The Warrior Churchill-1915

...But if it succeeded Russia might be saved and the Balkans would almost certainly have been drawn into the war on the side of the Allies...

...De Robeck, however, differed with this political decision and thought it would be necessary to keep his ships in hostile waters for an extended period of time...

...Now that the admiral on the spot had decided to abandon the operation Fisher absolutely refused to have anything more to do with it, and he did his best both by his resignation and by using his contacts with the Opposition to see Churchill removed from the Admiralty...

...Premodern statesmen saw war as a means to the ends of politics, which included, among other things, civil and religious virtues...

...Accordingly, Churchill made several attempts to gain a Balkan army by promising Greece, the strongest Balkan power next to Turkey, a share of the plunder when the war was over and the Ottoman Empire broken up...

...It is clear that if Fisher's fears were valid, the operation should have been called off: Britain's superior navy was her primary source of military security...

...This left the possibility of an attack through the Balkans, probably through Turkey, an ally of Germany and Austria...

...The highest possibilities for statesmanship exist for those who "hold with honor the foremost stations in the greatest storms...

...This was a strong appeal as the antagonisms of these small states were old and fierce...

...The forts were protected by minefields which could not be swept until the batteries and movable howitzers protecting them had been destroyed...

...But all of the arguments against ships fighting forts were made after the abandonment of the attack...

...De Robeck wanted to reconstitute The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 9 this force by replacing the trawlers with fast destroyers equipped to sweep mines, and this was in fact comleted by April 4. As for the main forts, by the end of the day they had been dominated by the ships...

...But his minesweepers were old wooden fishing trawlers that had been converted for naval use...

...but the opinion that Churchill was a poor strategist is mare circumscribed and rests upon the events of the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915, when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty...

...Cosgrave's work is that his analysis ofgoof Re44e4w Churchill at War Alone, 1939-40 (Vol...

...Being part of a great imperial project fortifies a citizen's self-respect, augments his patriotism, andgives a larger, more political meaning to his life: It makes him a more public-spirited citizen and, thereby, a more complete human being...

...This suspicion seemed to be confirmed by the fact that Hitler's attempt to direct World War II personally made it easier to defeat Germany than it might otherwise have been...

...This idea received the enthusiastic support of Lord Kitchener, who had direct experience of the situation in the Middle East and who expected Constantinople to capitulate once the fleet had forced its way into the Sea of Marmara...

...This did not, of course, make him popular with the Tories, and when he took up the cause of the People's Budget in 1909, he added further fuel to the charge that when he left the Tory Party he turned his back on his class (he was a cousin to the Duke of Marlborough) as well...

...The country naturally supported Admiral Fisher, and this resulted in Churchill's own resignation...

...To appreciate fully Churchill's position in 1915 it is necessary to recall that he had begun his political career as a Conservativeand had become a Liberal only in 1904...

...On March 18, the navy attacked the forts at the Dardanelles...

...The result is an intelligently constructed puzzle in which the relationships between the bewildering variety of pieces are subjected to a rigorous and coherent scrutiny...

...Rather it was Fisher, the sailor, who, using the opportunity given him by de Robeck's disagreement with the political judgment of the War Council, destroyed a sound naval plan...

...That is to say, Vice-Admiral de Robeck, with the support of General Hamilton, abandoned an operation begun because of political judgments (including the importance of draw-ing the Balkan powers into the War) regarding the likely consequences of a successful passage...

...As already mentioned, Fisher himself had not objected when the Dardanelles was originally decided upon...

...but Kitchener said he could not provide one, and thus the navy decided to undertake the job alone...

...He, like Churchill, had acquiesced in the purely naval attack only when he became convinced that the necessary troops could not be found for either a northern expedition or a combined operation against Turkey...

...Churchill called the British regime an "Imperial Democracy...

...Churchill at War is not a banal biography which merely takes the reader down a mental portrait gallery and invites him to gaze admiringly at a frozen fragment of time before beckoning him on to the next scene...

...Without consulting the Admiralty, de Robeck decided—whether prompted by Hamilton or not is uncertain—to abandon the purely naval attack in favor of a military operation, even though it would require waiting until all of Hamilton's forces arrived, which would not be until the middle of April...

...Lord Fisher had returned to the Admiralty in 1914 with an overriding purpose: to defeat the German High Seas Fleet, or if the fleet refused to fight, to invade Germany from the north...

...In this case, at least, the historians are right when they complain that politics and strategy were mixed with bad results...

...Because it requires for its continued existence a high level of moral and civic virtue from a few, and a lesser but significant measure of virtue from all its citizens, empire keeps alive for the whole nation a more complete view of human excellence than would otherwise survive in a modern mass democracy...

...On this point Fisher and Churchill agreed...

...On the other hand, his radicalism seemed opportunistic to many of the members of his new party, and his open ambition often unsettled them...

...By assuming the title of Minister of Defense as well as Prime Minister he became vulnerable to the criticisms that he could not possibly have known as much about strategy and tactics as his military advisors, and the subtler, but perhaps more important charge that his appreciation of military and civic virtue was unseemly in the leader of a democracy...

...But there are sound reasons for Churchill's disagreement with Fisher on this point...

...No one on the War Council or in the Naval War Group objected to the plan...

...But the advance of science is said to have made war the specialty of technicians, and many have come to question the ability of politicians to comprehend strategic matters...

...The virtues of the fully civilized man are developed and perfected only by energetic striving to perform the deeds and to engage in the activities which those virtues make possible...

...Had the politician governed the admiral, the Dardanelles attack would probably have succeeded...

...Fisher sent Asquith a list of stipulations which would have to be met if Fisher were to return to the Admiralty...

...But what makes this opinion difficult to question is that it is thought to be supported by the most fundamental principles of modern democracy...

...To have confined the British at home would have been to stifle their unusual potential for excellence: Churchill observed that within the broader Empire "the peculiar gifts for administration and high civic virtue of our race may find a healthy and honorable scope...

...But modern democratic regimes are based on a social contract theory of government which reduces the ends of politics to peace and prosperity...

...By January 1915, the navy had cleared the outer seas of enemy ships and had blocked the German navy up in its home harbors...

...The Government could ill afford Fisher's resignation at any time, but especially in May 1915 (it was still feeling the effects ofthe Shell Shortage scandal...

...The superiority of defensive methods of warfare (caused primarily by the invention of the machine gun) prevented the French and the British from breaking through the Western lines to relieve the pressure on Russia...

...But what is even more damaging to his position is that throughout his dispute with Churchill he was always ready to take as many ships from the Grand Fleet as necessary if they could be used in a northern, rather than in a southern, operation...

...Lord Kitchener again said he had no troops to spare (a statement Churchill did not agree with) and then asked Churchill to make a naval demonstration at the Dardanelles...

...He had serious doubts about modern mass democracy because he thought that it might reduce everyone to a common level of mediocrity...

...The possession of an empire thus tends to direct in the broadest sense the development of its ruling nation...

...And these guns were in turn protected by the minefields, thus completing a circular and impregnable defense...

...After the navy had abandoned the attack, the army landed and suffered a series of reverses which finally led to a retreat and the abandonment of the attempt to reach Constantinople...

...If one looked far enough to the north or the south one could find spots barren of the terrible machine guns and barbed wire...

...It soon became clear that a turn in the direction of the war was in the making, for if Russia were defeated Germany would be able to concentrate her efforts upon breaking the stalemate in the West...

...De Robeck remained convinced he could reach Constantinople...

...Only imperial nations are of sufficient magnitude to provide scope for the most splendid and demanding forms of political excellence...

...This may havebeen because he was the last democratic statesman who thought that the best kind of life was based upon, but not encompassed by, peace and prosperity...

...Besides, it was known at the time that the forts were short of ammunition...

...These culminated in the extraordinary demand that he have "complete charge of the war at sea, together with the absolute sole disposition of the fleet and the appointment of all officers of all ranks whatsoever, and absolutely untrammelled sole command of all the sea forces whatsoever...

...What they disagreed about was the disposition of surpluses and reserves...

...This last charge cannot be dealt with in a short article...

...Although later observers have often testified to the strength of Asquith's Liberal government at the beginning of the war (his cabinet included Churchill, Lloyd George, Lord Kitchener, and Earl Grey), it is often overlooked that it operated under one important handicap...

...Because of its widespread responsibilities for governing others, an imperial nation can provide a much greater number of authoritative offices than a nonimperial nation, and particularly than a modern demo-cratic nation which tends to have relatively weak offices and elevates private over public affairs...

...In this instance, at least, the cause of democracy would have been better served if the art—or science—of war had been left to the politicians...

...It is not necessary to enter into technical questions of firepower and tonnage to resolve the dispute...

...Jeffery D. Wallin The Warrior Churchill-1915 IT USED TO BE that a young man aspiring to learn the art of statesmanship first apprenticed himself to the art of war...

...To many this implies that excellence in the art of war is inappropriate to democratic statesmanship...

...In addition to advocating free trade, Churchill now took up the cause of the workingman...

...The Bolsheviks might not have seized power and the totalitarian governments generated by Bolshevism might never have come to dominate the politics of the twentieth century...

...The reader finds insights of unusual clarity and good sense on matters which must inevitably remain largely conjectural...

...The argument has since been made that the ships could not have succeeded because they could not get close enough to the forts to knock them out...

...At first the action was seen as a limited success...

...As far as the difficulty of sweeping the mines is concerned, he correctly understood that the problem was primarily due to the fact that his minesweeping force was ill-suited to its task...

...Philip Vander Elst The Warrior Churchill-1940 A /APERHAPS No FIGURE in recent history has been the object of so much study and commentary as Winston Churchill...

...Churchill came close to success twice, being defeated the last time by a stubborn and shortsighted Russian refusal to allow a Greek army into Constantinople...

...In a search for sufficient scope for his abilities Churchill went from sport to war to politics, activities which he ranked according to their ability to give full scope to his powers...

...The first powerful voice of dissension came some eight days after the War Council had approved the plan...

...The current in the Straits was fast, and the fire from the shore heavy...

...Though novel (since Nelson it had been a premise of the British navy that ships could not successfully fight forts without the support of the army), the Admiralty War Group supported an attack on the Dardanelles, partly because it was the only available means of breaking the deadlock, and partly because the ships which would be used to bombard the forts were old pre-Dreadnought ships of the Canapus class which would be useless in a modern naval battle anyway...

...Without the need to give someone his due there can be no development of justice, without a substantial danger, no courage, without political responsibilities, no prudence...

...On January 21, after seeing and agreeing to all the minutes of the previous week dealing with the specifics of the Dardanelles, Fisher objected to it on the ground that it was taking too many ships from the main fleet...

...As soon as the battle was over he telegraphed the Admiralty that he was ready to renew the attack as soon as the weather permitted...

...Churchill argued that the margin of safety necessary to ensure victory had been met...

...but they are right for the wrong reasons...

...Now man does not attain virtue naturally, without substantial effort on his own part...

...As tight as this argument appears to be at first sight, it is interesting to note that it was never made by Vice-Admiral de Robeck, commander of the forces at the Dardanelles...

...The virtues can be developed, then, only in situations which call for them and give them scope...

...Empire increases the security and economic well-being of all classes...

...Nevertheless, the Russian need was so great that in January 1915 the Grand Duke Nicholas asked the British to make a demonstration in order to draw off Austrian forces in the Caucasus...

...After all, if the attack failed, only old and practically useless ships would have been lost...

...Furthermore, a success at the Dardanelles might, by convincing the remaining Balkan powers of the superiority of the Entente's power, persuade them to join the Allies...

...Of course, everyone concerned would rather have had a combined operation...

...To paraphrase a comment of Churchill's in the Second World War: War is too important to be left to the generals and admirals...

...These circumstances never changed...

...but Fisher's support of the operation did...

...Churchill thought that the addition to a democratic regime of empire, and of the principle it represents, made that regime worthy of his full support...

...In an effort to move the Liberal Party to the left, and thereby to co-opt the emerging Labour Party (which he thought dangerous because of its constant appeals to class interest), he concerned himself with the problems of sweated labor, and, as Home Secretary, he opened the first labor exchanges, began work on unemployment insurance, and was an effective proponent of prison reform...

...Empire is the means to civilize democracy...

...The naval attack, which was approved as much for political as for naval considerations, was abandoned on purely political grounds by a naval officer...

...Hence, maintaining the superiority of the British fleet continued to be the primary responsibility of the Admiralty...

...Thus it had protected British imports of food and materials and at the same time had guaranteed the safe passage of British reinforcements to France...

...To answer this question it was necessary to take a continental view of the war...

...But to make a direct attack on Germany would have required a large army and according to Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, it would have been impossible to provide one in the foreseeable future...

...Russia had such severe munitions shortages, however, that she was unable to stop Germany's own advance under Hindenburg and Ludendorff...

...This became apparent when, as a price of joining a coalition in May 1915, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's dismissal and the Liberals acquiesced with few misgivings...

...These demands were not met, of course...

...By the end of 1914 the war in the West 8 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 had become stabilized along a front extending from the Swiss Alps to Nieuport on the English Channel...

...While the country was looking for a scapegoat, Fisher resigned, thus focusing attention on Churchill's part in the original naval plan...

...Turkey blocked the only feasible southern route to Russia (through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea), and thus a successful attack on Turkey would have opened a supply route to Russia...

...Since the lines could not be pierced, the question facing the British War Council was: how could the lines be circumvented so that aid could be sent to Russia...

...Hence it was difficult for their crews (fishermen, not sailors) to face the fire from the minefield batteries...

...But in doing this it had not defeated the smaller, but efficient German High Seas Fleet...

...This inconclusive debate did not decide the issue, however...

...When the War Council had originally approved the plan it had done so because in the judgment of its members, Constantinople would capitulate as soon as the fleet reached the Sea of Marmara...

...One would think therefore that it was impossible to say anything original about the greatest Englishman of the twentieth century, yet that is precisely what Patrick Cosgrave's new book does...

...Originally, both Churchill and Fisher favored a northern project...

...He, as well as the other members of the Admiralty War Group, had agreed that the operation would not endanger the margin of safety of the Grand Fleet since it contemplated using only old battleships...

...At that time, however, Fisher had made no objections (he had even on his own initiative sent the newest battleship afloat, the Queen Elizabeth, to help the Dardanelles fleet...

...Thus, while powerful for the moment, he had made many enemies in the Opposition, and had made few friends in his new party...

...It will be recalled that Lord Kitchener had supported the naval plan from the first, both because he could not provide an army and because he thought the navy could get through on its own...

...In fact, however, his ouster had much less to do with his "interference" in naval matters and much more to do with partisan politics than is usually thought...

...There had always been a strong element of pacifism in the Liberal Party and this image had to be changed if the country were to feel confident that the Party could win the war...

...His switch of party was accompanied by a switch in politics...

...He had since been persuaded to send the Twenty-ninth Division, among others, to help in case the navy ran into unforeseen difficulties...

...The most demanding offices in an empire are those at the peak of the imperial government itself...

...On the contrary, it is a remarkably documented and acute analysis of Churchill as an administrator, general (for that, in effect, he was), and politician during the most crucial period in his life...

...Fisher argued, from January 21 on, that it had not, and that the Dardanelles operation was draining needed ships from the Grand Fleet...

...Ruling a civilizing empire is the activity which marks the culmination of the search which men must undertake to find scope for, and thereby to develop, their "powers...

...Germany had placed most of her forces along this comparatively short line, with only a small army left in the East to block the advance of the Russians...

...Since no one had argued that the ships could not get through the Straits, and because any delay increased the possibility that Austrian submarines would arrive before the operation was finished, Churchill wanted to order de Robeck to continue with the attack...

...Thus Churchill was forced to resign in the face of criticisms by the Conservatives that he had meddled in technical naval strategies and tactics...

...Churchill thought that the highest kind of political and moral virtue was that which existed on the grandest scale...

...Churchill inquired of the commanding admiral in the Mediterranean whether he thought the Dardanelles Straits could be forced without assistance from the army and was surprised when he was told that they might be if enough ships were used in a methodical, stage-by-stage attack...

...but with Fisher's urging, Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative Party, insisted upon Churchill's removal from the Admiralty as one of his conditions for a coalition (the only means by which the Liberal Party could stay in power...

...To this second objection it may be observed that if Fisher's arguments were sound on January 21, they would have been just as sound on January 12, when the plan was confirmed...

...The ships never again fired another shot, however, and for entirely unrelated reasons...

...A passage to Russia might have shortened the war by years, and would have given renewed prestige to the Tsarist regime...

...This unswept minefield claimed three other ships as well, and eventually led to the abandonment of the enterprise...

...We are constantly aware of the tension between Churchill's brilliant and sweeping grasp of strategy and his more volatile, though still formidable, command of tacti10 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974...

...Only at the head of an extensive empire can the truly great-souled man have his day...

...From Alexander the Great to Henry V to the First Duke of Marlborough, there was an almost unbroken line of great statesmen who were also great generals...

...put it was not Churchill the politician who caused the disaster of the Dardanelles by interfering in professional naval matters...

...The British lost only 73 men, although the French had lost 600 when the Bouvet sunk after striking a mine...

...Unfortunately, Fisher chose this moment to discredit Churchill and to further his own plans for an attack in the north...

...In addition to perfecting the exceptional few, Churchill thought that empire elevates the common citizen who remains at home...

...wanting Constantinople for herself, Russia denied herself the aid which might have saved her from the defeats that eventually led to revolution and her capitulation at Brest-Litovsk...

...Man is pre-eminently a political being because, in addition to needing assistance to meet his primary needs for security and economic well-being, he perfects himself only through political activity, and particularly by holding public office...

...Yet if the Grand Fleet could spare ships for an operation Fisher liked, it is clear that it could spare them for an operation that he did not...

...It seemed clear that the Straits could be passed if the attack were renewed...

...In fact, these ships were already destined for the scrapheap...

...Empire is the essentially undemocratic means by which democracy, while retaining its foundation in the equal rights of all, is pushed in the direction of concern with encouraging human excellence...

...His attempt to combine civilizing empire and democracy should be seen as perhaps the most significant part of his efforts to give modern democracy a higher tone...

...Churchill's resignation from the Admiralty in May 1915 is usually attributed to the fact that he bullied his First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, into an unsound naval scheme at the Dardanelles, thus forcing Fisher to resign in protest...

...Winston S. Churchill was the last democratic statesman to combine the roles of general—at least in the sense of making strategy—and statesman...

...Hence the question became whether an attack should be made from the north (from the Baltic or the North Sea) or from the south (the Balkans...

...His reason for abandoning the attack was that he was concerned about his supply line once he reached the Sea of Marmara...

...1) by Patrick Cosgrave Collins [English Publisher] Churchill's mind and character under the the stress of war makes constant intellectual demands on the reader: it compels him to appreciate the paramount importance of integrating the exhaustive (and at times, exhausting) data of wartime organization —culled from Cabinet minutes, memoranda, and letters—with the quirks of individual psychology and the impact made by the actual movement of events...

...Yet as the trenches in France became more elaborate, and offensive attacks became more costly, it was difficult to imagine how Russia could be helped...

...Although Fisher was not appointed First Sea Lord for this reason alone, his presence did help convince people that the Liberal Government meant business...

...On March 22, General Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the British military forces destined for the Dardanelles: and Vice-Admiral de Robeck had a conference aboard the Queen Elizabeth...

...Cosgrave's account of Churchill's role in the first and most critical phase of the war, weaves the events of 1940 into a backcloth against whose starkness and simplicity the essence of Churchill's genius is most sharply defined...

...Empire can be the basic cause of a nation's cultivating a particular kind of man and the way of life he personifies...

...Fisher's only objections were that it would be better to attack with an army than without one—a position all accepted, but for which no one had a remedy—and that the operation was seriously weakening the Grand Fleet by taking too many needed ships from Admiral Jellicoe, Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet...

...They were slow, and what was worse, unarmored...

...The greatest merit of Mr...

...Churchill's critics have usually assumed that Fisher objected on the ground that the navy could not get through the Dardanelles Straits without the support of the military...

...Churchill's advocacy of civilizing empire followed from his view that the seeking and exercise of political responsibilities are necessary means to human excellence...