Daring To Look Ahead

Sir Philip Gibbs

WAITING IN WAR was what you did. But this was different. For once, it was — at least nearly — all quiet on the Western Front.

The great war correspondent, Philip Gibbs, by now a veteran along the front lines, alluded to “the hush before the storm”. It was not, however, the kind of quiet one could enjoy. British and French troops knew from bitter experience how terrifying and overwhelming the juggernaut of war, driven by the Germans, could be.

Their commanders were at least as uneasy. The scale of the forthcoming attack was inevitably one predicated in the certain knowledge that Germany would soon run out of men and materiel unless she could bring the war to an end within months. She had nothing to lose. Those schooled in the operas of Richard Wagner may justly have feared that life was threatening to imitate art.

For now, the Germans held back, save for a half-hearted attack on 8th February on the Chemin des Dames, and another in the Woeuvre area. Both were quickly repulsed by the French, who also launched bombing raids during the week against Saarbrucken and Metz. The British, perhaps wishing not to be left out, carried out a night raid on the railway junction at Courcelles-les-Metz on 9th February, dropping nearly one ton of bombs.

Chemin des Dames

This was war against civilians, however you dressed it up, although it does not seem to have been especially effective. Berlin announced that there had been 31 air raids against German cities in January with 14 casualties caused. Compared to the scale of death and injury which had followed the raining of bombs on southern England in recent weeks, this seems hardly to have been worth the journey.

Russia had given up waiting, it appeared. On 10th February, Trotsky announced that the nation was no longer at war. Her forces were ordered to stand down.

This was not a moment to hang out bunting or dance in the streets. Drink was taken, of course — at least, when it could be found — but mainly to blot out the horror of the present moment: not merely had Russia lost the war against the imperialists, she could not even sign a peace treaty with them.

The enemy (the erstwhile enemy, presumably) wanted too much land, too many raw materials. Trotsky would allow neither Russia nor, much more importantly, the Bolsheviks to be tainted by a formal instrument of capitulation. He just said, for about the millionth time, that the war was illegal, and that Russia simply could not continue to fight against Austrian and German workers and peasants.

Trotsky: didactic and bombastic

That war really was over, whatever formalities remained. Fighting, of course, continued — but in the tortuous and labyrinthine contours of a civil war. Trotsky and Lenin also drew hope from the fact that the geopolitical contours of eastern Europe, the Balkans and European Russia were more volatile and unpredictable than they had been for three centuries. In this context, at least, they were happy to wait on events.

It was bad luck for Russia’s neighbours and allies, of course, now left to take their chances: civil war raged in Finland, while Romania succumbed to famine and disease. They should have loved nothing more than to stay fighting the Kaiser, but bleak reality pointed otherwise. On 7th February, the Central Powers sent an ultimatum to the Romanian Government: make peace or face annihilation. Bratianu resigned as Prime Minister and the army’s idol, General Alexander Averescu, was nominated as the new Prime Minister.

Further east in Tobolsk, the Tsar and his family were also waiting — it is not clear for what. For better times, they presumably hoped. For the worst, they certainly feared. Schooled never to show too much emotion, especially pas devant les enfants, they sought to present a face to their captors of calm resignation. This week, just for a moment, came an indication that the Tsar was less phlegmatic than his clipped diary entries suggested. When Colonel Kobylinski, in charge of those guarding the royal family, announced to the Tsar his intention to resign, he recalled that:

The Emperor put his arm on my shoulders, his eyes filled with tears. He replied: ‘I implore you to remain. Eugene Stepanovitch, remain for my sake, for the sake of my wife and for the sake of my children. You must stand by us.’ Then he embraced me…

Kobylinski relented. His wish to stand down owed nothing to the imperial family, of whom he was evidently extremely fond, but very much to the insubordination and uncontrollability of those soldiers of the 2nd regiment who were under his command. They had elected a Soldiers’ Committee which recently had banned the wearing of epaulettes — a perfect example of the petty vindictiveness in which many seemed to indulge.

Colonel Eugene Kobylinski stands to the left of the Tsar. Judging by the shaved heads of the two daughters, the photograph was probably taken in about June 1917.

The imperial family was vulnerable, frightened and very under-occupied. In an effort to alleviate boredom, the prisoners had built a “snow mountain” which provided a perfect spot for tobogganing. The 13-year-old Tsarevich’s diary on 11th February recorded:

Played with Kolia [Derevenko] in the afternoon and slid down the hill. Hit the ankle on my right leg. Limped all evening. Put a compress at night.

The health of the haemophiliac Alexei continued to alarm and distress his parents and sisters. There is little evidence that many of the soldiers guarding the royal family were moved to pity. Doubtless most of them had known far greater miseries and discomforts in their own lives.

The Tsarevich — this picture probably dates to about this time.

Pity lay outside the lexicon of the Bolshevik rulers, and apparently beyond the range of their emotional experience. Any evidence of it made them uneasy. Whatever the manifold faults and abuses of the Russian Orthodox church, not so dissimilar to most churches of other traditions, it had been a source of succour and solace to many peasants through the centuries. The Bolsheviks, explicitly atheist, loathed such sentimentality, and it did not help that their dislike was returned in full measure. On 7th February, The Daily Telegraph reported that they had responded to their excommunication by the Patriarch of All Russia by “confiscating all the property, and virtually throwing the clergy, with the monks and nuns, destitute upon the world”.

News of this went down very badly indeed among Russia’s former allies, all God-fearing nations. Having been abandoned by Russia in the fight, there was now no reason not to think the very worst of her. On 8th February, fresh allegations surfaced in the Paris press that Lenin and Trotsky were in the pay of the German government. It was a rumour of course — no more than that. Disseminating rumours was part of the weaponry of war, especially if they served to sow dissent and unease. And, even without sensational whispers, there was plenty of that already.

This disquiet owed much to the terrible risks borne by those at sea, and — the two were closely linked — to Britain’s fear she would soon be starved. The terrible events at sea during the week climaxed in the sinking of the Tuscania on 5th February, the occasion of the highest American loss of life in a single day since the Civil War.

The ship had been part of a convoy of 14 ships which had set off from New Jersey a few days earlier. En route, she had been joined by an escort of eight British destroyers to guide it through the “Danger Zone” between the Irish and Scottish coasts to its destination of Liverpool. Tuscania, formerly a luxury liner, was now serving as a troopship. Aboard were over 2,000 American soldiers and 384 British crew. Alas, it had the bad luck now to have been stalked by UB-77 under Captain Wilhelm Meyer. Early in the evening of 5th February, it fired two torpedoes, the second of which struck amidships, causing an explosion in which 20 were killed.

Captain Meyer looks a harmless enough sort: such domestic images do not allow us to demonise quite so readily as we might like…

What happened next was depressingly familiar to most of those who endured an attack at sea. The ship began to list and all the lights went out and, while the ship’s company was well-versed in lifeboat drill, real-life nearly always went less smoothly. According to Sergeant Dubuque of Brooklyn:

After the crash, the vessel took a tremendous list to the starboard, nearly all the eight lifeboats on that side being either blown into the air or rendered useless. We immediately lined up, standing at attention, and singing The Star Spangled Banner, and My Country, ’Tis of Thee, while the ship’s crew sang the British National Anthem…

All very edifying. But many soldiers had to find their way below decks in the dark to fetch their life-vests, while others struggled to release lifeboats. Some of these fell on top of others, due to the listing of the ship; those which managed to launch did not always stay afloat: the heavy swell overturned several, pitching men into the sea. A survivor could never forget

the frantic and futile shouts of men who struggled as the high seas choked and chilled them, and the slow but sure steady listing of the great ship.

Terrible as this was, it might have been very much worse. Three  British destroyers, GrasshopperPigeon and Mosquito each came alongside the stricken ship and “with a display of seamanship nothing short of marvellous” rescued hundreds of soldiers still on board the Tuscania: 500 onto Grasshopper, over 800 onto Pigeon and 200 onto Mosquito.

Tuscania sank at around 10p.m., four hours after being hit. Nearly all those who died had escaped from the ship before the British destroyers had arrived and, of these, most perished in the freezing turbulent waters or were dashed to their deaths against the rocks, including those of Rathin Island, and on the cliffs of the island of Islay.

Most, but not all. Everett Harpham wrote to a friend in the States:

Nine of us were finally washed ashore alive, some injured badly and all nearly drowned. We laid together by a large rock, in the wind, and had to listen to the moans and groans of our now dying comrades till daylight. About twenty corpses washed ashore beside us when daylight came and we were rescued by a Highlander.

Years later, another survivor, Arthur Siplon, wrote:

When daylight arrived a terrible sight met our eyes. Many dead bodies were washing about by the sea. A number of men were badly injured with broken arms or legs, or other injuries.

One hundred and thirty-two men made it to the tiny island of Islay, many after ten hours in the sea. Islay had been denuded of its young men — they were all serving in the armed forces — and so the physically and emotionally arduous task of rescue belonged to the women, the old, and the young. One teenage boy, from the Morrison family went to raise the alarm; his brother rescued three soldiers, two from a rock, one from a cliff and took them back to their house. Their sisters, Betsy and Annie, fed the depleted and distraught men on scones they continued to bake all through the night. The family rapidly used up all their food supplies and gave away all their spare clothes. They refused, then or later, to take even a penny in payment.

Next day, and for the two which followed, the burials began, at which American soldiers acted as pall bearers and 400 islanders attended in the driving rain. Many bodies, of course, were never recovered. The death toll stood at 210, of whom 166 were Americans, and the rest crew members, mostly from Glasgow. A solitary American grave remains on the island — that of Private Roy Muncaster.

Burial of victims of the Tuscania: Isle of Islay, February 1918

The tragedy hit the United States hard, for whom participation in the war was still sufficiently recent for it to embrace conspiracy theory more greedily than other, more battle-hardened, powers. The New York Herald enquired:

Who informed the Germans of the departure of the Tuscania? America is honeycombed with spies. When will the hangings begin?

Hangings? Was there not already death enough? The Tuscania’s terrible fate was not the sum of the bad news at sea that week. Nearly 500 lives were lost in various disasters: on 11th February alone, a French Navy submarine sank in the Bay of Biscay due to an internal explosion, killing all 43 crew, and another 57 died when the cargo ship, Merton Hall, was torpedoed and sunk off Finistère.

It would be many years before the term “compassion fatigue” entered popular vocabulary — but, given the extent of horror, one wonders whether, by early 1918, it remained possible still to feel much emotion, save for those one knew.

It seems that it was. Sentimental guff had long ago passed out of fashion, but even now one can detect a rough-hewn compassion among exhausted soldiers and civilians, even in the most trying circumstances. Take for instance, attitudes towards Conscientious Objectors. Long after popular enthusiasm for the war, of the flag-waving variety, had diminished, conchies continued to have a hard time at the hands of both civilians and authorities. This week saw a conchie die, largely on account of the harsh treatment which persisted. Henry Firth, a former shoemaker and Methodist preacher, was breaking stones in the quarry at Dartmoor Prison when he collapsed. Twice he had reported to the doctor, and on the second occasion he had been told he was just being selfish. He was finally admitted to the camp hospital on 30th January, suffering from pneumonia, and died six days later.

Henry Firth

In a way, so what? It was wartime after all, so the fact that his request for eggs had been refused on the grounds they were needed for soldiers at the front was unlikely to inflame public sentiment. An inquest was held, in which Firth’s death was attributed not to neglect or lack of medical attention but to a “diabetic coma”.

The British people by and large did not like COs — hardly, in wartime, a surprising state of affairs. Yet both they and the government matched this with an acknowledgement that principles, while they came at a cost, deserved to be acknowledged. Some licence was allowed for those who cooperated with the Home Office Scheme. This had been introduced to alleviate pressure on prisons in which, at one stage, around 6,000 COs were housed. The scheme allowed objectors to be moved to special work centres where they could wear civilian clothes rather than prison uniform, and might work under civilian controllers and be allowed out on Sundays and in the evenings. In a remarkable testimony that Conchies may have been resented, but were not necessarily considered pariahs, Firth’s funeral was attended by all the inmates at Dartmoor, a thousand men sang ‘Abide with Me’ as a little train left to take his body to Plymouth.

If the war had killed off any residue of care and compassion, fair play would have become an irrelevance. Yet the British were becoming more clear-headed as to the extent to which the harsh contentions of war must be borne by all classes and conditions of people alike. This same week saw the philosopher, Bertrand Russell (grandson of a Victorian Prime Minister, no less) sentenced to six months in Brixton Prison.

Russell, Chairman of the No Conscription Fellowship, fell foul of the law after having written an article which demanded early peace negotiations with Germany and — even more provocatively — intimated that the American soldiers who were now pouring across the Atlantic might be deployed as strike breakers in Britain. This was almost certainly a total fabrication, but industrial relations were in a very sensitive condition just then, and there were plenty of labour leaders who were ready to believe it. Above all, the Government was determined to do nothing to upset the Americans. The idea that the Special Relationship might founder simply because of the scruples of some ditsy Cambridge academic was intolerable.

Bertrand Russell

Food, perhaps even more than peace, was what really mattered to most people. It also became a prism through which British society took strides towards a more egalitarian sense of itself. Food hoarding became the great unforgivable and the popular press thoroughly enjoyed the sport of naming and shaming those who fell short of the high standards of behaviour demanded by this new morality. This week’s big scalp was that of William MacGeagh-MacCaw, MP for West Down since 1908, whose house, Rooksnest, near Godstone had been raided in January. A significant quantity of food had been found including tapioca, rice, oatmeal (59lbs.), semolina, biscuits, tea, sugar (102lbs.), honey and 36lbs. of golden syrup. Similar quantities were found at his house in Eaton Square in London. The man himself sounds to have been a pretty dodgy sort, much of whose parliamentary career had involved little more than pursuing business interests in India. Nor did he help his own defence, insisting that… “a reasonable supply ought to be kept”.

There was no obvious sign of contrition either:

I don’t think I’ve neglected my duty in any way. I have a large body of people dependent upon me for food.

Rooksnest

Perhaps prudently, the disgraced MP chose to stand down before the post-war election. Meanwhile, he was fined the massive sum of £400, and the food was confiscated. In those straitened times, that may have hurt almost as much.

Presumably he, like so many others, was forced now to rely on the nasty-sounding alternative food products, advertisements for which now filled the pages of the newspapers — Egall’s eggs, Foster Clarks soups, and so forth. (Egalitarianism had its limits, however: King George V was rumoured to have sent venison from his deer herd in Windsor Great Park to fill the yawning stomachs of hungry schoolboys at nearby Eton.)

Further evidence of systemic change, designed explicitly to shape a post-war world, came this week when the Royal Assent was finally given to the Representation of the People Act. Famously, this enfranchised 8.4 million women. Less well-known was that 4.5 million new male voters also came into being, since the property qualification which had hitherto barred many from voting was now abolished. Or, at least, it was abolished for men. Women had to own property, or to be married to someone who did. Notoriously, they also had to be over the age of 30, whereas men could enter the polling booth at 21.

The Conservative Home Secretary, George Cave, had presented the bill before Parliament with these words:

War by all classes of our countrymen has brought us nearer together, has opened men’s eyes, and removed misunderstandings on all sides. It has made it, I think, impossible that ever again, at all events in the lifetime of the present generation, there should be a revival of the old class feeling which was responsible for so much, and, among other things, for the exclusion for a period, of so many or our population from the class of electors.

Cynthia Asquith’s diary of 6th February says something rather similar, albeit in the more pungent words of the great Fabian, Beatrice (Mrs Sidney) Webb.

Beatrice Webb

Sat next to Mrs Sidney Webb who froze me with her grim talk about the ‘Classes’. She said after the war there would inevitably be either the establishment of the ‘Equalitarian System’ or else complete anarchy. The ‘governing classes’ had been completely ‘shown up’ by the war, and it was a mistake to expect the people to be too war-weary to rise in their wrath…

Innovations such as food rationing or the extension of the franchise were about much more than righting a wrong. Britain, even in the midst of war, was embracing a new version of itself, and daring to think of the future.

Survivors from the Tuscania

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