Jane Addams's War Against Preparedness

 

Jane Addams, Front Row Second from Left (April 1915)
En Route to the Hague Conference

After World War I began in 1914, Chicago-based, internationally recognized social reformer Jane Addams  (1860-1935), called for mediation instead of battle, and formed peace groups in Chicago. With the assistance of overseas female activists, Addams convened a women’s conference in Washington, D.C. in January, 1915 to gather international support for opposing the war. Three thousand women attended from numerous countries; others were turned away. They created the Woman’s Peace Party (WPP), made Addams the chair and Chicago its headquarters. 

Three months later, Addams was asked to preside over a Spring 1915 meeting of 1,200 peace activists from 12 nations at the International Congress of Women at The Hague. Their goal was to stop World War I and future wars.   On 7 May 1915, as most of the delegates were heading back to their home countries,  an event occurred that undermined their pacifistic hopes and ambitions.  The sinking the liner RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat outraged the world.  In Addams's home county, itset off  a loud call to begin preparing to enter the conflict if necessary.  When this "Preparedness Movement" showed growth and staying power, Jane Addams concluded she needed to mobilize opposition.  

In fall 1915, Addams questioned President Wilson’s recent upgrading of U.S. defenses, and shared her concerns in a letter to him. Shortly afterward, she made more public statement of her views through a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune.  In January 1916, she reiterated and expanded her anti-preparedness position in testimony before the United States Congress. Collectively, these helped build a substantial although small following for her anti-preparedness and antiwar efforts.  By the time of the Armistice she had become known as "the most dangerous woman in America".

The Sinking That Launched the Preparedness Movement

Jane Addams Letter to President Woodrow Wilson, 29 October 1915

Feeling sure that you wish to get from all sources the sense of the American people in regard to great national questions, officers (1422) of the Women’s Peace Party venture to call to your attention certain views which they have reason to believe are widespread, although finding no adequate expression in the press.

We believe in real defense against real dangers, but not in a preposterous “preparedness” against hypothetical dangers. If an exhausted Europe could be an increased menace to our rich, resourceful republic, protected by two oceans, it must be a still greater menace to every other nation.

Whatever increase of war preparedness we may make would compel poorer nations to imitate us. These preparations would create rivalry, suspicion and taxation in every country. At this crisis of the world, to establish a “citizen soldiery” and enormously to increase our fighting equipment would inevitably make all other nations fear instead of trust us.

It has been the proud hope of American citizens who love their kind, a hope nobly expressed in several of your own messages, that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege not only of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace, but of aiding toward a gradual and proportional lessening of that vast burden of armament which has crushed to poverty the peoples of the old world.

Most important of all, it is obvious that increased war preparations in the United States would tend to disqualify our National Executive from rendering the epochal service which this world crisis offers for the establishment of permanent peace.

Jane Addams the Editor of the Chicago Tribune, 17 November 1915

In an informal discussion following my address at the Social Service club last Monday evening, I was asked to define my opposition on the question of preparedness, and to give some reasons for it.  I gave the following five reasons which I had written out the day before for another purpose, and which I am therefore able to recall quite accurately.

1.  The moment of panic is a bad time to decide any matter, and whatever danger of attack to America, none could be anticipated at the present time when al here hypothetical enemies are exhausting their resources elsewhere.

2.  When the results of this war are studied they will probably greatly modify the type of defense which will be employed in the future—submarines vs. dreadnaughts, etc. At the moment, the expenditure of enormous sums of money upon dreadnaughts of the old fashioned type is, to say the least, a premature decision.

3. It is hoped by many people in Europe and America that one result of this way may be the proportionate reduction of armaments.  At this moment, to have America so markedly increasing her "defense" would make it impossible for her to enter such a plane with clean hands.  By taking action now she assumes that any such plan is impracticable.

4.  There is no doubt that if the United States yields to pan at this moment and largely increases her army and navy, other nations will feel that they must also do this.  The action of the United States will have a profound influence upon the governments of South America and those in Asia, increasing tremendously the expenditure of the people's taxes for military purposes.

5.  The fact the United States is preparing against even a hypothetical enemy will make it much more difficult for her to act as a mediator in ending the war.

I beg to differ with your statement that the policy of preparedness is a matter of "military technique."  On the contrary, it seems to me to be a matter of affecting the general policy of a nation, whose very foundations rest upon the convictions of its citizens and free discussion.

It is certainly the prerogative of a citizen to urge the postponement of the entire matter until international affairs have returned to a normal condition

 

Some additional points Jane Addams raised with Congress in January 1916

A. Unlike European nations, the United States faced no definitive, predictable enemy and possessed ample geographic warning of any imminent homeland threat. 

B.  Quoting a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, Addams warned Congress that adopting a preparedness program meant the U.S. risked becoming "infected with the militaristic spirit,"

C.  She warned that expanding the U.S. military would empower a domestic "military and naval caste," undermining American civil democracy

Nobel Prize Medal, 1931

The Overall Impact of  Jane Addams Opposition to the Preparedness Movement

Opposition to the Preparedness Movement was largely ineffective at halting American war preparations, though it temporarily slowed down early legislative efforts and shaped initial political compromises. President Woodrow Wilson was initially opposed and was openly hostile to the military preparedness movement, advocating instead for strict neutrality and an unarmed or limited "armed neutrality".

The President, though,  in response to events such as escalating German submarine warfare, the political fallout from the Pancho Villa raid in 1916, and mounting political pressure ahead of his 1916 reelection campaign ,eventually reversed his stance and backed major pro-preparedness legislative bills.  Congress passed Wilson's  National Defense Act of 1916, which significantly expanded the size of the U.S. Army and National Guard, and the Naval Act of 1916, which launched a massive fleet-expansion program.

Jane Addams was vilified during this period, and more so after America's entry into the War in April 1918, as she expanded her antiwar activities, staunchly refusing to support the nation's war effort even after its official entry into the conflict in April 1917.  Her popular reputation gained some redemption, however, in 1931 when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the level of the war's sacrifices were being reconsidered.

Sources:  Articles from NPR and Priscilla Roberts in the Encyclopedia of World War I, 2007, Letter from the  Swarthmore College Peace Collection, News account from  Digital Jane Addams

Eyewitness: Major Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion Receives a Message from the Boche

Left: From a Reenactment at the Actual Site:
Soldiers in Rifle Pits and Whittlesey with Senior Officers
Right:  Site Marker on Hillside

On the evening of 2 October 1918, Major Charles Whittlesey led roughly 550 soldiers of the 77th Division into the Charlevaux Ravine in the Argonne Forest of France, pushing past enemy lines as ordered. While his battalion reached its objective, French and American units on their left and right flanks were pushed back by heavy German counterattacks. By the following morning, Whittlesey realized his men were completely surrounded and trapped. He issued this order to his men: "OUR MISSION IS TO HOLD THIS POSITION AT ALL COSTS. NO FALLING BACK. HAVE THIS UNDERSTOOD BY EVERY MAN IN YOUR COMMAND." 

Four days later the opposing German commander sent a message to Major Whittlesey.  This is an eyewitness account of what ensued from Sergeant Major Walter Baldwin.

Sergeant Major Baldwin

Monday, 7 October 1918

It was a monotonous day, with the added dead and wounded, a repetition that we had grown used to.  Then night again, a cold damp night it was, that dug into the very marrow of our bones, causing new aches and pains until we wondered if death itself was not more merciful. Then came another morning with the  same humdrum things, the morning of the seventh in this wilderness of murder. In the afternoon several men, unable to withstand the strain any longer, took it  upon themselves to go after a bag of rations they had  seen fall from an aeroplane. They had only gone but a  short distance when all but one ran into a machine gun nest and were completely wiped out. 

[There was, however, one survivor of this group, Pvt. Lowell Hollingshead, who later described his capture:

I have no idea how long that deadly "rat-tat-tat" of the machine guns kept up, it may have been for only a few minutes or longer but it seemed like eternity to me. I had no idea how many of the other fellows were alive, but I did know that the boy directly in front of me was dead. . .About that time a German appeared from behind a bush not six feet from me and held a long Luger leveled at my head. The German half smiled, half sneered and I instinctively raised my hands and said the only German work I knew, "Kamerad." Perhaps a second passed between the time I said "Kamerad" until he slowly lowered his gun, but it seemed several lifetimes to me.]

The survivor was made prisoner, well fed and his wounds dressed, then the German commander had him blindfolded and with a cane containing a little white flag for his guidance, they led him through their lines to their outposts from which they sent him off in the direction of our position on the hill.

He finally reported to Major Whittlesey and handed him the following communication from the German officer:

To The Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion, I. R. 308, of the 77th American Division

Sir: The bearer of the present, LOWELL R. HOLLINGSHEAD, has been taken prisoner by us on October 7. He refused to the German Intelligence Officer every answer to his questions and is quite an honourable fellow, doing honour to his Fatherland in the strictest sense of the word. 

He has been charged against his will, believing in doing wrong to his country, in carrying forward this present letter to the Officer in charge of the 2nd Battalion, J.R. 308 of the 77th Division with the purpose to recommend this Commander to surrender with his forces as it would be quite useless to resist any more, in view of the present conditions.

The suffering of your wounded men can be heard over here in the German lines and we are appealing to your human sentiments.

A white Flag shown by one of your men will tell us that you agree with these conditions.

Please treat the LOWELL R. HOLLINGSHEAD as an honourable man. He is quite a soldier. We envy you. 

The German Commanding Officer

Private Hollingshead

Major Whittlesey read the note carefully and silently, then without comment, he placed it in the hands of  Captain McMurtry, who likewise read it without change of expression, passing it in turn to Captain Holderman. The three then looked at each other and simultaneously a broad grin actually spread over the features of all. Undoubtedly the appeal to us to stop contained a grim humor that the hard headed Boche could not realize, in his hasty desire to play a safe game under the present harrowing conditions.

It's very audacity smacked of simplicity, when one considers the brand of warfare they had waged. After six days of relentless diabolic Teutonism, using every conceivable means of hell's torture and trickery, sending death and destruction in our midst, he would now have us cry quits, when he became tired of the unequal carnage.

The Major, fearing the slightest sign from us might be misinterpreted as a show of acceptance and surrender, yelled "Baldwin, take in the Panel," and I promptly scrambled out of my funk hole scurrying over the torn and bumpy ground, dragging from its place the signal we had prayed so hard and long would be seen by the planes. Now this ray of hope must be put in the same category as the rest of the forlorn ones.

Turning to the unfortunate Hollingshead, the Major berated him unmercifully, in a loud angry voice, for having left his post without permission, ordering him to report at once to his company commander. The incident had spread like wildfire through the ranks.  Men, almost too weak to stand, actually on the verge of starvation, had now mustered every ounce of remaining strength to voice their sentiments in cursing and damning the Hun, daring him in loud exclamations of choice profanity to come over and try to take us. That was all the white the Germans would ever see on that hillside slaughterhouse and was the unanimous sentiment of every half-dead man who still retained a breath of life.

I was within five feet of Major Whittlesey when he received the note from Hollingshead, and I positively declare he never used the expression "GO TO HELL," in response to the German commander. That story is simply a myth. There was absolutely no recognition given to the Boche communication, therefore there was no necessity to answer it. . .

[Later that night]  literally alive with vermin, weary and sore in body and mind, we settled down for another night in hell's garden. About nine o'clock, one of the men on the right flank came stumbling up to Major Whittlesey's funk hole and breathlessly gasped, "The 307th Infantry has broken through and their outposts are now in contact with our right flank."  

The Lost Battalion had been saved. On 8 October, the 190 remaining men of the “Lost Battalion” walked back to American lines. Another 260 wounded were carried out. 107 men were dead and 63 missing. Sgt. Major Baldwin survived until 1965, Pvt. Hollingshead to 1966. Charles Whittlesey—heavily burdened by the loss of his men and uncomfortable with his unwanted public fame as a war hero committed suicide in November 1921.

Post-Battle Survivors of the Lost Battalion

Source:  Over the Top, April & May, 2013

John Buchan's Incredibly Productive War

A writer, soldier, politician, and public servant, John Buchan was born on 26 August 1875 in Perth, Scotland. His father was a lively character who enjoyed singing border ballads and other Scots songs. His more reserved mother epitomized Free Church virtues. These contrasting attitudes to life made Buchan acutely aware of the importance of maintaining respectability, while appreciating that it's the world's eccentrics who get things done.  At Oxford, he proved a brilliant student, while concurrently launching a lifetime literary career during which he would publish over 100 books. After graduating from Brasenose College in 1899,  he launched a highly successful practices in both law and journalism, notably serving as a political private secretary to Lord Milner, the High Commissioner for South Africa, during and after the Boer War.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Buchan was suffering from duodenal ulcers and considered medically unfit for active service. He spent three months confined to bed and began to write a serialized history of the conflict, which was published by Thomas Nelson in 24 volumes. With each instalment around 50,000 words long, the work was marketed as "a readable narrative" and "an authoritative record for the future". 

Writing at the beginning of the First World War, Buchan found a side project that proved a welcome distraction from the realities of world events. Later he remembered, "While pinned to my bed during the first months of war and compelled to keep my mind off too tragic realities, I gave myself to stories of adventure."  His The Thirty-Nine Steps was serialized in 'Blackwood's Magazine' in the summer of 1915, where it was credited to the pseudonym H. de V. The book version came out in October the same year under the author's own name and sold over 25,000 copies in its first three months. With a plot full of train travel, code-breaking, car crashes and political intrigue, the novel has remained in print ever since. It is considered the seminal work of the "Spy Thriller" genre.

The novel's action takes place very precisely during a few weeks in May and June 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War. And its hero, Scotsman Richard Hannay, is immediately caught up in a troublesome situation that exposes just how vulnerable Britain could be to foreign plots. Throughout the book, Buchan holds Hannay up as an example of an ordinary man who puts his country's interests before his own safety. This patriotic stance, along with the page-turning plot, made the story a hit with soldiers stuck in the trenches of the First World War.

Order HERE

During 1915 he twice visited the Western Front as a war correspondent, observing and reporting on the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Loos.  Somehow, during this period, he found time to write his second espionage novel, Greenmantle. Set during the war in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Loos, Buchan's hero Richard Hannay is drawn into a dangerous intelligence mission to investigate rumors of a German-orchestrated Muslim uprising during World War I. Traveling through enemy territory with trusted companions, Hannay must decode cryptic clues, assume false identities, and navigate a web of spies and conspirators. Their perilous journey leads to Constantinople and beyond, where they race to uncover the mystery of "Greenmantle".   Lesser remembered today than The Thirty-Nine Steps, figures like Graham Greene and Alfred Hitchcock, who made an outstanding film of The Thirty-Nine Steps, considered Greenmantle the superior work. 

In 1916, Buchan received a field commission as a second lieutenant in the British Army's Intelligence Corps and was attached to General Headquarters (GHQ) on the Western Front, drafting official press communiqués and speeches for General Sir Douglas Haig.  It wasn't long, however, before he was pulled out of uniform and appointed Director of Information, with direct responsibility to the Prime Minister for Britain's propaganda effort. After the war, John Buchan became a Member of Parliament and a peer and, in 1935, was sworn in as Governor General of Canada. His service was highly admired before his 1940 death in Montreal.  His literary output continued at a high level throughout the remainder of his life.

Order HERE

While his combination of military and public service during the Great War was remarkable in itself,  his parallel literary output borders on the superhuman. 

• 24 volumes of: Nelson’s History of the War

• 3 novels: The Thirty Nine Steps, Greenmantle and Mr. Steadfast

• ?: Eyewitness reports from the Western Front; communiques; anonymous articles (a long-time practice)

Buchan nearly matched this pace for the remaining 22 years of his life, but that's another story.

Sources:  National Library of Scotland; History Today;  Oxford University Research Archive

When Canada Realized It Needed a Navy

Early Recruiting Poster

We have always been a destroyer navy, a navy that has small ships capable of doing big things anywhere that Canada needs them to go.

Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee CMM MSM CD, the Vice Chief of Canada's Defence Staff, speaking on June 5th, 2026 at the keel-laying ceremony in Halifax for Canada's first River-class destroyer, the future HMCS Fraser:

By James Patton

Why would Admiral Topshee say that? Well, his nation has 151,019 miles of coast line, the most of any nation in the world. It also has 52,455 oceanic islands, forming a myriad of tight and often shallow passages. The tasks of coastal defense and sovereignty protection for Canada are enormous. For centuries, they have relied on the remoteness of the Arctic to control unauthorized access, but that is changing. Measuring over the North Pole, Russia is about 1,000 miles from the closest spot in Nunavut, Canada's northernmost, and newest territory. Canada is a country of large distances. The distance from the same point to Ottawa is over 2,500 miles. To the folks in Nunavut, Moscow is actually the closer capitol. Moreover, in recent years Russia has claimed big chunks of the Arctic seabed and is now running shipping channels through the Arctic Ocean.  

In spite of geographic reality, until 1910 Canada didn’t even have a navy. They relied on the British Royal Navy (RN) (and good relations with the U.S.) for their maritime protection. Eventually around 1900, considerable pressure was brought on the Ottawa government to rein in clandestine American fishing in Canadian waters. Canadians felt that the RN was overlooking this activity, with an eye to preserving harmonious relations with the Americans. As a result, the  Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries established its Fisheries Protection Service and ordered a patrol vessel from a British shipyard, which was commissioned as the CGS (Canadian Government Ship) Canada in 1904. 

One-time Fisheries Patrol Boat Redesignated HMCS Canada, During WWI

While the agitation for fisheries enforcement was building, there was another disturbing revelation: in accordance with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of January 30th, 1902, the British decided that, in the event of war, the maritime defense of the west coast of Canada was to be provided by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Indeed, after war was declared, the IJN formed a North American Task Force (Kenbei Shitai), and the Japanese armoured cruiser Izumo, a British-built ship sporting 8-in. gun batteries (a veteran of the 1904  Battle of Tsushima Strait), duly arrived at Esquimalt, British Columbia (BC) on August 25th, 1914. Before that, however, folks in BC had already taken a step towards protecting themselves, as we shall learn below. 

Before the war, on 4 May 1910,  the Dominion parliament had passed the Naval Service Act, which created the Naval Service of Canada. It also created a naval reserve similar to the British and a naval college. The CGS Canada was retitled and transferred over to be a training ship for the new naval college. The Imperial Dockyards at Halifax and Esquimalt were also given over to the new Naval Service. The Act also provided that, in time of war, the  vessels of the Naval Service would be placed at the disposal of the British Admiralty “for general service in the Royal Navy.” This provision wasn’t popular with the French Canadians, who insisted that Canadian ships could never be used against France. 

The  RN agreed to make available to the Naval Service two obsolescent protected cruisers that had been laid up at Devonport for five years; one had even been decommissioned. Both required substantial repairs and updating. The original plan was to use these ships at Halifax for training, since Canada had no sailors ready to serve on warships. However, fisheries enforcement was immediately added to the Naval Service’s rota. In the Birthday Honours of 1911, on 16 August, The Naval Service, barely a year old, became the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). At the same time the crown also titled the Royal Australian Navy, an amalgamation of colonial  patrol vessels that could trace its origin back to the 1830’s.  

HMCS Rainbow (right) arrives for the first time at the   navy's Pacific base in Esquimalt, British Columbia, on 7 November 1910.

The first ship added to the Canadian Naval Service was the former HMS Rainbow, of the Apollo class, recommissioned on 4 August 1910. Built in 1891, she displaced  3,600 tons and could do 19.75 knots. She was  coal-fired and mounted  two 6-in. and six-4.7 in. guns, plus four torpedo tubes. The 6-in. guns were swapped out for Vickers 3-in. QF’s anti-aircraft and artillery guns in 1911. Altogether, she was slow and lightly armed, with a crew of 275. She cost Canada CD$225,000, paid from unspent funds that had been appropriated to the Department of Marine and Fisheries for law enforcement.  

After a 15,000 nautical mile trip around Cape Horn that took twelve weeks, she arrived at Esquimalt on Vancouver Island on 7 November 1910. Thereafter she had to operate with a skeleton crew, as most of her British sailors didn’t renew their contracts. Her subsequent service on the west coast consisted of ceremonies, training and very occasional fishery enforcement. In February 1911, she seized one American ship for fishing in Canadian waters. After one more fishery patrol, Rainbow had to be laid up due to insufficient crew, and remained so until 1913, when sailors were transferred over from Halifax.

In May 1914 Rainbow  was ordered to Vancouver to intercept a Japanese ship, the  Komagata Maru,  which was carrying prospective immigrants from India. Canada had passed legislation banning Asian immigration altogether, but these persons claimed that the law didn’t apply to them because they were subjects of the king. Nevertheless, they were denied entry, as the British failed to back up their claim, and Rainbow escorted the Komagata Maru out of Canadian waters. 

In August 1914, Rainbow was the largest armed ship that the Allies had in the eastern Pacific, and was ordered to engage two of the German ships then active there, the cruisers SMS Leipzig and SMS Nurnberg. At San Francisco,  Rainbow  actually missed an encounter with  Leipzig by only a day, fortuitous for Rainbow, because she would have been no match for Leipzig. Head to head, the German ship could both outrun or outrange Rainbow. In 1916 and early 1917, on four occasions, Rainbow was used to carry over 48,000 ounces of Russian gold bullion, which was transferred at sea from Japanese ships, and surreptitiously delivered to Vancouver, to be railed to Ottawa for deposit with the Bank of England. After this,  Rainbow was decommissioned and deactivated on 8 May 1917, and her crew was sent to Halifax.

HMS Niobe 

The other RN ship transferred to Canada on 6 September 1910  was the former  HMS Niobe of the Diadem class, launched in 1897. She  displaced 11,000 tons,  and  was capable of 20.5 knots. She was also coal-fired but heavily armed, mounting 16 6-in. and 14 3-in. guns, plus three torpedo tubes. However, she had a range of just 2,000 miles and required a crew of 760.  To acquire the Niobe, Canada paid the Admiralty  £215,000.  

While on a training cruise on the night of 30 July 1911, Niobe ran aground at Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, probably the most well-known reef in the area. The damage was considerable, causing a permanent reduction in her speed, and she was laid up for six months. Nevertheless, she was  returned to service and assigned to a patrol of the Gulf of St. Lawrence led by HMS Lancaster, then  from 11-15 September 1914, she escorted the HMT Canada to Bermuda to deliver a battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment for garrison duty there, relieving a battalion of British regulars that had joined the British 29th Division. On her return journey, Niobe developed mechanical problems which prevented her from leading the first Canadian Expeditionary Force convoy to Europe, which departed  on 3 October 1914. 

Ceremony Aboard the HMCS Rainbow

After the repairs, Niobe was assigned to the RN’s 4th Cruiser Squadron, tasked with rounding up German merchant ships along the Atlantic coast. She chased the German raider SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich into internment at Newport News, Virginia, but her boilers were wearing out, and after her  patrol on 4-17 1915, she was laid up at Halifax, never to be overhauled, and eventually becaming a depot ship. As such, she was extensively damaged by the Halifax harbor explosion on 6 December  1917. A total of fourteen of her complement were killed, seven of whom had voluntarily boarded the S.S. Mont Blanc to attempt to scuttle the burning ship.

Meanwhile, on 3 August 1914,  the fledgling RCN had added two submarines to their fleet. As previously mentioned, in August of 1914 folks in British Columbia felt uneasy about their vulnerability to German raiders. In a Seattle shipyard, there were available two submarines, designed by John Holland’s prestigious Electric Boat Co. of Groton, Connecticut. These had been built for the Chilean Navy, who hadn’t accepted them due to range concerns, and hadn’t paid for them, either.  The shipyard approached the BC Prime Minister, Sir Richard McBride (1870-1917), and he agreed that the province would buy them for CD $575,000 each, which was substantially more than Chile owed.  (Possibly the first example of WW1 war profiteering?) On the evening of  4 August 1914 (the day the UK declared war on Germany), using battery power, the two boats silently slipped out of Seattle, which was a violation of U.S. neutrality law. The next day the U.S.S. Milwaukee was alerted to intercept the subs but they had already managed to get over to Victoria.  British Columbia now had a navy, but only for three days; on 7 August   the Dominion government agreed to accept the boats from BC for the RCN and they were commissioned as HMCS CC-1 and HMCS CC-2. 

HMCS CC-1 Underway

Unfortunately, the new subs proved to have several problems. The most serious was the boats had been built heavier than designed, which made diving tricky. The only solution was to cut back on the fuel and stores that could be carried, which reduced the operating range. Also, the diesel engines tended to overheat. Due to metallurgical fatigue the engine heads would crack after six hours of operation at full speed, so full speed operation was rare. Some of the valves in the buoyancy system were faulty and had to be replaced. Lastly, the subs didn’t come provided with torpedoes. The type specified was the Whitehead Mark IV, which was manufactured at Fiume (today Rijeka, Croatia) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the only Mark IV’s in Canada were deployed on HMCS Niobe.

Due to the range and speed limitations,  the CC subs were ineffective for patrolling the west coast, so it was decided to send them to Halifax. After a lengthy odyssey involving numerous  port stops for fuel, provisions and repairs, plus frequent episodes of towing (even through the Panama Canal), and a maintenance  stopover at Electric Boat’s yard in Connecticut, the boats arrived in Halifax on 17  October 1917. They were there when the harbor blew up, but neither was damaged, and no one was injured. CC-1's engine was never reliable, but CC-2 was successfully used for anti-submarine warfare training on Bras d’Or Lake, an estuary on Cape Breton Island. In August 1918 she was ordered to go to the Mediterranean, but her departure was delayed until it was irrelevant.

To combat the U-boat threat, the RCN had built a ragtag  fleet consisting of 12 Battle class purpose-built long-range trawlers and 59 converted drifters that were fast enough to be sub chasers. There were also 63 drifters that were too slow so were converted to mine-sweepers. Of this fleet, 129 vessels were based on the east coast and only four on the west.  Despite the complete absence of destroyers in the RCN, U-boats did not sink a single ship which was in a convoy  in Canadian waters, a testament both to the effectiveness of shifting Halifax convoys to Montréal and to the RCN’s ability to get the most out its small boats. The three large ships that were sunk in Canadian waters were all attacked while proceeding independently. The only other U-boat victims in Canadian waters were 15  fishing schooners and trawlers sunk by U-156 and U-117 between 20 and 30 August  1918. 

 Auxiliary Patrol Trawler TR-1

In spite of their remarkable achievements, the RCN was criticized for the poor harbor management that many concluded had led to the Halifax Explosion. There was also widespread furor over the ineffective response to the audacious exploits of U-156, which captured the trawler Triumph and turned her into a raider, sinking six other fishing trawlers. There was resentment in certain quarters caused by the involuntary conversion of fishing vessels and sensational public outcry over the HMCS Hochelaga incident, where this converted yacht, escorting a four-ship coastal convoy, refused to go to the defense of trawlers being attacked by U-156. The commander of Hochelaga  was relieved, court-martialed and discharged, even though he was following standing orders to never abandon the convoy.  

A  total of 8,826 Canadian personnel served in the RCN during the war: 388 RCN officers and 1,080 RCN ratings, and 745 Royal Navy Canadian Volunteer Reserve  (RNCVR) officers and 6,613 RNCVR ratings. Another 90 RN and Royal Navy Reserve officers and 583 ratings served with the RCN for a grand total of 9,499 sailors. Of these totals, 190 men in RCN service were killed in action, died of wounds, or died of disease or accident. Twenty-one  RCN personnel were killed in the Halifax Explosion. 

Sailors of the Royal Canadian Navy with a Gift for the Kaiser

Post-war, the Rainbow, Niobe, CC-1 and CC-2 were all scrapped. The Battle class trawlers were repurposed for fisheries enforcement, the other small boats returned to their owners. In 1920 the RCN received  a new fleet: a cruiser, three destroyers and two H-class submarines were transferred from the RN. Due to budget cutbacks, all of these were retired from RCN service by 1927. Beginning in 1939, the RCN had to be reconstituted as a fighting force, which would—at its World War II peak—number 1,140 vessels and 104,722 serving men and women. 

Sources include: https://www.canada.ca/en/navy/services/history/naval-service-1910-2010/first-ww.html ; War Museum Canada Archives: rcnhistory.org

    

The Mistaken Assumption Behind the "Blank Check"

The July Crisis

Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans!

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, 1888

By Editor Mike Hanlon

On 5 July 1914, Alexander Hoyos, a leading hawk in the Austrian Foreign Ministry, and Count Ladislaus von Szögyény (1841-1916), the Habsburg ambassador to Berlin, met Wilhelm II, German Emperor and Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the German chancellor. The following morning, Bethmann Hollweg gave Szögyény this assurance the following morning:  

Concerning Austria’s relations with Serbia the German government believes that Vienna has to judge what has to be done to clarify this relationship; in this undertaking it can count safely on Germany’s support of the monarchy as ally and friend – whatever its decision.

This is the infamous "Blank Check" that encouraged Austria-Hungary to proceed with the punitive measures it was contemplating against Serbia but had feared the intervention of Russia, Serbia's fellow-Slavic protector.  The Dual Empire did indeed subsequently feel empowered to proceed with their plans.  Russian diplomats and intelligence operatives, meanwhile, picked up signs that Vienna was planning an aggressive move with this backing from Berlin. Petrograd had major stakes in such a game, viewing the Balkans as a vital sphere of influence and believed any losses there would signal weakness to its French and British allies.

Bismarck by von Lenbach
Understood Russia and the Balkans Better Than His Successors

This failure to anticipate Russia's response to subsequent Austro-Hungarian actions (chart above) led to Russia mobilizing and her allies eventually joining the war, thus turning a local European conflict into a Pan-European war, that quickly became a world-wide war.  The "Complete Catastrophe" in other words resulted from the mistaken assumption that Russia would stand-by and let the two Germanic empires have their way with a friendly Slavic state.  How could such a monumental error in judgment come about?  Below are some of the explanatory theories that historians have advanced of the years.

Amnesia

Those gentlemen who met in Berlin the first week of July 1914 had plenty of warning about being very  careful in the Balkans and with the Russian Bear, in particular, from Germany's greatest statesman Otto von Bismarck.  The former chancellor had based his mostly successful approach to European diplomacy on "making a good treaty with Russia", pronouncing for all to hear  that all the Balkans were “not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier” and that if a major war came to Europe it would start because of "some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."  This outbreak of amnesia apparently afflicted all the  top German decision-makers, who largely concurred on offering unconditional support to Austria-Hungary during the July Crisis of 1914.  One minor exception might be the German Ambassador in Vienna, Heinrich von Tschirschky, who is considered the most cautious of Germany's senior officials, although he still facilitated the messaging and conveyed that Berlin expected a firm response. 

Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
1916 Commemorative Medal

The Kaiser's Hand  

Kaiser Wilhelm II was inclined to believe that Russia would not intervene by his own predispositions, reinforced by his military and diplomatic circles (such as reports from Count Friedrich Pourtalès, the German ambassador to Russia). He also seems to have convinced himself that  his cousin (Dear Nicky)  Tsar Nicholas II—as a fellow conservative absolute monarch—would never align himself with or defend a nation of "regicides" (i.e. the Serbs responsible for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand).

Misreading the Opposition

The consensus ascendent among Berlin's insiders was a belief (or hope) that giving Austria-Hungary unconditional backing would scare Russia into staying neutral, allowing Austria-Hungary to crush Serbia quickly in a localized conflict without triggering a broader European war.  On the diplomatic / ideological front, however, Russia had clearly and overtly used Pan-Slavism to justify aggressive geopolitical moves and territorial ambitions directed against the Ottoman Empire. Abandoning Slavic Serbia would be inconsistent with that policy and undermine it. The ability to reflect realistically on Russia's interests appears lacking in reports on the discussions.

Gamesmanship

German planners believed Russia's military was still unrecovered and unready from the disastrous Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and had not yet fully implemented army reforms. They assumed Russia would be too weak to fight and would back down if faced with the combined might of Germany and Austria-Hungary.  Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg viewed an Austria-Hungary against Serbia war in July 1914 as a "calculated risk" to break up the Triple Entente or secure a localized diplomatic victory for the Central Powers. This latter point came from treating the crisis as an opportunity.

Combining All of the Above: There was An Epidemic of Wishful Thinking (My Opinion for What It's Worth)

Caesar by Rubens

Eschewed Wishful Thinking

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also. 

Julius Caesar, Commentaries

How did the leadership of an influential world power make the tragically dangerous assumption that a competing power would stay passive when a major conflict—in which it had a big stake—unfolded on its doorstep?  Putting this article together reminded me a bit of what I've read about the attack on Pearl Harbor and how it surprised all of America's civilian and military leadership when so much information was available to them. (We've lost track of the Japanese carriers!  They couldn't be headed for Honolulu, could they? Nah.)  In both cases it the most senior decision makers acted like some infectious agent carrying the wishful thinking pathogen was in the air.

History is filled with all sorts of episodes of groups of people collectively acting out in  irrational or destructive ways: the Dutch Tulip Craze, the Rwandan Genocide, and my favorite, The Strasbourg Dancing Plague of 1518, are examples.  The first of these examples is something of a definitive clinical case of  an epidemic of wishful thinking.  According to a study by University of Amsterdam (where they well-remember the tulips),  wishful thinking becomes an epidemic when high stress, uncertainty, and emotional stakes combine with social reinforcement and information overload, causing cognitive biases to spread across groups.  

What about in Berlin in 1914?  Were German statesmen captured by this phenomena? The pre-conditions described above certainly match the pressure chamber that Germany's statesmen found themselves in the midst of the July Crisis.  The assembled collectively wished away the greatest danger to their nation in making their decision.  The world war that followed, in my view, seems to have been caused by an epidemic of wishful thinking at a decisive moment.

Sources: "TWE Remembers: Austria-Hungary Issues an Ultimatum to Serbia ",   The Council of Foreign Relation; "The illusion of limited war: chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's calculated risk, July 1914 ", Leibniz-Institut Repository; "Making the future too bright: how wishful thinking can point us in the wrong direction," Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2024.

Weapons of War: Forging the Giant Cannons (Video)

Thanks to our friend and long-time contributor Robin Clayton of Walnut, Mississippi, for discovering this video

Liberating the Somme: The 1918 Battle of Chuignes

The slaughter of the enemy in the tangled valleys was considerable, for our Infantry are always vigorous bayonet fighters. They received much assistance from the tanks in disposing of the numerous machine gun detachments which held their ground to the last. — Monash

The Amiens Gun Captured During the Battle

Chuignes is the name of a rural village (population 152) and commune in the Somme department of the Hauts-de-France region in northern France about 20 miles east of Amiens. Despite its size, today Chuignes has its own tiny WWI museum because on 23 August 1918, the Australian Corps of the British Army won a strategic victory there that unhinged the primary German defensive line forward of the Somme River, forcing a broad German retreat and permanently safeguarding the critical logistics hub of Amiens. The next stops for the Allied forces were the Somme battlefield and the Hindenburg Line.

Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, Commander of the Australian Corps at the battle at Chuignes later wrote about the successes of that day: 

On 23 August, the Australian Corps—now composed of the five Australian divisions plus the 32nd British  Division—stood ten miles from the “line of the Somme,” marked by the great bend of the river to the south at Péronne. However, in between there was but one place in the river valley where German forces could concentrate and shelter sufficient artillery to make a stand against the advancing British Fourth Army.

The great attack by the First Division supported by the 32nd Division, which has come to be known as the Battle of Chuignes, was launched at dawn on August 23rd and was an unqualified success. 

The main valley of the Somme in this region is flanked by a number of tributary valleys, which run generally in a north and south direction, extending back from the river four or five miles. They are broad, with heavily wooded sides, and harbour a number of villages, such as Proyart, Chuignolles, Herleville, and Chuignes, which cluster on their slopes.

One such valley, larger and longer than any of those which, in our previous advances, we had yet crossed, lay before our front line of that morning, and square across our path. It ran from Herleville, northwards, past Chuignes, to join the Somme in the Bray bend. It was the most easterly of all the tributary valleys to which I have referred, and it was also the last piece of habitable country before the devastated area of 1916 was reached, just a mile to the east of it.

The valley afforded excellent cover for the enemy's guns, and the expectation was that some of them would be overrun by our attack. It was also ideal country for machine-gun defense, for the numerous woods, hedges, and copses afforded excellent cover, and had in all probability been amply fortified with barbed wire. It was a formidable proposition to attack such a position on such a frontage with only two Brigades.

The 2nd Brigade (Heane) attacked on the right, the 1st Brigade (Mackay) on the left, and the first phase was completed to time-table, with the green objective line, located on the east side of the long valley, in our possession. The only temporary hitch in the advance along the whole front was at Robert Wood, where the enemy held out and had to be completely enveloped from both flanks before surrendering.

Then came the second phase, and no difficulty was experienced in advancing our line 1,000 yards east of the green line, nor in establishing there a firm line of outposts for the night.

The third phase presented a great deal more difficulty than I had anticipated. It was to have been undertaken by the 3rd Brigade (Bennett) pushing without delay through the 1st Brigade, and advancing in open warfare formation north-easterly towards Cappy, for the seizure of Hill 90, overlooking that village and on the south-west of it, and terminating at its northern extremity in the high bluff of Froissy Beacon.

There was, however, some unexplained delay in the initiation of this advance, and it was not until about 2 o'clock that the 3rd Brigade moved forward to the assault of the long slope of the Chuignes Valley, which still lay before them in this part of the field. The enemy, under the impression that our attack had spent itself, had occupied the plateau in great strength, and at first little progress could be made.

 

Disabled Mark V During the Fighting

Mobile artillery was, however, promptly pushed up, and this proved of great assistance to the infantry. Garenne Wood, on the top of the plateau, into which large numbers of the enemy had withdrawn, proved a difficult obstacle, and incapable of capture by frontal attack. It, too, was conquered by enveloping tactics,  and with its fall the resistance of the enemy rapidly subsided, and the 3rd Brigade had the satisfaction of hunting the fugitives clean off the plateau into the Cappy Valley.

The whole of this phase of the battle was an especially fine piece of work on the part of the Regimental Officers. It was open warfare of the most complete character, and the victory was won by excellent battle control on the part of the Battalion Commanders, by splendid co-operation between the four Battalions of the Brigade, and by intelligent and gallant leadership on the part of the Company and Platoon Commanders. 

Beset as I had been by many anxieties during the early afternoon as to how the Third Brigade would fare in the difficult task which had been given it, rendered more difficult by the delay of which I have spoken, I had the satisfaction that night of contemplating a victory far greater than I had calculated upon.

A Junction of the River Somme (L) and the Somme Canal (R)
Captured During the Fighting

 

For the 32nd Division had successfully captured Herleville, and the First Division had seized the whole country for a depth of 1½ miles up to a line extending from Herleville to the western edge of Cappy. The whole Chuignes Valley was ours. By its capture, the enemy had been despoiled of all habitable areas and had been relegated to a waste of broken and ruined country between us and the line of the Somme.

One notable tactical achievement of the fighting was the capture of the famous "Amiens gun." Troops from the Australian 3rd Battalion secured a massive, 500-plus ton German 15-inch naval/railway gun hidden in Arcy Wood. Known affectionately as the "Amiens Gun" (or Chuignes Big Bertha), this weapon had been terrorizing the vital Allied logistics hub of Amiens from nearly 30 kilometers away.

We took that day 21 guns and over 3,100 prisoners from ten different regiments. It was a smashing blow and far exceeded in its results any previous record in my  experience, having regard to the number of troops engaged. Its immediate result, the same night, was the capture of Bray by the Third Division, north of the river, thus completing the work of that Division which the failure of the 47th Division on their left the day before had compelled them to leave unfinished. The 40th Battalion took 200 prisoners, with trifling loss to themselves.

A more remote result, which made itself apparent in the next few days, was that it compelled the enemy to abandon all hope of retaining a hold of any country west of the line of the Somme; it impelled him at last to an evacuation of the great bend of the river, a process which he began in a very few days.

 

German Prisoners from the Battle Being Marched to the Rear

ANZAC Portal, a site maintained by the Australian Government and the Monash Centre at Fouilly on the Somme battlefield, point out some additional important points about the battle:

Australians at the Battle of Chuignes in the final Hundred Days used a more sophisticated creeping barrage. Artillery delivered a mix of high explosive, shrapnel and smoke shells to maximise protection for the infantry. The Allies' barrage included up to 10% smoke shells to screen their advancing troops from the enemy.

The seasoned diggers of the 1st Division and the newer Mark V tanks each with its own infantry scout were protected by this barrage. Carrier tanks were also employed to ensure timely supply of the advancing troops. Tanks had been much improved since their failure at Bullecourt where they had lost the confidence of the infantry.

Outstanding acts of bravery were undertaken during the course of the battle by the Australian and British troops, with two Australians being awarded the Victoria Cross. Lieutenant Lawrence McCarthy an orphan from Perth, Western Australia displayed outstanding leadership and personal bravery which resulted in the killing of 20 German soldiers, the capture of over 40 prisoners and the seizure of 500 yards of German frontline. Charles Bean, the official Australian war correspondent believed McCarthy’s actions in winning his Victoria Cross to be one of the most outstanding feats of individual fighting in the history of the A.I.F.. Bean also believed McCarthy’s effort to be equal to that of Gallipoli V.C. winner Lieutenant Jacka who went on to win Military Cross at Pozières. Lieutenant William Joynt also won a Victoria Cross for his outstanding bravery during the battle for Chuignes. 

Source: The Australian Victories in France in 1918; Over the Top, August 2018; ANZAC Portal; The Sir John Monash Centre