Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals

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Preface to the Second Edition

This book, first published some 20 years ago, was on the cusp of what amounted

to a revolution in World War I studies in Britain. Interest in the Great War had

initially been revived in Britain in the 1960s during the fiftieth anniversary of that

conflict. The 26-part television series, The Great War, shown on both BBC2 and

BBCl, brought the war into the living rooms of the general public and was a huge

success. Numerous books were published that rehashed old controversies and

ignited new ones. At the time that Lloyd George and the Generals was published,

the standard treatment of the debate between British civil and military authorities

over how and where the war was to be fought was Paul Guinn’s British Strategy

and Politics, 1914–1918 (1965). Guinn’s impressive work, however, shared a

weakness with other attempts prior to the late 1960s to deal with the controversies

concerning war policy, strategy and personalities. Much of the contemporary

record, both private and official, remained closed to public scrutiny. The Public

Records Act of 1967, which reduced from 50 to 30 years the closing of public

records, had a revolutionary effect. Many private as well as public records were

now available to the historian, and World War I studies entered its most productive

era, with a new generation of historians who had an unequalled access to material

and a generally more even-handed approach because they did not have the same

emotional or personal attachment to their subject.

Lloyd George and the Generals was one of the first works to make extensive

use of these new sources, but many other volumes followed over the next two

decades that sharpened our understanding of many aspects of British involvement

in World War I. Interpretations were challenged and new perspectives gained.

History is after all an argument without end. David French, in two important books,

British Strategy and War Aims, 1914–1918 (1986) and The Strategy of the Lloyd

George Coalition 1916–1918 (1995), challenged my use of ‘easterners’ (or

indirect) and ‘westerners’ (concentration on western front) to describe the two

schools of strategic thought in Britain. Although this characterization had

dominated the historiography of the war, French argues that it does not accurately

reflect the differing perspectives over the conduct of the war. French makes a

strong case, and I would agree with him that this paradigm represents an

oversimplification of the debate over war policy, especially during the initial phase

of the war, when some British leaders attempted to limit their nation’s liability.

But I would also argue that Lloyd George and the Generals does not portray the

divisions over the deployment of British military resources in black and white

terms. Nor does it rigidly place the participants in the debate over strategy into

two mutually exclusive camps. In the case of Lloyd George’s disagreement with

the British high command over concentrating British military resources against

the main body of the German Army, I remain convinced that the shorthand use of

‘easterners’ and ‘westerners’ continues to be a useful way of characterizing their

differences.

I also believe that this volume continues to be an important addition to the

literature of the war because of its rich detail and emphasis on personalities as

well as policy, especially the role played by the dynamic and mercurial Lloyd

George. Given the high stakes involved, it is not surprising that the infighting in

the War Office and Whitehall often had a Byzantine quality. Fleet Street and the

monarchy were soon drawn into this conflict. What happened behind the scenes

is as much a part of the story as what appears in the conclusions of the minutes of

the councils of war or in the Cabinet memoranda. The clashes between powerful

personalities had consequences for such vital questions as manpower, the unity

of command, the protection of the British Empire in Asia, and the role of British

forces in France and Flanders.

David R.Woodward

September 2003

Series Editor’s Preface

There are few more vexing questions in any democracy than the relationship

between the civil power and the military. In this welcome new edition of David

Woodward’s splendid book, the opportunity is offered to reconsider the

controversial clash between David Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and

then Prime Minister, and his military advisers during the First World War. Any

dealings with Lloyd George, whatever the intrinsic merits of the case he advanced,

were invariably tricky. A.J.P.Taylor, in his Leslie Stephen Lecture of 1961, ‘Lloyd

George: Rise and Fall’, described him as ‘the great “rogue” of British political

life’, and the characterization remains apt.

Lloyd George’s position was sustained throughout the controversy by his desire

on succeeding to the premiership in December 1916 to be a national leader- a

source of political weakness as well as strength. The supporters of the coalition

government sitting on the backbenches upheld his wish to lead country rather than

party. Lloyd George’s premiership was thus complicated by the need to straddle

a coalition without the ballast of party unity to steady him. Some of Lloyd George’s

inconsistencies arose from his handling of coalition factionalism. Occasionally,

his critics in the General Staff (and some historians who support their stance) failed

to understand the weight and complexity of coalition politics.

One of Lloyd George’s critics, Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice, who

crossed swords publicly with him in 1918 during the Maurice Case (when he

accused the Prime Minister of lying about the strength of the British Army in

France before the German spring offensive), wrote a book reflecting on the

difficulties encountered in conducting the First World War. It was entitled

Governments and War (1926) and was based on his Lees Knowles Lectures at

Cambridge the year before. (It is better known in the United States as Statesmen

and Soldiers of the Civil War.) Maurice managed to rise above the spirit of previous

rancorous wartime disputes, and explored the problems of British civil-military

relations by comparison with the similar problems faced by the United States in

1861–65, when conducting a war of equally unexpected magnitude. He believed

that ‘difficulties in the past have arisen mainly because of the misconception of

what is meant by the conduct of war’. In modern wars, the command of armed

forces is but one aspect of the ‘the direction for a special purpose of the whole

power and resources of the nation’. Power to direct these tremendous forces, in

Maurice’s opinion, belonged to the Prime Minister: ‘a Committee is not a suitable

body to direct military operations’.

Maurice also believed that the growth in the power of the American presidency

in 1861–62 served as a valuable precedent for a similar increase in prime

ministerial power—a sort of temporary dictatorship. Lloyd George himself

claimed Abraham Lincoln as one of his heroes. Echoes of Lincoln’s great oratory

can be found in some of Lloyd George’s wartime speeches. Although Lloyd

George demonstrated comparable political finesse to his hero, he lacked Lincoln’s

one transcending virtue—sincerity. Such a deficiency left Maurice in a practical

dilemma. If he believed that the power of the premiership should be augmented

in wartime, then surely he hoped that great authority of this kind in the future

would be vested in British versions of Lincoln rather than shifty, untrustworthy

men like Lloyd George.

In opening up afresh these difficult issues, British historians owe Professor

Woodward a great debt As the author is an American, his book was the first to

detach itself from the polemical disputes that broke out after 1918—‘the battle of

the memoirs’ that shaped the debate that rumbled on into the 1970s. Lloyd George

and the Generals has stood the test of time. It is a significant landmark in the

historiography of British civil-military relations.

Brian Holden Reid

Series Co-Editor

xiii

Birth of an “Easterner

IT was growing late on the evening of August 4, 1914. David Lloyd George, the

chancellor of the exchequer, sat with a few other anxious ministers around the

green table in the historic cabinet room. Prime Minister Herbert W.Asquith sat

“with darkened face and dropped jowl.” Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary,

held his head in his hands. All were silent. They were waiting for Germany’s

response to the British ultimatum. Would Great Britain soon be at war over the

German violation of Belgian neutrality? The deadline for Germany’s response

was midnight in Berlin, eleven o’clock by British time. The silence was broken

by the loud chime of Big Ben. To Lloyd George, as he later noted in his memoirs,

the clock seemed to strike “‘Doom!’ ‘Doom!’ ‘Doom!’” eleven times.

On the surface Lloyd George was as ill prepared for the test of war as were most

of the other members of Asquith’s ministry. His only military experience had been

an undistinguished stint in the pre-Haldane militia. He had enjoyed the comraderie

of the barracks and the annual camps at Morfa Conway in northern Wales. But he

had learned little of warfare. Once, he had suffered a great embarrassment. As he

later related the story to his private secretary and whiskey-drinking companion,

Albert J.Sylvester:

I very nearly lost my reputation. We were engaged in a mock battle over the

hills, and the company to which I was attached was ordered to charge the

“enemy.” Shouting at the top of our voices, we broke from cover and charged

wildly over the hill side. I was racing along when to my horror I felt

something snap. My braces had broken and my trousers commenced to drop

down. It was a most uncomfortable moment. I couldn’t t fall out of the

charge, for I was in the first row of men. As I ran, my trousers came lower

and lower, till I was forced to hold ’em up with one hand and grip my rifle

in the other.

The generals were later to have a similar mental picture of Lloyd George— the

Welshman holding his pants up with one hand as he stormed their citadels of power

and influence.

Before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Lloyd George’s reputa tion

was generally that of a left-wing radical in the Liberal party who was primarily

interested in social reform. The popular image of this “cottagebred boy” was that

of a pacifist and isolationist, a reputation he had gained, in part, because of his

opposition to the Boer War.

The view that Lloyd George was a pacifist and isolationist was incorrect. At

least since Britain’s confrontation with Germany during the second Moroccan

crisis in 1911, he had shown an interest in international affairs and a surprising

grasp of strategic questions on the Continent. In his famous Mansion House

speech, on July 21, he had rebuked Berlin over its aggressive action in Morocco.

With the arrival of the German warship Panther at Agadir still fresh on his mind,

Lloyd George, at Asquith’s request, had attended an important meeting of the

Committee of Imperial Defence on August 23, 1911. In an all-day session, he had

observed with intense interest a showdown between the Admiralty’s “Blue Water”

and the War Office’s “Continental” schools of British strategy. General Sir Henry

H.Wilson, the director of military operations, spoke first on Britain’s role in a

European war. With a pointer and a large map, one of Britain’s most articulate

officers skillfully outlined and defended the general staff’ s plan to send six regular

divisions of the British Expeditionary Force to France. Admiral A.K.Wilson, the

first sea lord, countered with the Admiralty’s maritime strategy. He was

unconvincing.

During the discussion Lloyd George did not hesitate to speak out. In fact, he

was the first to ask what the general staff’s response would be to a French retreat,

an event he discovered that the generals had not even considered. He also looked

beyond the Western theater, asking questions about Russia’s role in the war.

A few days after this meeting Lloyd George sent Winston Churchill, who had

also participated in the discussion, a memorandum. He wrote:

We ought to know what R[ussia] is capable of before we trust the fortunes

of Europe to the hazard. We are even now almost at the point whence we

cannot recede.

Here is another position we ought to reconnoitre. What about Belgium?

150,000 British troops supporting the Belgian army on the German flank

would be a much more formidable proposition than the same number of

troops extending the French line.

It would force the Germans to detach at least 500,000 men to protect their

lines of communication. The Anglo-Belgian army numbering 400,000 men

would pivot on the great fort at Antwerp. The command of the sea would

make this position impregnable.

There is no evidence that Lloyd George questioned the essential correctness of

the general staff’s “Continental” strategy in 1911 which pushed Britain toward a

war in Europe which she was ill prepared to fight with her small professional army.

To the contrary, the Welshman showed a surprising eagerness to go to war with

Germany. According to Peter Rowland, a recent biographer of Lloyd George, “he

was actually convinced that the sooner a war was fought the better.”

2 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS

Austria’s declaration of war against Serbia on July 28, 1914, forced

Lloyd George to confront once again the prospect of Britain’s involvement in a

European war. This time his position was to be much less bellicose and more

ambivalent.

As the country edged towards a war he had not anticipated he was “filled with

horror at the prospect.” It was, as he wrote to his wife, Margaret, as if he were

“moving through a nightmare world.”

Many of his countrymen and colleagues

placed him with the noninterventionists in Asquith’s ministry. As chancellor of

the exchequer and second-in-command to Asquith, he was a key figure in the

debate over Britain’s involvement in the war. If Lloyd George chose to resign in

opposition to Britain’s participation, he would almost certainly wreck Asquith’s

ministry and be responsible for a divided government stumbling into war.

But Lloyd George did not attempt to lead a mutiny against his country’s

involvement in the Continental struggle. Cameron Hazlehurst, who has made the

most thorough investigation of the Welshman’s s position on the eve of war,

concludes that “the recollections and contemporary records of those who were

present show conclusively that he neither organized nor directed the thinking of

the waverers.”

Still, until Germany rejected the British ultimatum of August 4,

Lloyd George’s colleagues were uncertain of his position. He talked of peace,

resignation, and even of accepting Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality. On

a map he had traced with his finger the extreme southerly route the Germans might

take through Belgium. “You see,” he explained, “it is only a little bit, and the

Germans will pay for any damage they do.”

Lloyd George’s ambiguous statements and understandable hesitancy belie his

true position during the anxious days of early August. Although his heart rebelled

against war, his mind was prepared to accept the consequences of German

aggression.

His willingness to fight perhaps is explained by his understanding of

German strategy and the results of British inaction. He had a better appreciation

of the military situation than many of the other members of the cabinet. During

the earlier crisis with Germany in 1911, as we have seen, he had shown a real

understanding of the war plans. More recently, on August 1, 1914, he had been

given a memorandum on the military situation in Europe which had been prepared

for him by the general staff at Winston Churchill’s request. This appreciation of

the strategic situation in Europe had warned: “The German plan of operations is

clearly deducible. The German forces must crush France with as strong and swift

a succession of blows as possible before Russia can assist her, leave some Reserve

troops to hold her, and then turn Eastwards with their main forces to defeat, detach,

or frighten away Russia, with the assistance of Austria.” Furthermore, “there is

reason to suppose that the presence or absence of the British army will determine

the action of the Belgian army. It will very probably decide the fate of France.”

On August 2, the evening of the German ultimatum to Belgium demanding the

right of way to invade France, Lloyd George’s mind was fixed on military

developments. While dining at the home of Sir George Riddell, a newspaper

proprietor and his frequent golfing companion, he placed a large official war map

BIRTH OF AN “EASTERNER” 3

which had been circulated to the cabinet on the table. He then regaled those present

with a discussion of the position of the German and French divisions. “As he

munched his cutlets Lloyd George kept talking and pointing to the map, “dabbing

at it” with his fork—as Napoleon is said to have done.”

At this dinner Lloyd

George insisted that he “would rather resign” than accept war over anything but

the violation of Belgian neutrality. But since a German invasion of Belgium

seemed almost a foregone conclusion, “he was in effect, if not in appearance, a

war man.”

As he pored over the war map, word reached London of the German ultimatum.

The headlines in the Times the next morning, August 3, vividly depicted the

situation across the Channel:

FIVE NATIONS AT WAR

FIGHTING ON THREE FRONTIERS

GERMAN DECLARATION TO RUSSIA

INVASION OF FRANCE

GERMAN TROOPS IN LUXEMBURG

On August 4, the massive German right wing began its march across Belgium in

a giant enveloping move of the French army. “Necessity knows no law,” the

German chancellor declared in the Reichstag. Five hundred trains a day arrived

at the Belgian frontier, flooding that small country with German troops. Some

German soldiers had left Berlin with the words “Pleasure trip to Paris” written on

their transport cars. The chancellor of the exchequer, like most of his

contemporaries, was caught up in the excitement of war. He wrote his comrade

Alick Murray: “In a week or two it might be good to be the advance guard of an

expeditionary force to the coast of France, and run the risk of capture by a German

ship!”

Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality enabled Lloyd George to side with

the overwhelming majority of the cabinet without doing great violence to his image

as a man of peace. Frances Stevenson, his private secretary, mistress, and later

wife, has astutely observed: “My opinion is that L.G.’s mind was really made up

from the first, that he knew we would have to go in, and that the invasion of

Belgium was, to be cynical, a heaven-sent excuse for supporting a declaration of

war.”

Lloyd George’s acceptance of war was made easier by his belief, which was

widely shared, that the war would be short. Almost without exception, Europe’s

leaders believed that the boys would be “home by Christmas.” Grey’s famous

speech to the House of Commons on August 3 tended to reassure the nation: “For

us, with a powerful Fleet, which we believe able to protect our commerce, to

protect our shores, and to protect our interests, if we are engaged in war, we shall

suffer but little more than we shall suffer even if we stand aside.”

Economic

activity and even sports continued as usual. Plans were made to start the football

season on schedule and cricket matches continued to be played in the counties.

4 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS

As Europe descended into war, Lloyd George’s immediate responsibilities were

in the treasury. His attention focused initially on the monetary crisis caused by the

war rather than on official war maps. He was, in fact, not included when Asquith

covened a council of war in the cabinet room at 4:00 P.M. on August 5. The heads

of the Admiralty and the War Office along with Britain’s leading soldiers were

there. The crucial question was: should the British Expeditionary Force

immediately be dispatched to fight on the left flank of the French armies? The

general staff, solidly in the grip of the “Continentals,” had previously made

arrangements with the French military authorities to assist France.

No other war

plan really existed, and Britain’s war leaders gave no serious consideration to

falling back on a maritime or “blue water” strategy.

The decision of this “rather

motley gathering,”

as Asquith called it, unwittingly involved the British Empire

in a long and costly war of attrition with the German army on the desolate and

shellpocked battleflelds of France and Flanders. To keep her most important ally

from being overwhelmed, Britain, then and later, had no choice but to fight a land

war in the West. The extent of Britain’s commitment to the western front, however,

remained an open question; and an intense strategical debate revolved around this

issue until the end of the war.

On August 7 the British Expeditionary Force began to embark and within the

next few days four infantry divisions and one cavalry division secretly crossed the

Channel. By August 22, the British Expeditionary Force had taken up a position

on the French left near Maubeuge at Mons, a mining area covered with smoking

slag heaps. Britain’s professional force of less than 90,000 men was now directly

in the path of the German offensive. The next day the British army went into action

in western Europe for the first time since Waterloo. Although the British

Expeditionary Force inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking Germans during

the Battle of Mons, it had to retreat the following day because of the general

retirement of the French on their right.

As fierce battles waged along the frontiers, Britain’s civilian and military

leaders began to wrestle with the problems of fighting a great war. Parliament

quickly sanctioned 500,000 men for the army. To mold these recruits into a mass

force, Asquith selected as secretary of state for war Lord Kitchener of Khartoum,

who had to be abruptly summoned to London from Dover, where he was about to

depart for Egypt. Asquith’s choice for the leadership of the War Office was

overwhelmingly popular with the British public. Tall and aloof, with sculpted

features, Lord Kitchener projected determination. He was Britain’s most

distinguished soldier. Soon his impressive visage, with the message “Your

Country Needs You,” appeared on the hoardings in an extensive poster campaign.

The British people responded in great numbers. Kitchener—even more than the

king or Asquith—became a symbol for the unity of the nation.

Although the public viewed Kitchener as Britain’s greatest soldier, his

appointment was almost certainly a mistake. The new head of the War Office was

a foreigner to the give and take of politics and was incapable of working effectively

with his civilian colleagues. He thought little of their opinions and suspected their

BIRTH OF AN “EASTERNER” 5

ability to keep secrets. It was, he noted, “repugnant and unnatural to have to discuss

military secrets with a large number of gentlemen with some of whom he was but

barely acquainted.”

He was especially concerned about the ministers’ gossipy

wives, once remarking that “if they will only all divorce their wives…I will tell

them everything.”

Kitchener had a point. The ministers often revealed state

secrets to their wives—and to their girl friends! Asquith and Lloyd George were

both notorious in this latter respect.

Kitchener ran a one-man show in the War Office, refusing to delegate authority.

Wearing the blue dress uniform of a field marshal, he worked alone from precisely

nine o’clock in the morning to dusk. His awesome military reputation, combined

with his civil authority as secretary of state for war, made him dominant in the

military realm. His greatest contribution to the war effort was his realization that

the war would be a long one and that Britain must build a great army. But he had

serious liabilities as a strategist. The general staff, which had lost many of its most

capable officers when they accompanied the British Expeditionary Force to the

Continent, was headed by General Sir James Wolfe Murray, who was old and out

of touch with the new forms of warfare. Cowed by Kitchener’s forceful

personality, Murray kept the general staff in the background and it did not play

its proper role of planning military operations and assessing their strategical

significance. Hence Britain had no strategical rudder during the opening months

of the war.

In the first weeks of the war, as the British and French forces were being shoved

back by the German army, Lloyd George and the other ministers had little

knowledge of what was happening at the front. Lord Kitchener “in his loud staccato

voice” did give brief reports to the cabinet. But, according to Lloyd George, “His

main idea at the Council table was to tell the politicians as little as possible of

what was going on and get back to his desk as quickly as he could decently

escape.”

Lloyd George’s first indication that the British Expeditionary Force was in peril

came when Churchill interrupted his work at the treasury, informing him that the

British Expeditionary Force, which was in the process of retreating nearly 200

miles in thirteen days, was falling back from Mons. Several days later the

chancellor of the exchequer and his countrymen were stunned by a special Sunday

edition of the Times on August 30. A special correspondent, reporting from

Amiens, sent waves of panic through the nation when he described the “terrible

losses” of the British Expeditionary Force and the “almost incredible rapidity” of

the German advance.

The anxious ministers were faced with the terrible prospect

that Germany might deliver a knock-out blow to the Anglo-French forces.

Concern over a quick German victory evaporated during a great battle in early

September on the Marne. The French, assisted by the British, launched a

counterattack on September 6. As a result of this battle, the German army was

pushed across the Marne. Paris was saved. Of greater significance, the Allied

victory at the First Battle of the Marne destroyed the German war plan—the

Schlieffen Plan—to defeat France within the first weeks of the war.

6 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS