Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
space than was lost to German submarines.”
88
) The government had been
exploring ways to lessen the shipping crisis, with Haig’s cavalry catching its eye.
Haig, who envisaged his cavalry chasing the defeated Germans, was greatly
offended and opposed any government investigation of the British Expeditionary
Force’s utilization of horses. He wrote Robertson: “It appears that the War
Committee have overlooked the fact that I am responsible for the efficiency of the
armies in France.”
89
Robertson needed no prodding. He had already decided that
he and the Army Council must put “our foot down” to stop the civilians from
meddling in military questions.
90
Hence the Army Council’s support of Haig was
belligerent and unyielding:
The Council therefore cannot but regard the recommendation of the War
Committee as a serious reflection on the manner in which they have
discharged their dues, and one which if carried into effect would undermine
their responsibility and impair their authority with the army. If His Majesty’s
Government decide to proceed with a special investigation under a Minister
of the Crown—that is, if they feel themselves unable to rely upon the
judgment and advice of the Army Council in this matter— the Council
respectfully submit that it will not be possible for them to continue to be
responsible either for economical administration or for the efficient conduct
of the war.
91
With feeling running high in the committee, the Welshman’s cup of indignation
overflowed.
Mr. Lloyd George agreed that it was most surprising to receive such a letter
which amounted to the Army Council setting itself up against the
Government. After referring to somewhat similar transaction in connection
with the Admiralty, he said that he considered it a perfectly insolent letter
from Sir. D.Haig. The letter talked about his responsibility—to whom was
he responsible? He was responsible to them, to the Government, and through
the Government to Parliament, and through Parliament to the people. The
effect of this letter was to tell the War Committee “to mind their own
business” and not interfere with his. He thought that the documents of the
Army Council and of Sir D.Haig were most improper. There was another
matter to which he wished to direct their attention. That was the way the
War Committee was treated in the matter of information, which was
withheld from them. They had a perfect right to investigate any matter
connected with the war that they pleased. If they said they wished to
investigate anything, no one had the right to say that they objected, and to
tell them to mind their own business.
92
Several days later, on May 30, the War Committee finally discussed Lloyd
George’s agenda item on military information. The minister of munitions
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 77
emphasized once again the supreme responsibility of the War Committee,
expressing concern about the movement of divisions without the ministers’
knowledge, and suggesting “that there had been decisions which they might have
modified had they known all that the War Office knew.”
93
Robertson promised to do better about providing the ministers with information
and the civil-military crisis quickly subsided with the C.I.G.S.’s power intact.
Robertson and Haig’s conduct of the war was about to be put to a severe test—the
long-awaited Somme offensive. Haig had been biding his time while he husbanded
his men and shells. His army has been called “one of the most remarkable and
admirable military formations ever to have taken the field.”
94
Few armies in history
have matched its enthusiasm and courage. All were volunteers. No one was more
confident of the offensive power of this force than Haig, who “contemplated a
complete break-through like that carried out in May 1915 at Gorlice-Tarnow by
the Germans and Austrians, and then, a wheel and a sweep behind the German
front.”
95
Conscious of the civilians’ skepticism of a costly attempt at a breakthrough,
Robertson masked Haig’s true intentions from the War Committee. As Hankey
recorded in the minutes, “Sir W.Robertson assured the Committee that in the
suggested movement there was no idea of any attempt to break through the German
lines. It would be only a move to degager [or relieve] the French.”
96
By the end of May, it was imperative that Britain, irrespective of what the
Italians and Russians could accomplish on their fronts, must attack—and soon.
On May 26, Joffre emotionally informed Haig and Robertson that “the French
army would cease to exist”
97
if the British delayed their advance until August.
In the end, it was concern for France, a political reason, that led Lloyd George
to accept the offensive. On June 2, his friend Albert Thomas, the French minister
of munitions, wrote him:
Public opinion looks round for the responsibility of the present situation,
and becomes restive; it feels nervous when people think of our troops
struggling for months round Verdun, after resisting such formidable
onslaughts in the many months before. And what comes into the people’s
minds is that the English are in a state of inaction, that they have been
accumulating enormous forces, but the efficiency of which has not yet been
put to the test. I suppose this has been mentioned to you from various sources
of information: but not much would have to happen to undermine, as it were,
the confidence our country has in British cooperation.
98
Although Lloyd George still believed that the best policy was “holding the enemy
in check during 1916 until the Allies are fully equipped for a great offensive later
on,” he bowed to the inevitable.
99
In reality, Lloyd George was to never believe
that conditions were right for a massive and prolonged British offensive in the
West. And general headquarters’s tactics in 1916 served to reinforce his opposition
to the “Westerners’” strategy.
78 “WESTERNERS” IN THE ASCENDANCY; THE SOMME OFFENSIVE
The army leadership was dominated by cavalry officers (five of the nine
generals who commanded armies during the war were horse soldiers) and the
resulting “cavalry spirit” led to haste and disproportionate losses. Although the
British Expeditionary Force now had more guns on their front than the Germans,
British artillery tactics were rigid and unimaginative. As the British official history
admits: “Too little attention was paid by the General Staff to the advice of the
artillery and engineer experts, who, recalling the methods of fortress warfare,
suggested the concentration of artillery fire on particular sections rather than
spreading it nearly evenly.”
100
The problems of siege warfare had been largely
neglected by an overly optimistic general headquarters. As A.J.P.Taylor has noted:
“Nothing had been learnt from previous failures except how to repeat them on a
larger scale.”
101
A further weakness of the British offensive—which was no fault of the soldiers
—was the artillery’s inability to kill the enemy in their dugouts on a broad front
with high-explosive shells. The Ministry of Munitions had made astonishing
strides in the manufacture of shells under Lloyd George’s leadership, increasing
its production of medium shells sevenfold and heavy shells twelvefold since June
1915. But the munitions industry was not yet capable of producing a large number
of high-explosive shells for the most common artillery piece—the eighteen-
pounder. Moreover, the next most plentiful artillery piece, the 4.5-inch howitzer,
fired a thirty-five-pound shell which contained only four pounds ten ounces of
high explosive. This was due to the purpose of the shell (designed to explode on
impact producing a cloud of shell fragments) and the necessity of having a heavy
casing to prevent the shell from disintegrating within the gun when fired. Out of
the 12,000 tons fired by the howitzers and heavy guns in the preliminary barrage
on the Somme, only around 900 tons consisted of high-explosive shells.
102
In volume and weight the British bombardment which began on June 24 far
surpassed any previous British artillery barrage, employing over twelve times the
weight of shell per mile of front used at Festubert:
The weight of shells transported to the British guns was 21,000 tons,
excluding propellant (the explosive needed to drive the shell up the barrel
at the moment of firing). It had taken the efforts of about fifty thousand
gunners (almost the number of Wellington’s Army at Waterloo), working
for seven days, to load this weight into their pieces and fire it at the enemy
—or, more precisely, into the area, 25,000 by 2,000 yards square which the
British infantry were to attack. In crude terms, this meant that each 2,500
yards had received a ton of shells; or, if numbers of shells are used for the
calculation—and about 1,500,000 had been fired—that each 2,000 square
yards had received 30 shells.
103
Most of the shells in this rain of metal, however, were ineffective shrapnel shells.
Many of the Germans, sitting on long wooden benches twenty feet or more below
the ground, survived the gigantic shelling.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 79
Between 6:30 and 7:30 A.M. on July 1 the most intense fire of the
entire bombardment crashed into the German lines. Then the noise of exploding
shells was replaced by the sound of officers’ whistles. About 140,000 tommies
with their bayonets glistening in the bright sun climbed from their trenches and
slowly moved in perfect rows across no-man’s-land as if they were on a morning
stroll. They could not move faster because each man was weighted down with
about sixty-six pounds of equipment. German machine gunners were quickly
laying down a murderous fire. It was an unequal contest between man and
machine. The horrendous losses—almost 60,000 casualties—made July 1 the
blackest day in British military history.
On July 3, Lloyd George, Balfour, and Hankey held a grim discussion of the
offensive, which thus far had resulted in little progress. To Hankey, Haig’s tactics
were “sheer slogging reduced to its crudest form.” Lloyd George reminded Hankey
of the latter’s belief in December 1914 that the German defenses in the West were
impregnable and that Britain’s great opportunity lay in the East
104
—a position to
which he himself had steadfastly clung. Second-guessing, however, was a useless
exercise. The cult of the offensive was in the ascendancy and Lloyd George knew
Sir Douglas Haig and General Sir Henry Rawlinson at Fourth Army headquarters
on the eve of the Somme offensive.
80 “WESTERNERS” IN THE ASCENDANCY; THE SOMME OFFENSIVE
that he was about to become secretary of state for war, a position which might link
his reputation, in part, to the success or failure of the great offensive underway.
NOTES
1. Bonham-Carter, Soldier True, p. 5.
2. “Talk with Maurice Hankey at United Service Club,” November 8, 1932, Liddell
Hart MSS, 11/1932/43.
3. Haig to Lady Haig, June 22 and 30, 1916, Haig MSS, no. 144. It must be noted that
Haig concluded his June 22 letter with this sentence: “Anyhow you must realize that
I try to do more than ‘do my best & trust to God,’ because of the reasons I give
above.” But Haig gives no “reasons” above that would indicate that he did.
4. Esher Diary, June 1, 1916,2/16.
5. E.K.G.Sixsmith, Douglas Haig (1976), pp. 164–71.
6. Haig’s minute on “Cavalry Operations 20–26th, 1917,” n.d., Haig MSS, no. 119.
7. Haig Diary, October 9, 1918, no. 132.
8. Sir James E.Edmonds, compiler, Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1918,
5:235.
9. Ibid., p. 196.
10. Robertson to Kiggell, July 5, 1916, and Rawlinson, July 26, 1916, Robertson MSS,
I/35/65 and 100.
11. Esher Diary, September 23, 1916, 2/17.
12. See especially his To Win a War, 1918: The Year of Victory (1978) and Douglas
Haig: The Educated Soldier (1963).
13. Memorandum by Robertson, November 8, 1915, CAB 42/5/6.
14. Brigadier-General John Charteris, Field-Marshal Haig (1929), p. 66.
15. Brigadier-General John Charteris, At G.H.Q. (1931), p. 11.
16. Robertson to Wigram, March 24, 1915, RA GV Q2522/3/172.
17. See Haig Diary, June 26, 1915, no. 101, and Haig to Wigram, June 27, 1915, RA
GV 2521/V/133.
18. Robertson to Stamfordham, n.d., but most probably written in late June or early July
1915, Robertson MSS, I/12/3. Robertson also prepared a paper which suggested that
strategy should be the exclusive property of the C.I.G.S. See his “Notes on the
Machinery of the Government for Conducting the War,” June 30, 1915, Robertson
MSS, 1/9/6.
19. Haig to Kiggell, July 1, 1915, Kiggell MSS, II/2.
20. These eight divisions were never sent to Gallipoli.
21. Haig Diary, October 17, 1915, no. 103.
22. Ibid., October 24, 1915, no. 103.
23. Robertson to Murray, October 21, 1915, Robertson MSS, I/15/1. For more on
Robertson’s unhappiness with Kitchener and Murray, see file 1/9 in Robertson MSS.
24. Robertson to Haig, November 15, 1915, Haig MSS, no. 103.
25. Robertson to Haig, November 17, 1915, Haig MSS, no. 103.
26. Haig had followed Robertson to London and had put pressure on Asquith and Bonar
Law to make Robertson C.I.G.S.
27. Murray to Robertson, November 28, 1915, Robertson MSS, I/15/6.
28. Robertson to Murray, November 30, 1915, Robertson MSS, I/15/7.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 81
29. Stamfordham to Asquith, December 3, 1915, Asquith MSS, 4.
30. Asquith to Stamfordham, December 6, 1915, RA GV Q838/52. Terraine attempts
to pooh-pooh the role of the king in the shakeup of the high command in December.
Haig: Educated Soldier, p. 165. But George V certainly seems to have believed that
“he had done the whole thing.” See Hankey Diary, December 14, 1915, 1/1.
31. Robertson to Kitchener, December 5, 1915, Robertson MSS, 1/9/40.
32. Robertson to Wigram, December 11, 1915, RA GV Q838/61.
33. Hankey, Supreme Command, 2:446.
34. Robertson to Repington, October 31, 1916, Robertson MSS, I/33/73.
35. Hankey to Asquith, May 23, 1916, CAB 42/14/12.
36. Ibid.
37. Robertson to Haig, March 8, 1916, Robertson MSS, I/22/30, and Robertson to
Murray, March 8, 1916, Murray-Robertson MSS, Add. 52463.
38. Hankey, Supreme Command, 2:471.
39. War Committee, February 22 and 29, 1916, CAB 42/9/3 and 7, and March 21, 1916,
CAB 42/11/6. Also see Robertson to Lloyd George, March 16, 1916, Robertson, I/
33/5.
40. War Committee, December 23, 1915, CAB 42/6/13.
41. Robertson, “Note for the War Committee by the Chief of the Imperial Staff, with
Reference to the General Staff Paper, dated December 16, 1915,” December 23,
1916, CAB 42/6/14.
42. War Committee, December 28, 1915, CAB 42/6/14.
43. Memorandum by Balfour, December 27, 1915, CAB 42/7/5.
44. War Committee, January 13, 1916, CAB 42/7/5.
45. Ibid.
46. Haig to Robertson, January 13, 1916, Robertson MSS, 1/22/14.
47. Robertson, “Note prepared for the War Committee by the Chief of the Imperial
General Staff on the Question of Offensive Operations on the Western Front,”
January 1, 1916, CAB 42/7/1.
48. Robertson, “Memorandum on the Conduct of the War,” November 8, 1915, CAB
42/5/6.
49. War Committee, December 28, 1915, CAB 42/6/14.
50. Cruttwell, History of the Great War, p. 260.
51. Robertson to Haig, August 29 and November 1, 1916, Robertson MSS, I/22/72 and
86.
52. See “Note by Balfour,” January 25, 1916, CAB 42/7/12, and Hankey Diary, January
21, 1916,1/1.
53. Entries of January 31 and February 1, 1916, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 92.
54. Haig Diary, January 30, 1916, no. 104.
55. Robertson to Haig, January 24, 1916, Robertson MSS, 1/22/18.
56. War Committee, February 3, 1916, CAB 42/8/1.
57. Ibid., February 22, 1916, CAB 42/9/3.
58. Winston S.Churchill to Clementine Churchill, January 13, 1916, quoted in Gilbert,
Companion, Part 2, Documents: May 1915–December 1916, pp. 1368–70.
59. Lloyd George to Hankey, February 23, 1916, Lloyd George MSS, D/17/3/18.
60. Hankey to Lloyd George, February 23, 1916, Lloyd George MSS, D/17/3/19.
61. Hankey to Lloyd George, February 25, 1916, Lloyd George MSS, D/17/3/20.
62. War Committee, March 21, 1916, CAB 42/11/6.
82 “WESTERNERS” IN THE ASCENDANCY; THE SOMME OFFENSIVE
63. Lloyd George’s minute on a memorandum on the campaign of 1916, dated February
28, 1916, prepared privately for him by his military secretary in the Ministry of
Munitions, Colonel Arthur Lee. Lloyd George MSS, D/2/22.
64. Du Cane to Lloyd George (“Notes on the Statement by the Commander-in-Chief of
the French Armies on the Military Situation,” March 18, 1916 inclosed) April 1916,
Lloyd George MSS, D/l/1/16.
65. Haig to Robertson, April 4, 1916, CAB 42/12/5.
66. War Committee, April 7, 1916, CAB 42/12/5. It is interesting that Kitchener, whom
Lloyd George had manipulated to depose as Britain’s s supreme war lord, agreed
with the Welshman’s criticisms and continued to argue after the April 7 decision
that Britain should hoard her manpower in 1916 in preparation for a great attack in
1917. See Esher Diary, April 17, 1916, 2/15.
67. See David R.Woodward, “Great Britain and President Wilson’s s Efforts to End
World War I in 1916,” The Maryland Historian 1 (Spring 1970): 45–58, and John
Milton Cooper, Jr., “The British Response to the House-Grey Memorandum: New
Evidence and New Questions,” Journal of American History 59 (March 1973): 958–
71.
68. See War Committee, February 22, 1916, and “Addendum to the Proceedings of the
War Committee on March 21, 1916,” CAB 42/9/3 and 42/11/6; also see entry of
February 23, 1916, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 101.
69. Entry of April 14, 1916, Diary of Lord Bertie, 1:337.
70. Memorandum by Grey, January 14, 1916, Grey MSS, F.O. 800/96.
71. Taylor, English History, p. 53.
72. Roy Jenkins, Asquith: Portrait of a Man and an Era (paperback edn., 1966), p. 392.
73. Entry of April 17, 1916, A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 106.
74. “Sic” in original; Memorandum by Stamfordham, April 16, 1916, RA GV K951/4.
75. Memorandum by Stamfordham, April 19, 1916, RA GV K951/7.
76. Cruttwell, History of the Great War, p. 348.
77. Joffre to Robertson, April 25, 1916, CAB 42/13/2.
78. War Committee, May 3, 1916, CAB 42/13/2.
79. Ibid., May 17, 1916, CAB 42/14/1.
80. “The Policy of the Allies in the Balkans. Memorandum by the War Committee,”
May 17, 1916, CAB 42/14/1.
81. Anglo-French Conference, June 9, 1916, CAB 28/1/1.C.-8.
82. Hankey Diary, May 22, 1916, 1/1.
83. War Committee, March 21, 1916, CAB 42/11/6.
84. Hankey to Asquith, May 23, 1916, CAB 42/14/12. Hankey’s letter also included
some minor criticism of the secrecy of the Ministry of Munitions.
85. Hankey Diary, May 24, 1916, 1/1.
86. Ibid. There was no formal meeting of the Army Council with minutes and hence
Hankey’s diary is the only record of its stand.
87. Hankey Diary, May 24, 1916, 1/1.
88. Taylor, English History, p. 59.
89. Haig to Robertson, May 20, 1916, CAB 42/14/10; also see Haig to Robertson, May
29, 1916, Robertson MSS, 1/22/41.
90. Robertson to Haig, May 19, 1916, Robertson MSS, I/22/38.
91. Army Council (180), May 22, 1916, W.O. 163/21.
92. War Committee, May 24, 1916, CAB 42/14110.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 83
93. Ibid., May 30, 1916, CAB 42/14/12.
94. John Keegan, The Face of Battle (paperback edn., 1976), p. 215.
95. Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1916, 1 :254.
96. War Committee, May 30, 1916, CAB 42/14/12.
97. Haig Diary, May 26, 1916, no. 106.
98. Thomas to Lloyd George, June 2, 1916, Lloyd George MSS, D/19/6/29.
99. Lloyd George to Thomas, June 3, 1916, Lloyd George MSS, D/19/6/31, and entry
of June 6–8, 1916, Diaries of C.P.Scott, pp. 214–16.
100. Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1918, 5:605.
101. A.J.P.Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History (paperback edn., 1972),
pp. 133–34.
102. Adams, Arms and the Wizard, pp. 172–73, 241–45, and Keegan, Face of Battle, pp.
227– 37.
103. Keegan, Face of Battle, p. 234.
104. Hankey Diary, July 3, 1916, 1/1.
84 “WESTERNERS” IN THE ASCENDANCY; THE SOMME OFFENSIVE
5
Wizard in the War Office
SHORTLY before noon on June 6, Lloyd George left the Ministry of Munitions
to attend a meeting of the War Committee at 10 Downing Street. The war continued
to go badly. Five days earlier the greatest sea battle of the war, Jutland, had ended
in a draw. To the profound disappointment of the nation, the proud Grand Fleet
had been unable to win a Trafalgar-like victory over the German High Seas Fleet.
As Lloyd George approached the cabinet room, an agitated Bonham Carter
informed him that another misfortune had befallen the nation. News had just been
received that Kitchener of Khartoum, en route to Russia, had gone down with the
Hampshire when it struck a mine off the Orkneys.
The stunned ministers at Lloyd George’s suggestion decided against
adjournment and carried on with their work. As Britain’s war leaders discussed
across the table topics ranging from the Greek situation to routes for merchant
ships, Lloyd George and Robertson had their minds on another question—
Kitchener’s successor.
Wully feared that Asquith would appoint his nemesis, Lloyd George, whose
energetically expressed strategical views and criticisms of the generals’ conduct
of the war made him anathema to the soldiers. With Kitchener dead and Lloyd
George in the War Office, the soldiers’ defenses might be breached. As soon as
the War Committee concluded its meeting, Robertson cornered Hankey, letting
him know that “he was very anxious not to have Lloyd George.” Later in the day,
he got the ear of Asquith. His first choice for the War Office was the army’s friend,
Austen Chamberlain, the secretary of state for India.
1
In the following days, Robertson carried on an urgent campaign to deny the
Welshman the War Office. Influential allies were the Army Council, certain
newspapers, and the king. George V informed Hankey on June 10 that
Chamberlain was also his choice and then “went into a most violent diatribe against
Ll. George.”
2
For his part, Lloyd George left the cabinet room convinced that he was the
leading candidate for the War Office. He had had one foot in the door during the
May crisis in 1915 and more recently, in January, Asquith’s supporters had felt
him out about replacing Kitchener.
3
As head of the War Office, his voice might
be raised in Allied council for his single-front approach to the war. In this way the
East might compete with the West for British guns and men. Ignored at home, he
might find allies in Paris, Rome, and Petrograd. It would not be the first time that
Britain’s allies had forced the ministers to go against the advice of the general
staff. Witness Salonika.
But initially the War Office had little attraction for him if he had to accept
Kitchener’s figurehead position. For his criticisms of the generals’ conduct of the
war to have any impact he had to have the army’s respect. At the very least he
wanted the power to appoint and sack generals. ‘The soldiers would crawl before
the man who they knew had the ultimate power over them,” he told Scott on the
afternoon of June 6, “and treat anyone who had not with contempt.” Obviously
relishing the chance of shaking up the generals, he spoke with Scott, “of the need
for a new spirit at the War Office and for rather extensive changes of personnel.”
4
The great unanswered questions were: Would Robertson relinquish any of his
vast power, and, equally important, would the prime minister pressure him to do
so? Also, Lloyd George was uncertain of Bonar Law’s position for the Unionist
leader could make a strong claim to the seals of the War Office.
On Sunday, June 11, the two most powerful men in Asquith’s coalition
government met at Aitken’s home at Leatherhead. The atmosphere was distinctly
frosty at first. Bonar Law, according to Aitken’s account, led off with an
enumeration of Lloyd George’s faults. The minister of munitions deftly
sidestepped this personal attack, emphasizing that the important thing was to
prevent “a satellite of Asquith or a weak man agreeable to the soldiers” from taking
the vital post. He and Bonar Law were the only ones who could prevent this. He
was quite prepared to step aside and support Bonar Law. At the end of a long and
difficult discussion, Bonar Law declared that Lloyd George was his choice for the
War Office.
5
The common bond between the two men was their agreement that
the Kitchener-Robertson compact should be destroyed.
6
With his mind made up, Bonar Law wasted no time in applying pressure on
Asquith. It was Whitsun weekend, and Asquith was resting at his cottage on the
Thames near Didcot, the Wharf. On Monday morning, when the Unionist leader
descended on Asquith at his country home, the prime minister at first offered him
the post. But when Bonar Law resisted, he agreed to appoint the Welshman.
7
When
he talked with Lloyd George that evening, however, he began to have second
thoughts. There is no full record of their conversation, but it is apparent that Lloyd
George and Asquith were far apart on the powers the former would have. Over
breakfast the next morning with Scott, Lloyd George continued to insist that he
must have “the full ordinary powers of the Secretary of State which had been
largely withdrawn from Kitchener—especially the ultimate power of appointment
to the higher commands.” He also admitted that he had threatened Asquith with
resignation if “somebody else were put over his head at the War Office.”
8
Lloyd George, of course, had been threatening resignation more frequently than
the change of seasons. Before Kitchener’s death he saw no prospect of playing a
major role within the government in military policy. Only in opposition might he
effectively attack the generals’ conduct of the war and the failure of Asquith and
the Liberals to overrule them. He had been restrained from resigning, in part,
86 WIZARD IN THE WAR OFFICE