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At 1 a.m. on August 8 Sir Berkeley Milne, having collected and coaled his three battle cruisers at Malta, set out at a moderate speed on an Easterly course in pursuit of the Goeben. At this juncture the Fates moved a blameless and punctilious Admiralty clerk to declare war upon Austria. The code telegram ordering hostilities to be commenced against Austria was inadvertently released without any authority whatever. The mistake was repaired a few hours later; but the first message reached Sir Berkeley Milne at 2 p.m. on August 8 when he was half-way between Sicily and Greece. His original war orders, had prescribed that in the event of a war with Austria he should in the first instance concentrate his fleet near Malta, and faithful to these instructions he turned his ships about and desisted from the pursuit of the Goeben. Twenty-four hours were thus lost before orders could reach him to resume it. But the Goeben herself had come to a standstill. Admiral Souchon was cruising irresolutely about the Greek islands endeavouring to make sure that he would be admitted by the Turks to the Dardanelles. He dallied thirty-six hours at Denusa and was forced to use his tell-tale wireless on several occasions. It was not till the evening of the 10th that he entered the Dardanelles and the Curse descended irrevocably upon Turkey and the East.
From the 9th to the 22nd of August the Army was crossing the Channel. This was a period of great anxiety to us. All the most fateful possibilities were open. We were bound to expect a military descent upon our coasts with the intention of arresting or recalling our Army, or a naval raid into the Channel to cut down the transports, or a concentrated submarine attack upon these vessels crowded with our troops. The great naval battle might begin at any moment, either independently or in connection with any of these operations. It was a period of extreme psychological tension.
In continued anxiety lest some capital mistake should be made through a different sense of proportion prevailing in the Fleet and at the Admiralty, I drew up the following appreciation which with the concurrence of the First Sea Lord was sent officially to Sir John Jellicoe.
1. To-morrow, Sunday, the Expeditionary Force begins to cross the Channel. During that week the Germans have the strongest incentives to action. They know that the Expeditionary Force is leaving, and that the mobilisation and training of the Territorial Army is incomplete. They may well argue that a raid or raids now upon the East Coast would interrupt, confuse and probably delay the departure of the Army, and further that it might draw the Grand Fleet rapidly South to interfere with the landing.
2. Alternatively, or simultaneously, they may attempt to rush the Straits and interrupt the passage of the Army. It seems in the last degree improbable that if they did so they would use their modern Battle Fleet. Their principle has been, according to all we know about them, to aim at a general battle with the British Fleet when by attrition and accident our margin of superiority has been reduced. They may be assumed to know our general dispositions in the South, and the strong and numerous Submarine flotillas of which we and the French dispose. They must apprehend that the Straits are mined. Since the distance across the Channel can be covered in 6 to 8 hours, 3 hours’ notice of their approach would enable every transport to reach safety. To force the Straits and enter the Channel with their best ships means the certain loss of units which it is vital to them to preserve if they are ever to fight a general battle. And this sacrifice, with all its hazards, would lead them only into an Anglo-French lake, lined with fortified harbours and infested with torpedo craft, at the end of which lies the Atlantic Ocean, and the Grand Fleet—wherever it is—certainly between them and home. If this plan were followed by the Germans, we should mine the Straits of Dover heavily behind them, and leave you to engage them at your convenience.
3. A far more probable German plan would be (A) to send a fast division to rush the Straits and attack the transports, while at the same time (B) making raids on the East Coast to create a diversion. Our dispositions in the Channel and its approaches provide fully for (A). With regard to (B), it is not considered that more than 10,000 men can be spared from Germany at present for raids. Such raid or raids would inconvenience the military arrangements, but the Army is ready to meet the raiders if they land. Their Lordships would wish to emphasise that it is not part of the Grand Fleet’s duty to prevent such raids, but to deal with the enemy’s Battle Fleet. The enemy’s older ships will possibly be used to cover either one or more raids. Their main Battle Fleet may be in rear to support them. They may expect you to come direct to prevent the raid, and therefore may lay one or more lines of mines across your expected course, or use their Submarines for the same purpose. Whereas if you approach from an Easterly or North-Easterly direction, i.e. behind them, you would cut the German Battle Fleet from its base, the landed raiders from all reinforcements, and you would approach by a path along which the chance of meeting mines would be sensibly reduced. In our view therefore you should ignore the raid or raids, and work by a circuitous route so as to get between the enemy’s fleet, or covering force, and home. It would seem undesirable to come South of latitude 57° until news of a raid has been actually received; and even then the possibility of the German Battle Fleet being still in the Heligoland Bight, i.e. behind you, cannot be excluded.
This appreciation of the situation is not intended to hamper your discretion to act according to circumstances.
The naval dispositions by which the passage of the Army was covered have been fully described in the Official History of the War and in other Service works. The northern approaches to the Straits of Dover were patrolled by cruiser squadrons and by flotillas from Harwich and the Thames. The Straits of Dover were minutely watched by the British and French Destroyer flotillas of the Dover cordon and by the Submarine flotillas of Commodore Keyes. Behind these there was constituted on August 7 the Channel Fleet, comprising nineteen battleships of the 5th, 7th and 8th Battle Squadrons, now all fully mobilised. This fleet, having assembled under the command of Admiral Burney at Portland, cruised in readiness for battle at the western end of the Channel at such distances from the Dover cordon as its commander might judge convenient. The western entrance to the Channel was guarded by other cruiser squadrons.
During the first few days of the transportation no great numbers of troops were crossing the Channel, but from the 12th to the 17th the bulk of the Army was in transit, and the strategic tension reached its climax. Until this period was reached the Grand Fleet was kept in its northern station and was even permitted to cruise northwards of the Orkneys, but on August 12 Admiral Jellicoe was directed to re-enter the North Sea and to cruise southward into a position of effective proximity.
We cannot wholly exclude the chance of an attempt at a landing during this week on a large scale supported by High Sea Fleet. In addition to the possibilities explained in Admiralty appreciation of situation sent you 8th, extraordinary silence and inertia of enemy may be prelude to serious enterprises. Our view remains as expressed in appreciation, and even if larger landing forces were employed the general principles of action would remain unaltered except that the urgency of interrupting the landing would of course be greater. You ought however to be nearer the theatre of decisive action, as we originally contemplated, and now that you have shaken off the submarine menace, or as soon as you can do so, it would appear necessary to bring the Fleet to the Eastward of the Orkneys passing either N. or S. of the Shetlands keeping well out of sight of land and stopping traffic if necessary. Cruiser sweeps to the South and South-east should be made as convenient. Acknowledge this immediately on receipt.
During the three days of heaviest transportation, August 15, 16 and 17, the Heligoland Bight was closely blockaded by submarines and destroyers, supported between the Horn Reef and the Dogger Bank by the whole of the Grand Fleet. Thus battle in open water was offered to the German Navy during the three days when their inducements to fight were at their maximum. But except for an occasional submarine, no sign betrayed the existence of the enemy’s naval power.
All went well. Not a ship was sunk, not a man was drowned: all arrangements worked with the utmost smoothness and punctuality. The Army concentration was completed three days in advance of Sir John French’s original undertaking to General Lanrezac;[41] and with such secrecy was the whole of this vast operation enshrouded, that on the evening of August 21, only a few hours before the British cavalry patrols were in contact with the Germans, General von Kluck, commanding the First German Army in Belgium, received from the Supreme Command no better information than the following:—
‘A landing of British troops at Boulogne and their advance from about Lille must be reckoned with. It is believed that no landing of British troops on a big scale has yet taken place.’[42]
Three days later the whole British Army was fighting the battle of Mons.
The silence at sea was accompanied by a suspense on land. Except for the overrunning and trampling down of Liége, and a French raid into Alsace, only the covering troops of the great armies were in contact. There was a long, stifling pause before the breaking of the storm. All over Europe millions of men, pouring along the roads and railroads, flowing across the Rhine bridges, draining from the farthest provinces of the wide Russian Empire, streaming northwards from Southern France and Northern Africa, were forming in the immense masses of manœuvre or the lines of battle. There was plenty to fill the newspapers; but to those who understood what was coming, the fortnight with which this chapter is concerned seemed oppressed by a deathly hush.