Free Lord Beaverbrook by David Adams Richards Page B

Australians at Gallipoli. This all happened during the Dardanelles campaign. Churchill had conceived of the plan to take the strait off Turkey, hoping to capture Constantinople and maintain a rearguard action against the enemy, the Germans and Austrians, and the Turks. This caper ended with the loss of a quarter of a million men, and caused theresignation of Sea Lord Fisher and the subsequent firing (if we can call it that) of Churchill.
    Losing Sea Lord Fisher over his dispute with an extremely unpopular Winston Churchill was a desperate blow to the Liberal government. Fisher was perhaps the greatest naval officer since Nelson, and had served the British with distinction for almost fifty years. He had masterminded the modernization of the British naval fleet in the early part of the twentieth century, by promoting the building of both submarines and battleships.
    But really, by early 1916 there was no way to buoy up the Liberal government of Asquith except with Tory help. Now a coalition would have to be formed—that is, a merger. And Max Aitken from Newcastle, New Brunswick, merger-maker extraordinaire, was there.
    Here were the principal players in 1916: Asquith, the prime minister (Liberal); Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty (disgraced Liberal); Fisher, First Sea Lord (resigned); Kitchener, minister of war for Asquith, deceased (the victim of a mine on his way to Russia); Lloyd George, chancellor of the exchequer and top Liberal cabinet minister; Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative Party; Austin Chamberlain, top Tory member; Sir Max Aitken, Tory MP for Ashton-under-Lyne.
    MAX AITKEN , as well as many others, was politically astute enough to know that an election during the war would not favour a change in government. Therefore, the best possible solution was for a coalition government, which would for the time being keep Asquith and the Liberals in power but would give the Tories—that is Bonar Law—a strong representation within the war cabinet. And as Bonar Law’s friend and confidant, he would tag along. This is what Max hoped for—to be a tag-along into the cabinet.
    A.J.P. Taylor states that Aitken wanted Bonar Law to have close to equal authority with the prime minister. Churchill, who had wanted the coalition in 1914, did not want it now for personal reasons. He desperately feared he would lose any personal power if a coalition were formed. The political climate had turned completely against him.
    Max was not totally blind to his own position (he never was) and wanted power for himself. That’s why he made mergers in the first place. Ask the board of the CPR.
    The coalition was formed, and it marked the political death knell for both Churchill (for the moment) and Asquith. Displeasure in the Liberal ranks over the handling of the war threatened to turn into open revolt. Churchill went to the trenches in France, where he stayed for some weeks, facing extreme danger and discomfort.
    In December 1916, Asquith resigned, to allow for a new prime minister. Max again wanted Bonar Law in the position. Max, as Taylor states, was now living at the Hyde Park Hotel, in an intimate setting where he could entertain privately, and he was seeing Bonar Law on almost a daily basis.
    Bonar Law said no, he could not be prime minister. For one thing it would mean a change in party colours at the helm of the wartime government. Second, Law was always a reluctant combatant. These were desperate times, and perhaps he was frightened of failure. They needed a sitting Liberal to take the reins of a coalition government, and that Liberal would be David Lloyd George. In every meeting that Aitken had had with Bonar Law and others, from mid-1915 forward, David Lloyd George had been present and had posed as Aitken’s friend. At that time their offices were two doors from one another. Lloyd George had made himself indispensable to the Tories, while pretending to be Asquith’s right-hand man.
    “We cannot possibly do without Lloyd