The Gallipoli Letter Read Online Free PDF Page B

concern about the qualities of British military leadership at Gallipoli. Bean was at a low ebb, his diary shows, and in real despair about the prospects at Gallipoli. He wrote bitterly about British muddle, confusion and arrogance. Bean was also a sick man. His mood must have affected Murdoch.
    So Murdoch and Ashmead-Bartlett talked and agreed with one another. ‘You must let people in London know these things,’ Murdoch urged, just as he would be letting his own prime minister know the truth. Ashmead-Bartlett reminded Murdoch of the commitment both had signed that required them to submit everything they wrote to the censors. ‘If I wrote the truth,’ Ashmead-Bartlett explained, ‘it would never be passed by the censor.’ When Murdoch had sought Hamilton’s approval for a visit to Anzac Murdoch had written that ‘any conditions you impose I should, of course, faithfully observe’. Yet briefing a prime minister, Murdoch believed, stood outside any undertaking either he or Ashmead-Bartlett had given. They could write to prime ministers without submitting to the censors, Murdoch argued. Murdoch must have resolved on this when he first applied to Ian Hamilton for permission to visit Anzac. He would report truthfully and fully to Andrew Fisher; he had a commission to do so. Murdoch now urged Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett to do the same to his prime minister, Herbert Asquith.
    You are going to London, the British journalist countered, and you can tell the people in charge the truth. But it was highly unlikely that they would listen, argued Murdoch. After all he had only been on Anzac for four days, had seen nothing whatever of the operations at Helles and very little of Suvla. Nor had he met the most senior people like Hamilton and Birdwood, nor did he have an understanding gained by months in the field. Who in London would take him seriously? But they would listen to Ashmead-Bartlett if he were to write a letter. Murdoch was arguing a very strong case. Certainly Ashmead-Bartlett could believe that if Murdoch were to attempt to criticise the campaign in London he would make mistakes. He simply did not know enough. Supporters of Hamilton and the campaign would leap on those mistakes to discredit Murdoch and he might end up doing more harm than good. Ashmead-Bartlett agonised, eventually deciding that he would write to his prime minister—Murdoch would take the letter to London for personal delivery to 10 Downing Street.
    Murdoch left Imbros on 8 September, unaware that he had already been betrayed to Hamilton, most likely by another war correspondent aghast that the two journalists were determined to circumvent the censorship to which each had freely submitted. Hamilton believed that the letter Murdoch was carrying was destined for publication in Ashmead-Bartlett’s paper, the Daily Telegraph and that, on publication, it would cause a sensation. So Hamilton arranged with British military intelligence in France to have Murdoch stopped and the letter seized when his ship, S.S. Mooltan , docked at Marseilles. Indeed Murdoch was told at Marseilles that he would be arrested unless he turned Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter over. Which he did.
    It was an awful shock, though, to everyone involved in the seizure of the letter to discover that it was addressed not to the editor of the Daily Telegraph but to the Rt Hon. H.H. Asquith, 10 Downing Street, London. The military nervously asked themselves if it was right that they intercept the prime minister’s correspondence. The letter was quietly lost, most probably somewhere in Whitehall. Ashmead-Bartlett was in disgrace regardless, for the potential breach of censorship. In early October, Hamilton withdrew his accreditation and told him to leave Imbros immediately. This was a tactical error on Hamilton’s part. The journalist could talk his head off in London without restraint, and he did.
    Keith Murdoch, though, still had a job of work in front of