In short, there would be no formal military alliance with France at any time short of war. The staff were to work out a plan to assist France in case, and then only when the crunch came, the 'Government of the day' elected to approve of such assistance. This turned the normal process of government decision-making political approval first, executive action later- on its head, but it suited the political needs of the moment. Undeterred by this caveat, Wilson's first task on taking up his post as DMO was to cross the Channel for further conversations with General Foch and members of the French General Staff.
In view of what follows it is important to understand Wilson's official position at this time. He was not an important figure in the War Office or among the military establishment. He was one of three officers on the third rung of the War Office ladder, below the CIGS, the Adjutant General, the Quartermaster General and the Master General of the Ordnance, far below the Secretary of State for War.
There were three directorates at the War Office - Military Operations, Staff Duties and Military Training; the other two directors were on the same level as Wilson and his equals in rank. Wilson was a Brigadier General, the lowest grade of general officer, and had neither the rank nor the appointment, let alone the official backing, to engage in high-level discussions on the deployment of British forces with the representatives of a foreign power. Given these facts, Wilson's actions and the latitude he was granted in pursuing his aims can only be described as remarkable.
However, given his aims, the question arises as to what the state of the British Army and the British Expeditionary Force was when Wilson took up his post as DMO in August 1910.
Writing in his diary in April 1908, R. D. Haldane records having assured the French Prime Minister, M. Clemenceau, that 'We have a force ready to co-operate with an ally on the Continent if necessary', adding that 'this force was fully equipped and so organised as to be capable of rapid mobilisation and transport' (7) Wilson's diary for 27 October 1910, two months after he became DMO, disputes this claim and records the following: 'Long day in office. I am very dissatisfied with the state of affairs in every respect. No rail arrangements for concentration and movement of either Expeditionary Force or Territorials. No proper arrangements for horse supply, no arrangements for safe guarding our arsenal at Woolwich. A lot of time spent writing beautiful but useless minutes.' (8)
Since both cannot be right, what was the true situation at this time? The answer lies in a War Office memorandum (9) issued late in 1911 and entitled 'Action taken since 1906 in preparing a plan for rendering military assistance to France in the event of an unprovoked attack on that power by Germany'. A pencilled note on the memorandum refers to the 'WF' (Wilson-Foch) scheme. (10) The memorandum details the progress of the plan and begins:
After due consideration, and taking into account the requirements of home defence, the General Staff were of the opinion that our military resources would admit the formation of an Expeditionary Force for the purpose in view consisting of four divisions and a cavalry division ...But if the scheme were to be of any value should the occasion arise for carrying it out, it was necessary to go further and to collect and formulate information regarding the ports of embarkation and railway transport thereto, transport by sea across the Channel, the ports of disembarkation, and railway transport therefrom to the assumed area of operations.
Then follows a brief account of steps taken from 1906, but the sum total of the report supports Major-General Sir Percy Radcliffe's allegation in the same War Office file that:
When he [Wilson) took over the appointment as DMO, there were certain tentative schemes in the War Office pigeon-holes, but these were entirely academic. Not a single, practical step had been taken to give effect to them, no such thing as a railway timetable on our side of the Channel had even been attempted, nor would the QMG [the Quartermaster General, the staff officer officially concerned with transport and logistics] touch the business.
Wilson therefore faced an uphill task when he arrived at the War Office in August 1910. The government remained adamant that these Staff 'conversations' with France were not to be regarded as a firm commitment to military action and defence expenditure was concentrated on the Royal Navy, then engaged in its dreadnought race with the High Seas Fleet. Few practical steps had been taken to mobilize Britain's reserves in the event of hostilities, bring the divisions allocated to the BEF up to strength or make arrangements to ship them to France.
Wilson's diary for the next few months is full of notes on the difficulties he encountered in attempting to alter this situation. On 28 October he 'got off my detailed queries to the QMG in regard to horses for mobilisation'. (11) His queries came back the next day with the statement that the QMG's department were 'quite unable to give me the information I want and ...no one can tell me where the horses are coming from nor when they will come. This is as I thought, but what a scandalous state of affairs! I'll push this to the end.' (12)
On 28 November Wilson writes: 'I had a long talk with the DST [Director of Staff Training] about horse mobilisation. He is taking my papers and will find out from the C-in-Cs when they expect to be mobilised; but the fact is clear and is this- that at the end of 1910 no one knows how long it will take us to mobilise. A disgraceful state of affairs.’ (13)
On 2 January 1911, Wilson sums up the situation: 'Ever since last August I have been trying to find out when the four divisions (1,2, 3, 5) of the Expeditionary Force will be ready to move and up till now (5 months), have been quite unable to do so.'
On 9 January Wilson writes, 'I told Nick [General Sir William Nicholson, the CIGS] he must support me in my endeavour to force Mills [the QMG] to make detailed arrangements for railing the Expeditionary Force to the ports of embarkation. At present absolutely nothing exists, which is scandalous.’ (14)
Similar entries continue into the summer. Then Wilson's hand was strengthened on 1 July 1911 when the Kaiser sent the gunboat Panther to the Moroccan port of Agadir, allegedly to protect German interests. At this, says Churchill, 'All the alarm bells throughout Europe began immediately to quiver.' (15)
The arrival of the Panther at Agadir seemed to promise a rerun of the 1905 Tangier Incident, and tension duly mounted between Berlin and Paris. British interests were affected, partly because the Moroccan question had supposedly been settled at Algeciras in 1906, but mainly because Agadir was a newly built port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco which might become a base for the High Seas Fleet. On 5 July Sir Edward Grey asked the German ambassador for an explanation and informed him that 'until Germany's intentions were known, the British Government's attitude remained one of reserve'. (16)
No reply was received from the German government and tension increased until 21 July when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, speaking at a dinner in the City of London, told the audience that 'if Britain were to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of Nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure'. (17)
These words produced a swift reaction from Berlin. The first response was a note to Sir Edward Grey so stiff that it seemed to suggest the possibility of war, and refusing to account for the presence of the Panther at Agadir. The Fleet was put on alert, the German note met with an equally stiff reply, and it was some weeks before the Panther left Agadir and tensions relaxed.
These alarm bells had also alerted Henry Wilson, and on 20 July he departed for Paris and further talks with the French general staff. Samuel Williamson comments: 'That this trip had Haldane's approval is not certain; that it did not have the Cabinet's sanction is certain.' (18)
In Paris, on 20 July 19II, after the usual disclaimer that this military agreement was not to be confused with any political intention, Wilson and General Auguste Dubail, Chief of the French General Staff, drew up a specific memorandum which provided for the dispatch of a British Expeditionary Force of six infantry
divisions and a cavalry division to France in the event of British intervention in any Franco-German war. Wilson and Dubail both signed this memorandum, (19) Brigadier General Henry Wilson thereby committing the British government to a course of action that had no prior cabinet approval whatsoever.
This Wilson-Dubail memorandum was no vague declaration of intent. The terms were specific: the total BEF would consist of some 150,000 men - and 67,000 horses - and would come ashore at Boulogne, Le Havre or Rouen between the fourth and twelfth day after mobilization and proceed to concentrate near Maubeuge. Therefore, when war came, and if the British entered it, their course of action had already been proscribed; they would form part of the French Army, charged with protecting the left flank of that Army from envelopment by the German Army.
This was certainly the view taken by a delighted Colonel Huguet, who alleged that the French had persuaded Wilson and the British general staff that there should be no 'secondary theatre of operations' but common action in 'the main theatre, that is to say, the French'. (20)
If the French had indeed persuaded Wilson to support this deployment it must have been a simple task, for Wilson needed little persuasion. On his return from Paris he did not hesitate to present the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for War with his fait accompli, even telling them what they had to do if - when - war came about. 'First, we must join the French. Second, we must mobilise on the same day as the French. Third, we must send all six divisions.' (21)
Why these senior politicians should let themselves be lectured by a fairly junior army officer is hard to say, but Wilson's position was strong at this time, not because of his rank, position or repu tation, but because of his convictions. He knew what to do at a time when everyone else seemed to be dithering, and this conviction - that he alone knew what to do - carried Wilson along. Rather than being an adviser to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, he became the quasi-official spokesman for the Army view on Franco-British military cooperation - though the views he presented were those he shared with Foch and the French General Staff, not with his British colleagues and superiors at the War Office.
British views he tended to dismiss: 'I was profoundly dissatified with the grasp of the situation possessed by Grey and Haldane,' he wrote in his diary on 9 August 1911, commenting on Kitchener and General Sir John French the following day that 'neither of [them] knows anything at all about the subject'. (22) In other words, when it came to Franco-British affairs, the Foreign Secretary and the War Minister as well as Britain's senior field marshal and most experienced general must take the advice of a Staff brigadier. Hubris could hardly be greater.
There were, of course, other views on how British strength might be deployed in war, not least those of the Royal Navy. Since the Army and Navy views differed somewhat, on 23 August the Prime Minister, Hubert Asquith, called a special meeting of the CID to consider what should be done in the event of war between France and Germany. Asquith and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, were privy to the staff 'conversations' and believed that an Expeditionary Force should be sent to France. Wilson had already moved the issue forward by concluding the agreement with Dubail- the question was not should Britain intervene, but where and how? To ease matters along, several ministers known to oppose any continental intervention- and blissfully unaware of the existence of these Anglo-French 'conversations' - were not invited to this meeting. Those present included Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, the War Minister, R. G. Haldane, Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, and two known opponents of intervention, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna, and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson.
The meeting lasted all day. Asquith proposed that Brigadier General Wilson should present the army's argument in the morning and Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson should put the Royal Navy's case in the afternoon. This 'Battle of the Two Wilsons', as it came to be called, was a triumph for Henry Wilson, who came to the meeting well prepared and wiped the deck with his unfortunate namesake.
'I put all my big maps on the wall,' Wilson wrote in his diary, 'and lectured for one and a half hours. Everyone very nice. Much questioning, especially from Winston and Lloyd George.’ (23) Wilson began by explaining the military position on the Continent. He demonstrated convincingly that unless the BEF was sent to France immediately on the outbreak of war, it would arrive too late to prevent the French armies being outflanked and overrun- and that if these armies were overrun before Russia could mobilize, German victory was certain.
The crux of the matter was time. The BEF must mobilize when the French did. Whether the BEF went to Belgium or fell in on the French left- northern-flank, it must be shipped across the Straits of Dover where the troop transports would be safe from German naval attack. That done, the French would transport the BEF to Maubeuge, from where it could be sent either to Belgium or into position alongside the French. It should be noted that at no time during this presentation did Wilson mention his recent meetings with the French general staff or the Wilson-Dubail agreement. At the end of this tour de force Wilson sat down and turned the floor over to the admiral.
Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson's effort has been described as 'a pathetically inept presentation of sketchy naval plans for amphibious landings on the German coast, aimed at drawing troops away from the Western Front'. (24) Wilson was, in fact, regurgitating Admiral Jackie Fisher's old scheme of putting troops ashore in Schleswig-Holstein, calculating that a landing there -less than 100 miles from Berlin - would oblige the Germans to rush back from France to protect the Reich. That argument would have failed even had it been well presented, for the original counter arguments still held good. Britain did not have the amphibious shipping or expertise to land a large force in the Baltic and the Germans could reinforce the defending units in Holstein far faster than the Royal Navy could ferry troops ashore from Britain.
The next logical action for Asquith was to set the CID secretariat to examining both plans and providing the Cabinet with some sound advice. Nothing could or would be done unless the Cabinet gave its approval - and most of the Cabinet, and some important members of the CID, did not know that the Staff 'conversations' had taken place since 1906, let alone about the Wilson-Dubail accord. Asquith therefore did nothing, hoping, as he told Haldane in a letter, 'that we may not have again to consider the contingency'. (25) Had the Agadir crisis of 1911 blown up into a full-scale war, Britain would have been entering the conflict without any prearranged political direction, but fortunately the crisis passed. Nerves jangling, the politicians returned to the policy of hoping for the best, and Henry Wilson continued to hone his preparations for mobilizing the BEF and sending it to France.
In the following months Wilson continued to commute across the Channel for more meetings with the French chiefs, interspersing these trips with the submission of advice, some of it requested, some not, to the leaders of the British government. Wilson's diary at this time makes interesting reading, demonstrating that his position as international eminence gris was doing nothing for his modesty. The entries for August 1911, for example, contain the following passage: 'After lunch Winston Churchill came to my room and discussed the present situation which, according to him, has become critical. He remained three hours with me ... I was rather pleased with Winston.' (26) On the following day Wilson records: 'A despatch from Fairholm, MA [Military Assistant] in Paris, describing an interview he had with General Joffre, the new Chief of Staff in Paris. In the main, Joffre seems to agree with me.'
If Wilson's diary is accurate, his position at this time resembles that of a spider at the centre of a web; nothing happens of which he is unaware, no action is taken unless he is consulted - and all this, be it remembered, when Wilson was merely one of three directorate heads at the War Office and a brigadier, the lowest rung on the general officers' ladder. Nevertheless, at least according to Wilson, senior ministers- Churchill, Grey, Lloyd George come to visit him, asking his advice, seeking his op
inions.
Wilson also maintained close contact with the French military attache, Colonel Huguet. On 9 September 1911, his diary records:
Huguet spent an hour with me in the office. I impressed on him the value of Belgian active support. He went back and told Cambon [the French ambassador) who is going to Paris tomorrow and will lay this out before the Ministers. I showed him my maps with German and French troops on them. He was immensely struck with all the work and knowledge this meant. He told me where the French General Staff wanted us to go and what their plans are. This is the first time I have been told. He told me also that if I had gone to the manoeuvres, M. Massigny [the French war minister) was himself going to invest me with the Legion of Honour.
It does not seem to have occurred to Wilson that this information on the intentions of the French should have been passed to his superiors in the War Office or that Royal - not merely official - permission is needed before a British officer can accept a foreign decoration. Wilson had effectively taken full charge of Anglo French military plans; the Wilson-Dubail memorandum may have contained the usual reservations about political approval and no firm commitment, but these were negated when Wilson handed over the BEF's order of battle and agreed with French proposals for the deployment of the BEF. As always, actions speak louder than words, and Wilson's involvement with the French General Staff continued.
When Wilson is invited to consult with the French General Staff on 28 November 1911, he goes to Paris. It never seems to occur to him that a more senior officer might be more appropriate, or that he should ask the CIGS's permission; he simply goes. Moreover, once there he is clearly accepted as Britain's plenipotentiary - no one questions his ability to make decisions or commit his country's armed forces to a continental struggle.
The Old Contemptibles Page 7
