I met the PM at 10 Downing today and he offered me the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. This not only means I must abandon my fight for more social reforms; it means a complete reversal of roles by becoming a leader in the arms race.
Asquith refused to take my "no" as an answer and was extremely compelling about the inevitability of a land war on the European continent.
As First Lord, I would be in charge of building a thousand-warship navy, the most powerful fleet the world has ever known.
I took a bundle of reports to study, written by our greatest experts in the military, intelligence, financial men, industrial wizards, scientists, and politicians and advised the PM I would give him an answer as soon as possible.
October 7, 1911 I am torn, utterly, horribly torn. There is no conclusion a sane and reasonable man can draw except that war will soon be upon us and there is no way we can finesse our way out of it. The German empire is in wretched shape and the Kaiser and General Staff feel that there is no way to prevent an internal collapse except to go to war against France and Russia.
What chills the marrow is the prediction of casualties. One million men from each of the major nations are predicted to be killed, a minimum of six million dead and God knows how many wounded.
All of my lovely dreams of the march of the common man with myself as their leader have now gone asunder. Although heavy of pain, I see no choice but to place myself at the pleasure of the Crown.
In addition to the gigantic task before me, this post is bound to make me leap forward toward the political goals I have set for myself.
My illustrious ancestor, John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough, never lost a battle or failed to capture a city under siege. I do not claim his mastery of field tactics and engagement, but I understand the grand strategy that England must employ against Germany.
When the time comes I shall set down this strategy and it will dazzle our War Council.
October 24, 1911 I have accepted the appointment of First Lord of the Admiralty at the age of thirty-four.
October 25, 1911 The Conservatives and a good part of the press are howling like mad dogs over my appointment.
Well, we shall see.
51.
Predictions of Sir Frederick Weed's early demise failed to materialize. He stormed back, determined to get his empire in proper order. Weed went first into his own ranks, gleaning them for managers, executives, foremen able to think in twentieth-century terms. Those he could not find, he went out and stole from his competitors. A financial wizard from the Bank of England went on the board as did some of the foremost minds in the British Isles. The only thing Freddie questioned was why he hadn't done this years earlier.
At first there were a lot of bad jokes and snickers in the corridors of power. It was soon evident that Caroline Hubble had inherited her father's qualities of bossmanship. The snickering stopped cold as she took her seat at the opposite end of the long table from her father.
The day Caroline called to order and ran her first executive meeting, she showed an added dimension. Caroline obviously had the quality to extract the best a person had to offer. Had she not once helped create a masterpiece through a croppy blacksmith?
Naval shipbuilding was now going on at breakneck speed, beyond capacity. Belfast buzzed with full employment and high wages. With his new people making hard decisions, Weed was able to cut back his own role to an hour or two a day, often from Rathweed Hall.
The London office of Weed Ship & Iron, with its proximity to the heart of government and the financial world, became as vital as Belfast itself. Freddie had battled Caroline all her life to keep her in Ulster. Now, he could bestow on her the gift of London.
She took over the London end of the operation, cleared out three decades of rust, and yes, she thrived outside the landscape of Ireland, as one often does when one escapes captivity.
Caroline's London home was arty and elegant but did not shriek of wealth. The informality of it was assured by its Chelsea location in the midst of her closest friends-actors, writers, artists, scholars, and all sorts of off-horse, out of the ordinary, fun people. It was the home she never had in the marbled museum of Rathweed Hall or the ancient castle of the Foyles. She became a force in the arts and drifted heavily into Liberal Party politics.
Long steeped in the brutal and myopic politics of Ulster, the Liberals were yet another reprieve from the Belfast graveyard. Caroline's salon became a regular watering hole for their gatherings.
Her favorite was that odd fellow, Winston Churchill. The qualities Caroline had spotted in him from distant Londonderry were coming to fruition. She grew to be one of his very few confidantes, particularly on Irish matters. Indeed, Winston came to her with his dilemma before accepting the Admiralty post.
Frederick Weed knew that if he pouted too much about his daughter's house crawling with Liberals he could have a seizure. On the other hand, he'd also learned in his eighty-plus years that Caroline would not be deterred. There was no possibility whatsoever of changing her childlike, bohemian, bolshevik tendencies.
Caroline entered middle age lovely. What had been lost from her overpowering beauty had been replaced by a calm grace, wisdom, and aura of grandeur one usually wins only through tragedy. To supervise a powerful industrial complex and remain utterly feminine was perhaps her most endearing trait.
Her name in London became linked to Gorman Galloway, an untamed Anglo-Irishman of the other faith, who was saddled with an unfortunate and undivorceable marriage, as was Caroline. His wife lived in Dublin and his children, all Irish gems, were scattered about and in and out.
Galloway was mostly sane but occasionally pure mad Irish, always witty, an actor, producer, director, and a smashing writer. Mocking all political parties, he wrote magnificent, devastating social commentary, usually mercilessly jerking around the imperial union jackers.
Gorman was one hell of a fun fellow himself, with an adoring court at his feet and coattails. Though loosely tied, he and Caroline were looked upon as a rather committed couple despite the fact Gorman went off on outrageous binges that found him waking up in Cork or leading a suffragette rally in Bristol.
Caroline's meetings with Roger were mercifully minimal. She was now out from under any pretense of a successful or congenial marriage and too powerful in her own right to be brought down by titters and gossip. Free from her early struggle with Freddie for equality, free from the labored years with Roger, and finally at peace with her unrequited love of Conor Larkin, Caroline was open and joyous but always aware the joy could be gone in a wisp.
Hester, bloodless and all, made Christopher more acceptable. Caroline was compassionate to Hester and understood Hester's failure to become pregnant. Their visits were proper and of proper length and their conversation, noncontentious.
Gorman knew that when Caroline flashed that occasional look of terrible, terrible sadness it was for one of two men...Conor Larkin or Jeremy Hubble. Jeremy was still a subaltern in the Coleraines and he'd gotten very Irish with his drinking and even worse with his self-pity.
Caroline had searched herself weary for Molly O'Rafferty, a search kept alive by the faintest of clues that always turned cold.
Caroline knew that she would need to make a first gesture to Jeremy sooner or later. What she really wanted was for him to join her search. She wanted Jeremy to finally be a man and demand to find that son or daughter of his. As long as he drank his way through it, she would not come to him.
Caroline's Chelsea parlor became a whirlwind of exciting times as the Liberals rode the winds of change in trying to uproot the British class system. The bull's-eye of the target was the culpable hereditary powers vested in the House of Lords. Well, the House of Lords was not going to dismiss itself and abandon its privileges. At last the Liberals came up with a scheme. If Lords' powers were not curtailed, the Liberals would create hundreds of new Liberal peerages and double the size of Lords.
Faced with the dastardly specter of a slew of ordinary street people being named to the aristocracy, Lords yielded. Henceforth, if a bill passed Commons and was rejected by Lords, Commons had the right to pass it twice. If Lords rejected it a second time, then Commons could pass it a third time and it automatically became law.
Into this political grab bag came the dying gasps of John Redmond and his Irish Party. Prime Minister Asquith, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and the Liberal Party didn't really give a hoot in hell about Irish self-government. Nonetheless they needed the Irish Party in their coalition if they were to remain in power and so give their Home Rule Bill ambivalent sincerity.
The Third Irish Home Rule Bill was bloodless stuff. Under it the Irish could erect road signs, establish mental clinics, warden fishing streams, and trim hedges, but when it came to the hard stuff-defense, collection of taxes, loyalty to the Crown, and a place among the nations-England remained all. All, to the point that any legislation passed by a Dublin Parliament could be verruled by the House of Commons.
This legislation was the most meager of symbolic gestures, but Redmond desperately needed that gesture. Redmond's Irish Party was on its last legs and might well lose badly to the Sinn Fein in the next elections.
Despite the fact that the bill posed no real threat to the Unionists of Ulster, the mere words Home Rule were sufficient to open Pandora's box.
In early April of 1912, the Liberal and Irish Parties passed the Third Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons by 110 votes.
On April 14, the House of Lords rejected Irish Home Rule, 326 to 69.
The Liberals slated a second reading of the bill in Commons for later in the year, but across the sea Protestant Ulster was in a frenzy. Having earlier signed their Act of Covenant, often in blood, the province erupted in massive rallies from end to end. As the Protestant protest lapped up on England's shores, the Conservative Party leapt on the issue, sensing that any anti-Irish measure would gain popularity.
Protests, well financed from Ulster, swept England and Wales and Scotland. Conservatives fanned the fires with the goal of bringing down the Liberal government.
On cue, Rudyard Kipling penned a heroic new poem, soon memorized and recited with fervor by every Protestant school child in the British Isles.
We know the war prepared On every peaceful home.
We know the hells declared For such as serve not Rome.
In terror, threats and dread, In market, hearth and field, We know when all is said We perish if we yield.
Believe, we dare not boast.
Believe we do not fear.
We stand to pay the cost In all that men hold dear.
What answer from the North?
One Law, one Land, one Throne.
If England drives us forth, We shall not fall alone.
Orange Ulster had declared war on anything within shooting range: Irish Catholics, Liberals, many of their own, and certainly everybody who disagreed with them.
For Roger Hubble, the Fourteenth Earl of Foyle, it was resurrection time. Armed with a wide-open mandate, Roger revived his Belfast connections. On matters of Unionism, Roger and Sir Frederick were still allies. Bringing in four of the most powerful Unionists in the province along with some high-ranking Ulster military, a series of attacks were concocted, each upping the ante against the British government.
The Ulster Militia, hitherto not quite legal, came out into the open for recruits after a public appeal by Sir Frederick himself.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a spokesman for 170 Unionist clubs and Orange lodges with a membership of 17,000 men of military age pledged to enlist their entire membership the minute the Militia's doors opened.
Lord Roberts, the leading general of India, tendered his resignation, presumably to assume command of the Militia.
Targeted retired British officers were contacted for hire to form a quasi-army with transportation, medical corps, intelligence units, communications, and whatever else the Militia required.
Sir Frederick was peppered with questions at a press conference that followed. Is this not a private army belonging to a political party? Is it loyal to the Crown? Is it legal?
"The Ulster Militia," Sir Frederick said cheekily, "may or may not be legal, depending on whose bull we are goring. We are only committed to the continued freedom of Ulster as part of the United Kingdom. That is legal! Furthermore, we will shoot anyone who denies us our British heritage."
"Does that mean the Militia will shoot British soldiers?" he was asked.
"Sir, no British soldier would shoot a kindred Ulsterman. Anyone who would order him to do so is a traitor!"
In England the Conservatives picked up on the word traitor...and the Liberals scrambled to organize themselves against the next assault, lest they go down as being incapable of governing the nation.
With the Liberals on the defensive, the Conservative-Unionist coalition pressed on audaciously.
What was amazing was the civility with which Sir Frederick could work with his loathed son-in-law on Unionist matters. Roger had concocted a scenario that, if successful, might well be the jugular blow to Asquith.
It was a conspiracy of lovely delicacy.
The now Brigadier Llewelyn Brodhead commanded Camp Bushy in the placid environs where the river Shannon opened into Lough Ree. Camp Bushy was the main garrison for Ulster. Brodhead was imperial Ulster incarnate. His breath, his flesh, all that was him and his, belonged to the empire.
The Brigadier and Lord Roger were longstanding pals of the sort who always owed one another a favor. Lettershambo Castle, the Militia arsenal of questionable legality, became out-and-out under Brodhead's protection with Brodhead's cooperation in the gunrunning.
Roger saw to it that the Brigadier was let in on a number of "good bets" with his insider information.
The principal troops at Bushy were the King's Midlanders, but the Coleraine Rifles were also included. When Roger exiled Jeremy to the Rifles, Brodhead assured him he'd keep the lad under control and out of trouble, which he did.
When Christopher went to the Rifles, he was earmarked for rapid promotion and became a close aide to Brodhead. Chris was having a problem getting his wife pregnant and was given all the time off he needed to get the old job done.
With Brodhead and Captain Christopher Hubble in on the scheme, Lord Roger contacted Weed to set up a secret meeting and bring along three or four cronies who could deliver vast amounts of money.
When Roger unfolded the plan, tens of thousands of quid were laid in the center of the table. Their principal German arms dealer had purchased a shipload of heavy arms for the Militia, and two nine-hundred-ton vessels. It was done with the cooperation and assistance of the German government, keen on anything to disrupt Ireland or embarrass the British government.
The ship was in a Hamburg dock with her empty sister ship in the next slip, to be used as a decoy. A story was circulated that the pair were bound for Mexico where the ousted dictator, Diaz, planned a coup.
Enter Captain Christopher Hubble, in civvies but blond, erect, correct, polished, moustached, the very model of empire man.
Christopher left with a German crew under a German flag, but instead of the usual North Sea route, swung into the English Channel and up the Irish Sea where the ship was shadowed by a British destroyer.
The sister ship trailed, then switched places with, the arms boat in the middle of the night. The captain of the British destroyer, a member of the plot, deliberately followed the wrong ship.
Christopher's boat slipped through the North Channel separating Ulster from Scotland. At the Rathlin Islands, the German crew was replaced by a crew of Ulster Militia. They raised the banner of the Militia and in broad daylight sailed down Lough Foyle to Londonderry.
Emergency inquiries from the Admiralty and War Office to Camp Bushy went unanswered as the arms boat unloaded into a waiting freight train, which whisked its cargo into the safety of Lettershambo Castle.
Christopher Hubble was spirited back to Camp Bushy to the winks and back slaps of knowing staff officers and a whispered chorus of "Well dones."
Asquith ordered a lid of secrecy clamped on the area as the cabinet went into emergency session. Brigadier Brodhead stiffened to take the blow. Two days after the landing, a personal message was delivered to Brigadier Brodhead by the Assistant Chief of Operations and signed by the Prime Minister.
Brodhead was ordered to place the King's Midlanders and all attached units, including the Coleraine Rifles, on twenty-four-hour alert. All leaves were canceled and all personnel restricted to base.
STAND BY TO ENTER ULSTER FOR THE PURPOSE OF MILITARY OCCUPATION AND DEFUSE A GROWING REVOLT BY THE ULSTER MILITIA. ALL PORTS, RAILWAY DEPOTS, ARSENALS INCLUDING LETTERSHAMBO CASTLE, FACTORIES ENGAGED IN ARMS MANUFACTURING, BRIDGES, UTILITY STATIONS, AND OTHER FACILITIES LISTED ARE TO BE SECURED IN COOPERATION WITH THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY. MAKE IMMEDIATE PLANS FOR DUSK-TO-DAWN CURFEWS IN ALL TOWNSHIPS.
ALL TROOPS ARE TO BE DEPLOYED IN COMBATREADY POSTURE. IF RESISTANCE IS OFFERED BY THE ULSTER MILITIA OR ANY OF ITS SUB-UNITS, TROOPS ARE RELEASED TO RESPOND WITH APPROPRIATE GUNFIRE.
The final act of the Weed-Hubble-Brodhead plot unfolded. Brigadier Llewelyn Brodhead tendered his resignation and summoned Captain Christopher Hubble to his office. Christopher, riding on hero's wings, affixed his signature below the Brigadier's. Within an hour every officer in the Coleraine Rifles, except for Subaltern Jeremy Hubble, had likewise resigned.
This was a gigantic relief. Now, at least, if the Brigadier and the Captain faced the firing squad, they'd have company.
By morning every officer in the King's Midlanders and elsewhere in Camp Bushy had resigned. Jeremy caved in as he had when he abandoned Molly.
For the moment secrecy held, but what the cabinet was looking at was open mutiny!
52.
Caroline's London office desk was neither slapdash with papers and trinkets nor wholly immaculate but for a single rose. It was cleared for action like a battleship deck, as she focused on a trio of thick reports, her nose balancing her specs in the manner of her father.
Chalmers, her chief financial adviser, and MacGregor, her father's top engineer, were both iffy about the bold stroke Caroline wanted to put on the boards for the future.
Like many facilities, Weed Ship & Iron was building at capacity and, to handle new bids, was leasing old facilities or patching up derelict ones.
Caroline was opting for an entire new shipyard north of Belfast. The vicinity around Larne would be perfect.