Within four days of his appointment Churchill completed a memorandum for the Cabinet advocating the establishment of a Naval War Staff. 'Adequate preparation for war is the only guarantee for the preservation of the wealth, natural resources, and territory of the State,' he wrote, 'and it can only be based upon an understanding, firstly, of the probable dangers that may arise; secondly, of the best general method of meeting them as taught by the principles to be deduced from the events of history; and, thirdly, of the most efficient application of the war material of the era.' Now was the time to prepare. In time of peace, preparation provided 'the only field wherein immediate and sustained action of a useful nature is possible'.
For the next two and a half years Churchill made naval preparation his task, visiting naval stations and dockyards, seeking to master the intricacies of naval gunnery and tactics, scrutinising the development of German naval construction, and working to improve naval morale. Typical of his vigilance was a note to Asquith, written within two weeks of his appointment, 'I have come across one disconcerting fact: there is a shortage of 120 21-inch torpedoes, meaning that thirty of our best destroyers would have to go to sea without reserves of any kind other than the two they carry.' This deficiency, he added, 'cannot be fully repaired till April or May at the earliest'. But repaired it would be: 'It is essential that by the time all vessels are completed for service,' he wrote to the Fourth Sea Lord ten days later, 'their full reserves of ammunition and torpedoes should be simultaneously at hand.'
Every deficiency would have to be made good, every gap filled, every contingency anticipated. Churchill's letter to Asquith of November 5 was written during his first day on board the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, which, with a complement of 196 officers and ratings, was to be his home and office for more than two hundred days during the next two and a half years. On this first journey, setting off from Cowes, he inspected the dockyard and submarine depot at Portsmouth. On his second voyage three days later he joined the naval vessels escorting the King and Queen out of Portsmouth harbour on their way to India for the Delhi Durbar. On his third voyage, beginning on November 17, he launched the battleship Centurion at Devonport. On his fourth voyage he inspected the torpedo-boat destroyer Falcon. And on December 9, during his fifth journey in under six weeks, he inspected the Royal Naval Barracks at Portsmouth and visited the submarine school.
There was an even more recent branch of war science that Churchill studied during his first months at the Admiralty; war in the air. That December he insisted that terms and conditions for a naval air service 'must be devised to make aviation for war purposes the most honourable, as it is the most dangerous profession a young Englishman can adopt'. No regard to seniority 'should prevent the really young & capable men who have already done so much for the new arm being placed effectively at the head of the corps of airmen'. The Army envisaged its air service as primarily one of reconnaissance, avoiding, wherever possible, any actual air battles. Churchill wanted the Navy to use aircraft more aggressively; both bomb-dropping and machine-gunnery became part of the experimentation and training of the Royal Naval Air Service.
***
Churchill continued to nourish cross-Party friendships. When Andrew Bonar Law, one of the founder-members of the Other Club, was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, Churchill wrote to him that his election 'makes me sure that if ever a national emergency makes Party interests fade, we shall find in the Leader of the Opposition one who in no fictitious sense places the country and the Empire first'. He hoped the Other Club would continue. 'Great tact' would be needed, however, in fixing its meetings and in the avoidance of 'bad moments'. But no one could say that 'so far as public things are concerned' fortune had not followed the footsteps of many of its members, 'or that the chance of including in its lists a Prime Minister has become less good since our beginnings'. There were in fact already three future Prime Ministers in the Club, Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Churchill.
From a former Prime Minister came encouragement to Churchill in his new post. 'I am glad you have gone to the Admiralty,' Balfour wrote. 'A fresh eye at this moment is all important.' From a former First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher, came a visit, followed by constant letters of exhortation and encouragement, to which Churchill responded with enthusiasm. 'I wish you could have seen the model of the new ships for this year,' Churchill wrote to him on December 3. 'It conforms to almost every requisite which we discussed together.'
Fisher encouraged Churchill to develop the 15-inch gun for battleships, to create a Fast Division of warships capable of a speed of twenty-five knots, and to build warships powered not by coal as hitherto but by oil, making possible a speed of twenty-five knots. Some observers were shocked that Churchill should turn for advice to a retired officer noted for controversy and outspokenness. But the two men, one aged seventy, the other thirty-eight, found an instant affinity of zeal and purpose. Recalling Fisher's advocacy of the 15-inch gun, Churchill later wrote: 'No one who has not experienced it has any idea of the passion and eloquence of this old lion when thoroughly roused on a technical question. He was steadfast and even violent. So I hardened my heart and took the plunge. The whole outfit of guns was ordered forthwith.'
Churchill's concern over German naval developments grew in December; in a letter to a correspondent just before Christmas 1911 he pointed to the 'very rapid growth' of the German Navy in the past few years. The union of that enlarged Navy with the existing large German Army, he warned, 'will be a most sinister and disquieting fact', especially as 'these gigantic engines of destruction' would not be wielded by a democratic Government but by a 'military and bureaucratic oligarchy supported by a powerful Junker landlord class'. It was up to Germany, Churchill added, 'without endangering her own security or liberty at all, to terminate at once the distressing tension which now exists'. Any step she might take to reduce the pace of naval construction 'we will instantly respond to, not only by words and sentiments, but by action'.
Perhaps as a result of Britain's firmness during the Agadir crisis, Churchill wrote, and in particular Lloyd George's Mansion House speech, the 'evil day' had only been postponed; that in itself was surely 'a great deal', particularly, Churchill wrote, as 'I do not believe in the theory of inevitable wars. All the world is changing at once, and it may be that in a few years' time the democratic forces in Germany will again have greater control of their own Government, and that the landlord ascendancy which now exists will be replaced by more pacific and less formidable elements.' Meanwhile, as Russia recovered from her defeat in Manchuria in 1905 at the hands of Japan, she was 'a great corrective to aggressive action on the part of Germany'.
At the beginning of January 1912 Churchill spoke to Sir Ernest Cassel, who was on his way to Germany to see the Kaiser. Until Germany 'dropped the naval challenge', he told Cassel, her policy would be continually viewed in Britain 'with deepening suspicion & apprehension'. Any slackening on Germany's part would produce 'an immediate détente with much good will from England'. Failing any slackening, 'I see little in prospect but politeness & preparation'.
That preparation went steadily ahead. Three days after Churchill's letter to Cassel, he wrote to Fisher to inform him that flights of aeroplanes would soon be regularly attached to the battle squadrons. There would be an increase in the number of submarines under construction. The cruisers being built in 1912 would be as much as two knots faster than their predecessors.
Replying to those Conservatives who believed that Churchill was not doing enough, and who wanted British naval units more widely dispersed throughout the Empire, he was emphatic that such dispersal would be unwise. 'It should not be supposed that mastery of the seas depends upon the simultaneous occupation of every sea,' he wrote. 'On the contrary it depends upon the ability to defeat the strongest battle fleet or combination which can be brought to bear. This ability cannot be maintained by a policy of dispersion.' Napoleon's 'supreme strategic principle' of the concentration of superior forces in the decisive theatre must govern all naval dispositions. 'Dispersion of strength, frittering away of money, empty parades of foolish little ships "displaying the flag" in unfrequented seas, are the certain features of a policy leading through extravagance to defeat.'
On January 31 Sir Ernest Cassel, having returned from Berlin, breakfasted with Churchill and Lloyd George. The news he brought back from his meeting with the Kaiser was that a major German naval expansion was imminent; instead of the twelve battleships hitherto planned, there would be an accelerated six-year building programme, to include fifteen new battleships. When the Germans announced their new programme, Churchill told Grey later that day, Britain would make 'an immediate & effective reply'. Then, if the Germans cared to slow down the tempo of their expansion, so that their new plans were accomplished in twelve rather than six years, 'friendly relations would ensue' between the two countries, and Britain could 'slow down too'.
Cassel had persuaded the Kaiser to show Churchill the new German Navy Law in advance. As soon as he read it, Churchill realised that it contained a further element of danger for Britain, the deepening of the Kiel Canal between the Baltic and the North Sea. At present, he pointed out to Grey, those German battleships which were on the 'wrong' side of the Kiel Canal could only reach the North Sea by a long detour. 'The deepening of the canal by 1915 will extinguish this safety signal.' Once all twenty-five German battleships could be sent rapidly to the North Sea at Germany's 'selected moment' for hostilities, Britain would need to keep 'not less than forty available within twenty-four hours'.
On February 14 Churchill circulated the new German Navy Law to the Cabinet. It was clear that a substantial increase in British naval construction would be needed. Against the previously planned seventeen extra battleships, four extra battle-cruisers and twelve extra small cruisers, Germany now planned to build twenty-five, twelve and eighteen of each type. More than fifty new submarines were to be built. A further 15,000 officers and men were to be added to the existing 86,500. Of Germany's five battle squadrons, two would consist entirely, by April 1914, of the most modern battleships and cruisers. It was not merely the new German construction, Churchill explained, but the increase of personnel, and of vessels of all classes 'maintained in full commission', that was the danger. It practically amounted 'to putting about four-fifths of the German Navy permanently on a war footing'.
Once the new German Navy Law was carried out, Churchill informed the Cabinet on March 9, Germany would have 'at all seasons of the year' at least twenty-five battleships available in the North Sea, as against twenty-two British battleships, 'even counting the Atlantic Fleet'. He therefore proposed that for every German battleship built under the new law, assuming that law were put into effect, Britain would build two. 'Two keels to one on all increases above the existing German Navy Law Churchill announced this in the Commons on March 18. At the same time, seeking a way of averting the naval arms race, he proposed a 'Naval Holiday' whereby naval construction would be suspended for a year by both countries, telling the House: 'Any retardation or reduction in German construction will, within certain limits, be promptly followed here, as soon as it is apparent, by large and fully proportioned reductions. For instance, if Germany elected to drop out any one, or even any two, of these annual quotas and to put her money into her pocket for the enjoyment of her people and the development of her own prosperity, we will at once, in the absence of any dangerous development elsewhere not now foreseen, blot out our corresponding quota, and the slowing down by Germany will be accompanied naturally on a larger scale by us.'
Churchill's unexpected, and dramatic offer, continued: 'Take, as an instance of this proposition which I am putting forward for general consideration, the year 1913. In that year, as I apprehend, Germany will build three capital ships, and it will be necessary for us to build five in consequence. Supposing we were both to take a holiday for that year. Supposing we both introduced a blank page in the book of misunderstanding; supposing that Germany were to build no ships in that year, she would save herself between £6,000,000 and £7,000,000 sterling. But that is not all. We should not in ordinary circumstances begin our ships until she has started hers. The three ships that she did not build would therefore automatically wipe out no fewer than five British potential super "Dreadnoughts", and that is more than I expect them to hope to do in a brilliant naval action. As to the indirect results, even from a single year, they simply cannot be measured, not only between our two great brother nations, but to all the world. They are results immeasurable in their hope and brightness.'
While awaiting the German reply to his offer of a 'Naval Holiday' Churchill returned to the Enchantress and to his inspection of naval dockyards and warships. With him was a new shorthand writer, Harry Beckenham, who was to remain with him throughout his time at the Admiralty. At the end of March, having spent six days at Portland, Churchill wrote to Clementine, 'I have got on the track of a lot of waste of money in refitting & repairing ships unnecessarily-just in order to make work for the dockyards. Probe, Prune, Prepare-one cannot do too much of it.' He was confident of success: 'We shall be much stronger in a year. I wish I had nine lives like a cat, so that I could go into each branch thoroughly. As it is I have to trust so much to others-when I am pretty confident I could do it better myself.' He was also proud of the men under his Ministerial command: 'There are some very nice fellows here-good, hard-working, smart officers of quality & conduct.' There were eleven battleships at Portland and 'seven or eight' other large warships. 'Unluckily there are no Germans to be found. Tiresome people-but their turn will come.'
Churchill now sent his Cabinet colleagues copies of the original German Navy Law, in which, he told Morley on April 7, 'the policy so resolutely and eagerly pursued and developed during the last fourteen years is set forth in all its sinister candour. It is lucky for us we have the situation so well in hand. Since the original Law there have been four successive cumulative increases.'
Still Churchill awaited a positive reply to his offer of a Naval Holiday, writing to Cassel on April 14, in a letter intended for the Kaiser's eye, 'Certainly it must be almost impossible for Germany with her splendid armies and warlike population capable of holding their native soil against all comers, and situated inland with road & railway communications on every side, to appreciate the sentiments with which an island State like Britain views the steady & remorseless development of a rival naval power of the very highest efficiency.' But all was not lost: 'Patience, however, and good temper accomplish much, & as the years pass many difficulties and dangers seem to settle themselves peacefully.'
The Germans had still not announced their new naval programme. At the Royal Academy banquet in London on May 4, Churchill stated that the sole aim of British naval policy, and the only means of averting defeat in the event of a naval war, was the development of the maximum war power 'at a given moment, and at a particular point'. Everything in the naval world was directed 'to the manifestation at a particular place, during the compass of a few minutes, of a shattering, blasting, overbearing force'.
Churchill also ventured a prophecy that day, 'If any two great and highly scientific nations go to war with one another, they will become heartily sick of it before they come to the end of it.' A month had passed since his proposal for a Naval Holiday, but it had not been taken up. On May 9 and 10 he was at Weymouth for the King's inspection of the Fleet, when two major advances were demonstrated to the assembled onlookers; aeroplanes were used to detect submarines beneath the surface, and explosive bombs were dropped from aeroplanes on to targets below. During the review Churchill took Balfour and Morley into a gun turret on the battleship Orion. Commented one newspaper, 'Mr Churchill, quite a naval enthusiast, seems to instil into his guests some of his own keen appreciation of naval men and material.'
Speaking in London on May 15, Churchill stressed the horrors which would ensue if war broke out, but concluded, 'It is much more likely, I say it with sincere conviction, that war will never come in our time-and perhaps will have passed from the world, at any rate for the period which our most adventurous imagination enables us to foresee.'
This prophecy was in vain. On May 21 the German Navy Law was passed by the Reichstag. Henceforth Churchill's energies were to be focused on preparing the Royal Navy for conflict with Germany. Within six weeks he had presented the Cabinet with an outline of his proposals for 'an extraordinary increase in the striking force of ships of all classes'. He was confident that he could inspire his subordinates and enhance the power of the Navy. When, in June, he visited a submarine at Portsmouth, the Daily Express wrote: 'He had a yarn with nearly all the lower deck men of the ship's company, asking why, wherefore and how everything was done. All the sailors "go a bundle" on him, because he makes no fuss and takes them by surprise. He is here, there, and everywhere.'
In June and July Churchill sailed on Enchantress to the Irish ports and to Spithead; among his guests was Austen Chamberlain, Joe's son, a Party adversary, but a personal friend. During the voyage, Clementine's continuing illnesses were much on his mind. 'My dear darling,' he wrote to her on July 9, 'I am so distressed to think of you in pain & discouragement. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Always to be expecting that you are going to get well & then one thing after another. It is a cruel trial for you. But you will bear it bravely-my own darling & emerge triumphant into the sunlight.'
***
On July 22, with the German Navy Law now public knowledge, Churchill introduced supplementary Navy Estimates to Parliament. It was a grave moment in his career, and in Britain and Europe's history. Speaking for more than two hours, he explained in detail both the new German Navy Law and Britain's response. Britain would build such warships as were needed to retain her security at sea. 'The state of Europe and of the world would seem to contain many more germs of danger than the period through which we have been passing in our lifetime.' He wished to assert two general principles, 'First that we must have an ample margin of strength instantly ready; and, secondly, that there must be a steady and systematic development of our naval forces untiringly pursued over a number of years.'
On August 1 Churchill wrote to Clementine, who was at the seaside, 'My work has been incessant & seems to mount and mount day after day.' He hurried to be with her. 'I have made no plans for Sunday except to come down quietly & see you. We ought really to find a good sandy beach where I can cut the sand into a nicely bevelled fortress-or best of all with a little stream running down. You might explore & report,' and he added, 'My darling one I have much felt the need of kissing your dear face & stroking your soft skin in these solitary days.'
During August and September, Churchill sailed to naval stations all round Britain, watching firing-practice, witnessing tactical exercises, attending launchings, inspecting dockyards, shore installations, armaments works, and examining the latest technical developments. 'This afternoon I studied the torpedo again under my young officer,' he wrote in one of his letters to Clementine. 'It is a tangle of complications, & the 2nd lesson opens up all sorts of vistas of which I never dreamed. I could write ten pages on the "Valve group".'
That autumn Churchill also discussed with the French Ministry of Marine how best to strengthen France as a Mediterranean naval power, thereby allowing Britain to concentrate her own naval strength in the North Sea. He was reluctant, however, to see Britain join the French system of alliances, particularly the alliance with Russia, telling Asquith and Grey that he opposed any agreement which would result in 'tying us up too tightly with France, and depriving us of that liberty of choice on which our power to stop a war might well depend'. No military or naval arrangements ought to be made, he warned, which might expose Britain to the charge of bad faith 'if when the time comes we decide to stand out'.
***
The supplementary Navy Estimates would ensure that the Royal Navy was numerically strong; Churchill also wanted the sailors to be contented. To this end he pressed for increases in pay for the lower deck, and for facilities for recreation on shore. After a visit to Harwich he sought funds for a football ground, a canteen with a reading room, billiard tables, bowling-alleys, and sleeping accommodation in the town 'so that the men have proper places to go when spending the night ashore'.
No aspect of the naval scene escaped him; warning Lloyd George in October that a further increase in British naval spending would soon be needed, he pointed out that the German battle-cruiser Seydlitz, the latest German ship of which the Admiralty had details, was 'superior in armour, only slightly inferior in gun power, and at least equal in every other particular to our latest comparable vessel, the Tiger'.
Churchill had repeatedly to fight for his department with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. When, four days after his letter about the Seydlitz, he asked in Cabinet for the extra funds to increase sailors' pay, Lloyd George protested at his 'having looked out for opportunities to squander money'. Two weeks after Lloyd George's rebuke, Churchill learned that Austria-Hungary might be about to build three extra battleships, he wrote at once: 'Look at this. Do you realise what it means if it is true? It is no use being vexed with me and reproaching me. I can no more control these facts than you can.' Should the Austrians build these extra ships 'beyond anything yet foreseen or provided against' by Britain, Churchill warned, 'we shall have to take further measures'.
Churchill had no intention of spending money without full cause; as he prepared the Navy Estimates for 1913-14, he promised the Cabinet 'an unshakeable foundation for every item put forward'. Writing to Lloyd George on December 9 he stated with confidence, 'I am sure the Government have only to put their case plainly and boldly to the House of Commons to receive from one source or another, without any serious difficulty, the sums which are necessary for the safety of the State.'
The pressures on Churchill had begun to affect his private life. 'I was stupid last night,' he wrote to his wife from the Enchantress at the start of a seven-day separation, 'but you know what a prey I am to nerves & prepossessions.' He was sorry she was not with him. 'I should like to kiss your dear face and stroke your baby cheeks and make you purr softly in my arms.' And he added: 'Don't be disloyal to me in your thoughts. I have no one but you to break the loneliness of a bustling and bustled existence.'
***
At the beginning of 1913, after a visit on Enchantress to the naval air station at Eastchurch, on the Isle of Sheppey, Churchill asked the young naval pilots there to teach him to fly. It was a dangerous undertaking. In 1912 there had been one death in every 5,000 flights. It was also rare for a civilian to fly, or for anyone over the age of thirty-two to take up flying. His first instructor was the twenty-three-year-old Spenser Grey, a descendant of Earl Grey of the Reform Bill, and a pioneer of sea-plane experiments, which he had carried out in his own plane the previous year. The pilots were amazed and excited that the First Lord should wish to learn their dangerous craft. His enthusiasm was a tonic. One of them, Ivon Courtney, later recalled how, before their first flight together, Churchill said to him: 'We are in the Stephenson age of flying. Now our machines are frail. One day they will be robust, and of value to our country.'
Churchill's relatives and friends deprecated his new activity, particularly when they read of accidents among the pilots; Spenser Grey was himself severely injured when his plane got into a spin and crashed. 'I do not suppose I shall get the chance of writing you many more letters if you continue your journeys in the Air,' Churchill's cousin Sunny wrote to him in March 1913. 'Really I consider that you owe it to your wife, family and friends to desist from a practice or pastime-whatever you call it-which is fraught with so much danger to life. It is really wrong of you.'
Right or wrong, Churchill continued his flying instruction at every opportunity, spending many weekends at Eastchurch. 'Churchill and I would go up perhaps ten times in one day,' Courtney later recalled. 'He was far more keen than most learners to "go up again". He couldn't bear to make mistakes. He always wanted to correct them at once. I remember the time when, on landing, he bent an undercarriage. I imagined he would want to stop flying that day. But the shock did not deter him one bit. It made him more eager. So up we went again.'
Throughout 1913 the Enchantress was Churchill's second home; at the Admiralty, the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and the other members of the Admiralty Board, followed up the requests emanating from their First Lord. On April 6 Churchill wrote to Clementine from Portsmouth: 'I stay placidly in my nice cabin working all the morning, walk round the dockyard in the afternoon & then home to tea & a couple of hours more work before dinner. The papers in files & bags & boxes come rolling in. One never seems to do more than keep abreast of them.'
Among those whom Churchill met that year was Prince Louis' elder son Dickie, who later recalled: 'Although I was only a thirteen-year-old Naval Cadet he always spoke to me as though I were a fully fledged Naval Officer. No wonder I quickly fell under his spell.' In 1942 Churchill was to appoint that Naval Cadet, then Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, as Chief of Combined Operations.
In London, Clementine was preparing to move from their home in Eccleston Square to the First Lord's official residence at Admiralty House, overlooking both Horse Guards Parade and Whitehall. 'I like the idea of these spacious rooms,' Churchill wrote to her in the same letter. 'I am sure you will take to it when you get there. I am afraid it all means very hard work for you-poor lamb. But remember I am going to turn over a new leaf! That I promise. The only mystery is "What is written on the other side?" It may only be "ditto, ditto"!'
As often as possible Clementine joined her husband on Enchantress. When she left he would write affectionately of their separation. 'I mewed at the departure of the Catling,' he wrote in June from Portland, 'but I must admit it would be but a poor show for her here. Wind, rain & sea = crowds of men talking shop = cold & sleet = more shop. But it amuses me-I am a fool who should not have been born.' Despite his wife's unease, he had continued with his flying practice. On June 28 he was at London Aerodrome, Hendon, at a flying meeting. 'I have been naughty today about flying,' he confessed to her on the following day. 'Down here with twenty machines in the air at once and thousands of flights made without mishap, it is not possible to look upon it as a very serious risk. Do not be vexed with me. I shall be back tomorrow between 11 and 12.'
That summer Clementine joined her husband for a prolonged and pleasurable journey. Asquith, his wife Margot, and his daughter Violet went with them. Travelling by train to Venice, they joined Enchantress and sailed through the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, visiting Malta, Sicily and Corsica. At Malta, Churchill met Kitchener, had several hours' talk with him about the defence of the Mediterranean, and sought, not without some success, to close the gap of age and distrust.
***
Returning to Britain, Churchill was closely involved in an attempt to resolve the Irish impasse. Early the previous year, at Belfast, where in 1886 his father had warned that the Protestants of Ulster might use unconstitutional methods to prevent Home Rule, he had extolled the virtues of Home Rule and urged the six counties of Ulster to accept it. In reply, Sir Edward Carson had declared Ulster's total opposition to Home Rule and was supported by Bonar Law. The Home Rule Bill was introduced in April 1912; in a speech during the ensuing debate Churchill had appealed to Ulstermen to help sweep the Irish question 'out of life and into history, and free the British realm of the canker which has poisoned its heart for generations'. If they refused, he said, 'if they take to the boats, all we say is they shall not obstruct the work of salvage, and we shall go forward-at any rate-to the end'.
During the debates of 1912 Churchill had called Bonar Law's opposition to Home Rule 'almost treasonable activity'. That autumn, an Ulster MP, Ronald O'Neill, had thrown a book at Churchill across the Chamber, hitting him on the head and drawing blood. There was talk of an Ulster rebellion, fuelled by extremist speeches by both Protestants and Catholics. On his return from the Mediterranean in the summer of 1913, Churchill took a lead in trying to defuse these passions.
At Balmoral in the third week of September, while the guest of the King, Churchill met Bonar Law and spoke to him of a solution based on some special rights for Ulster, possibly outside the framework of Home Rule. 'History teaches us that in such cases British common sense generally triumphs,' he told the Conservative Leader. 'If Ireland has the right to claim separate Government from England, Ulster cannot be refused similar exemption from Government by an Irish Parliament.' But Ireland could not be expected 'to stand by & see the cup, almost at her lips, dashed to the ground'.
The Home Rule Bill would go ahead. But 'some sort of bargain', Asquith confirmed after Churchill's Balmoral talks, could be made about Ulster. All talk of civil war must cease, however; threats of organized disorder were, in Asquith's words, 'almost puerile in their crudity'. Churchill now worked through his friend F.E. Smith, and in the convivial cross-Party atmosphere of the Other Club, to try to effect a compromise whereby Ulster could have a special status, at least in the early stages of the evolution of a self-governing Ireland. No settlement, he told an audience at Manchester on October 18, must be destructive of the unity of Ireland.
During his Manchester speech Churchill repeated his call to Germany for a moratorium on naval shipbuilding. 'If the Germans refuse,' he wrote to Clementine on the following day, 'I shall have made my case for action. If they accept, it will be a big event in the world's affairs.' But, he added, 'they won't accept-they will just butt on the water as in the air!'
In an effort to reduce naval expenditure wherever possible, Churchill now decided to cancel the annual Grand Manoeuvres for 1914. These were estimated to cost £230,000; eight million pounds in the money values of 1990. In their place he proposed a less expensive mobilisation of the Third Fleet. The monetary saving would be £180,000, most of it on fuel. The result of this decision was that the Third Fleet, instead of being dispersed in the Atlantic on manoeuvres in July 1914, was to be concentrated in the North Sea, fully mobilised.
As well as saving money, Churchill was concerned, he explained to Prince Louis of Battenberg on October 19, to have 'a thorough overhaul of the mobilisation arrangements'. Nothing should be left to chance or custom. As well as mobilising the Third Fleet, he wished to have a test mobilisation of the Royal Fleet Reserve and the Reserve officers, telling Prince Louis, 'Such a step is urgently needed.' Amid these plans for test mobilisation, and while awaiting some German response to his second call for a Naval Holiday, Churchill remained the champion not only of the lower deck but of the men who worked in the dockyards. 'As for the dockyard workmen,' he wrote to Fisher that November, 'it is socially just that men who work all their lives faithfully for the State should have permanency and pension guaranteed, just like Admirals!'
That autumn Churchill resumed his flying instruction. Among his instructors were Eugene Gerrard and Richard Bell Davies, who was to win the Victoria Cross at the Dardanelles. As well as continuing to learn to fly, notching up the hours that would enable him to get his pilot's licence, Churchill kept a close eye on all aspects of aerial warfare and training. In August he had authorised the direct entry of civilian flyers into the naval air wing, and had raised the age of entry from twenty-two to twenty-four. In September he made plans for a war establishment of a hundred seaplanes; indeed, it was he who coined the word 'seaplane', a fact of which, in later years, he was most proud.
In October, from Sheerness, Churchill flew in an airship above Chatham and the Medway. 'She is a very satisfactory vessel,' he wrote to Clementine, 'and so easy to manage that they let me steer her for a whole hour myself.' Also that day he flew in a seaplane and inspected the Sheerness dockyard. 'It has been as good as one of those old days in the South African war, & I have lived entirely in the moment, with no care for all those tiresome party politics & searching newspapers, & awkward by-elections, & sulky Orangemen, & obnoxious Cecils & smug little Runcimans.'
His day at Sheerness encouraged Churchill enormously. 'It is very satisfactory to find such signs of progress in every branch of the naval air service,' he told Clementine. 'In another year-if I am spared ministerially-there will be a great development. When I have pumped in another million the thing will be alive & on the wing.' On November 3 he wrote to her again on the air theme: 'These flying people's affairs are very odd & very criss-cross-& today much difficulty has arisen about their ranks, & their rows & their uniforms & their prospects.' He did his best to create for the airmen a sense of independence of rank and dress and promotion. But Clementine's unhappiness at his continued flying led him to write to her: 'You know so much about me, & with your intuition have measured the good & bad in my nature. Alas I have no very good opinion of myself. At times I think I could conquer everything-& then again I know I am only a weak vain fool. But your love for me is the greatest glory and recognition that has or will ever befall me & the attachment which I feel towards you is not capable of being altered by the sort of things that happen in this world. I only wish I were more worthy of you, & more able to meet the inner needs of your soul.'
Churchill's fascination with, and belief in the future of, aviation, was total; in mid-November he pushed forward with the building of seaplane bases along the south and east coasts, and prepared for seaplane exercises to be held the following summer. He also told his advisers that 'a band should be provided and everything done to foster cohesion, unity and esprit de corps in this new service'. At the end of November he returned to Eastchurch for further flying. On this occasion his co-pilot was Captain Gilbert Lushington. 'I started Winston off on his instruction about 12.15,' Lushington wrote to his fiancée, Airlie Hynes, '& he got so bitten with it, I could hardly get him out of the machine, in fact except for about ¾ hour for lunch we were in the machine till about 3.30. He showed great promise, & is coming down again for further instruction & practice.'
At lunch Churchill went to Lushington's cabin to wash his hands. In the cabin he saw the photographs of Miss Hynes, whom Lushington said he intended to marry. 'He asked me when it was coming off, & I said when I had saved some money.' That night at dinner, fortified by oysters flown specially for him from Whitstable, Churchill was, in Lushington's words, 'absolutely full out and talked hard about what he was going to do'. November 30 was Churchill's thirty-ninth birthday. In a letter to Lushington that day he asked if he could 'clear up the question of the steering control and let me know what was the real difficulty I had in making the rudder act. Probably the explanation is that I was pushing against myself, though I am not quite sure about this. It may be that they are very stiff and hard to work.'
Churchill asked Lushington to go up with another flying officer and 'sitting yourself in the back seat, see whether there is great stiffness and difficulty in steering, or whether it was all my clumsiness'. He also asked his principal air adviser at the Admiralty to fit one of the Eastchurch biplanes with dual controls 'of exact equality'. Such a machine, he noted, 'would be useful for long distance flying and enable one pilot to relieve the other'. Lushington went up as Churchill asked, flying in the passenger seat. 'I believe you fell into a very common error of beginners, & even of experienced pilots too,' he wrote on December 2, 'of pushing against yourself. I ought to have warned you of the possibility of your doing so, before taking you up. These faults rectify themselves in time.'
Shortly after writing this letter Lushington went up again in the plane in which he and Churchill had flown. On coming in to land the plane sideslipped and crashed. Lushington was killed. His letter to Churchill reached the Admiralty a few days later. 'I think you ought to have it,' Churchill wrote to Airlie Hynes, 'and may I ask you to accept my deepest sympathy in the blow which has fallen upon you. To be killed instantly without pain or fear in the necessary service of the country, when one is quite happy and life is full of success & hope, cannot be reckoned the worst of fortune. But to some who are left behind the loss is terrible.'
Following Lushington's death, many newspapers urged Churchill to give up flying. So did his closest friends. 'Why do you do such a thing as fly repeatedly?' F.E. Smith wrote on December 6. 'Surely it is unfair to your family, your career & your friends.' But Churchill did not intend to give up the skill which he was beginning to master.
***
Churchill had begun to prepare the Navy Estimates for 1914-15. One blow to his search for economy was the refusal of the Canadian Government to pay for the construction of three of the battleships in Britain's future programme. Another was the continuing German refusal to contemplate a moratorium on naval construction, as well as Churchill's decision that merchant ships bringing food to Britain should be armed, enabling them to fire back at any enemy warship that attacked them. Thirty had already been armed; he wanted to arm a further forty in the coming year. This was in addition to the merchant ships being taken over by the Navy and converted into auxiliary cruisers, to protect Britain's food lifelines.
Extra expenditure was also inevitable in three main areas of modernisation; the continuing change from coal-fired to oil-burning ships and the need to build up oil-storage depots; the expansion of the Royal Naval Air Service and the need to build naval air stations and facilities; and the spread of wireless telegraphy as the chief means of secret communication both at sea and in the air. The Cabinet was divided on whether or not to give Churchill £3 million above the previous year's total of £50 million. Some Ministers still felt that Liberalism and increased naval armaments were incompatible. At first Lloyd George supported Churchill. Then he joined those who were demanding a 'substantial reduction' in the Navy Estimates, including the postponement of the construction of at least one of the four battleships to be laid down in 1914-15. In the last week of December, Churchill threatened resignation if his proposal for four new battleships to be laid down in 1914-15 were rejected. 'I am inflexible-thank God-on some things,' he wrote to Grey on Christmas Day 1913.
Churchill prepared charts and statistical tables to show that his proposals were the minimum needed to meet the current German naval expansion. 'I am absolutely fixed, & can do nothing more,' he wrote Morley January 13. 'The four ships are vital & no compromise of any sort is possible.' 'While I am responsible,' he wrote to Lloyd George two weeks later, 'what is necessary will have to be provided.' The Navy Estimates of 1914-15 had been prepared 'with the strictest economy'. For all the expenditure incurred or proposed there was 'full warrant & good reason'.
As the crisis continued, Lloyd George offered to accept the Estimates for 1914-15 in return for a promise of a definite reduction in the spending for 1915-16. Churchill rejected this. 'I cannot buy a year of office by a bargain under duress,' he replied. In the first week of February, Asquith asked Churchill to 'throw a baby or two out of the sledge' in order to effect a compromise with those whom he called 'the critical pack (who know well that they have behind them a large body of Party opinion)'. Churchill replied: 'I do not love this naval expenditure & am grieved to be found in the position of taskmaster. But I am myself the slave of facts & forces which are uncontrollable unless naval efficiency is frankly abandoned. The result of all this pressure & controversy leaves me anxious chiefly lest the necessary services have been cut too low. The sledge is bare of babies, & though the pack may crunch the driver's bones, the winter will not be ended.'
A week later Churchill agreed to two small cutbacks, in the cruiser programme and recruitment. The Cabinet then accepted his Navy Estimates for the coming year. Had there been any other Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Estimates would have been cut 'by millions', commented one Labour Party critic. 'There would also have been another First Lord of the Admiralty!' was Churchill's comment. 'And who can say,' he told Lloyd George, 'if such gaps were opened, that there would not have been another Government-which does not necessarily mean lower Estimates'.
Three days before he was to introduce his Navy Estimates to Parliament, Churchill was to speak at Bradford, where in 1886 his father had defended his policy of retrenchment and no foreign entanglements. Two days before going to Bradford he was present at a Cabinet meeting which was given alarming news from Ulster. The Protestant leaders had rejected the Government's Home Rule compromise, whereby each of the six Ulster counties would be able to decide by plebiscite in favour of exclusion for six years from the enactment of Home Rule. For the Ulster Unionists this was not enough. They wanted total exclusion from the supremacy of the predominantly Catholic Dublin Parliament which the Home Rule Bill would establish. Ulster Volunteers were preparing to take the law into their own hands, threatening to challenge the police by force should any effort be made to disarm them.
The Cabinet of March 12 were told, as Asquith reported to the King, of the latest series of police reports indicating 'the possibility of attempts on the part of the "volunteers" to seize, by coups de main, police and military barracks, and depots of arms and ammunition'. There were only 9,000 British regular troops in Ulster; the bulk of the force, 23,000 men, were stationed in southern Ireland, mostly at the Curragh, outside Dublin. The Cabinet were agreed that it might be necessary to send these troops against the Volunteers, but decided that before any such action was taken a senior Government Minister should issue a public warning to the Unionists. Churchill was the one chosen to issue it. 'You are the only member of the Cabinet who can make such a speech,' Lloyd George told him. 'You are known to have been in favour of conciliation for Ulster. Now you can say that having secured a compromise, Ulstermen will have to accept it or take the consequences.'
At the request of the Cabinet, when Churchill spoke at Bradford on March 14 he challenged in the strongest terms his father's dictum 'Ulster will fight, Ulster will be right', and did so in forceful language which Asquith had approved beforehand. The 'Tory mind', he declared, denounces 'all violence except their own. They uphold all law except the law they choose to break. They are to select from the Statute Book the laws they will obey and the laws they will resist.' This was the political doctrine 'they salute the twentieth century with'. But the Government would not allow the realm of Great Britain to 'sink to the condition of the Republic of Mexico'. If all the 'loose, wanton and reckless chatter we have been forced to listen to these months is in the end to disclose a sinister revolutionary purpose, then I can only say to you, "Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof"'.
Returning to London that evening, Churchill worked to complete his speech on the Navy Estimates in three days' time, March 17. The speech lasted two and a half hours, 'the longest and perhaps also the most weighty and eloquent speech', wrote the Daily Telegraph, 'to which the House of Commons have listened during the present generation'. In it, Churchill defended the increase in Britain's naval expenditure by pointing to the upsurge in German and also Austro-Hungarian naval construction. He also drew a distinction between their needs and those of Britain. None of the Great Powers needed navies to defend 'their actual independence or safety', he said. 'They build them so as to play a part in the world's affairs. It is sport to them. It is life and death to us.'
It was not suggested, Churchill told the Commons, that 'the whole world will turn upon us, or that our preparations should contemplate such a monstrous contingency. By a sober and modest conduct, by a skilful diplomacy, we can in part disarm and in part divide the elements of danger.' But Britain's diplomacy, whereby this amelioration would be made, depended 'in great part for its effectiveness upon our naval position'. Britain's naval strength was 'the one great balancing force which we can contribute to our own safety and the peace of the world'. Twenty years later, in the face of a second German threat, Churchill was to insist that Britain's air strength was similarly vital for the preservation of peace.
Churchill won his Navy Estimates battle. But it was now Ireland that dominated the centre of the political stage. There was no way in which the Liberal Government could convince Ulster that its interests were not to be sacrificed to Dublin. Asquith's compromise of a six-year exclusion was unacceptable to the Protestants of Ulster, who believed that they should never come under the rule of Dublin, but could rule Ulster themselves, pushing aside the forces of law and order, if necessary by violence.
On March 15 Churchill was appointed to a Cabinet Committee which reported three days later that the four main depots of arms and ammunition in Ulster were in danger of being 'rushed' by the Volunteers. The War Office had instructed General Paget, commanding the forces in Ireland, to have these depots adequately guarded. Paget declined, fearing that the movement of troops from the Curragh to Ulster would 'possibly precipitate a crisis'. Churchill prepared to use the Royal Navy to defend the Government's policy. The forthcoming practice manoeuvres of the Third Battle Squadron, he told the Cabinet of March 18, would take place at Lamlash, on the Scottish coast, only seventy miles from Belfast. If the railway company declined to help, naval vessels could carry troops by sea, from southern Ireland to Ulster. The Cabinet approved this course of action.
The Third Battle Squadron was then on the Atlantic coast of France. 'Proceed at once at ordinary speed to Lamlash,' Churchill signalled to its Commanding Admiral on March 19. That same day he ordered three destroyers direct to a port in southern Ireland, where they were instructed to take a company of infantrymen to near Belfast, where they were to be landed 'at once'. Two more destroyers were ordered to take 550 infantrymen from the South to the North. One destroyer Captain was ordered to land at Bangor, on Belfast Lough, 'in plain clothes', to co-operate with the Army units there. Another was to arrange for the guarding of military stores and ammunition at Carrickfergus. 'The place is to be defended against attack by every means,' Churchill signalled, 'and if co-operation of Navy is necessary, by guns and searchlights from the ship.'
The news from Ulster was of continuing determination on the part of the Ulster Volunteers to seize arms and ammunition. But General Paget's hands were dramatically tied when the commander of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, General Gough, and fifty-seven of his seventy officers, resigned rather than be sent from their camp at the Curragh to Ulster. Following this 'Curragh mutiny' Paget was more dependent than before on the Navy. On March 21, at his request, four field guns were embarked on the flagship of the Third Battle Squadron, then at Devonport.
In the event, the troops already available in Ulster proved sufficient to guard the stores, and no attacks were made upon them. The Third Battle Squadron remained at Lamlash. The Navy was not required to confront the Ulster Volunteers. But Churchill's naval preparations, despite having full Cabinet sanction, became the object of virulent attack from the Conservative benches; he was accused of wishing to institute an 'Ulster Pogrom'. When he told the House that the Navy's movements had been 'purely precautionary measures', he was accused of having wanted those movements to lead 'to fighting and bloodshed'. This, he retorted, was a 'hellish insinuation'. But it was widely made and widely believed.
Hostility to Churchill reached a peak at a rally in Hyde Park on April 4, when Edward Carson, the Parliamentary leader of the Ulster Unionists, denounced 'Lord Randolph's renegade son, who wanted to be handed down to posterity as the Belfast butcher who threatened to shoot down those who followed his father's advice'. For his part, Churchill still believed that a compromise was possible in Ireland, and worked to secure it. 'The Federal and conciliation movements are both going forward well,' he told Clementine on April 23, 'and there is a tremendous undercurrent on both sides towards a settlement.'
On the night of April 24 hopes of a settlement seemed to be brought abruptly to an end when the Ulster Volunteers, with Carson's connivance, landed some 30,000 rifles and 3 million cartridges at Larne, quickly distributing them. This was the most serious challenge yet by the Ulstermen. But 'from a Parliamentary point of view', Churchill assured Clementine two days later, the situation had been 'much altered in our favour by the gun-running escapade of the Ulstermen. They have put themselves entirely in the wrong.'
At the very moment when Liberal opinion was most incensed against Ulster, Churchill decided to take a personal initiative towards a settlement. The occasion was one of great tension, a Conservative Vote of Censure on the Government for its alleged hostility to the needs of Ulster. Churchill began by rebuking the censure motion itself. It was, he said, 'uncommonly like a vote of censure by the criminal classes on the police'.
Having defended the Government's actions in Ulster, Churchill ended with a remarkable appeal for conciliation to Carson himself: 'Today I believe most firmly, in spite of all the antagonism and partisanship of our politics and our conflicting Party interests, that Peace with Honour is not beyond the reach of all. Tomorrow it may be gone for ever. I am going to run some little risk on my own account by what I will now say. Why cannot the right hon and learned Gentleman say boldly, "Give me the Amendments to this Home Rule Bill which I ask for, to safeguard the dignity and the interests of Protestant Ulster, and I in return will use all my influence and goodwill to make Ireland an integral unit in a federal system." If the right hon Gentleman used language of that kind in the spirit of sincerity with which everybody will instantly credit him, it would go far to transform the political situation and every man would be bound to reconsider his own position in relation to these great controversies.'
Many Liberals were outraged that Churchill had even broached, let alone offered Carson, the Federal scheme, which for the Irish Nationalists seemed a device to blanket and stifle Home Rule. 'It is absolutely vital,' one Cabinet Minister wrote, 'that you should realise the extent of the fury-for no milder term will fit the facts-which has been aroused in the Irish Party and among large numbers of our Liberal colleagues by the offer to Carson with which you concluded your speech.'
Despite Liberal and Irish Nationalist fury, Churchill's offer cooled the passions of Ulster, enabling negotiations to continue through the summer. 'As you will see,' he wrote to Clementine on April 29, 'I yesterday at the end of my speech, greatly daring, and on my own account, threw a sentence across the floor of the House of Commons to Carson which has revolutionised the situation, and we are all back again in full conciliation.'
In May, Churchill sought to pursue conciliation of another sort, with Germany. He had been invited by the Kaiser to visit Kiel during the naval regatta at the end of June. The father of the German Navy, Grand Admiral Tirpitz, had also expressed a wish to see him. Churchill was willing to go, hoping that such 'direct personal discussion' with Tirpitz might prove the prelude to a wider agreement. He would, he told Asquith and Grey, explain to the Grand Admiral the genuineness of his Naval Holiday proposal for a mutual reduction in the numbers of warships 'in case circumstances should ever render it admissible'.
Churchill also wanted to take up a suggestion made earlier by Tirpitz for a limitation in the size of the largest warships. 'Even if numbers could not be touched,' he felt, 'a limitation in the size would be a great saving, and is on every ground to be desired.' He would even go so far as to propose 'the abandonment of secrecy in regard to the numbers and general characteristics (apart from special inventions) of the ships, built and building, in British and German dockyards'. Naval attachés from both navies could visit each other's dockyards 'and see what was going on'. This, Churchill argued, 'would go a long way to stopping the espionage on both sides which is a continued cause of suspicion and ill-feeling'.
At the end of June, two British naval squadrons would be in the Baltic, invited by both the Russian and German navies. Churchill proposed joining them, sailing on Enchantress first to the Imperial Russian naval base at Kronstadt, and then to Kiel. There would be nothing about his visit to offend the French, he pointed out, as he had already been a guest at the French naval base at Toulon. As Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey hesitated to sanction Churchill's journey. Hitherto, he wrote, Tirpitz had 'resented' all efforts to discuss naval expenditure. As to the visits to Kronstadt and Kiel, 'I am most reluctant to stand in the way, but they will make a terrible splash in the European Press and give a significance to the cruise of our squadrons that is out of all proportion to anything that was contemplated when the cruises were planned.' The 'wildest reports' would be circulated, and Britain would be involved 'in constant explanations to ambassadors at the Foreign Office, and denials in the Press of the things that will be attributed to us'.
Grey advised that the Kaiser be informed of Churchill's 'inability' to go to Kiel. This should not be 'construed in any way as wanting in respect to the Emperor'. But it effectively ended Churchill's hopes of ameliorating the naval rivalry. Instead of planning a voyage to the Baltic he spent the first week of June on Enchantress, first at Plymouth and then at Cherbourg. He also visited the naval cadets at Dartmouth. 'The boys do not seem to be hustled as they used to be,' he wrote to Clementine on June 1, '& all my suggestions have been in the direction of "easing up".'
What Churchill did not tell his wife was that, before his week on Enchantress, he had continued with his flying lessons, spending two days at the Central Flying School. He knew that she did not approve, he explained to her on May 29, 'so I did not write you from there as I know you would be vexed'. Now that he was on board Enchantress, on his way from Portsmouth to Portland, 'I hasten to tell you how much & how often you & the babies were in my thoughts during these happy & interesting days.' He had flown on one occasion to a Yeomanry camp eleven miles from the school. 'We had a great reception-the men all running out in a mob, as if they had never seen an aeroplane before.'
Churchill's flying instructor on this occasion was a twenty-seven-year-old Royal Marine, Lieutenant Thomas Creswell. Six days after he had flown with Churchill, he and a co-pilot, Lieutenant-Commander Arthur Rice, were killed when their seaplane, the same one which Churchill had flown, broke up and crashed into the sea. Learning of this, Clementine, who was expecting her third child in October, begged her husband to give up flying. He deferred to her plea, writing from Enchantress on June 6:
My darling one,
I will not fly any more until at any rate you have recovered from your kitten: & by then or perhaps later the risks may have been greatly reduced.
This is a wrench, because I was on the verge of taking my pilot's certificate. It only needed a couple of calm mornings; & I am confident of my ability to achieve it very respectably. I should greatly have liked to reach this point which would have made a suitable moment for breaking off. But I admit that the numerous fatalities of this year would justify you in complaining if I continued to share the risks-as I am proud to do-of these good fellows. So I give it up decidedly for many months & perhaps for ever. This is a gift-so stupidly am I made-which costs me more than anything which could be bought with money. So I am very glad to lay it at your feet, because I know it will rejoice & relieve your heart.
Anyhow I can feel I know a good deal about this fascinating new art. I can manage a machine with ease in the air, even with high winds, & only a little more practice in landings would have enabled me to go up with reasonable safety alone. I have been up nearly 140 times, with many pilots, & all kinds of machines, so I know the difficulties, the dangers & the joys of the air-well enough to appreciate them, & to understand all the questions of policy which will arise in the near future.
It is curious that while I have been lucky, accidents have happened to others who have flown with me out of the natural proportion. This poor Lieutenant whose loss has disturbed your anxieties again, took me up only last week in this very machine!
You will give me some kisses and forgive me for past distresses-I am sure. Though I had no need & perhaps no right to do it-it was an important part of my life during the last seven months, & I am sure my nerve, my spirit & my virtue were all improved by it. But at your expense my poor pussy cat! I am sorry.
Churchill stopped flying. But he intensified his efforts to ensure that the Royal Naval Air Service was well trained and properly equipped. On June 9 he approved the entry of two hundred civilians into the service, and the development of five naval air stations, three less than he had hoped, because of his Navy Estimate economies. He also continued his vigilance in regard to social conditions throughout the Navy, pressing for the introduction of widows' pensions for sailors dying in the service. More than a decade was to pass, however, and four years of war, before, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, it fell to Churchill himself to introduce pensions for all war widows, and also war orphans.
On June 17, in one of his most important initiatives as First Lord, Churchill asked the House of Commons to authorise a revolutionary business transaction that he had negotiated; the purchase by the British Government of a 51 per cent share in the profits of all oil produced by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, as well as the first use of all the oil produced at the company's wells. By this purchase, he explained, for the cost of just over £2 million, the Royal Navy would secure all the oil it needed to maintain its warships, without depending on any private company or any foreign government.
Two years before he brought the details of his plan to Parliament, Churchill had appointed Fisher to examine the Navy's oil requirements, one of which was that the Navy 'control an oil-field somewhere'. When Fisher advised the Anglo-Persian oil field as the one to be controlled, Churchill at once began negotiations to acquire it; assisted by a young Treasury official, Richard Hopkins, he had carried these out with his mastery of detail and his ability to reconcile the competing interests of different Government departments. 'What we want now,' he told the Commons on June 17, 'is a proved proposition, a going concern, an immediate supply, and a definite prospect with potentialities of development over which we can ourselves preside. These we find in Persia.'
The House of Commons approved Britain's purchase of a majority shareholding in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company by 254 votes to 18. The Admiralty now had control of the oil it needed, in a region within Britain's sphere of influence since the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1906, and with a prospect of considerable profit; over the next fifty years the interest alone of Britain's 51 per cent share of the oil profits was to pay for the cost of all battleships built after 1914.
***
On June 28, eleven days after Churchill's success in acquiring the oil needed by the Navy, an event took place in the Balkans which was to shatter the fabric of Europe: the assassination in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo of the Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife. There had been an immediate outcry in Austria-Hungary against the assassin, a Serb nationalist, and against Serbia.
It seemed certain that Austria would make demands on Serbia for redress, possibly even make war on her. Russia's sympathies would be with the Serbs, fellow-Slavs struggling to maintain their nationhood. According to both sentiment and alliance, Germany might side with Austria-Hungary, and France with Russia. All this, however, was in the realm of speculation. On July 9, eleven days after the assassination, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the British Foreign Office told Sir Edward Grey, 'I have my doubts as to whether Austria will take any action of a serious character and I expect the storm will blow over.'
On board Enchantress, Churchill's thoughts were far from the possibility of a wider conflict. On July 9 he wrote to King Alfonso of Spain of his hope 'that I shall have the honour of seeing Your Majesty during your visit in September in the seclusion of the polo world'. But there was to be no 'seclusion', and no 'polo world', in September 1914.
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