Beau Geste: Clemenceau, Wilson and the Fourteen Points

 

The Victors' Table at Versailles

By Robert Hanks, Ph.D., University of Toronto

Presented at the 2009 Joint WFA-USA and Great War Society Seminar

Recently, I responded to an inquiry about Clemenceau's biting comment on Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, "Even the good Lord contented Himself with only ten commandments, and we should not try to improve upon them."

Georges Clemenceau was one of the most famous and biting wits of his age. His observations, jokes, sallies, and jests impressed even the most hardened generals and politicians. This ability to impress senior leaders accounts for a great deal of his charisma. His impact on his peers in the council chambers was so great that many of his aphorisms have subsequently become embedded in the historical literature, yet have been repeated over and over again without reference to their original context. As a result, historians have often reduced Clemenceau to a few stock phrases or jokes, and have lost sight of his complex character and policies. The quotation in question is a typical case in point. It was attributed to Clemenceau by many participants at the Paris Peace Conference (Colonel House, etc...), and is generally interpreted as proof that Clemenceau was a cynical old school diplomat who was opposed to Wilsonianism.

In fact, the phrase in question was first attributed to him well before the Paris Peace Conference began. Set in fuller context, it sheds light on his complex relationship with both the United States and Woodrow Wilson. Inter-allied tensions did not begin in January 1919, as many books assume, but rather had their roots in Clemenceau's personal relationship with the United States, and in the diplomatic and strategic quarrels of the First World War.

Clemenceau considered himself to be a practical idealist. He had considerable respect for the USA. As a young student during the Second Empire, he was influenced by the principles of the American Revolution, which, of course, he believed had originated in the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He admired Abraham Lincoln, supported the Union during the American Civil War and actually lived in the United States for most of the period between 1865-69.

In terms of temperament, Clemenceau greatly admired the action-oriented, rugged individualism of Theodore Roosevelt. Conversely, he had little respect for Woodrow Wilson's brand of academic idealism. In particular, he was greatly irked by Wilson's assumption that Wilsonianism had a monopoly of international morality. In Clemenceau's view, France had been living under the shadow of German militarism since 1871. There was thus no question in his mind that France was fighting a just defensive war in 1914. In the period prior to the American entry into the war, he criticized Wilson's mediation attempts on the grounds that France and Germany were not equally culpable. 

Clemenceau Viewing Dead Germans at Château-Thierry with American Doughboys

Clemenceau's thinking about the United States and Wilson was partly revealed by a column he wrote after the American entry into the war in his newspaper, L'Homme Enchaine, which was reprinted in the New York Times on April 5, 1917. In this Clemenceau wrote that the American intervention in European affairs was "one of the greatest revolutions in history," comparable in importance to the Russian Revolution in March.  

He presciently predicted that the American army would have a decisive impact on the war in spite of the U-boats. He made amends to his previous criticisms of Wilson by praising the latter's idealism, and expressed the hope that mankind would evolve peacefully toward a more "equitable organization of labor." However, he added two important caveats. First, he was not convinced that mankind was "heading straight toward the society of nations." Second, he reminded his audiences that great principles for which America and Wilson now stood had originated in Europe. 

Clemenceau paid careful attention to the White House after taking power in France in November 1917. When the Fourteen Points were proclaimed in January 1918, he accorded them the highest importance. According to Bertrand Favreau, when Clemenceau's assistant, Georges Mandel, received news of the Fourteen Points at 3:00 in the morning, he immediately rushed to wake the Tiger. During the twenty months that Clemenceau's government held power, this was apparently one of the three occasions on which Mandel deemed it necessary to wake Clemenceau in the middle of the night. 

Clemenceau's reaction to the Fourteen points was one of official solidarity and private frustration. Publicly, he adopted a stance that reflected his belief that the Fourteen Points had their roots in the French Enlightenment. As David Stevenson has written, he authorized his foreign minister, Stephen Pichon, to tell the Chamber of Deputies on 11 January 1918 that Allied war aims were in accord in substance if not in form. To show support for Wilson, Pichon added that France claimed only the frontiers of 1870. Privately, however, Clemenceau was less flattering. In a conversation with President Poincaré on 13 January, he was as scathing toward Italian territorial pretensions, which were based on old school diplomacy, as he was on Wilson's "intemperance." In particular, he was irritated by Wilson's use of the term "Associated Power" to distinguish the United States from the Allies and by Wilson's propensity to reserve full independence for himself while denying similar independence to the Allies.

Clemenceau aired these grievances to the Supreme War Council in  March 1918. In the words of the British recording secretary, Colonel Hankey: "Clemenceau said 'President Wilson is listening to what we say, but doesn't tell us what he thinks – a very favorable position for him.' He said a good many other very shrewd things about President Wilson's claim to be a co-belligerent but not an ally, and to run and [sic] independent policy all over the world, while protesting if the allies made any independent announcement. I duly recorded his rather witty sallies."

Clemenceau and Wilson, Side by Side

The very soul of bureaucracy—Hankey's sense of humor was somewhat lacking—he either did not record Clemenceau's jokes, or when he did, he failed to capture the essence of their wit. It is a bit of a mystery what the Clemenceau witticisms were, although according to Frances Stevenson, he objected vociferously to the presence of a junior American diplomat, Arthur Frazier, at the deliberations of the SWC by furiously exclaiming: "Taking notes for President Wilson! No doubt the Kaiser would also like to send a shorthand writer to these meetings!"

As far my researches indicate, the first report on Clemenceau's joke about Wilson having four points more than God surfaced in October 1918. After six terrible months of fighting in 1918, Britain and France were counting on the AEF to relieve much of the burden they were carrying. Their expectations were too high, and they were consequently bitterly disappointed by General Pershing's failure to achieve a dramatic success in the Argonne offensive in September-October 1918. Both Lloyd George and Clemenceau were bitterly critical of Pershing at this point. Their pique at the USA was worsened by Wilson's attempts to mediate an armistice between the Allies and Bulgaria. In Clemenceau's view, Wilson had no right to intervene in this affair because he had not declared war on Bulgaria.

Furthermore, it was his position that armistices should be negotiated only by the local military commander-in-chief, who in this case, was the French general, Franchet D'Esperey. Clemenceau won this argument against Wilson, thus setting an important precedent in inter-Allied circles for Marshal Foch's armistice negotiations with the Germans.

Reports of the Tiger's complaints about Wilson soon crossed the channel. The British political insider Lord Esher thus recorded in his diary on October 14, 1918 that "Clemenceau said: 'God was satisfied with Ten Commandments. Wilson gives us fourteen.' " A slightly different version of this story made the rounds of London's clubland a fortnight later. On 1 November 1918, the Manchester Guardian reported that when a draft of Wilson's Fourteen Points was presented to Clemenceau, he was reputed to have said: "Quatorze points, mais cela est un peu fort. Le bon Dieu n'en avait que dix." (trans: "Fourteen points: that's a bit much. The good Lord had only ten.")

This short piece cannot do justice to all the vicissitudes of Franco-American relations during the First World War and the ensuing Paris Peace Conference, but hopefully it has clarified the provenance of a famous phrase. From this, a few larger conclusions may be drawn. Clemenceau had sympathy for the idealism behind the Fourteen Points, for in his opinion, American ideals were based upon the universal ideals of the Enlightenment. However, he was frustrated by Wilson's interpretation and application of these principles, particularly when they threatened French prestige and interests. He expressed these frustrations through various jests and insults at numerous points during the course of crisis-filled 1918. These tensions, and the aphorisms which they produced, later had a great impact on the conduct and character of the Paris Peace Conference.

Sources and Thanks: This piece is based on my dissertation: Culture Versus Diplomacy: Georges Clemenceau and Anglo-American  Relations During the First World War,  University of Toronto, 2002. 

Desperate Fighting: One Destroyer's Night Actions at Jutland

HMS Spitfire in 1915

As darkness fell, Grand Fleet Commander of the Grand Fleet Admiral John Jellicoe headed south to keep himself between the Germans and their home bases. He put his light craft in the rear of the battle squadrons. A desperate Scheer eventually turned for home and, as a later study of the battle described it, what was a converging ‘v’  turned into an ‘x’ as the Germans crossed astern of the British – and then into an upside down ‘v’ as the High Sea Fleet won clear. [But] they did not go unopposed.

A series of ferocious encounters ensued, which resulted in another British armoured cruiser blowing up, together with an old German battleship. When there was no other sensor but the human eye, the result was a form of seaborne hand to hand combat. The Royal Navy's destroyer HMS Spitfire was in the middle of the action and the near-blind conditions.

The Doomed HMS Black Prince

Stoker Henry Albert Wishart of the Spitfire’s crew later described a confused encounter with a burning cruiser, believed to be HMS Black Prince, during the night : 

Suddenly there was a cry from nearly a dozen people at once, ‘Look out!’  I looked up, and saw a few hundred yards away, on our starboard quarter, what appeared to be a battle cruiser on fire, steering straight for our stern….. To our intense relief she missed our stern by a few feet, but so close was she to us that it seemed that we were actually under her guns, which were trained out on her starboard beam.  She tore past us with a roar, rather like a motor roaring uphill on low gear, and the very crackling and heat of the flames could be heard and felt.  She was a mass of fire from fore-mast to main-mast, on deck and between decks… flames were issuing out of her from every corner…. Soon afterwards, about midnight, there came an explosion from the direction in which she had disappeared.

SMS Nassau

 

In a subsequent encounter, the Spitfire collided with the German first ever Dreadnought, SMS Nassau.  Nassau had contributed to the gunfire which eventually resulted in the sinking of the Black Prince. In the collision Spitfire’s superstructure was flattened by the blast when the battleship fired her 11-inch guns overhead. There were nearly seven metres of Nassau’s side plate left on her upper deck when the destroyer broke free. Spitfire made it home and served out the war after repairs as did Nassau.

Click Image to Enlarge

Survivor: HMS Spitfire After the Battle

Sources:  Stories of the Fallen; "Firepower: Lessons from the Great War Seminar Series", presented by Rear Admiral James Goldrick, Royal Australian Navy 

Siberian Briar Patch, Part III: Time for AEF Siberia to Depart

 

Back in Vladivostok

Washington was not deterred by news of these clashes. Indeed, during this time Wilson clearly stated whom the "Amerikanskije soldaty" were fighting for. Five days after the "Romanovka Massacre," Secretary of State Robert Lansing ordered the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Roland Morris, to travel to Kolchak's (provisional) capital, Omsk. His instructions were, first, to meet with Kolchak's Supreme Council, though "not involving any present recognition of Kolchak, leaves us free to take a sympathetic interest in Kolchak's organization and activities," and second, "to impress upon the Japanese Government our great interest in the Siberian situation and our intention to adopt a definite policy that will include the 'Open Door' to a Russia free from Japanese domination." When Morris finally reached Omsk he described the situation as "extremely critical." On the same date, Wilson pronounced to the Senate the necessity and reason for an expeditionary force in Siberia, which was maintaining order on the Siberian railways on which "the forces of Admiral Kolchak are entirely dependent."

By this time, however, the end of the White effort in Siberia was already in sight. Kolchak's army was demoralized. The Czech Legion was soon to quit the fight and begin to plan (once again) their exit from Russia, and the Trans-Siberian became increasingly congested with refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. To Morris, for the U.S. to properly assist Admiral Kolchak it would have to extend massive monetary and military aid to his flagging forces and reinforce the AEF by "at least 40,000 troops." This Wilson simply could not afford to do, even if those measures would ensure a Kolchak victory. Wilson's pragmatic wait-and-see policy allowed him (and his expeditionary force) to exit Siberia when all hope of successful counterrevolution had vanished. With the fall of Omsk in November, this time had clearly arrived and plans for a U.S. withdrawal were laid.

The U.S. Army Transport Thomas Returned Many of the American Troops to the Philippines

Rather than idealistic or misguided, Wilson's Siberian policy, as executed by General Graves, allowed the president to cautiously play the situation with a minimum political and military cost. Graves resisted British demands for wider action and Japanese calls for assistance while the latter was suffering heavy losses against Bolshevik forces. The argument put forward that Wilson decided to intervene under pressure to be a good ally is countered by the fact that U.S. actions in Siberia served to antagonize all parties involved, Russian and Allied. By the winter of 1919–1920 all American forces were pulled back to Vladivostok and departing Siberia.

During the Civil War, however, that force served its purpose. By limiting its activities in Siberia it avoided being engulfed in the civil strife while supporting counterrevolution. Arms and supplies could continue to be shipped inland, White and Allied forces could continue to control the territory (at least around the railroad), and the Japanese could be observed and left to their own costly counterinsurgency campaign. President Wilson, in the meantime, could continue to proclaim the honorable intentions of U.S. intervention into Russian internal affairs while campaigning in Congress for a League of Nations based on self-determination.

It Was Nothing Like This

Postscript:

In 1959 Russian and Siberian expert and author of a study of America's decision to intervene in Russia in 1918 George Kennan had this to say about the venture:

Viewed in their entirety, the American expeditions to North Russia and Siberia appear today as pathetic and ill-conceived ventures, to which Woodrow Wilson — poorly informed, harried with wartime burdens, and torn between his own instincts and his feeling of obligation to his Allies - was brought against his own better judgment. He did his best at all times to keep the American action from assuming the form of an interference in Russian internal affairs, and there is no suggestion more preposterous than that he was animated in these decisions by hostility toward the Russian people or by a desire to overthrow the Soviet regime with American forces. In both cases, his original decision was closely linked with America’s wartime concerns. Had there been no great European war in progress, neither expedition would ever have been dispatched.

That the expeditions were regrettable — that it would have been better, from the standpoint of American interests, had they never been sent — seems hardly open to doubt. That they reflected imperialistic motives and constituted a serious injury to the Russian people is a figment of the imagination of Soviet propagandists, useful to their political purpose but not to the development of historical truth.

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD; "American Troops in Russia: The True Record" by George F. Kennan, The Atlantic, January 1959.

Siberian Briar Patch, Part II: AEF Siberia in Action

 

U.S. Commander William Graves and Staff with
Russian White Commander Grigoriy Semënov

The Military Mission

The military intervention into Siberia can be divided into three stages. These divisions are based more on official clarifications of duties, rather than any changes in military policy. A continuity, a consistency is present throughout the entire period of U.S. intervention, primarily to facilitate counterrevolution. The first stage is the period between the landing of U.S. troops and the acceptance by Washington of the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (IARA) on 9 February 1919. The IARA imposed military control on the Siberian railways by clearly defining the respective responsibilities of the intervening forces on various sectors of the railway. For the Americans, this would confirm duties already assumed and create new ones.

Although obvious in whose interest the agreement worked, it was not until July that the purpose of the AEF was officially stated. During the summer of 1919, it was openly admitted that U.S. troops were in Siberia to maintain the supply line of the white leader, Admiral Kolchak. To the troops north of Vladivostok the latter was by that time an irrelevant technicality.

Japanese Troops Advancing in Force Against Red Troops

American troops had arrived at Vladivostok to much cheer, mostly furnished by themselves and the crew and band of the USS Brooklyn that had been stationed in the waters around Vladivostok since March. The Japanese commander, General Kikuzo Otani, greeted the Americans with more seriousness and urgency. By letter he advised Colonel Henry Styre, in temporary command whilst Graves was in transit, that Vladivostok was in peril of imminent invasion. The Americans were needed for the city's defense.

Unwilling to remain inactive and unable to verify Otani's story, Styre consented to join in what was later to be known as the Ussuri Campaign. The several companies sent to help "defend" the city caught up with the Japanese after six days hard marching and served as rear flank to the Japanese and Czech forces who were pursuing the Bolsheviki northwards up the Trans-Siberian. The campaign culminated at Khabarosk, 475 miles from Vladivostok, where the Stars and Stripes and the Rising Sun were raised together in a significant show of unity.

U.S. Major Samuel Johnson Commanding the
International Police Force of Vladivostok

Graves's first real examination of his troops came in October during a tour north of Vladivostok. He ordered back to Khabarovsk any troops he found west of the city that had continued to follow the Japanese in their pursuit of the Red Guard. Graves could "see no reason for keeping troops at any of these stations," although a number of troops were kept at important locations between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. U.S. forces elsewhere got off to a less auspicious beginning, but equally partisan in the widening civil war. The majority of the 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments (dispatched from Manila) marched east of Vladivostok to establish a tent camp at Gornastaya Valley. The International Police Force was also created at this time under the command of a Russian-born American officer, Major Samuel Ignatiev Johnson.

An additional 250 troops were sent to the Soucha coalmines, located 75 miles northeast of the city. The mines consisted of 12 shafts and served as the fuel supply for the entire Primorsk province and for the operation of eastern Siberian railroads. The Suchan mines were the fuel for intervention and counterrevolution. The Allies set about immediately to secure the continued production of its coal. One of the first acts of the Allied leaders was to reinstate the previous mine manager, recently run out of the area by mine workers. To Graves, the mines proved to be the "stormy petrel" of his entire Siberian adventure. Most American causalities would be suffered protecting the spur lines linking the mines with the Trans-Siberian.

Guarding the Siberian Railroads

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Railway Agreement of February formalized some of these winter arrangements and added others. Although finalized in February, it took an additional two months to sort out which Allied force would protect each specific sector. (See map above.) Some 550 U.S. troops became responsible for the line running immediately out of Vladivostok to the town of Nikolsk-Ussuri, 68 miles north. Nikolsk-Ussuri, a town of 52,000 inhabitants, served as the juncture of the Ussuri line continuing to Khabarovsk, and the Chinese Eastern Railroad which crossed Manchuria, later to reenter Siberia. At Spasskoe, continuing north, 1,700 troops were responsible for the length of line leading to the town of Ussuri and the 40-foot long bridge crossing the river Ussuri 217 miles from Vladivostok. Another 1,900 troops were assigned to guard a branch line from Ulgonaya to the coal mines at Suchan. Two thousand men were also stationed 1,700 miles west to maintain the stretch of line between Verkhe-Udinsk and Mysovaya, where the Trans-Siberian reached the network of 38 tunnels linking eastern and western Siberia.

U.S. Railroad Guard Detail

With the railway agreement practicably enacted, U.S. troops were immediately confronted by the dilemma of professed "non-interference" while participating in counterrevolution. Graves continued to maintain his "neutrality" regardless, which in essence was to keep his expeditionary force as disentangled from the mire of civil war as long as possible. In a proclamation given to his troops to distribute in their sectors he outlined that:

The sole object and purpose of the armed forces of the United States of America. . . is to protect the railroad and railway property and ensure the operation of passenger and freight trains through such sector without obstruction or interruption.

The proclamation initially left the partisan guerrillas wondering just who the "Amerikanskiy soldat" was. They soon made up their minds. As such order on the railroad only benefited one side, the U.S. soldiers soon became justifiable targets of the partisans. Just as it allowed supplies to roll to counterrevolution forces in western Siberia, Allied control of the railways made White control of the east possible. White representatives in eastern Siberia used order on the railroad to either starve or attack "Bolshevist" areas. "We are making this condition possible," Graves wired Washington, "by our presence here."

Hospital Car on American Train

Even before U.S. sectors were chosen, U.S. troops north of Vladivostok were preparing for "anticipated...guerrilla warfare or general revolution with the recession of winter" due to the "unsettled political and economic conditions in eastern Siberia." As early as 14 March, partisans fired upon trains and "information was received that the partisans were recruiting for a vigorous spring drive against the Kolchak government." By late spring, U.S. forces finally settled in their allotted sectors, became swept up in that vigorous drive. Throughout March and April, attacks on rail freight, tack, and bridges increased. In May, Graves decided that to properly maintain "order" on the railways, U.S. troops would have to follow the attacking partisans into the surrounding countryside. The first active campaign began on 21 May in the vicinity of Maihe in the Ulgonaya-Suchan sector. Throughout the summer of 1919, the history of the AEF in eastern Siberia is one of skirmishes, attacks, and forays into the surrounding hills and valleys. On numerous occasions American combat patrols fought in conjunction with White Russian and Japanese forces. Over 200 U.S. soldiers were to fall in this partisan war. Twenty-five died on the morning of 25 June near the village of Romanovka during a dawn raid on their encampment.

Tomorrow: Siberian Briar Patch, Part III:  Time for AEF Siberia to Depart

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD

Siberian Briar Patch, Part I: President Wilson Sends the Army

August 1918: AEF Siberia Arrives in Vladivostok

After long consideration President Wilson decided that it was necessary to deploy American troops to Siberia [and also Murmansk and Archangel] in the midst of the Russian Civil War. His explanation for doing so are buried in an aide-mémoire (a diplomatic summary) of 17 July 1918 conveyed by the Secretary of State to the Allied ambassadors. The document (found HERE) covers all the fronts of the war.  Regarding any prospect for sending American forces, it makes a very good case for not doing so:

It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United States, arrived at after repeated and very searching reconsiderations of the whole situation in Russia, that military intervention there would add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it, injure her rather than help her, and that it would be of no advantage in the prosecution of our main design, to win the war against Germany. It cannot, therefore, take part in such intervention or sanction it in principle.

Yet the same paragraph also contained this rationale for sending armed forces to Russia.

Military action is admissible in Russia, as the Government of the United States sees the circumstances, only to help the Czecho-Slovaks consolidate their forces and get into successful cooperation with their Slavic kinsmen and to steady any efforts at self government or self defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. Whether from Vladivostok or from Murmansk and Archangel, the only legitimate object for which American or allied troops can be employed, it submits, is to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense. For helping the Czecho-Slovaks there is immediate necessity and sufficient justification.

Armored Train of the Czech Legion

Such a vague example of the president's rhetorical flair was to become the actual orders presented to the man chosen to command the expeditionary force, Major General William Graves. "Watch your step," Secretary of War Newton Baker warned as he handed Graves the pale brown envelope containing the memoir. "You will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite".

By the time of his arrival in Siberia the general felt he could decipher his instructions fairly well. According to the memoir the AEF was not to become embroiled in the civil war; hence the "non-interference" in Russian internal affairs outlined in the document. Implicit in his orders was aid to the Czechs, which meant, first, maintaining order in Vladivostok. This was achieved in the form of an International Military Police force comprising troops from 12 nations and that preformed its duties in an efficient and disciplined manner.

Second, for the Czechs to consolidate their forces the railway system had to remain operable. Acceptance of this duty immediately compromised any "neutrality" sought by General Graves. The Czech Legion was in revolt against the Bolsheviks and were active partisans in the civil war. To maintain the railway system, moreover, was not just aid to the Czechs; it would benefit the counterrevolution that depended upon the railway. Graves had little illusion about the role his troops played in Siberia. "As I see this question," he would wire Washington, "we become a party, by guarding the railroad, to the actions of this governmental class".

His interpretation of Wilson's memoir was to gain the animosity of his allies, who called for more direct action, the violent response from Red partisans, and numerous calls for his replacement in favor of a more forceful American commander. If, however, Graves were a more impulsive leader, Chief of Staff Payton C. March later wrote, "we would have had to send 100,000 men to get them out alive". Graves was instructed by March 1919 during the intervention to continue his policy until changed by the president. This the president, who could ill afford 100,000 men, never did.

Major General William Graves

The military intervention into Siberia can be divided into three stages. These divisions are based more on official clarifications of duties, rather than any changes in military policy. A continuity, a consistency is present throughout the entire period of U.S. intervention, primarily to facilitate counterrevolution. The first stage is the period between the landing of U.S. troops and the acceptance by Washington of the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (IARA) on 9 February 1919. The IARA imposed military control on the Siberian railways by clearly defining the respective responsibilities of the intervening forces on various sectors of the railway. For the Americans, this would confirm duties already assumed and create new ones.

Although obvious in whose interest the agreement worked, it was not until July that the purpose of the AEF was officially stated. During the summer of 1919, it was openly admitted that U.S. troops were in Siberia to maintain the supply line of the White leader, Admiral Kolchak. To the troops north of Vladivostok the latter was by that time an irrelevant technicality.

Tomorrow:  Part II, AEF Siberia in Action

Sources: Articles in the April and May, 2020, St. Mihiel Trip-Wire by Christopher T. McMaster, PhD

Jutland: The Unfinished Battle by Nicholas Jellicoe

British Destroyer HMS Onslow on the Attack during the Jutland Night Actions (Click on Image to Enlarge)

By Nicholas Jellicoe

Naval Institute Press, 2018 Reprint

Reviewed by Holger Herwig

Excerpted from "Jutland: Acrimony to Resolution," Naval War College Review, Autumn 2016.

It now has been [over] one hundred years since the battle of Jutland. Beatty and Jellicoe both rest in the crypt of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. Armies of naval historians have dissected every aspect of the battle, and have come up with intriguing names such as “Flawed Victory,” “Distant Victory,” “Jutland Scandal,” “The Riddle of Jutland,” “The Truth about Jutland,” “The Jutland Epic,” “The Blindfold Game,” “The Rules of the Game,” “The Smoke Screen of Jutland,” “Sins of Omission and Commission,” and “Our Bloody Ships or Our Bloody System,” among countless others.

Thankfully, we now have a superb analysis, Jutland: The Unfinished Battle (2016), from Nicholas Jellicoe—the admiral’s grandson. This source at first  light might seem to be prejudiced, but that is not the case. Obviously aware of the possible suspicion of bias because of his last name, Nicholas Jellicoe has gone out of his way to offer both the general reader and the naval expert a balanced,measured, and yet nuanced account of the greatest sea battle of World War I. He weighs and measures. He offers conflicting accounts and interpretations.

He evaluates sources. He compares British and German eyewitness and official accounts and statistics. He judiciously examines the accounts by John Harper, Reginald Bacon, and the Admiralty discussed above. And then he offers his own best opinion. Along the way, he provides the layman with text boxes and sidebars to explain the complex naval systems in place at Jutland, and he further includes countless diagrams to explain ship locations and movements.

Nicholas Jellicoe apportions praise and criticism in equal amounts. Tactically, Jutland was a German victory and a “bad blow” for both the Royal Navy and  the nation. Hipper’s leadership of the German battle cruisers had been “brilliant,” Scheer’s two “battle turns away” and his ultimate escape “remarkable.” German signals and communications had been “exemplary,” those of the British “lamentable.” Jellicoe’s system of command had been rigid, a “vestige of the Victorian past.” Beatty’s reconnaissance and reporting had been a “failure.” Beatty’s obsession with rapid firing and the resulting storage of cordite next to the gun turrets, rather than improper flash protection, had caused the loss of the battle cruisers.

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The role of the new weapons of the day—mines, torpedoes, and aircraft—had been overrated before the battle, and negligible in its outcome. Both navies had fought the battle unexpectedly and discovered it to be highly complex, and had fought under difficult conditions of wind, rain, smoke, heavy seas, and fading light. Both sides regarded it as an “unfinished battle.”

Strategically, Nicholas Jellicoe joins the bevy of historians who have argued that Jutland was a British victory. “The issue at stake,” he writes, “had been sea power.” One side exercised it; the other sought to gain it. Afterward, the arteries of seaborne commerce, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s maritime highways, remained open to Britain and closed to Germany. Reinhard Scheer, the putative “victor of the Skagerrak,” accepted this reality when, in his after-action report of 4 July 1916 to Wilhelm II, he forsook future “Jutlands” in favor of “the defeat of  British economic life” by way of unrestricted submarine warfare “against  British trade.”

The High Sea Fleet, in Churchill’s stinging remark of February 1912, indeed had been but a “luxury” fleet.

Holger Herwig

The Mighty Royal Arsenal Woolwich in the Great War

Click to Enlarge Image

In the Gun Factory at Woolwich Arsenal, 1918,
George Clausen

By Greig Watson, BBC News

From the 17th century, the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, was an establishment on the south bank of the River Thames in Woolwich in southeast London, England, that was used for the manufacture of armaments and ammunition, proofing, and explosives research for the British Army and Royal Navy. 

It was a factory like no other in World War One. The Royal Arsenal was spread across a swathe of southeast London, and it was devoted to the delivery of death. The Woolwich-based factory was at its peak during WWI, covering 1,285 acres, filled with dozens of buildings and employing about 80,000 people. It was the focus for some of the seismic shifts the war prompted, from how war was fought to how Britain was run.

"The Arsenal was fundamental to the war," says Paul Evans, from the Royal Artillery Museum. 

"Artillery dominated the battlefield and the Arsenal was at the head of everything to do with artillery.

"It was everything. It was research, it was manufacturing, it was testing, it was inspection. You lose the Arsenal, you lose the war."

Click to Enlarge Image

Partial View of the Arsenal, Post WWI

From a patch of open ground used to test 17th-century guns, the Arsenal was already a sprawling complex at the start of the 20th century, with more than 10,000 workers. Buildings like the Royal Brass Foundry, Great Pile, Laboratory, and Grand Store hint at its history and scale. It even had its own steel foundry and railway.

By the early 1900s though, it was a hotchpotch of semi-independent departments that had defied attempts at modernisation. But change was coming. As an English Heritage study of the site put it: "When war did break out in 1914, the Arsenal was congested, inefficient and no longer innovative. . . Yet, at huge cost, it was mobilized, and feminized, into exceptional productivity."

The unexpected appearance of trench warfare meant Britain's carefully prepared stock of shrapnel artillery shells—designed to be used against armies in the open—was next to useless. As battles became immense slugging matches between ever larger guns—366,000 fired in four days by the British at Loos in September 1915, for example—the army ran low on its main weapon, high-explosive shells. And of those arriving at the front, up to 30 percent proved to be duds.

Entrance Gate: Then & Now

The Wartime Workforce

At its peak, the Arsenal covered 1,300 acres and employed around 80,000 people, Mr Evans says: "It was nobody's fault, it was just the way the war worked. . . If you take all of your skilled labour out of the factories and turn them into soldiers, you quadruple the demand for what they are making anyway, and with the people you have brought in you are trying to cut corners anyway to keep up with the pace, it's not going to work."

David Lloyd George, the Minister of Munitions from May 1915, made two big changes. He increased government control over weapons production—then largely in private hands—and sought to bring women into the workplace. Nowhere was this felt more than in Woolwich, where eventually almost 30,000 women were employed.

Female Staff of the Arsenal

Caroline Rennles was already a "canary"—turned temporarily yellow by working with TNT explosive—when she went to make bullets at the Arsenal. Interviewed in 1975, she described the unforgiving conditions.

"We would work 13 days out of 14," she said.

"You would work 13 days 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., have a day off that's all, then do 7 p.m.  until 7a.m.

"On the night shift, the place would be lit with little lamps and you had just enough light to see what you were doing."

First used in the Arsenal's small arms factory, women soon moved into heavy work, such as heavy arms, trucking, crane-driving and "danger work"—handling high explosives.

Changes were not confined to women—in 1914, the site's research department's Explosives Section had only 11 chemists. By 1918, it had 107. So great was the shift in number and nature of the workforce that nearly 3,000 new homes had to be built on the Well Hall Road and a 700-place creche—believed to be the country's first in the workplace—was set up.

King George V & Queen Mary on a Visit to the Arsenal

Despite inexperienced workers dealing with munitions, there were no large accidents at the Arsenal—but the explosion at the nearby Silvertown munitions works, which killed 73 in January 1917, underlined the dangers.

The shells began to flow. And how.

Mr Evans gives some examples of the numbers: 

"Expenditure of ammunition in France; 6in howitzer shells, 22,387,363; 18 pounder ammunition, 99,897,670 rounds fired at the Germans. Altogether, 170 million rounds were dropped on the Germans. And that is just on the Western Front and that doesn't include bullets. There were lots of big guns, firing lots of shells. It explains those photographs of blasted landscapes."

But victory, when it came, was bittersweet.

Female workers began to be laid off even before the war ended, but all staff suffered. The Royal Arsenal was regarded as crowded, out of date, and dangerous in such a built up area. By 1922, the workforce had fallen to just 6,000. Bit by bit areas and buildings were sold off, converted, or demolished.  In the Second World War the arsenal grew again, of course, but only to half the staffing of the Great War. 

Still Standing:  the Main Administrative Building

The focus of the site grew less military over the next decades. The Royal Regiment of Artillery was last to leave, in 1998. Large areas have now been redeveloped as housing, but a link is maintained as Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum, also occupies part of the site.

Bonus Feature:

Join Joolz, London's Greatest Guide, on A Whimsical & Wonderful Wander in Woolwich Arsenal, London

Sources:  BBC, Wikicommons, Woolwich Arsenal History, Imperial War Museum, and Joolz Guides–London History Walks

Kaiser Wilhelm II's 1917 Easter Message

Editor's Introduction:  Until March 1917 when he was overruled by the military, Imperial German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg’s efforts on the home front were focused on holding together the so-called “civil truce” and ensuring maximum domestic support for the war effort. Conditions at home became critical in late 1916 and Bethmann prevailed upon the Kaiser to issue his “Easter Message” of 7 April 1917, which turned out to be the day after  the United States declared war on Imperial Germany.  The Kaiser seemed to  promise a reform of the Prussian suffrage and the Prussian upper house of parliament after the war, but this was too vague for the left and even Bethmann was now convinced that the three-class suffrage had to be abolished. At the same time the mere promise of reform created powerful enemies for the chancellor on the right. Bethmann was effectively forced by the military leadership to resign on 13 July 1917.  MH

The German Empire's Leaders Who Decided on Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

(left to right) Hindenburg, the Kaiser, Chancellor Bethmann, the King of Bavaria, Ludendorff, and Admiral Holtzendorff

Presented to the Prussian Parliament

Never before has the German people proved so unshakable as in this war. The realization that the Fatherland faced a grave emergency exerted a wonderfully conciliatory force, and despite all the sacrifices of blood that we made on foreign fields, and despite all the difficult privations that we bore at home, the will has remained unshakable to risk the utmost for the last, victorious struggle. The national and social spirits were unified in mutual understanding and gave us lasting strength. Everyone felt: what had been built up during long years of peace, amid many internal difficulties, was worth defending.

The achievements of the whole nation in war and need shine before my soul. The experiences of this struggle for our national existence are inaugurating a new epoch in magnificent solemnity. As the responsible Chancellor of the German Reich and First Minister of my Prussian Government, you face the obligation to help fulfill the demands of this time with the proper means and at the proper time. On various occasions you have spoken of the spirit in which the forms of our state’s life are to be rebuilt in order to foster the free, enthusiastic cooperation of all members of our nation. The principles that you worked out on these occasions have, as you know, my approval. I am aware that in giving it, I am following the course of my grandfather, the founder of the Reich, who fulfilled his monarchical responsibilities in exemplary fashion, both when, as king of Prussia, he presided over the organization of the military, and when, as German Kaiser, he oversaw social reform. In so doing, he created the foundations on which the German people will survive this bloody time in unanimous and wrathful perseverance.

To preserve the armed forces as a true army of the people, to promote the social improvement of all classes of the people, has been my aim from the beginning of my reign. Determined as I am to serve the commonwealth, in hard-tested unity between the people and the monarchy, I have decided to begin the reconstruction of our domestic political, economic, and social life to the extent that the conditions of war permit.

Millions of our fellow countrymen are still on the battlefield. Behind the front, the settlement of differences of opinion, which are unavoidable in connection with a far-reaching alteration of the Constitution, must be postponed in the  highest patriotic interest, until our warriors have returned home and can themselves by word and deed aid in the progress of the new age. However, in order to allow the necessary and practical steps in this connection to take place immediately upon the successful end of the war, which I confidently hope is not far off, I wish that the preparations be concluded without delay. 

I am especially anxious to see the reorganization of the Prussian parliament and the liberation of all our domestic politics from this problem. On my orders, preparations for altering the suffrage for the House of Delegates were made at the beginning of the war. I now charge you to submit to me concrete proposals from the State Ministry, so this work, which is basic to the structure of domestic politics in Prussia, will quickly be carried out by legislation, once our warriors have returned. Given the colossal achievements of the whole people in this terrible war, I am convinced that there is no room any longer for the three-class franchise system in Prussia. Furthermore, the proposed bill is to provide for the direct and secret election of deputies.

No King of Prussia will fail to appreciate the merits and enduring significance of the House of Lords for the state. But the House of Lords will better be able to meet the colossal demands of the coming age if, to a broader and more equitable extent than before, it unifies in its midst leading men from the diverse sectors and vocations of the people, men who are distinguished by the respect of their fellow citizens. 

In renewing important dimensions of our firmly established and hard-tested state apparatus, I am acting in the traditions of my great forebears as I demonstrate my confidence in a loyal, brave, disciplined, and highly developed people.

I charge you to publish this decree at once.

Supreme Headquarters, April 7, 1917

Wilhelm I. R.

Source:  German History in Documents and Images; 1914-1918 Online

Trevor Wilson on the Essence of Trench Warfare

Trevor Wilson (1928–2022)

By December 1914 the trench warfare system was fully established on the Western Front. Over time the men in the trenches—as can be seen in the examples on the right—dug deeper and improved their firing positions. Although the sites are quite comparable you can see from the hunched-over postures of the men in the 1914 trench that they are definitely in a hot zone. Compare that to the men and their officer in the improved trench, in what might be a posed photo. What did the apparent permanence of all this mean for the those men stuck in the trenches?

1914 French Trench

There is an important thing to understand about trench warfare and what it was like to be in the trenches. It was not the same people in the same trench all through the war. The army realized that even in quiet periods, being in the front line was a terribly wearing experience.

At any moment, if you put your head above the parapet, a sniper might get you; at any moment, a trench mortar or shell might land among you, killing and maiming. Consequently, people there are living in a state of great anxiety, which if continued for long, would wear them down; and they would wear down pretty rapidly to the point where they can't be used again.

Similar Trench, Probably 1915

To avoid this, the army was constantly recycling people, having them in the front line a week at a time, then moving them to reserve trenches, then moving them out of the lines altogether (giving them time to recuperate), and then bringing them back again. A soldier would usually occupy a front line trench for only a week at a time.

Historian Trevor Wilson, PBS Interview

The Anthem of the Anti-Preparedness Movement: I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier

Preparedness Themed Lusitania Poster

After the Lusitania sinking of May 1915, Americans began debating the need for military and economic preparations for war. Strong opposition to “preparedness” came from isolationists, socialists, pacifists, many Protestant ministers, German Americans, and Irish Americans (who were hostile to Britain). Just earlier, one of the hit songs of 1915, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” by lyricist Alfred Bryan and composer Al Piantadosi, had captured widespread American skepticism about joining in the European war. 

With the Lusitania tragedy, interventionists and sympathizers for the Allied cause like former president Theodore Roosevelt increasingly beat the drums for preparedness. Anti-interventionists made sure the song stayed popular. Roosevelt’s retort to the popularity of the antiwar song was that it should be accompanied by the tune “I Didn’t Raise My Girl to Be a Mother.” He suggested that the place for women who opposed war was “in China—or by preference in a harem—and not in the United States.”

Listen to the Song Here

Lyrics

Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,

Who may never return again.

Ten million mothers' hearts must break,

For the ones who died in vain.

Head bowed down in sorrow in her lonely years,

I heard a mother murmur thro' her tears:

Chorus:

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,

I brought him up to be my pride and joy,

Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder,

To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,

It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,

There’d be no war today,

If mothers all would say,

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.

Source:  History Matters