Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916-1922

by Martin Gilbert

Overview

The fourth volume in the official biography—“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written” (Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times).
 
Covering the years 1916 to 1922, Martin Gilbert’s fascinating account carefully traces Churchill’s wide-ranging activities and shows how, by his persuasive oratory, administrative skill, and masterful contributions to Cabinet discussions, Churchill regained, only a few years after the disaster of the Dardanelles, a leading position in British political life.
 
Included are many dramatic and controversial episodes: the German breakthrough on the Western Front in March 1918, the anti-Bolshevik intervention in 1919, negotiating the Irish Treaty, consolidating the Jewish National Home in Palestine, and the Chanak crisis with Turkey. In all these, and many other events, Churchill’s leading role is explained and illuminated in Martin Gilbert’s precise, masterful style.
 
In a moving final chapter, covering a period when Churchill was without a seat in Parliament for the first time since 1900, Martin Gilbert brilliantly draws together the many strands of a time in Churchill’s life when his political triumphs were overshadowed by personal sorrows, by his increasingly somber reflections on the backward march of nations and society, and by his stark forecasts of dangers to come.
 
“A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . Rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780795344541
Publisher:	RosettaBooks
Publication date:	09/01/2018
Series:	Winston S. Churchill Biography , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	988
Sales rank:	363,176
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

SIR MARTIN GILBERT was born in England in 1936. He was a graduate of Oxford University, from which he held a Doctorate of Letters, and was an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. In 1962 he began work as one of Randolph Churchill’s research assistants, and in 1968, after Randolph Churchill’s death, he became the official biographer of Winston Churchill. He published six volumes of the Churchill biography, and edited twelve volumes of Churchill documents. During forty-eight years of research and writing, Sir Martin published eighty books, including The First World War, The Second World War, and a three-volume History of the Twentieth Century. He also wrote, as part of his series of ten historical atlases, Atlas of the First World War, and, most recently, Atlas of the Second World War. Sir Martin’s film and television work included a documentary series on the life of Winston Churchill. His other published works include Churchill: A Photographic Portrait, In Search of Churchill, Churchill and America, and the single volume Churchill, A Life.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Shadow of the Dardanelles

By the beginning of December 1916 Churchill had been out of office for more than a year. Following his removal from the Admiralty in May 1915 he had sometimes despaired of ever holding an important Cabinet position again. He alone had been held responsible for the failure of the British naval attack of the Dardanelles, and many people had blamed his lack of judgement for the suffering and slaughter of the Gallipoli campaign. He had found no solace, during the summer of 1915, in being Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a Cabinet post devoid of all administrative work, and incapable of satisfying his ambition. 'I do not want office,' he had written to his friend Archibald Sinclair on 5 July 1915, 'but only war direction: that perhaps never again. Everything else — not that. At least so I feel in my evil moments.' Later in his letter he told Sinclair:

I am profoundly unsettled: & cannot use my gift. Of that last I have no doubts. I do not feel that my judgements have been falsified, or that the determined pursuance of my policy through all the necessary risks was wrong. I wd do it all again if the circumstances were repeated. But I am faced with the problem of living through days of 24 hours each: & averting my mind from the intricate business I had in hand — wh was my life.

In November 1915 Churchill had resigned from the Government, rejoined the army and gone to the western front. In January 1916 he had been given command of an infantry battalion. With Sinclair as his second-in-command, he had tried to absorb himself in front-line duties. But politics still dominated his thoughts, and by the end of March 1916 he had decided to return to the House of Commons, even if it meant a long period in opposition. 'Is it not damnable,' he had written to his brother Jack on 15 July 1916, 'that I should be denied all real scope to serve this country, in this tremendous hour?'

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1916 Churchill's main activity had been the preparation of his case for the Dardanelles Commission of Enquiry, to which, on September 28, he had given evidence. Throughout October he had watched while others gave evidence, had challenged every statement with which he disagreed and had urged those who had supported the campaign to come forward in his defence. 'Everything I hear about the D'lles Commission encourages me,' he had written to Sinclair on November 29. 'The interim report cannot now be long delayed and I have good hopes that it will be a fair judgement. I sh'd like to have it out as soon as possible. But the days slip away.'

On December 7 Lloyd George had become Prime Minister, at the head of a new all-Party Coalition, committed to the vigorous prosecution of the war. But he had offered Churchill no place in his administration. Although he had a high regard for Churchill's talents, and wanted to make use of them, the Conservatives, on whom he depended for support, insisted on Churchill's exclusion from office. This veto reflected more than a decade of Conservative hostility.

* * *

Churchill had counted on Lloyd George's accession to office for his own return to the Cabinet, and was bitter not to be included in the new Government. On December 10 he wrote to Sinclair:

The papers will have apprised you of the course of events, & you will have learned from them of the downfall of all my hopes and desires. These have not been unworthy, for I had an impulse & a gift to give to the war energies of the country. But my treasure is rejected. If I cd reconcile the turn of events and of newspaper opinion with the true facts & the true values I shd be hopelessly downcast. But I am sure that these judgements are unjust and I have a good conscience & am confident of my record. Still you who know me so well will understand how unpleasant it is to me to be denied all scope in action at this time of all other times.

Of course I have every right to complain of L.G. who weakly & faithlessly bowed to Northcliffe's malevolent press. But this is not the hour when personal resentments however justified must influence conduct or colour opinion. I shall remain absolutely silent!

It was unlucky that the D'lles report shd have been delayed until after the crisis; for I am still hopeful that it will give a turn to public opinion. But everything has turned out ill for me since the war began. Perhaps we are now at the nadir.

It will be odd now on the direct opposition Bench with all the furious ex Ministers arriving. I expect they will soon be vy anxious to be civil to me. But I intend to sit in the corner seat in a kind of isolation.

Later in his letter Churchill gave Sinclair his impression of Lloyd George's Cabinet:

The new Government is a weak one — so far as ability is concerned and largely inexperienced. Political considerations alone have ruled the formation of the War Council, & except L.G. not one of its members possesses any aptitude for war or knowledge of it. The exclusion of the Admiralty & War Office from the War Council shows an utter lack of comprehension of the interplay of forces. The difficulties before them are enormous, & only disasters lie ahead for many months.

On December 10, as a gesture of friendship and encouragement, Lloyd George asked Sir George Riddell to take Churchill a message. Riddell told Churchill that Lloyd George had no intention of keeping him out of office, and would try to make him Chairman of the Air Board. Lloyd George added, however, that the Dardanelles Commission Report would have to be published first. As the Report was unlikely to be ready until the summer of 1917, the offer held out no immediate hope of office. Riddell gave Churchill Lloyd George's message on December 11, and in his diary recorded Churchill's reaction. 'I don't reproach him,' Churchill had replied. 'His conscience will tell him what he should do. Give him that message and tell him that I cannot allow what you have said to fetter my freedom of action. I will take any position which will enable me to serve my country. My only purpose is to help defeat the Hun, and I will subordinate my own feelings so that I may be able to render some assistance.'

Churchill would have liked to become Chairman of the Air Board. For over a year he had been advocating a united air policy, under a single Minister. Although the post was not in the War Cabinet, Conservative opposition could not be overcome. On December 20 the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Edward Carson, wrote to the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law: 'I shd greatly fear friction if the appt is made. I much dislike having to seem opposed to the suggestion as my personal inclination is towards utilising Churchill's undoubted ability — especially so as he's so down in his luck at present — but I hope some other, more suitable opportunity may be found.' That same day Churchill wrote to Sinclair, describing Lloyd George's offer, and adding:

Since then I hear this arrangement bruited in various secret & well informed quarters. I have not seen him however, tho he threw a note across the floor last night asking me to come. I do not want to have a chatterbox talk. Unless I am really wanted I do not want to join them. However painful it is not to have work to do against the enemy, one must just wait. There is nothing to be gained by eagerness. The matter now hangs I suppose in the balance. ... But for the war nothing wd induce me to take office.

I look back a gt deal to our Plugstreet days, & wish I cd have cut myself more adrift from London & its whirlpools and been more content with the simple animal life (& death) wh the trenches offered. When I am absolutely sure there is no prospect of regaining control or part of it here, I shall turn again to that resort & refuge: & after all I have learned in disillusionment I think I cd do better. It is a mellow picture in retrospect. But I was always tormented by the idea that gt opportunities were slipping by at home.

And this is a fact. If I had stayed Chancellor of the Duchy and shut my mouth & drawn my salary, I shd today be one of the principal personages in direction of affairs. That was a costly excursion. Still I cannot regret it. Under a fair pretence of fine words, there is a gt déconsideration of all who wear uniform. They are discounted as persons 'under the law'. Not one of these gallant MPs who has fought through the Somme at the heads of their battalions, stands a chance agst less clever men who have stopped & chattered at home. This is to me the most curious phenomenon of all. It is quite inexplicable to me.

Churchill still hoped that when the Dardanelles Commission Report was published, his political fortunes would improve. Meanwhile, he held aloof from all opposition groupings. 'I have been enveloped in courtesies by the ex Liberal Ministers,' he told Sinclair in his letter of December 20, 'but I remain quite unattached.' 'Everyone seems to think,' Churchill's former Private Secretary Edward Marsh wrote to Sinclair on the following day, 'the report will be much in his favour. If only he'd stayed out with you, I expect he wd now be at the top of the tree, & I shd be back with him. Let us all beware of Impatience!'

On December 23 Churchill left London for Blenheim, where he spent Christmas and New Year with his family. It was the second consecutive New Year during which he had held no political office. Lord Fisher, whose resignation in May 1915 had precipitated the crisis leading to Churchill's fall, was likewise without any official employment. On January 25 Fisher celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday. That same day Churchill wrote to congratulate him on his 'continued enjoyment of perennial youth and vigour'. His letter went on:

Like you I have seen no one political. One is quite powerless as far as the war is concerned. It is a pity, because a descent on the German coast, the bringing in of Denmark and the entry & domination of the Baltic wd secure a decisive victory for the Allies, who otherwise will be forced to far less satisfactory alternatives after far greater sacrifices. Our common enemies are all powerful today & friendship counts for less than nothing.

I am simply existing.

Throughout the early months of 1917, Churchill's thoughts were entirely dominated by the Dardanelles. 'I had a short talk with Winston about the Dardanelles Report,' Sir Maurice Hankey wrote in his diary on February 16. 'He said he was satisfied, but the tone of his voice indicated disappointment.' During February Churchill wrote two long memoranda for the Dardanelles Commission of Enquiry, setting out his reasons for supporting the Gallipoli campaign even after he had left the Admiralty in May 1915. In the first memorandum Churchill criticized what he described as the 'series of delays' in reinforcing the troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the summer of 1915, and wrote bitterly of the Coalition Government which Asquith had formed in May 1915, as a Government 'based purely upon a balancing of personal and party claims, united neither by any common conception of action, nor of comradeship, nor by mutual confidence, nor even by partisanship'. And he continued: 'It robbed the country at once of a responsible Opposition and an alternative Administration. It suppressed utterly for the time being all effective criticism within the House of Commons and transferred this function with the immense power which has followed from it to the press.' Churchill went on to point out that the poor quality of the Divisions at Gallipoli, though known to the War Office, had not been revealed to the Cabinet until it was too late. 'If ever there was an operation in the history of war,' he concluded, 'which once having been taken should have been carried through with the utmost vigour and at the utmost speed it was the military attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula.'

In his second memorandum of February 1917, Churchill criticized the Government's policy after the failure of the August offensive. In September and October 1915, he insisted, the Government should have renewed the military offensive on the Gallipoli Peninsula and sent sufficient reinforcements and munitions to make victory certain. The failure was not a military, but a political one. 'It is no good coming along afterwards,' he wrote, 'and applying to these events the light of after-knowledge and the assumptions of plenary power. The future was then unknown. No one possessed plenary power.' And he continued:

The wishes of foreign Governments, themselves convulsed internally by difficulties the counterpart of our own, were constantly thrusting themselves athwart our policy. No one had the power to give clear brutal orders which would command unquestioning respect. Power was widely disseminated among the many important personages who in this period formed the governing instrument. Knowledge was very unequally shared. Innumerable arguments of a partial character could be quoted on every side of all these complicated questions. The situation itself was in constant and violent movement. We never at any time possessed the initiative; we were always compelled to adapt ourselves to events.

All the time, however, clear and simple solutions existed which would speedily have produced the precious element of victory. They were not, however, solutions within the reach of anyone not possessed of commanding power.

On February 21, while the Dardanelles Commission was reading Churchill's final submissions, the Navy Estimates debate in the House of Commons gave him a chance to voice his opinions on the current conduct of the war. His mind was still on the Dardanelles. Criticism had its place, he told the House of Commons, but the only criticism that was justified in wartime was 'criticism before the event'. And he went on: 'Nothing is more easy, nothing is cheaper, nothing is more futile than to criticise the hazardous and incalculable events and tendencies of war after the event has occurred.'

On March 5, during the Army Estimates debate, Churchill advocated a Secret Session of the House of Commons, to enable Ministers to explain their policies in greater detail, and to enable MPs to be more critical. 'The House of Commons,' he asserted, 'would be to blame and failing in its duty if upon all these great questions connected with manpower, the supply of men, and our military policy, they do not insist upon some serious discussion in which the Ministers could take part, and in which hon. Members could really address themselves to questions in which the life and fortunes of the country depend.' But Lloyd George declined Churchill's advice.

In his speech on the Army Estimates Churchill argued that insufficient use had been made of Indian and African manpower. From Africa, he believed, as many as 300,000 men could have been recruited for labour services in the war zone, thus freeing an equivalent number of British soldiers for the front line. The failure to find new sources of manpower would, he declared, gravely hamper the military campaigns of 1918: 'I say quite frankly, I have a feeling of despair, because it does seem to me that the House of Commons, by not grappling with these questions, by not following them up with intense attention and even ferocity, is allowing power to slip from its hands and is allowing itself to be made a useless addition to the Constitution.'

Churchill then outlined his own plans for the campaigns of the future, aimed at saving life, but at the same time ensuring victory. He was insistent that new techniques of mechanical warfare must be developed. 'Machines save life,' he asserted, 'machine-power is a substitute for man-power, brains will save blood, manoeuvre is a great diluting agent to slaughter.' Unless new 'manoeuvre devices' were developed, he went on, 'I do not see how we are to avoid being thrown back on those dismal processes of waste and slaughter which are called attrition'. Churchill then warned the Government not to repeat the tactics of the Somme offensive of 1916. 'I hope,' he said, 'that they will not launch out on vast offensives of the kind we had last year unless they are certain that the fair weather months at their disposal and the reserves they command relatively to the enemy are such as to give an indisputable result.' The Allies had no right 'to count upon events turning decisively and immediately in our favour'. Preparation should now be made for the campaign of 1918. No source of manpower should be neglected. Mechanical aids should be developed 'which require intense exertion of thought'. The skilled production of weapons should proceed 'at its very height'. By such methods, Churchill concluded, 'we can make victory a certainty in 1918. There is still time for that. Do not let us always be behind the march of events. We are doing in 1917 what we ought to have done in 1916 or even in 1915. Do not let it be said when 1918 arrives that we find ourselves in agreement at last with all those measures which it would have been proper to take in 1917.'

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Illustrations,
Maps,
Preface,
Acknowledgements to the New Edition,
PART ONE: MINISTER OF MUNITIONS, 1917–1918,
1 THE SHADOW OF THE DARDANELLES,
2 'A DANGEROUSLY AMBITIOUS MAN',
3 MINISTER OF MUNITIONS,
4 'GIVE ME THE POWER',
5 WITHIN AN ACE OF DESTRUCTION,
6 'NO PEACE TILL VICTORY',
7 'THE SORT OF LIFE I LIKE',
8 THE COMING OF VICTORY,
9 ELECTIONEERING AND CABINET MAKING,
PART TWO: AT THE WAR OFFICE, 1919–1921,
10 DEMOBILIZATION,
11 SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR,
12 RUSSIA IN TURMOIL,
13 MISSION TO PARIS,
14 'I KNOW OF NO RUSSIAN POLICY',
15 'THE BOLSHEVIK TYRANNY IS THE WORST....',
16 'NOW IS THE TIME TO HELP',
17 'THE WHOLE FATE OF RUSSIA',
18 'MR CHURCHILL'S PRIVATE WAR',
19 GENERAL DENIKIN'S RETREAT,
20 THE TRIUMPH OF THE BOLSHEVIKS,
21 'EVERYBODY WISHING TO MAKE THEIR PEACE',
22 'THE HAIRY PAW OF THE BABOON',
23 THE AMRITSAR DEBATE,
24 'THE POISON PERIL FROM THE EAST',
25 RUSSIA'S 'BLOODSTAINED GOLD',
26 IRELAND 1919–1920: 'LET MURDER STOP',
27 TURKEY IN DEFEAT,
28 'THESE THANKLESS DESERTS',
PART THREE: AT THE COLONIAL OFFICE, 1921–1922,
29 CREATING THE MIDDLE EAST DEPARTMENT,
30 'I AM DETERMINED TO SAVE YOU MILLIONS',
31 THE CAIRO CONFERENCE: MARCH 1921,
32 VISIT TO JERUSALEM,
33 THE MIDDLE EAST SETTLEMENT,
34 1921: 'A WONDERFUL AND TERRIBLE YEAR',
35 PALESTINE 1921: 'GIVE THE JEWS THEIR CHANCE',
36 PALESTINE 1922: DEFENDING THE BALFOUR DECLARATION,
37 'THIS MYSTERIOUS POWER OF IRELAND',
38 THE IRISH TREATY: 'A STATUE OF SNOW',
39 IRELAND 1922: 'WILL THE LESSON BE LEARNED IN TIME',
40 IRELAND 1922: 'THE UNCEASING, TORMENTING STRUGGLE',
41 THE WAR MEMOIRS: 'A GT CHANCE TO PUT MY WHOLE CASE',
42 IN DEFENCE OF THE COALITION,
43 THE GENOA CONFERENCE,
44 IRAQ, 1921-1922: 'AN UNGRATEFUL VOLCANO',
45 THE CHANAK CRISIS,
46 THE FALL OF THE COALITION,
47 'I THOUGHT HIS CAREER WAS OVER',
48 RETROSPECT: 'PONDER, & THEN ACT',
List of Sources,
Endnotes,