In 1902, Churchill had pooh-poohed Austen Chamberlain’s desire to become First Lord as a “poor ambition.” Now, in October, 1911, he took what was commonly regarded as an inferior Cabinet post, after holding the Home Office, which comes next in titular precedence to the dignities of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He made the change because the Admiralty was a more exciting spot in that era of intense Anglo-German naval rivalry and final preparations for Armageddon.
What manner of man was the 36-year-old First Lord? All the traits that were to win him world renown in World War II were clearly discernible then: self-confidence, vivacity, inexhaustible vitality and power of work, eloquence, temperament, and a great brain. This ex-lieutenant of Hussars, a widely read student of military history, could hardly pose as a naval expert in 1911, though he had followed naval affairs closely from about 1906. To be sure, First Lords, invariably civilians, were not supposed to know much about the Navy, but Churchill was not content to lean too hard on his professional advisers. From the start he set out to familiarize himself with all aspects of the Royal Navy—-administration, personnel, and materiel. During his first eighteen months at the Admiralty, he spent 182 days at sea to keep in touch with the actual work of the Fleet. He visited practically every dockyard, shipyard, naval establishment, and important ship in the British Isles and the Mediterranean. No First Lord in modern times has displayed equal zeal in this direction. In all, he spent eight months afloat in the nearly three years before World War I. He told a friend in March, 1912, that he “had never worked so hard or been so happy.”
Churchill’s first-hand study of, and interest in, every detail of the Navy fortified his unlimited faith in himself and resulted in frequent interference in technical matters and overriding of professional opinion. Jellicoe later wrote privately that his “persistent habit of assuming for himself a knowledge of technical affairs which he could not possibly possess was fatal to a really successful administration and later on during the War led to most unfortunate results.” Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, one of the top admirals of the day, then in retirement, publicly stated in 1912 that after the manoeuvres Churchill had had the various admirals up to Whitehall and lectured them as to what they ought to have done in the circumstances. Beresford even charged that the First Lord himself manoeuvred the defending fleet by wireless. These charges may not have been true, though never denied, but the interesting thing is that the Service at large believed them to be true. Yet one must admit that Churchill’s intervention in technical matters often represented pure gain, as we shall see in a moment. The late Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes has testified that Churchill’s “quick brain and vivid imagination were invaluable and, in the majority of cases, his intervention was in the best interests of the Service.”
His methods may not always have been popular, but Churchill did possess the invaluable attributes of foresight, courage, and unbounded energy. These assets, coupled with his reliance on Lord Fisher’s advice, particularly in technical matters, were productive of tremendous naval progress in the years 1911-1914. Churchill had not dared to call Fisher back as First Sea Lord in 1911. He was apprehensive of Fisher’s age (71) and he feared the revival of the feuds: The old sea dog had antagonized a large section of the Navy with his epochal reforms and violent methods in the years 1904 to 1910. But finding Fisher “a veritable volcano of knowledge and of inspiration,” Churchill had quickly installed him as his unofficial adviser and uncrowned First Sea Lord.
There can be no doubt that many of the most significant achievements of the Churchill regime, pre-war, were in large measure due to the ideas and stimulation of Fisher. It was rumored at the time that Fisher was Churchill’s “dry nurse,” but the extent of the Admiral’s influence was not suspected by the Service and public opinion at large. Most of all, Fisher proved stimulating to Churchill in everything that related to ship design. Three fundamental departures were made in the 1912 battleship program. It was decided to build a fast division of battleships armed with 15-inch guns and driven by oil fuel: the famous Queen Elizabeth class, which gave such a splendid account of itself in the war. In 1909, Fisher had made a revolutionary plunge by increasing the gunpower of the dreadnoughts from a 12-inch to a 13.5-inch primary armament, so raising the weight of the shell from 850 lbs. to 1400 lbs., a projectile 40 per cent or more heavier than the biggest fired by the German Fleet. On coming to the Admiralty, Churchill at once planned to go one size better—to introduce 15-inch guns hurling a 1920-lb. projectile for the five dreadnoughts of the 1912 program. It took courage to enlarge the gun, for it meant enlarging the size of the ships and increasing the cost, which was bound to meet opposition in the “Little-Navy” Asquith Cabinet. It took still greater courage for the First Lord—on Fisher’s advice but against the advice of responsible experts— to order all the 15-inch guns at once instead of waiting for a trial gun to be constructed and tested before placing orders for the lot. This would have meant losing a year. Churchill plunged and everything turned out fine.
The next step was the decision to make the five new dreadnoughts a fast division. The big argument was that such a division could “cross the T” and manoeuvre around the German Fleet, whichever way the enemy might deploy, and bring him to bay. Bridgeman, the First Sea Lord, and Fisher supported the fast division, though Churchill did not need much coaxing.
To give the fast division 25 knots, the increase of four or five knots recommended by a War College study, fuel oil had to be used. It gave a large excess of speed over coal, enabled that speed to be attained with far greater rapidity, gave 40 per cent greater radius of action for the same weight of coal, and enabled a fleet to refuel at sea with ease. The Navy had already adopted oil for submarines and destroyers, but to build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing Britain’s naval supremacy on oil. This had its dangers: there is virtually no oil in Britain. It could come only from overseas, whereas the finest supply of the best steam coal in the world was right in England. To change the foundation of the Navy from British coal to foreign oil was a formidable decision. But Churchill thought the gains worth the difficulties and risks, and so did Fisher. It was the most vital decision Churchill made, and, “The camel once swallowed, the gnats went down easily enough”: oil was adopted for the smaller ships of war.
There is one debit in Churchill’s oil policy. In 1913, Jellicoe, the Second Sea Lord, “vehemently” pressed for a large increase in the contemplated oil reserves, from three months’ war consumption to six months. The Fisher Royal Commission on Oil, accepting the recommendations of the Naval Staff, favored four years’ war consumption in reserve. Churchill could not accept either of these “extravagant” demands because of strong Treasury and Cabinet opposition to excessive expenditure. There was a compromise after Jellicoe threatened to resign: 4½ months’ war consumption, to be effected gradually. Churchill is incorrect in saying (World Crisis) that “These conclusions stood the test of war,” because during several months of 1917 the shortage of oil fuel was most critical, due to successful submarine attacks on so many British oil-carrying vessels. It was down to a 3 weeks’ supply as a whole, and to 6 days’ supply at some of the fueling bases.
The second fundamental decision made by the Churchill Board was the institution of a Naval War Staff, in January, 1912. “The dead weight of professional opinion was adverse. . . . They did not want a special class of officer professing to be more brainy than the rest” (World Crisis). There were major flaws in Churchill’s scheme. The so-called Chief of Staff had no executive authority. The First Sea Lord should have been Chief of Staff. The divorce of the two officers was unworkable, as Churchill had been warned by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson would be the case. The two officers were fused in the latter part of the war. Nor was any serious effort made to separate staff from administrative duties. The First Sea Lord, who was responsible for operations, continued to carry out a multitude of other duties. But, at any rate, no longer were war plans locked in the brain of the First Sea Lord as before.
The third fundamental decision was an overhauling of war plans. By 1912 two new factors had made a change in the traditional strategy desirable. (1) The advent of submarines and destroyers had made close blockade of the Heligoland Bight and the capture of an advanced base for the blockading flotillas highly impracticable if not impossible; (2) Germany had greatly strengthened Heligoland’s fortifications, and then fortified all the Frisian Islands that could be useful to the British. A new war policy— that of distant blockade—was adopted in 1912. Under it the Fleet was to be disposed so as to block the exits from the North Sea— the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow and a destroyer cordon across the Dover Straits, supported by the older battleships and protected by minefields. In this way it was expected that German commerce would be throttled and that the resulting economic and financial pressure would cripple Germany’s capacity to continue a war. This was the British naval strategy in World War I, and of its soundness and efficacy there can be no doubt. Churchill played a large part in this big decision.
The many other constructive achievements of Churchill included these, briefly:
(1) He did much to assist the early development of an air force. Whereas the War Office saw chiefly the reconnaissance possibilities of aircraft, Churchill and Fisher conceived wider uses for the air force. For example, in 1913 the Admiralty adopted for the naval wing a three-fold use of seaplanes —for coast defense and patrol, for scouting as eyes of the Fleet, and as attacking and bombing planes.
(2) Churchill interested himself in the submarine service and had much to do with its efficiency and preparation for war in 1914, although, like nearly all lay and professional experts, he did not foresee the use to which the Germans would put the submarine. He believed that no civilized power would use submarines to sink merchant vessels.
(3) Merit, and merit only, he felt, must be the passport to advancement. Accordingly, in December, 1911, with a little prompting from Fisher, he passed over four or five senior admirals on the active list and made Jellicoe second in command of the Home Fleet (renamed the Grand Fleet when the war came), which virtually designated him for the supreme command as Admiral Sir George Callaghan’s successor. When the war came, it was felt, correctly, that the occasion demanded a younger man. Therefore, the 62-year-old Callaghan, whose appointment was due to expire on October 1st, was superseded by the 55-year-old Jellicoe on August 2nd. The appointment meant offending a string of admirals senior to Jellicoe. Even worse was the resentment of many flag officers over the rough way in which the change was supposed to have taken place. The decision was right and wise, but it took courage. As Lord Fisher said afterwards, “You may not like Winston, but he has got the heart of a lion.” Incidentally, Fisher’s advice appears to have been the determining factor in the original appointment in 1911, and in overcoming Churchill’s hesitation in 1914 before making the appointment.
In September, 1912, Churchill effected a fundamental personnel reform. Whereas in the past commissions had been granted to lower-deck men, they had represented little more than a reward for good service at the tail-end of a career. Under the new system the Navy was really open to the lower deck, making it possible for a lower-deck hand of exceptional merit to win a commission at 26 or 27. Churchill was applying the Napoleonic maxim of “careers open to talent.” It was the true beginning of a movement for democratizing the Nav^ and the credit goes to Churchill the Aristocrat.
The story of Churchill’s hectic nine months at the Admiralty in the beginning of the war revolve about his conception of the function of his office.
I accepted full responsibility for bringing about successful results and in that spirit exercised a close general supervision over everything that was done or proposed. Further, I claimed and exercised an unlimited power of suggestion and initiative over the whole field, subject only to the approval and agreement of the First Sea Lord on all operative orders (World Crisis).
This sounds fine, though it is something of a feat of legerdemain to exercise a supervision at once “close” and “general.” Writing of the Admiralty War Group—First Lord, First Sea Lord, Chief of Staff, the Secretary to the Admiralty, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, and often Admiral Sir Henry Jackson— Churchill says: “We met every day and sometimes twice a day, reviewed the whole position and arrived at a united decision on every matter of consequence.” But the Chief of Staff informed Jellicoe that there was “very little united decision.” Churchill’s large idea of his office—-“his business everything and his intent everywhere”—tended to diminish the status of the First Sea Lord and the Chief of Staff (Battenberg, Sturdee till the end of October, 1914, then Fisher, Oliver), and to cramp their freedom of action.
For instance, Churchill states that
It happened in a large number of cases that seeing what ought to be done and confident of the agreement of the First Sea Lord, I myself drafted the telegrams and decisions in accordance with our policy, and the Chief of Staff took them personally to the First Sea Lord for his concurrence before dispatch.
This, too, may sound very well, but it worked very badly. The practice of drafting “operational” telegrams in the First Lord’s office was no doubt an important contributory factor in the escape of the Goeben. On July 30th Churchill discussed the war plans for the Mediterranean and despatched a telegram to the Commander-in-Chief there, Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne—a telegram that, in the words of the distinguished naval historian Sir Julian Corbett, had “very regrettable consequences.” After stating the probability of war, the telegram said in part: “Your first task should be to aid the French in the transportation of their African army by covering and if possible bringing to action individual fast German ships, particularly Goeben, which may interfere with that transportation.” [Italics mine.] But what does “covering” mean? In its naval sense it generally means protecting a convoy or landing force. Here it is apparently used for “shadowing.” Also there is a distinct implication (“particularly Goeben, which may interfere,” etc.) that if the Goeben did not interfere with the transports and made for the Adriatic or the Levant, she need not be “covered.” The sense that it conveyed to Milne was that “his first duty was the protection of French transports,” which was a natural and legitimate interpretation.
Also in connection with the First Lord’s telegrams preceding the Coronel disaster and on other occasions, his deficiencies were brought out. “Mr. Churchill was and is a masterly writer,” Captain A. C. Dewar has commented, “but he used words far too loosely to be a master of words in the staff sense, where every useless word must be eliminated and every word must be screwed down to a definite meaning.” Lesson number one of Churchill’s war experience is: The English language is at least as important as gunnery.
A second lesson of Churchill’s war experience at the Admiralty is that a thoroughly efficient naval staff is a prerequisite for the successful conduct of modern war and that such a staff is hardly possible when the civilian head of a navy habitually overrides the experts in the direction of the naval campaign. Indeed, there was no detail of naval business, however technical, into which Churchill would not plunge with the greatest confidence. Perhaps it was impossible for a person of so masterful and active a temperament and with such unlimited faith in himself to have acted differently. But the results were not always happy.
The third lesson is closely related to the second: A civilian First Lord, even though he is the supreme and controlling authority at the Admiralty, should not interfere with operations except when they are bungled. There should be ample scope for even the most brilliant First Lord in political, administrative, and general policy matters.
To illustrate lessons two and three: On December 20, 1914, Fisher sent this revealing note to Jellicoe:
Winston has so monopolized all initiative in the Admiralty and fires off such a multitude of purely departmental memos (his power of work is absolutely amazing!) that my colleagues are no longer “superintending Lords,” but only “the First Lord’s Registry”! I told Winston this yesterday and he did not like it at all, but it is true! and the consequence is that the Sea Lords are atrophied and their departments run really by the Private Office, and I find it a Herculean task to get back to the right procedure, and quite possibly I may have to clear out, and I’ve warned Winston of this.
The First Lord was “always on the move, full of affairs and aflame with the zest and high consequence of his office.” All sorts of operations were continually presenting themselves to his fertile brain, which soared very easily over the real difficulties of a problem. A few excerpts from the recently published diaries of that brilliant admiral, the late Sir Herbert Richmond, a Captain on the Naval War Staff in 1914-1915, will illustrate the point neatly:
Aug. 9, 1914: [Churchill wanted to seize a base on the Dutch coast, even at the cost of alienating Holland.] He was vehement in his desire to adopt an offensive attitude. I saw that no words could check his vivid imagination and that it was quite impossible to persuade him both of the strategical and tactical futility of such an operation.
Oct. 24, 1914: [re a dinner with Churchill who] was oppressed with the impossibility of doing anything. The attitude of waiting, threatened all the time by submarines, unable to strike back at their fleet which lies secure behind the dock gates of the Canal, Emden or Wilhelmshaven, and the inability of the Staff to make any suggestions seem to bother him. I have not seen him so despondent before. . . . He wanted to send battleships—old ones—up the Elbe, but for what purpose except to be sunk I did not understand.
April 26, 1915: . . . Winston is doing all he can to get the Fleet to rush at the Germans if they shew their noses. [To that end he wanted to move the Grand Fleet to the Humber, from where it could bring the German Fleet to action quickly. But the Chief of Staff and other responsible people were dead against it.] ... It is inconceivable that we should do anything so contrary to our interests, whether considered from the points of view of grand strategy, minor strategy, or tactics, as to abandon a [the distant] blockade merely in order to bring about a battle under unfavourable conditions to ourselves [i.e., close to German bases]. [Churchill reluctantly shelved the idea.]
From the beginning Churchill was bitten with the idea that the Fleet should “do something.” Although he had been a prime originator of the distant blockade policy, he failed to appreciate the real power the Grand Fleet was exercising and the fact that it might go through the war without fighting a battle and yet have been the dominating factor all the time. That did not mean that the Fleet would refuse a battle. It welcomed it—only the enemy must come and fight where the Grand Fleet wanted. This was the point of view of the Staff and, with reservations, of the Sea Lords, but is was not Churchill’s idea of naval warfare.
The best illustration of Churchill’s strength and weakness as a wartime First Lord is the Dardanelles adventure, the most controversial incident in his entire official career. The Dardanelles failure was due to many serious mistakes in planning and execution for which Churchill cannot be held responsible. There is no doubt that he was the prime mover of the adventure—a responsibility which he can be proud to bear. Had the Straits been forced and Constantinople taken, it would have given the Allies free access to Russia, rallied the Balkan states against Turkey and Austria, cut the Turkish armies in Gallipoli and Asia Minor from their sole source of supply, forced the Turks to make a separate peace, and so shortened the war.
If the conception was brilliant, the modus operandi was not. The disastrous plan of a one-sided naval operation without simultaneous military action was due to the unavailability of troops, to Churchill’s optimism and impetuosity, and to his mistaken belief, founded on the German experience at Liege, that naval guns alone were capable o destroying the Turkish forts.
At the crucial War Council of January 28, 1915, the First Lord left the clear impression that his view was the considered opinion of the Board of Admiralty as a whole, which was not the case. As Sir Arthur Wilson testified before the Dardanelles Commission in 1916: Churchill “rather passed” over the unfavorable opinions of the Admiralty regarding an exclusively naval attack. “He was very keen on his own views.”
Q. In what way did you think the First Lord on the 28th failed to represent the difficulties to the War Council?
A. In the first place, he kept on saying he could do it without the army; he only wanted the army to come in and reap the the fruits, I think, was his expression; and I think he generally minimised the risks from mobile guns, and treated it as if the the armoured ships were immune altogether from injury.
The facts are: the Junior Sea Lords had not been consulted; Wilson (though the question of the Dardanelles was not put to him directly) believed the scheme unsound; Fisher and Oliver, the Chief of Staff, acquiesced in the naval attack (the former with great reluctance), but would greatly have preferred to wait until the Army was ready, when a combined attack might have been made. Admiral Sir Henry Jackson had agreed to “an attack on the outer forts and nothing more.” He did not consider an attempt made by the Fleet alone to get through the Dardanelles “a feasible operation.” The main technical objection of all the experts, Jellicoe included, was that naval gunfire was not capable of destroying the forts. Had these facts been brought to the attention of the War Council on the 28th, the Dardanelles operations would, it is very probable, never have taken place except purely as a political demonstration, or the whole operation would have been held up until adequate military force was available. But as matters stood on January 28th, the War Council, hypnotized by the eloquence of Churchill and Balfour, agreed to a naval attempt to force the Dardanelles—specifically, “To bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula, with Constantinople as its objective.”
The Dardanelles Commission in its report (1917) was wholly just, in my opinion, when it concluded:
We have not the least doubt that, in speaking at the Council, Mr. Churchill thought that he was correctly representing the collective views of the Admiralty experts. But... it seems clear that he was carried away by his sanguine temperament and his firm belief in the success of the undertaking which he advocated. Although none of his expert advisers absolutely expressed dissent, all the evidence laid before us leads to the conclusion that Mr. Churchill had obtained their support to a less extent than he himself imagined. . . . Mr. Churchill appears to have advocated the attack by ships alone before the War Council on a certain amount of half-hearted and hesitating expert opinion, which favoured a tentative or progressive scheme, beginning with an attack upon the outer forts. This attack, if successful, was to be followed by further operations against the main defences of the Narrows.
After the January 28th War Council, the objective of the Government remained the same, but the necessity for employing a large military force became daily more apparent as the inability of the Navy to make much headway was proven. As early as February, Churchill was doing all he could to get troops sent to the Dardanelles, but Kitchener, the War Minister, would not send them. This does not absolve Churchill from the blame of attempting to force the Straits without troops in February and March, in the course of which severe losses were sustained by the Fleet and the Turks were put on their guard for the joint operations that began on April 25th. On March 23rd it was decided to postpone further operations until adequate military forces could be assembled. The idea of making a purely naval attack was definitely abandoned. The conclusions we can draw are these:
As Captain Dewar has written, “It was not the business of a First Lord to act as a hot gospeller of any particular mode of attack, or to see in the Queen Elizabeth's powers a fancied likeness to the ‘slow and relentless’ advance of the 38 cm. howitzers at Antwerp.” Churchill should have relied more on his professional advisers and on the Naval Staff. Considered Staff appreciations were not asked for, except for two appreciations from Admiral Jackson on January 5th and January 15th.
The Dardanelles campaign was a direct cause of Fisher’s resignation in May, 1915, which in turn led to Churchill’s own resignation. An underlying cause of the May crisis was their incompatibility in temperament and outlook. Here were two masterful men, with brilliant intellects and active minds, each accustomed to being absolutely supreme in any work he undertook, and each very intolerant of any criticism or opposition.
A second important underlying factor, an outgrowth of the first, was “the deep personal irritation caused Fisher by the First Lord s methods of conducting business.” As early as January, Fisher was complaining that on purely technical matters he was frequently overruled (“He outargues me”). Above all, Fisher was continually and increasingly irritated by the First Lord’s methods in dealing with telegrams, and in issuing often in his own name the executive orders to the fleets, squadrons, and ships. No doubt Churchill felt he was the best interpreter of the Admiralty instructions and views even in operational matters. Usually he sent the draft telegram for Fisher’s concurrence, but on occasions no draft was sent.
Now, the First Lord was the “supreme and controlling authority” at the Admiralty, and there was nothing to prevent him from interfering in purely professional matters; there was ample precedent. All the same, it was the general view, certainly in the Navy, that it was improper and dangerous for a First Lord to dispute the opinion of the First Sea Lord in a purely professional matter. The Sea Lords supported Fisher with this unsolicited minute to Churchill on May 16th:
The present method of directing the distribution of the Fleet and the conduct of the War by which the orders for controlling movements and supplies appear to be largely taken out of the hands of the First Sea Lord is open to very grave objection.
Churchill replied that no order had ever been sent to the Fleet except upon the written authority of the First Sea Lord. This was not entirely true. Moreover, most of Churchill’s telegrams leave the idea that it was Churchill speaking and not the Board. They speak for themselves, and any naval officer reading them will see the reason for Fisher’s irritation, which was not decreased because as a rule there was nothing definite to which exception could be taken.
The long-delayed head-on clash between Fisher and Churchill came over the Dardanelles migraine in May. Fisher had agreed with extreme reluctance on January 28th not to resign and to support the operation. But it meant, as time went on and as Fisher had foreseen, a gradual draining of Britain’s naval resources from the decisive theatre of war. The naval demands of the Dardanelles were jeopardizing the superiority of the Grand Fleet, which was essential to the successful prosecution of the war. On this point Jellicoe, Fisher, and the Sea Lords were agreed. But with the Army clinging on to its dearly-won positions by tooth and nail, Churchill was determined to see the campaign through to a successful issue. On May 12th he proposed to send out further reinforcements of ships from England. Fisher agreed to two of the older battleships and two 14-inch monitors going out if the Queen Elizabeth were ordered home, and a settlement was reached. Then, on May 14th, Churchill proposed further substantial reinforcements. This was, for Fisher, the last straw. He saw that concessions would only be followed by fresh demands. This dangerous depletion of the Navy in home waters to provide reinforcements for the Dardanelles was the immediate cause of Fisher’s resignation on May 15th.
Churchill, in his World Crisis, admits that the profound disagreement over reinforcements for the Dardanelles was one of the reasons for the resignation. But he adds two others: Fisher resigned mainly because Churchill on May 14th had wired the Italian Minister of Marine that certain ships were being despatched to co-operate with the Italian Fleet. The telegram had been sent without Fisher’s concurrence, though he had previously accepted the proposal in principle. As a secondary cause, Churchill adds, Fisher resigned because of jealousy of Kitchener’s position—a professional man serving as War Minister and member of the War Council. The first factor had no influence whatever on Fisher’s decision, and there is no evidence of any jealousy of Kitchener. No, the causes are those as given. They are pithily summed up in a letter from Fisher to Jellicoe on May 17th:
I have resigned on account of proposed further depletion of our Home resources for the Dardanelles, and also because of absolute incompatibility of view with the First Lord. He is a bigger danger than the Germans. The other Sea Lords agree, but don’t resign. . .
Churchill was full of confidence after Fisher had resigned. Henceforth he would be sole master at the Admiralty. But the Conservative party capitalized on the situation. The resignation of Britain’s most respected and trusted admiral exposed the Government to serious attack in the House of Commons. Moreover, Kitchener was being attacked for allegedly having failed to supply the army in France with what it needed and had asked for. To stave off the threatened Conservative attack on both counts, Asquith agreed to the formation of a coalition government, and one of the conditions of the compact was Churchill’s departure from the Admiralty. The Conservatives maintained that as long as a strong and famous man was First Sea Lord some check would be imposed on Churchill, but an ordinary sailor as First Sea Lord would be helpless. They would not tolerate a tame Board, subservient to Churchill’s policies. At first it was planned to put Churchill in the Colonial Office, but plans were suddenly changed— we do not know exactly why. He was relegated to the sinecure Duchy of Lancaster, a post ordinarily reserved, as Lloyd George said, for “beginners in the Cabinet, or for distinguished politicians who had reached the first stages of unmistakable decrepitude.” For the next year he was on the fringes of the central prosecution of the war. The news of Churchill’s retirement from Whitehall was received with relief in the Navy. At the same time, though the brutality of the fall had stunned him, his very dignified departure—no accusations, no recriminations—won him a great deal of sympathy, even among those over whom he had at times ridden rough-shod.
To attempt an estimate of the four years that Churchill, prior to World War II, regarded as “the most memorable” of his official career: It was his work during the critical pre-war period that will give Churchill an assured place in naval history. “There is one thing,” Kitchener said in the darkest hour of Churchill’s fortunes, “they cannot take away from you: the Fleet was ready.” As regards his wartime service at the Admiralty, as I have tried to show, his extraordinarily irritating methods and his rather amateurish strategic ideas hindered the war effort. On the other hand, the British Navy will not forget the debt due to his initiative, driving power, and willingness to take responsibility as First Lord. He had brought to the Admiralty the driving force which had been needed at the moment, and which was absent from the Admiralty throughout the rest of the war.
I subscribe to Fisher’s sincere tribute: “I backed him up till I resigned. I would do the same again. He had courage and imagination! He was a War Man!”