified them, the same department was charged with the duty of designing such plans.

In the result, that particular and inestimably important office was gradually dropped. The department became an Intelligence Department alone. The First Sea Lord was charged with the duty of preparation and organisation for war. After various changes in the distribution of business, it was again discovered that there was no organisation for war; that the First Sea Lord, though (as I said in 1886) he had a head as big as a battleship, could not accomplish the work by himself; and a War Staff, affiliated to the Intelligence Department, was constituted in 1912.

In other words, twenty-six years elapsed before my scheme was carried into full execution.

On the 13th October, 1886, the substance of my confidential Memorandum on Organisation for War was published in the Pall Mall Gazette. It was stolen from the Admiralty by an Admiralty messenger, who was employed by both the First Sea Lord and myself. The contents of several other confidential documents having been published, suspicion fell upon the messenger, and a snare was laid for him. An electric contact was made with a certain drawer in the desk of the First Sea Lord, communicating with an alarm in another quarter of the building. Upon leaving his room, the First Sea Lord told the messenger to admit no one during his absence, as he had left unlocked a drawer containing confidential documents. A little after, the alarm rang, and the messenger was discovered seated at the desk, making a copy of the documents in question. He was arrested, brought to trial, and sentenced.

CHAPTER XXXVI
THE TWENTY-ONE MILLION

In January, 1887, my routine work at the Admiralty was varied by a trip in the new submarine Nautilus to the bottom of Tilbury Dock, which was very nearly the last voyage of the party in this world. The owners of the boat, Mr. Edward Wolseley and Mr. C. E. Lyon, had invited several guests, among whom was Mr. William White (afterwards Sir William Henry White, K.C.B., F.R.S., etc.), together with some officials of the Admiralty. The theory was that by pushing air cylinders to project from each side of the boat, her buoyancy would be so increased that she would rise to the surface. We sank gently to the bottom and stayed there. The cylinders were pushed out, and still we remained there. I was looking through the glass scuttle, and, although in a submarine the motion or rising or sinking is not felt by those within, I knew that we had not moved, because I could see that the muddy particles suspended in the water remained stationary. The Thames mud had us fast. In this emergency, I suggested rolling her by moving the people quickly from side to side. The expedient succeeded, none too soon; for by the time she came to the surface, the air was very foul.

During the same month, Mr. William White, Chief Constructor to the Admiralty, read a paper at the Mansion House dealing with the design of modern men-of-war, which marked an era in shipbuilding. Sir William White restored to the ship of war that symmetry and beauty of design which had been lost during the transition from sails to steam. The transition vessels were nightmares. Sir William White designed ships. A man of genius, of a refined and beautiful nature, a loyal servant of the Admiralty, to which he devoted talents which, applied outside the Service, would have gained him wealth, his recent death was a great loss to his country. The later Victorian Navy is his splendid monument: and it may yet be that history will designate those noble ships as the finest type of steam vessels of war.

About the same time, I brought forward another motion in the House of Commons, to abolish obsolete vessels, of which I specified fifty-nine, and to utilise the money saved in their maintenance, in new construction. The scheme was carried into execution by degrees.

In June of 1887, I invited a large party of members of the House of Commons to visit Portsmouth, where they were shown something of the Navy.

In December of the same year, speaking in public, I affirmed the following principles: that in time of war our frontiers were the ports of the enemy; that our main fleets could be required to watch those ports; and that the strength of the Fleet required should be calculated upon the basis of the work it would be required to perform. I also urged that the line of communications should be instituted, by means of establishing a system of signalling between the ships of the Navy and the ships of the mercantile marine, and between all ships and the shore. At that time there was no such system.

The Press and the public received the exposition of these elementary principles of organisation for war as a complete novelty; by many they were welcomed like a revelation; circumstances which exemplify the general ignorance prevailing at the time.

Of even more significance were the official declarations on the subject. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, had publicly stated in November, 1886, that this country had more ships in commission than the three other European Naval Powers next in order of strength. The statement was correct; but among the ships in commission were included many vessels of no fighting value, such as the Indus, Asia and Duke of Wellington. As an estimate of comparative fighting strength, the statement, like many another official statement before and since, required qualification; as I remarked in the House of Commons in the course of my reply to Lord George Hamilton.

In December, 1886, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Randolph Churchill, suddenly resigned. He afterwards explained that his resignation was a protest against extravagance and waste in the administration of the Services. There were extravagance and waste; but, in my view, which I represented to Lord Randolph, it would take several years to reform the administration, and it was far more important to set right our defences, even if their administration cost more in the meantime.

I recall these things because they serve to illustrate the trend of events. On the one side were the Government and their official advisers at the Admiralty, convinced that all was very well as it was. On the other side, were the rapid development of the fighting ship in all countries, which owing to Mr. W. H. White, was particularly marked in this country; the greatly increased public interest in naval affairs; and the constant representations of a number of naval officers, myself among them, to the effect that great reforms were urgently required.

We believed that there existed at the Board of Admiralty no system of direct responsibility; that Parliament and the nation had no means either of ascertaining upon what principle the money was expended upon our defences or of affixing responsibility whether it were expended ill or well; that there existed no plan of campaign at the Admiralty; that the Navy and the Army had no arrangement for working together in the event of war; and that, in point of fact, the Navy was dangerously inadequate. And in attempting to achieve reform, we were confronted by a solid breastwork, as though built of bales of wool, of official immovability. Had it been a hard obstacle, we might have smashed it.

Towards the end of 1887, the Admiralty did a very foolish thing. They decided to cut down the salaries of the officers of the new Intelligence Department by £950. In my view, this proceeding both involved a breach of faith with the officers concerned, and would be highly injurious to the efficiency of the department for whose success I felt peculiarly responsible. My protests were, however, disregarded; the First Lord asserted his supreme authority; and the thing was done.

The efficiency of the whole Service was, in my view, bound up with the efficiency of the Intelligence Department; because that department was created for the express purpose of estimating and reporting what was required to enable the Navy to fulfil its duties. It was in view of the main question of the necessity of strengthening the Fleet, that I decided to resign my position upon the Board of Admiralty, and to declare publicly my reasons for so doing. On the 9th January, 1888, I sent my resignation to Lord Salisbury; who, courteously expressing his regret, accepted it on 18th January.

In making my decision to take this extreme action, I was influenced by the conviction that nothing short of the resignation of a member of the Board of Admiralty would induce the authorities to reorganise and strengthen our defences. Whether or not I was right in that belief, I do not know to this day; but, as the strengthening of the Fleet was shortly afterwards carried into execution in precise accordance with my recommendations, there is some evidence in my favour. My constituents in East Marylebone were strongly adverse to my course of action. Many of my friends begged me not to resign. General Buller, in particular, pointed out to me that no good was ever done by an officer resigning his post, because the officer who resigned ceased by his own act to occupy the position which entitled him to a hearing. I daresay he was right. At any rate, I was well aware that I was jeopardising my whole career. For an officer to resign his seat upon the Board of Admiralty in order to direct public attention to abuses, is to commit, officially speaking, the unpardonable sin. When, three or four years later, Sir Frederick Richards, the First Sea Lord, threatened to resign if the Government would not accept his shipbuilding programme, although I am certain he would have pursued exactly the same course had he stood alone, he had the support of the rest of the Board. I had the rest of the Sea Lords against me. That is a different affair. A united Board of Admiralty can generally in the last resort prevail against the Government. A single member of that Board who attempts the same feat, knows, at least, that never again will he be employed at the Admiralty. But when Sir Frederick Richards and his colleagues threatened resignation, they were in fact risking the loss of employment and incurring the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in comparative penury. A later Liberal administration has dismissed one Naval Lord after another, without a scruple.

In my case, I had the advantage of possessing a private income, so that I was independent of the Service as a means of livelihood. It is necessary to speak plainly upon this matter of resignation. It is most unfair to expect naval officers to resign in the hope of bringing about reform, when by so doing their income is greatly reduced. If the British public desire it to be understood that a Sea Lord is expected to resign should the Government in power fail to make what he believes to be the necessary provision for the national security, then the public must insist that the Sea Lords be granted an ample retiring allowance.

In the following February (1888) Lord George Hamilton made a speech at Ealing, in which he dealt with my protests in the most courteous manner. He stated that I had resigned because I objected to the exercise of the supreme authority of the First Lord over the Board of Admiralty. I had certainly objected to its exercise in a particular instance. And at that time I was constantly urging that Parliament and the country had a right to know who was responsible for the actions of the Admiralty. My theory was that there should be some means by which Parliament and the public should be assured that any given course of action was founded upon professional advice. That no such means existed was notorious. It was within the legal right of a First Lord to announce a policy contravening or modifying the views of the rest of the Board.

My view was, and is, the view tersely stated by Admiral Phipps Hornby, who said that it was the right of the Cabinet to formulate a policy, and that it was the duty of the Sea Lords to provide what was required in order to carry that policy into execution; but that the Cabinet had no right whatever to dictate to the Sea Lords in what the provision should consist, for that was a matter of which the Sea Lords alone were competent to judge.

But if the Board of Admiralty be placed under the supreme jurisdiction of the First Lord, a civilian and a politician, the country has no means of knowing whether or no the recommendations of the Sea Lords are being carried into execution. I said at the time that some such means should be instituted; afterwards, perceiving that no such demand would be granted, I urged that the Cabinet at least ought to be precisely informed what were the requirements stated by the Sea Lords to be necessary in order to carry into execution the policy of the Government.

In claiming supreme authority as First Lord over the Board of Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton was legally and constitutionally in the right. The Royal Commission on the administration of the Navy and Army, over which Lord Hartington presided, reported in 1890 (when I was at sea) that the Admiralty had long ceased to be administered in accordance with the terms of its original Patent, and that "the present system of administration in the Admiralty is the result of Parliamentary action upon what was once in fact as well as name an executive and administrative Board. The responsibility, and consequently the power of the First Lord has continually increased, and he is at present practically the Minister of Marine." In other words, by slow degrees the politician had transferred the powers of the Board to himself, where they remain; the other members of the Board becoming merely his advisers. The result is that there is nothing, except the personal influence of the Naval Lords upon the First Lord, to prevent the Navy from being governed in accordance with party politics, without reference to national and Imperial requirements; a system which produces intermittent insecurity and periodical panics involving extravagant expense.

The Commissioners also found that there was a difference of opinion among the Naval Lords themselves concerning their responsibility with regard to the strength and efficiency of the Fleet. It was, in a word, nobody's business to state what were the requirements of the Fleet. The First Lord might ask for advice, if he chose, in which case he would get it. If he did not so choose, there was no one whose duty it was to make representations on the subject. Admiral Sir Arthur Hood stated that never in the whole course of his experience had he known a scheme comprehending the naval requirements of the Empire to be laid before the Board. He also stated that the method of preparing the Navy Estimates was that the First Lord stated what sum the Cabinet felt disposed to grant for the Navy, and that the Naval Lords then proceeded to get as much value for their money as they could.

No wonder the Sea Lords were expected to sign the Estimates without looking at them. When I was junior lord, responsible for the provision of coal and stores among other trifles, a clerk came into my room with a sheaf of papers in one hand and a wet quill pen in the other.

"Will you sign the Estimates?" says he.

"What?" said I.

"Will you sign the Estimates for the year?" he repeated.

"My good man," I said, "I haven't seen them."

The clerk looked mildly perturbed. He said:

"The other Lords have signed them, sir. It will be very inconvenient if you do not."

"I am very sorry," said I. "I am afraid I am inconvenient in this office already. But I certainly shall not sign the Estimates."

The clerk's countenance betrayed consternation.

"I must tell the First Lord, sir," said he, as one who presents an ultimatum.

"I don't care a fig whom you tell," said I. "I can't sign the Estimates, because I have not read them."

Nor did I sign them. They were brought before the House of Commons without my signature. The First Lord said it did not really matter. My point was that I would not take responsibility for a document I had not seen. The fact was, that the custom of obtaining the signatures of the Board is a survival of the time when the Sea Lords wielded the power and responsibility conferred upon them by the original Patent.

The Commissioners also reported that the lack of "sufficient provision for the consideration by either Service of the wants of the other" … was an "unsatisfactory and dangerous condition of affairs."

Here, then, were all the points for which my brother officers and myself were contending, and in order to illuminate which I had resigned, explicitly admitted. But the proofs did not appear until a year after my resignation took effect, when the Select Committee on the Navy Estimates began to take evidence; nor were they published for another year.

In the meantime, the naval reformers fought as best they might. Freed from the restraint necessarily imposed upon me by my official position at the Admiralty, I was able to devote my whole energies to making known the real state of affairs.

Upon the introduction of the Navy Estimates of 1888-9 I challenged the votes for shipbuilding, the Secretary's Department, the Intelligence Department, the Reserve of merchant cruisers, the Royal Naval Reserve and naval armaments, in order to call attention to requirements.

In the course of the debates, the official formula was: "At no time was the Navy more ready or better organised for any work which it might be called upon to do than to-day." My reply was that these words "have rung in our ears as often as the tune 'Britannia rules the waves,' and have been invariably falsified when war appeared imminent." And who would have to do the work? The officials who said that all was ready, or the admirals who said that all was unready?

In May, a meeting to consider the needs of national defence was held in the City, at which I delivered an address. Speaking at the Lord Mayor's banquet in November, the First Lord admitted that there might be room for improvement in the Navy. It was a dangerous, if a candid, admission. For if the Navy were not strong enough, how weak was it?