Woodward D. Lloyd George and the Generals

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The Uncertain Road to Victory

THAT Germany could not be defeated in 1918 was an article of faith in London

in the spring and summer of 1918. This belief, along with imperial considerations,

the worsening manpower crisis, and the consequent fear that Haig’s army might

be reduced to a second- or third-class military force by the end of the year, played

a decisive role in shaping the civilians’ strategic views and determining their

attitude toward both the British high command and the new generalissimo.

The French continued to believe that Britain was hoarding her manpower.

Within days after he had deflected the serious charge in the Maurice debate that

he had placed the army in danger by starving Haig of men, Lloyd George received

a letter from Clemenceau demanding that the British divisions broken up since

March 21 be reconstituted. The fierce-tempered French premier held in contempt

the “A” and “B” categories used by the British War Office (“a mere sailor’s

notion”), mistakenly believing that category “B” men were restricted to service

in the United Kingdom when, in fact, they had been used abroad as clerks, in labor

battalions, etc., and Haig was about to commit them to battle in certain

circumstances.

To allay French suspicions, Lloyd George at the Supreme War

Council at Abbeville had allowed a French officer, Colonel Roure, to come to

London to investigate Britain’s utilization of men in khaki. The Frenchman’s visit

apparently destroyed once and for all the French notion that the British were

holding back a vast army in Britain. Many soldiers in Britain were in training

units; others were in hospitals or recovering from wounds. Derby reported to

London that he had learned from private sources that Clemenceau “now believes

our figures and that it has disturbed the Government very much as they were under

the impression that we had lied to them and that we had a large reserve which they

now find to be non-existent.”

Clemenceau, however, remained convinced that

more could be done to maintain Haig’s army by withdrawing men from civil life.

Lloyd George continued to stress British contributions in shipping and in the

production of coal and war material, but the French, who had mobilized more men

despite a smaller population to draw upon, refused to accept this argument. Yet

French manpower policies in 1918 were not that different from the British. When

Pétain requested the release of 200,000 men from the 1,200,000 withheld for

industry to maintain his forces, the French War Ministry, supported by

Clemenceau, gave him only a fraction of the men he demanded, although the

French commander in chief maintained that the drafts provided him between April

and October would leave him short 154,000 men by the beginning of November.

With France’s ability to continue the war in question, Lloyd George was

prepared to go quite far in satisfying Clemenceau about British manpower policies,

as the extraordinary mission of Roure demonstrates. But he thought intolerable

what he considered was the War Office’s continued intrigue against him on this

question. In mid-May, Macready, perhaps in retaliation against Lloyd George’s

refusal to use the corrected figures supplied by his department in the Maurice

debate, wrote a memorandum which could have come from Repington’s pen. In

no uncertain terms, the government’s past manpower policies were blasted.

Coming on the heels of the Maurice debate, Lloyd George saw a sinister motive

in its production. The adjutant general maintained that the weakened and perilous

state of Haig’s army was due to the failure of the government to heed the Army

Council’s incessant demands for fresh recruits throughout 1917. He also

emphasized that the War Office’s calculations of Haig’s wastage in 1918, which

had been rejected by the Manpower Committee, had been completely vindicated

by events. There was even a dig at the government for pushing a forward policy

in Palestine when Haig’s present and future need for riflemen was so apparent.

Auckland Geddes, the minister for national service, immediately rushed to the

government’s defense, taking the adjutant general to task for statistical errors (“I

would suggest that the War Office Statistical Department be reinforced”) and

emphasizing that the army had increased in size since January 1, 1917. Many men,

of course, had been allocated to the new arms (tanks, machine-gun units, etc.)

rather than to the infantry. But whose responsibility was this?

On Lloyd George’s instructions, Hankey then expanded on Geddes’s theme to

rebut the adjutant general. Calling Macready’s memorandum a “laconic and one-

sided document,” the secretary of the War Cabinet noted: “It is the business of the

Army to get the best value that it can out of the men. If it considers that better

fighting value is obtained from artillery, machine-guns, aeroplanes, trench motors,

tanks, poison gas, and other mechanical adjuncts, than by devoting the same

personnel to infantry, the Army is no doubt right to make this allocation.” Hankey

also emphasized that Lloyd George and the War Cabinet had throughout the latter

half of 1917 underlined the growing manpower crisis to the military authorities

and cautioned them against excessive losses. Yet the high command had treated

these warnings “with disdain”. “They were always ready to ask the Government

for men, and to warn the Government of the danger of not providing them, but

never to adopt a policy of husbanding their man-power.”

This last argument

actually came very close to reflecting Lloyd George’s true position on manpower.

As shown elsewhere, he had resisted the extreme combing out of vital occupations,

not only to maintain Britain’s staying power, but to force Haig to economize his

losses. This policy had come to grief during the battles of Passchendaele and

Cambrai. Whatever one thinks of this policy, it cannot be said that Haig had not

been repeatedly warned about the number of new recruits available to him.

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Macready’s paper made Lloyd George more anxious than ever to shake up the

War Office personnel. Milner, in this regard, was a great disappointment.

Although Milner often agreed with Lloyd George about the larger issues of the

war, especially grand strategy, his allegiances shifted when he moved to the War

Office. Never was this so clear as when the prime minister, after Macready was

eased out of the War Office by being appointed commissioner of metropolitan

police in early September, proposed merging the departments of the adjutant

general and quartermaster general and placing them under a civilian in an apparent

attempt to gain control of the army’s production of at times questionable statistics.

This plan naturally provoked bitter resentment from the professionals, and Milner

came down very strongly on the side of the military authorities in fighting what

he called a “retrograde step.” Milner also angered Lloyd George by putting

forward Macdonogh, a Robertson appointee, as Macready’s replacement. There

was much unpleasantness over this, but, when Milner made it a question of Lloyd

George’s confidence in him, the prime minister relented. There was no merger

and Macdonogh suceeded Macready.

Milner’s different perspective as secretary

of state for war probably best explains the widening gulf between him and the

prime minister during the last months of the war.

On the eve of the third German offensive of 1918, Foch’s leadership came under

increasing attack by Henry Wilson. By mid-May three British soldiers had been

lost since March 21 to every one French soldier. Yet the French seemed unwilling

to recognize the gigantic losses suffered by or the dominant role played by British

arms. Wilson even feared that Foch sought the amalgamation of the French and

British forces and the destruction of an independent British army. After the

generalissimo succeeded in dispersing part of Haig’s army by transferring some

battered British divisions to supposedly “quiet” French sectors to relieve French

divisions from the trenches, Wilson, who had opposed this move, concluded that

“the French mean to take us over body and soul.” On May 15, the Army Council

considered a paper by Wilson addressed to Milner. As he had warned three weeks

earlier, Wilson asserted, the British army was disappearing “into scattered

fragments impossible of control by our General Headquarters.” Moreover, this

roulement was contributing to French domination of Allied transportation and the

pooling of Allied resources. The Army Council, no less than Wilson, was opposed

to any amalgamation of the British and French armies or the loss of British control

over their supply services. When Milner forwarded Wilson’s s paper to the prime

minister, he noted: “[We should] make it clear to the French now at once, that,

when we agreed gladly to strategic unity of control, we never contemplated the

administrative unification of the French & British Armies, & that it is quite

impossible for us to agree to it.”

At first, Lloyd George resisted challenging Foch’s new authority, telling Milner

and Wilson that “the first consideration was to win the battle; nothing must be

done which handicapped General Foch in this respect.”

Lloyd George obviously

hoped that the new unity of command would encourage the French to expend more

of their men and material in the battles ahead to ease the pressure on Haig’s forces.

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 309

But French actions after the German attack against the Chemin des Dames ridge

hardened him against Foch and Clemenceau. The German high command had

planned this attack as a diversionary offensive to draw off the Allied reserves from

the north before attacking the British again. But its success encouraged Ludendorff

to continue it. By the beginning of June the Germans had driven to the Marne and

were within less than fifty miles of Paris, where panic reigned.

The continued German inroads on Allied manpower, with the war-weary French

bearing the brunt of the attack this time, was the catalyst for a nasty confrontation

between Lloyd George and the French on June 1 during a meeting at Versailles

of a committee of the Supreme War Council which included only British and

French leaders. Foch began the meeting by reading a memorandum which charged

that the French were making every effort to maintain their number of divisions

while the British allowed their divisions to dwindle away without sending

adequate reinforcements from the home forces or from British forces “operating

in distant countries.”

When Foch’s paper was discussed, Milner made the obvious point that the

Germans, not the policy of the British government, were responsible for the

reduction of British divisions in the West from sixty-one to fifty-three despite the

transfer of two divisions each from Italy and Palestine to France. After all, the

British had suffered approximately 350,000 casualties since March 21. With Paris

itself threatened, Clemenceau brushed these and other

British arguments aside.

M.Clemenceau said that the fundamental question was that put by General

Foch, namely: how many combatant divisions could be maintained? The

French had lost 2,000,000 men in this war, and had been obliged to reduce

divisions. Nevertheless, they intended to maintain 100 divisions, even if

they had to fill them up with niggers.

Mr. Lloyd George said he thought we could keep up our divisions if we

incorporated niggers in them.

Mr. Clemenceau said he did not mind how we did it…the fact remained

that the country with a smaller population had given more men to the army.

This highly emotional discussion came to an abrupt end when Lloyd George

suggested that the French send a representative to London to “show us where and

how to find more men.” This proposal, Clemenceau exclaimed, gave him

“extraordinary satisfaction.”

Lloyd George felt that he had nothing to hide, and

he hoped that a visit by a Frenchman (it was to be Colonel Roure again) to the

British War Office would force the soldiers to make better use of men in the home

forces, including men of the “B” category, and behind Haig’s lines. When Roure

showed up at the War Office, the professionals practically slammed the door in

his face. Robertson, who was now commander in chief of the home forces, even

told the government that he would refuse to be responsible for the defense of the

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United Kingdom if the forces under his command were further reduced in

strength.

Although the German offensive against the French had lost its momentum by

early June and Paris was in no immediate danger, relations between London and

Paris continued to deteriorate. Wilson reckoned that the Germans still had forty-

eight reserve divisions in a position to attack British trenches, and the C.I.G.S.

and Haig were concerned that Foch was denuding the British army of reserves

available to it. The reserves of the French divisions in Haig’s sector were

withdrawn by Foch, along with the five American divisions training in his sector,

and sent south. Then, on June 4, Haig received a telegram requesting him to place

three British divisions astride the Somme to be used either on the French or the

British fronts. Haig complied with this demand, but not without issuing a formal

protest.

Wilson was even more alarmed than Haig by Foch’s deployment of Allied

reserves. Foch was going to lose the war he bluntly told Lloyd George and Milner

on June 5 by taking away Haig’s reserves and by rejecting Wilson’s suggestion

that Haig’s line be shortened at its northern end by the sea. “He was absolutely

convinced that we were not in a position to hold the present line against the attack

that Prince Rupprecht, who still had 48 divisions in reserve, could deliver against

us.”

During a second meeting of the “X” Committee on this day, it was decided

to dispatch Milner and Wilson to France to confront Foch and Clemenceau.

On June 7, Haig, Foch, Milner, Wilson, and Clemenceau, among others,

attempted to reach an understanding about Foch’s authority at the French Ministry

of War. It was a delicate matter, with the French naturally fearing for the safety

of Paris and the British for the security of their army. The British government’s

support of Haig made the French tread warily. Foch promised to consult Haig

(which implied common agreement) before moving troops from his front.

Future

relations between Haig and Foch were actually to be better than between the British

government and Foch.

Unknown to the French, their British ally was anticipating at this very moment

the utter ruin of the French army. These frightening thoughts were not confined

to the British civilians. According to Wilson, Haig believed that the reserves being

sent south were being committed to a lost cause because the French were

“beaten.”

In London, the civilians even considered the possibility that the British

forces might have to be evacuated from the Continent.

Avoiding defeat rather than total victory was uppermost on the minds of the

leaders of the empire as they gathered in London to participate once again in

meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet. On the eve of this meeting to plan and

coordinate the military effort of the empire, Milner in a letter to the prime minister

discussed British military policy and strategy in the event that Germany overran

France and Italy.

It is rather fortunate, that you have all the Dominion people here at this

critical time. It will give you a chance of telling them what they really are

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 311

up against & finding out, whether they are prepared for all that is involved

in “seeing it through.”

We must be prepared for France & Italy both being beaten to their knees.

In that case the Germano-Austro-Turko-Bulgar bloc will be master of all

Europe & Northern & Central Asia up to the point, at wh. Japan steps in to

bar the way, if she does step in…. In any case it is clear that, unless the only

remaining free peoples of the world, America, this country & the Dominions,

are knit together in the closest conceivable alliance & prepared for the

maximum of sacrifice, the Central bloc, under the hegemony of Germany,

will control not only Europe & most of Asia but the whole world…. The

fight will now be for Southern Asia & above all for Africa (the Palestine

bridge-head is of immense importance) & success may largely depend on

what supplies we can get from India & Australia, instead of having to send

everything from this country by routes increasingly dangerous & perhaps

very much lengthened.

Another concern for the British were reports that the Germans were moving across

the Black Sea to the Caucasus to establish a base for the penetration of central

Asia and had preparations underway to send reinforcements to the Turkish

theater.

German pressure had forced the civilians to pour all available men and

equipment into France, but their minds were obviously never far from the

periphery. A German victory on the Continent would be the end for France and

Italy; but if the British Empire clung to its position in Mesopotamia and Palestine

and forged stronger ties with Japan and especially the United States, the rim powers

might still be able to contain Qr even defeat Germany and her allies.

You asked me [Amery wrote the prime minister] the other day to say what

I thought of the situation, and I ventured to sum it up by saying that as soon

as this “little side show” in the West is over, whether the line gets stabilised

or disappears altogether, we shall have to take the war for the mastery of

Asia in hand seriously, and that in that quarter we can call a New World

into being to redress the balance of the Old—if the Old should go wrong,

which I am not yet prepared to admit.

Despite the gloomy military situation, Lloyd George had abandoned any idea of

buying a favorable peace in the West by allowing Germany to expand eastwards

and gave no thought to anything less than victory. The all-out enemy effort

convinced him that the German leaders were unprepared to consider any peace

which the British Empire could accept. “They would be selling out at the top of

the market,”

he told the dominion leaders. Even if France collapsed, he told

Wilson, he was prepared to fight on “if America will stick to it.”

America, more and more, exerted a powerful influence on Lloyd George’s

approach to the war. Since 1916 the British army had assumed the major burden

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in fighting the German army. More confident of the fighting ability of the

American army than Haig, he was determined to shift this responsibility to the

“Yanks” as soon as possible and concentrate British military in the outlying

theaters. His indirect strategic views, which had been strengthened rather than

weakened by recent military developments, were bound to bring him into conflict

with Haig and the French; and he hoped to enlist the support of the dominion

leaders to strengthen his hand. On June 11, he spoke at length in the Imperial War

Cabinet about past battles and future prospects. Taking pains to link his “Eastern”

strategy to Britain’s ability to continue the war if France and Italy went under, he

discussed Allenby’s capture of Jerusalem.

We have captured a very considerable part—perhaps the most important part

—of Palestine. That is important, not merely from the point of view of the

great historical associations which attach to that country but from the point

of view also of possible future developments, because Palestine is the great

bridge-head in that part of the world…. This means that if we were to be

thrown back as an Empire upon our old traditional policy of utilising the

command of the sea in order to cut off our enemies from all the sources of

supply and from all possible means of expansion, north, east, south, and

west, Palestine would be invaluable, as would also be Mesopotamia.

Lloyd George clearly saw no way of achieving decisive results in the West in

1918. Any victory over the German army would have to wait at least until 1919

and then much would depend upon the ability of the Americans to fulfill their

promise of sending 100 divisions (or about 2,700,000 men) to Europe. Still, the

German breakthrough had demonstrated that the fortifications in the West were

not impenetrable. “There is no doubt that they [the Germans] have shown what

can be accomplished on the Western Front by troops properly trained and skilfully

handled.”

This amounted to an attack on the British high command; and the

competence of Haig and other British generals was the topic of the second meeting

of the Imperial War Cabinet.

Apparently egged on by Smuts, Robert Borden, the Canadian prime minister,

delivered a bitter tirade against the generals, concentrating on the last phase of

Haig’s Flanders offensive. “The gain was not worth the candle [and]…the result

was not worth the loss,” General A.W.Currie, the commander of the Canadian

corps, had told him in respect to the capture of the village of Passchendaele.

W.F.Massey, the prime minister of New Zealand, added his voice to this criticism.

At Passchendaele, he asserted, New Zealanders “were asked to do the impossible”

and were “simply shot down like rabbits.”

On June 14, Smuts attempted to clear the government of all responsibility for

Passchendaele, pointing out that Lloyd George had pleaded with the military

authorities to limit their attacks in the West and concentrate on Germany’s war-

weary allies. This was not quite fair, for the ultimate responsibility for the Flanders

offensive rested with the civilian authorities. Smuts also discussed past difficulties

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 313

between the government and its military advisers. The focal point of the conflict

was how the war should be won, not intrigue of the ministers against the army, he

ingeniously explained.

The government’s conduct of the war thus defended,

Lloyd George and his fellow “Easterners” then carried on a well-coordinated

campaign to keep the dominion leaders out of the camp of the “Westerners.”

On June 15, a memorandum by Amery was circulated to the members of the

Imperial War Cabinet. Britain’s first objective had to be holding the line in France,

Amery stressed. However, even if the German drive stalled in the West, the Allies

had “no reasonable prospect” of “acquiring a definite military ascendancy over

the Germans till the autumn of 1919 or spring of 1920." Only in the East might

the British Empire take the initiative during the interim. Its goal should be “to

keep the German menace in the East at arm’s length.” The Turk must be ejected

from Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, Persia secured, part of the whole of the

Caucasus and Armenia taken, and a line drawn in Russia “at the Urals or bent back

from the Caspian to the Yenisei or even to Lake Baikal.” With a great American

army eventually giving the Allies military superiority in the West and with the

German and Turkish threat contained in the East, the empire would have reason

to be confident about obtaining a “tolerable” peace settlement, whether it came at

the peace table or on the battlefield.

On June 18, Wilson gave his support to Amery’s “Eastern” sentiments. Standing

before the dominion prime ministers in the War Office, armed with a map and

pointer, the C.I.G.S. talked for seventy minutes on past and future strategy.

Although the Germans considered the West the decisive front, this had not

prevented them from picking off Britain’s allies one by one. As he condensed the

strategy of the war for the benefit of the “frocks,” his pointer beat a tattoo on the

map. He had not had such a moment since his famous lecture that had dazzled the

ministers during the meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on August

23, 1911.

It is very nearly fair, and it is very nearly true to say…when we took

Bullecourt, a little village, at the end of the Somme fight, the Boche took

Roumania; when we took Messines, they took Russia; and when we took

Passchendaele, they very nearly knocked out Italy in the same months. And

our decisions, or attempts at them were here, all theirs being out on that

side…. As regards the future—I am speaking as a soldier—I want to see us

established along the Rhine; but it seems to me that if we do get ourselves

into that pass, that is not getting a real decision on this front. It seems to me

we have to get a position on this side (the East) as well as on the west. If

that is so, we have got to get everybody to help, and we must get the Japanese.

I can see no other way out of it. No military decisions, as far as I can see,

that we can get here now will settle the east. It is for that reason that I think

that between the days when all anxiety is past, this autumn, and the time

when we throw down the glove here for a final clinch, we ought to exploit

314 THE UNCERTAIN ROAD TO VICTORY

the outside theatres as much as we can, so that at the Peace Conference we,

the British anyhow, will not be so badly off.

Finally, on June 25, Curzon, the chairman of the Eastern Committee, weighed in

with a lecture on the importance of the much derided “side shows.”

It may very well be that those whose eyes are almost exclusively

concentrated on the West—because of the magnitude of the forces there

engaged, because of the peril to our shores, because of its greater proximity

to our lives—are somewhat mistaking the real proportions and focus of the

case with which we have to deal, and that as time goes on, they may realise

that the Eastern is not less important than the Western theatre of war.

At great length he talked about the danger of Germany advancing through the door

which Russia’s collapse had flung open.

Let us, representatives of the British Empire who are here, realise fully that

Germany is out in this war to destroy the British Empire. That is the first

and foremost of her objects, and one of the methods of destroying the British

Empire is not merely the destruction of her forces at Calais or Boulogne,

but it is by rendering her position in the East insecure. She sees that the

power of Great Britain is built upon her overseas strength.

The dominion prime ministers could not help being influenced by this wave of

“Eastern” sentiment, and Massey, according to Hankey, remained “the only out

and out Westerner.” A clear reflection of the mood of the imperial leaders can be

found in the discussion over whether or not to transfer more of Allenby’s force to

France. Pressed by Wilson, the civilians reluctantly decided to recall the 54th

Division, retaining, however, the Australian Mounted Division in Palestine. Once

the Italian front seemed secure, which would enable the British divisions there to

be sent to the West if necessary, this decision, however, was first provisionally

and then finally reversed.

(Later the 54th Division played a key role in Allenby’s

successful offensive in September and October.) An important consideration for

the civilians was that, once a British division was sent to France, it might never

be extracted from that theater. As Smuts put it, “He doubted if General Foch would

ever agree to sending the troops back to Palestine.”

Smuts touched upon a delicate question which was uppermost on Lloyd

George’s mind in June. On June 6, exactly twenty-six years before “D” Day, U.S.

troops went into action at Belleau Wood near Château-Thierry. Although their

inexperience resulted in heavy casualties, the Americans fought with

determination. “If the Americans concentrated a great Army on the Western front

next year,” Lloyd George noted in a meeting of the “X” Committee, “it might be

possible for our Army to follow its traditional rôle of operating on the outskirts

of the war area.”

Gaining support for a policy so favorable to imperial interests,

LLOYD GEORGE AND THE GENERALS 315

however, was certain to tax Lloyd George’s ingenuity to the utmost. In an attempt

to escape the domination of the British high command, Lloyd George had worked

towards unity of command. But Foch, like Haig and Robertson, wanted the British

to concentrate their military power in the West. Lloyd George hoped to place

Americans in the British sector and use the British divisions thus freed for

operations in other theaters. But Foch, determined that Britain maintain all of its

divisions in the West, was wrecking this policy by stationing most of the

Americans in the French sector. In his distribution of American troops, Lloyd

George believed that “Foch had, intentionally or unintentionally, ‘done’ us in the

matter.”

Determined to get all of the ten divisions originally allocated to the

British sector for training in the Pershing-Milner agreement, he was prepared to

challenge the authority of the generalissimo. Also, to give the British more

influence he hoped to breathe new life into the body of Allied permanent military

representatives at Versailles. As for Foch’s own small staff, although it obviously

needed strengthening, he wanted it to reflect the British as well as French view.

When Wilson suggested that Foch take over Pétain’s staff for his own, Lloyd

George objected, arguing that Foch’s staff would then be “biased in the interests

of General Pétain’s Army. We were entitled to ask Monsieur Clemenceau that

General Foch should have an independent Staff.”

The Supreme War Council meeting at Versailles in early July gave Lloyd

George an opportunity to ventilate his opposition to any French attempt to

dominate Allied war policy. First, on July 2 he took on André Tardieu, the high

commissioner for Franco-American affairs, for meddling in British shipping

arrangements with the Americans. Shipping, of course, was Britain’s ace in the

hole in any quarrel with the French; and the Welshman was determined to keep it

independent from any French interference or control. In an attempt to hasten the

arrival of American soldiers to France, Tardieu had undertaken unilateral

discussions with Washington, only bringing in Joseph Maclay, the British minister

for shipping, the previous day. Lloyd George demanded to know why the British

authorities had only been “casually consulted.” The question was one solely for

the Americans and the British to decide.

On the following day, July 3, there was an even more violent explosion by the

volatile Welshman. This time his anger was directed toward the French

government, which had, without consulting its allies, changed the standing orders

for the multinational Eastern Army in the Balkans from a defensive to an offensive

posture. The preemptory behavior of the French placed the supreme command in

jeopardy. “It was evident that the moment General Foch came to be considered

merely as the servant of the French Government trouble would arise,” he

thundered. “At the present moment they trusted him absolutely, but if it was

thought that he was taking instructions from one Government more than from

another, this feeling of complete confidence would disappear.”

In short, if the

machinery of the Supreme War Council, especially the role of the permanent

military representatives, was similarly ignored in the future, it might mean the

ruination of unity of command. Hankey and probably Lloyd George, too,

316 THE UNCERTAIN ROAD TO VICTORY