Aubrey Herbert - World War One - 1916

1916

Impatient with the indecision of the Foreign Office over Albania, Herbert at the start of 1916 went prospecting for new opportunities. Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss proposed for him a job as Captain in Intelligence. When in February the War Office cleared him from involvement in Albania, he took up the offer and found himself in charge of Naval intelligence in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and the Gulf.

Following the critical situation of British troops at Kut-al-Amara, the War Office was instructed to offer Herbert's services to General Townshend to negotiate terms with the Turks. T. E. Lawrence was sent on behalf of the Arab Bureau while Colonel Beach acted for Intelligence of the Indian Expeditionary Force. Together they were to oversee the exchange of prisoners and wounded, and eventually to offer the commander Khalil Pasha up to ₤ 2 million for the relief of Kut. The offer was rejected by Enver Pasha, and the evacuation of the wounded severely hampered through lack of transport.

The situation at Kut led Aubrey to send a telegram to Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India, with support of General Lake but still in breach of army regulations, condemning the incompetence in handling the Mesopotamian campaign. The Government of India ordered a court martial but the War Office refused. Admiral Wemyss, who travelled to Simla for the purpose, supported him throughout.

Back in England in July 1916, Aubrey Herbert started asking in the House of Commons for a Royal Commission to inquire into the conduct of the Mesopotamian campaign. He opposed the routine evasiveness of the Prime Minister, Asquith (a close friend), by speaking in the House four times on Mesopotamia, and his critics saw in his obstinacy a personal vendetta against Sir Beauchamp Duff, the Commander-in-Chief in India, and Sir William Meyer, the Financial Secretary., but his persistence paid off, and a Special Commission Mesopotamia was subsequently appointed.

In October 1916 Aubrey Herbert started his post as a liaison officer with the Italian army, whose frontline lay in Albania. It seems that he was unaware of the clause partitioning Albania signed with Italy in the secret Treaty of London on 26 April 1915. When the Bolsheviks published its secret provisions in 1917, he rejected the idea of Albania as merely a small Muslim state, the fiefdom he believed of Essad Pasha. In December he was back in England.

In December 1916 also he learned about the death of his cousin Bron, the son of his (pacifist) uncle Auberon Herbert, to whom he had felt closest. From that date Aubrey was to consistently support the idea of negotiated peace.