Kitchener leaves for the Dardanelles

On the night of 4/5 November 1915 the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert Kitchener, left London for Paris, the first stage of his journey to the Mediterranean. The day before, the new War Committee had decided that it could not yet accept the advice of General Charles Monro, who on 31 October had recommended the evacuation of the Gallipoli peninsula. The ministers asked Kitchener to go out himself and assess the whole situation in the Near East, including the defence of Egypt. The British official history of the naval campaign points out that the matter called for a broader view than one general’s purely military assessment, because evacuation was just as much a political problem.

A minister who feared evacuation

Kitchener feared a withdrawal from Gallipoli more than anyone else in the government. He believed it would cost thousands killed and taken prisoner and would undermine British prestige throughout the East. According to the Australian official historian Charles Bean, he told the Prime Minister that at night he paced his room and saw boats under fire capsizing and soldiers drowning. His hope lay in the plan of Commodore Roger Keyes, chief of staff of the fleet at the Dardanelles, who wanted to force the straits with warships once more. Kitchener met him on 2 November and liked the plan very much. On the night of 3/4 November he informed General William Birdwood at Gallipoli that he was coming and told him to consider a landing that would support the fleet’s attack.

On the afternoon of 4 November Kitchener discussed the plan once more with Keyes and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Balfour, in Balfour’s room. Keyes left convinced that approval for forcing the straits was still possible. An hour later came the last meeting of members of the government before the minister’s departure. According to the British official history of the Gallipoli campaign, it was decided there that a naval attack could be approved only together with a new offensive by the army. There were no fresh troops for such an offensive. In the evening Kitchener therefore cancelled his earlier telegram to Birdwood. “I fear the Navy may not play up,” he wrote. “The more I look at the problem the less I see my way through, so you had better very quietly and secretly work out any scheme for getting the troops off.”

A convenient departure

The journey suited many of the minister’s colleagues. By the autumn of 1915 Kitchener was losing the Cabinet’s confidence. He was accused of not sharing information, of deciding alone and of not using the General Staff. Bean writes that the ministers chafed under his silent dominance and evidently hoped he would stay in the East, while in France it was even assumed that he had been removed from power. Kitchener’s biographer, George Arthur, recalled that well-wishers warned the minister against colleagues who would gladly seize on any reason to prolong his absence. The Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, hoped that Kitchener could be persuaded to take the supreme command in the East, and for the duration of his absence took charge of the War Office, the British ministry of war, himself. According to some accounts Kitchener, sensing this, took the seals of office with him so that he could not be replaced in his absence. When the Cabinet accepted the idea of the journey, he is said to have remarked: “Perhaps, if I have to lose many men there, I shall not want to come back.”

Through Paris to Marseilles

In Paris on 5 November Kitchener learned to his surprise that the new French government of Aristide Briand was firmly opposed to the evacuation of the peninsula. The French cared more about the number of British soldiers sent to Salonika than about their fighting value. This awoke a last hope in him. If the first two divisions from France destined for Salonika were sent to the Dardanelles instead, and the tired divisions from Suvla or Helles were sent to Greece in exchange, it might be possible to hold the peninsula through the winter and even to attack again. Kitchener telegraphed to Birdwood that he regarded evacuation as “a terrible disaster which must be avoided at all costs”, and that he would try to collect two regular divisions, a brigade of Gurkhas and a brigade from Egypt. He also asked the Admiralty for Keyes to join him at Marseilles and discuss the plan for the naval attack with him. The telegram was not passed on to Keyes, because he would not have arrived in time.

Kitchener was accompanied by his personal secretary, Colonel Oswald FitzGerald, and General Henry Horne. On 7 November, according to the British official history of the naval campaign, the minister reached Marseilles. The cruiser Dartmouth was waiting there to take him to Alexandria, but at the last moment she was ordered to sail straight to Mudros on the island of Lemnos, where the Allied fleet lay. On the same day Asquith telegraphed to Birdwood that the government had not decided on evacuation and would not do so until it knew Kitchener’s opinion, but that a plan for withdrawing the troops must be prepared in the greatest secrecy. Kitchener spent almost the whole of November in the Mediterranean, and only after seeing the peninsula and Salonika and talking with the Greek king did he come round to evacuation.