That evening, Churchill wrote to Lloyd George to reiterate his opposition to a renewed offensive that year in France, and to 'limit the consequences' of any attack that might already have been decided upon, 'I deplore with you the necessity for giving way to the military wish for a renewed offensive in the West.' Churchill also suggested that the time had come to prepare a further amphibious landing against Turkey-in-Europe, making use of the five or six divisions then idle at Salonica which 'would be crouched instead of sprawled'. Once the Turkish Army in Europe were forced to surrender, the Allied troops in Palestine would be 'free by the spring of next year for action in Italy or France'. Churchill ended with a plea to Lloyd George, who was on his way to France, 'Don't get torpedoed; for if I am left alone your colleagues will eat me.'
The headquarters of the Ministry of Munitions was in Northumberland Avenue, at the Hotel Metropole. The hotel, taken over by the Government, was just off Trafalgar Square, only a few minutes' walk from Admiralty House, Churchill's Ministerial home from 1911 to 1915. From what his predecessor, Dr Addison, could learn, the members of the Munitions secretariat 'were not very friendly to the idea of Winston's coming'. Addison introduced him on July 24; a senior departmental officer, Harold Bellman, later recalled how they had expected 'a stormy scene' and that Churchill was received 'rather coldly'. Indeed, Bellman recalled, he opened his remarks by stating 'that he perceived that he "started at scratch in the popularity stakes". He went on boldly to indicate his policy for an even swifter production of munitions. As he elaborated his plans the atmosphere changed perceptibly. This was not an apology. It was a challenge. Those who came to curse remained to cheer.'
Hostility to Churchill's appointment continued; on August 3 the Morning Post announced: 'That dangerous and uncertain quantity, Mr Winston Churchill-a floating kidney in the body politic-is back again at Whitehall. We do not know in the least what he may be up to, but from past experience we venture to suggest that it will be everything but his own business.' Four days later Churchill faced his first test as Minister of Munitions, a year-and-a-half-old industrial dispute which had brought Sir William Beardmore's munitions works, and other munitions factories on the Clyde, to a halt. Several of the strike leaders had not only been dismissed from Beardmore's, but arrested and forbidden to reside in Glasgow. Three successive Ministers, Lloyd George, Edwin Montagu and Addison, all Liberals, had upheld the exclusion order.
In an attempt to resolve the dispute, Churchill invited the leader of the 'Clyde deportees', David Kirkwood, a man of his own age, to meet him at the Ministry. In his memoirs Kirkwood recalled how he had expected 'arrogance, military precision, abruptness', but the moment Churchill appeared, 'I knew I was wrong. He came in, his fresh face all smiles, and greeted me simply, without a trace of side or trappings. I felt I had found a friend.' As their talk began, Churchill rang a bell and said, 'Let's have a cup of tea and a bit of cake together.' Kirkwood was amazed: 'Here was the man supposed never to think of trifles, suggesting tea and cakes-a sort of bread and salt of friendship. It was magnificent. We debated over the teacups.'
Kirkwood demanded reinstatement for the 'deportees', in return for a pledge that they would agree to resume working. Churchill recognised Kirkwood's patriotism and accepted the pledge, putting immediate pressure on Beardmore to reinstate them. Three days later the strike was over. Kirkwood himself was offered the job of manager at Beardmore's Mile End shell factory in London. 'The incurable itch to do something striking,' wrote the Morning Post in denouncing the settlement, 'has already been too much for Mr Churchill. He has already celebrated his tenure of office by extending the hand of fellowship to the Clyde deportees, a gang of as dangerous and desperate agitators as ever fomented trouble in the labour world.' Within six weeks of his reinstatement Kirkwood had devised a workers' bonus scheme which made production at Mile End the highest in Britain.
On August 15 Churchill presented his Munitions of War Bill to the Commons. The aim of the Bill, he explained, was 'output on the one hand and industrial peace on the other'. Special wage awards would be made to skilled men. No worker would be penalised for belonging to a trade union or taking part in a trade dispute. Although in some respects this could be prejudicial to output, 'it removes any suspicion of want of good faith or want of sympathy'. The war could not be won 'unless we are supported by the great masses of the labouring classes of this country'. Unless they gave their support 'with a loyal and spontaneous determination, we must expect disastrous results'.
Churchill was not a member of the War Cabinet, but attended those meetings at which munitions were discussed. When, on August 15, he gave, unasked, his views about the allocation of British field guns to Russia, Derby protested to Lloyd George and persuaded the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, to do likewise. At a second War Cabinet that day, Churchill spoke in favour of a possible transfer of naval guns from the Navy to the Army. It was Churchill's task to produce Britain's munitions of war, and to try to satisfy the competing claims to them; he therefore felt that he must point out what he believed to be the best use of them. There were 'very large reserves' of guns being discarded by the Admiralty, he pointed out, which the War Office could use on land. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Eric Geddes, was not at the meeting, but as soon as he learned Churchill had spoken, he too protested; indeed, he and Derby threatened to resign if Churchill's interventions were not curtailed.
Three days after this dispute Churchill announced the new structure of his Ministry. It was a masterpiece of streamlining, intended, he said, 'by more economical processes, by closer organisation, and by thrifty and harmonious methods, to glean and gather a further reinforcement of war power'. In place of fifty semi-autonomous departments he set up a Munitions Council of eleven members, each of whom would be in charge of several related aspects of munitions production. A Council Secretariat would co-ordinate the purchase of raw materials and supervise production methods. Churchill appointed his former Admiralty Secretary, James Masterton-Smith, to take charge of it, and brought Edward Marsh back to his Private Office.
The Munitions Council met once a week. Specific issues were delegated to Council Committees, seventy-five of which were set up in the following fifteen months. Dozens of businessmen and industrialists participated in the Ministry's efforts, working side by side with the civil servants. Churchill read the Committees' reports and approved them. 'I think I have hardly ever altered a word,' he noted four months later. On September 4 he addressed the Munitions Council on the question of air power. For too long, he said, the Air Force had been 'the drudge of the other services'. Now, however, there were 'only two ways of winning the war, and they both begin with A. One is aeroplanes and the other is America. That is all that is left. Everything else is swept away.'
Churchill was in his element; work and a clear plan. 'If you know your war plan it is easy to parcel out your material,' he told his Council that day. Five days later he wrote to Lloyd George: 'This is a very heavy department, almost as interesting as the Admiralty, with the enormous advantage that one has neither got to fight Admirals nor Huns! I am delighted with all these clever business people who are helping me to their utmost. It is very pleasant to work with competent people.'
On September 12 Churchill made his first munitions visit to France. From Calais, he and Marsh drove to the war zone. As Messines was reported to be 'unhealthy' they went instead to Wytschaete Ridge, which had been taken two months earlier by Irish and Ulster regiments fighting side by side. No sooner had they reached the ridge than German shells began to burst sixty yards away, hurling fragments to within five or six yards. 'Winston soon began to think it was silly to stay there,' Marsh wrote to a friend, 'and we began picking our way back through the stumps and round the shell-holes of Wytschaete wood.' Leaving Wytschaete, Churchill drove to St Omer for two days of talks with Haig and his staff.
Haig had ordered a major offensive to begin in a week's time, determined to break through the German trenches in the Ypres salient. His objective was to attack through the village of Passchendaele and on to Bruges, even to Zeebrugge, thus ending the stalemate of trench warfare. On September 13, the first full day of his talks with Churchill, he noted in his diary, 'Winston admitted that Lloyd George and he were doubtful about being able to beat the Germans on the Western Front.'
From St Omer, Churchill drove to Poperinghe for tea with his brother, then serving on the staff of the Australian and New Zealand Division. On the way back to St Omer he passed large numbers of troops moving forward to the trenches. 'Many of them recognised Winston and cheered and waved their hands,' Marsh wrote. 'He was as pleased as Punch.'
On the evening of September 16 Churchill presided over a munitions conference at Arras, before driving eastward towards the front. 'Winston was attracted by the sight of shells bursting in the distance-irresistible!' Marsh wrote to his friend. 'Out we got, put on our steel helmets, hung our gas-masks round our necks, and walked for half-an-hour towards the firing. There was a great noise, shells whistling over our heads, and some fine bursts in the distance-but we seemed to get no nearer and the firing died down, so we went back after another hour's delay. Winston's disregard of time, when there's anything he wants to do, is sublime-he firmly believes that it waits for him.'
That night Churchill reached Paris at midnight; rooms awaited him at the Ritz. On September 17 he met his French opposite number, Louis Loucheur, who advocated the establishment of an Inter-Allied Munitions Council. Churchill agreed. His main concern was to present to the Americans 'the joint agreed proposals' of Britain and France. On the following day he held discussions outside Paris with French artillery experts, to ensure the more efficient transport of heavy guns on the congested railway lines. That evening he dined at Amiens, then drove to the coast, where a destroyer took him back to Dover.
Haig's new offensive opened on September 20. Thirteen days later, on October 3, he sent Churchill an urgent appeal for 6-inch howitzer ammunition. Any reduction of supply, he warned, would hamper his present advance. Churchill instructed the British Mission in Washington to put the request to the American War Industries Board. The Commissioner on the Board in charge of raw materials, Bernard Baruch, agreed to provide the shells required. Henceforth Baruch and Churchill were to be in direct telegraphic contact, sometimes daily. They had never met, but through their telegraphic exchanges emerged a close working partnership.
On October 12 Haig's armies opened their assault against the village of Passchendaele, the last high ground before the expected sweep forward. But after twelve days of intense, often hand-to-hand, fighting, over an area less than half a mile in depth, the advance was halted. That day, in Italy, the Italian Army was defeated at Caporetto by a combined German and Austrian Army, and more than a million Italians were in retreat. When news of the extent of that disaster reached the War Office, Churchill was at Lullenden. Lloyd George, who was at Walton Heath, telephoned and asked him to drive over, a distance of twenty miles. 'He showed me the telegrams, which even in their guarded form revealed a defeat of the first magnitude,' Churchill later recalled.
Churchill gave Lloyd George the courage he sought. British and French troops would be sent to Italy to hold the line. Lloyd George himself would go to Italy. Churchill would do everything possible to ensure that the increased call for guns and munitions was met. This was a formidable task; Britain's factories, even working to capacity, had been unable that October to match their September output. 'We should be careful,' Churchill told his Munitions Council on November 7, 'not to dissipate our strength or melt it down to the average level of exhausted nations. It will be better used with design by us, than weakly dispersed.'
That same day, Churchill held his first meeting with the Women's Trade Union Advisory Committee. Almost a million women came within his Ministerial responsibility. Eight months earlier he had voted in favour of the extension of the franchise which, for the first time in British history, gave votes to women; six million women gained the vote as a result of the new Act. Now it was the demand for a fairer wage that dominated the discussion; during the meeting the women's case was put by a thirty-six-year-old Trade Union leader, Ernest Bevin, who, twenty-three years later, was to be a member of Churchill's War Cabinet.
Churchill was sympathetic to the women's demands, telling the meeting that he believed women's labour should be more than 'an incident of the war'. At the end of the meeting he took up a point that had been raised by Bevin: 'If you think that I have an idea that this is to be a mere sham and that we have called you together to keep the women quiet, you make a very great mistake. That is the last thing we have in view. The times are much too serious for games like that. This is really an earnest attempt to face the problem of women in industrial life and in munitions life during the war.'
Two days after his meeting with the women, Churchill told the War Council that the current wage demands by munitions workers were not in any way in excess either of the increases in the cost of living 'or in the degree of effort which has been forthcoming'. That effort was continuous; among Churchill's initiatives in the first two weeks of November were to stop the cut-back in the production of bombing aircraft, and to increase the production of aeroplane engines. Then, on November 18, he returned to Paris to co-ordinate Italian munitions needs with the French and Italians; after three days of talks, the Italian needs were met.
On November 20, while Churchill was in Paris, the British launched the first tank offensive of the war, at Cambrai. Within two weeks the trench lines were overrun and more than forty-two square miles of German-held territory regained. On the first day of the battle Churchill went to the Chamber of Deputies to hear France's new Prime Minister and Minister of War, the seventy-six-year-old Georges Clemenceau, declare, 'No more pacifist campaigns, no more German intrigues, neither treason nor half treason-war, nothing but war.' It was a remarkable performance. 'He ranged from one side of the tribune to the other,' Churchill later recalled, 'without a note or book of reference or scrap of paper, barking out sharp, staccato sentences as the thought broke upon his mind.' It was not a matter of actual words or reasoning: 'Language, eloquence, arguments were not needed to express the situation. With snarls and growls, the ferocious, aged, dauntless beast of prey went into action.'
Churchill was still in France on his forty-third birthday; he remained there until December 4. During his visit he finalised plans to set up a British gun factory at Creil, north of Paris, so that heavy guns could be repaired and modified without needing to be sent back to Britain. He also undertook, at Bernard Baruch's request, to find and buy for the United States those war materials which American troops would need when they reached Europe. Churchill acquired these materials in France, Spain and even Canada; they included 452 aeroplanes.
While in Paris, Churchill was able to persuade Loucheur to allow him to establish an Anglo-American tank factory at Bordeaux, which would assemble parts sent over from Britain and the United States, and would turn out 1,500 large tanks a month from July 1918. It was with these tanks, he believed, that victory would be won. Tanks should be used, he told the War Cabinet on his return to London, not only as a substitute for artillery bombardment but as an 'indispensable adjunct to infantry'. To support his argument, he pointed out that in the battle of Cambrai, which had ended two days earlier, the forty-two square miles which had been gained had cost fewer than 10,000 men killed or wounded, at a cost in munitions of £6,600,000, whereas in Flanders, from August to November that year, the fifty-four square miles gained had cost 300,000 in killed and wounded, and £84 million in ammunition. The first thing to be done, he told the War Cabinet, was to release the thirty to forty thousand 'admirable cavalrymen', most of them already being found other employment, for service in tanks.
Churchill was relieved that the third battle of Ypres was over. 'Thank God our offensives are at an end,' he wrote to Sinclair. 'Let them make the pockets. Let them traipse across the crater fields. Let them rejoice in the occasional capture of placeless names & sterile ridges: & let us dart here & there armed with science & surprise & backed at all points by a superior artillery. That is the way to break their hearts & leave them bankrupt in resources at the end of the 1918 campaign.'
As 1917 came to an end, Churchill's energies focused on that 1918 campaign. But now a new danger loomed: in Russia, a Bolshevik Government, coming to power at the beginning of November, declared that it would make peace with Germany. Once this happened, the Germans would be able to transfer vast numbers of troops from the Eastern to the Western Front, giving them a marked superiority in numbers. Greatly alarmed, on 19 January 1918 Churchill sent Lloyd George an appeal, begging him to ensure that the Army was brought to 'full strength' at once. The Navy still had priority in recruitment, Churchill pointed out, and he went on to protest:
To me this is incomprehensible. The imminent danger is on the Western front; & the crisis will come before June. A defeat here will be fatal.
Please don't let vexation against past military blunders (which I share with you to the full) lead you to underrate the gravity of the impending campaign, or to keep the army short of what is needed. You know how highly I rate the modern defensive compared with offensive. But I do not like the situation now developing and do not think all that is possible is being done to meet it.
Fancy if there was a bad break!
Look what happened to Italy. One night may efface an army-men at once-at all costs, from Navy, from Munitions, from Home Army, from Civil Life. Stint food and commercial imports to increase shells, aeroplanes & tanks.
Wire and concrete on the largest possible scale.
A good plan for counter blows all worked out beforehand to relieve pressure at the points of attack when they manifest themselves.
If this went wrong everything would go wrong. I do not feel sure about it. The Germans are a terrible foe, & their generals are better than ours. Ponder & then act.
Churchill's actions matched his sense of danger. At the end of January he pressed the Air Minister not to allow orders to fall below four thousand aircraft engines a month. If it was 'considered worthwhile', he wrote, the Ministry of Munitions would support an increase to five or even six thousand. Crossing to France for the day on February 18, he discussed with the British Army commanders their needs in ammunition, tanks and mustard gas, determined to fulfil those needs. He returned to France three days later to continue those discussions, and to see the trenches near Vimy, 'walking in mud for five hours', he told Clementine.
Two days later Churchill visited his own former trenches at Ploegsteert. 'Everything has been torn to pieces,' he told Clementine, '& the shelling is at all times severe. The British line has moved forward about a mile, but all my old farms are mere heaps of bricks & mouldering sandbags.' The strong dugout he had built at Laurence Farm, however, 'has stood out the whole two years of battering, & is still in use. So also are the cellars of the convent which I drained & called the "conning tower". Otherwise utter ruin.'
From Ploegsteert, Churchill went northwards to Ypres, where, on the Menin Road, 'the Huns began to fire. The spot is a favourite one-& is called "Hellfire Corner". Big shells whined overhead & burst with very loud bangs behind us. Nobody paid the slightest attention.' From Hellfire Corner, he walked over the duckboards to Glencorse Wood and Polygon Wood, scenes of fierce fighting during the September and October battle.
At one point Churchill walked to within five hundred yards of a German fortified position, Polderhoek Château. 'The view of the battlefield is remarkable,' he told Clementine. 'Desolation reigns on every side. Litter, mud, rusty wire & the pockmarked ground. Very few soldiers to be seen, mostly in "pill boxes" captured from the industrious Hun. Overhead aeroplanes constantly fired at. The Passchendaele ridge was too far for us to reach but the whole immense arena of slaughter was visible. Nearly 800,000 of our British men have shed their blood or lost their lives here during 3½ years of unceasing conflict. Many of our friends & my contemporaries all perished here. Death seems as commonplace & as little alarming as the undertaker. Quite a natural ordinary event, which may happen to anyone at any moment, as it happened to all these scores of thousands who lie together in this vast cemetery, ennobled & rendered for ever glorious by their brave memory.'
Churchill was amazed at how soldiers now moved about the battle zone. 'It was like walking along a street-not a scrap of cover or even camouflage. Still people kept coming & going & not a shot was fired. In my days at Plugstreet it would have been certain death. But I suppose they are all so bored with the war that they cannot be bothered to kill a few passers-by. We on the other hand shoot every man we can see.' On the way back to his car, he commented, 'we passed the lunatic asylum blown to pieces by the sane folk outside!'
On February 26 and 27, Churchill was in Paris on munitions business. Then he returned to London. In a memorandum on March 5, he asked the War Cabinet to think in terms of a new offensive strategy for 1919, dominated by aircraft and tanks, a type of war 'proceeding by design through crisis to decision-not mere waste and slaughter sagging slowly downwards into general collapse'. Three days later he explained to Lloyd George his wish to see tanks used in large numbers as an integral part of the battle. Sir Henry Wilson, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who was also present, expressed concern that minefields would act as a barrier to a tank advance. Eight days later, Churchill circulated a memorandum in which he suggested various counter-measures, and pressed for work to be done to enable tanks to cross minefields safely. His proposals included a 'large steel hammer' extending twenty feet in front of each tank; a special tank in each group with an undercarriage strong enough to resist the explosions, clearing the way for the others; and a heavy roller or series of rollers pushed in front of a tank to explode the mines. These were, he said, 'crude ideas only intended to excite the scientific mind and lead to the production of definite solutions'.
Within his Ministry, Churchill now set up a Tank Board. The target he gave it was 4,459 tanks by April 1919 and double that number by September 1919. He also wanted to double Britain's air strength, believing, as he had written in his memorandum of March 5, that the results of the war would be decisive if either side had the power to drop 'not five tons but five hundred tons of bombs each night on the cities and manufacturing establishments of its opponents'.
On March 18 Churchill again crossed over to France, his fifth visit since becoming Minister of Munitions eight months earlier. Reaching St Omer he learned that a major German offensive was believed to be imminent. North of the River Oise, British troops were outnumbered two to one. On the following morning he was at British tank headquarters at Montreuil. His next official meeting in France was not for another two days; rather that return to Britain, he decided to visit his friend General Tudor, who was now commanding the Ninth Division. Churchill spent the night of March 19 at Tudor's headquarters at Nurlu. On the following day the two men inspected every part of the division's defences, from the artillery position at Havrincourt to the South African trenches in Gauche Wood.
That night Churchill slept at Nurlu. He awoke early on March 21, just after four o'clock. For half an hour he lay in bed; then, at twenty minutes to five, he heard six or seven loud explosions several miles away. He thought they were British guns firing. They were in fact German mines exploding under the British trenches. 'And then,' he later recalled, 'exactly as a pianist runs his hands across the keyboard from treble to bass, there rose in less than one minute the most tremendous cannonade I shall ever hear.'
The German offensive had begun. Churchill quickly dressed and hurried to see Tudor, who told him that the British guns were about to open fire. Churchill did not hear them. 'The crash of the German shells bursting on our trench lines eight thousand yards away was so over-powering,' he later wrote, 'that the accession to the tumult of nearly two hundred guns firing from much nearer could not be even distinguished.' Shortly after six o'clock the German infantry began its advance. The South African positions at Gauche Wood were overrun. Churchill wanted to remain with the division but Tudor persuaded him to leave. Driving to Peronne, he made his way northward to St Omer. By nightfall the road from Nurlu to Peronne was impassable.
Churchill remained at St Omer for the rest of the day. On March 22 he attended the gas conference there. Then, on March 23, as Nurlu itself was overrun, he left for London. At Downing Street, Lloyd George took him aside to ask how it would be possible to hold any positions on the battlefront now that the carefully fortified lines had been taken: 'I answered that every offensive lost its force as it proceeded. It was like throwing a bucket of water over the floor. It first rushed forward, then soaked forward, and finally stopped altogether until another bucket could be brought.' After thirty or forty miles there would be a breathing space and the front could be reconstituted, 'if every effort were made'.
That night Lloyd George and Henry Wilson dined with Churchill at his home at 33 Eccleston Square. In his diary Wilson described Churchill as 'a real gem in a crisis'. At the War Cabinet on the following day Churchill announced that all munitions workers would be asked to give up their Easter holidays. He would also release munitions workers for the front. On March 26 he worked through the night at the Ministry of Munitions building, to ensure that the maximum number of artillery pieces were moved to France in the shortest possible time. He again slept at the Ministry on the night of March 27. When he awoke on the morning of March 28 German forces had overrun the whole battlefield of the Somme, captured from them at such a terrible cost in 1916, and now threatened to drive a wedge between the French and British armies. Haig had moved his headquarters from St Omer to Montreuil, near the Channel Coast.
Lloyd George wanted first-hand evidence that the French and British armies had the stamina and means to halt the German onslaught. To get that evidence he decided to send Churchill to the front. He also needed to know for certain if the French, hitherto relatively little engaged in the new battle, would be willing to make a 'vigorous attack' from the south, to relieve the pressure on the British line. It was up to Churchill to find out; that morning Lloyd George telegraphed to Clemenceau in Paris to inform him that Churchill was on his way to French Army headquarters.
Churchill's critics at once raised the alarm. Even as he was on his way to Folkestone, Bonar Law and Henry Wilson went to see Lloyd George to say that it was quite wrong for him to be sent on a military mission to French headquarters. Lloyd George bowed to the protest, sending a telephone message from Downing Street to await Churchill at Folkestone, telling him that 'he had better stay in Paris & not at French headquarters. He had better therefore go straight to Clemenceau, ascertain the position, & report here.'
At midday Churchill was at Folkestone. No message had arrived from Lloyd George. Proceeding by destroyer to Boulogne, he drove to Haig's new headquarters, where he found 'an utter absence of excitement or bustle indeed, the Commander-in-Chief 'was taking his afternoon ride.' While at Montreuil he was told that in the past week the British Army had lost more than 100,000 men killed or captured, and over a thousand guns. Most dangerous of all, the Germans were moving troops towards the as yet unattacked northern sector of the British line. Suddenly there was a danger that the British forces would be driven back to the Channel Coast. A French advance from the south was all the more urgent. But at Haig's headquarters no one knew what the French intention was, or what forces they had available to come to Britain's rescue.
Churchill drove south from Montreuil to Amiens, which was already under German bombardment. At midnight he reached Paris, and, as he later recalled, 'the luxuries of an almost empty Ritz'. On reaching the Ritz he was handed Lloyd George's message.
March 29 was Good Friday; in Paris that morning a German shell hit a crowded church, killing eighty of the congregation. 'I do hope that when the long range guns start firing you take cover,' Clementine wrote. That morning Churchill received a message that Clemenceau would not only see him but would 'take him tomorrow to the battle and we will visit all the Commanders of Corps and Armies engaged'. At six that evening the two men met for the first time. 'There is a clear bold policy being pushed to the utmost limit with all available resources,' Churchill telegraphed to Lloyd George. 'They are in good confidence here. Clemenceau of course a tower of strength and courage.'
Lloyd George read out Churchill's report to the War Cabinet on the morning of March 30. The Minister without Portfolio, Lord Milner, Churchill's adversary of a previous decade, protested that his mission, even if 'limited' to a visit to Clemenceau, was a 'direct snub' to himself as the Minister who normally conducted talks with the French. Lloyd George knew, however, that Churchill's reports were crucial to his understanding of whether France really would hold out, and help Britain's forces where needed.
At eight o'clock on the morning of March 30, Churchill presented himself at Clemenceau's headquarters. 'We shall show you everything,' Clemenceau told him. 'We shall go together everywhere and see everything for ourselves.' Within two hours they reached Beauvais, where Marshal Foch was waiting for them at the Town Hall. Churchill later recalled how, in his room, 'Foch seized a large pencil as if it were a weapon, and without the slightest preliminary advanced upon the map and proceeded to describe the situation.' With animated gestures and loud cries, Foch traced the German advance during its first massive onrush on March 21. He then described the gradual slowing down of the German advance with each successive day. As he did so 'his whole attitude and manner flowed out in pity for this poor, weak, miserable little zone of invasion which was all that had been achieved by the enemy on the last day. One felt what a wretched, petty compass it was compared to the mighty strides of the opening days. The hostile effort was exhausted.'
The stabilisation of the line, Foch then told his visitors, was 'sure, certain, soon. And afterwards. Ah, afterwards. That is my affair.' The visitors left, driving north to Drury, where General Rawlinson was commanding the Fourth Army. Would the line hold, Churchill asked him. 'No one could tell,' Rawlinson replied. 'We have hardly anything between us and the enemy except utterly exhausted, disorganised troops.' The men of the Fifth Army, who had borne the brunt of the attack, were 'dead from want of sleep and rest. Nearly all the formations are mixed or dissolved. The men are just crawling slowly backwards: they are completely worn out.'
Haig arrived at Drury and asked the French for support. Clemenceau at once gave orders for two divisions of French troops to cross the River Ancre in support of the British. 'If your men are tired,' he said in English, 'and we have fresh men, our men shall come up at once and help you.' This offer, Churchill telegraphed to Lloyd George, afforded immediate relief to soldiers who were 'worn out and deadened by what they have gone through'. Instead of a separate French push further south, there would now be direct French assistance where the British line was weakest.
Clemenceau spoke again: 'I claim my reward. I wish to pass the river and see the battle.' Rawlinson protested that the situation beyond the River Luce could not be established. 'Very well,' Clemenceau replied, 'we will establish it. After coming all this way and sending you two divisions, I shall not go back without crossing the river.' Summoning Churchill to follow, Clemenceau entered his car. As they drove forward, Churchill told Clementine, they passed British soldiers walking away from the battle zone 'as if they were in a dream'. Most of them took no notice of the brightly flagged cars. A few, recognising Churchill, 'gave me a wave or a grin as they would no doubt have done to George Robey or Harry Lauder, or any other well known figure which carried their minds back to vanished England and the dear days of peace and party politics.'
At last they reached the river. The artillery fire was quite close. 'Now, Mr Winston Churchill, we are in the British lines,' said Clemenceau. 'Will you take charge of us? We will do what you say.'
'How far do you want to go?' Churchill asked.
'As far as possible,' Clemenceau answered. 'But you shall judge.'
Map in hand, Churchill ordered his car to lead the convoy. It crossed the bridge. 'The projectiles whined to and fro overhead,' Churchill later recalled. The convoy came to within three or four hundred yards of the last high ground in British hands. 'Rifle fire was now audible in the woods, and shells began to burst in front of us on the road and in the sopping meadows on either side.'
Churchill thought they had gone far enough. Clemenceau agreed to stop, got down from his car and climbed a small rise by the roadside. He remained there for about a quarter of an hour 'questioning the stragglers and admiring the scene'. They were 'in the highest spirits,' Churchill recalled, 'and as irresponsible as schoolboys on holiday. But the French staff officers were increasingly concerned for the safety of their Prime Minister. They urged me to persuade him to withdraw.' Clemenceau agreed to go back. Then, as they reached the road, 'a shell burst among a group of led horses at no great distance. The group was scattered. A wounded and riderless horse came in a staggering trot along the road towards us. The poor animal was streaming with blood.'
Clemenceau, aged seventy-six, advanced towards the wounded horse 'and with great quickness seized its bridle, bringing it to a standstill. The blood accumulated upon the road. A French General expostulated with him, and he turned reluctantly towards his car. As he did so, he gave me a sidelong glance and observed in an undertone, "Quel moment délicieux!"'
The convoy returned to Drury, then went northward through Amiens. Churchill was impressed when the French General in the line on Rawlinson's right expressed confidence that he could hold his own sector for twenty-four hours, when reinforcements would arrive. At eight in the evening the convoy reached Beauvais, where General Pétain, the French Commander-in-Chief, welcomed them on board his train, 'this sumptuous military palace' Churchill called it.
'We had already,' Churchill later wrote, 'been exactly twelve hours either touring along the roads at frantic speeds, or in constant exciting conversation with persons of high consequence. Personally I was quite tired. But the iron frame of "The Tiger" appeared immune from fatigue of any kind or in any form.' Pétain described the situation as he saw it. He was confident that the German offensive would fail, explaining that the current phase was the 'phase of men', during which a new front was being formed. Then would come the 'phase of guns'. A strengthened artillery organisation would be ready within forty-eight hours. Ammunition would arrive within four days.
After dining with Pétain in his train, the visitors returned to Paris, reaching the city at one in the morning. Before going to bed Churchill telegraphed to Lloyd George, advising him that as many men as possible ought to be sent to France at once: 'You ought to scour your whole military organisation and also the Navy in order to diminish the superiority of the enemy.' Clemenceau was 'splendid in his resolution and buoyancy'. That Sunday, Churchill wrote also to Clementine about the Tiger: 'His spirit & energy indomitable. Fifteen hours yesterday over rough roads at high speed in motor cars, I was tired out-& he is 76! He makes the same impression on me as Fisher: but much more efficient, & just as ready to turn round & bite!'
Lloyd George wanted the Americans to send substantial drafts of men to France without delay, ideally 120,000 men a month. On the morning of March 31 Churchill went, at Lloyd George's request, to put this idea to Clemenceau. Together they drafted a telegram to President Wilson, putting the urgency to him. Basing himself on all he had learned during the previous day's journey, Clemenceau wrote, with Churchill's guidance, 'I am now able to inform you that, whatever happens, we shall contest the ground step by step, and that from today onward we are certain of stopping the enemy.'
President Wilson agreed to expedite the men in the numbers asked. After another day at the front, Churchill returned to Paris, where he telegraphed to Lloyd George at midnight, 'French are now well established and solidly backed with guns.' The German southward thrust 'does not now cause anxiety'.
Churchill saw Clemenceau again that night; then he telegraphed to Lloyd George, urging him to cross to France at once and settle with Clemenceau the details of the High Command structure. 'You and he together can make a good settlement and no one else can.' Lloyd George crossed to Boulogne on the morning of April 3, together with Henry Wilson. Churchill met them at Boulogne and drove with them to Montreuil. But at Sir Henry's insistence he was excluded from the military discussion which took place that morning at Beauvais, at which it was agreed that Foch should become Generalissimo of all Allied forces in France, including the British and American.
Excluded from these discussions, Churchill spent the rest of April 3 in northern France on munitions business, then joined Lloyd George in the evening for the journey from Boulogne to Folkestone and back to London, which they reached at two-thirty in the morning.
***
On the Eastern Front, the Bolsheviks had made their peace with Germany. Churchill cast about for some means of persuading them to re-enter the war, and re-activate the Eastern Front. If the Bolsheviks could be 'induced' to make common cause with Roumania, he wrote to the War Cabinet, and jointly attack Germany, that would be the moment to send to Moscow 'representatives of the Allies, of sufficient weight to give the Bolshevik Government a new element of stability and a means of reaching a working arrangement with other classes of Russian society'.
Churchill felt that if the former American President, Theodore Roosevelt, who was then in Paris, or the former French Minister of War, Albert Thomas, 'were with Trotsky at the inevitable moment when war is again declared between Germany and Russia, a rallying point might be created sufficiently prominent for all Russians to fix their gaze upon. Some general formula such as "safeguarding the permanent fruits of the Revolution" might be devised which would render common action possible having regard to the cruel and increasing pressure of the Germans.' The Entente representative might become 'an integral part of the Russian Government'.
Churchill was convinced that Britain and the Bolsheviks could make common cause. 'Let us never forget that Lenin and Trotsky are fighting with ropes round their necks. They will leave office for the grave. Show them any real chance of consolidating their power, of getting some kind of protection against the vengeance of a counter-revolution, and they would be non-human not to embrace it. They must, however, be forced by events and aided by foreigners. Without external aid and countenance they can do nothing. Hitherto they have had other hopes but these have utterly failed, and self-preservation will force them to tread a path which is also ours if they can be helped to gain it.'
'In the main,' Churchill wrote in a second memorandum for the Cabinet that April, 'the intellect of Russia, including the Bolsheviks, must, whatever happens in the long run, be hostile to Prussian militarism and therefore drawn towards the Allied parliamentary democracies.'
Churchill sought every possible means of bringing pressure to bear on the German forces. A day before his suggestion of a deal with Lenin, he had written to Loucheur about the need to continue the manufacture of mustard-gas shells, telling him he was 'in favour of the greatest possible development of gas warfare, and of the fullest utilisation of winds, which favour us so much more than the enemy'. Within a month, more than a third of the shells fired by the British Army were mustard-gas shells. But the first gas success that year was achieved by the Germans, when shortly after midnight on April 7 they attacked the northern sector of the British line at Armentières. Three days later, Armentières was overrun.
All the gains of the Third Battle of Ypres had been lost; the woods in the Ypres salient which Churchill had explored in February were again in German hands. Churchill now warned Lloyd George of the danger of the Germans driving a wedge between the British and French forces by reaching the English Channel at Abbeville. 'Is not the sound rule,' he asked Lloyd George on April 18, 'to stand together, retire together, turn together and strike together, as we did after the Marne?'
Following his return from France, Churchill had redoubled his efforts to manufacture munitions. By April 21 he had been able to send Haig twice as many guns as had been lost or destroyed since the start of the German offensive a month earlier. The same was true of aircraft. He had also been able to replace every tank lost by one of a newer and better pattern. In order to find out from Haig the exact needs in heavy gun ammunition, Churchill crossed back to France on April 27. That evening Haig wrote in his diary, 'He has certainly improved the output of the munitions factories very greatly, and is full of energy in trying to release men for the army, and replace them by substitutes.'
On his return from France, Churchill found an appeal from the United States for the two hundred heavy guns which he had promised the Americans five months earlier. They were now urgently needed by the new armies soon to arrive in France. Despite the British losses after March 21, and the despatch of stocks to the armies in Italy, he was able to make good his promise. But his main work that summer was the munitions needs for 1919, the first year in which it was assumed victory would be possible. To expedite these efforts Churchill now lived permanently, and slept, at the Ministry building. This had 'many conveniences from the point of view of getting work done', he told a friend. 'It enables me to work to the last moment before dinner, to get papers when I come back after dinner, and to begin with shorthand assistance as early as I choose in the morning.'
That summer Churchill also instituted the first regular cross-Channel air service, for Ministers and officials who needed to go regularly back and forth to France. Churchill made the first of these flights on May 18, from Le Bourget airport north-east of Paris, in order to return as quickly as possible to London from an Inter-Allied munitions conference.
On June 1 there was a personal interlude, the marriage of Churchill's mother to a member of the Nigerian Civil Service, Montagu Porch. Her second husband, George Cornwallis-West, had left her in 1913 to marry the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell. Porch was twenty-three years younger than Lady Randolph and three years younger than Churchill himself. 'Winston says he hopes marriage won't become the vogue among ladies of his mother's age,' a family friend noted in his diary. Lady Randolph was sixty-four. Churchill and his wife were among those who signed the register; Clementine was four months pregnant.
Two days after his mother's wedding, Churchill flew back to France. Clementine saw him off. 'I had a touching vision of you & your two kittens growing rapidly smaller, and the aerodrome & its sheds dwindling into distant perspective as I whirled away,' he wrote to her from France. 'It was a very beautiful & wonderful journey.'
The Germans, cheated of their victory in March, had launched another offensive, breaking through the French lines between the Aisne and the Marne. There was concern in Paris that the capital itself might be threatened. Churchill landed at Hesdin, then drove to Paris. 'An air raid is in progress,' he wrote to Clementine from Paris on the night of June 6, '& I am due & overdue for bed.' As to the military situation, 'On the whole I am hopeful. But the fate of the capital hangs in the balance-only 45 miles away. Next time I come (if there is a "next time") you must really try to accompany me.'
On June 8 Churchill visited the French front line north of Compiègne. The two French Generals he met there were both 'soberly confident & hoped that they would be attacked', he told Clementine. 'The day had been quiet,' he later recalled, 'and the sweetness of the summer evening was undisturbed even by a cannon shot. Very calm and gallant, and even gay, were the French soldiers who awaited the new stroke of fate. By the next evening all the ground over which they had led me was in German hands, and most of those with whom I had talked were dead or prisoners'. In all, the German Army took 60,000 prisoners during their sweep forward.
Back in Paris, Churchill reported to his wife on the afternoon of June 9 that the battle then raging between Montdidier and Noyon was 'very critical and deadly'. If the French could not hold the Germans back on that sector 'it is not easy to see what the next step on our part should be'. He was, however, hopeful; the line was 'strongly held with troops & good reserves at hand'. That day, in Paris, two German long-range shells fell within 150 yards of where Churchill was in conference.
The Germans failed to reach Compiègne. On June 11 the French began their counter-attack. Churchill flew back to England on the following day. During the flight something went wrong with the engine. 'I very nearly finished an eventful though disappointing life in the salt waters of the Channel,' he told Sinclair. 'We just fluttered back to shore.'
***
Churchill was angered that month when, at the insistence of Lord Milner, recently appointed Secretary of State for War, the War Cabinet decided to continue to take men from the munitions factories for the front, even though this had begun to lead to a sharp drop in tank production. He was now worried about Britain's ability to win the war in 1919. 'Do the means of beating the German armies in the West in 1919 exist?' he asked the War Cabinet in a memorandum on June 22. 'Can the men be procured? If so, the mechanisms can be prepared. We still have the time. Have we the will-power and the command to look ahead and regulate action accordingly?' When the War Cabinet announced publicly that no British air raids would take place over Germany on Corpus Christi Day, Churchill wrote angrily to Lloyd George, 'Do put your foot down on this. It is abject.'
A further threat to munitions production for 1919 came at the end of June, when strikes broke out in many factories, fuelled by the refusal of the owners to discuss wage increases with the unions. In the most serious case, at the Alliance Aeroplane Works, the strike began with the sacking of a shop steward. Aircraft production was halted. Churchill took drastic action, taking over the works for the Government. He then reinstated the sacked shop steward and allowed the shop committee to continue its activities, defending his action by upholding the workers' claim that the firm 'had opposed the legitimate development of the shop steward and shop committee movement'.
A week later strikes broke out in several tank factories in protest against the transfer of men against their will from one factory to another. This had become necessary because of the continued transfer of men to the front, as insisted upon by the War Cabinet. Confronted by a virtual collapse in tank production, Churchill wanted to force the strikers back to work by withdrawing their exemption from military service. At a meeting with Churchill on July 25, Bonar Law opposed this, not wanting to use the Military Service Act 'as an agent in an industrial dispute'. On the following day 300,000 munitions workers in Leeds threatened to strike from July 29; Lloyd George at once intervened, supporting Churchill's proposal and issuing a statement from Downing Street that all strikers would be liable to be sent to the front. The strike collapsed and tank production resumed. The hopes for a military victory in 1919 were intact.
***
On August 8 the British Fourth Army, commanded by General Rawlinson, launched a new offensive; British, Canadian and Australian troops all took part. The battle was remarkable because seventy-two tanks, all built as a result of Churchill's Ministerial efforts and exhortations, took part in the battle. Wanting to be in France while the tanks were in action, Churchill flew that afternoon to Hesdin. From there he was driven to the Château Verchocq, which Haig had put at his disposal for his future visits to France.
By nightfall on August 8 the tank attack had broken through the German front-line trenches; 400 German guns and nearly 22,000 soldiers were captured. 'I am so glad that it has all come right,' Churchill telegraphed to Haig, who replied, 'I shall always remember with gratitude the energy and foresight which you displayed as Minister of Munitions, and so rendered our success possible.' Churchill sent Haig's telegram to Clementine with the covering note: 'It is certainly very satisfactory to have succeeded in gaining the confidence and good-will of the extremely difficult and to some extent prejudiced authorities out here. There is no doubt that they have felt themselves abundantly supplied.'
On August 9 Churchill went to see Rawlinson at his headquarters at Flixecourt; then he drove with his brother Jack to the front line. 'On our way to the front,' he told Clementine, 'we passed nearly 5,000 German prisoners, penned up in cages or resting under escort in long columns along the roadside.' Among them were more than 200 officers. 'I went into the cages and looked at them carefully. They looked a fairly sturdy lot, though some of them were very young. I could not help feeling sorry for them in their miserable plight and dejection, having marched all those miles from the battlefield without food or rest, and having been through all the horrors of the fight before that. Still, I was very glad to see them where they were.'
Together with his brother, Churchill reached the front near the village of Lamotte, which on the previous morning had been five thousand yards inside the German lines. 'The tracks of the tanks were everywhere apparent,' he told Clementine with pride.
By August 10 the British Army had made further advances, taking another 10,000 prisoners. 'The tide has turned,' Churchill wrote to Clementine that day. 'It is our victory, won chiefly by our troops under a British Commander, and largely through the invincible tank which British brains have invented and developed.' Still focusing on the battles of 1919, he wrote that night to Lloyd George of the need for 100,000 men by the following June if the tanks were not to 'fail in their full effect'. On August 11 he returned to the battle zone. 'The Germans were hardly firing at all,' he told Clementine, 'while our batteries thundered away. There were more German dead lying about than in the other sector which I visited, & all our dead cavalry horses dotted the countryside & disfigured the scene.' He saw a British observation balloon shot down in flames, 'the observers just skipping out in their parachutes in time'.
'I do hope we shall be careful not to waste our men in pushing now that the spurt is finished,' Clementine wrote to her husband on August 13. 'Your remark about not throwing away our men', he replied, 'shows you to be a very wise & sagacious military pussy cat.' On the day of her letter he had driven from Verchocq to Paris to preside at the Inter-Allied Munitions Council. Its task was to fix the munitions programme for 1919. He also called on Clemenceau, who expressed unease at Britain's manpower plans. 'I am also disquieted by what I know,' Churchill wrote to Clementine, '& think we are not making sufficient provision.'
While still in Paris on August 16, Churchill and Loucheur agreed to provide the tank engines and guns needed by the American Third Army. Two days later he pressed Loucheur to help him in the design and manufacture of long-distance bombing planes which could 'discharge the maximum quantity of bombs upon the enemy'. This was the moment, he explained, 'to carry the war into his own country, to make him feel in his own towns and in his own person something of the havoc he has wrought in France and Belgium. This is the moment, just before the winter begins, to affect his morale, and to harry his hungry and dispirited cities without pause or stay.'
Churchill returned to Verchocq for three days. Then on August 19 he flew for the day to Haig's advance headquarters at Frévent. 'He is most anxious to help us in every way,' Haig wrote in his diary, 'and is hurrying up the supply of "10 calibre-head" shells, gas, tanks etc. His schemes are all timed for "completion in next June"! I told him we ought to get a decision this autumn.' Returning at dusk to the airfield near Verchocq, Churchill spoke to a group of young pilots who were waiting to take off on a night bombing raid on Germany. 'You know,' he told his own pilot, 'the people at home have no idea what these lads are going through.'
Churchill remained at Verchocq for another week. By August 24 British troops on the Somme had recaptured almost all the ground overrun by the Germans in March. 'It is very jolly moving about so freely with the armies,' he wrote that day to Clementine, '& yet being able to do my work regularly.' On the following day he flew back to England, going straight from the airfield at Kenley, to Lullenden, less than twelve miles away, to be with his family.
While Churchill was in London on August 31, Bolshevik troops forced their way into the British Embassy in Petrograd. Among the British officers in the building was the Naval Attaché, Captain Francis Cromie, who shot three of the Bolshevik soldiers dead, and was then killed. As soon as Churchill heard this, he dictated a memorandum for the War Cabinet, in which he wrote that Cromie was 'a very gifted man, of exceptionally high professional attainments' whom he had known personally before 1914. He continued: 'I earnestly hope that the Government, in spite of its many pre-occupations, will pursue the perpetrators of this crime with tireless perseverance. Reprisals upon various Bolshevik nonentities who happen to be in our hands are of no real use, though they should be by no means excluded. The only policy which is likely to be effective, either for the past or the future, is to mark down the personalities of the Bolshevik Government as the objects upon whom justice will be executed, however long it takes, and to make them feel that their punishment will become an important object of British policy to be held steadily in view through all the phases of the war and of the settlement.'
Churchill drew a wider moral from the shooting: 'The exertions which a nation is prepared to make to protect its individual representatives or citizens from outrage,' he wrote, 'is one of the truest measures of its greatness as an organised State. The fact that men are dying in thousands in fair war must not deaden us to the entirely different character of an act of this kind.' At its meeting on September 4 the War Cabinet decided to send a telegram to the Soviet Government 'threatening reprisals' against Trotsky, Lenin, and 'the leaders of that Government' if the lives of British subjects were not henceforth safeguarded.
***
Having negotiated that August with the Chilean Government for the purchase by the Allies of the whole of Chile's nitrate production, an essential component in munitions manufacture, on September 7 Churchill telegraphed to Bernard Baruch in Washington, asking him what the monthly munitions requirements of the United States would be in 1919, so that Allied production plans could be worked out in harmony, to maximum effect. That afternoon he joined his wife and children at St Margaret's Bay near Dover for a brief seaside excursion. Then, at dusk, he drove to Lympne and flew back to Verchocq.
Clementine realised the need for her husband's long absences, but she was unhappy about the increase in the amount of flying he was doing. He begged her not to worry. 'It gives me a feeling of tremendous conquest over space,' he wrote, '& I know you would love it yourself.' On the following day he flew from Verchocq to Haig's headquarters at Montreuil, where he found a confident mood that victory would come before the end of 1918. 'One must always discount the sanguine opinions of the Army,' he told Clementine. 'Still there is an end to every task, & some day the optimists will be right.'
With each British advance Churchill went to the scene to see how his shells, mustard gas and tanks had been used, or misused. On September 9 he visited the newly captured German positions at Drocourt, east of Vimy. 'The ruin of the countryside was complete,' he wrote to Clementine. 'Everywhere pain & litter & squalor & the abomination of desolation. Everywhere too the enemy flung shells at random-now here, now there, to which the working, sleeping, eating, bathing, loitering, marching soldiers paid not the slightest attention.' Most of the British dead in the battle had already been buried, 'but a number of German blue and grey bundles still lie around'.
Churchill did not tell his wife of the full situation at Drocourt. But he did tell Lloyd George, for it illustrated what happened when the advancing infantry no longer had tank support. Each successive fortified German line had been overrun, he wrote to the Prime Minister on September 10, but at the point where the Germans only had left 'a few little pits and holes' from which to fire their machine guns, the advancing troops had 'got beyond the support of the tanks in one small space about 380 yards wide 'nearly 400 Canadian dead had just been buried and only a few score Germans'. Churchill added: 'You would have been shocked to see the tragic spectacle of the ground where our attack for the time being withered away. It was just like a line of seaweed and jetsam which is left by a great wave as it recoils.'
Churchill went on to warn Lloyd George that as a result of the heavy expenditure of ammunition on the Western Front since the start of the August offensive, there was grave danger of severe shortages in 1919. In view of what had happened at Drocourt he wanted a substantial increase in the number of tanks for 1919, involving a similar increase in the number of crews. Indeed, he wrote, many more crews would be needed than tanks as the 'permanent wastage of the personnel is high, whereas the tank in any victorious battle recovers very quickly from his wounds and hardly ever dies beyond the hope of resurrection. A few months sojourn in the grave is nearly always followed by a reincarnation.' As well as restoring damaged tanks, Churchill wanted to press ahead with the design of larger, stronger and faster tanks, and to make sure that they too were ready by the summer of 1919.
Haig was alarmed at Churchill's repeated emphasis on the campaigns of 1919. On the evening of September 10 he sent a mutual friend to tell him that 'we ought to aim at finishing the war now and not to delay the provision of tanks until experiments showed we had the perfect design'. But in one area Haig and Churchill were in agreement. On September 12 he wrote to Clementine from Paris, 'I am trying also to give the Germans a good first dose of the mustard gas, before the end of the month. Haig is very keen on it & we shall I think have enough to produce a decided effect.' Churchill added, 'Their whining in defeat is very gratifying to hear.'
This was the first time Churchill had written in a letter of Germany's imminent defeat. It was his tenth wedding anniversary:
Ten years ago my dearest one we were sliding down to Blenheim in our special train. Do you remember? It is a long stage on life's road. Do you think we have been less happy or more happy than the average married couple?
I reproach myself very much for not having been more to you. But at any rate in these ten years the sun has never yet gone down on our wrath. Never once have we closed our eyes in slumber with an unappeased difference.
My dearest sweet I hope & pray that future years may bring you serene & smiling days, & full & fruitful occupation. I think that you will find real scope in the new world opening out to women, & find interests which will enrich your life. And always at your side in true & tender friendship as long as he breathes will be your ever devoted, if only partially satisfactory W
From Paris, Churchill returned to Verchocq. He had begun to fulfil a 2,000-gun order from the United States, with which, he told Clementine on September 15, 'they will be able to arm perhaps fifteen additional divisions or nearly half a million men, in time for the crisis of next year'. He was also buying from the United States 2,000 to 3,000 aircraft engines 'for the bombing of Germany' by British pilots in 1919. 'My days here have been fruitful in business,' he told her, '& I have got lots of things moving which were otherwise stuck. The hamper of mustard gas is on its way. This hellish poison will I trust be discharged on the Huns to the extent of nearly 1,000 tons by the end of this month.' He no longer chafed 'at adverse political combinations, or at not being able to direct general policy. I am content to be associated with the splendid machines of the British Army, & to feel how many ways there are open to me to serve them.'
Churchill returned to England on September 17. Nine days later, in the first phase of the battle for the Hindenburg Line, British artillery began a three-day gas bombardment on the German positions with devastating effect. Churchill was back in Paris on September 27 when the Bulgarian Army surrendered unconditionally. The first of the allies of Germany and Austria-Hungary was out of the war. The Balkans, which three years earlier Churchill had hoped to turn against Austria and Germany, were now the Achilles' heel of the Central Powers.
On the Western Front, Haig's armies had captured another 10,000 German prisoners and 200 guns. But, while speaking to munitions workers at Glasgow on October 7, Churchill warned against the current talk 'of the speedy termination of the conflict'. It might be that the course of the battle 'will be better than we have any right to hope for now, but we must not count or build upon too favourable a development of events. We have started out to put this business through, and we must continue to develop to the utmost every resource that can make certain that, whatever the course of the war in 1918, the year 1919 will see our foe unable to resist our legitimate and rightful claims.'
This was too cautious a forecast; on October 15, exhausted by the blood-letting, faced with widespread starvation as a result of the Allied sea blockade, and fearing a total collapse of the Balkan front, the Germans asked for an armistice. President Wilson, who had already set out the Allied conditions for an end to the war, including the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France, turned down the German request. Speaking that day at Manchester, Churchill praised Wilson's 'stern and formidable answer'.
Wilson had made it clear that the war must go on until Germany surrendered; that week the British bombing of German factories, supply dumps and aerodromes intensified. On October 17, as British forces entered Lille, which had been under German occupation for four years, Churchill was again at Verchocq. Clementine, who for more than three years had worked to organise canteens for women munitions workers, wrote to him on October 18:
Do come home and look after what is to be done with the munition workers when the fighting really does stop. Even if the fighting is not over yet, your share of it must be & I would like you to be praised as a reconstructive genius, as well as for a Mustard Gas fiend, a Tank juggernaut & a flying Terror. Besides the credit for all these Bogey parts will be given to subordinates.
Can't the men munition workers build lovely garden cities & pull down slums in places like Bethnal Green, Newcastle, Glasgow, Leeds, etc. & can't the women munition workers make all the lovely furniture for them, babies' cradles, cupboards etc.
Do come home and arrange all this.
On October 20, in an attempt to win favour with the Allies, the Germans announced the end of their submarine campaign against merchant ships. Five days later, accompanied by Marsh, Churchill was again in France, visiting the newly liberated areas. On October 26 he toured the battlefield of Le Câteau, the scene in September 1914 of one of the earliest German victories, now won back after more than four years. But his attempt to drive to the front line was frustrated by a fallen railway bridge which the Germans had blown up. On October 27 he drove to Lille, where he spent the night; on the following day he was asked to be present on the saluting stand at a march-past of British troops. Also on the stand was a young British officer, Major Bernard Montgomery. Before the march-past ended Churchill had to leave, as he had been invited to lunch with his friend General Tudor at his headquarters at Harlebeke, across the Belgian border.
After their lunch Churchill and Tudor drove towards the front line, reaching a church tower from which they could survey the scene. As they looked over the German lines there was a heavy shell attack. Then, recorded Marsh, who was with them, 'the General smelt mustard gas, and made us stuff handkerchiefs into our mouths till we got back to the motor'. Mustard gas was being used by both sides.
Churchill spent the night of October 28 at Tudor's headquarters. During dinner, Marsh noted, 'a Hun plane dropped a fairly large bomb in the street fairly near the house, but this was the only one dropped.' On the following day Churchill and Marsh set off by car for Bruges. Their drive nearly ended in disaster. As they entered the village of Desselghem, looking for a bridge over the River Lys, 'I was puzzled,' Churchill wrote a week later to Tudor, 'to see a peasant suddenly throw himself down behind the wall of a house, and something seemed to be very odd about his gesture. Still, so strong was my impression that we were nearly 10,000 yards from the line that I did not draw any true conclusions from the incident.'
Unknown to Churchill, the village was less than two thousand yards from the nearest German positions, and about to be subjected to a severe bombardment. Hardly had the peasant thrown himself to the ground when a shell burst fifty yards ahead of the car. Thinking that he was nowhere near the front, Churchill assumed it was a bomb dropped from an aeroplane. Two or three seconds later there was 'a whole series of explosions around us'. Still thinking it was an aeroplane, he contemplated not driving on into the open country, in case his 'large and flaunting car' became a target. 'Very luckily, however, I let the car run on, for the very spot where I had thought of pulling up to make enquiries was struck by another shell almost immediately.'
It was now clear that Desselghem was being struck by artillery shells, not bombs. As the car drove on, Churchill still did not realise how near he had been to the front. 'I continued to speculate stupidly upon the odd habits of the Huns in firing such a very long-range battery upon an obscure village 10,000 yards behind the lines.' Then 'we had another rapid series of shells to enliven our journey'. It was only when he reached Bruges that Churchill learned how close he had been to the Germans. The car had been travelling at forty miles an hour, he told Tudor, and could easily have run straight into the German lines. 'What mugs we should have been!'
From Bruges, Churchill drove south, through recently liberated Belgian villages to Passchendaele, which he reached from what had been the German side, crossing into the former Allied lines and revisiting Hellfire Corner on his way into Ypres. There, after looking at the ruined buildings in the centre of the town, he told Marsh that he wanted to turn them into a war cemetery 'with lawns and flowers among the ruins, and the names of innumerable dead'.
That night Churchill slept at Verchocq. On the following day, as he flew back to England, Turkey surrendered to the Allied Powers. The surrender of Austria-Hungary was expected any day; 'a drizzle of empires falling through the air', Churchill described it to Marsh.
Austria-Hungary surrendered on November 3. In London, Churchill tried to ensure that once the war was over there would be a place for him at the centre of policy-making. At lunch with Lloyd George on November 6 he spoke of 'the degradation of being a Minister without responsibility for policy'. Lloyd George assured him that all Ministers with wartime departments would have places in a peacetime Cabinet.
On November 7 a German delegation crossed into the French lines and asked for an armistice; for three days it discussed the Allied conditions. On November 10 Lloyd George invited Churchill to a special Cabinet meeting to discuss the course of those negotiations. During the meeting a message was brought in that the Kaiser had fled to Holland. At five o'clock the next morning the Germans accepted the Allied terms. Fighting would cease at eleven o'clock that morning. Within fourteen days German troops would evacuate France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Alsace and Lorraine. All German troops would withdraw from the Rhineland. Allied and American troops would occupy Germany west of the Rhine.
The future of the German Army was also discussed at the Cabinet of November 10. There was general agreement that it should be demobilised as soon as possible. Churchill, however, struck a note of caution. 'We might have to build up the German army,' he warned, as it was 'important to get Germany on her legs again for fear of the spread of Bolshevism.'
On the morning of November 11 Churchill and his advisers discussed the sale of Britain's surplus munitions stock, and the problems of factories then at the height of their daily output, whose shells, guns and tanks would no longer be needed, certainly not in the enormous quantities now being produced. Then, as the eleven o'clock deadline for the ceasefire approached, Churchill stood alone at the window of his room in the Hotel Metropole, overlooking Northumberland Avenue. 'Victory had come after all the hazards and heartbreaks in an absolute and unlimited form,' he later wrote. 'All the Kings and Emperors with whom we had warred were in flight or exile. All their armies and fleets were destroyed or subdued. In this Britain had borne a notable part, and done her best from first to last.'
Churchill's musings continued. 'The material purposes on which one's work had been centred, every process of thought on which one had lived, crumbled into nothing. The whole vast business of supply, the growing outputs, the careful hoards, the secret future plans-but yesterday the whole duty of life-all at a stroke vanished like a nightmare dream, leaving a void behind.' His mind ranged over the problems of demobilisation; what would his three million workers make now? 'How would the factories be converted? How in fact are swords beaten into ploughshares?'
The first stroke of eleven o'clock rang out. 'I looked again at the broad street beneath me. It was deserted. From the portals of one of the large hotels absorbed by Government departments darted the slight figure of a girl clerk, distractedly gesticulating while another stroke of Big Ben resounded. Then from all sides men and women came scurrying into the street. Streams of people poured out of the buildings.' Northumberland Avenue was now full of people. In the Hotel Metropole 'disorder had broken out'. Doors banged. Feet clattered down corridors. 'Everyone rose from the desk and cast aside pen and paper.'
Churchill looked towards Trafalgar Square. It was swarming with people. 'Flags appeared as if by magic.' Clementine, who was expecting the birth of her fourth child that very week, arrived at the Hotel Metropole to be with her husband. They decided to drive together to Downing Street to congratulate Lloyd George. As they entered their car about twenty people jumped excitedly upon it. Surrounded by a wildly cheering crowd, it eventually reached Downing Street.
That evening, Lloyd George invited Churchill to dine with him. The only other guests were F.E. Smith and Sir Henry Wilson. 'LG wants to shoot the Kaiser,' Wilson noted in his diary, 'Winston does not.' The struggles of war were over; the conflicts of peace had begun.
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