Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals
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Yet the fact remains that long after it was obvious to Robertson, Lloyd George,
and many of the ministers that Haig’s grandiose strategic objectives were
unobtainable in 1917, Lloyd George allowed the costly attack to continue.
Hankey’s view was that Lloyd George gave Haig free rein in October “knowing
that the bad weather was preventing a big success” to discredit the “Westerners”
and wrest control of the strategy for 1918–1919 from them.
125
If Hankey is correct,
this is indeed a harsh indictment of the prime minister.
Another direct course of action would have been to strengthen his political
position through a general election, which the War Cabinet had considered and
rejected after Henderson’s resignation over the Stockholm conference affair. The
advantage of an election from the War Cabinet’s point of view would be that “the
direct authority of the whole country might be behind the government in their
future conduct of the war.”
126
On the other hand, was it prudent to allow a national
debate on the progress of the war? The military situation was far less promising
than the public had been led to believe by the tightly censored press. The ministers
feared that elements favoring a compromise peace might have their voices
raised.
127
An additional concern for Lloyd George, if he called an election in
response to Henderson’s s resignation, was that he might be placed in the awkward
Passchendaele: the mud of Flanders in October 1917.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 207
position of having to defend Haig and Robertson against attacks on Britain’s
military policy. After all, he was ultimately responsible for the successes and
failures of the British army. In the spring and summer of 1917 he wanted all
criticism of the high command to be confined to the cabinet room. After Churchill
delivered very skillful attacks (which mirrored Lloyd George’s own views) on
British military policy in Parliament, he had braved violent Unionist opposition
and appointed him minister of munitions in July to silence him. And, of course,
there was always the chance that Lloyd George, who believed that he alone could
bring the country through its great crisis, might be defeated and his placed taken
by someone completely subservient to the military.
Dominant in the inner councils of the government, he was uncertain of his
support in the country throughout 1917, especially if he were forced to fight an
election over his “amateur” strategic views. Kenneth O.Morgan has astutely
observed, “In the wider political arena, on the periphery, his standing was far more
uncertain. At each level of political support, Lloyd George, so dominant
elsewhere, was the most precarious of premiers. His downfall seemed imminent
from week to week. Only extraordinary feats of political equilibrism appeared to
keep his ministry in being.”
128
In 1917 Labour’s mood was uncertain; the Irish
were angry; most of the Liberals were loyal to Asquith; and his Unionist backing
depended upon his ability to retain the support of men such as Curzon, Balfour,
Cecil, Long, Chamberlain, and Carson.
Still it is possible that Lloyd George underestimated his political strength.
Asquith, who was under the circumstances the leader of the Opposition, suffered
from a fatal weakness. “An Opposition in wartime might have been expected to
claim that it could run the war better than the existing Government. This claim
was so grotesque in view of what had gone before that Asquith never dared to
make it,”
129
A.J.P.Taylor had acidly written. Also, many Unionists, despite their
misgivings at times, saw no alternative to Lloyd George’s dynamic leadership.
Balfour spoke for them in a letter to his nephew, Cecil, who was a strong supporter
of the generals:
After all yoù must not expect perfection. You see Lloyd George’s faults,
and they are not difficult to see. But do you think he can be improved upon
out of our existing material? Is there any one of his colleagues in the present
War Cabinet you would like to see in his place? Do you believe there is in
the House of Commons any genius on the Back Benches fit for the place?
Do you think there is somewhere in the undistinguished mass of the general
public, some unknown genius to whom, if we could but find him, we might
entrust the most difficult, and the most important, task with which British
statesmanship has ever been confronted?
130
208 STRAIN
NOTES
1. See Report of the Cabinet Committee on War Policy, August 10, 1917, CAB 27/6.
2. Robertson, “War Policy on West Front,” July 19, 1917, W.P. 43, CAB 27/7.
3. War Cabinet (191A), July 20, 1917, CAB 23/13.
4. Hankey Diary, July 23, 1917, 1/3.
5. War Memoirs, 2:1380.
6. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1529 of July 24, 1917, CAB 24/41.
7. Allied Conference, July 26, 1917, CAB 28/2/I.C.-24(a).
8. Hankey Diary, July 26, 1917, 1/3.
9. Robertson to Kiggell, July 27, 1917, Kiggell MSS, IV/7, and Robertson to Haig,
August 9, 1917, Haig MSS, no. 116.
10. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1549 of July 29, 1917, CAB 24/21.
11. Robertson to Milner, August 7, 1917, Milner, dep. 45.
12. See, for example, Wilson Diary, August 7, 1917.
13. See Allied Conference, August 7–8, 1917, CAB 28/2/I.C.-25, and Painlevé,
Comment J’ai Nommé Foch et Pétain, p. 241.
14. See War Cabinet (200A), July 31, 1917, CAB 23/13, and Cabinet Paper G.T. 1641
of August 7, 1917, CAB 24/22.
15. Robertson to Haig, August 9, 1917, Haig MSS, no. 116.
16. Haig to Robertson, August 13, 1917, Haig MSS, no. 116.
17. War Cabinet (200), July 31, 1917, CAB 23/3.
18. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1621 of August 4, 1917, CAB 24/22.
19. Haig to E.H.Tennyson d’Eyncourt, August 27, 1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/44/3/20.
20. Wynne, however, refused to have his name associated with this volume because of
Edmonds’s editing which whitewashed general headquarters’ mistakes.
21. Captain G.C.Wynne, “The Development of the German Defensive Battle in 1917,
and its Influence on British Defence Tactics, Part I,” The Army Quarterly 34 (April
1937): 23.
22. General Sir Hubert Gough, The Fifth Army (1931), pp. 214–15.
23. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1814 of August 21, 1917, CAB 24/24.
24. The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1917, 4:945.
25. Hankey Diary, August 15, 1917, 1/3. To neutralize the king, Lloyd George told him
that if Haig’s attack failed, it would
“
be his duty to appeal to the King, (whom he
regards with himself as a Joint Trustee of the Nation), and demand some change of
plan, such as that proposed in his Memorandum [Lloyd George’s paper presented
to the Cabinet Committee on War Policy in June].” Account of Lord Stamfordham’s
interview with Lloyd George, August 14, 1917, RA GV K1185/4.
26. Allied Conference, August 8, 1917, CAB 28/2/I.C.-25(e).
27. Esher to Haig, June 25, 1917, Haig MSS, no. 214 f.
28. Wilson Diary, August 17, 1917.
29. Ibid., August 22–24, 1917.
30. Ibid., August 23, 1917.
31. Ibid., 24–25 and 27, 1917.
32. Decypher of telegrams from Rennell Rodd, August 26, 1917, Lloyd George MSS,
F/56/1/47.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 209
33. See Hankey Diary, August 14, 1917, 1/3. On August 11, Lloyd George had sent
Henry Norman, a member of the Inventions Panel in the Ministry of Munitions, to
Paris to talk with Painlevé about secret Austro-French negotiations in Switzerland.
These discussions gave the impression that the Austrian emperor had “a profound
desire…to have peace at the earliest possible moment.” Further, Emperor Charles
seemed “willing to go to almost any lengths [for peace], even if these involve a
rupture with Germany.” On August 14, the War Cabinet discussed these negotiations
with no notes being taken. See Norman, “Memorandum for Prime Minister
concerning certain conversations in Switzerland,” August 15, 1917, Lloyd George
MSS, F/160/1/13.
34. Hankey Diary, August 26, 1917, 1/3, and Lloyd George to Robertson, August 26,
1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/44/3/19.
35. Entry of August 27–28, 1917, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, p. 267, and Note on Lord
Stamfordham’s interview with Lloyd George, August 14, 1917, RA GV K1185.
36. Robertson to Kiggell, August 9, 1917, Kiggell MSS, IV/9, and Robertson to Haig,
August 9, 1917, Haig MSS, no. 116.
37. War Cabinet (225A), August 28, 1917, CAB 23/13. As a matter of fact, Robertson
had never bothered to ascertain how long (about two weeks) it would take to transfer
the guns. See Maurice to Kiggell, August 29, 1917, Kiggell MSS, V/119.
38. Cypher telegram to Rennell Rodd, August 29, 1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/56/1/48.
39. Hankey Diary, August 29, 1917, 1/3.
40. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1918 of August 31, 1917, CAB 24/25, Robertson to Maurice,
August 31, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/25/4, and Cecil to Balfour, September 4, 1917,
Balfour MSS, add. 49738.
41. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1928 of September 3, 1917, CAB 24/25.
42. Milner to Bonar Law, September 10, 1917, Milner, dep. 354.
43. Cabinet Paper G.T. 1931 of September 4, 1917, CAB 24/25.
44. War Cabinet (227C), September 4, 1917, CAB 23/13.
45. Anglo-French Conference, September 4, 1917, CAB 28/2/I.C.-26.
46. Hankey Diary, September 4, 1917, 1/3.
47. Ibid., September 5, 1917, 1/3.
48. Lloyd George to Miss Stevenson, September 13, 1917, quoted in Taylor, My Darling
Pussy, p. 21.
49. Hankey Diary, September 14, 1917, 1/3.
50. See War Cabinet (210A), August 10, 1917, CAB 23/13.
51. See Robertson’s correspondence with Munro and Allenby, August 1, 1917, and
Allenby to Robertson, August 26, 1917, Robertson MSS, 1/32/65–66 and 70.
52. Hankey Diary, September 16, 1917, 1/3.
53. Ibid., September 18, 1917, 1/3.
54. Entry of September 22, 1917, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, p. 275.
55. Bonar Law to Lloyd George, August 18, 1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/30/2/25.
56. Hankey Diary, September 21, 1917, 1/3.
57. Cabinet Paper G.T. 2143 of September 18, 1917, CAB 24/27.
58. Balfour, “Peace Negotiations,” September 20, 1917, CAB 1/25.
59. Hankey Diary, September 22, 1917, 1/3.
60. Entry of August 27–28, 1917, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, p. 267.
61. (Unsigned), “Notes on conversation with M.Briand,” October 29, 1917, Lloyd
George MSS, F/160/1/8.
210 STRAIN
62. War Cabinet (238A), September 24, 1917, CAB 23/16.
63. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War 1914–
1920, p. 361. If Dominion losses are included, the figure was over 820,000. War
Cabinet (300), December 17, 17917, M.P.C. 19, CAB 27/14.
64. Robertson to Haig, September 15, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/23/51.
65. See Marvin Swartz, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the
First World War (1971), pp. 147–69, and Chris Wrigley, David Lloyd George and
the British Labour Movement: Peace and War (1976), pp. 177–231.
66. Lloyd George to C.P.Scott, January 15, 1918, Lloyd George MSS, F/45/2/10.
67. War Cabinet (238A), September 24, 1917, CAB 23/13.
68. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 2:1242, Hankey Diary, September 25, 1917, l/3, and
War Cabinet (239 A), September 27, 1917, CAB 23/13.
69. See Hankey’s notes of this conference, September 26, 1916, in CAB 1/25/16.
70. Hankey Diary, September 26, 1917, 1/3, and the prime minister’s remarks in War
Cabinet (240), September 27, 1917, CAB 23/4.
71. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 2:1316.
72. Entries of September 21 and October 20, 1917, Lord Riddell’s War Diary, pp. 274–
75 and 285.
73. Balfour to Lloyd George, September 24, 1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/3/2/30, and
Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, pp. 106–7.
74. War Cabinet (239A), September 27, 1917, CAB 23/13. Walter S.Long, the secretary
of state for the colonies, and a staunch defender of the high command, was quick to
remind the War Cabinet that the interests of the dominions must not be ignored in
any peace discussions with Germany. Cabinet Paper G.T. 2172 of September 29,
1917, CAB 24/27.
75. Hankey Diary, October 6, 1917, 1 /3, Foreign Office to Sir William Wiseman,
October 4, 1917, F.O. 800/201, and Balfour to Paris, Washington, Tokyo, Rome,
Petrograd, the Hague, Berne, Madrid, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Christiania, sent
October 8, received October 9, 1917, F.O. 115/2264.
76. For German motives, see Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War
(paperback edn., 1967).
77. Times (London), October 11, 1917.
78. Cabinet Committee on War Policy (17), September 24, 1917, CAB 27/6, and
Robertson to Haig, September 24, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/23/53.
79. Anglo-French Conference, September 25, 1917, CAB 28/2/I.C.-27(a).
80. Robertson to Haig, September 27, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/23/54.
81. Cabinet Committee on War Policy (18), October 3, 1917, CAB 27/6.
82. Hankey Diary, October 6, 1917, 1/3.
83. Robertson to Allenby, October 5, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/14/95.
84. Robertson to Haig, October 6, 1917, Haig MSS, no. 118.
85. Cabinet Committee on War Policy (20), October 8, 1917, CAB 27/6.
86. Cabinet Paper G.T. 2242 of October 9, 1917, CAB 24/28.
87. Cabinet Committee on War Policy (21), October 9 (misdated October 11), 1917,
CAB 27/6.
88. Painlevé, Comment J’ai Nommé Foch et Pétain, pp. 244–46.
89. Wilson Dairy, October 5, 1917.
90. See Cabinet Papers G.T. 2243 of October 8, and 2242 of October 9, 1917, CAB 24/28.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 211
91. Cabinet Committee on War Policy (21), October 9 (misdated October 11), 1917,
CAB 27/6.
92. Rawlinson Diary, October 2, 1917, 1/9.
93. Major-General Sir John Davidson, Haig: Master of the Field (1953), p. 115, and
Charteris, Field-Marshal Haig, pp. 280–82.
94. Haig Diary, October 18, 1917, no. 118, and Cabinet Paper G.T. 2243 of October 8,
1917, CAB 24/28.
95. Cabinet Paper G.T. 2243 of October 8, 1917, CAB 24/28.
96. War Cabinet (251), October 17, 1917, CAB 23/4.
97. General Erich von Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story: August 1914–November
1918, 2 vols. (1919), 2:92.
98. War Cabinet (247A), October 20, 1917, CAB 23/13.
99. Hankey Diary, October 10, 1917, 1/3.
100. Ibid., October 11, 1917, 1/1.
101. War Cabinet (247B), October 11, 1917, CAB 23/13.
102. Robertson to Haig, October 11, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/23/58.
103. “Secretary’s Notes of a Conversation at Chequers Court on Sunday, October 14,
1917,” CAB 28/2/I.C.-28. Earlier Lloyd George had attempted to win President
Wilson over to an inter-Allied council and staff. See Lloyd George to President
Wilson, September 3, 1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/60/1/1, and Hankey Diary,
August 28, 30 and September 3, 1917, 1/3.
104. Supreme Command, 2:705–6, and Hankey Diary, October 15, 1917, 1/3. Of the three
ministers whom Hankey spoke to, Milner was apparently the most congenial to Lloyd
George’s strategic views. On October 17, he wrote Curzon expressing his opposition
to “the policy of Hammer, Hammer, Hammer on the Western Front.” Milner to
Curzon, October 17, 1917, Curzon MSS, Eur. F 112/113. Five days after Lloyd
George talked with Hankey he gave the following definition of military victory to
Scott: “I asked what he meant by military victory,” Scott writes. “Would the forcing
back of the Germans to the line of the Meuse and evacuation of a great part of
Belgium be victory? He said, Yes, it would, but there was no prospect of that next
year.” Entry of October 20, 1917, Diaries of C.P.Scott, p. 308.
105. See, for example, Haig to Robertson, October 11, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/23/57,
and Haig Diary, October 11, 1917, no. 118.
106. Robertson to Haig, October 12, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/23/59.
107. Sanders, “Condition of the Turkish Army today,” December 13, 1917, quoted in
Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey (1927), pp. 189–97.
108. Allenby to Robertson, October 19, 1917, Robertson MSS, I/32/73/1.
109. Allenby to Robertson, October 9, 1917, W.P. 52, CAB 27/8.
110. Captain Cyril Falls and Lieutenant-General Sir G.MacMunn, Military Operations,
Egypt and Palestine. From June 1917 to the End of the War, vol. 2, part I, p. 27, and
Cabinet Committee on Man-Power (1), December 10, 1917, CAB 27/14.
111. Jellicoe, “Reinforcement of the Army in Palestine,” October 13, 1917, CAB 27/8,
and Cabinet Paper G.T. 2250 of October 9, 1917, CAB 24/28.
112. French, “The Present State of the War, the Future Prospects, and Future Action to
be Taken,” October 20, 1917, W.P. 60, and Wilson, “The Present State of the War,
The Future Prospects, and Future Action to be Taken,” October 20, 1917, W.P. 61,
CAB 27/8.
113. Cabinet Paper G.T. 2438 of October 27, 1917, CAB 24/30.
212 STRAIN
114. Robertson to Lloyd George and Lloyd George to Robertson, October 27, 1917, Lloyd
George MSS, F/44/3/27–28.
115. Hankey Diary, October 27, 1917, 1/3.
116. Ibid.
117. See Derby to Haig, October 29, 1917 (not sent), Derby MSS, 920 (17), and War
Cabinet (259), October 29, 1917, CAB 23/4.
118. Hankey Diary, October 29, 1917, 1/3.
119. War Cabinet (259A), October 30, 1917, CAB 23/13.
120. Hankey Diary, October 31, 1917, 1/3.
121. Author’s italics. War Cabinet (262), November 1, 1917, CAB 23/4. Also see Derby
to Lloyd George, October 31, 1917, Lloyd George MSS, F/14/4/75.
122. See Lloyd George to Painlevé, October 30, 1917, War Cabinet (259A), October 30,
1917, CAB 23/13.
123. War Cabinet (263), November 2, 1917, CAB 23/4. At one time it appears the
ministers were prepared to allow Robertson to become the British permanent military
representative if he relinguished his position as C.I.G.S. See Maurice to Delmé
Radcliffe, November 31, 1917, Robertson MSS, 1/14/96/1.
124. “Talk with Lloyd George at Criccieth,” September 24, 1932, Liddell Hart MSS, ll/
1932/42c.
125. Hankey Diary, October 21, 1917, 1/3.
126. War Cabinet (212), August 11, 1917, CAB 23/3.
127. Ibid.
128. Kenneth O.Morgan, Lloyd George. Introduction by A.J.P.Taylor (1974), pp. 113–14.
129. A.J.P.Taylor, Essays in British History (paperback edn., 1976), p. 245.
130. Balfour to Cecil, September 12, 1917, Balfour MSS, Add. 49738.
LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 213
10
The Supreme War Council and British Military
Plans for 1918
WlTH the backing of the War Cabinet, Lloyd George left London on November
3 on one of his most crucial missions of the war. The task facing him was
formidable and the stakes were high. If he failed, he knew that Haig and Robertson
wanted to continue the Flanders offensive next year, which might break the spirit
of the British Expeditionary Force. Lloyd George marched under the banner of
“supreme command,” but his real purpose was to take the war away from the
“Westerners,” who had been in control since late 1915. He would use the artichoke
method, stripping away one leaf of the general staff s authority at a time. With his
man Wilson as a member of the Allied general staff, he hoped to have two sets of
military opinion from which to select. Never again would he occupy the impossible
position he had found himself in during the Passchendaele debate. Then it had
been his amateur strategy against the monolithic military bloc, with Haig,
Robertson, and Jellicoe all speaking with one voice.
In addition to Wilson, he counted as his chief allies Milner, Smuts, and the
zealous imperialist spokesman and military-affairs busybody Leopold Amery.
During the following months these men were to play the key role in attempting to
impose a strategy on the army that had the immediate objective of advancing
imperial interests rather than the defeat of the German army, which they did not
think possible in 1918. Nothing less than the redeployment of part of the British
army outside of France was contemplated. As Milner put it to Wilson, “We are
now threatened by Pétain’s latest proposal [extension of British line], with the
stereotyping of our worse source of weakness, the permanent immobilisation of
seven-eighths of our strength and our interest in part of France, gaining no
additional control, having nothing up our sleeve for a blow elsewhere.”
1
The
creation of the Supreme War Council, even if dominated by Britain, however,
would not in itself give British strategy flexibility. “To secure the necessary power
and influence, it is essential, first of all,” Amery argued:
that those representatives [on S.W.C.] should be liberated from a rigid
strategy which regards only one small section of the Allied front as a serious
theatre of war and treats all the rest of the front as of no real consequence.
Such a strategy leaves our representatives in any Allied Conference without
freedom of choice and therefore without influence. Our whole position
relative to the French would be altered if, even for the sake of argument
alone, we discussed the possibility of moving 20 of our divisions elsewhere,
and made them realise that those divisions are really ours to use as we like.
2
Amery’s memorandum, pretentiously entitled “The Turning Point of the War,”
was given to Maurice by Lloyd George on the train to Paris. Maurice countered
with the familiar argument of the German advantage of interior lines.
3
Amery,
Milner, Lloyd George, and others, however, no longer bought this argument
because they believed that the deterioration of German rails and engines had
limited German mobility.
4
In addition to the limitations placed on British freedom
by coalition warfare, a fatal weakness of this attempt to give British arms flexibility
was that Germany, by taking the initiative in 1918, might dictate to Britain where
she must concentrate her military power.
The only member of the War Cabinet to accompany Lloyd George was Smuts,
whom Lloyd George had chosen, in part, to bring him more solidly into the
anti-“Western” camp. In Paris, Lloyd George took advantage of a meeting with
General Pershing, the commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force,
to lobby for unity of command. Then he was quickly on to Italy. Originally the
Italians had suggested Nervi rather than Rapallo for the crucial inter-Allied
conference, which Hankey thought perfect “for the comic papers in the present
state of Italian “nerves!”
4
At Rapallo an angry and defensive Robertson was waiting. He had been at
Cadorna’s headquarters when Maurice secretly cabled him of Lloyd George’s
intentions and he correctly saw in the proposed arrangement an attempt to diminish
his authority. With his enemy Wilson on the Allied general staff, he might be
responsible for executing military plans with which he disagreed and had played
no role in formulating. The permanent military representatives, he later wrote,
“were in the happy position of the man who can say, ‘Heads I win, tails you lose.’
“
5
Convinced that Derby had let the army down in his absence, he believed that
he could “make it more or less all right” when the prime minister came up against
him.
6
Hankey, however, took the rebellious Wully aside and bluntly told him that
it was futile to resist because the War Cabinet had given Lloyd George a free hand
to create the Supreme War Council.
On November 7, in the New Casino Hotel, the Allied ministers discussed a draft
of the proposed inter-Allied war council which had been accepted by Smuts and
Franklin-Bouillon the previous evening. Painlevé, in his high, piping voice, made
the awkward suggestion that Foch, the chief of the French general staff, should
become the French permanent military representative on the Allied general staff.
If this were done, Robertson would clearly be the logical British permanent
military representative as well as C.I.G.S.Lloyd George, however, succeeded in
forcing Foch to relinquish his position in the French ministry of war. The first
formal meeting of the Supreme War Council that afternoon represented a
considerable triumph for the prime minister. Completely outmaneuvered,
Robertson’s rage was something to behold. When the Allied representatives first
THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL AND BRITISH MILITARY PLANS FOR 1918 215
broached the subject of unity of command in the West, he rose from his seat and
walked out, stopping to tell Hankey, “I wash my hands of this business.”
7
Lloyd George was quick to exploit the shattered defenses of the military in other
ways. In opposition to Haig, who argued that the best way to assist the Italians
was to continue his Flanders operations, the prime minister ordered two more
British divisions to leave for Italy; ultimately, 200,000 AngloFrench troops were
sent south to assist the shell-shocked Italians, with the front stabilizing along the
Piave river.
Other dramatic events in early November served to erode the authority of the
British high command. Allenby, without any reinforcements from France, broke
through the Turkish defenses on the Gaza-Beersheba line, prying open the gate to
the Holy City. On the same day, November 7, that Allenby finished his successful
battle, the Bolsheviks completed their overthrow of the feeble provisional
government by storming the Winter Palace. With Russia in Bolshevik hands,
Haig’s desire to launch yet another big attack in the West before the Americans
arrived in force seemed madness.
Meanwhile, Haig finally called a halt to the last and bloodiest phase of his
offensive with the capture of the village of Passchendaele, which had been reduced
to a heap of rubble. Haig’s optimism had had a boomerang effect. None of the
grand strategic objectives which he had carefully outlined to the civilians to gain
their support had been obtained. A few miles of enemy territory had been captured,
but in the process the British army had been badly battered, losing perhaps three
men for every two of the enemy.
8
The last day of the battle, November 10, was
representative of Haig’s rigid and costly tactics, with 3,000 men being killed and
7,000 wounded.
The ministers’ loss of faith in Haig, however, was not shared by the general
public because the press had touted every British advance as a “victory” over the
enemy. Furthermore, many newspapers continued to argue that the war must be
left in the hands of the professional soldier. The Morning Post and the National
Review were especially outspoken in this respect, and Lloyd George believed that
the papers of Gwynne and Leo Maxse were kept abreast of his differences with
Robertson by the C.I.G.S. himself. During the secret debate over guns for Italy,
Maxse praised Robertson and warned against “gambling” on the part of the
civilians. The “supreme direction of the war,” he blustered, must “remain in the
hands of the soldiers, and in theirs alone.”
9
Leading articles by Gwynne, like the
“The Amateur and the Soldiers” and “Political Strategy,” also hammered away at
civilian meddling in strategy in September and October.
10
Believing that these
editorial opinions were inspired by the general staff, Lloyd George attempted to
take advantage of the Italian setback to swing the press in his direction; he and his
private secretary, William Sutherland, attempted to work up a press campaign
against the general staff’s strategy and for his concept of a supreme war council
in late October and early November.
11
“If politicians and civilians are to have
nothing to say about the conduct of the war,” Scott’s Manchester Guardian
proclaimed on November 1, “then the nation is being wagged from its least
216 LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS