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    Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916–1922
    Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916–1922
    Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916–1922
    Ebook1,587 pages

    Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916–1922

    By Martin Gilbert

    3.5/5

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    The fourth volume in the official biography—“The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written” (Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times).
     
    Covering the years 1916 to 1922, Martin Gilbert’s fascinating account carefully traces Churchill’s wide-ranging activities and shows how, by his persuasive oratory, administrative skill, and masterful contributions to Cabinet discussions, Churchill regained, only a few years after the disaster of the Dardanelles, a leading position in British political life.
     
    Included are many dramatic and controversial episodes: the German breakthrough on the Western Front in March 1918, the anti-Bolshevik intervention in 1919, negotiating the Irish Treaty, consolidating the Jewish National Home in Palestine, and the Chanak crisis with Turkey. In all these, and many other events, Churchill’s leading role is explained and illuminated in Martin Gilbert’s precise, masterful style.
     
    In a moving final chapter, covering a period when Churchill was without a seat in Parliament for the first time since 1900, Martin Gilbert brilliantly draws together the many strands of a time in Churchill’s life when his political triumphs were overshadowed by personal sorrows, by his increasingly somber reflections on the backward march of nations and society, and by his stark forecasts of dangers to come.
     
    “A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . Rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 6, 2015
    ISBN9780795344541
    Winston S. Churchill: World in Torment, 1916–1922
    Author

    Martin Gilbert

    Sir Martin Gilbert was named Winston Churchill's official biographer in 1968. He was the author of seventy-five books, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories The First World War and The Second World War, the comprehensive Israel: A History, and his three-volume History of the Twentieth Century. An Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan, he was knighted in 1995 'for services to British history and international relations', and in 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford for the totality of his published work. Martin Gilbert died in 2015. 

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    • 3/5
      There are many dramatic and controversial episodes: the German breakthrough on the Western Front in March 1918, the anti-Bolshevik Intervention in 1919, negotiating the Irish Treaty, consolidating the Jewish National Home in Palestine, and the Chanak crisis with Turkey. In all these, and many other events, Churchill’s leading role is explained and illuminated in Martin Gilbert’s precise, masterful style. The Churchill who emerges from these pages is a complex, gifted, energetic, troubled man who made a forceful impact on his contemporaries; a man whose remarkable skills were admired by his colleagues, but who often angered – even maddened – them by what he said and did.-------------------------------------------Nel libro vengono riportati alcuni degli episodi più importanti della vita di Churchill da cui emerge il ritratto di un uomo complesso, energico, problematico che ha avuto un impatto fondamentale sui suoi contemporanei. Un uomo i cui trionfi politici venivano adombrati dalla sue dure previsioni sui pericoli del futuro.
    • 4/5
      After Gallipoli our hero falls into a bit of a decline. He goes to the trenches in France, mugs a bit for the cameras, and plots a return to Westminster. Lloyd George's Coalition government signals a return to the cabinet, but as minister of munitions. Victory still sees him at that post, but he goes from there to secretary of State for Air, the War ministry, and Colonial Secretary. He's on his way back up.Read it twice.

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    Winston S. Churchill - Martin Gilbert

    PART ONE

    MINISTER OF MUNITIONS, 1917–1918

    1

    The Shadow of the Dardanelles

    By the beginning of December 1916 Churchill had been out of office for more than a year. Following his removal from the Admiralty in May 1915 he had sometimes despaired of ever holding an important Cabinet position again. He alone had been held responsible for the failure of the British naval attack of the Dardanelles, and many people had blamed his lack of judgement for the suffering and slaughter of the Gallipoli campaign. He had found no solace, during the summer of 1915, in being Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a Cabinet post devoid of all administrative work, and incapable of satisfying his ambition. ‘I do not want office,’ he had written to his friend Archibald Sinclair¹ on 5 July 1915, ‘but only war direction: that perhaps never again. Everything else—not that. At least so I feel in my evil moments.’ Later in his letter he told Sinclair:

    I am profoundly unsettled: & cannot use my gift. Of that last I have no doubts. I do not feel that my judgements have been falsified, or that the determined pursuance of my policy through all the necessary risks was wrong. I wd do it all again if the circumstances were repeated. But I am faced with the problem of living through days of 24 hours each: & averting my mind from the intricate business I had in hand—wh was my life.

    In November 1915 Churchill had resigned from the Government, rejoined the army and gone to the western front. In January 1916 he had been given command of an infantry battalion. With Sinclair as his second-in-command, he had tried to absorb himself in front-line duties. But politics still dominated his thoughts, and by the end of March 1916 he had decided to return to the House of Commons, even if it meant a long period in opposition. ‘Is it not damnable,’ he had written to his brother Jack² on 15 July 1916, ‘that I should be denied all real scope to serve this country, in this tremendous hour?’

    Throughout the summer and autumn of 1916 Churchill’s main activity had been the preparation of his case for the Dardanelles Commission of Enquiry, to which, on September 28, he had given evidence. Throughout October he had watched while others gave evidence, had challenged every statement with which he disagreed and had urged those who had supported the campaign to come forward in his defence. ‘Everything I hear about the D’lles Commission encourages me,’ he had written to Sinclair on November 29. ‘The interim report cannot now be long delayed and I have good hopes that it will be a fair judgement. I sh’d like to have it out as soon as possible. But the days slip away.’

    On December 7 Lloyd George³ had become Prime Minister, at the head of a new all-Party Coalition, committed to the vigorous prosecution of the war. But he had offered Churchill no place in his administration. Although he had a high regard for Churchill’s talents, and wanted to make use of them, the Conservatives, on whom he depended for support, insisted on Churchill’s exclusion from office. This veto reflected more than a decade of Conservative hostility.

    ***

    Churchill had counted on Lloyd George’s accession to office for his own return to the Cabinet, and was bitter not to be included in the new Government. On December 10 he wrote to Sinclair:

    The papers will have apprised you of the course of events, & you will have learned from them of the downfall of all my hopes and desires. These have not been unworthy, for I had an impulse & a gift to give to the war energies of the country. But my treasure is rejected. If I cd reconcile the turn of events and of newspaper opinion with the true facts & the true values I shd be hopelessly downcast. But I am sure that these judgements are unjust and I have a good conscience & am confident of my record. Still you who know me so well will understand how unpleasant it is to me to be denied all scope in action at this time of all other times.

    Of course I have every right to complain of L.G. who weakly & faithlessly bowed to Northcliffe’s⁴ malevolent press. But this is not the hour when personal resentments however justified must influence conduct or colour opinion. I shall remain absolutely silent!

    It was unlucky that the D’lles report shd have been delayed until after the crisis; for I am still hopeful that it will give a turn to public opinion. But everything has turned out ill for me since the war began. Perhaps we are now at the nadir.

    It will be odd now on the direct opposition Bench with all the furious ex Ministers arriving. I expect they will soon be vy anxious to be civil to me. But I intend to sit in the corner seat in a kind of isolation.

    Later in his letter Churchill gave Sinclair his impression of Lloyd George’s Cabinet:

    The new Government is a weak one—so far as ability is concerned and largely inexperienced. Political considerations alone have ruled the formation of the War Council, & except L.G. not one of its members possesses any aptitude for war or knowledge of it. The exclusion of the Admiralty & War Office from the War Council shows an utter lack of comprehension of the interplay of forces. The difficulties before them are enormous, & only disasters lie ahead for many months.

    On December 10, as a gesture of friendship and encouragement, Lloyd George asked Sir George Riddell⁵ to take Churchill a message. Riddell told Churchill that Lloyd George had no intention of keeping him out of office, and would try to make him Chairman of the Air Board. Lloyd George added, however, that the Dardanelles Commission Report would have to be published first. As the Report was unlikely to be ready until the summer of 1917, the offer held out no immediate hope of office. Riddell gave Churchill Lloyd George’s message on December 11, and in his diary recorded Churchill’s reaction. ‘I don’t reproach him,’ Churchill had replied. ‘His conscience will tell him what he should do. Give him that message and tell him that I cannot allow what you have said to fetter my freedom of action. I will take any position which will enable me to serve my country. My only purpose is to help defeat the Hun, and I will subordinate my own feelings so that I may be able to render some assistance.’

    Churchill would have liked to become Chairman of the Air Board. For over a year he had been advocating a united air policy, under a single Minister. Although the post was not in the War Cabinet, Conservative opposition could not be overcome. On December 20 the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Edward Carson,⁶ wrote to the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law:⁷ ‘I shd greatly fear friction if the appt is made. I much dislike having to seem opposed to the suggestion as my personal inclination is towards utilising Churchill’s undoubted ability—especially so as he’s so down in his luck at present—but I hope some other, more suitable opportunity may be found.’ That same day Churchill wrote to Sinclair, describing Lloyd George’s offer, and adding:

    Since then I hear this arrangement bruited in various secret & well informed quarters. I have not seen him however, tho he threw a note across the floor last night asking me to come. I do not want to have a chatterbox talk. Unless I am really wanted I do not want to join them. However painful it is not to have work to do against the enemy, one must just wait. There is nothing to be gained by eagerness. The matter now hangs I suppose in the balance…. But for the war nothing wd induce me to take office.

    I look back a gt deal to our Plugstreet days, & wish I cd have cut myself more adrift from London & its whirlpools and been more content with the simple animal life (& death) wh the trenches offered. When I am absolutely sure there is no prospect of regaining control or part of it here, I shall turn again to that resort & refuge: & after all I have learned in disillusionment I think I cd do better. It is a mellow picture in retrospect. But I was always tormented by the idea that gt opportunities were slipping by at home.

    And this is a fact. If I had stayed Chancellor of the Duchy and shut my mouth & drawn my salary, I shd today be one of the principal personages in direction of affairs. That was a costly excursion. Still I cannot regret it. Under a fair pretence of fine words, there is a gt déconsideration of all who wear uniform. They are discounted as persons ‘under the law’. Not one of these gallant MPs who has fought through the Somme at the heads of their battalions, stands a chance agst less clever men who have stopped & chattered at home. This is to me the most curious phenomenon of all. It is quite inexplicable to me.

    Churchill still hoped that when the Dardanelles Commission Report was published, his political fortunes would improve. Meanwhile, he held aloof from all opposition groupings. ‘I have been enveloped in courtesies by the ex Liberal Ministers,’ he told Sinclair in his letter of December 20, ‘but I remain quite unattached.’ ‘Everyone seems to think,’ Churchill’s former Private Secretary Edward Marsh⁸ wrote to Sinclair on the following day, ‘the report will be much in his favour. If only he’d stayed out with you, I expect he wd now be at the top of the tree, & I shd be back with him. Let us all beware of Impatience!’

    On December 23 Churchill left London for Blenheim, where he spent Christmas and New Year with his family. It was the second consecutive New Year during which he had held no political office. Lord Fisher,⁹ whose resignation in May 1915 had precipitated the crisis leading to Churchill’s fall, was likewise without any official employment. On January 25 Fisher celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday. That same day Churchill wrote to congratulate him on his ‘continued enjoyment of perennial youth and vigour’. His letter went on:

    Like you I have seen no one political. One is quite powerless as far as the war is concerned. It is a pity, because a descent on the German coast, the bringing in of Denmark and the entry & domination of the Baltic wd secure a decisive victory for the Allies, who otherwise will be forced to far less satisfactory alternatives after far greater sacrifices. Our common enemies are all powerful today & friendship counts for less than nothing.

    I am simply existing.

    Throughout the early months of 1917, Churchill’s thoughts were entirely dominated by the Dardanelles. ‘I had a short talk with Winston about the Dardanelles Report,’ Sir Maurice Hankey¹⁰ wrote in his diary on February 16. ‘He said he was satisfied, but the tone of his voice indicated disappointment.’ During February Churchill wrote two long memoranda for the Dardanelles Commission of Enquiry, setting out his reasons for supporting the Gallipoli campaign even after he had left the Admiralty in May 1915. In the first memorandum Churchill criticized what he described as the ‘series of delays’ in reinforcing the troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the summer of 1915, and wrote bitterly of the Coalition Government which Asquith¹¹ had formed in May 1915, as a Government ‘based purely upon a balancing of personal and party claims, united neither by any common conception of action, nor of comradeship, nor by mutual confidence, nor even by partisanship’. And he continued: ‘It robbed the country at once of a responsible Opposition and an alternative Administration. It suppressed utterly for the time being all effective criticism within the House of Commons and transferred this function with the immense power which has followed from it to the press.’ Churchill went on to point out that the poor quality of the Divisions at Gallipoli, though known to the War Office, had not been revealed to the Cabinet until it was too late. ‘If ever there was an operation in the history of war,’ he concluded, ‘which once having been taken should have been carried through with the utmost vigour and at the utmost speed it was the military attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula.’

    In his second memorandum of February 1917, Churchill criticized the Government’s policy after the failure of the August offensive. In September and October 1915, he insisted, the Government should have renewed the military offensive on the Gallipoli Peninsula and sent sufficient reinforcements and munitions to make victory certain. The failure was not a military, but a political one. ‘It is no good coming along afterwards,’ he wrote, ‘and applying to these events the light of after-knowledge and the assumptions of plenary power. The future was then unknown. No one possessed plenary power.’ And he continued:

    The wishes of foreign Governments, themselves convulsed internally by difficulties the counterpart of our own, were constantly thrusting themselves athwart our policy. No one had the power to give clear brutal orders which would command unquestioning respect. Power was widely disseminated among the many important personages who in this period formed the governing instrument. Knowledge was very unequally shared. Innumerable arguments of a partial character could be quoted on every side of all these complicated questions. The situation itself was in constant and violent movement. We never at any time possessed the initiative; we were always compelled to adapt ourselves to events.

    All the time, however, clear and simple solutions existed which would speedily have produced the precious element of victory. They were not, however, solutions within the reach of anyone not possessed of commanding power.

    On February 21, while the Dardanelles Commission was reading Churchill’s final submissions, the Navy Estimates debate in the House of Commons gave him a chance to voice his opinions on the current conduct of the war. His mind was still on the Dardanelles. Criticism had its place, he told the House of Commons, but the only criticism that was justified in wartime was ‘criticism before the event’. And he went on: ‘Nothing is more easy, nothing is cheaper, nothing is more futile than to criticise the hazardous and incalculable events and tendencies of war after the event has occurred.’

    On March 5, during the Army Estimates debate, Churchill advocated a Secret Session of the House of Commons, to enable Ministers to explain their policies in greater detail, and to enable MPs to be more critical. ‘The House of Commons,’ he asserted, ‘would be to blame and failing in its duty if upon all these great questions connected with manpower, the supply of men, and our military policy, they do not insist upon some serious discussion in which the Ministers could take part, and in which hon. Members could really address themselves to questions in which the life and fortunes of the country depend.’ But Lloyd George declined Churchill’s advice.

    In his speech on the Army Estimates Churchill argued that insufficient use had been made of Indian and African manpower. From Africa, he believed, as many as 300,000 men could have been recruited for labour services in the war zone, thus freeing an equivalent number of British soldiers for the front line. The failure to find new sources of manpower would, he declared, gravely hamper the military campaigns of 1918: ‘I say quite frankly, I have a feeling of despair, because it does seem to me that the House of Commons, by not grappling with these questions, by not following them up with intense attention and even ferocity, is allowing power to slip from its hands and is allowing itself to be made a useless addition to the Constitution.’

    Churchill then outlined his own plans for the campaigns of the future, aimed at saving life, but at the same time ensuring victory. He was insistent that new techniques of mechanical warfare must be developed. ‘Machines save life,’ he asserted, ‘machine-power is a substitute for man-power, brains will save blood, manoeuvre is a great diluting agent to slaughter.’ Unless new ‘manoeuvre devices’ were developed, he went on, ‘I do not see how we are to avoid being thrown back on those dismal processes of waste and slaughter which are called attrition’. Churchill then warned the Government not to repeat the tactics of the Somme offensive of 1916. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that they will not launch out on vast offensives of the kind we had last year unless they are certain that the fair weather months at their disposal and the reserves they command relatively to the enemy are such as to give an indisputable result.’ The Allies had no right ‘to count upon events turning decisively and immediately in our favour’. Preparation should now be made for the campaign of 1918. No source of manpower should be neglected. Mechanical aids should be developed ‘which require intense exertion of thought’. The skilled production of weapons should proceed ‘at its very height’. By such methods, Churchill concluded, ‘we can make victory a certainty in 1918. There is still time for that. Do not let us always be behind the march of events. We are doing in 1917 what we ought to have done in 1916 or even in 1915. Do not let it be said when 1918 arrives that we find ourselves in agreement at last with all those measures which it would have been proper to take in 1917.’

    ***

    Churchill’s immediate political prospects still seemed to depend on the verdict of the Dardanelles Commission of Enquiry. On February 15, in a friendly gesture, Lloyd George had lent him a draft copy of the first section of the Report, which Churchill in his turn showed to Sir George Riddell. ‘After I had skimmed it,’ Riddell recorded in his diary that same day, ‘he asked my candid opinion. I told him I thought he had come well out of the inquiry, but that the document would be damaging to Asquith and Kitchener.’¹² But Churchill pointed out to Riddell that the evidence on which the report was based was not to be published, although it contained, Churchill said, ‘proof that when we stopped the naval operations the Turks had only three rounds of ammunition’.

    The Report made it clear that Asquith had been as anxious as any of his Cabinet to attack and defeat Turkey, and that Lord Kitchener had not informed his colleagues in sufficient detail of the military plans for April and August 1915. Although Churchill himself was not singled out for blame in the Report, he was angered because many of the charges that had been levelled against him were not fully answered. On March 10 he wrote to Lloyd George, protesting against the excisions and distortions of the Report. Riddell delivered the letter personally. ‘I assert,’ wrote Churchill, ‘that quotations from the evidence included in the body of the Report do not in numerous cases represent the evidence given before the Commission.’

    For the Commission itself, Churchill prepared a series of notes on the Report, in which he listed the omissions which, in his view, needed to be remedied. In a covering letter to the Commissioners he set out his main grievance, that the Report had failed to set the Dardanelles campaign into the general context of the war:

    It seems to me very necessary for the Commission to bear in mind the circumstances in which their inquiry is pursued. The enterprise has ended in defeat and failure. The Army has been withdrawn. The positions which they had won by so much effort and sacrifice have been yielded to the enemy. The hopes, the legitimate expectations, the chances of battle have vanished away; only the slaughter, the suffering and the waste remains….

    A great volume of prejudice and not unnatural vexation has gathered round the story of the expedition. All tongues are freed. The natural tendency of the Commission is to look for faults and errors and it is not surprising that they should find them.

    It is important therefore that some standard bearing a true relation to the episodes of the Great War should be kept in mind and that in surveying the military operations on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the many horrible and melancholy circumstances connected with them it should not be assumed that elsewhere throughout the theatres of war everything has gone smoothly and well; that other plans have not miscarried; that other battles have been fought without painful incidents, confusion or mischance; that loss of life on the Gallipoli Peninsula was more deplorable and more preventable than loss of life elsewhere; that its suffering and carnage are unparalleled.

    Churchill then turned to the events on the western front, telling the Commission:

    In the attack of the 1st of July on the German positions North of the Somme nearly 70,000 British troops were killed and wounded and of these nearly half were killed or missing and of the missing—nearly 20,000—all except a few hundreds perished miserably and by inches where they fell. Except at the Southern end of the line the whole plan of attack failed, and after five months continuous fighting sustained by unprecedented supplies of men and ammunition scarcely any of the original objectives assigned to the first day’s operations had been attained. The sanguine expectations which led on three or four occasions to many thousands of Cavalry being brought up to gallop through some gap in the enemy’s line were shown to be utterly out of contact with reality at any point. For the sake of a few miles of ground devoid of strategic significance nearly 600,000 British casualties have been sustained and the efficiency of our Army in the West sensibly and permanently diminished. These operations were based upon a complete and admitted miscalculation of the German reserves, the error amounting to nearly two millions of men. In consequence the Spring campaign of 1917 opens with a greater equality of forces in the West than was the case when the battle of the Somme began.

    Nevertheless with a good Press sedulously manipulated & employed and the effective support of the governing forces, these operations have been represented as a long series of famous and memorable victories and the initial disaster of the 1st of July has been established in the public mind as a brilliant triumph. A fifth of the resources, the effort, the loyalty, the resolution, the perseverance vainly employed in the battle of the Somme to gain a few shattered villages and a few square miles of devastated ground, would in the Gallipoli Peninsula, used in time, have united the Balkans on our side, joined hands with Russia, and cut Turkey out of the war. The choice was open to us; we have built our own misfortune and no one can tell what its limits will be.

    Churchill did not expect to be vindicated for some time. His letter ended:

    Public opinion is unable to measure the true proportion of events. Orthodox military opinion remains united on the local view that victory in 1915 could only be found by pouring out men and munitions in frantic efforts to break the German entrenchments in the West. The passage of a few years will throw a very different light on these events. They will then be seen in a truer proportion and perspective. It will then be understood that the capture of Constantinople and the rallying of the Balkans was the one great and decisive manoeuvre open to the allied armies in 1915. It will then be seen that the ill-supported armies struggling on the Gallipoli Peninsula, whose efforts are now viewed with so much prejudice and repugnance were in fact within an ace of succeeding in an enterprise which would have abridged the miseries of the World and proved the salvation of our cause. It will then seem incredible that a dozen old ships, half a dozen divisions, or a few hundred thousand shells were allowed to stand between them and success. Contemporaries have condemned the men who tried to force the Dardanelles—History will condemn those who did not aid them.

    ***

    The Dardanelles Report was to be debated in the House of Commons on March 20. Churchill spent six days preparing his speech. When he lunched with the editor of the Manchester Guardian, C. P. Scott,¹³ on March 16, he could talk, Scott recorded, ‘of nothing but Dardanelles Report’ which was, he told Scott, ‘curiously careless and inaccurate’. During their talk, Scott asked Churchill whether he was willing to join Lloyd George’s Government. ‘Not in any subordinate capacity—,’ Churchill replied, ‘only in one of the chief posts.’ Scott asked if he would accept the War Office. ‘Yes,’ said Churchill, ‘that would do very well.’

    The Debate on the Dardanelles Commission Report opened in the House of Commons on the afternoon of March 20. The House was crowded. For the first time since the outbreak of the war, a military operation was being made the subject of thorough scrutiny and open debate. In his speech Churchill welcomed the Report as ‘at any rate, an instalment of fair play’ and went on to say, of the Commissioners:

    They have swept away directly, or by implication, many serious and reckless charges which have passed current broadcast throughout the land during the long months of the last two years. They have reduced these charges within the limits of modest and sober criticism, and, further, by laying before the nation, the general outlines of the story—a long, tangled, complicated story—they have limited the responsibilities which have been thrown on me and under which I have greatly suffered.

    …the current of public opinion and the weight of popular displeasure, were mainly directed upon me, who was at that time responsible for the Admiralty. The burden that I have hitherto borne alone is now shared with the most eminent men which this country has produced within the lifetime of a whole generation in Parliament, in the Army, or the Fleet.

    But Churchill went on to criticize severely specific quotations in the Report, elaborating in even greater detail on the criticisms that he had sent to Lloyd George on March 10, and to the Commissioners in early March. His discussion of the specific documents and orders took more than half an hour. ‘I elaborate these details to the House,’ he explained, ‘first of all to defend myself against the false impression spread abroad by building up a story out of these little clippings and snippets from documents and evidence, which do not represent the documents and which do not represent the evidence,’ but also to defend ‘other interests besides my own’. He went on:

    I am defending the Government of which I was a member. I am defending the chief under whom I served, and who had acted on the advice which I had tendered. I am defending the authority and dignity of the Admiralty, because, believe me, you could do it no greater injury than to weaken the confidence of the officers and men of the Fleet in the orders they get from the Admiralty by favouring the impression that those orders had been made in a reckless, careless, amateur, and a haphazard way.

    Churchill reiterated the arguments he had used in his letter to the Commissioners, and begged his critics to look at the naval attack on the Dardanelles with a greater sense of proportion. ‘I may be accused of being reckless or sanguine,’ he went on, ‘but I shall plead that if I am it is because the sense of proportion with which I have judged this War from the very beginning, is different in important aspects from the accepted standard.’

    Towards the end of his speech, Churchill raised the question of the Turkish shortage of heavy gun munitions at the moment when the British naval attack was broken off. ‘It was not possible for me to lay all the information I possessed on this subject before the Commission,’ he told the House of Commons; the result was that in the Report itself there was nothing but ‘a dark, vague and cryptic sentence to the effect that there was information that the forts were running short of ammunition’. This, he believed, as he had earlier written to Lloyd George, did not show how near the naval attack might have been to success, and ignored altogether the influence that this information had had upon even Lord Fisher’s determination to persevere with the attack. ‘One day the truth will be known…’ Churchill continued, ‘and surely it is prudent, it would be prudent, to wait before passing final judgment on the action of those who were responsible for these operations, until these all-important facts can be ascertained with historical certainty.’

    Churchill continued his speech with a detailed denunciation of those who had disrupted the planning of the Dardanelles by their criticism, and ended:

    My recollection, looking back on this story, is that it was one long struggle from the beginning to the end—one long, agonising, wearying struggle to get every ship, every soldier, every gun, and every round of ammunition for the Dardanelles. When this matter is passed in final review before the tribunal of history, I have no fear where the sympathies of those who come after us will lie. Your Commission may condemn the men who tried to force the Dardanelles, but your children will keep their condemnation for all who did not rally to their aid.

    On March 22, two days after his Dardanelles speech, Churchill sent Sir Archibald Sinclair a detailed account of his feelings:

    The war weighs heavy on us all & amid such universal misfortune & with death so ubiquitous & life so harsh, I find a difficulty in setting pen to paper. I have liked to think you have been bored & not in danger, & I hope this condition will continue. I share it—so we are fellow sufferers. I remain inactive & useless on the edge of the whirlpool. I see a good deal of L.G. and hear how things are going. But otherwise I keep clear of the whole governing machine except F.E.¹⁴ The Asquithians are all vy kind & friendly: but here again I keep a separate dwelling.

    You will be glad to hear that the House of Commons is coming to hand again. The three speeches I have made this year have all been vy well received. The Dardanelles debate especially was vy successful to me personally. The grouping of forces in the House are becoming increasingly favourable. The Dlles report has forced all who care about K’s memory (and they are many) to join with all who adhere to orthodox Liberalism in defence of that operation: and I thus have strong bodies of public opinion between me & the malevolence of Tory Press. This is likely to govern my affairs.

    Churchill went on to tell Sinclair that Lloyd George was planning ‘to force an election’. But, he said, there was ‘no justification’ for such a course, and ‘I am doing all I can to prevent such a disastrous course both by supporting the Government in the prosecution of the war, & by protesting against such a course’.

    On April 3 Churchill again criticized the Government’s military policy. Speaking in the House of Commons, he spoke of the misuse of wounded men. ‘It is perfectly clear,’ he said, ‘that men invalided out of the Army for ill-health while on active service, and considered permanently disabled from that ill-health, should not be called up and sent to the front while there are, as we all know, quite young and active men in many industries throughout the country within the age limit who have not yet been out to the front at all.’ And he added angrily: ‘Everybody knows it. Everybody feels it.’

    Churchill’s concern for a rapid development of mechanical warfare was accentuated in the first week of April, when he learnt of the impending British offensive east of Arras. Writing in the Sunday Pictorial on April 8, he warned that victory could not be obtained ‘simply by throwing in masses of men on the western front’, and argued that mechanical inventions could become, if properly used, ‘a substitute for men’.

    On April 9—Easter Monday—the British Army launched its spring offensive. By April 11 the Germans had been driven back nearly four miles, along a fourteen-mile front. That day Churchill wrote to Sinclair—who had been taken ill and was thus unable to take part in the battle:

    My dear,

    I am so sorry to hear of yr illness & I know how vexed you will be to be out of the fight. Never mind. Cavalry have no rôle on the western front. There will be no galloping through, & even catastrophe will be prevented by the unfailing interposition of preliminary hard facts.

    This battle seems to have been well organised and the Artillery (fed by the abused L.G. & other ‘politicians’) has proved once again overwhelming on the limited area exposed to its attack. But the secondary stages are vy costly, and the forward movement must be gradual—i.e. step by step.

    Meanwhile there is much to cause anxiety. Russia! The Submarines!! The German Reserve Army!!! (if it really exists). All these are factors of fundamental uncertainty.

    It is vy joyous reading of this brilliant episode. 11,000 Huns glad to accept life at the hands of our small army. One likes to dwell on it, altho I fear the tendencies are no longer so favourable as they used to be. Still America—dear to your heart & mine, is please God a final makeweight.

    Do not fret or chafe. Just do what is yr appointed task & may Heaven protect you till better days dawn—& even after that—is the prayer of yr sincere friend W.

    ***

    On April 17 the House of Commons debated the Government’s suppression of a series of articles in the Nation, in which it had been asserted that the British troops on the western front had been outmanoeuvred by the German ‘tactical’ withdrawal in Champagne, and that the German retreat had been a prudent act. The first of the articles, written on March 3, had been widely reprinted in Germany. The Government decided not to allow the others to appear.

    Lloyd George defended the suppression in a passionate speech. Churchill then rose to defend the Nation. But before he could speak, Lloyd George left the Chamber, a fact on which Churchill commented with much sarcasm. As for the articles themselves, he declared, they were ‘absolutely immaterial and innocent’; everything in them made ‘mild reading compared with the Dardanelles Report from the point of view of public confidence’. If such reports could not be published, it would soon lead ‘to a universal harmonious chorus of adulation from morning to night about whatever was done, until some frightful disaster took place’. The Government’s action betrayed ‘an undue love of power and an undue love of the assertion of arbitrary power’.

    During his speech, Churchill appealed to Bonar Law to take note, on Lloyd George’s behalf, of the deep concern of the House of Commons. When Bonar Law interrupted to say: ‘We will judge that by the Division,’ Churchill was stung to anger. ‘Do not look for quarrels,’ he replied, ‘do not make them; make it easy for every party, every force in this country, to give you its aid and support, and remove barriers and obstructions and misunderstandings that tend to cause superficial and apparent divergence among men whose aim is all directed to our common object of victory, on which all our futures depend.’ Above all, Churchill insisted, the Government must deal ‘fairly and justly’ with criticism, and not reply to it with ‘the kind of rhetoric or argument which might do very well on public platforms, but is entirely unsuitable to the cool discussion in the House of Commons’.

    Lloyd George knew that Churchill’s aim was to return to a position of authority, but that if no place were found for him, he would continue to attack the Government’s war policy. Towards the end of April he had discussed the possibility of Churchill’s employment with the Minister of Munitions, Dr Christopher Addison.¹⁵ Lloyd George suggested that Churchill might join the Ministry of Munitions as the Chairman of a Committee, or Board, to examine the development of mechanical aids to warfare.

    At Lloyd George’s suggestion, Addison met Churchill twice, and discussed the question with him. ‘It appears to me,’ Addison wrote to Lloyd George on April 27, ‘that the most effective way of giving effect to your suggestions and making the fullest use of Mr Churchill’s services, on the lines on which he feels free to assist, (viz:—without undue advertisement and without attaching to him special executive responsibilities) would be to form a small ad hoc Committee under his Chairmanship which should consider and discuss (1) the general question of the Tank programme, both as to numbers and types, and any other suggestions with regard to mechanical devices which may be worth considering.’ Addison added that the Ministry of Munitions would give Churchill ‘any facilities that might be required’. But nothing came of this suggestion. Two days later, when Lloyd George spoke at the Guildhall, his Secretary, Frances Stevenson,¹⁶ noted that Churchill, who was present, looked ‘very sulky’. Everyone she spoke to ‘remarked how surly he was looking, and he left quite alone’.

    In the first week of May, Churchill sought out his cousin, Frederick Guest,¹⁷ the Coalition Liberal Chief Whip. They discussed the growing Parliamentary opposition to Lloyd George’s Government, and the fact that Liberal, Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs were grumbling about the conduct and prospects of the war. If these three Parties were to unite against Lloyd George, and if Asquith were to mount a direct Liberal challenge, Conservative support alone would not be enough to sustain the administration. Churchill suggested to his cousin that Lloyd George should take the initiative, and summon a secret Session of the House of Commons.

    Guest informed Lloyd George of Churchill’s advice. A secret Session was announced for May 10. Asquith, who was unprepared for such an opportunity, did not seek to exploit it. No member of Asquith’s opposition group asked to open the Debate. The task therefore fell to Churchill, whose main appeal was a repetition of what he had been saying openly for more than six months: that there should be no premature offensive in France. The United States had entered the war on April 2; but American troops could not be ready for action in Europe until 1918. ‘Is it not obvious…’ he asked, ‘that we ought not to squander the remaining armies of France and Britain in precipitate offensives before the American power begins to be felt on the battlefields?’ He proceeded to give his reasons: ‘We have not the numerical superiority necessary for such a successful offensive. We have no marked artillery preponderance over the enemy. We have not got the numbers of tanks which we need. We have not established superiority in the air. We have discovered neither the mechanical nor the tactical methods of piercing an indefinite succession of fortified lines defended by German troops.’ Then he returned once more to his plea: ‘Shall we then in such circumstances cast away our remaining man power in desperate efforts on the Western Front before large American forces are marshalled in France? Let the House implore the Prime Minister to use the authority which he wields, and all his personal weight, to prevent the French and British High Commands from dragging each other into fresh bloody and disastrous adventures. Master the U-boat attack. Bring over the American millions. And meanwhile maintain an active defensive on the Western Front, so as to economize French and British lives, and so as to train, increase and perfect our armies and our methods for a decisive effort in a later year.’

    In his reply, Lloyd George refused to commit himself against a renewed offensive. Nor did he tell the House of Commons the extent to which he was already committed. Shortly after he had finished speaking, he and Churchill met by chance behind the Speaker’s chair. ‘In his satisfaction at the course the Debate had taken,’ Churchill later recalled in The World Crisis, ‘he assured me of his determination to have me at his side. From that day, although holding no office, I became to a large extent his colleague. He repeatedly discussed with me every aspect of the war and many of his secret hopes and fears.’

    A few days later Churchill decided to visit the French front to see for himself the military situation. Lloyd George agreed to support his visit, and when the two men lunched together at Walton Heath on Sunday May 19, Lloyd George wrote to the French Minister of War, Paul Painlevé,¹⁸ asking him to give Churchill ‘every facility’ for visiting the front. That evening, Frances Stevenson recorded in her diary Lloyd George’s reasons for drawing closer to Churchill once more:

    He says he wants someone in who will cheer him up and help & encourage him, & who will not be continually coming to him with a long face and telling him that everything is going wrong. At present, he says, he has to carry the whole of his colleagues on his back. They all come to him with their troubles and trials, instead of trying to relieve him of anxiety. D [Lloyd George] feels that he must have someone a little more cheerful to help him to cope with all these mournful faces—Bonar Law not the least of them. I think D. is thinking of getting Winston in in some capacity. He has an intense admiration for his cleverness, & at any rate he is energetic and forceful. D. has seen him once or twice lately & I think they have talked things over. Churchill is very loath to associate with the Asquithites. He hates McKenna¹⁹ & was telling D. that McKenna simply gloated when the submarine losses were high….

    I don’t know whether D. is seriously thinking of taking Churchill on, as he knows his limitations and realises that he is eaten up with conceit. ‘He has spoilt himself by reading about Napoleon’, said D. to me.

    ***

    During the spring of 1917 Churchill had bought a small home in the country, Lullenden, in Sussex. It cost him £6,000, which he raised by selling £5,000 of Pennsylvania Railroad stock, and a £1,000 Exchequer War Bond. He liked to spend each weekend at Lullenden, relaxing with his family and painting. His nephew Peregrine,²⁰ who was four years old at the time, later recalled:

    We had a game called the bear game. Uncle Winston used to prop up his paintings against the wall, to make a tunnel, and then he would chase us through the tunnel.

    We had three German prisoners at Lullenden working on the farm. One day we were taken ill with food poisoning. The prisoners were arrested and taken away. We had pet rabbits. One night they were served up for dinner.

    Churchill’s son Randolph²¹ also remembered Lullenden. He was six years old at the time of its purchase. Forty-four years later he recalled how his father would set off through the woods, ‘and we all had to chase him. Once he disturbed a nest of bees or perhaps wasps and passed through unscathed. All of us children however, in hot pursuit were badly stung….’ Randolph also remembered an outdoor version of the bear game:

    Father was the Bear. We had to turn our backs and close our eyes and he would climb a tree. All us children—six or seven perhaps—had then to go and look for Bear. We were very much afraid but would advance courageously on a tree and say: ‘Bear! Bear! Bear!’ And then run away. Suddenly he would drop from a tree and we would scatter in various directions. He would pursue us and the one he caught would be the loser.

    ***

    On Saturday May 26 Churchill left England for his visit to France. The French high command entertained him as they had done over two years before, when he was a Cabinet Minister; they listened to his opinions and responded to his enthusiasm. Under the auspices of the French Ministry of War, he was taken to the battlefields of 1916—to Verdun, the Argonne and the Vimy Ridge. ‘There was no danger,’ Churchill wrote to his wife on May 29, ‘& hardly the sound of a gun.’ He dined with General Fayolle,²² whose Army corps he had visited in December 1915, and who had since been given the much wider command of an Army Group. ‘Instead of 3 Divisions,’ Churchill explained to his wife, ‘he commands 41! So he has gone up in the world. It was pleasant to find complete agreement on all military questions. Indeed I think the French soldiers see vy clearly the truths of this front.’ The tour was exhausting: ‘We have been travelling very long distances in motor cars,’ he told his wife, ‘and in continuous movement from daylight till night: & I expect this will continue.’

    While in Paris, Churchill saw Marshal Foch,²³ who had been removed from his fighting command after the unsuccessful and costly French offensive in Artois in the spring of 1915. Churchill saw Foch in his office near Les Invalides—‘Certainly no one ever appeared less downcast or conscious of being at a discount,’ he later recorded, in an article published in the Pall Mall magazine in July 1929; and his article continued:

    He discussed with the utmost frankness and vigour the whole scene of the war, and particularly those Eastern spheres in which I had been so much interested. His postures, his captivating manner, his vigorous and often pantomimic gestures—comical, if they had not been fully expressive—the energy of his ideas when his interest was aroused, made a vivid impression upon me. He was fighting all the time, whether he had armies to launch or only thoughts.

    After two days in the French battle zone, Churchill made plans for his journey northwards, to the British front. ‘Evidently,’ he wrote to his wife in his letter of May 29, ‘all the claws of the military pussy cat are withdrawn into their sheaths and a soft purring sound is plainly audible.’

    Before leaving for the British front, Churchill spent two days in Paris, staying at the Ritz. On May 29 he lunched with Lord Esher²⁴ at the Café des Ambassadeurs. Also at the lunch was Sir Henry Wilson,²⁵ who wrote a full account of the conversation in his diary:

    Winston in great form & evidently in high favour with L.G. so I expect he will soon be employed again. He is very keen (& rightly so) that the navy should fight instead of doing nothing & he has great plans for bringing on fights by laying mine fields close up against enemy ports. Then his great plan for the moment is to delay any attempt at a decision on this front till the Americans come over—say 12–15 months. He developed this at length using both good & silly arguments all mixed up….

    Winston was very keen to get ½ Salonica Garrn on flat-bottomed boats to be used for sudden descents here & there. There is the germ of a good idea there, but I besought him not to go out of Salonica without bargaining about it.

    So we have a great lunch & long talk, and it always amuses me to talk to Winston….

    On May 30 Churchill lunched with Painlevé. Several senior French officials had been invited to meet him.²⁶ One of the Englishmen who was present at the lunch, Sir Henry Norman,²⁷ sent Lloyd George an account of his own conversation with Churchill on May 31. ‘I asked Churchill if his visit to the French front had modified his pessimistic outlook, as expressed in the secret session. He said it had only confirmed him in his views!’ Churchill was still convinced that the correct time for an offensive was 1918, not 1917. In his letter to his wife of May 29 he had written: ‘It has all been vy pleasant, but never for a moment does the thought of this carnage & ruin escape my mind or my thoughts stray from the supreme problem. I am much stimulated by the change and movement, & new discussions with new people, & I am vy full of ideas.’

    On the morning of May 31 Churchill left Paris for the British front, where he spent the whole of June 1. On June 2 he lunched with Sir Douglas Haig²⁸ at St Omer. In his diary Haig recorded that Churchill had argued in favour of postponing the offensive until the summer of 1918, but that during their discussion he had seemed ‘most humble’. Haig had received, however, a most critical letter about Churchill, written by Lord Esher on May 30:

    My dear Douglas,

    A true appreciation of Winson Churchill,—of his potential uses,—is a difficult matter.

    The degree in which his clever but unbalanced mind will in future fulfil its responsibilities is very speculative.

    He handles great subjects in rhythmical language, and becomes quickly enslaved by his own phrases.

    He deceives himself into the belief that he takes broad views, when his mind is fixed upon one comparatively small aspect of the question.

    At this moment he is captured by the picture of what 1918 may bring forth in the shape of accumulated reserves of men and material, poured out from England in one great and final effort; while, at the same time a million Americans sweep over Holland on to the German flank.

    He fails to grasp the meaning to France, to England, to Europe, of a postponement of effort—through the long summer that was crammed full of artificial expectations—and a still longer winter….

    It seems not unlikely that L. George will put Winston into the Government, or give him some showy position. There have been pourparlers between L.G. and the Tories on the subject: but Winston told me no details. He appeals to L. George, because he can strike ideas into colour and imagery. But his ideas are ‘Transpontine’ that is to say too melodramatic; and nothing but steadiness and the very coolest appreciation of the factors in the problems of the war and its settlement can give us the position we ought to occupy at the War’s end….

    The power of Winston for good and evil is, I should say, very considerable.

    His temperament is of wax and quicksilver, and this strange toy amuses and fascinates L. George, who likes and fears him.

    You will find much that he has to say about the navy both interesting and valuable. All that he has to say about the army valueless. It may be worth your while to instruct him. Of this you will be the best judge.

    To me he appears not as a statesman, but as a politician of keen intelligence lacking in those puissant qualities that are essential in a man who is to conduct the business of our country through the coming year. I hope therefore that he may remain outside the Government.

    2

    ‘A Dangerously Ambitious Man’

    While Churchill was still in France, several newspapers announced categorically that on his return he would be brought into the Cabinet as Chairman of the Air Board. Downing Street refused to confirm or deny the report. There was an immediate spate of protest. On June 3 the Sunday Times declared that Churchill’s appointment to any Cabinet post would be ‘a grave danger to the Administration and to the Empire as whole’. The leading article continued: ‘Whatever his friends and admirers may say or think of him, his public record has proved beyond all argument or doubt that he does not possess those qualities of balanced judgement and shrewd farsightedness which are essential to the sound administrator….’

    Two of Lloyd George’s Conservative Ministers, Lord Curzon²⁹ and Lord Derby,³⁰ were quick to complain about the rumoured appointment. ‘As you know,’ Curzon wrote to Bonar Law on June 4, ‘some of us myself included only joined Ll.G on the distinct understanding that W.Ch was not to be a member of the Govt. It is on record, and to the pledge I and I think all my colleagues adhere.’

    Lord Derby went to see Lloyd George on June 8 to make his protest. Immediately after the meeting he wrote to reinforce his arguments. Churchill’s inclusion in the Government, he wrote, could only be ‘a source of weakness’. Derby was only prepared to accept Churchill in the Cabinet on three conditions, which Lloyd George had apparently agreed to, and which Derby set out in his letter:

    that he was not a member of the War Cabinet and did not attend any meetings unless specially summoned for business connected with the Board;

    that his duties as Chairman of the Board were the same as those of Lord Cowdray³¹ and that he had nothing to do with either personnel, tactics or the nomination of the War Office representatives on the Board; and

    that he received no War Office telegrams other than those which were in any way connected with his particular department.

    Derby added that he doubted whether Churchill would ever agree to accept ‘a comparatively minor position’, or agree ‘to do his own work without interfering with other peoples’’.

    A third Conservative Minister, Lord Milner,³² was likewise angered at the thought of Churchill’s appointment. On June 30 Sir Henry Wilson recorded a conversation with Milner in his diary: ‘He told me he was getting on well with LG on the whole, although he had very difficult times now and then; that only a few days ago he nearly resigned over some subject which he was afraid would come up again. I thought it was Winston….’

    Not all Lloyd George’s colleagues were as hostile as Curzon, Derby and Milner. Dr Addison shared Lloyd George’s desire to see Churchill’s talents used in the interest of the State. On June 4 he had written to Lloyd George about the Air Board: ‘I feel that we should get Winston in & the more it is talked about the more opportunity there is for opposition to gather. I should advise acting quickly in this so as to get the ice broken.’ Addison was also willing to hand over the Ministry of Munitions to Churchill. ‘Give me three weeks,’ he added, ‘and I could get the estimates over & shape things here through my new Board of Directors so as to pave the way for Winston if you wished him to follow me.’ Lord Rothermere³³ also wrote to Lloyd George at this time:

    …you know I hold the view very strongly that if you saw your way to appoint Winston to the Air Board it would by reason of his driving power be popular particularly under yourself as you alone of all his friends can control him. Misfortune has chastened him. He really is very attached to you and it seems a calamity that his knowledge and energy should be lost to the nation at this crisis.

    If you make this appointment you can rely upon me using all the influence I have to support it….

    On June 8 Christopher Addison recorded in his diary: ‘I advised LG that if he wanted to get Winston in to put him into the Air Board at once, otherwise he only gave opportunity for opposition which is very strong in the Unionist Party.’ But Lloyd George made no announcement. During the day Lord Curzon wrote angrily to Lloyd George:

    My dear Prime Minister,

    May I again and for the last time urge you to think well before you make the appointment (W Ch) which we have more than once discussed? It will be an appointment intensely unpopular with many of your chief colleagues—in the opinions of some of whom it will lead to the disruption of the Govt at an early date—even if it does not lead as it may well do to resignations now.

    Derby, who opened the subject to me of his own accord this evening & who has spoken to you, tells me that it will be intensely unpopular in the Army.

    I have reason to believe the same of the Navy.

    Is it worthwhile to incur all these risks and to override some of those who are your most faithful colleagues & allies merely in order to silence a possible tribune of the people whom in my judgment the people will absolutely decline to follow?

    He is a potential danger in opposition. In the opinion of all of us he will as a member of the Govt be an active danger in our midst.

    On June 8, Sir George Younger,³⁴ who knew the temper of the Tory Party, warned Lloyd George that Churchill’s inclusion in the Government ‘would strain to breaking point the Unionist Party’s loyalty to you’. Younger’s letter listed new and old complaints:

    His unfortunate record, the utter futility of his criticisms of your War Policy at the last Secret Session, and his grave responsibility for two of the greatest disasters in the War have accentuated the distrust of him which has prevailed both in the House and outside of it for a long time past, and I feel certain that his inclusion in the Government would prove disastrous to its fortunes. I believe the Unionist Party in the House would unanimously back this opinion and I am certain that our great organisations in the country of which, as you know, I am Chairman would strongly assert it.

    The protests in the Cabinet continued. The man whom Churchill would have replaced at the Air Board, Lord Cowdray, warned Lloyd George, in a letter on June 9, that Churchill would take over a thriving department and would then make sure ‘that he, and he alone, gets all the credit from the very brilliant achievements of the Air Service’. Churchill was ‘a dangerously ambitious man’ who would be led by the success of the Air Board ‘to think that he was the most important man (in the eyes of the country) in the Government & therefore the proper man to make a bid for the Premiership’. If he went to the Air Board, Cowdray concluded, he would be a ‘grave danger, both to the country & to yourself’.

    The rumour of Churchill’s appointment to the Air Board had reached the United States. From New York, Lord Northcliffe telegraphed to Churchill, on June 13: ‘Many congratulations on your appointment.’ But Northcliffe’s telegram was premature. Lloyd George had in fact made Churchill no offer of a Cabinet place. ‘The latest attempts to hustle Mr Churchill into the Ministry,’ noted the Morning Post, ‘have failed.’

    On June 18 Lloyd George invited Christopher Addison to lunch with him at 10 Downing Street, and spoke of the strong Conservative opposition to giving Churchill the Air Board. Lloyd George had another scheme. ‘He is going to try,’ Addison wrote, ‘to get him into the Duchy of Lancaster….’ Later that same day Lloyd George sent Frederick Guest to see Churchill, and to offer him a place in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with elaborated functions. Churchill declined.

    That night Guest sent Lloyd George an account of the interview. Churchill, he wrote, was prepared ‘to try to help to beat the Hun in either of the following capacities. 1. To assist you in council in the War Cabinet, if necessary without salary. 2. To accept charge & responsibility for any War Department, as long as he has powers to

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