Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  Another member of Roberts’ Academy, William (Wully) Robertson, was unique in that he served for the first 12 years of his military career as a private. He passed the entrance exam to become an officer, was transferred to the Dragoon Guards and entered Camberley entirely on merit. During the Boer War, he served directly under Lord Roberts and was drafted into the Academy. Thereafter, his promotion was rapid. In 1905, he was appointed assistant director of military operations and decorated as a Companion of the Order of the Bath. In 1906, he went to France with General Grierson to study the lie of the land along the Franco-German border. In a later visit that same year, he joined Major Victor Huguet, the former French military attaché in London who had been the initial contact for the ‘informal conversations’ in 1905, and, in consultation with the French general staff, they selected landing bases and staging areas for the British Expeditionary Force.34

  In 1910, Robertson took over from Wilson as commandant at Camberley. He commented: ‘there was no position in the army where greater influence for good or evil can be exerted over the rising generation of officers’.35 This was exactly why Roberts had placed his own appointees there. Roberts retained huge influence through his Academy even when he ‘retired’. As long as his values were instilled in others, the Staff College continued to produce officers shaped in Roberts’ image. And they did. In 1913, Robertson was moved to the War Office as director of military training, by which point the higher reaches of military command were dominated by the Academy.

  The member of Roberts’ Academy who achieved greatest notoriety was Douglas Haig. The youngest offspring of a wealthy Scottish whisky distilling family, Haig attended Brasenose College, Oxford, where he joined the exclusive Bullingdon Club but failed to achieve even a humble pass degree before moving to Sandhurst. He was unpopular with fellow student officers, who considered him a spoilt, dour and highly abrasive individual.36 Seconded to the Egyptian army after Staff College, Haig served in the 7th Hussars, in Kitchener’s campaign against the Dervishes. Thereafter, he was posted as a staff officer with the Cavalry in South Africa, ending the Boer War as commander of the 17th Lancers. Haig was heavy-handed and aggressive with the men under his command, especially junior officers, and made a point of keeping his distance from them at mealtimes.37 Roberts considered these characteristics as eminently suitable for a member of his Academy and ensured Haig’s rapid promotion. Appointed aide-de-camp to King Edward in 1902, he became the youngest major-general in the army two years later. In 1906, he was moved to the War Office as director of military training, an appointment that had ‘been strongly urged by King Edward’.38 Flattered with a knighthood, Haig worked closely with Richard Haldane to create a general staff, develop the Territorial Army and organise the British Expeditionary Force. In 1911, following a two-year spell in India as chief of the general staff and promotion to lieutenant-general, Haig was moved to Aldershot as general officer commanding.

  Two of the Academy men who would lead the British Army into the Secret Elite’s war, Haig and French, held military views forged in old-fashioned wars. They firmly believed in the paramount value of the cavalry and argued that so long as the cavalry charge was maintained, all would be well. Haig stated: ‘Artillery seems only likely to be really effective against raw troops’ and confidently declared: ‘Cavalry will have a larger sphere of action in future wars … Besides being used before during and after a battle as hitherto, we must expect to see it employed strategically on a much larger scale than formerly.’39 Despite the fact that they knew the devastating power of the machine gun, as witnessed in the Sudan and Rhodesia, the Academy leadership remained committed to the past.

  The Royal Commission on the War in South Africa clearly demonstrated that officers had failed to recognise the root problem of the fusillade and the difficulty and danger for soldiers crossing open ground swept by machine guns. But the lesson had not been learned. The cavalry school dominated military high command in the years before the war, and the careers of those who deigned to argue otherwise withered. The British Army’s selection process singularly failed to bring to the fore officers best fitted for leadership. Outstanding officers failed to gain promotion on the basis of merit.40 Others, who were unquestioningly loyal to Roberts, rapidly climbed the career ladder despite their mediocrity. There was an idiosyncratic promotion structure based on personal favouritism and this had a negative impact on the army’s later performance.41 Top military positions were bestowed at the whim of a man who had absolutely no right to interfere in such decisions. As a consequence, the ordinary British soldier would pay a heavy price in the years to come. Such was the quality of the Roberts Academy. They listened to him, they followed him and they flourished.

  Others who served under Roberts in the Boer War included General Louis Lipsett, who was sent to Canada in 1911 as general staff officer. His remit was to put into action the policy agreed at the Imperial Conferences of 1907 and 1909, when the heads of state from all the dominions and colonies had gathered in London. The Secret Elite were very conscious of the fact that military training among the British and dominion armies had to be standardised. General Sir Alexander Godley was likewise despatched to New Zealand to provide advice and training. Godley was detested by the New Zealand troops, but their military preparedness for 1914 was excellent.

  While Milner’s Kindergarten was drawn from an academic and social elite, men whose talent, intellect and ability was prized, Roberts’ Academy maintained the old-boy networks that constrained army leadership. Milner recognised talent and shaped it into a formidable force for the advancement of the Empire, while Roberts favoured men who thought like him and followed him faithfully but had little discernible talent. Milner’s men were loyal to him, to the Empire and to each other. Roberts’ Academy were loyal to their leader but undermined each other if it meant personal advancement. Both knew that war with Germany was planned. Both served the Secret Elite cause at the expense of democracy and were willing to sacrifice others, but only Milner’s men became part of the Secret Elite. Roberts was intrinsically associated with Milner, Esher, Balfour, the royal family and the inner core of the Secret Elite, but he was being used. Through him, they had control of the army leadership. His ‘retirement’ was little more than a front behind which he influenced military appointments, policy and preparations for war.

  The Roberts Academy comprised a small group of egotistical, self-promoting officers who were intensely loyal to the old field marshal and the secret agenda to which he was committed. They should not be considered patriots, for they actively planned to take Britain to war against the expressed wishes of Parliament and the people. Their loyalty was to a small clique of conspirators, not the nation. Some believed that the sword and lance would outmatch the machine gun. They, of course, were not amongst those who would be sacrificed to the slaughter.

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 15 – THE ROBERTS ACADEMY

  A small coterie of very powerful army officers rooted in the South Africa campaign owed their allegiance to Lord Roberts, a close associate of Alfred Milner and the Secret Elite.

  Although retired, Roberts retained immense power in military and political circles and was an advisor to the Conservative Party.

  He was the first president of the Pilgrims Society of Great Britain, 1902–14, and president of the National Service League, which advocated conscription.

  Roberts was responsible for promoting scare stories about invasion through the Northcliffe press.

  He created an ‘Academy’ of high-ranking officers, including Generals French, Wilson, Rawlinson, Robertson and Haig.

  The Academy controlled the Staff College at Camberley, military operations at the War Office and army representation on the Committee of Imperial Defence.

  Men from the Roberts Academy were responsible for the military planning and operations of the First World War.

  CHAPTER 16

  Poincaré – The Man Who Would be Bought

  MANIPULATING KEY PLACEMEN INTO POSITIONS of political p
ower in any country is a complex challenge but one in which the Secret Elite were well practised. The radical French prime minister Joseph Caillaux, who had instigated diplomatic negotiations with Germany and resolved the crisis over Agadir, had to be replaced. His belief that ‘our true policy is an alliance with Germany’1 was incompatible with Secret Elite plans. Caillaux had many enemies but none more deadly than Alexander Isvolsky, the principal foreign agent of the Secret Elite. Though he had given up his post as Russian foreign secretary in 1910 and moved from St Petersburg to Paris as the Russian ambassador, Isvolsky had not been demoted or reduced in rank. His principal roles were to coordinate war preparation between Russia and France, and help corrupt French politics.

  Isvolsky was provided with substantial funds to bribe the French press into turning public opinion against Caillaux and like-minded politicians. A right-wing Revanchist lawyer Raymond Poincaré was selected as the man to replace Caillaux and lead France to war. Born in Lorraine, Poincaré was consumed by hatred of Germany and harboured a fierce determination to regain the province for France. He later conceded: ‘I could discover no other reason why my generation should go on living except for the hope of recovering our lost provinces …’2

  Be clear about this: from the outset, Poincaré knew that he was funded and supported by outside agencies to turn France against Germany. He was fully aware that he owed his political success to hidden forces that sponsored his rise to power in France. He sold his soul to the Secret Elite in order to regain Alsace-Lorraine. Poincaré was personally involved in the bribing of the French press, advising Isvolsky ‘on the most suitable plan of distribution of the subsidies’.3 Subsidies indeed. This was outright corruption in its most blatant form. French newspaper editors were paid large sums of money to subject Caillaux to a torrent of abuse. Vilifying Caillaux, they alleged that he had negotiated with the kaiser behind the back of his ministerial colleagues and needlessly conceded French colonial territory in Africa to Germany. Revanchists in the Senate quite ludicrously portrayed the African bushlands Caillaux had given up in return for European peace as a second Alsace-Lorraine ‘torn from the bleeding body of France’.4 Under immense personal and political pressure, Caillaux resigned in January 1912. Poincaré was elected as prime minister and foreign minister, and, for the first time, France was committed to the Revanchist cause. It was a pivotal moment in European history.

  The new prime minister of France owed everything to Isvolsky and his controllers. Within hours of his installation, Poincaré went to Isvolsky’s office to assure him of France’s absolute solidarity with Russia.5 Note the sequence of events. The prime minister immediately went in person to see Isvolsky rather than the ambassador being called to the prime minister’s office. This clearly proved who called the shots in the relationship. Poincaré was a bought man who fully understood his indebtedness and did everything but kiss the dapper little Russian’s hands. From the start, he carefully fashioned French foreign policy to meet Sir Edward Grey’s approval, and it was to the British Foreign Office that he looked for direction.6

  After two frustrating years dealing with anti-war politicians in Paris, Alexander Isvolsky was overjoyed. He wrote elatedly to Sergei Sazonov, his own chosen replacement at the Russian Foreign Office, that the French War Ministry was now energetically preparing for ‘military operations in the very near future’ and that Poincaré intended to discuss these matters with him ‘as frequently and thoroughly as possible’.7 Some weeks later, Isvolsky informed Sazonov that Poincaré’s first concern was ‘to prevent a German movement for peace’.8 Under his direction, the nature of the Franco-Russian agreement changed from a defensive alliance to open support for aggressive Russian intervention in the Balkans. Furthermore, Poincaré had assured Isvolsky that France would give Russia armed support if she became involved in a war with Austria and Germany.9 With Poincaré in power, Isvolsky was renewed in his purpose, and the chronicle of the two years that followed is the story of their victory over all opposition in France and Russia.10 They cooperated and assisted each other to attain their personal dreams: the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France and Russian control over Constantinople and the Straits.

  Poincaré’s legal skills and forceful personality saw him dominate the French cabinet, and from the first day of his premiership he pursued an anti-German foreign policy that had been given no explicit public approval.11 He was faced with one particular problem. Georges Louis, the French ambassador in St Petersburg, one of France’s most able diplomats, was staunchly against war. Ambassador Louis was aware of the change to the nature of the Franco-Russian Alliance and spoke out strongly against it.12 Henceforth, his days were numbered.

  Raymond Poincaré was not particularly subtle. In April 1912, he curtly rejected German overtures of friendship.13 He was perplexed about Haldane’s ‘mission’ to Germany, but the British Foreign Office quietly reassured him that nothing had changed and reminded him how the entente worked in practice. Nothing could be committed to writing. Secret agreements of such a magnitude between Britain and France, and Britain and Russia, had to remain unwritten. Thereafter, Poincaré appeared entirely comfortable with verbal assurances from London. Speaking with studied admiration of the late British monarch, he noted that ‘King Edward regarded it as entirely superfluous to set down in writing the understanding between Powers’.14

  Be certain that he did. Isvolsky was able to report back to Sazonov in June 1912 that: ‘Neither France nor England has cause to desire modification of present relations … Signature of this or that other formal document … would not reinforce in any manner this guarantee.’15 You can almost hear King Edward’s calm reassurance through these very words. In reality, there was greater harmony and mutual confidence between France and Britain though they were only ‘friends’ than between France and Russia with their formally signed treaty. The commitment was absolute, yet Asquith and Grey continued to deny solemnly in Parliament that Britain had any secret agreements that bound her to participate in a continental war.16

  When Russia was deliberately and steadily fomenting trouble in the Balkans in August 1912, Poincaré visited St Petersburg to assure Sazonov of French and British support, and to conclude further military agreements. The French prime minister was accompanied everywhere by Isvolsky, while Ambassador Georges Louis was pointedly kept well away from the discussions. They did not trust their own ambassador with policy changes to which they knew he would object.17 Poincaré promised Sazonov that France would follow Russia into a war with Germany18 and assured him that ‘England’ was ready to come to France’s aid with her military and naval forces. The French war plan, Plan XVII, detailed the elaborate provisions already in place for the British Expeditionary Force’s transportation and concentration on the Belgian frontier. Poincaré begged Sazonov to ‘preserve the most absolute secrecy in regard to the information’.19

  The other matter that required attention was finance. Russia remained desperately short of capital for war preparations. During his visit, Poincaré pointedly linked financial support from France to an increase in the efficiency of the crucial Russian railway lines leading to the frontiers with Germany. He was particularly insistent that the timescale required for mobilisation and advance of the Russian army towards the Polish–German border had to be reduced to a minimum.20 French capital was also to be used for specific war enterprises in Russia such as naval construction, armaments production, railway carriages and the infrastructure to move everything effectively. A major Paris bank, L’Union Parisienne, was the principal vehicle for much of the funding. Linked as it was to the Rothschilds through Baron Anthony de Rothschild, this had all the hallmarks of Secret Elite funding for Russia’s war machine. 21

  Given that Russia had serious problems maintaining its own internal investment, Isvolsky’s capacity to find funds to promote Secret Elite objectives is worthy of examination. By the onset of the First World War, 80 per cent of direct Russian government debt was held in Paris.22 When they tried to arrange a flotatio
n of railway securities at half a billion francs annually, Poincaré’s government gave approval based on certain promises: the Russian army had to be increased, and construction of designated strategic railroads up to the German border, which had been agreed in advance with the French general staff, was required to begin immediately.23

  Despite its name, the centre point of French banking was not the Bank of France. It was an organisation controlled by a handful of private banks amongst which two were more powerful than all of the others combined: the ‘Haute Banks’ of Mirabaud and Rothschild. Indeed, the Rothschilds and their relatives were consistently on the Board of Regents of the Bank of France.24 Investment banks, the first line source of funding, were dominated by the Rothschild Banque de Paris et de Pay Bas (Paribas) and the Banque de L’Union Parisienne, a nominal rival. Though separate, they frequently shared directors. The Rothschilds’ Paribas Bank controlled the all-powerful news agency Havas, which in turn owned the most important advertising agency in France.25 Like Lord Natty Rothschild in London, Baron Edouard de Rothschild in Paris controlled massive swathes of global investment banking. The London and Paris cousins worked in tandem so that the funds that flowed to Russia were strictly directed to the war aims of the Secret Elite.

  The large amount of money Isvolsky used to corrupt French politics and the French press appeared to come from Russia. It did, but only via a circuitous route. The slush fund was siphoned off from the huge loans that were transferred there from Paris. This indirect funding structure meant that the money was borrowed in Paris, at a cost to the Russian taxpayer, and redirected back to France to provide Isvolsky’s slush fund. It was a clever system whereby all of the loan debt and the interest accrued on it was ultimately repaid by the Russian people. Poincaré understood enough about the power of money to change the banking rules in 1912 so that any applications for international loans had to be approved through himself as foreign minister.26 This allowed him to work closely with all of the bankers to whom he directly and indirectly owed his position, and channel the funds required by Russia and Serbia to prepare for war.