Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals

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its great attraction, did not seem promising. A conference in the Foreign Office

on May 12 attended by Curzon, Cecil, Lord Hardinge, the permanent under-

secretary for foreign affairs, Hankey, and Leopold S. Amery, the assistant

secretary to the War Cabinet, concluded that there was “no sufficient reason” that

any of Germany’s allies “should sever themselves from an alliance which has

already proved to be so successful.”

Both Curzon and Amery, however, agreed

with Lloyd George that the conquest of Palestine was vital to the security of Egypt

and Mesopotamia. As Amery, an imperialistic braintruster who had influence far

beyond his position in the government because of his close relationship with Lloyd

George, Milner, and Smuts, wrote: “The collapse of Russia has, in fact, made

Palestine, of the issues still left undecided by the war, one of the most vital for the

whole of the British Empire.”

It is significant, however, that these imperial strategists, despite their zeal for

the conquest of Palestine, supported Robertson’s view that Britain had no choice

but to continue to concentrate her military power in the West.

“By no other

means,” Curzon emphasized, “does it appear likely that the complete liberation

of Belgium, and the evacuation of France, will, if the war continues as long, be

secure. For, if these two objects were made the subject of an offer by Germany at

an earlier date, while her military strength and that of her Allies is still unbroken,

it could only be at the price of conditions which Great Britain alone would have

to pay and which would purchase the safety of our Allies by the acceptance of a

grave peril to the future of the British Empire.”

In short, as long as Britain sought

the destruction of German militarism, it was unsound to lessen Britain’s military

commitment to her Continental allies and concentrate on peripheral operations

which were so dear to Lloyd George’s heart. Thus Lloyd George’s most important

source for his “Eastern” strategy—the imperialist-minded members of his

government—deferred to the general staff.

For the moment Lloyd George had to be satisfied with strengthening the

Egyptian Expeditionary Force. This was achieved through a rare compromise with

Wully. By mid-May, after it was obvious that Sarrail had achieved no important

success against the Bulgarians, Lloyd George agreed to support in Allied councils

the general staff’s effort to get British troops away from Salonika. But he had his

price. These troops were to be sent to Egypt rather than France.

Under the terms

of this bargain, Robertson was able to pry two divisions away from Salonika, but

four still remained at the end of the year.

As Lloyd George prepared the way for a big push against the Turk in Palestine,

Haig moved to implement his great offensive. Whatever criticisms may be directed

against Haig’s plan, and there are many, it cannot be argued that it did not have

clear and important strategical objectives. As we have seen, the clearing of the

Belgian coast had long held an attraction for British military thinkers ranging from

Hankey to Sir John French to Churchill. With German submarines operating from

the Belgium coast being responsible for about one third of the British ships lost

to the torpedo,

many British civilians saw a special British interest in this military

operation. Jellicoe also expressed concern about the Belgian ports being used by

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 157

German destroyers.

Furthermore, enemy aircraft on the way to blast and burn

London would have to fly over additional anti-aircraft defenses if the coast were

in British hands. Also, if the German lines could be ruptured, the liberation of

much of Belgium (Britain’s major war aim in Europe) and the control of the

enemy’s vital communications system with its northern front might follow.

Even if the Germans did not give way, they might suffer terrible losses

attempting to hold ground that they could not afford to give up.

Haig’s plan to achieve these important strategic goals, as he outlined them to

Nivelle, Robertson, and his commanders, ran as follows. He would continue the

Arras attack to wear down the enemy. Meanwhile, British forces and material

would continue to be massed in the north in Ypres, where the main attack would

be launched in stages. First the Messines Ridge would be secured for observation

and to protect the right flank of his army. A few weeks later the other shoe would

drop—the operation to take the Belgian coast. This attack would proceed one step

at a time to secure Passchendaele Ridge, Staden Ridge, Clercken Ridge, etc. To

reassure Robertson and the civilians, Haig emphasized that “my arrangements

commit me to no undue risks and can be modified to meet any developments in

the situation.”

Despite the deliberate nature of his tactics, Haig was confident that ultimately

the German line would be broken, with his cavalry sweeping across western

Belgium, conquering Ostend and Zeebrugge, and mopping up the German forces.

Since the British generals Herbert Plumer and H.S.Rawlinson, who were involved

in the preparations, were not so optimistic as Haig, he chose a fellow cavalryman,

the dashing and aggressive General Herbert Gough who was imbued with the

“cavalry spirit,” to lead the assault with his Fifth Army.

This grandiose plan was questioned by leading French generals. Pétain,

although he refused to criticize Haig’s plan to his face, continued to oppose “any

operations with such distant objectives” and in a conversation with Sir Henry

Wilson he emphasized that “with the amount of assistance he could give,” Haig

was embarking upon “an impossible task.”

Ferdinand Foch was more blunt,

telling Wilson that “he wanted to know who was the fool who wanted Haig to go

on ‘a duck’s march through the inundations to Ostend & Zeebrugge.’” “As Wilson

noted in his diary, “He thinks the whole thing futile, fantastic & dangerous, and I

confess I agree & always have.”

Robertson, who shared Lloyd George’s concern that the French might not give

Haig adequate support and that the British army might consequently be bled white

in its attack, was also leery of Haig’s plan of a series of consecutive offensives to

gain grandiose strategic objectives. At the Paris conference he and Pétain had

stressed limited and wearing-down tactics which ran counter to Haig’s ultimate

objectives. As Robertson’s biographer astutely observes:

The difficulty lay, of course, in limiting each step in a continuous offensive.

Messines had been correct for it had been complete in itself. Third Ypres

would depend on the success of each component step. What would happen

158 PASSCHENDAELE: THE RACK OF CHOICE

to the battle if one of the components failed? If it was broken off, according

to the book, then the campaign would halt without completing its strategic

purpose, and a lot of lives and effort would have been expended for nothing.

If it was kept going, then Wully feared it might degenerate into a second

Somme, a human holocaust that he was concerned as the Prime Minister to

avoid.

Another concern of Robertson’s was Haig’s blind faith in Brigadier-

General J.Charteris, the head of the intelligence section at general headquarters,

who fed Haig a steady diet of unrealistic reports about the exhaustion of the

German army. Intelligence furnished Robertson by George Macdonogh, the

director of military intelligence at the War Office, painted a much truer picture of

the condition of the German army. Robertson, moreover, was apparently

impressed by Repington’s warning about fighting in the Low Countries. “I said

[to Robertson] that you can fight in mountains and deserts,” Repington writes on

May 21, “but no one can fight in mud and when the water is let out against you,

and, at the best, you are restricted to the narrow fronts on the higher ground, which

are very unfavourable with modern weapons.”

On May 18, prompted by Lloyd George and Robertson, Haig put the essential

question to Pétain.” ‘Did the French intend to play their full part as promised at

the Paris Conference? Could I rely on his wholehearted co-operation?’”

Pétain’s

misleading response was entirely reassuring as was the French government’s reply

to Derby’s inquiries.

On June 2, only five days before the British attack on the Messines Ridge was

scheduled to begin, Pétain was a bit more candid about the exhaustion of the French

army, sending his chief of staff, General Debeney, to Haig’s headquarters to

inform the British commander in chief that he would be unable to launch his

supporting attack as promised on June 10. “The French Army is in a bad state of

discipline,” Debeney ominously told Haig. On the other hand, Pétain’s messenger

assured Haig that he could count on the French army fulfilling its role in his

Flanders operation in the summer.

Whether Haig really believed that he could

expect wholehearted French support in the future is open to serious question.

Debeney emphasized that the French attacks during the next month were to be

essentially assaults by artillery and airplanes (a preview, in fact, of Pétain’s tactics

for the rest of the year). When Sir Henry Wilson saw the notes of the Haig-Debeney

conference, he wrote in his diary: “This endorses and underlines all that I have

been saying for the last month or more, and I think, and hope, that it will finally

dispose of Haig’s insane idea of taking Ostend and Zeebrugge.”

What is certain

is that Haig ignored Robertson’s s persistent pleas for any scrap of evidence that

would indicate that the French were not prepared to do their part.

Neither

Robertson nor the War Cabinet were informed of Debeney’s revelation about the

exhaustion of the French army. With Lloyd George (and Robertson) insisting that

the full cooperation of the French army was the essential requirement for any great

British attack, Haig apparently feared that his Messines Ridge attack and, more

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 159

importantly, his main Flanders offensive would be vetoed by the civilians if he

passed on this vital information to London.

In May and early June the War Office and general headquarters were out of

step for the first time since Robertson had become C.I.G.S. Unlike Haig, Robertson

did not now believe that the German army could be defeated in 1917 or perhaps

even in 1918.

Within the War Office Charteris was considered “a dangerous fool

because of his ridiculous optimism.”

With Britain’s manpower chips dwindling,

Robertson was reluctant to raise the ante. Under the circumstances, Lloyd

George’s policy of “knocking away the props” found some favor in the War

Office. Macdonogh told Wilson that he agreed with “the obvious necessity of

cutting out the Turk & Bulgar and believes it could be done.”

Even the apostle

of the “Western” school of thought, Robertson, momentarily looked toward the

Italian theater, where Cadorna was winding down the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo.

On June 7 he met with Foch at Abbeville and stressed a theory that he had held

since becoming C.I.G.S.: diplomacy was not supporting the military by detaching

the minor powers. Foch then raised an obvious point. A diplomatic offensive

without adequate military support was usually doomed to futility. “He said that

the French information from Austria was both recent and good. Austria was very

anxious to treat for peace, but would only treat when she was beaten. She was, in

fact, asking to be beaten, in order to get out of the war with a good face.”

Robertson’s response to this statement was remarkable: “This information raised

the whole question of our military policy. Ought we now to concentrate against

Austria?” Foch’s answer, it must be noted, was that “theoretically, that sounded

very well, but there were many practical difficulties.”

Two days later Robertson tentatively raised this point with Haig, who recorded

the following in his diary: “He wished me to realise the difficult situation in which

the Country would be, if I carried out large and costly attacks without full

cooperation by the French. When Autumn came round, Britain would then be

without an Army! On the other hand it is possible that Austria would make peace,

if harassed enough. Would it not be a good plan, therefore, to support Italy with

guns?” Haig, of course, viewed such sentiments as being heretical and attempted

to bring Wully back into the bosom of “Western” orthodoxy.

After his meeting with Haig, Robertson suppressed his misgivings about the

Flanders operation and loyally supported Haig in the great debate which was about

to begin over his offensive. Why was this rugged and strongwilled individual, who

feared no man, willing to defer to Haig? The answer can be found in his fear that

any disagreement between himself and Haig would be immediately exploited by

Lloyd George to undermine the “Westerners” and perhaps even to depose Haig.

He had always argued that the soldiers must support each other to keep the civilians

from interfering in strategy. This had been Robertson’s position, it should be

emphasized, long before Lloyd George’s underhanded tactics at Calais. In early

1916, he had stressed in a letter to Haig that the success of the British army

depended largely upon “the extent we at the top stick together and stand firm.”

160 PASSCHENDAELE: THE RACK OF CHOICE

The tragic result of Robertson’s s deference to Haig was that the government’s

adviser on grand strategy was reduced to the status of Haig’s cipher.

When Robertson returned to London he discovered a fresh challenge to the high

command’s direction of the war. On June 8, the War Cabinet, prompted it seems

by a paper written by Milner, had established the War Policy Committee “to

investigate the facts of the Naval, Military, and Political situations, and present a

full report to the War Cabinet.”

The War Policy Committee consisted of the

prime minister, Curzon, Milner, and Smuts (who had joined the War Cabinet after

turning down the opportunity to replace Murray as commander in chief of the

Egyptian Expeditionary Force). Bonar Law was not an official member but he

might as well have been because of his involvement in the committee’s

deliberations.

The origins of this committee can be found in the growing realization on the

part of the ministers that the situation had changed since the Paris conference,

when Lloyd George had supported a continuation of the offensive throughout

1917. Given the apparently irreversible decline of the Russian army and the

uncertain state of the French army, how much longer should the British go on

using up its declining manpower by attacking in the West? On June 6, the War

Cabinet had received its first official indication that something was wrong with

the French army. Macdonogh had “reported that there was serious trouble

practically amounting to mutiny, in a number of French regiments, partly as the

result of Socialist propaganda, partly on the ground that native troops had been

allowed to fire on strikers in the neighbourhood of Paris. It was hoped that this

disaffection would be set right in five or six days.”

This report (apparently

through no fault of Macdonogh’s) minimized the French mutiny. Hence, for the

moment the collapse of the Russian army continued to provoke the greatest

anxiety. On June 7, Milner stressed in a paper that “the defection of Russia” had

completely derailed Allied military plans, both in the West and in the East. “On

the other hand,” he wrote, “the entrance of America into the war has introduced

a new factor, of great ultimate promise but small immediate value. What are we

going to do to fill up the time before the weight of America can be thrown into

the scale?” It would not do “to go on without any plan at all. How do we now

stand about Palestine, about the Balkan campaign, about the continuance of the

offensive on the Western Front? I don’t know that we have made up our minds

about any of them. I feel as if we were just drifting, and as if there was some danger

that, in view of the preoccupation of a number of grave but nevertheless minor

domestic questions, we might continue to drift.”

The military was none too encouraging about America’s capacity to assist the

French and British on the western front in the near future. In May the general staff

had warned the civilians that an American army would not “be in the field in any

theatre of war for a long time to come.”

And within the next few days, General

I.M.Bridges, who had accompanied Balfour’s mission to the United States in

April, presented a disquieting report on American preparedness. In what Curzon

called the “most depressing statement that the Cabinet had received for a long

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 161

time,” Bridges informed the ministers that Washington might only be able to send

between 120,000 and 150,000 men to France by January 1, 1918. Moreover, by

the end of 1918, the American Expeditionary Force in Europe might number only

half a million men.

Waiting for America, then, might be a risky policy. On the

other hand, these figures suggested that it was more important than ever to keep

Haig from exhausting the British army in attack, for the Americans might not be

able to fill his depleted ranks. Furthermore, men must be kept out of the army to

build the ships to accelerate the transportation of the Americans across the Atlantic.

Lloyd George was clearly delighted with the shift in the mood of the ministers

since early May, when he had been pledged by them to support the offensive in

the West. At this time he was excited about news that he had just received from

the British embassy in Rome. Cadorna, behind the back of his government, had

motored to Rome to meet secretly with a member of the British embassy, E.Capel

Cure. The Italian general’s clandestine movements were probably explained by

his government’s lack of enthusiasm for the offensive. Cadorna told Cure that his

attack on the Isonzo, which was now stalled, would have resulted in a “vital blow”

to the enemy if he had had the guns which he had turned down at the Rome

conference. Moreover, he expressed the conviction that he could “go right

through” to Trieste on the Austrian front between Carso and the sea if the British

provided him with 300 or more guns.

Fearing that the continued drift of the government would leave the initiative

with Haig, Lloyd George welcomed the creation of the War Policy Committee,

which gave him the chance to ventilate thoroughly his view that Austria and Turkey

—not Germany—should be the chief targets of the Allies in 1917. One facet of

Lloyd George’s personality that has clearly emerged thus far in these pages is his

extraordinary patience. Stalled by opposition at home or abroad, he returned again

and again to his peripheral strategy.

On the same day the War Cabinet created the War Policy Committee, he

launched a campaign to deny Haig his cherished Flanders campaign. A report

delivered by Sir Henry Wilson gave him some leverage. Wilson “confessed grave

doubts as to whether we could count on the continued resistance of the French

army and nation until such time as effective military assistance could be received

from the United States of America.” Despite this admission, Wilson refused to

break ranks with Haig in other respects. He would not confirm “the rumours which

had reached the War Cabinet [Macdonogh’s report of the sixth] that an incident

had occurred in the French army amounting almost to a mutiny.” He also

emphasized that “Pétain could not hold the French army together through another

winter without some real success, whether military or diplomatic.” When pressed

by the War Cabinet for his personal views on where a great victory might be won,

he said “that he could see no reasonable prospect of this in Mesopotamia, or Egypt,

or on the Western front, with the possible exception of Flanders, where he

understood that Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig was hopeful.” On the other hand,

he admitted that the prospect of Haig’s offensive “would be considerably reduced

162 PASSCHENDAELE: THE RACK OF CHOICE

if the French would not develope [sic] an attack on a large scale in concert with

the British offensive.”

Although Wilson had been guarded, even deceptive, in his remarks, his

comments had a considerable impact on the ministers, and it was agreed that his

views “strongly reinforced the arguments given by Lord Milner in his

Memorandum of June 7 in favour of a fresh stock-taking of the whole war

situation.” Conveniently overlooking his support of Nivelle, Lloyd George stressed

that up to the present time the Government had been guided in their war

policy entirely by the views of their naval and military experts. He himself

had always felt some misgivings about this course owing to the fact that in

a large number of instances all through the war the advice of the

experts proved to be wrong. Recent events had confirmed the view that, like

everyone else, they were not infallible. He pointed out that. at the Paris

Conference on May 4 & 5 he and Lord Robert Cecil, after prolonged

discussion, had supported the naval and military experts without hesitation,

although it involved forcing on the French Government an unpalatable

decision. Now the position had changed.

Lloyd George then came to the nub of the problem. The French were showing

signs of exhaustion, but in the weeks ahead Haig planned a “gigantic operation.”

The attack underway at the moment—the Messines Ridge assault—was just a

preliminary. Yet Robertson, Lloyd George noted, “did not believe that the main

British operation could be attended with success unless the French would

undertake an offensive on a corresponding scale.”

The prime minister allowed no defeatism to creep into his assessment of the

military situation. With the strain great in every quarter this was not the time for

hand-wringing or loss of faith in eventual victory. The ministers, in fact, were so

concerned about preventing a peace atmosphere from developing that two days

earlier they had rejected Hankey’s practical suggestion that “detailed secretarial

arrangements” be made for the “eventual Peace Conference” which might take

place “within months or years.” The ministers agreed that nothing must be done

to “create a peace atmosphere or give the impression that the Government were

making preparations for a Peace Conference.”

“Personally,” Lloyd George noted, “he inclined to the view that General Wilson

had probably been too pessimistic [about the exhaustion of the French]…. He

himself believed, however, that we could achieve both a military and diplomatic

success, and he shared General Wilson’s view as to the importance of this.”

Any

discussion of strategy, however, had to await the return of Robertson from France.

It would soon be obvious to all, if it was not already, that Lloyd George believed

only in the possibility of winning a major victory over the Austrians or Turks.

The stage was now set for the greatest and most intense debate of the war

between the “Easterners” and “Westerners.” In the next weeks the War Policy

Committee held sixteen meetings, usually in the morning, but twice at dinner

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 163

meetings which went on late into the evening, before the committee’s report was

ready to be laid before the War Cabinet for its approval on July 20.

Lloyd George viewed the question as the most important yet before his

government. With the losses on the Somme burned in his memory, he was obsessed

with limiting British casualties. If Haig were allowed to take on the German army

practically singlehandedly before the Americans arrived on the scene, the British

army might be destroyed by the formidable and, to Lloyd George, impassable

German defenses. This was consistent with his views on how the war should be

waged. Although his Liberal colleagues in Asquith’s government thought him an

extremist on compulsion, a common denominator of his strategic views was to

limit British losses. He had lobbied for guns for Russia to allow the colossus of

the East to wear down the Germans, intervention in the Balkans to involve Balkan

soldiers in the anti

German coalition, attacks against the Turks, in which British casualties were

often relatively light, and Nivelle’s offensive, which assigned a secondary role to

the British army. Now, if the ministers accepted his plan to attack Austria,

assuming that Rome would not reject the dubious honor bestowed upon it, the

Italians would do most of the killing and dying.

The trustee of his nation’s manpower inspects the grave of a British soldier.

164 PASSCHENDAELE: THE RACK OF CHOICE

Unable to divert the generals away from the West during the first months of his

premiership, Lloyd George and his colleagues in the War Cabinet had used

manpower as a means to force Haig to adopt less wasteful tactics. There is a

revealing discussion of the War Cabinet’s policy in a memorandum by Hankey,

dated April 18, 1917. It must be quoted at some length.

41. Man-Power is now the most difficult of the problems which the War Cabinet

has to face under the economic head. Their policy has never been very explicitly

defined and may in time lead to a difficult parliamentary situation…with the

probability of a prolongation of the War, the Government feel it to be more and

more dangerous to mortgage the future by reducing our man-power by any drastic

steps….

42. Although is has never been formulated in the War Cabinet Minutes it is

understood that the policy of the Government is first, by keeping the War Office

short to compel the soldiers to adopt tactics that will reduce the waste of man-

power. The French are alleged to have accomplished their successes in 1916 with

losses about half those incurred by the British army. Some British Generals are

known to be far more careful of human life than others, and these are not the least

successful leaders. The War Cabinet, it is understood, intend to force this fact upon

the Higher Command, in order that they in turn may compel subordinate leaders

to exercise great care in this matter. Further, they desire the War Office to work

out their own salvation by a careful substitution of elderly and partially fit men

and coloured men for fit men in all services behind the lines. The Government

would also like to see the adoption of a system of reduced numbers of battalions

in divisions. Although this would undoubtedly reduce the total numerical strength

of the army, it would not reduce the effective strength in anything like the same

proportion for the reason that the effective strength is largely dependent on

mechanical means, such as guns, machine-guns, trench mortars, and tanks; all

these latter are continually increasing, so that the effective strength of a division

of 9 battalions in 1917 would be incomparably greater than that of a division of

12 battalions in 1914.

43. If this is the policy of the Government it might be as well to place it on

record in the War Cabinet Minutes at an early date.

Although the War Cabinet’s policy of keeping the army short of men was never

formally recorded in the minutes, the government refused to support universal

national service or the further combing out of war-related occupations. As Derby

lamented in June, “it seems clear that, practically, the Army is now provided with

men after all other needs of the Nation have been cared for.”

The War Cabinet,

however, enjoyed no success in attempting to get Haig to reduce British divisions

from twelve to nine battalions.

With the burden of fighting the German army shifting to the British after

Nivelle’s failure, the civilians’ approach to the manpower question changed.

Preserving Britain’s s staying power rather than forcing Haig to change his tactics

became their primary concern. Haig’s growing anger over the government’s

refusal to supply him with all of the men he demanded is understandable. When

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 165

Robertson, after conferring with Lloyd George in late May, informed him with

some exaggeration that he would receive “only scraps” in future drafts, Haig’s

frustration boiled over: “For the last two years most of the soldiers have realised

that Great Britain must take the necessary steps to win the war by herself, because

our French Allies had already shewn that they lacked both the moral qualities &

the means for gaining the victory. It is thus sad to see the British Govt. failing at

the XIIth hour!”

Haig’s belief that Britain was “at the XIIth hour” was at the

heart of general headquarters’s differences with the War Cabinet over manpower.

Haig thought that he might defeat Germany in 1917; the civilians did not. Hence,

Lloyd George and others were determined to maintain Britain’s ability to fight

on. Men were needed to plow, build ships, and turn out munitions as well as man

the trenches on the western front. Furthermore, the government was worried about

the impact of further compulsion on the mood of Labour. Maintaining home

morale might mean the difference between victory or defeat as the war continued

into 1918 or even 1919.

The War Policy Committee meetings need not be described in exhaustive detail

because the reader is already well acquainted with most of the arguments of the

“Easterners” and the “Westerners.” The battle lines were drawn at its first meeting

on June 11. Robertson argued that Britain had no choice but to continue the

offensive in the West and noted that the British army was confident that it could

“beat the Germans by themselves.”

The prime minister countered with his view

that the Italian front offered the British greater opportunities than the formidable

German defenses in the West. He read a private letter from Sir Rennell Rodd, the

British ambassador in Rome, which described a secret interview that Cadorna had

with a member of the British embassy. The Italian commander in chief had asked

for more guns from the British and had expressed the conviction “that the Italian

front provided the enemy’s most vulnerable point on the Western Front.”

Robertson immediately demurred. If the Italians had to have more guns, let them

come from the guns allotted to the Palestine expedition rather than from Haig’s

army.

Just before the committee adjourned for the day, Lloyd George begged the

military and civilian leaders to consider his strategy with an open mind:

In his view the great defect of the War had been that we have always hit the

enemy at his strongest instead of his weakest side. If we had concentrated

against Austria earlier in the War we might have knocked her out and

isolated Germany. In his opinion, our strategy must be considered again

without any preconceived ideas. This was the only chance of rescuing

ourselves from a tight place. The news from Russia was very discouraging

and Colonel Spiers [the way Sir Edmund Spears, the head of the British

Military Mission in Paris, spelled his name in 1917], an officer of great

knowledge of the French, actually talked of the possibility of a Revolution

in France. On the other hand, he could see no serious indication of cracking

166 PASSCHENDAELE: THE RACK OF CHOICE