Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Although the enemy advance had slowed down, the drastic measures taken to recruit as many men as possible convinced pacifists that any further fighting was pointless. Morrell and Snowden, two of the most consistent opponents of the war, called in the Commons on 20 June for a negotiated peace. Morrell had little hope of success. ‘I can well understand that at a time like this, when the Germans are thundering almost at the gates at Paris and the Austrians are approaching Venice, or are not very far from it, and the situation, as the Prime Minister said, is a grave and menacing one, there are many people in this House who will think that no word with regard to peace ought to be uttered.’289 He claimed that ‘never before, I believe, was the desire for peace so deep, so widespread, so passionate, as it is to-day, I am not saying in the minds of the governing classes, but in the minds of the people in all the warring countries of Europe.’290

  He reiterated the gravity of the casualty figures. In the week ended 9 June, he said, 700 British soldiers had been killed every day; and over the week 30,000 men had been wounded or gone missing. In five months from the beginning of January to the beginning of June 71,000 men had been killed, and more than half the period was before the great enemy advance. The wounded and missing amounted to 300,000. He believed the German figures were even worse, which was why the German public demanded an end to the war. In Austria, he said, there were riots and stop-the-war meetings. But what mattered was happening closer to home. ‘I was speaking,’ he said, ‘the other day to an old man who had lost several sons in the War, and he said to me, in tones which I shall not easily forget, “It is not war; it is murder!” That is the feeling which is growing in this country.’291

  Morrell asserted that even Germany’s government could not afford to ignore public opinion: in that he was more right than he knew. He asked for the ‘weapon of diplomacy’ to be deployed, for that reason.292 But – reflecting on the several occasions during 1917 when the Commons had discussed a negotiated peace – he said phrases such as ‘knock-out blow’ made diplomacy even harder. He doubted the Prussian army – as he called it – could be destroyed and, even if it was, he was sure Prussian militarism could not. Snowden berated Lloyd George for never attending the House when this subject was debated – he usually left it to Balfour, as on this occasion – and upbraided the government for not using Russia’s exit from the war to reopen the question. Balfour accused his opponents of trying to divide the Allies and encourage the Germans to believe they were near victory; he said the Allies sought the kind of peace that would prevent such an outrage as the violation of Belgium from happening again, and that secured the future of liberty. That, however, did not seem to be a German desire.

  He stressed that the government would never reject a serious peace offer, but asked: ‘Have the German Government ever openly and plainly said, in any document, or in any speech, that Belgium is to be given up, that Belgium is to be restored, that Belgium is to be placed in a position of absolute economic as well as political independence? I know of no such statement.’293 National honour would not allow Britain to concede this point. He talked of a future in which a ‘League of Nations’ would offer true security and peace. However, he concluded: ‘We shall never get that peace, and we shall never deserve to get that peace, if we listen to the counsel given to us by the hon Gentleman who has just sat down, if we fail to look facts in the face, if we fail to see what German ambitions really mean, what German statesmen are really driving at, and what it is they are determined to have.’294 He carried the House with him: Germany’s utter refusal to discuss the return of any territory it had occupied remained the great obstacle.

  However, even as Morrell spoke it was becoming clear that the tide on the Western Front had turned. On 18 July the French army started to drive back the Germans from Champagne, and Allied troops soon retook the bulge in the line conquered since March. The news, together with the absence of air raids, helped revive morale that, for reasons beyond the military reverses of the preceding four months, had dipped badly, leaving many people in an unprecedented attitude of stunned compliance. The German people were now feeling the full psychological impact of the war, and they would not prove equal to it.

  CHAPTER 11

  ARMISTICE

  I

  On Sunday 4 August 1918 the fourth anniversary of the declaration of war, religious and secular events were held around Britain to mark what the press called ‘Remembrance Day’. The King and Queen led the solemnities, attending a service at St Margaret’s, Westminster, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in his sermon warned the nation against ‘slackness’ and ‘lack of grip’.1 The Bishop of London led a service for 20,000 people in Hyde Park that afternoon, and Marble Arch served as a shrine for people to lay flowers ‘in memory of those who have fallen’. At all gatherings a resolution was read out proclaiming that those attending were ‘silently paying tribute to the Empire’s sons who have fallen in the fight for freedom on the scattered battlefields of the world-war’.2 It also called for recognition of the sacrifice of those still fighting, and especially of prisoners of war, and of those engaged in vital war work in munitions factories and elsewhere ‘for the preservation of civilisation’.

  Three days later Lloyd George reviewed the war in the Commons. He began in a way that suggested either a highly defective memory, or that he was so used to lying that it had become second nature to do it even in Parliament, and even when his lies or misrepresentations could be easily exposed. ‘We had a compact with France,’ he told the Commons, ‘that if she were wantonly attacked, the United Kingdom would go to her support.’3 This was a travesty, and bore no resemblance to the events of August 1914; a couple of MPs expressed their surprise. But then the point of his speech was not to give an accurate picture of the war; it was to boast about how the system he had implemented the previous winter, with Foch becoming ‘generalissimo’, had helped arrest the German advance: and had he been allowed to implement it sooner one factor in that advance would have been removed. This outraged the Asquithians; some inevitably knew that had Lloyd George not starved the Western Front of troops in order to disoblige Haig, the advance might have been far less of a problem, and the great national panic of the previous spring might have been avoided. He bragged that the government had sent a huge new force rapidly to repel the German advance.

  Herbert Samuel followed him, and set about correcting his bizarre version of history. ‘I think the Prime Minister, if he reviews the facts, will find that his memory has deceived him as to that,’ he said about France. ‘Our hands were entirely free.’4 He quoted exactly what Grey had said on 3 August 1914, all of which was a matter of undisputed record. Samuel was not seeking to expose Lloyd George’s dishonesty or incompetent grasp of fact, though he incidentally did; he acted to avoid a damaging misunderstanding among the public. ‘It is essential that the country should not think there was anything in the nature of a secret treaty or any private compact which obliged us at the beginning of August, 1914, to enter this War. It was our sense of duty, our obligation under the treaty that safeguarded the independence of Belgium, and our sense of duty to safeguard the reign of public law and the freedom of Europe against the wanton aggression of the moment, and that alone, and no specific contract with the French Government which required us at that time to enter this War.’5

  Samuel reminded Lloyd George of his boast the previous November that the unified command had been devised to ensure there would be an effective response to any attack. He made him squirm: ‘While we rejoice that it was possible to send from this country 268,000 men at such short notice,’ he said, ‘and while we cordially congratulate the Government and the War Office on the rapidity with which they were thrown across the Channel at the crucial moment, the House will feel that if those large forces had been available on the spot and had already been dispatched in anticipation of a blow being struck, the battle might have taken a different course.’6 Lloyd George tried to claim the troops were drafts kept in reserve for such a mo
ment; Samuel reminded him that he had sat on a War Office subcommittee in 1917–18 that had repeatedly warned the government about the folly of keeping large numbers of troops at home. It was not surprising Lloyd George had steered so far from the truth; what was astonishing was that he thought no one would notice.

  Later in the debate Lloyd George rose again to admit that perhaps the word ‘compact’ was wrong. ‘In my judgment it was an obligation of honour,’ he said, a different matter altogether.7 No one lacked the tact to remind him how close he had come to not supporting the war before the attack on Belgium, and when the ‘obligation of honour’ was all there was to it. However, Samuel did point out that Grey had specifically said, in his Commons speech on 3 August 1914, that there was no obligation of honour. However Lloyd George tried to twist the truth, the truth would out. Asquith, who was not present, read what Samuel had said and wrote to congratulate him on having corrected Lloyd George’s ‘monstrous and most mischievous misrepresentations of our ‘understanding’ with France.’8 In case anyone still wondered about the true nature and character of Lloyd George, this speech gave a helpful preview of the tone and methods he would deploy when seeking a mandate from the country later in the year.

  The next day came the real turning point on the Western Front: the Battle of Amiens launched the German army on a retreat that would continue until the Armistice. Ludendorff, the German commander, called 8 August ‘the Black Day of the German Army’. They were soon driven back 7 miles towards the Hindenburg Line, which prompted the obedient Wilson to write to Haig and advise him the War Cabinet would be upset if he incurred heavy losses attacking the Hindenburg Line unless he did so successfully. Haig was appalled. ‘The Cabinet are ready to meddle and interfere in my plans in an underhand way, but do not dare openly to say that they mean to take the responsibility for any failure though ready to take credit for every success,’ he told his diary. ‘The object of this telegram is, no doubt, to save the Prime Minister in case of any failure.’9 In his memoirs Lloyd George denied knowledge of Wilson’s telegram.

  On that first day of the Allied assault 400 guns and 22,000 prisoners were taken.10 After Amiens Haig was secure in his post: a fortnight earlier Lloyd George had summoned the Earl of Cavan, a lieutenant general commanding the Army in Italy, to London to ‘vet’ him as a possible replacement. Hankey, who noted the visit in his diary, persuaded Lloyd George to stick with Haig.11 As the papers reported the continuing advance, and the public realised the Germans were on the run and the war had become truly mobile in the Allies’ favour, the mood at home changed to one of excitement and expectation for the first time in four years. When MacDonald tried to address an Independent Labour Party meeting on Plumstead Common in south London on 31 August he was shouted down, mainly but not exclusively by discharged and disabled soldiers, and a small riot ensued.

  Haig went to London on 10 September to explain to Milner how radically the situation at the front had changed since 8 August, so the cabinet could be better informed before it made decisions. In four weeks 77,000 prisoners had been taken, and 800 guns. The German prisoners were in a revolutionary frame of mind, refusing to obey their officers or NCOs, and had given intelligence officers good reason to believe discipline was breaking down in the whole Army among those still fighting. Haig told Milner ‘it was the beginning of the end,’ though his history of optimism may have caused Milner to question his assertion.12 Haig asked him to send all home troops to France at once to finish the Germans off; he refused to plan for troop numbers up to the middle of 1919, arguing that with the right action the war would have ended by then.

  The story of the ensuing weeks was of a German army exhausted by months of attack, its morale sinking, and no match for the superior manpower or equipment of the Allied armies as it was driven back into Belgium. American troops were now pouring into France: by the time of the Armistice there were 6,432,000 Allied and American soldiers on the Western Front and only 3,527,000 against them.13 The Austrians wished to sue for peace, the political situation in the Habsburg lands being even worse than in the Hohenzollern. The Allied and American armies had better supply lines, more food, more horses, better output of ammunition, better intelligence and better air power. Low morale in the German and Austro-Hungarian armies was betrayed by an increasing number of desertions and surrenders throughout September and October. In a typical moment of dramatic pessimism, Northcliffe may have said in September that ‘none of us will live to see the end of this war’.14 However, the fact was that even as he spoke the fighting men of the Central Powers were contemplating giving up.

  The end result was made more certain when Germany suddenly began to find itself without allies. The Turkish front was imploding, with Allied victories in Palestine and at Salonica, and on 27 September a note from Bulgaria arrived asking for an armistice. Terms were offered, and accepted, on 30 September. On 3 October Wilhelm II’s new more liberal government, under Prince Max of Baden, recognised the impossibility of defeating the forces now ranged against the Central Powers; and in an attempt at divide and rule, sued for peace with President Wilson. America had never been one of the Allies; to preserve independence of action, it had only been ‘associated’ with them, so could have separate war aims and make a separate peace if it wished. It was this separation that the Germans chose to exploit and, for the moment, the Americans seemed happy to contemplate a divergence of their war aims from those of the European Allies. Austria too asked Wilson for an armistice on 4 October, and made the request unconditional on 27 October.

  France and Britain would join in discussions with Wilson, though they had reservations about some of his fourteen points, which he had set out the previous January as America’s war aims. These had been largely drawn up by Colonel House, as Wilson’s main foreign policy adviser. Most were easy for Britain to accept. These included a commitment to democracy, free trade, a league of nations, and to the making of public rather than private understandings in diplomatic dealings. Britain was also happy with the demand for the evacuation of occupied territory – notably Belgium – and its restoration to its own people, which had been integral to British war aims since August 1914. And, despite its determination to retain its own empire, Britain could endorse Wilson’s belief in self-determination for the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There was, however, anxiety about Wilson’s demand for freedom of the seas, because this would affect Britain’s conduct of imperial policy and the Royal Navy’s ability to police the overseas possessions. This was of little consequence to Americans, who saw no need to preserve the British Empire. Were Britain to subscribe to such a principle it would seriously restrict its ability to mount precisely the sort of blockade that had undone Germany. Nor did Wilson’s proposals for the Middle East take into account British interests there, such as the fate of non-Turkish peoples in the former Ottoman Empire. Wilson wanted them to be guaranteed ‘autonomous development’ and for the Dardanelles to be left permanently open for free passage of ships; ideals that would not inevitably suit British needs in the area. Nor had Wilson covered reparations, and Britain was keen on Germany being made to pay an economic price for the consequences of its aggression.

  By early October morale was collapsing among the civilian population of Germany, putting extreme pressure on the Kaiser and his political advisers, and necessitating the approach to Wilson. Food, fuel and clothing shortages had been bad enough: but in early October the ‘Spanish’ influenza epidemic, which was relentlessly attacking much of Europe and the rest of the world, reached Berlin, and started to kill an undernourished and exhausted population. At a conference of the Supreme War Council, meeting in Paris on 6 October, officials began work on terms for a German armistice, suspecting the German government’s plea for peace was not another empty gesture and that the country’s capitulation could be imminent. President Wilson was reluctant to convey a view to his representatives in Paris about what he made of the separate requests by Germany and Austria; his main concern was acceptance by the enem
y of the fourteen points.

  He did, however, emphasise to the Central Powers that he could not recommend an end to hostilities to the Allies while the armies of those powers were on Allied soil. What was also clear, even as early as 8 October, was that those with forces ranged against the Germans all had different ideas about what might be required to end hostilities, beyond British reservations about some of the fourteen points. President Wilson, to general annoyance but especially that of Lloyd George, had replied to the petitions for an armistice without consulting the Allies, and it was not until 9 October that his reply was shared with them. The Allies had their own conditions they wished to impose besides the evacuation of occupied territory. The French – whose views were expressed by Foch – sought conditions from Germany that Hankey, who was at the meeting, termed ‘too extreme’ and ‘humiliating’.15

  When the Germans replied to Wilson on 12 October, seeking to negotiate the process of evacuation from all the territories they had invaded, the British interpreted that as the Germans playing for time in which to regroup. Lloyd George, after consultation with Law, Balfour, Churchill and service chiefs, sent a telegram to Wilson urging him to ‘disillusion’ the Germans about the conditions of an armistice, and to consult his allies about them.16 Wilson still did not consult them, but his next note to the Germans took account of Lloyd George’s telegram, making it clear Germany would have to respect the military supremacy of the US and Allied armies in organising its evacuation of occupied territory: there would need to be an end to submarine warfare and to the retreating German army’s wanton destruction of all in its path.