Milne was merely the first to feel this forceful and articulate presence looming over his shoulder

From Castles of Steel by Robert K Massie. Page 33.

Milne was neither wicked nor incompetent; he was ordinary. And he was far from solely responsible for the debacle that followed. The underlying cause of his flawed strategy and faulty dispositions was Britain’s unwillingness to commit absolutely to France. French uncertainty as to Britain’s role in the coming war continued right up to the afternoon of August 4, when, after the British ultimatum had been sent to Berlin, Churchill finally received a group of French admirals at the Admiralty. There, the First Lord, employing his broadly Anglicized French, declared in a burst of good fellowship, “Use Malta as if it were Toulon [the main French naval base in the Mediterranean].” Two days later, Prince Louis concluded an agreement that gave France, in the person of Vice Admiral Augustin Boue de Lapeyrère, general direction of naval operations in the Mediterranean.

None of this helped Admiral Milne. The two admiralties might be talking, but no arrangements had been made for communication between French and British commanders at sea. At 4:00 a.m. on August 3, Admiral de Lapeyrère put to sea with the entire French Mediterranean fleet, steaming south toward Algeria to provide protection for the troop transports of the French North African army corps. His battleships and cruisers, organized in three squadrons, were in sufficient strength, he believed, to deal with Goeben and Breslau. However, to make certain that the two fast German ships did not, as Churchill feared, “break in upon the transports . . . crammed with soldiers,” de Lapeyrère postponed for several days the date of the troopships’ sailing from Africa. Admiral Milne did not know this. Ordered by Churchill to give priority to the protection of the French transports, he focused diligently on that assignment, even though the French fleet itself was there to protect them and the transports themselves were not yet at sea. Not until August 2 was Milne given authority to communicate with the French. When he tried to do so, Milne could not raise the French admiral by wireless and was eventually obliged to send a light cruiser to Bizerte “in quest of his colleague,” de Lapeyrère.

Lack of communication with the French caused difficulties, but Milne’s situation was made worse by the fact that communication between his flagship and the First Lord at the Admiralty was all too rapid. This was the first naval war in which admiralties could intervene directly to control ship movements by means of cable and wireless radio. This new technology, enabling orders to be dispatched from London night and day, offered a powerful temptation to the restless First Lord. Frequently ignoring the First Sea Lord, whose proper role was the operational control of warships, Churchill began sending orders directly to admirals and ships at sea. Milne was merely the first to feel this forceful and articulate presence looming over his shoulder.