The Somme Read online

  Faced with this double riposte, the War Committee might have concluded that it had trespassed beyond its province. That, however, was not its response. Faced with this display of military obduracy, the committee exploded in wrath. The issue promply turned from a mundane matter concerning horses into a constitutional challenge to civilian primacy over the military.

  The charge was led by Curzon. (In an earlier incarnation, as Viceroy of India, he had suffered much at military hands – ironically those of Lord Kitchener.) ‘The Army Council,’ Curzon proclaimed, ‘had written a reply of the most surprising nature.’ As for Haig's missive, ‘according to his feelings [it] was absolutely astonishing’. The War Committee, Curzon insisted, had been carrying out its duty of seeking to alleviate the undue pressure on shipping resources; ‘if this was to be the attitude of the Army Council towards them, he could only characterize it as most extraordinary’. Lloyd George agreed. He considered it ‘most surprising to receive such a letter which amounted to the Army Council setting itself up against the Government’, and deemed Haig's letter ‘perfectly insolent’. In words which addressed directly the issue of where, under the British constitution, authority lay in military matters, Lloyd George said of Haig:

  The latter talked about his responsibility – to whom was he responsible? He was responsible to them, to the Government, and through the Government to Parliament, and through Parliament to the people.... He thought that the documents of the Army Council and of Sir D. Haig were most improper ... they could not say ‘hands off ‘ to the War Committee, who were the real responsible body.

  The Prime Minister joined the chorus of disapproval. Countering a suggestion by the CIGS that only a military expert ‘could say what was the number of horses required’, he responded that that was not at all the issue.

  The point was that the War Committee was faced with a big question – not the minor question of how many horses they should have, but the large question of the best way of prosecuting the war.

  Significantly, Asquith went on to make a decidedly pungent judgement on a strictly military matter which he clearly saw as his concern:

  the horses out in France were of no use now. They were only there for prospective use when we had broken through. We were maintaining in France an enormous number of horses which were temporarily useless.

  As for the statement by the Army Council, it ‘should never have been written nor presented’.

  A few voices were raised in defence of the military, but only in a decidedly half-hearted way: either the army chiefs had not got the hang of what was being said, or they had not intended their views to reach the War Committee. So Balfour suggested that the whole thing arose from a misconception:

  The War Committee were thought to be mixing themselves up with questions of detail, whereas they were [actually] concerned with the great part of two big questions. The men who had written the memo had no idea of the real issue.

  As for Haig, Balfour felt that had he known ‘what was at the bottom of the proposed investigation, he would not have written as he did’.

  Robertson took a slightly different, but no more combative, line in defending the military. Haig's letter, he said, had been addressed to himself, not to the War Committee, and he regretted having shown it to the latter body. Countering a proposal that he should draw Haig's attention to ‘the impropriety of his having written as he had’, Robertson requested that this should not be pressed, ‘as it was a private letter’.

  What eventuated from this lively exchange? As it happened nothing of consequence. After exerting themselves in committee, Britain's civilian leadership, perhaps exhausted by their own audacity, sank into torpor. They dispatched no instructions to Haig ordering a reduction in the number of horses or to disband the cavalry. The supposedly urgent need to save shipping space by reducing fodder supplies was never raised again. While constitutional supremacy had been vigorously asserted, in practice it was the military who emerged victorious from this encounter. This pattern – of assertion and inaction – of acerbic criticism and an inability to direct – would dog the War Committee's dealings with the high command from the first day of the Battle of the Somme until the last.

  3 Decision-making, January–February

  I

  On 28 December 1915, the War Committee gathered to consider the resolutions of the Chantilly conference. So began the process of passing judgement on the proposed Anglo-French offensive in the spring of 1916.1

  Britain's political chiefs, a month earlier, had taken two decisions which bore directly on this subject. On 23 November, the War Committee had felt bound to recommend ‘the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula, on military grounds, notwithstanding the grave political disadvantages which may result’.2 And on 1 and 15 November, it had ruled out further devotion of British resources to the campaign at Salonika – first resolving on the evacuation of British forces, then amending this to read that any increase in men or guns must be provided by the French.3

  Thereby, the War Committee had set aside two areas of strategy potentially alternative to the Western Front. That is, even before receiving the proposals from Chantilly, it had begun moving to a situation where the only field of action open to British forces in 1916 – assuming it intended a serious offensive anywhere – lay in France or Belgium.

  The War Committee meeting of 28 December took five decisions.4 The first two were crucial. They deemed that France and Flanders were to be ‘the main theatres of operations’, and that every effort was to be made to prepare for an offensive there ‘next spring’. It would take place ‘in the greatest possible strength’ and in close co-operation with Britain's allies. Three subsidiary conclusions followed. Operations in East Africa would continue ‘with the force already determined’; a body of troops should be kept in Egypt sufficient ‘for its defence’; and operations in Mesopotamia (in the aftermath of the abortive thrust to Baghdad) would be ‘of a defensive nature’ employing ‘the existing garrison of India’.

  All of this seemed to point to a smooth endorsement by the War Committee of the Chantilly proposals. That, soon however, ceased to be the case. On 29 December, one of its members, A. J. Balfour, wrote a memorandum which was quite at odds with the conclusions reached just the day before.5 A former Conservative Prime Minister and now First Lord of the Admiralty, Balfour had been a regular member of the Committee of Imperial Defence even when his party was out of office. Already in recent weeks he had made clear his opposition to the decision to evacuate Gallipoli. And while accepting that he had been over-ruled on that matter, he continued to deplore the high command's view that the Western Front constituted the only region for fruitful operations. He agreed that the purpose for which the expedition to Salonika had been undertaken – namely the salvation of Serbia – had been ‘wholly illusory’. And he accepted that ‘erroneous information’ had caused British forces in Mesopotamia to be placed in a difficult position. But he would not conclude that this made exclusive concentration on the Western Front the only appropriate direction for British endeavours.

  The origins of the war, Balfour argued, lay in the east, where Germany's main ambitions were centred. Certainly, British and French concerns were concentrated in the west, and the total defeat of Germany there might bring down its allies, ‘whether Christian or Mahometan’: ‘But we have no right to regard the crushing defeat of the Central Powers at some new Waterloo ... as the only possible issue of the present struggle.’6 If anything short of a decisive victory in the war turned out to be all that the Allies could achieve, Balfour argued, then ‘every loss of prestige by Britain and France in the East ... must raise against us new enemies that will make victory in the war more difficult’.

  As it stands, Balfour's argument is downright obtuse. He appeared to be saying that a conclusion to the war that fell short of a definite victory over Germany would ‘make victory in the war more difficult’. Nevertheless, his conclusion on military matters was clear enough. In a war whose outcome was indecisive, Britai
n would be advantaged by having maintained a strong military presence in the east. Consequently, as regards Salonika, ‘it may be foolish to abandon an adventure which it was foolish to undertake’, because, as long as Britain was not turned out from there, Germany's ‘triumph in the Near East is incomplete’.

  What also emerged from this was Balfour's lack of conviction that a great Western Front offensive, even though employing all Anglo-French resources, would be an incontrovertible success. Certainly, the Entente powers were seeking to achieve over Germany a great superiority in men and weapons. ‘But ... the Germans are straining every nerve to make their line absolutely impregnable’. Further, ‘we have found no sufficient reply to the obstacles provided by successive lines of trenches, the unlimited use of barbed wire, and the machine gun’. He asked whether the Western powers could afford to fight on terms ‘which may involve a far heavier loss of men for them than for their opponents’. And he offered the judgement that ‘if at the end of these spring operations’ the strategic position remained unchanged ‘while the attackers have lost far more men than the attacked’, then ‘the position would ... be one of extreme peril for the Entente’.

  At the very least, Balfour argued, Britain should not engage in a Western offensive as early as the spring of 1916. For this there were two reasons. First, by then British armaments would still be inadequate. The required level of firepower could not be reached before mid-year. Second, the absence of a British offensive in the west in the spring would force the Germans to act there. Germany's ‘theories of war’ and ‘internal necessities’ would compel it to assume the offensive in the west. When Germany had attacked there and had failed; when Germany had sacrificed three men for every two of the Allies; and when Germany's reserves had been seriously drained and its people discouraged by months of ‘unrewarded hardship’, then the time would have come for an Allied Western offensive.

  II

  Balfour's memorandum (despite its sustained incoherence) carried sufficient weight to elicit a powerful rejoinder from the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener.7 He rejected Balfour's apparent view that Germany's objectives were limited to Eastern and south-eastern Europe. ‘Germany's primary object was’, he asserted, ‘... to establish a predominant position in Europe, first by crushing France completely, and then by compelling her other adversaries to accept the terms she chooses to dictate’. Kitchener strongly endorsed actions to render Egypt secure, but deplored locking up forces in Salonika, ‘where they can exert no effect on operations in the main theatre, where they may not detain a single German or Austrian soldier, and where, from a military point of view, they are wholly wasted’. In addition, an active policy in the Near East, even if intended only as a prelude to later operations on the Western Front, would deny British troops the necessary training in trench warfare and would place a strain on Britain's inadequate shipping resources.

  Kitchener went on to challenge Balfour's advocacy of delaying the opening of the Allied offensive in the west beyond the spring. He rejected as ‘wholly illusory’ Balfour's claim that this would force the Germans – to their cost – to launch their own offensive in that region:

  They are in occupation of the whole of Belgium and all the north-eastern provinces of France, comprising the most valuable mining and manufacturing districts in that country. They may well conclude that, providing they can continue to hold their gains, they will be in a favourable position to impose their own peace terms, and that the Allies will tire of the struggle before they themselves do so.

  Delaying the attack until June (when the Allies had reached their maximum strength) would leave insufficient campaigning time to accomplish a victory on the required scale. What was being contemplated, Kitchener insisted, was not a single battle on the lines of Waterloo, but a succession of battles prolonged over several months. Any postponement in the commencement of this process would result in an extended campaign, ‘protracted too late into the year’. The opportunity to end the war before the onset of winter would be lost, with unhappy consequences:

  it must be apparent to all my colleagues that it will be extremely difficult for this country to sustain the strain imposed upon us by keeping our forces in the field during the winter [of 1916–17] for a spring campaign in 1917, and that France will be also in a similar condition ... we shall be running a great risk of losing the war through the exhaustion of our resources.

  Finally, Kitchener turned his attention to an assertion by Balfour about ‘our “relative deficiency in guns”’:

  In November of last year [1915] the number of guns on the Allied front from the Somme to the sea was – Field guns, 2,950; heavy guns, 1,269. The Germans on this front had – Field guns, 1,764; heavy guns, 604. Since November the number of our guns has been steadily increased.

  III

  Balfour was not alone in resisting the proposals emanating from Chantilly. At a meeting of the War Committee on 13 January 1916, further dissenting voices were raised.8

  The Prime Minister was at pains to point out that the resolution agreed upon on 28 December was not a firm endorsement of an Anglo-French offensive in the spring. All that had been concluded was that ‘every effort is to be made to prepare’ for such an offensive. That, Asquith argued, ‘left the matter open for final decision’.

  In response, a number of members spoke in ways at least suggesting that the ‘final decision’ might go another way. Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for India, indicated that ‘possibly our plans on the Western front might be upset by the Germans acting against the Eastern front’, and inquired: ‘In this case should we then settle down to the defensive?’ And when Kitchener affirmed, yet again, that ‘the only chance of finishing the war this year was by a great offensive in the West’, he was challenged by Reginald McKenna, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. McKenna stated that unless Kitchener could say ‘with positive conviction’ that such an undertaking would certainly succeed, ‘he could not accept it’. ‘Such an effort would be contemplating the exhaustion of our resources.’ Responding to a question by Kitchener, McKenna was even firmer: ‘if we were exhausted we were done’. Lloyd George (not personally an ally of McKenna) chimed in with what appeared to be support. He claimed that in such circumstances ‘we should have nothing to bargain with’.

  Lloyd George's interventions at the meeting of 13 January are of particular note, if only because in his war memoirs (written in the 1930s) he usually – although not invariably – presented himself as a devoted opponent of a Western strategy. Lloyd George on 13 January interpreted Balfour's memorandum as requiring the War Committee to decide whether or not the Somme offensive should proceed. He pointed out that Britain had (in 1915) already participated in two Western offensives, ‘both of which had come to nothing’. And he insisted:

  We could not have another of the same sort. That would amount to a defeat. Therefore we ought to delay until we were really strong enough.

  Equally as important as British concerns, Lloyd George went on, was the matter of French preparations. ‘On every occasion hitherto the French had understated the amount of ammunition they required’ – with (by implication) disastrous results. Now, however, they were adopting a more considered approach, as revealed in a document emanating from the French Xth Army ‘which showed that they would not be ready by June’. Lloyd George pressed this point:

  On the figures which he had, by every computation we should not be ready by March–April.... We must postpone in order to make for ourselves a fair chance of success.... By June we should have a large number of heavy trench weapons, and the French would have complete artillery with a sufficient supply of munitions.

  Lloyd George's contributions on this occasion are notable for their ambiguity. Up to this point, he seemed to be arguing (as Balfour too may have been) against a premature Western Front offensive rather than against such an offensive in any circumstances. His prime concern appeared to be a sufficiency of guns and ammunition. But at other points in the discussion, Lloyd G
eorge appeared to be inclining against any Western offensive.

  For example, in a discussion stemming from a suggestion that the Turks might, in about May, embark on a big offensive into Egypt, Lloyd George aired what looked like a proposal for action far from the Somme: a campaign against this ally of Germany, ‘forc[ing] the Germans to do what we had to do in Servia’. Lloyd George argued:

  In the main, it was our business to sit tight on the Western frontier, and then take the offensive in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Salonika. If we attacked in either [sic] of these places, the Turk must be there, and the German must come to his assistance. We could not do both things. It meant the selection of an alternative.

  Warming to his subject, Lloyd George revealed that he had even more to offer than just a British offensive against Germans or Turks. There was, he argued,

  a third alternative, namely to send equipment to France and Russia. Russia had a long front, and it might be easier to break through on it. It was worth considering the question of sending heavy guns and equipment direct to the Eastern Front.... Supposing France and ourselves sent 1,000 heavy guns to Russia, they might be able to break down the defence.

  Plainly, for some highly placed members of the British government, the issue of strategy was wide open.

  IV

  Yet if the meeting of 13 January showed the War Committee prepared to look askance at the Chantilly proposals, in what direction were the dissenting voices pointing?