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Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881–1931), journalist
and war correspondent, was the eldest son of Sir Ellis
Ashmead-Bartlett MP who was civil Lord of the Admiralty
between 1885 and 1892. Sir Ellis’ interests took
him to various theatres of war: the ‘Bulgarian
atrocities’ in 1877–8; with the Turkish
army during their war with Greece in 1897; and in
1899 he witnessed some of the early stages of the
Boer War, in which two of his sons took part.
His son, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett followed in his father’s
footsteps. At the age of 16 he accompanied his father
with the Turkish army in the Graeco-Turkish war and
he served as a subaltern in the Bedfordshire Regiment
in the Boer War. He was a special war correspondent
with the Japanese army in the Russo-Japanese war (1904);
with the French campaign in Morocco (1907) and with
the Italian army in Tripoli (1911). In 1912 he was
at the Turkish Headquarters during the First Balkan
War.
Not surprisingly, Ashmead-Bartlett was keen to join
the Dardanelles campaign and on 11 March 1915 he wrote
to Winston Churchill requesting permission to ‘accompany
the forces to Constantinople’. Although he was
a journalist with the Daily Telegraph he
had organised to apply as the Newspaper Proprietors’
Association representative so that he could supply
accounts of the operations to the whole of the London
press as well as for numerous other British, European
and American newspapers. Thirteen days after his letter
to Churchill, Ashmead-Bartlett received a letter from
the British Admiralty advising that his application
had been approved. Included in the letter were clauses
outlining the terms of his travel and advising that
he was ‘expected to conform to the general regulations
issued by the British War Office for the guidance
of press correspondents in the field’. He was
also requested ‘to refer to a Major in the Royal
Naval Division for instructions regarding censorship.'
Ashmead-Bartlett arrived off Gallipoli during the
naval campaign to breach the Dardanelles and so was
comfortably ensconced by the beginning of the land
operations. With no apparent embarrassment about his
superior surroundings as an observer of the carnage,
Ashmead-Bartlett’s dispatches often mentioned
his comfortable living conditions. Charles Bean, the
Australian war correspondent, commenting on the opulence
of Ashmead-Bartlett’s surroundings at the correspondents’
camp at Imbros, wrote that ‘in camp he lives
like a king and couldn’t think of putting up
with the sort of discomfort that satisfies some of
us’. However, when the occasion demanded, Ashmead-Bartlettcould
rough it. On the night before the landing, the ship’s
officers entertained some of the Australian army officers
on board HMS London in the wardroom. Ashmead-Bartlett
wrote that in an effort to give the officers as much
rest as possible he and the ship’s crew gave
up their bunks to the officers and he ‘snatched
a few hours sleep on the floor’ of his cabin.
On 25 April, the pinnaces from the battleships were
so busy transporting the men that Ashmead-Bartlett
did not actually step onto the peninsula until about
9.30 that night. He wrote later that as he arrived
ashore, he was arrested as a spy by an Australian
colonel, but was released almost immediately. He spent
the next hours travelling around from ship to ship:
his pinnace from the London had been commandeered
to carry General Birdwood’s Anzac evacuation
request to Sir Ian Hamilton and Ashmead-Bartlett travelled
from ship to ship with the messenger. By his own account,
he arrived back on board London at about
3 am on 26 April.
Ashmead-Bartlett’s dispatch about the landing
at Anzac Cove on 25 April was the first to reach Australia
and a detailed account was published in Australian
papers on 8 May 1915. Unfortunately, staff at GHQ
(General Headquarters) had not recognised Charles
Bean as an official correspondent and his dispatch
was not published in Australia until 13 May.
Years after the war, in 1927, one Australian official
historian, A W Bazley, wrote:
Bean agreed:
Ashmead-Bartlett’s dispatches praised the prowess
and bravery of the troops but became more and more
critical of their leadership and what he believed
was the futile sacrifice of so many men. On 10 May
his dispatch in the Daily Telegraph in London
warned readers of the strength of the Turkish troops.
This differed from previous reports and was certainly
a very different message from that in official GHQ
communiques.
Despite the warning
about censorship, Ashmead-Bartlett was nevertheless surprised when, in May, the
British Admiralty confiscated a package of undeveloped films he had taken:
he had been given permission to take his cinematograph and had taken many
lantern slides of the operations. Then, on 27 May he lost all his notes
and possessions with the sinking of HMS Majestic off the Gallipoli
peninsula. Ashmead-Bartlett returned to England to replace his typewriter and
wardrobe and while he was there he attempted to advise English politicians
of his impressions of the problems in Gallipoli.
He continued to have problems with missing dispatches
and censorship after he returned to Gallipoli. On
18 July he complained bitterly:
In late August, Australian journalist, Keith Murdoch,
received permission from General Birdwood to visit
Anzac for four days. Despite having signed the official
declaration regarding censorship, he agreed to carry
a letter from Ashmead-Bartlett to the British Prime
Minister, Herbert Asquith. A British army officer
in Marseilles confiscated the letter. Before his ship
had reached England Murdoch had composed an 8000-word
letter to the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher,
which he sent on 23 September. His letter praised
Australians lavishly but attacked the British army
at all levels. It contained many errors and exaggerations
but provided ammunition for the anti-Dardanelles faction
in London. It contributed to Sir Ian Hamilton’s
recall on 17 October and to the eventual evacuation
of the allied troops.
Ashmead-Bartlett was ordered to leave Gallipoli on
2 October. According to Bean, Ashmead-Bartlett’s
letter:
Bean believed the Press Officer kept a spy in the
war correspondents’ camp at Imbros and that he
had discovered that Murdoch was carrying the letter.
After the letter was discovered, the War Office sent
a wire to Sir Ian Hamilton ordering that Ashmead-Bartlett
be recalled to London. He left Imbros for England
on 2 October believing that his career as a war correspondent
was at an end – certainly for that war.
After his return home he contracted jaundice and spent
a month in hospital. During this time he signed a
contract to give twenty-five lectures in England and
then to travel to Australia and New Zealand to deliver
seventy five more. Ashmead-Bartlett has written that
his first lecture in the Queens Hall on October 27
was attended by representatives from the War Office
and detectives who had orders to stop him and arrest
him if he said anything that was likely to embarrass
the government. Nothing happened, and he was left
alone for the remainder of his lectures in England
but with the ever-present threat of action if he criticised
the conduct of the campaign too severely.
He sailed for New York on 22 December 1915 and, once
again, found War Office representatives waiting with:
He arrived in Sydney on 11 February 1916 where he
was greeted with the news that a welcome on the wharf
by a large number of returned soldiers had been forbidden.
The State Commandant of the 2nd Military District
had refused permission for the returned soldiers to
wear their uniform for a guard of honour and march
through the city as part of the reception for him.
However, that evening he gave his first public speech
in Australia when he attended a dinner held in his
honour by the Returned Soldiers Association. After
the dinner he was presented with a huge picture containing
photographs of all the notable Australian soldiers
and an address thanking him for what he had written
about the Australian troops in Gallipoli.
His first lecture was to be held the next day at the
Sydney Town Hall. On the morning of the lecture Ashmead-Bartlett
was visited by the local military censor, Major Armstrong.
He informed him that he was acting under instructions
from the Ministry of Defence in Melbourne and that
Ashmead-Bartlett was not to say a word until his whole
lecture had been screened by the major. This was a
problem as Ashmead-Bartlett spoke from notes. Later
that afternoon he collected the carbon copies of all
the articles and telegrams he had ever written from
the Dardanelles – about fifty thousand words
– and handed them to the Major saying he would
be lecturing from that but wouldn’t know exactly
which parts he would use. As he had intended, the
major returned all the papers after he had read about
a dozen pages. A report in the Sydney Mail
on 16 February 1916, stated that the Town Hall was
‘thronged’ for his lecture on 12 February
and he was given ‘a very warm reception’.
The report continued that Ashmead-Bartlett:
Ashmead-Bartlett wrote later that he was not bothered
again by the military authorities in Australia: probably
because of the popularity of his lectures and their
propaganda value for recruitment.
The surveillance was resumed when he arrived in New
Zealand on 16 April. He was advised that he would
be accompanied on his lecture tour by an army colonel
who was part of a British mission engaged in training
the New Zealanders. Despite the circumstances, the
two became quite good friends during their six weeks
together.
Arriving back in England he was subjected to a long
interrogation at Liverpool during which he was asked
to hand over his papers. According to Ashmead-Bartlett
he went off to London to reclaim his property from
the War Office and to restart his campaign against
them in the British press.
On 1 May 1917 a representative of the Dardanelles
Commission requested Ashmead-Bartlett appear on ‘Thursday
next at 11 o’clock and to give evidence before
them’ at the House of Lords. He had previously
provided some of his maps of the campaign to the commission.
Ashmead-Bartlett was the Conservative MP for North
Hammersmith between 1924 and 1926. He continued to
write about the Gallipoli campaign and published The
Uncensored Dardanelles in 1928, three years before
his death at the age of 50 years.
In 1927, both Charles Bean and John Treloar, the Director
of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra tried to
trace the Ashmead-Bartlett documents for the Memorial’s
collection. They discovered – after lengthy
correspondence – that Angus and Robertson in
Sydney had negotiated the purchase of these documents
with Ashmead-Bartlett early in 1916. They are now
in the Mitchell Library in Sydney.
Sources:
‘Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett’, in Sir Sidney
Lee (ed) The Dictionary of National Biography,
Vol 1, Supplement Jan. 1901–1911, Oxford, 1966,
pp 105-6.
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, diary, Mitchell Library, State
Library of New South Wales.
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, Papers on Gallipoli,
Microfilm M2581-6, National Library of Australia.
2nd Military District Registry files: Guard
of Honour composed of returned soldiers at Ashmead-Bartlett’s
reception (February 1916), item 105/1/85, Australian
War Memorial 34.
Ashmead-Bartlett’s first dispatch from Gallipoli
to the London Daily Telegraph — enquiry
suggested by Mr A W Bazley for Australian War Memorial
Library, 12/3/47, Australian War Memorial 93.
‘Sir Keith Murdoch’, in B Nairn
and G Serle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Vol 10, Melbourne, 1986, pp 622–627.
Robert Rhodes James, Gallipoli, London, 1989.
Sydney Mail, 5 January–28 June 1916,
Microfilm NX21 101, National Library of Australia.
Ashmead-Bartlett publications in National Library
of Australia:
Ashmead Bartlett’s Despatches from the Dardanelles,
George Newnes, 1916.
Port Arthur, the Siege and Capitulation,
Blackwood, 1906.
Some of my experiences in the Great War,
George Newnes, 1918.
The Tragedy of Central Europe, Butterworth,
1923.
The Uncensored Dardanelles, Hutchinson, 1928.
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