All the same, Churchill later admitted that he relished the years before the First World War more than any other period of his career. We tend to think of them as a halcyon age of peace, prosperity, and pleasure, the last in English history. In fact it was an age of turbulence, and that is one reason Churchill enjoyed it so much. It was not the world war which ended the ancien régime but the years before it: the war was merely one of the symptoms of the change. There is a remarkable book,
The Strange Death of Liberal England,
in which George Dangerfield presents the epoch in this light, a time of frenzy, extremism, and incipient violence, banishing the old Liberal slogan of “Peace, Prosperity and Reform,” and with it all tranquillity in public life. The unions were active as never before, taking full advantage of their virtual immunity to actions for damages caused by strikes, which the Liberals had unwisely conferred on them in 1906. The suffragettes were turning from protest to direct action, were being brutally arrested, sent to prison, and forcibly fed when they resorted to hunger strikes. In 1909, to pay for the welfare state, Lloyd George introduced a budget which taxed land values, so hitting hard the aristocracy, and increased taxation generally. Breaking a long tradition under which the House of Lords automatically passed finance bills agreed by the Commons, the Lords rejected it, the Tories using their overwhelming built-in majority there. Asquith had either to withdraw or tone down the budget, to create peers to enable it to be passed—which King George initially declined to do—or to go to the country. But two elections in 1910 failed to decide the matter, though they robbed the Liberals of their huge majority over all parties, forcing Asquith to rely on Irish support in order to go on governing. That in turn forced him to buy the Irish MPs by giving them a Home Rule bill, which further angered the Tories and their Ulster Protestant allies, who threatened violence and began to arm themselves.
Churchill, by nature an activist and a partisan, if not exactly belligerent, was in the thick of all those struggles. Trade unionists now hated him. Suffragettes, who made him a particular target, tried to break up his meetings and occasionally assaulted him. He was made the victim of a rare physical assault in the Commons. On November 13, 1912, during an Ulster debate, the ultra-Tories shouted “Rats!” to him and Colonel Seely, sitting on the front bench. Churchill characteristically responded by waving a handkerchief, a gesture of irony interpreted as provocation, and Ronald McNeill, an Ulster MP, responded in turn by seizing the Speaker’s leather-bound copy of Standing Orders, hurling it in a vast parabola through the tense air, and striking Churchill on the head. He responded by quoting Hazlitt: “I do not mind a physical blow. It is hostile ideas which hurt me.” Later he insisted on fulfilling a speaking engagement in Belfast’s Unionist Hall, despite threats to his life. This was one of many instances at the time which testify to his lack of physical fear. In this sense there has never been a more courageous politician. He courted danger, given the chance.
Not that Churchill enjoyed divisions in society—quite the contrary. He found the center attractive. He and Lloyd George discussed the possibility of a new party of all talents. In his case it was made more attractive by his friendship with the Tory MP F. E. Smith. Son of a former mayor of Birkenhead and prizewinning lawyer from Wadham College, Oxford, “F. E.,” as he was known, had made in February 1906 what is rated the greatest of all maiden speeches and had almost immediately taken a prominent place on the Conservative front bench. He and Churchill soon became fast friends. Smith made a tremendous income at the bar and helped Churchill in a libel action. He was witty, abrasive, profane, a great hater and enthusiast, the only person Churchill admitted had a finer brain than himself. They argued, drank, and joked together into the night, and Clemmie believed he was the worst possible influence on her husband, more even than Lloyd George, who at any rate had the (to her) merit of going to bed at nine if he could. Smith was the only friend with whom Churchill watched his words, for he feared that Smith, who was the master of insults, might if they quar reled use expressions which would end their friendship forever. To Clemmie’s horror he was asked to be Randolph’s godfather, and agreed. Churchill thought him a natural for a center party of brilliant individuals. This friendship continued, even intensified, over the budget crisis, the House of Lords crisis, and the Ulster crisis. The only thing they agreed about was denying votes to women, for Smith, who adored them—“he spared no man with his wit, and all women”—and would not allow his daughters to go to boarding school or university, thought participation in public life would destroy femininity. The two men were famous for laughing loud and long together. Unable to dominate as they wished the old-style Literary Club, or “the Club,” originally founded by Dr. Johnson, they created a rival, “the Other Club,” which they stocked with their friends, and which became even more famous for scintillating talk and vitality, if not for wisdom. It was a bridge between two hostile worlds, as Tories shut their doors in Liberal faces. It was one of the rare times in English history when members of the two parties did not meet at dinner or in ballrooms. New York and Paris were used to bitter political schisms, but London had always put social relations before party, and the bitterness was painful as well as novel. Smith joked: “We have got the best of the bargain. We are sought out by duchesses. Countesses give dinner parties for us. What do you Liberals get? The Society of Knights’ Ladies.”
Actually there is no evidence Churchill was ever excluded by the Mayfair hostesses as a result of his views, or for any other reason. They were delighted to have him, then as always. In any case he had resources of his own. He and Clemmie had always contrived to be “well-mounted,” a horsey term which he used to signify “able to maintain a comfortable existence in society.” As he once put it: “All my life, I have earned my own living, so that I have always had a bottle of champagne for myself and another for a friend.” In 1911 Asquith, hearing the rumbles of war grow louder, transferred Churchill to the Admiralty. As first lord, he became “tenant of the grandest tied cottage in Whitehall,” as he put it. At Admiralty House his retinue of indoor servants expanded from seven to twelve, and Clemmie was able to preside over sumptuous dinner parties and receptions. Nor was this all. He had the use of the Admiralty yacht, the
Enchantress,
at four thousand tons one of the largest afloat, with a crew of 196. He delighted in this splendid vessel: “It was the finest toy I ever had in my life.” Luxury yachting under blue skies was the greatest pleasure of the prewar ruling class. He provided it in regular spring and summer cruises on the grand scale for his social and political friends, from the Asquiths down. There are rapturous accounts of these occasions. There was nothing frivolous about them, however. The Royal Navy was the most complex and widely spread fighting machine on earth. It was “the Senior Service,” dogmatically proud of its ways and determined not to change them. The senior admirals regarded Churchill with horror. Junior officers, petty officers, and ratings saw him as a hero, especially after he improved their pay and conditions. There were many hundreds of naval establishments and bases in the British Isles and the Mediterranean alone. Thanks to
Enchantress,
Churchill visited every one of them, spending eighteen months on board her during his three peacetime years as first lord. He looked into everything and everyone. He often worked eighteen hours a day, and absorbed the new technology of naval warfare with impressive speed. It was exactly the kind of existence he loved. Against frenzied opposition he created a naval staff. He began the historic switch from coal to oil, and in the process laid down a new class, the Queen Elizabeth, of huge, oil-burning battleships. He created the naval air service, and begged his ship architects to design him aircraft carriers. He learned to fly himself and did so, with reckless delight, as often as he could, until Clemmie, on her knees, persuaded him to give it up. He recognized no limitations to his activities and took the government, and Britain, into the oil industry by investing in Persia and creating the great Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP). This proved to be, over the decades, an even better investment than Disraeli’s purchase of the Suez Canal.
Surveying the world scene from his coign of vantage at the Admiralty, now, thanks to his efforts, in direct wireless communication with every part of the world, Churchill sensed that Britain was heading for a war with Germany. While still home secretary he judged it his duty, as the minister responsible for international security, to attend German army maneuvers. The kaiser, who was part English and spoke the language fluently, made a fuss of him and Churchill got to know him quite well, insofar as anyone did. For the kaiser, as Churchill made clear in an essay in
Great Contemporaries
(1937), was an enigma and a mass of contradictions. It was unclear whether he was a puppet or an autocrat. What was undeniable, as Churchill saw for himself, was that Germany possessed the best professional army in the world. He attended French maneuvers, too, and, despite his lifelong Francophilia, he could see there was no comparison. Moreover, Germany was now easily the largest industrial power in Europe and, with a large and rapidly growing population, capable of expanding her war machine dramatically. On his return from German maneuvers, Churchill said, “I can only thank God that there is a sea between England and Germany.”
The sea was defended by the Royal Navy, the largest in the world, though no longer up to the “two-power standard,” able to take on and defeat the two next largest navies in the world. That raised the question: why were the Germans, with an army capable of domination of all Europe, determined to match, or at least challenge, Britain at sea? Their navy could only be aimed at Britain and the global command of the sea. The Germans began building their High Seas Fleet, as they called it, in the late 1880s, and continued to increase the rate of ship construction, especially of armored, big-gun battleships, over the next twenty years. It was this plainly anti-British construction program which turned public opinion, hitherto pro-German, if anything, against what were now referred to as “the Huns.” (Churchill preferred the French term of abuse,
boche
.) When Churchill took over the Admiralty, the policy was then to maintain a 60 percent superiority over Germany in modern battleships. But this was upset by the German Naval Law of 1912 which increased their battleship construction rate by half again. Churchill responded with the Queen Elizabeth class, the largest warships ever made at 27,500 tons and eight fifteen-inch guns each, oil burning and able to maintain high speeds. A disgusted Lloyd George complained that Churchill had lost all interest in social reform “and now talks about nothing but boilers.”
Churchill was also concerned by the German decision to build large numbers of U-boats (as they called them). What were they for? The answer was unmistakable. Britain had the largest merchant navy in the world and imported a greater percentage of her food than any other great power. The German U-boat was a potential war-winning weapon which could starve Britain to death. Churchill began to hate the U-boat passionately, and near the end of his life he declared that in both world wars the submarine threat had worried him more than any other. The only answer was to build large numbers of U-boat destroyers, or destroyers for short, very fast and equipped with a new weapon, the depth charge. This he did. But at every step in his policies, he was opposed by elderly admirals, of whom there were a large number occupying key positions. He spent as much time battling with them as he did at the actual work of modernizing the navy.
It says a lot for Churchill’s overwhelming energy that while performing all his myriad tasks at the Admiralty and the naval bases, he did many other things, too. He stood by Lloyd George in his many troubles—accusations of corruption over Marconi shares, and of fornication and adultery—and backed Asquith to the hilt over Home Rule. There was much gunrunning among both Protestants and Catholics and threats by Ulster Protestant army officers, many of whom held senior posts, to resign their commissions rather than participate in coercing Ulster to accept Home Rule. He made two hazardous visits to Ulster, on one taking Clemmie, to put the government’s case, and he was prepared to use force to ensure that Ulster abide by the Home Rule compromise. It is worth noting that in the years 1911-14, Churchill felt bound to pursue policies which antagonized most of the senior admirals and many of the senior generals. This helps to explain his troubles during the war. Indeed, though he was not at all an extremist, his actions often looked extreme. His nature was such that, once a policy was finally determined in the cabinet, he pushed it with enthusiasm bordering on recklessness. Ulster was determined to fight, as his father had said. He himself now believed that London should fight, and would be right—though he never actually said it. But in a speech at Bradford on March 14, 1914, he said that it was time to “go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof.” He ordered the Third Battle Squadron to be within an hour’s sailing from Belfast, to show that the legitimate government was serious about using force. Fortunately Asquith quickly canceled the order. But it was known, and bitterly resented, that Churchill was the foremost in the cabinet in his willingness to coerce Ulstermen, whose greatest pride was that they were “loyalists” and stuck by the empire, unlike the southern Irish Catholics who were violently anti-British. If Churchill found himself uncomfortable in this unusual role he did not show it. He put himself firmly on the side of parliamentary institutions and the rule of law. And, as always, action for him was more heartening—and delicious—than sitting behind a constitutional desk. If the crisis had exploded into civil war, as looked likely by July 1914, it is not clear what Churchill would have done. But the coming of European war shoved Ulster violently onto the back burner, and Churchill eagerly turned his attention in a totally different direction.