The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (58 page)

This incident in 1918 was also an example of the notorious cussedness of Australian soldiers, which had become a constant headache for senior officers, long accustomed to the docility of the British Tommy. The Australian fighting man was an independent-minded creature whose first and often only attachment was to his immediate unit. Australian officers, although for the most part from middle-class backgrounds, had to spend some time in the ranks, and relations between them and their men were free and easy. Extending the spirit of ‘mateship’, one Australian officer shared his bottle of whisky with some British NCOs and found himself reprimanded by a British court martial, which interpreted his gesture as one likely to undermine discipline. Such a view of discipline, indeed the whole concept of hierarchy it was intended to uphold, was utterly incomprehensible to the Australian soldier. At first, Australians had been puzzled by the servile obedience shown to their officers by English soldiers (the Scots seemed far less passive ), but their attitude later turned to one of contempt towards men who refused to stick up for themselves.
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British generals, Haig in particular, were disturbed by the possibility that the insubordinate spirit of the Australians might contaminate British personnel. It did not; in fact, there was an understandable jealousy felt by many British servicemen towards the ‘fuckin’ five bobbers’, since Australians were paid five shillings (25p) a day as opposed to the one shilling allowed the British soldier.
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In Egypt, and afterwards France, this extra cash was usually spent on drink and prostitutes, and there were protests in the Australian press about the exposure of the country’s virtuous young manhood to the ‘depravity’ of the former country.
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A near epidemic of venereal diseases among Anzac troops early in 1915 led to a riot in Cairo in which brothels were sacked and burned. Subsequent manifestations of Australian recalcitrance included two mutinies in France in 1918, and the destruction of the Arab village of Surafend and the killing of several of its inhabitants as retaliation for the murder of a New Zealander.

By contrast, the Indian professional soldier knew his duty and place in the scheme of things, or so his officers thought. The stress of war proved them wrong, for the fighting spirit of the two Indian divisions sent to France in the autumn of 1914 soon evaporated. Despite internal reforms of the past decade, the Indian army and its senior officers were physically and mentally unprepared to fight a modern, European war. A combination of cold, wet weather and extraordinarily heavy casualties (some units were reduced by half in a single action) suffered in battle led to a decay of morale which was reflected in a rash of self-inflicted wounds and malingering during the winter of 1914–15.
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In May 1915, the censors of Indian soldiers’ mail revealed that a large number were infected with ‘despair of survival’, and Haig feared that a mutiny was imminent.
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The Indian government, which had vainly attempted to keep knowledge of its soldiers’ discontent to itself, concurred, and in September the Indian contingent was pulled out of France for redeployment in Mesopotamia.

Mobilisation of the empire’s manpower in 1914 had proceeded by slow stages, and according to no plan beyond the need to find dominion soldiers to replace imperial garrisons of British regulars, who were urgently needed in France. It was events there during the winter of 1914–15 which dictated the shape and direction of the empire’s war effort. By the turn of the year the conflict in France had evolved into what is best described as an extended siege. Two increasingly well-protected lines of fortification, each many miles deep, stretched from the Channel to the Alps. For the next three and a half years, the Anglo-French and German armies attempted to fracture and penetrate their adversary’s network of barbed wire, trenches and bunkers. At the same time, the opposing high commands endeavoured to discover a formula by which the innovations of modern warfare – machine-guns, high explosive shells, pinpoint bombardment, aircraft, poison gas, tanks, and wireless – could be brought together to deliver the knock-out blow. This task was made more difficult by simultaneous improvements in the techniques of defence.

The process of finding a way to end the deadlock in the West was painfully slow and bloody. It was marked by a sequence of mass offensives between 1915 and 1918 which consumed men by the hundred thousand and yielded relatively minor tactical gains. Haig, who took command of the British Expeditionary Force in December 1915, justified this strategy in terms of wearing down the German army to a point of moral and physical exhaustion. This was arguable. What was not was that the Allies would need a continual flow of fighting men to make good the losses which were the inevitable result of a war of attrition. To start with, and in the belief that the contest would be soon over, Britain and the dominions had relied on volunteers.

Conscription had long been regarded as inimical to those cherished notions of individual freedom which obtained in Britain and the dominions. Principles of this sort were luxuries in time of war, and as the flow of volunteers slackened the British government was forced to introduce conscription at the beginning of 1916. New Zealand followed suit in May, but in Australia, where the enlistment rate was falling, there was widespread resistance to compulsory service. The matter was twice put to the public in referendums in October 1916 and December 1917, and each time the vote was decisively against conscription. On each occasion there had been considerable opposition from Australians of Irish descent whose ancestral dislike for Britain had been sharpened by the condign measures employed after the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, and the British government’s reluctance to allow Home Rule. Conscription also opened up racial divisions in Canada where French Canadians objected to conscription legislation passed in August 1917. Its enforcement during the winter and spring of 1917–18 provoked riots in Quebec. Fears of a similar rift between those of British ancestry who were wholeheartedly behind the war and the Afrikaners, of whom a minority were pro-German, inhibited the South African government from even considering conscription. The reactions to conscription of Australian Irish,
Canadiens
and Boers were a reminder that within the white dominions were communities whose collective historic memory made it impossible for them to have any natural affinity with Britain, or any emotional attachment to the idea of empire.

While the dominions had the final word as to whether or not conscription was adopted, overall control of the imperial war effort and allocation of imperial resources was the responsibility of the British war cabinet and high command. Both worked in harness if not harmony with their French counterparts, and were constrained by having to take into account their ally’s needs. Domestic political intrigue and debate had not been suspended at the outbreak of war, rather they became more intense and bitter as it became clear that successive governments were failing to deliver victories. Asquith’s Liberal war cabinet, to which the imperial hero Kitchener had been co-opted as Minister for War, was replaced by a coalition in April 1915. Asquith survived until December 1916, when he was unseated by a cabal of newspaper owners and politicians who believed that he lacked the energy and willpower needed to win the war. Lloyd George possessed both qualities, as well as charisma. He succeeded Asquith, heading a coalition which remained in power, often uncomfortably, for the next two years.

The entries and exits of ministries, ministers and for that matter generals and admirals, were the outward evidence of discord and divisions among those responsible for deciding strategy. By the beginning of 1915, two distinct views were emerging as to the nature of the war and how it might be won. On one hand there were the ‘Westerners’ who, with French backing, wanted a concentration of resources in France on the grounds that victory could only be achieved by the defeat of the German army there. On the other, there were the ‘Easterners’ who argued that the war in France had become a stalemate and, as the casualty lists were daily proving, attempts to gain a breakthrough just squandered lives. Instead, an attack should be made on Germany’s allies, weaker vessels which would shatter easily, and whose destruction would undermine Germany.

Turkey was the first target of the Easterners. Forcing the Straits would bring down the Ottoman empire and open a passage to Russia, which was showing signs of extreme strain. Furthermore, and this made the enterprise highly attractive to imperialists such as Churchill and Kitchener, Britain could take a share of Turkish provinces. The ‘scramble’ for Turkey had, in fact, already started; in November 1914 an Indian expeditionary force had occupied Basra and was tentatively moving northwards, while the Russians had invaded eastern Anatolia. Diplomatic preparations for a postwar division of the spoils were in hand. By the end of the year, Russia had been allocated the Straits, and after much wrangling the Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916 defined the boundaries of the British and French official and unofficial empires in Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine and Mesopotamia.

So, according to the Easterners, operations against Turkey would puncture Germany’s ‘soft underbelly’; might lead to a Balkan front against Austria-Hungary; and provide an opportunity to extend the empire. If, as seemed likely between 1915 and 1917, it was impossible to break the deadlock in France, then a negotiated peace with Germany would follow. Britain had, therefore, to acquire some bargaining counters and look to the future. Sir Mark Sykes, a Yorkshire MP with a specialist, first-hand knowledge of the Middle East, argued in 1916 that by tightening its grip on southern Mesopotamia Britain would be better placed to resist post-war Russian encroachments in the region. He, like many others, assumed that when the war ended the great powers would restart their former global jockeying for influence and territory.

The Easterners’ arguments prevailed within the war cabinet and the result was the Dardanelles expedition in the spring of 1915. Its supporters not only claimed that it would knock Turkey out of the war, but it would be a spectacular affirmation of the military might of the British empire and France. This object lesson in imperial power quickly went awry. In all, 129,000 troops were landed, a third of them Anzacs, but Turkish resistance was dogged. The campaign dragged on into the autumn, and, when it was obvious that no breakthrough could be made, the war cabinet reluctantly approved a withdrawal.

The evacuation of the Gallipoli peninsula in December 1915 was a signal humiliation for the imperial powers, particularly Britain. The conventional imperial wisdom, expressed shortly after by a senior Indian army officer, held that, ‘We owe our position to the fundamental and inherent superiority of the European as a fighting man over the Asiatic.’
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But this no longer held true: a predominantly Turkish army had beaten a predominantly white one and proved that Europeans were not invincible. Gallipoli confirmed for the peoples of Asia and the Middle East the lesson of Russia’s defeat at the hands of Japan ten years before; white armies were not unbeatable. Mustapha Kamal Pasha, who had masterminded the defence of the Dardanelles and is better known by his post-war name, Kamal Atatürk, became the focus for and leader of the Turkish national movement, and an example to other Middle Eastern nationalists. A further blow to European supremacy was delivered in April 1916, when an Anglo–Indian army was forced to surrender at Kut-al-Amhara on the Tigris.

The reverses at Gallipoli and Kut damaged British prestige. The last confirmed the unfitness for modern warfare of the Indian army, or at least its high command. The ‘scramble’ for Turkey was proving a far harder task than its earlier counterparts in Africa and China. In terms of winning the war, the Gallipoli and Mesopotamian campaigns were, as the Westerners had always insisted, sideshows which wasted manpower needed to fight the real war in France.

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The Gallipoli campaign forms the background to John Buchan’s thriller
Greenmantle,
published in October 1916. The plot revolves around an attempt by the Turko-German high command to enkindle a mass uprising among the Muslims of North Africa, the Sahara, the Middle East and India in the name of a messianic holy man. The fictional holy war is prevented in the nick of time, but the possibility of a real one was a source of unending anxiety for British and Indian governments throughout the war. In November 1914 the Turkish Sultan, speaking as khalifah (spiritual head of all Sunni Muslims), had declared a jihad against Britain, France and Russia. These powers were the merciless enemies of Islam; they had made war on Muslims for a hundred years, and had taken their lands from them in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Now Muslims could unite, fight back, and, in the name of their faith, take back what had been theirs.

A nightmare was coming true. Three years before, Lord Fisher had foretold that, ‘The world has yet to learn what the Mohammedans can do if once their holy fervour seizes them.’
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His apprehension was shared by those proconsuls who governed predominantly Muslim areas. The jihad had an enormous potential for mischief, especially in India, whose 57 million Muslims were the main source of recruits for the army. Jihadic passion was strongest on the North-West Frontier, and sepoys from this region were always more likely to place faith before loyalty to the king emperor, and desert. A handful of Pathan deserters were known to be working with Turko-German intelligence during 1915 and 1916, and some may have returned to their homeland to foment uprisings against the British. Far more serious was a mutiny in November 1914, when men from the 130th Baluchis refused to fight against the Turks. There was a further, more violent mutiny in February 1915 by the 5th Native Light Infantry at Singapore during which the insurgents murdered European officers and civilians. In both instances the mutineers were rounded up, tried and the ringleaders publicly executed. An official enquiry after the Singapore affair revealed evidence of pan-Islamic subversion, and a widespread disquiet felt by many sepoys about reports of the heavy losses among Indian troops in France.