Earlier today I was reminded of a quote concerning the Admiralty war room at the outbreak of World War One. It can be found in Nicholas Lambert’s 2005 article ‘Strategic Command and Control for Maneuver Warfare’ (Journal of Military History). The quote is from the diary of Captain Philip W. Dumas, about to take over as Assistant Director of Torpedoes, and according to Lambert it reads:
The scene was wild thousands of telegrams littered about and no-one keeping a proper record of them. [Director Operations Division Arthur] Leveson shrieking—a disheveled looking man—and the only person with his head screwed on the right way seemed to be [Assistant Director Operations Division Philip] Vyvyan.
There are a couple of things wrong with this. Vyvyan was called Arthur, not Philip, and was Assistant to the Chief of the Staff, not Assistant Director Operations Division (that was that other notorious diarist Herbert Richmond). But what is most surprising is the description of Leveson as ‘a dishevelled looking man’. On referring to the Dumas diary it is very difficult to see how Lambert could have possibly read that last word as ‘man’. In fact it looks very much like Dumas calls Leveson ‘a dishevelled looking jew’. The reader can judge for themselves:
One thing is for certain, and that is that ‘man’ does not appear in that sentence, whilst it would appear from a look at his writing that the j, e and w match that word letter for letter. If anyone else has another suggestion I am more than happy to hear it. Quite why Lambert felt the need to be so creative one can only imagine.
Leveson can of course mean ‘Son of Levi’, but in this case Dumas was wide of the mark: Arthur Leveson’s parents had married in 1860 in the Parish church of Savenake, Wiltshire, and his father Edward had become a Freemason in 1857.
As to Dumas, his diary is informative but one can tell he had an unpleasant side. On 4 August we find him writing ‘there is a notice in Prince Louis’ office that no telephone message is to be sent to his house because he has German servants though it doesn’t say so’. The German-born Admiral His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg was First Sea Lord at the time, and despite having been a British subject for over 40 years at this point was accused of holding pro-German sympathies. The innuendo in Dumas’ writing is as thick as a knife.
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You may be correct that the first word in the last line you have excerpted is “Jew”, but the last letter of that word bears no resemblance to the ‘w’ in the word “with” or the word “screwed” in the same line. There is no word in your excerpt that has a ‘j’ to compare. I have no suggestion as to what that first word is but the first letter of the first word could just as easily be a ‘g’ as a ‘j’
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Ian, I’ve got copies of over 13 years of Dumas’ diaries (and have been through them several times) so I’m fairly satisfied that my interpretation is correct, especially with regard to the “w”. Given how much he carped it’s frankly not surprising anti-antisemitism (especially inaccurate antisemitism) would be the next step for him.
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