CHAPTER XII

SOME INTER-ALLIES CONFERENCES

The Conference with the Italians in Paris in April-May 1915 -- Its constitution -- Italians anxious that Allies should deliver big offensive simultaneously with advance of Italian army -- Impossibility of giving a guarantee -- Difficulties over the naval proposals -- Banquet given by M. Millerand at the War Office -- A visit to the front -- Impressions -- Mr. Churchill turns up unexpectedly -- A conference with General Joffre at Chantilly over Salonika -- Its unsatisfactory character -- Admiral Gamble races "Grandpère," and suffers discomfiture -- A distinguished party proceed to Paris -- A formal conference with the French Government -- Messrs. Asquith, Grey and Lloyd George as linguists -- The French attitude over Salonika -- Sir W. Robertson gives his views -- The decision -- Dinner at the Élysée -- Return to London -- Mr. Lloyd George and the soldiers on the Boulogne jetty -- Points of the destroyer as a yacht -- Mr. Balfour and Sir W. Robertson afloat -- A chatty dinner on our side of the Channel -- Difficulty over Russian munitions owing to a Chantilly conference -- A conference at the War Office -- Mr. Lloyd George as chairman -- M. Mantoux.

The first meeting of importance with representatives of the Allies at which I was present took place in Paris at the end of April 1915, and has already been referred to on p. 63. Sir H. Jackson and I were sent over, as representing respectively the Admiralty and the War Office, to take part in a secret conference that was to be held between French, Russian, and British naval and military delegates on the one side, and Italian naval and military delegates on the other side in connection with Italy's entry into the war as an associate of the Entente. That Italy was to join the Allies had already been arranged secretly between the four governments, and it was understood that she was to open hostilities in the latter part of May. The purpose of the Conference was to permit of the situation being discussed, and formal naval and military conventions were to be drawn up between the contracting Powers. Sir Henry and I were accompanied by small staffs, and we put up at the Ritz in the Place Vendôme.

M. Millerand, who was French War Minister at the time, presided at the Conference which assembled in the War Office, and he made an ideal chairman--the French are always admirable at managing such functions. The principal French military delegate was General Pellé, General Joffre's Chief of Staff; the Russians were represented by their Military Attaché in Paris, Colonel Count Ignatieff, and the principal Italian military delegate was a colonel (whose name I cannot recall), a most attractive and evidently an extremely capable soldier, who unhappily was killed within a few months when in command of a brigade in one of the early fights near Gorizia. In so far as framing the military convention was concerned, that part of the proceedings gave little trouble. The Italian representatives, it is true, were anxious that the Allies should undertake to embark upon an offensive on the greatest possible scale practicable, simultaneously with the Italian army crossing the frontier about the Isonzo; but General Pellé and I could give no guarantee to that effect, the more so seeing that a Franco-British offensive had already, as it was, been decided upon to start in the Bethune-Vimy region within a few days and before the Italian army would be ready. One had a pretty shrewd suspicion that there was no opening whatever for an offensive on the Eastern Front in view of our Russian Allies' grave munitions difficulties, although the French seemed strangely unaware of the nakedness of the land in that quarter; still, it was no part of the game to hint at joints in our harness of that kind to the Italian representatives. Ignatieff, bluff and cheery, was careful not to commit himself on the subject. The end of it was that our military convention amounted to little more than an agreement that we were all jolly fine fellows, accompanied by cordial expressions of good-will and of a determination on the part of the four contracting Powers to do their best and to stick together. The naval side of the problem, on the other hand, was beset by pitfalls, and that part of the business was not satisfactorily disposed of for several days.

Even to a landsman like myself, it was apparent that the Italian conception of war afloat in the year of grace 1915 was open to criticism. Our new friends contemplated employing their fleet very freely as an auxiliary to their army in its advance along the littoral towards Trieste, a theory of naval operations which came upon one with something of a shock at the very start. Pola and other well-sheltered bowers for under-water craft lie pretty handy to the maritime district in which King Victor's troops were going to take the field. For battleships and cruisers to be pottering about in those waters serving out succour to the soldiers on shore, succour which would in all probability be of no great account in any case, suggested that those battleships and cruisers would be transmogrified into submarines at a very early stage of the proceedings. One wondered if the Ministry of Marine away south by the Tiber had heard the tragic tale of the _Hogue_, the _Cressy_ and the _Aboukir_. Nor was that all. The Italian naval delegates put forward requests that fairly substantial assistance in the shape of war-craft of various types should be afforded them within the Adriatic by the French and ourselves.

All this struck even an outsider like myself as somewhat unsatisfactory, and that was clearly the view which Sir H. Jackson took. For, in some disorder, he let slip an observation to the effect that it looked like the recently acquired collaborator with the Entente being rather a nuisance than otherwise. The rendering of this expression of opinion of the Admiral's into French at the hands of our Naval Attaché in Paris (Captain Hodges) was a masterpiece of diplomatic camouflage. In the end the Italian sailors were obliged to ask for an adjournment to allow of their communicating with Rome, and, if I recollect aright, the principal one of them had to proceed home to discuss the question at headquarters. All this took up time, and we did not finally get the conventions signed for nearly a fortnight.

M. Millerand gave a banquet at the War Office in honour of us delegates, at which we met M. Viviani, the Prime Minister, together with other members of the French Cabinet. I enjoyed the good fortune of sitting next to M. Delcassé, and so of making the acquaintance of one of the great Foreign Ministers of our time. Paris is at its best in spring, and had it not been war-time and had one not been in a fidget to get back to Whitehall, a few days of comparative idleness spent in _la ville lumière_ after nine months of incessant office work, while the international sailor-men settled their differences, would have been not unwelcome. The pause, however, provided an opportunity for motoring down to St. Omer and spending a couple of days in the war zone--my first visit to the Front. Two points especially struck me on this trip. One was the wonderful way that the women and children of France (for scarcely an adult male was to be seen about in the rural districts) were keeping their end up in the fields. The other was the smart and soldier-like bearing of the rank-and-file amongst our troops, in striking contrast to the go-as-you-please methods which prevailed in South Africa, and to which, indirectly, some of the "regrettable incidents" which occurred on the veldt were traceable. It gave one confidence. Sir J. French and some of G.H.Q. were at advanced headquarters at Hazebrouck as offensive operations were impending, and Sir John, on the afternoon that I saw him, was greatly pleased at a most successful retirement of our line in a portion of the Ypres salient which General Plumer had brought off on the previous night. On getting back to Paris it transpired that the naval trouble was not yet settled.

One morning, sitting with Admiral Gamble who was over to help Sir H. Jackson, in the long alley-way of the Ritz where one enjoys early breakfast if that meal be not partaken of in private apartments, Commodore Bartolomé, the First Lord's "Personal Naval Assistant," was of a sudden descried in the offing and beating up for the Bureau. "Good God!" exclaimed the Admiral, horror-stricken. "Winston's come!" He had, so we learnt from Bartolomé; but what he had come for nobody could make out. Telegraphic communication exists between Paris and London, and Sir H. Jackson was in constant touch with our Admiralty. However, to whatever cause the visit was to be attributed, there was Mr. Churchill as large as life and most anxious to get busy; and I personally was glad to see him, because he told me all about what had been going on in the Gallipoli Peninsula since the landing of a few days before. One did not gather that the French were any more delighted at his jack-in-the-box arrival, and at his interventions in the Conference discussions, than were our naval representatives who had been officially accredited for the purpose. A satisfactory agreement was, however, at last arrived at over the Adriatic, the conventions were signed with due pomp and circumstance, and our party returned to England. While in Paris I had paid one or two visits to General Graziani, who was the Chief of the General Staff at the French War Office; but we in Whitehall never could make out exactly what were the relations between the military authorities in Paris and those at Chantilly. The very fact that General Joffre's Chief of Staff had been French military representative at our Conference, and not General Graziani or his nominee, seemed odd.

Some six months later, early in November, I again went over to France, this time with Sir A. Murray, to attend a discussion with General Joffre at Chantilly concerning Salonika. Admiralty representatives, including Admiral Gamble and Mr. Graeme Thomson, Director of Naval Transport, were of the party. Sir J. French with Sir W. Robertson, his Chief of the General Staff, and Sir H. Wilson came up from St. Omer. It was by no means a satisfactory meeting. We from the War Office in London desired to circumscribe British participation in this new side-show to the utmost, and to keep the whole business as far as possible within limits; but we got uncommonly little support from G.H.Q. Sir W. Robertson expressed no opinion, nor was he called upon to do so; he would have found it awkward to dissent from his commander-in-chief. But the result was that when a much more important conference over the same subject took place a few days later, this time between the two Governments, Sir J. French was not present while Sir W. Robertson was. These things do arrange themselves somehow.

As the discussion took place at Chantilly late in the afternoon, G.H.Q. and we put up at Amiens for the night. On our discovering that General Joffre contemplated crossing the Channel next day to have a chat with our Government, the C.I.G.S. prevailed upon Admiral Gamble to hurry on in his motor to Boulogne next morning so as to catch the packet there, to cross to Folkestone, and to get up to London in time to warn our people of the somewhat expansive Salonika programme which "Grandpère" had up his sleeve. The Silent Navy, it is hardly necessary to say, fairly rose to the occasion, for the Admiral was off under forced draught in the dog-watch. Chancing things, however, when weathering a promontory off Montreuil, he contrived to pile up his craft on a shoal in a bad position, and he would have missed trans-shipment at Boulogne altogether had he not got himself taken off in a passing craft which was under charge of soldier-officers who were likewise making for the packet. So he got across all right in the end and he flashed up to town, only to find that old man Joffre had not played the game. "Grandpère" had slept peacefully in the train, had boarded a destroyer at some unearthly hour of the morning, and was already in Whitehall before our staunch, precipitate emissary had cast off from Boulogne.

On the occasion of that next pow-wow mentioned [p.228] above, Messrs. Asquith, Balfour (now First Lord), Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey crossed over as our representatives. Sir H. Jackson (now First Sea Lord), Sir W. Robertson, who had been summoned over to London, and I accompanied them, as well as Colonel Hankey and some others. We travelled by specials and a destroyer and took the Boulogne route. Our warship tied up to the _East Anglia_, hospital ship, at Boulogne, and as we passed across her some of us had a few words with nurses and wounded on board, little anticipating that she would be mined next day on the passage over to England, with most unfortunate loss of life. Eventually we arrived at the Gare du Nord about midnight, to be welcomed by a swarm of French Ministers and Lord Bertie, and to find all arrangements made for us with typical French hospitality.

The Conference took place at the Foreign Office on the Quai d'Orsay, M. Briand presiding. Several members of the French Government were present, besides Generals Joffre, Gallieni and Graziani; and with our party, as well as interpreters, secretaries and others, there was quite a gathering. After M. Briand had welcomed us cordially and in felicitous terms, Mr. Asquith got a charming little speech in French off his chest; it may perhaps have had a whiff of the lamp about it and had probably been learnt by heart, but the P. M. undoubtedly managed to serve up a savoury _appétitif_, and we felt that in the matter of courtesy and the amenities our man had held his own. In the course of the discussion that followed, Sir E. Grey's minute-gun process of turning our host's delightful language to account afforded all present ample time to take in the drift of his cogent, weighty arguments and to appraise them at their proper worth. Had it been any one else, Mr. Lloyd George would have been voted an unmitigated nuisance on all hands. As a result of prolonged residence in the Gay City at a somewhat later date, the Right Honourable Gentleman is now, it is understood, in the habit of bandying badinage with the _midinettes_ in the _argot_ of the Quartier Latin. But at the time that I speak of his acquaintance with the Gallic tongue was strictly limited (although he did put forward claims to be able to understand "Grey's French"), and he kept from time to time insisting upon the proceedings being brought to a halt while a translation of something that had been said was furnished for his benefit, generally selecting some particularly unprofitable platitude which had been uttered by one of those present for the purpose of gaining time.

The French took up a strong line over Salonika. In a sense they drove our side into a corner, and the responsibility for hundreds of tho