![]() Another article accused Churchill of issuing an initial false report about Jutland causing a decline in stock prices. Douglas claimed he was murdered by a Jewish conspiracy to keep him from reaching Russia and preventing the Bolshevik revolution. Lord Kitchener, Minister of War in 1916, had been killed when his warship bound for Russia struck a mine. A Conservative newspaper with which he usually agreed, The Morning Post, had fired a broadside: “It must no longer be a paying proposition,” the paper wrote, for Douglas “to invent vile insults against the Jews.” The “invention” to which The Morning Post referred was a series of Douglas articles in an anti-Semitic weekly, Plain English.ĭouglas believed he had been defamed. With “a permanent chip on his shoulder,” he was apt to take offense easily.” And when Douglas took offense, he frequently ended up in court as a libel plaintiff or defendant. Montgomery Hyde, the scandal left Lord Alfred, now in his fifties, aggressive and quarrelsome. Their relationship had played a prominent role in the latter’s conviction and imprisonment for “gross indecency and procuring”-a conviction brought about through a campaign waged by Lord Alfred’s outraged father, the man who had formulated the modern rules of boxing. Notwithstanding, he was still best known for his scandalous affair with Oscar Wilde just before the turn of the century. A convert to Catholicism, he was something of a puritan in later life. 26 April 1923 Lord Alfred Douglas, circa 1910. They inadvertently but presciently illustrated how modern American and English libel law could arrive at a different result in a defamation action involving both the same facts and the same public figure. The two trials involved identical fact situations but entirely different legal standards. Douglas accused Churchill of plotting with Jewish financiers to manipulate stock exchanges through issuance of false communiqués on Jutland. The trials involved Lord Alfred Douglas, a notorious British literary figure, son of the Marquess of Queensbury. Little did Churchill realize at the time that the simple act of preparing, at his government’s request, a favorable postmortem of the Battle of Jutland would lead him seven years later into playing a major role in two prominent libel trials within six months. One side effect of the Admiralty’s release of Churchill’s “appreciation” was that stocks promptly bounced back. Initial reports on Jutland caused British stocks to suffer dramatic drops on the New York Stock Exchange. Jellicoe had been following previously agreed grand strategy crafted while Churchill was at the Admiralty helm. While he was not as aggressive as some would have liked, Churchill didn’t care. British Commander Admiral Jellicoe was the one man, Churchill wrote, who could “lose the war in an afternoon.”įaced with that opportunity on, in the North Sea, Jellicoe had not lost. Not so with Germany, a land-based power in the center of Europe. Without it, Britain’s survival was in peril. Worldwide control of the oceans was critical to an island people with vast dominions throughout the globe. Additional details taken from Lawrence Sondhaus, “Navies in Modern World History.” (Wikimedia Commons) A map of the Battle of Jutland, a work of the Department of History, United States Military Academy. And it left the British Navy with the same margin of superiority it enjoyed before the battle. It removed lingering doubts that the Germans had more naval surprises in store. At best, he wrote, the battle was a draw that exposed the inferiority of the German High Seas Fleet. ![]() He dictated a public “appreciation” on Jutland that took an optimistic view. The Germans lost only eleven ships and 2500 sailors, but Churchill knew war was not a cricket match: That was not how you kept score. ![]() True, fourteen British ships sank and 6000 sailors perished. The press had inaccurately reported the North Sea encounter between the British and the German Fleets as a defeat. Just two weeks earlier, he had been highly critical of Balfour for discontinuing Churchill’s successful bombing of German zeppelin sheds. Advisers to Arthur Balfour, his successor as First Lord, wanted his views-for public release-on the Battle of Jutland. Winston Churchill was surprised by an invitation to the Admiralty. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain) 2 June 1916 The sketch was a highly effective portrait of an inconclusive battle. German salvos (shown too close together) are falling short of the four-stack cruiser (also not accurately portrayed). Preliminary study for a finished watercolor. Above: HMS Southampton at Jutland,, by William Lionel Wylie (1851-1931). The Lord Alfred story begins with the Battle of Jutland.
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