The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (60 page)

I remain here at your disposal.
¹

I was surprised to hear nothing from Mr. Chamberlain during the whole of September 2, which was a day of intense crisis. I thought it probable that a last-minute effort was being made to preserve peace; and this proved true. However, when Parliament met in the afternoon, a short but very fierce debate occurred, in which the Prime Minister’s temporising statement was ill-received by the House. When Mr. Greenwood rose to speak on behalf of the Labour Opposition, Mr. Amery from the Conservative benches cried out to him, “Speak for England.” This was received with loud cheers. There was no doubt that the temper of the House was for war. I even deemed it more resolute and united than in the similar scene on August 2, 1914, in which I had also taken part. In the evening a number of gentlemen of importance in all parties called upon me at my flat opposite the Westminster Cathedral, and all expressed deep anxiety lest we should fail in our obligations to Poland. The House was to meet again at noon the next day. I wrote that night as follows to the Prime Minister:

2.9.39.

I have not heard anything from you since our talks on Friday, when I understood that I was to serve as your colleague, and when you told me that this would be announced speedily. I really do not know what has happened during the course of this agitated day; though it seems to me that entirely different ideas have ruled from those which you expressed to me when you said, “The die was cast.” I quite realise that in contact with this tremendous European situation changes of method may become necessary, but I feel entitled to ask you to let me know how we stand, both publicly and privately, before the debate opens at noon.

It seems to me that if the Labour Party, and as I gather the Liberal Party, are estranged, it will be difficult to form an effective War Government on the limited basis you mentioned. I consider that a further effort should be made to bring in the Liberals, and in addition that the composition and scope of the War Cabinet you discussed with me requires review. There was a feeling tonight in the House that injury had been done to the spirit of national unity by the apparent weakening of our resolve. I do not underrate the difficulties you have with the French; but I trust that we shall now take our decision independently, and thus give our French friends any lead that may be necessary. In order to do this, we shall need the strongest and most integral combination that can be formed. I therefore ask that there should be no announcement of the composition of the War Cabinet until we have had a further talk.

As I wrote to you yesterday morning, I hold myself entirely at your disposal, with every desire to aid you in your task.

I learnt later that a British ultimatum had been given to Germany at 9.30
P.M
. on September 1, and that this had been followed by a second and final ultimatum at 9
A.M
. on September 3. The early broadcast of the third announced that the Prime Minister would speak on the radio at 11.15
A.M
. As it now seemed certain that war would be immediately declared by Great Britain and also by France, I prepared a short speech which I thought would be becoming to the solemn and awful moment in our lives and history.

The Prime Minister’s broadcast informed us that we were already at war, and he had scarcely ceased speaking when a strange, prolonged, wailing noise, afterwards to become familiar, broke upon the ear. My wife came into the room braced by the crisis and commented favourably upon German promptitude and precision, and we went up to the flat top of the house to see what was going on. Around us on every side, in the clear, cool September light, rose the roofs and spires of London. Above them were already slowly rising thirty or forty cylindrical balloons. We gave the Government a good mark for this evident sign of preparation, and as the quarter of an hour’s notice, which we had been led to expect we should receive, was now running out, we made our way to the shelter assigned to us, armed with a bottle of brandy and other appropriate medical comforts.

Our shelter was a hundred yards down the street and consisted merely of an open basement, not even sandbagged, in which the tenants of half a dozen flats were already assembled. Everyone was cheerful and jocular, as is the English manner when about to encounter the unknown. As I gazed from the doorway along the empty street and at the crowded room below, my imagination drew pictures of ruin and carnage and vast explosions shaking the ground; of buildings clattering down in dust and rubble, of fire brigades and ambulances scurrying through the smoke, beneath the drone of hostile aeroplanes. For had we not all been taught how terrible air raids would be? The Air Ministry had, in natural self-importance, greatly exaggerated their power. The pacifists had sought to play on public fears, and those of us who had so long pressed for preparation and a superior air force, while not accepting the most lurid forecasts, had been content they should act as a spur. I knew that the Government were prepared, in the first few days of the war, with over two hundred and fifty thousand beds for air-raid casualties. Here at least there had been no underestimation. Now we should see what were the facts.

After about ten minutes had passed, the wailing broke out again. I was myself not sure that this was not a reiteration of the previous warning, but a man came running along the street shouting “All Clear,” and we dispersed to our dwellings and went about our business. Mine was to go to the House of Commons, which duly met at noon with its unhurried procedure and brief, stately prayers. There I received a note from the Prime Minister asking me to come to his room as soon as the debate died down. As I sat in my place, listening to the speeches, a very strong sense of calm came over me, after the intense passions and excitements of the last few days. I felt a serenity of mind and was conscious of a kind of uplifted detachment from human and personal affairs. The glory of Old England, peace-loving and ill-prepared as she was, but instant and fearless at the call of honour, thrilled my being and seemed to lift our fate to those spheres far removed from earthly facts and physical sensation. I tried to convey some of this mood to the House when I spoke, not without acceptance.

Mr. Chamberlain told me that he had considered my letters, that the Liberals would not join the Government, that he was able to meet my views about the average age to some extent by bringing the three Service Ministers into the War Cabinet in spite of their executive functions, and that this would reduce the average age to less than sixty. This, he said, made it possible for him to offer me the Admiralty as well as a seat in the War Cabinet. I was very glad of this because, though I had not raised the point, I naturally preferred a definite task to that exalted brooding over the work done by others which may well be the lot of a Minister, however influential, who has no department. It is easier to give directions than advice, and more agreeable to have the right to act, even in a limited sphere, than the privilege to talk at large. Had the Prime Minister in the first instance given me the choice between the War Cabinet and the Admiralty, I should, of course, have chosen the Admiralty. Now I was to have both.

Nothing had been said about when I should formally receive my office from the King, and in fact I did not kiss hands till the fifth. But the opening hours of war may be vital with navies. I therefore sent word to the Admiralty that I would take charge forthwith and arrive at six o’clock. On this the Board were kind enough to signal to the Fleet, “Winston is back.” So it was that I came again to the room I had quitted in pain and sorrow almost exactly a quarter of a century before, when Lord Fisher’s resignation had led to my removal from my post as First Lord and ruined irretrievably, as it proved, the important conception of forcing the Dardanelles. A few feet behind me, as I sat in my old chair, was the wooden map-case I had had fixed in 1911, and inside it still remained the chart of the North Sea on which each day, in order to focus attention on the supreme objective, I had made the Naval Intelligence Branch record the movements and dispositions of the German High Seas Fleet. Since 1911 much more than a quarter of a century had passed, and still mortal peril threatened us at the hands of the same nation. Once again defence of the rights of a weak state, outraged and invaded by unprovoked aggression, forced us to draw the sword. Once again we must fight for life and honour against all the might and fury of the valiant, disciplined, and ruthless German race. Once again! So be it.

* * * * *

Presently the First Sea Lord came to see me. I had known Dudley Pound slightly in my previous tenure of the Admiralty as one of Lord Fisher’s trusted staff officers. I had strongly condemned in Parliament the dispositions of the Mediterranean Fleet when he commanded it in 1938, at the moment of the Italian descent upon Albania. Now we met as colleagues upon whose intimate relations and fundamental agreement the smooth working of the vast Admiralty machine would depend. We eyed each other amicably if doubtfully. But from the earliest days our friendship and mutual confidence grew and ripened. I measured and respected the great professional and personal qualities of Admiral Pound. As the war, with all its shifts and fortunes, beat upon us with clanging blows, we became ever truer comrades and friends. And when, four years later, he died at the moment of the general victory over Italy, I mourned with a personal pang for all the Navy and the nation had lost.

I spent a good part of the night of the third, meeting the Sea Lords and heads of the various departments, and from the morning of the fourth I laid my hands upon the naval affairs. As in 1914, precautionary measures against surprise had been taken in advance of general mobilisation. As early as June 15, large numbers of officers and men of the reserves had been called up. The reserve fleet, fully manned for exercises, had been inspected by the King on August 9, and on the twenty-second various additional classes of reservists had been summoned. On the twenty-fourth an Emergency Powers Defence Bill was passed through Parliament, and at the same time the Fleet was ordered to its war stations; in fact our main forces had been at Scapa Flow for some weeks. After the general mobilisation of the Fleet had been authorised, the Admiralty war plan had unfolded smoothly, and in spite of certain serious deficiencies, notably in cruisers and anti-submarine vessels, the challenge, as in 1914, found the Fleet equal to the immense tasks before it.

* * * * *

I had, as the reader may be aware, a considerable knowledge of the Admiralty and of the Royal Navy. The four years from 1911 to 1915, when I had the duty of preparing the Fleet for war and the task of directing the Admiralty during the first ten critical months, had been the most vivid of my life. I had amassed an immense amount of detailed information and had learned many lessons about the Fleet and war at sea. In the interval I had studied and written much about naval affairs. I had spoken repeatedly upon them in the House of Commons. I had always preserved a close contact with the Admiralty and, although their foremost critic in these years, I had been made privy to many of their secrets. My four years’ work on the Air Defence Research Committee had given me access to all the most modern developments of radar which now vitally affected the naval service. I have mentioned how in June, 1938, Lord Chatfield, the First Sea Lord, had himself shown me over the anti-submarine school at Portland, and how we had gone to sea in destroyers on an exercise in submarine-detection by the use of the Asdic apparatus. My intimacy with the late Admiral Henderson, Controller of the Navy till 1938, and the discussions which the First Lord of those days had encouraged me to have with Lord Chatfield upon the design of new battleships and cruisers, gave me a full view over the sphere of new construction. I was, of course, familiar from the published records with the strength, composition, and structure of our Fleet, actual and prospective, and with those of the German, Italian, and Japanese Navies.

As a critic and a spur, my public speeches had naturally dwelt upon weaknesses and shortcomings and, taken by themselves, had by no means portrayed either the vast strength of the Royal Navy or my own confidence in it. It would be unjust to the Chamberlain Administration and their service advisers to suggest that the Navy had not been adequately prepared for a war with Germany, or with Germany and Italy. The effective defence of Australasia and India in the face of a simultaneous attack by Japan raised more serious difficulties: but in this case – which was at the moment unlikely – such an assault might well have involved the United States. I therefore felt, when I entered upon my duties, that I had at my disposal what was undoubtedly the finest-tempered instrument of naval war in the world, and I was sure that time would be granted to make good the oversights of peace and to cope with the equally certain unpleasant surprises of war.

* * * * *

The tremendous naval situation of 1914 in no way repeated itself. Then we had entered the war with a ratio of sixteen to ten in capital ships and two to one in cruisers. In those days we had mobilised eight battle squadrons of eight battleships with a cruiser squadron and a flotilla assigned to each, together with important detached cruiser forces, and I looked forward to a general action with a weaker but still formidable fleet. Now, the German Navy had only begun their rebuilding and had no power even to form a line of battle. Their two great battleships,
Bismarck
and
Tirpitz,
both of which, it must be assumed, had transgressed the agreed Treaty limits in tonnage, were at least a year from completion. The light battle cruisers,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
which had been fraudulently increased by the Germans from ten thousand tons to twenty-six thousand tons, had been completed in 1938. Besides this, Germany had available the three “pocket battleships” of ten thousand tons,
Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer,
and
Deutschland,
together with two fast eight-inch-gun cruisers of ten thousand tons, six light cruisers, and sixty destroyers and smaller vessels. Thus there was no challenge in surface craft to our command of the seas. There was no doubt that the British Navy was overwhelmingly superior to the German in strength and in numbers, and no reason to assume that its science training or skill was in any way defective. Apart from the shortage of cruisers and destroyers, the Fleet had been maintained at its customary high standard. It had to face enormous and innumerable duties, rather than an antagonist.