Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals

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yards with peasant farms and an occasional hamlet; water everywhere, for

only an intricate system of small drainage canals relieved the land from the

ever-present danger of flooding; a clay soil which the slightest dampness

turned into a clinging mud, and which after rain resembled a huge bog. Then

imagine this same countryside battered, beaten, and torn by a torrent of shell

and explosive—a torrent which had lasted without intermission for nearly

three years. And then, following this merciless scouring, this same earth

was blasted by a storm of steel such as no land in the world had yet witnessed

—the soil shaken and reshaken, fields tossed into new and fantastic shapes,

roads blotted out from the landscape, houses and hamlets pounded into dust

so thoroughly that no man could point to where they had stood, and the

intensive and essential drainage system utterly and irretrievably destroyed.

This alone presents a battleground of tremendous difficulty. But then came

the incessant rain. The broken earth became a fluid clay; the little brooks

and tiny canals became formidable obstacles, and every shell-hole a dismal

pond; hills and valleys alike were but waves and troughs of a gigantic sea

of mud. Still the guns churned the treacherous slime. Every day conditions

grew worse. What had once been difficult now became impossible. The

surplus water poured into the trenches as its natural outlet, and they became

impossible for troops; nor was it possible to walk over the open field— men

staggered wearily over duckboard tracks. Wounded men falling headlong

into the shell holes were in danger of drowning. Mules slipped from the

tracks and were often drowned in the giant shell holes alongside. Guns sank

till they became useless; rifles caked and would not fire; even food was

tainted with the inevitable mud. No battle in history was ever fought under

such conditions as that of Passchendaele.

It is sometimes suggested that Haig was ignorant of the horrors of the

Passchendaele battlefield but his description of the conditions was not that

different from Gough’s. “In many places the men could only get forward by

assisting each other out of the breast-high mud and water in the shell holes,”

reported to the War Cabinet through Robertson on August 21. Yet he continued

to push in his attacks “when his guns could neither subdue the enemy’s artillery

nor screen their own infantry, and when the infantry could not retain its

freshness.”

His primary motivation, it would appear, was his fear that, if he halted

his attack, he would give the civilians the excuse they needed to cancel his

operations and switch off to another theater. This, in the end, was the great tragedy

of the suspicion and hostility that characterized general headquarters’s relations

with the War Cabinet and vice versa.

Although Lloyd George believed that his lack of faith in Haig’s offensive had

been fully justified by its lack of success, he was uncertain of his support within

the War Cabinet and he feared the political consequences of overruling Haig and

Robertson. In mid-August, Hankey found him “obviously puzzled, as his

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 187

predecessor was, as to how far the Government is justified in interfering with a

military operation.”

Having failed to seize the initiative from his generals in formulating mili-tary

plans for 1917, he was looking ahead to 1918. Although the London conference

had instructed the Italian, French, and British general staffs to prepare plans to

strike at Germany’s allies,

he knew that this decision was meaningless as long

as Robertson remained supreme in the realm of strategy. To undermine the general

staff, he sought to exploit the jealousies between the “ins” and “outs” of the British

army. His allies were Sir John French, who was obsessed with hatred for Haig and

Robertson, and the ambitious Sir Henry Wilson, of whom it was once maliciously

said by an army colleague that he became sexually aroused in the company of

politicians. Wilson, who has flitted across these pages, was about to become a

central figure in Lloyd George’s conflict with Haig and Robertson. In early July,

the lanky Irishman had resigned as Head of the British mission at French

headquarters and returned to Britain to cultivate both the flowers in his garden

and the nation’s political leaders who held him in high regard because of his

amusing, easy manner and apparently well-informed views on the military

situation. An unemployed Wilson—with good reason—was viewed as a positive

danger by Haig and Robertson. “His danger is that of any loose gun in a ship,”

was the way Esher put it.

As the high command feared, Wilson was soon involved in talks with Lloyd

George concerning the direction of the war. On August 17, he visited with French,

who told him of Lloyd George’s scheme to create a committee of three generals,

including himself and Wilson, to examine proposals put forward by the general

staff. Wilson demurred, proposing instead the creation of an Allied body to

develop plans for the 1918 campaign, which would “leave R.[obertson] in but to

put him under a superior direction.”

Wilson later informed Derby of the general nature of his conversation with

French about a form of unity of command. Not surprisingly, just before he departed

with French on August 23 for a meeting with Lloyd George, who was resting at

Sir George Riddell’s home near Hurstpierpoint in Sussex, he received an anxious

visit from Robertson, who wanted to know if he were still a “Westerner,” and if

so, requesting his support because he was carrying a “‘heavy load.’” Wilson

insisted that he had not broken ranks with the army, and indeed he viewed the

western front as the primary theater for the British army, but in opposition to Haig

and Robertson, he saw merit in the “side shows,” especially if they were conducted

during the “mud months” of the winter, when military operations in the West were

stalled.

Later that day Wilson explained his plan “of three PM’s & 3 soldiers to be over

all C.I.G.S. & to draw up plans for the whole theatre from Nieuport to Baghdad”

to an interested Lloyd George. After delivering a blistering attack on Robertson,

Lloyd George explained the dilemma with which he was faced. “He said he was

not in a position nor had he the knowledge to bring out alternative plans & to insist

on their adoption as it would always be said that he was over-ruling the soldiers.

188 STRAIN

That it was because of his profound disquiet that he had thought of forming a

commt. of Johnnie & me & another but he now quite agreed with me that that

would not work & that my plan was infinitely better.”

During the following days, Wilson, who was Lloyd George’s choice to be the

British military representative on any Allied war council, attempted (on the prime

minister’s instructions) to win the support of Milner, Bonar Law, and Carson for

his scheme.

Although none of the ministers consulted offered opposition to

Wilson’s proposal, it was pushed into the background by some startling news from

the Italian theater.

Lloyd George had given Wilson the impression that he planned to stop Haig’s

offensive within the next ten days, and on August 26 a telegram from the British

ambassador in Rome gave him the necessary pretext. Rodd reported that Cadorna’s

Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo was beginning to offer the prospect of “a complete

smashing of the Austrian Army.”

This news, which proved to be exaggerated,

when put beside recent information that Austria might be on the verge of

abandoning its alliance with Germany,

appeared to offer conclusive proof that

Lloyd George had been right all along. In a “ferment of excitement,” he wrote

Wully suggesting that Italy’s allies give her support to turn “the Austrian retreat

into a rout.”

Although he dared not tell Robertson, the prime minister was

thinking of the dispatch of 300 guns and British divisions which would almost

certainly bring Haig’s attack to an end.

Robertson, who saw Lloyd George’s proposal as the thin edge of the wedge in

shutting down Haig’s offensive, was not deceived. Like the prime minister, he

was desperately tired and out of sorts because of the continuous battling over

strategy. In his view, the prime minister was “a real bad ‘un” and “an under-bred

swine.” With the exception of Smuts, the other key members of the War Cabinet

were no better; Milner was “a tired dyspeptic old man,” Curzon, “a gas-bag,” and

“Bonar Law equals Bonar law.”

On August 28, with Lloyd George still in Sussex, Wully launched into a bitter

tirade in the War Cabinet. After a distorted description of the formulation of Allied

military plans in 1917, he made the incredible statement that “the general staff,

therefore, had no hand in not adopting the Italian plan. It was ruled out by the

action of the War Cabinet.” Ignoring the conditions carefully placed on the

Flanders operations by the ministers, he attacked them for wanting to change plans

every week or so. “No plan is of any good,” he thundered, “unless carried out with

confidence and resolution.” He went on to warn that the wavering of the prime

minister and his colleagues was bound to have a serious impact on the morale of

the British army in France. Twisting facts to bolster his argument, Robertson

insisted that no immediate aid could be given Cadorna because “it was impossible

to transfer large numbers of guns to that Front in less than a month.”

Robertson and Lloyd George began a face-to-face confrontation at Riddell’s

home the following day. To soften Robertson, apple pudding, his favorite dish,

was placed before him at lunch. In the end Robertson acquiesced in the dispatch

of a telegram to the British ambassador in Rome which offered substantial British

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 189

support to Cadorna, although it would involve “breaking off the offensive in

Flanders,” if the Italian commander in chief would guarantee a decisive defeat of

the Austrian army.

Robertson’s belief that no such assurance would be

forthcoming from Cadorna—not the two generous helpings of apple pudding he

consumed at lunch—probably explains his willingness to agree to this telegram.

The amicable conclusion of Robertson’s meeting with the prime minister did

not conclude the row over guns for Italy. General Delmé Radcliffe and Foch joined

in the clamor for sending artillery to Cadorna, who was expected to continue his

attacks into October. Since Albert Thomas had been at Riddell’s home in Sussex

with Lloyd George, the War Office was convinced that Foch’s request “was a put

up job” between Thomas and Lloyd

George. Robertson dug in his heels, now claiming that he had not agreed with

the telegram to Rome and was in no way associated with it.

With Foch and Haig on their way to London, Lloyd George returned to

Whitehall from Sussex. But his heart was no longer in the battle. The Italian

offensive which had burned so brightly for a few days now smoldered with the

Italian army stalled in rugged country. On the other hand, Haig remained confident

that he could attain his objectives, and the Admiralty submitted memoranda

emphasizing the crucial importance of taking the Flemish ports.

Furthermore,

Lloyd George found no inclination on the part of his colleagues in the War Cabinet

to overrule the high command. Even Milner, who had been in favor of Lloyd

George’s Italian project, supported Haig. Once the government had decided upon

an offensive, he argued, the commander in charge of it should be given a free

hand. If Haig’s forces were weakened to support the Italians, “he would feel that

he had not been treated quite fairly and that is a fatal frame of mind for a

commander actually engaged in difficult operations.”

On the morning of September 4, Foch and Haig attempted to resolve their

differences without success. Foch wanted to take all of the guns he planned to

send south of the Alps from the French First Army on Haig’s left which was

participating in the Flanders offensive. Haig and Robertson dissented, with Haig

arguing that the removal of some 100 guns on his front would be detrimental to

his attack and Robertson reminding the French that Haig had a right to expect the

same cooperation from them that he had earlier given Nivelle.

Later that day the War Cabinet took up the matter. Carefully avoiding any

criticism of his generals’ strategy, Lloyd George stressed the political

considerations involved in the Italian request for assistance. If the British refused

to cooperate with Foch, the Italians might be angered and the antiGerman coalition

damaged, he limply observed.

The mood of the War Cabinet, however, was to

support Haig over Foch; and during the AngloFrench conference that immediately

followed, Lloyd George stood with his generals, arguing against denuding the

British front of 100 guns because it “would unduly weaken the great attack which

was in progress.”

Eventually a compromise was worked out, with 100 French

guns (50 from the French First Army) being added to Cadorna’s artillery. This

was a small price indeed for the British high command to pay for the continuation

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of the Flanders offensive. Whereupon Cadorna shocked Lloyd George with the

news that he planned no further major offensive for the rest of the year.

The guns for Italy episode was the closest Lloyd George ever came to stopping

Haig’s attack. But when it came to a showdown, he pulled back. In Hankey’s

words, “L. G. had been very truculent about the idea of overruling the soldiers,

but, when he came to the point, he funked it.” Yet it is fortunate that Lloyd

George’s instincts told him that it was not “the moment for a row with the

soldiers.”

If he had overruled Haig and Robertson and ordered them to send 300

or more guns and perhaps some British divisions to Cadorna, Robertson would

probably have resigned, precipitating a political crisis. Cadorna’s stunning volte

face would then have cut the ground out from under the prime minister. Coming

on the heels of his association with Nivelle’s failure a few months earlier this

interference with the military could well have destroyed his premiership.

Routed by his generals once again, Lloyd George gave every appearance of

being on the verge of a breakdown. Hankey found him “restless and neurotic,

unstable & rather infirm in purpose, neuralgic & irritable, exacting and difficult

to please.”

A human dynamo, he had maintained an incredible pace since become

prime minister, pushing himself and his colleagues to the limit. By August 22,

when he took a month’s leave from the War Cabinet, broken only by a return to

London for the debate over guns for Italy, the War Cabinet had been in almost

continuous session, with 222 meetings in less than 260 days. There were other

meetings as well, the Imperial War Cabinet, the War Policy Committee and many

inter-Allied conferences. Involved with almost every nut and bolt of Britain’s

warmaking machinery, he entertained a stream of visitors both inside and outside

of the government. Particular attention was paid to the press lords and to key

members of his government. Almost every morning he made the short journey

down the corridor to Bonar Law’s residence at 11 Downing Street. There, through

a haze of pipe smoke, he played his ideas off the chancellor of the exchequer.

His mastery and domination of the War Cabinet in many areas was truly

remarkable. But his influence in military policy, where he dared not act

unilaterally, remained limited. The War Office was immune to his magical ways;

and the ministers were opposed to overruling the military authorities. Unable to

escape the Flanders quagmire, he was overwhelmed with a sense of impotence.

On September 5, he retreated to Criccieth, his Welsh home. There, suffering

from nervous exhaustion, his condition worsened. On September 13, he wrote

Miss Stevenson: “Since I left you I have had a really bad time…. I must stay down

as long as I can be spared. Otherwise P.[ussy] will soon have to find another Tom

Cat. I am asking Hankey down for a weekend.”

When Hankey arrived, he

discovered the prime minister “rather despondent at the failure of the year’s

campaigning and disgusted at the narrowness of the General Staff, and the inability

of his colleagues to see eye to eye with him and their fear of over-ruling the General

Staff.”

Unable to get on in the Italian theater, Lloyd George’s mind was now fixed on

Turkey. Earlier, on August 10, he had gotten the War Cabinet to send instructions

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 191

to the new commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, “Bull” Allenby, “to

strike the Turk as hard as possible during the coming Autumn and Winter.”

Although Robertson was “dead against” any attempt to conquer Palestine, he did

not oppose this decision, because he believed that he could limit Allenby’s assault

to a hard knock on the GazaBeersheba line. In secret correspondence with Allenby,

a fellow student at the Staff College two decades earlier, he made his intentions

clear.

Determined to have his way on a great offensive against Turkey, Lloyd George

discussed ways of getting the general staff to bend to the will of the War Cabinet

without provoking a political crisis. Hankey suggested reviving the War Policy

Committee “to bring Robertson to heel without a row.” Given the prime minister’s

desire to “abandon all activity on the western front and to concentrate our efforts

against Turkey,” this was naive advice to say the least.

On September 17, Milner arrived to participate in these discussions. He agreed

that “the western front affords no opportunity for achieving complete success and

that it is necessary to devote our main efforts against Turkey.”

Milner’s support

of Lloyd George’s strategy, however, was of little value because he believed, as

he told Riddell, “that the soldiers stand well with public, who do not know the

facts and have short memories, and that a quarrel with the soldiers would therefore

involve an attack which would dishearten our people and hearten the enemy.”

Milner wanted “to carry the soldiers with the Cabinet.”

Lloyd George knew

better. Bonar Law had just reported that he believed that Wully had “no hope of

anything coming of Haig’s offensive,”

but Lloyd George was convinced that the

C.I.G.S. would never break ranks with the field marshal. The only way to break

the general staff’s stranglehold on strategy was either to divide Robertson’s power

or replace him; either move might destroy his government. It is no wonder that

Hankey noted in his diary after Milner’s departure: “Lloyd George’s neuralgia, I

regret to say, is not much better.”

On September 22, sensational news reached Criccieth that raised the prime

minister’s sagging spirits. On September 19 the Foreign Office had received a

telegram, dated September 18, from Sir A.Hardinge, the British ambassador in

Spain, which included the following bombshell: “Minister of State says he has

heard through a Spanish diplomatic representative that German Government

would be glad to make a communication to ourselves relative to peace.”

Accompanying the news of this German peace feeler via Spain was a missive from

Balfour which urged the prime minister to immediately include all of Britain’s

allies in this indirect peace approach.

Lloyd George hesitated to accept Balfour’s advice. His agile mind quickly

perceived that a peace which satisfied the French on Alsace-Lorraine and the

British on Belgium could only be made by sacrificing Russia to German demands

in the East.

At the bottom of Lloyd George’s willingness to sacrifice an ally to

get a favorable peace was his obsession with Passchendaele. As he had told Riddell

three weeks earlier: “Unless the war is conducted on different lines we are certain

to lose it, and that unless a change is made it would be better to make the best

192 STRAIN

peace possible.”

Haig’s and Robertson’s domination of military policy thus had

momentarily weakened the resolve of the author of the “knock-out blow” for total

victory. Seeing a way to prevent more bloodshed in Flanders, Lloyd George’s

spirits were lifted; that night he and Hankey sang “The Bay of Biscay” in a duet.

The next day he hurried back to London to discover another peace feeler, via

the French, which if genuine, seemed too attractive not to consider seriously. A

meeting in Switzerland had been proposed through intermediaries between former

Premier Briand and Baron Oskar von der Lancken, the former head of the chancery

at the German embassy in Paris and now a high official in the German occupation

government in Belgium. Briand had informed his government of this approach

and the British in turn had been apprized of these developments.

On September 24, the ministers without their military advisers held a secret

session in which the minutes were not circulated. Balfour compared the German

peace kites via Spain and France, throwing his support to the Spanish approach

because it was official even though there had been no mention of terms. On the

other hand, the informal approach through Briand, which included the restoration

of Belgium and Serbia, territorial concessions to Italy and colonial concessions to

Britain, and the cession of AlsaceLorraine to France, was “so favourable” that

Balfour saw “sinister” motives behind it. If not a trap to divide the alliance, it was

certainly a clear invitation to abandon Russia. The foreign secretary’s

recommendation was at once to involve Britain’s allies in the official German

offer through Spain.

Lloyd George balked at Balfour’s advice. Before bringing in all of Britain’s

allies, especially Russia, he wanted to explore the Briand-Lancken channel as

well. With the mutinous Russian army inactive and with Socialist and anti-war

sentiment prevailing in Petrograd, he was prepared to consider sacrificing Russia

for a good peace. If Russia abandoned her allies, as seemed likely, could Britain

achieve her war objectives? “If we came to the conclusion that the Soviet was

going to destroy our prospects of success,” he went on, “then Russia ought to pay

the penalty.”

Lloyd George was walking through a mine field and he knew it. Walls in London

were placarded with clenched fists, symbolizing a “knock-out blow” against the

German army, and the majority of the British people were still solidly behind the

war. Still, the heavy losses in 1917 suffered by Haig’s army (by the end of the

year British casualties would approach 760,000) 63 made the government fearful

of the growth of defeatist or anti-war sentiment. As Robertson once wrote Haig,

“There are gradually accumulating in the country a great many wounded and

crippled men who are not of a very cheery disposition; there are others who are

mere wasters and without patriotism; and finally, there are the various Labour

Unions etc. On the whole there is a fairly formidable body of discontented or half-

hearted people.”

What was now a trickle might become a flood under the right

circumstances. Witness the growing war-weariness of Britain’s Continental allies.

Already cracks in British Labour’s support for the war were beginning to

develop.

The small Independent Labour party had been aggressively pushing a

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 193

peace by negotiation and its anti-war stance was mirrored by the Union of

Democratic Control, which had been created by Liberal elements in 1914 to

influence foreign policy. In August the government had been confronted with a

proposed conference of the Second International at Stockholm. If held, it might

become a rally by the European Left for a compromise peace that was not in

Britain’s s interests. Henderson, the Labour representative in the War Cabinet,

had been forced to resign because he refused to oppose the Stockholm conference.

The emerging debate about Britain’s war aims placed Lloyd George in a precarious

position. If it became known that the prime minister was favorable to a compromise

peace, forces might be unleashed that could not be controlled. Britain’s smoothly-

running engine of war might break down if the prime minister was caught, as he

once expressed it to C.P. Scott, between “the extravagance of the Jingo and the

cantankerousness of the pacifist.”

During the discussion of the German peace moves, Lloyd George found support

—tentative though it might be—for a peace short of total victory. But the two

members of the War Cabinet, whose support was crucial, Milner and Bonar Law,

were for fighting on. Milner was unequivocable in his opposition; and Bonar Law

favored continuing the struggle if there were “reasonable grounds” for expecting

victory. Without the support of Milner and Bonar Law, Lloyd George retreated a

step. He said that he agreed with those who wanted to continue the war, “but only

provided that the Chief of the Imperial General Staff would advise that we could

smash Germany, with Russia out of the war and the blockade gone. Germany

would be able to supply herself in course of time with wheat, copper, tungsten and

other metals.”

In the end Lloyd George won his point, with the War Cabinet deciding to leave

Britain’s allies in the dark about Germany’s apparent willingness to negotiate

while Lloyd George further explored the matter with the new French Premier

Painlevé, who had replaced Ribot on September 13. Lloyd George then

immediately left London on an all-night trip to France. The next morning over

breakfast on a train at Boulogne he conferred with Foch and Painlevé. From the

premier, he learned that the French government considered the approach to Briand

bona fide. But, at the same time, there was considerable uncertainty about Berlin’s

terms. They might be far less generous than originally thought. A disturbing fact

that emerged from these discussions was that the French had once again postponed

their offensive to assist Haig.

The situation was fraught with danger. The Italians

had stopped all offensive action for the rest of the year; now the French had

apparently decided to do likewise; and, of course, the Russians appeared finished.

With Robertson, Lloyd George then drove to Haig’s general headquarters near

St. Omer to get the field marshal’s view of the German peace feelers and to

determine the progress of his recent attacks which had begun on September 20.

General Herbert Plumer, rather than Gough, now had the principal role in the

offensive. On a narrow front, supported by a thousandyard-deep artillery barrage,

Plumer’s forces advanced in clouds of dust rather than rain, making real, though

limited progress. Buoyed by Plumer’s success, general headquarters was in high

194 STRAIN

spirits. As Britain’s war leaders talked, messages flowed in from the front; and

the progress of the offensive was shown on a large map. One by one the German

positions were taken. Haig’s remarks reflected his supreme confidence in his army,

with the following exchange taking place:

Field Marshal Haig said that we could not desert Russia.

The Prime Minister said that the British people would not fight in order

to win for Russia, what she herself was unwilling to fight for.

Field Marshal Haig said that the right course for us was to go on

hammering now, and to make the French fight without delay. He believed

that the Germans were in a bad way.

The Prime Minister said they were not in such a bad way as not to be able

to fight. There was no question of making a peace offer to Germany, but

only whether we should receive one.

General Robertson stated the Prime Minister’s point in the following

manner. Russia is practically finished for the purposes of the war—a view

he held himself. The Italians are not fighting, and the French are not fighting.

How, then, does the war look? We cannot singlehanded defeat the German

army.

Field Marshal Haig said that the Germans were now very worn out and

had some very poor material in the fighting line. We could punish them

severely if only the French would go on fighting on the Aisne.

The conference finished, Lloyd George went off to view German prisoners

captured during the day. In a cage he observed “nerve shattered, tired, unshaved,

and dirty men.” Even though these prisoners “sprang to attention as though under

review by the Kaiser,” he was obviously impressed by their beaten appearance.

Only later did he discover that someone (certainly not Haig) at general

headquarters had instructed the Fifth Army corps headquarters to remove all “able-

bodied prisoners” from the cage.

Returning to London that evening, Lloyd George to his alarm discovered that

Asquith had delivered a speech at Leeds in which he had made the German

evacuation of Russia a condition of peace. The actions of the former prime minister

had been carefully observed. Previously he had been quietly sitting on the

Opposition Front Bench, brooding but loyally supporting the government. In mid-

September, however, he had paid Haig a visit at the front and Lloyd George, it

seems, feared that his Leeds speech, coupled with his visit to general headquarters,

indicated that Asquith was considering a comeback in an alliance with the

soldiers.

What Lloyd George did not know was that the Foreign Office had

encouraged Asquith to make his Leeds speech. Sir Eric Drummond, Asquith’s

former private secretary and Balfour’s present one, had told the Liberal leader of

Lloyd George’s interest in the sacrifice of Russia in return for generous German

terms to the British and French. It is perhaps reasonable to assume that Drummond

was acting with Balfour’s approval for the foreign secretary was greatly alarmed

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 195

at the prime minister’s trend of thinking. At any rate, it is known that Balfour

conspired with Paul Cambon, the French ambassador in London, to undermine

any peace negotiations with Berlin.

On September 27, the ministers resumed their secret discussion of the German

peace feelers. The prime minister reminded his colleagues of the very precarious

military situation. He then emphasized that

it was very unwise to make any unconditional declaration, such as Mr.

Asquith had just made in his speech for the War Aims Committee at Leeds,

to the effect that we should not make peace until the Germans were prepared

to surrender the territory they had occupied in Russia, which he had treated

in precisely the same manner as the occupied territory in France. When we

came to consider peace terms, reference must be had to the question of

whether Russia was taking her share in the fighting.

In the discussion that followed, Lloyd George discovered that there was almost

no support for a compromise peace that would save the lives of tens of thousands

British soldiers. Only Carson, who had joined the War Cabinet in July, gave him

tentative support. Smuts was noncommittal. George N.

Barnes (who had replaced Henderson), Curzon, Milner, and Balfour spoke in

opposition. Bonar Law was not present. The opponents of a compromise peace

had little faith in Haig’s efforts to defeat the German army, but they were still

opposed to a peace that left German militarism unchecked on the Continent and

overseas. Balfour defended Asquith’s speech at Leeds and warned that the danger

of Russia’s going out of the war “would be enormously increased if it got about

that we are prepared to make peace at her expense.” He also “attached great

importance to the deprivation to Germany of any Colonies” unless it could be

guaranteed “that she would not break the peace, of which at present there appeared

to be no prospect.” Curzon and Milner were alarmed by the prospect of Germany’s

domination of Russia.

During the next few days Lloyd George abandoned for the time being any

consideration of a compromise peace. On October 4, the Morning Post, speaking

for the Right, issued a clear warning in a leading article, “PEACE OR VICTORY?”

The business of our statesmen and of the nation is to see that the blood of

our soldiers is not wasted nor their courage betrayed…. If our politicians

were now to make a peace with an undefeated enemy, it would make our

captains sick, and our dead would turn in their serried graves.

On the same day Balfour informed Washington for the first time of the German

peace approach. Two days later he called the Allied representatives to the Foreign

Office to prepare a joint note to Berlin in response to the German peace feeler via

Spain.

Meanwhile, Lancken was left cooling his heels in Switzerland because

the French government prevented Briand from conferring with him.

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