THE FROCKS AND THE BRASS HATS – PART ONE
Friction between politicians and military commanders is probably as old as warfare itself. The politician sees a political end which involves a military campaign. The admiral, general or, later, air marshal is not necessarily interested in the end but he has to manage the campaign. When the soldier and the politician are one there is no problem. Henry V was King of England and head of the government and also commander of England’s armies. Cromwell was eventually head of government and also commanded the army. Abroad, Napoleon Bonaparte was emperor of the French and her overall military commander. While someone who wields both political and military power has of course to weigh up the political consequences of a military act, and vice versa, there is no conflict of interest – what is decided by Cromwell the lord protector is faithfully executed by Cromwell the general.
It is where political authority and military command are separate that problems arise, either when the soldier (or admiral or air marshal) pokes his nose into the political arena, or when the politician thinks he knows better than the soldier how to manage a military campaign. Moving outside the perceived boundaries of the soldier or of the politician does not necessarily lead to disaster, although it often does. The so-called constitutional convention that members of the British armed forces take no part in politics and make no public statements that might be construed as political is in fact a very recent arrangement. Until 1927 it was permitted – and indeed by no means uncommon – for officers and soldiers to stand for election as MPs and to sit in parliament if elected, while continuing to serve as soldiers. Members of the reserve forces continue to have this right today, although very few seem to avail themselves of it, or perhaps very few members of parliament wish to join the Army Reserve.
In the years running up to the First World War British politicians were almost unanimous in the view that should a European war happen, Britain would not be involved, or at least not on land. It is often forgotten that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), created by Haldane and Haig in 1908, had to be prepared to deploy anywhere in defence of Imperial interests, and in the years leading up to war was specifically forbidden from using Germany – still technically a friendly power – as the enemy in its training and exercises. Some British officers did not agree, and from 1906 there were unofficial discussions with the Belgian military establishment – Belgium was after all a British creation – and from 1911 with the French. Foremost amongst the negotiators was Henry Wilson, then a Brigadier General and Director of Military Operations at the War Office. Entirely without any governmental approval, or indeed knowledge, Wilson drew up, with the French general staff, detailed plans for the landing and deployment in France of the BEF should war come. When in July 1914 it dawned on the British government that war was unavoidable it was the promises that Wilson had made to the French in the name of the British government, but without its knowledge, that contributed to the British acceptance that they must enter the war on land. In hindsight Wilson and other soldiers who thought like him – which fortunately for Wilson included Sir John French, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) from 1912 to 1914 – were right, but it was interference well outside the military remit on a massive scale.
John French was himself involved in military blackmail of the civil power of huge proportions, due to his involvement in the so-called Curragh Mutiny. The Irish Home Rule Bill, which would have given Ireland rather less power than is now held by the Scottish assembly, was making its way through Parliament and the Ulster Protestants, convinced that Home Rule meant Rome Rule, were determined to resist it by force and had raised a paramilitary, and totally illegal, armed body to do so. Clearly it would be the army that would have to deal with the Ulster Volunteers if push came to shove, and many officers of Irish extraction, and many of English extraction who sympathised, were reluctant to use force against their fellow citizens. The officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, stationed at the Curragh in County Kildare, stated that rather than march against Ulster they would resign. French from the War Office hastily announced that the whole thing was a misunderstanding and that it was never the government’s intention to use force to implement Home Rule. As that statement was issued without cabinet approval there were resignations, including that of French, which did not prevent him from being recalled to command the BEF, nor the eventual promotion of the commander 3 Cavalry Brigade, Brigadier General Hubert Gough, to full general. This may not have been a mutiny in the strict legal sense – the officers had not disobeyed direct orders – but it was disgraceful nevertheless. It is not for officers – or soldiers, but particularly officers – in a regular, volunteer, professional army to question with whom they must fight. Indeed one of the great advantages of a professional army is that you can use it against anyone, anywhere at any time.
Despite military attempts, overt and covert, to influence government policy, the generals would accept that it is for the politicians to decide upon war or peace. The politicians having made the decision to go to war, the generals would then very much like those politicians to leave the waging of it to those who are paid and trained to do it and who have spent their whole lives preparing for it. I do not know who first said ‘war is too important to be left to the generals’, but we can be sure it was a politician. It is about as logical as saying that heart bypasses are too important to be left to surgeons and that flying a plane is too important to be left to the pilot. What men like Lloyd George and Churchill and those like them could never understand was that the only way to win the Great War was to defeat the main enemy – Germany – in the main theatre – the Western Front. These people were constantly advocating what was known as the Eastern Strategy, which said that if you knocked away the props – Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria-Hungary – then Germany would collapse. What they failed to understand was that it was Germany that was the prop. Her allies were only kept in the war by German money, German trainers and German equipment. If her allies were knocked out, Germany would in some ways be stronger because she would not have to divert resources to prop up Austria and Bulgaria, and to a lesser extent Turkey.
Douglas Haig took over command of the BEF from French in December 1915 and the attempts by the politicians to frustrate his prosecution of the war sometimes took on what would have been a ludicrous dimension were it not that soldiers’ lives were at stake. The Salonika caper led to a quarter of a million French and British soldiers achieving little, except for a rocketing rate of VD amongst the French contingent. At one stage the CIGS, Sir William Robertson, wrote in exasperation to the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Curzon: ‘it would be valuable if you would kindly explain to the Prime Minister what the nature of the Balkan country is. He seems quite unable to envisage it and to understand the difficulty in getting heavy artillery forward and in supplying an army. In particular he seems to think that there is a single range of hills between the Salonika Force and Sofia [the capital of Bulgaria], whereas the whole country is a mass of mountains. The country is in short one where a small army would be murdered and a large one would starve. It is of a highly defensible nature and no amount of argument will alter that.’
In December 1917 General Headquarters (GHQ) in France produced an intelligence summary in which they predicted that the collapse of the Eastern Front gave Germany an opportunity to try to win the war before America was able to intervene, and that this would include an offensive on the Western Front which would probably come in the following March. When this was put to the cabinet Lloyd George flatly refused to believe it, claiming that the German army was done with and that the paper was merely a ruse by Haig to squeeze more men out of the government for the BEF. After the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 10 November 1917) Lloyd George had not only refused to reinforce the BEF but had at the same time agreed, against military advice, that the British should take over more and more of the Front from the French. Unable to keep the BEF up to strength, Haig had to reduce his infantry divisions from 12 battalions to nine, so each division now had to cover a bigger sector with fewer men. When the Kaiserschlacht did come, in March as GHQ had predicted, the Germans pushed the Allied line back and back, but although the elastic stretched almost to breaking point it did not break. The BEF fought the German army to a standstill. Ludendorff had shot his bolt and he did not have another one. At home the politicians tried to blame the army for not stopping the Germans sooner, and once again Lloyd George tried to find someone who could replace Haig.
Probably the most disgraceful episode was the case of Major General Sir Frederick Maurice. The press and the opposition had been giving the government a hard time over their failure to reinforce the BEF prior to the German Spring Offensive, and in trying to fix the blame on the generals Lloyd George made a speech in the House of Commons in which he said that the strength of the BEF in January 1918 was ‘considerably stronger’ than it had been in January 1917. In strict numbers Lloyd George was right. In January 1917 the strength of the BEF was 1,533,000 and in January 1918 it was 1,751,000, so on the face of it the troops available to Haig had increased by 218,000. What Lloyd George knew perfectly well, however, and what he did not say, was that the 1918 figure included 335,500 men who weren’t soldiers at all but members of the Labour Corps, which had not existed at all in January 1917, and was largely composed of coloured labour from South Africa, China and the West Indies. Now while a Chinese coolie with a shovel is doubtless a very fine fellow, he cannot compare with a soldier with a rifle or a Lewis Gun, and the fighting strength of the BEF was actually 118,000 men less than it had been a year before. Worse, the Infantry, on which arm the bulk of the fighting fell, had fallen by a third but still had to cover a longer sector of front.
Major General Maurice had just completed his tour as Director of Military Operations in the War Office, and was awaiting his posting to the front, probably as chief of staff of an army, and he read Lloyd George’s speech. Having been in the War Office, and having regularly visited France, he knew what the truth was and he knew how angry the BEF was about it, so he wrote to the papers. All but the Daily Telegraph published it. His letter was pretty mild by modern standards – the PM had not been entirely accurate – there had been some misunderstanding – some of the figures given were misleading – and so on in the same vein, with Maurice suggesting that there might be an Inquiry into the matter. What Maurice had said was absolutely true, but officers were and are forbidden to communicate with the Press. Lloyd George denied any impropriety and Maurice’s career was finished and he had to resign. Many years later Lloyd George did admit that he had misled the House, but excused it as a perfectly permissible political ruse.
The only reason that Lloyd George was unable to sack Haig and most of the high command – which would have led to disaster – was that the generals were sufficiently astute to ensure that the King, the Press and most public opinion was on their side.
Political and military disagreement was even worse in the Second World War than it had been in the First, but that must wait for another post.