Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Lloyd George continued to favour the ‘Salonica’ strategy, persisting in the view that attacking the Kaiser’s more vulnerable allies would bring better results than constant attrition in France and Flanders. The rapid realisation that Russia, after the February revolution and the installation of the provisional government, could not hold its own militarily or in weapons production, caused Robertson and Haig to grasp that more German troops might reach the Western Front, which therefore could not be denuded of the troops to resist them.

  The prime minister was, however, right in his belief that Britain’s best hope lay in having Germany worn down by blockade before another great attack in the West. On 5 May 1917, after an Allied conference in Paris following the failure of the Nivelle offensive, a joint Anglo-French communiqué announced: ‘It is no longer a question of aiming at breaking through the enemy’s front and aiming at distant objectives. It is now a question of wearing down and exhausting the enemy’s resistance and if and when this is achieved, to exploit it to the furthest possible extent.’165 A sudden capitulation by the Germans was impossible: only attrition could defeat them.

  Milner, on 7 June, argued that there was ‘an urgent need of a fresh stocktaking of the whole war situation,’ after events in Russia, and America’s entry into the conflict.166 He and others feared mutinies in the French army made France an unreliable ally. He identified a sense of ‘drift’, and felt a different initiative was needed. A possibility of this arose when the new Emperor of Austria–Hungary, Karl, who had succeeded his great-uncle Franz Josef in 1916, approached the French government via his cousin Prince Sixte of Bourbon for a separate peace in early April. Lloyd George, seeing a means of dividing the Central Powers, was enthusiastic: but the Italians, with an army in the field against Austria, were not interested, so the proposal failed. Robertson feared the prime minister nonetheless wanted to launch a new offensive in Italy, and warned Haig on 13 June to be on the alert against such a proposal. He told Haig ‘there is trouble in the land just now’ because ‘the War Cabinet, under the influence of LG, have started … to review the whole policy and strategy of the war and to “get at facts”.’167 The War Cabinet was interviewing the relevant people, and his (and Robertson’s) time would come ‘and then the trouble would begin’ because ‘the railway people have been asked for figures regarding the rapid transfer of 12 divisions and 300 heavy guns to Italy! They will never go while I am CIGS,’ Robertson declared.

  Committed as they both were to a western campaign, he impressed upon Haig his need to avoid the habitual extreme optimism Robertson knew Lloyd George found so nauseating: ‘Don’t argue that you can finish the war this year, or that the German is already beaten.’ He suggested Haig put forward his plan for the summer offensive and leave it to the War Cabinet to reject it – ‘they dare not do that.’ Unfortunately, when Haig came to London on 19 June, to argue for a new Flanders offensive, he forgot this useful advice. Flushed by the success of the Battle of Messines the previous week (in which, thanks to a superb mining operation by sappers, more than 10,000 Germans were reported missing, 7,200 of whom were taken prisoner), he outlined a new attack that, if successful, would take the Army to Ostend and the coast. He used a huge relief map of the terrain, in a presentation during which Lloyd George thought ‘the critical faculties’ of some of his colleagues ‘were overwhelmed.’168

  Haig felt each of his questioners seemed ‘more pessimistic than the other’; he asserted that ‘Germany was nearer her end than they seemed to think.’169 He demanded more men and guns, and sidestepped Lloyd George’s Italian ideas: despite serious competition, Haig was becoming his own worst enemy. That afternoon Smuts, trying to help, told him that Lloyd George ‘was afraid that my plan would exhaust the British Army by the winter, and without gaining victory.’ Haig made a point of hammering away at Robertson’s caution: when the CIGS visited him in France before Haig’s trip to London, Haig had told him that:

  the German was now on his last legs and that there was only one sound plan to follow viz

  Send to France every possible man

  ” ” ” ” possible aeroplane

  ” ” ” ” gun170

  Robertson had visited Haig to warn him that if he tried any more great attacks without French support Britain would soon be without an army; but he returned believing Haig was right, and the part he played in convincing Lloyd George of this undermined his own career.

  In the succeeding weeks Haig and Robertson pressed the War Cabinet to accept the plan. The politicians talked to Haig for days, though decided remarkably little. Haig colluded with Repington to have The Times demand more men be sent to France. Robertson was asked whether he believed the offensive would succeed; more cautious than Haig (to Haig’s annoyance), he said it was the right course – though success would be more certain if Russia and France struck the Germans too. Lloyd George struggled to conquer his belief that his military advisers were clueless. He cannot have been reassured when, with disarming honesty, Haig conceded he expected 100,000 casualties a month, similar to the Somme.

  Robertson outlined a further argument. ‘I would recall the demoralizing effect upon troops which prolonged defensive tactics inevitably have; urge that, although the attacker might at first be the heavier loser, it was the defender who would certainly lose most in the long run, once his physical and moral powers began to break down; and that, as in the conduct of any business, civil no less than military, without offensive action, without initiative, success could never, in point of fact, be achieved.’171 Ministers countered by talking of ‘attrition’ and ‘the unintelligent application of brute force’, arguments Robertson dismissed as ‘fatuous’.

  With the Austrians seeming to wish for a separate peace, Lloyd George became all the more determined to send men to north Italy, to attack Trieste and encourage an Austrian surrender. Curzon felt Flanders would be better for an attack than the Somme had been; Milner saw the value in getting the Germans off the Belgian coast; Haig claimed that by occupying more of that coast air raids on England would be reduced, a keen political consideration, given the raids by Gotha bombers that were now plaguing London and the east coast of England.

  It was not until 18 July that Haig learned he could probably go ahead with what would be known as the Third Battle of Ypres: it took three more days for the prime minister to agree, which finally happened at what Robertson called ‘a rough and tumble meeting’ of the War Cabinet.172 Given Lloyd George’s fears of public outrage at the carnage, it was all the more astonishing he agreed to another such offensive; though perhaps not more astonishing than Haig, whom many already regarded as a butcher, apparently contemplating one with such equanimity. However, the War Cabinet (on Jellicoe’s advice) also feared the shortage of shipping would starve Britain into submission and, as Haig put it, ‘it would be impossible for Great Britain to continue the war in 1918.’ And it was that, as much as anything, that caused Lloyd George to agree to Haig’s plan. The decision was taken ‘with reluctance and misgiving’, though Lloyd George was conscious Haig had been right about the Nivelle offensive.173 Haig was told another Somme would not be allowed: if the offensive failed, it would be stopped quickly. He warned the politicians it might take several weeks, with commensurate casualties, before the Army attained its main objective, the Passchendaele ridge.

  On 31 July the Third Battle of Ypres began. The torrential rain that would turn it into a sea of mud arrived that evening. It quickly became a disaster, fought in the wettest August for decades. It achieved a mere four-mile advance, a huge loss of men and an even larger proportionate loss of officers. Although it unquestionably harmed the morale of a German army so short of supplies that its men only received the full bread ration when in the front line, it harmed British morale too. The great offensive was reported with heavy censorship, but one did not have to read between the lines too carefully to discern how little progress was being made. To make matters worse, The Times commented on the lack of information from the Western Front,
and it was clear the public were uneasy because of the lack of news about progress. Whether because of the shortage of newsprint or in order not to exacerbate despair, the paper of record now usually printed daily lists of casualties only among officers instead of pages of NCOs and other ranks, though these returned during September.

  The slaughter at Ypres was less shocking than that of the Somme, because it was less novel: the flood of letters and telegrams to the bereaved nonetheless depressed morale. As on the Somme, it took even ministers a while to grasp the sheer scale of British losses on the Western Front. The huge and rapid expansion of the state meant the War Cabinet was in almost permanent session, so that for ministers to keep track of how the war was being fought, and to hold the generals to account, became an increasingly tall order. By 2 August the War Cabinet had held 200 meetings in 235 days. Smuts told Riddell that ‘drastic revision of the organisation’ was necessary.174 ‘There is no sufficient delegation and Ministers have no time to think out the really great problems of the war. At the end of the week the mind is in a haze owing to the number and complexity of the problems which have arisen.’ Indeed, one reason the debacle in Flanders was allowed to continue was because the politicians were so preoccupied that they failed properly to engage with it. Hankey would later tell Riddell that ‘ministers are so overwhelmed with work that they cannot follow the naval and military operations in detail from day to day.’175 Matters were not helped by Haig’s disingenuousness and his decision to press ahead in the face of the evidence of the failure of the new offensive, even though he had undertaken to call it off immediately in such an event. Senior soldiers may privately have regarded Lloyd George as dishonest, but it is hard to know what to make of a report Haig sent to the War Cabinet on 4 August, the third anniversary of the outbreak of the war and the fifth day of the Ypres offensive, in which he proclaimed the results thus far were ‘most satisfactory’.176

  Along with the continuing food problems the news depressed morale, as did recurring, and blatant, daylight air raids. On 12 August, a Sunday afternoon, Gothas attacked Southend-on-Sea, packed with day trippers and holidaymakers: thirty-two people were killed and forty-three injured. They also attempted to bomb Clacton and Margate, whence the RFC drove them out to sea before they could do more than superficial damage. In Southend the police had had a few minutes’ warning: it was not enough to warn the public in the streets. The jury in the inquest on the deaths called the raid ‘inexcusable’ as there was nothing of military interest anywhere near Southend.177 It also registered dismay at the inadequacy of the warnings. Soon, there were demands to build shelters, or at least for churches and buildings with crypts or cellars to open them up during raids so people could take cover. On the night of 3–4 September there were military casualties nearer home: a raid targeting the naval establishment at Chatham on the Medway killed 152 people, including 130 naval recruits sleeping in their barracks.

  This happened almost a fortnight into the horror of Passchendaele, as the casualty lists were beginning to inform the public about the enormity of the strategic blunder. One of the many astounding features of this bloodbath was that its architect, Haig, survived in his job. Passchendaele was, to Lloyd George, when he eventually discovered the truth about what had happened (for Haig had starved even Robertson of information), the final proof of Haig’s inadequacy. The prime minister realised he was twice bitten – by Nivelle and now by Haig – which increased his determination to improve strategic military decision-making and the quality of advice. Since this advice was usually channelled through Robertson, Lloyd George chose to focus his wrath on him, even though Haig had been the driving force behind the offensive. A week into the Third Battle of Ypres, and by now utterly convinced that his generals were wrong and their strategy a disaster, Lloyd George reopened his demand for a strengthened Italian front. He was supported, to Robertson’s dismay, by Foch; who, in London for a combined conference, also proposed setting up an Allied Staff in Paris, an idea Robertson and Haig had hoped was dead and buried after the Nivelle offensive. ‘I can see Lloyd George in the future wanting to agree to some such organisation,’ Robertson told Haig on 9 August, ‘so as to put the matter in French hands and to take it out of mine.’178 Robertson indicated he would not go without a fight. ‘However we shall see all about this,’ he told Haig.179 For Lloyd George, an Italian campaign was a means of diverting troops from Haig’s efforts to slaughter them.

  Exasperated by the politicians, Robertson complained about their inadequacies to Haig: ‘Milner is a tired, dyspeptic old man. Curzon a gas-bag. Bonar Law equals Bonar Law. Smuts has good instinct but lacks knowledge. On the whole he is best, but they help one very little.’180 He told General Sir Launcelot Kiggell, Haig’s chief of staff, that the prime minister was ‘an under-bred swine.’181

  On 29 August Lloyd George, on a semi-holiday in a Sussex as battered by wind and rain as Passchendaele, ordered Robertson down to see him to discuss what to do next. He argued for an Italian offensive. Robertson strongly disagreed. He claimed the Germans were on their knees and short of reserves, and a victory in Flanders was inevitable – according to Haig. Later, Robertson wrote to Gwynne (whom Haig regarded as ‘very self-satisfied and highly conceited’), criticising the press for having built up expectations to an unreasonable level, and warned him ‘there must be a row one day I fear.’182 He outlined what he perceived to be the problem with the prime minister: ‘Each day brings a proposal more wild than its predecessor, regardless of time & space … interference is constant.’

  The French continued to support Lloyd George’s idea of reinforcing Italy, with Foch offering to send 100 guns, subject to British approval, which he came to London to seek on 3 September: but the Italians themselves were on the defensive, and in no position to lead a joint attack on Austria. Haig joined the meeting with Foch and insisted the Western Front could not possibly lose one hundred guns. Law vacillated, but Smuts, still then a Western Front man, and Carson took Haig’s side. Haig agreed to a private entreaty from Lloyd George to try to find fifty guns. The prime minister confided in him that he was distressed by the collapse of the French government of Alexandre Ribot, which had just fallen after a series of crises including the mutinies in the French army; and he said that ‘Russia could be of no further help to the Allies in the War.’183 Churchill told Haig on 13 September that he too supported concentrating efforts for 1918 against the enemy in France and Flanders, but ‘admitted that Lloyd George and he were doubtful about being able to beat the Germans on the Western front.’184 The next day Smith and Carson assured Haig they would urge Lloyd George to stick to a Western Front strategy.

  In despair and unwell, and increasingly vexed by news from Russia about the growing anarchy there, Lloyd George went to his home in Wales for a rest. When Hankey visited him at Criccieth on 14 September he found him ‘despondent’ 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 overruling the General Staff.’185 With an Italian excursion ruled out, his attention turned to Turkey, an idea for which he had the support of Milner, who also came to Criccieth for consultations; but nothing would come of that idea.

  Although he had his partisans in the second tier of ministers, Haig was exhausting the patience of most of the War Cabinet; after Milner’s implicit disavowal of him, Law then wrote to Lloyd George on 18 September to say he had told Robertson the previous day ‘that I had lost absolutely all hope of anything coming of Haig’s offensive and, though he did not say so in so many words, I understood he took the same view … it is evident that the time must soon come when we will have to decide whether or not this offensive is to be allowed to go on.’186 After a conversation with Riddell, who like Milner had also been asked to Criccieth, the newspaper proprietor believed that ‘he has evidently decided to press for a cessation of the Western offensive. He has said on many occasions that he was opposed to it and has prophesied its failure.’187 Milner, again, entirely suppor
ted this view. A confrontation was, in Riddell’s and Hankey’s view, brewing between Lloyd George and the generals.

  When word reached Criccieth that Haig and Asquith had met for talks, it prompted Lloyd George and his friends to conclude that the Field Marshal was expecting an onslaught from his political masters, and had enlisted Asquith to support him. Nevertheless the Flanders offensive carried on until it petered out, with great loss of life on both sides, in early November: the figures are highly disputed, but a consensus view is that each side had over a quarter of a million casualties. Lloyd George realised that to end it sooner would have forced the resignations of Robertson and Haig, for which he was not then ready. However, at the War Cabinet he found another way of provoking them, by stepping up demands for Turkey to be taken on and forced out of the war.

  In a long talk on 15 October with Hankey, Lloyd George said he saw no chance of the war ending before 1919, when he felt the Allies would at last have the resources for a devastating attack. But he was contemplating seeking formation of what became known as the Supreme War Council, a coordinating body of all Allies. His view would be reinforced by a general with an axe to grind, critical of the Flanders offensive and who shared his belief that a regular conference of British, French, Russian and Italian leaders could give the war better and more varied direction. Sir Henry Wilson, at that stage commander-in-chief of Eastern Command and based in London, was driving the idea, which bore signs of his personality as an intriguer. Some Allied generals had long discussed this possibility: Lloyd George embraced the notion to counter his generals’ obsession with the Western Front.