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Fifth child and third son of Robert Alers Hankey of Warcowie, South Australia and Brighton, Maurice was born on 1 Apr 1877 at Biarritz. “The second of his Christian names was given to him in accordance with an old French custom. But that year Easter Sunday coincided with All Fools’ Day, and his father is alleged to have described the infant as ‘an April fool but an Easter egg’ .

He was married in 1903 to Adeline de Smidt (1882-1979), daughter of Abraham de Smidt, Surveyor-General of Cape Colony, and by her had three sons and a daughter:

In 1939 Sir Maurice Hankey was created Baron Hankey, of The Chart, Surrey, and a Privy Councillor. Of Highstead, Limpsfield. He died on 26 Jan 1963 at Limpsfield.

Born at Biarritz 1 April 1877, the fifth child and third son of Robert Alers Hankey and his wife, Helen, daughter of William Bakewell, lawyer, of Adelaide, South Australia. His father, whose health was delicate, had spent some years as a sheep farmer in Australia. Hankey, like his father, was educated at Rugby School. He was gazetted a probationary second lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery in 1895; passed out first with the sword of honour at the Royal Naval College; and took first place in all his examinations at Eastney Barracks, Portsmouth. He served in the Ramilles, flagship on the Mediterranean station, in 1899-1902 and was then transferred to the Naval Intelligence Department in the Admiralty. There he served on committees on the defences of the principal naval bases at home and overseas (1905-6) and on naval war plans (1906-7). In 1907 he returned to the Mediterranean as intelligence officer. In 1908 he was appointed an assistant secretary in the Committee of Imperial Defence and in 1912 was promoted secretary at the early age of thirty-five.

The outbreak of war in 1914 brought him additional responsibilities in the secretaryship of the War Council, the Dardanelles Committee, and the War Committee. When the War Cabinet Secretariat was established in December 1916 he became its chief, and after the war combined the secretaryship of the Cabinet with that of the Committee of Imperial Defence, to which in 1923 was added the clerkship of the Privy Council. He retained these three positions until he retired from official life in 1938.

 

 

To these exacting activities at home he added a number of important tasks in the international sphere. Amongst the most important were the secretaryship of the British Empire delegation at the Paris peace conference in 1919 and later at the same conference the secretaryship of the innermost Council of Four (Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Orlando, and Woodrow Wilson). He was British secretary at the Washington conference (1921) and the Genoa conference (1922); secretary of the Imperial conferences of 1921, 1923, 1926, 1930, and 1937; secretary-general to the conferences on German reparations in London (1924) and Lausanne (1932), the Hague conferences of 1929 and 1930, and the London naval conference in 1930.

Hankey’s mind was capacious, his memory large and exact, his persistence relentless, and his tenacity invincible: characteristics of many public servants. But Hankey had supplementary qualities which brought him into the ranks of the really great administrators. He had more than the usual allotment of tact with those volatile politicians who were his daily masters. He served with equal success men as widely dissimilar in temperament as Asquith, Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Baldwin, Ramsay Macdonald, and Neville Chamberlain. If he did not like all of them to an equal degree, they all trusted his integrity and used him to sort out some of the rough animosities which constantly arise between ambitious men. They relied also upon his prodigious memory and his extraordinary application to the problems which confronted them. On questions of defence in particular his opinion and advice were constantly sought, and he had no hesitation about responding. In the first war it was difficult for ministers to get an objective inter-Service point of view from the official Service advisers: each upheld in confident terms the professional views of his own Service. There was no machinery by which comprehensive strategic advice could be obtained. Hankey filled the gap, and his memoranda on broad strategic questions, always deeply considered, resembled the thorough reports submitted by the Joint Planning Staff to the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the prime minister in the second war. Obviously Hankey’s memoranda did not carry the same authority, and inevitably from time to time they roused the suspicion and hostility of the Admiralty and the War Office. But they were always well informed, often imaginative and prescient, and invariably cogently expressed.

Hankey’s greatest achievement was the creation of the Cabinet Secretariat which first came into existence in 1916. From the time of the Liberal election victory of 1906, the scope and complexity of government responsibilities had increased; but the only official record of Cabinet proceedings - a very subjective one - was the prime minister’s letter to the sovereign. Responsibility for executing decisions lay with individual ministers in Cabinet: the danger of confusion and negligence was considerable. With the onset of war in 1914 the consequences of misunderstandings could well have been disastrous. Hankey saw clearly the need for some effective articulating machinery and to him must go the chief credit for the formation of the Cabinet Secretariat. He laid down the principles which have continued to guide its performance. From time to time it has been viewed with suspicion, by the Treasury in particular, and not much less by the Foreign Office and Service departments: it has remained right at the centre of power and inevitably the secretary of the Cabinet has more direct contact with the prime minister than any other official could hope to have.

When the war was over and Lloyd George, in whose eyes Hankey was indispensable, had fallen from power in 1922, the system came under heavy attack. Bonar Law, the new prime minister, professed to think the Cabinet Secretariat an extravagance. This stimulated the Treasury into an all-out attempt to obliterate the Cabinet Office once and for all. The Foreign Office gladly joined in the hunt and some prominent newspapers were anxious to be in at the kill. Hankey defended his creation with skill and vigour and by making judicious concessions here and there kept it in existence. In this process it became more and more obvious to him that, if a Cabinet Secretariat were to make its appropriate and invaluable contribution to the conduct of government, its ambitions must be restricted by modesty.

After this somewhat bitter defensive action Hankey was even more careful not to abuse his position and his successors have followed his example. If the Cabinet Secretariat were to attempt to override the great departments of State and to make pretentions to superior knowledge, it would fail in its co-ordinating and articulating duty. Hankey came to understand this very clearly, and it is for this reason that he was so often acceptable as secretary-general of various international conferences. He was by no means without ambition and he held strong views on many subjects, but he knew that for the successful conduct of business of the Cabinet and of any other committees and conferences the secretary must be self-effacing. The system remains the envy of many other nations.

After his retirement in 1938 Hankey was created a baron (1939) and in that year joined Neville Chamberlain’s War Cabinet as minister without portfolio. When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 he made Hankey Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, without a seat in the War Cabinet, and subsequently in 1941 paymaster-general, from which office he was dismissed in March 1942. Churchill was a notable example of the fact that prime ministers rarely have much time for the political figures favoured by their predecessors. Moreover, he was never much in sympathy with men of strict habits and moralizing tendencies. Whereas, as a secretary, Hankey had been excellent and silent in Cabinet, as a minister he talked too much. Churchill was irritated especially by Hankey’s insistence in 1941-2 that the battle of the Atlantic ought to have priority over strategic bombing, largely valueless at that time.

Nevertheless, in spite of Churchill’s waning confidence, Hankey did some useful work as chairman of Cabinet committees, where his capacious mind and knowledge of government business were most valuable. His chairmanship of the Cabinet’s Scientific Advisory Committee brought him into a new world, and the many scientists, whose work he facilitated by his high administrative skill, honoured him with a fellowship of the Royal Society (1942). After his dismissal from office he continued, at the request of Ernest Bevin, to be chairman of two ministerial committees, and he accepted the unpaid chairmanship of several official committees right up to 1952.

In his retirement Hankey busied himself with his memoirs of the first war. The publication of these was banned by three successive prime ministers (Churchill, Attlee and Macmillan) on security grounds, and after the deletion of certain passages they finally appeared in two innocuous volumes in 1961 under the title of The Supreme Command 1914-1918. In 1945 Hankey published his Lees Knowles lectures on Government Control in War; in 1946 Diplomacy by Conference; and in 1951 his Romanes lecture on The Science and Art of Government - all subjects of which his practical experience was unrivalled.

Success and promotion in Whitehall are more often derived from the skilful mobilisation and use of the written and the spoken word than from qualities of personal leadership. Hankey in office was certainly too busy on matters of extreme national significance to give very much consideration to the personal problems of his own staff, and his natural gifts did not lead him in that direction. The harsh trial of official business was seldom mitigated by the exercise of charm and humour. His subordinates admired his extraordinary qualities and they were proud to share in the splendid organisation he had created and to be praised when they did well. But their admiration for their chief was greater than their affection.

In person Hankey was not impressive. He was no more than 5 feet 5 inches in height, his figure was inelegant, and it seemed to many observers that he was always in a hurry, running from one crucial position to another. He had a large head and massive brow, and the tones of his voice were light and pleasant. He was busy always, and his moods of relaxation were known only to his family. Part of his scanty leisure was occupied with music to which he was devoted throughout his life. His private life was founded upon the principles of Christianity and a strict observance of the rites of the Church of England. His religion was of the type known as ‘muscular Christianity’. He took a cold bath every morning, he was an advocate of alfresco meals in unwelcoming weather, he was persistent in physical exercise, and his favourite method of locomotion was on his feet. He was a man of temperate habits. He preferred a diet of whole-meal bread, raw vegetables, fresh fruit, eggs, and nuts, and this sustained him in full vigour until he was nearly eighty-six.

In 1903 Hankey married Adeline Hermine Gertrude Ernestine (died 1979), daughter of Abraham de Smidt, who had been surveyor-general in Cape Colony but had settled in England in 1890. A woman of strong character and outstanding practical ability, she took over the burden of family affairs and created a happy background in which her over-stretched husband was able to enjoy himself with their three sons and one daughter. There was no self-indulgence about his enjoyment, and he took pains to devise games and activities for them and to stimulate their imagination and their interest in history and current affairs. The secret of the family happiness was the mutual and constant devotion of Hankey and his wife.

 

Adeline Alers Hankey

 

 

Hankey received a grant of £25,000 for his services in the first war. To his private secretary he gave a box of small cigars. He was appointed CB (1912), KCB (1916), GCB (1919), GCMG (1929), and GCVO (1934). He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1939. He held honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Birmingham. He died in hospital in Limpsfield 26 January 1963 and was succeeded as second baron by his eldest son, Robert Maurice Alers (born 1905), a member of the Diplomatic Service.

The National Portrait Gallery owns a portrait of Hankey by Sir William Orpen. There is also a sketch of Hankey intended for inclusion in a picture of the Versailles peace conference by Orpen in the British Embassy in Paris. A portrait of Hankey in his room in the Cabinet office by Robert Olivier is reproduced in Diplomacy by Conference.”