Haig of Bemersyde

I

WHEN Britain for the first time in her history waged war not with a small professional army but with the nation in arms, it was characteristic of her nature that, instead of a genius, the man called to lead her armies should be the embodiment of her normal virtues and defects. Military genius has occasionally flowered on her soil, but it has been an exotic growth. Haig, in contrast, was distilled essence of Britain. Calm, unimaginative acceptance of whatever fate may have in store, serene faith that all will come right in the end, resisting power deep-rooted in the tradition of centuries — these combine to produce that inexhaustible endurance which has ever been the despair of Britain’s foes, sapping their own will to conquer. Marvelously apt, both for Haig and for the men of whom he was the leader and type, was the family motto of the Haigs — ‘Tyde what may.’

Born on June 19, 1861, at Cameronbridge, Fifeshire, Douglas Haig sprang from a branch of the famous border Haigs of Bemersyde. He conformed to the national tradition from the first. In his school and university days, at Clifton and at Oxford, he was known for his athletic powers and character but not for any academic promise or achievements. From Oxford he went to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst,

— not direct to a commission like the present-day university entrant, — and here revealed the first signs of distinction. Industry is the proverbial birthright of the Lowland Scot, and heredity may have asserted itself to give his mind a serious bent, coupled with the fact that he entered later and thus was several years older than his fellows. It is at least certain that one of his officers, in answer to an inquiry, said: ‘There is a cadet here called Douglas Haig, who is top at everything—books, drill, riding, sports, and games; he is to go into the Cavalry; and what is more, he will be top of the Army before he has finished.’ He actually passed first out of Sandhurst, and was commissioned in the 7th Hussars. The Cavalry, in those days particularly, did not take soldiering too seriously, and an officer with a zest for work could be sure of receiving the grateful surrender of others’ modest portion so long as he did not disturb their tranquillity. Thus after barely three years’ service he became adjutant of his regiment, and this position, backed by his strong character, enabled him to disturb others to such good effect that the training of the 7th Hussars began to set new standards in India. He was helped by his skill at polo, for the fact that on joining he went straight into the 7th Hussars team, then the finest in the Army, dissipated the prejudice which attaches to that unpopular species, the bookworm.

Polo, greatest of all games, is undoubtedly good training for a cavalry troop or squadron leader. But in the British Army it is more, for any one who attends regimental dinners knows that a good polo player is ipso facto a good general. The reason apparently does not lie, however, in the rapidity and skill of manœuvre which it induces, for I recall an interchange of such sentiments and compliments between two distinguished cavalry generals, one of whom then went on to deliver the interesting if unhistorical dictum that ‘a great army can only be worn down by hard fighting; it cannot be outmanœuvred.’ As, under Haig, he was primarily responsible for the offensive at Ypres in 1917, — hard enough in cost and result, — he ought to know.

Haig’s strenuous time as adjutant merely gave him a greater thirst for military experience, and he spent his subsequent leave in visits to the German Army and the French Cavalry School at Saumur, His report on which brought him to wider notice. But for a moment his career was in jeopardy through the discovery that he was color-blind. Rejected in the medical examination for the Staff College, he managed to enlist the sympathy and influence of the Duke of Cambridge, who secured his entry as an exception to the rule. Haig was fortunate, for, if ‘hard cases make bad law,’ an uncompromising insistence on red-tape regulations has lost the Army many good soldiers.

At the Staff College, prophecy from many quarters forecast for him a great career, and fortune befriended him by providing in the quick succession of the Sudan and South African campaigns not merely a chance to win his spurs, but an extended opportunity for distinction. Coming back from the Sudan in 1899, to become brigade major to the cavalry brigade under Sir John French, he naturally found a place on his staff when the South African War broke out a few months later. Soon he became Chief Staff Officer to French in the Cavalry Division, where his methodical instincts, caution, and sagacity acted as ballast to his impetuous commander. Brevet promotions came rapidly, and in the later phase of the war he became commander of a group of columns during the ‘sweeping ’ operations. Here he did useful work, but the thoroughness and method which made him an ideal staff officer were not all-sufficient qualities in the chase of slippery bands of Boer partisans.

Among many honors which the campaign had brought him was that of extra aide-de-camp to the King. Although his spells of home service had been short, he had won the personal regard of King Edward, and the royal interest in his career was strengthened by his marriage in 1905 to the Honorable Dorothy Vivian, one of Queen Alexandra’s maids of honor. When this took place he was once more holding an appointment abroad, for in the autumn of 1903 he was appointed Inspector General of Cavalry in India, at the direct request of Kitchener, then Commander in Chief, on whom his work in the Sudan campaign had made a lasting impression. The appointment was exceptional for one who was only a brevet colonel, and coupled with his substantive promotion he was made temporary major general. Next year this rank was made permanent — an amazing rise for a man of forty-two who had only entered the Army at twenty-three. He was commonly called ‘Lucky’ Haig and, marked as was his ability, he was the favorite of fortune not merely in his escapes from death but in the combination of circumstances which gave him such a close series of opportunities to win distinction and attract notice.

In 1906 he came home to be suecessively Director of Military Training and Director of Staff Duties at the War Office. Three years later he went out to India again, as Chief of the Staff, although very reluctant to take the post because of his conviction that a war with Germany was inevitable and imminent, and his wish to be on hand to take part. It was a relief to him when in 1912 he was again brought back, this time to receive the blue ribbon of home commands — the Aldershot command. Aldershot was the main training ground of the Expeditionary Force, containing its first two divisions, and fate gave him only two years in which to prepare this force for its great test.

II

On the declaration of war Haig took up his assigned position as commander of one of the two army corps of the British Expeditionary Force. Grierson had the other, but, upon his sudden death in the train, his command was given to Smith-Dorrien, Haig’s predecessor at Aldershot. In the opening clash at Mons and the subsequent retreat, Haig, on the right wing, bore a less severe strain than the 2d Army Corps on the left wing, where the brunt of the German onslaught fell. And history has shown that the strain on Smith-Dorrien’s corps was partly owing to the action — or inaction — of Haig’s corps. The major responsibility, however, rested with General Headquarters, which failed to keep control of the operations and to coordinate the movements of the two army corps. This failure in turn had its main source in the collapse of Sir John French’s Chief of Staff, General Murray, who fainted in an inn at St. Quentin on August 26, the day of the Le Cateau battle. Worse still, he recovered sufficiently to think that he was functioning, when actually he was still unfit. Thus during critical days there was no firm band on the helm.

The danger, as well as the subsequent difficulties, was immensely aggravated by the fact that, at the outset, the British retreat was split into two portions by the forest of Mormal. This large and dense obstacle was so close to the starting point of the retreat that there was hardly time or space to withdraw the whole force by one flank, and Sir John French decided, on receiving an inaccurate cavalry report that there were no roads through the forest, to divide his force, leaving Haig to retire by the east side of the forest while Smith-Dorrien retired by the west.

The divergence was almost fatal, for, separating on August 24, it was not until September 1 that the two army corps joined up once more, — there was at times a gap of fifteen miles between their inner flanks, — and during that interval the 2d Army Corps (Smith-Dorrien) came desperately close to disaster at Le Cateau. Isolated and unaided, except for the welcome reenforcements of a fresh division, Smith-Dorrien was compelled by the closeness of the enemy and the fatigue of his own troops to stand and fight at Le Cateau on August 26, disregarding the orders for a continuance of the retreat. After the check to the German advance caused by this rear-guard action, the further retirement of the Expeditionary Force was never seriously threatened. But it was fortunate for the British troops, exhausted and disordered, that the Germans were slow to begin the pursuit and then took the wrong direction in the belief that the British were retreating westward instead of southward. This German delusion, held even before Le Cateau, was strengthened by the very fact that they met resistance only on the left wing, as Haig’s corps had continued its retreat while Smith-Dorrien was standing to fight. In consequence the Germans not only attacked SmithDorrien’s front from the north, believing that it was his flank, but passed round his right and attacked his exposed flank, believing that it was his front.

Why had Haig laid bare his neighbor’s flank and why was he too far away to support him when attacked? It has long been one of the mysteries of the war. The cause lay partly in French’s failure to keep in touch with and control over his two corps, partly in Haig’s failure to fulfill French’s orders. On the eve of Le Cateau, French had ordered both corps to continue the retreat next day in a southwestward direction. Smith-Dorrien, as we have seen, disobeyed these orders by stopping to fight, compelled to take the decision on his own initiative because of the difficulty of communicating with French in time. Haig disobeyed these orders by retiring southward next day, instead of southwestward, a course which took him hour by hour farther from SmithDorrien. If his decision lacked SmithDorrien’s justification, we need to remember that in war the commander on the spot often finds that circumstances alter plans, and the root cause of the trouble was that the Commander in Chief was too far away for consultation or control. French had moved his headquarters back to St. Quentin, twenty-two miles distant even from Smith-Dorrien at Bertry, and with no direct telephone communication except through the railway station there.

Liaison was, indeed, the weak joint of the command, not merely inside the British force, but between it and the French. At the first meeting between Sir John French and General Lanrezac, commanding the Fifth French Army on his eastern flank, a mutual antipathy had sprung up, accentuated by the barrier of language, and thereafter each took his own course without consideration of the other. If Lanrezac gave the first cause for complaint. French, after Le Cateau, thought for a moment of cutting adrift from his allies altogether, to fall back and fortify ‘Torres Vedras’ lines near the coast, a project from which he was only dissuaded by Sir Henry Wilson’s timely use of his inimitable powers of humor and cajolery.

This lack of liaison between the Allies throughout the retreat would have been worse but for Haig’s influence. As his corps was the material link between the two armies, so he himself was the personal link, and so quickly did the French liaison officers realize this that all made a point of calling first at his headquarters on their journeys to and fro between two greater headquarters. His disregard of orders in moving southward on the day of Le Cateau may have been due to his desire to keep in touch with the French.

Similarly, when the French Fifth Army halted its retreat on August 28, Haig sent a message to Lanrezac that his troops were perfectly fit to attack and that he wished to cooperate with the French in a counterstroke. His willingness was overruled and reprimanded, however, by Sir John French, who, in face of the appeals of the French commanders, insisted on continuing the retreat, leaving the French to fight alone and lose the fruits of their success. Let it be said in fairness to Sir John French that, seeing only the local situation, he may have found it difficult to understand why Lanrezac had left him in the lurch at Mons.

Haig had a cooler temperament and a more balanced view, as well as a better understanding of the French mind. He maintained this spirit of helpfulness when in supreme command, and none had a better grasp of the vital importance of cooperation between the Allies, If General Headquarters was sometimes as notorious for its criticisms against the French as was Grand Quartier Général against the British, such tendencies were due not to Haig but to his subordinates.

In the Battle of the Marne, which turned the tide of the war, the British force had an important indirect influence, but its direct influence was small, owing to the fact that it had made an extra day’s march to the south when its allies halted for the counteroffensive. But after the subsequent advance to the Aisne and the check there, the British Expeditionary Force assumed a leading role and was the decisive factor in thwarting the Germans’ second bid for victory. The immortal resistance of Ypres was primarily a soldiers’ battle, depending on the courage, endurance, and musketry skill of the regimental officers and men, and on timely counterattacks carried out by battalion or brigade commanders. The rôle of the Higher Command was perforce limited to their moral influence and to their efforts to cement the crumbling parts of the front by scraping reserves from other parts. Within these limits Haig proved himself an ideal defensive general. On him fell the whole conduct of the battle. His Chief still had the delusion that he was attacking when the troops were barely holding their ground, and later, when enlightenment came, was equally insistent on retreat, only to be dissuaded by the greater will power and perhaps the greater selfdelusion of Foch, who had been given the rôle of coördinating the action of the Allied forces around Ypres.

Haig’s economic distribution of his slender strength, and his success in ‘puttying up’ the strained and cracking front, owed much both to his cool calculation and to the forward location of his headquarters, close to the battlefront. Invaluable also was the moral influence of the calm which his bearing diffused. And on the most critical day of the struggle he revived for a moment that personal element of leadership which so often turned the scale of battle in the past, before the days of scientific killing at long range. News had just come back that the Germans had made a breach in the front at Gheluvelt; the guns were necessarily falling back, stragglers and wounded trickling down the Menin road. Up the road, moving ‘at a slow trot, with part of his staff behind him as at an inspection,’Haig was seen riding forward toward Hooge, and the sight did much to restore confidence.

When the German tide of attack at last ebbed, and the sorely depleted British ranks were refilled and expanded, the Expeditionary Force was divided into two armies, and Haig received command of the First. In this capacity he was in executive command of all the abortive attempts in 1915 to break through the trench barrier. The first was at Neuve-Chapelle in March. Here a heavy concentration of artillery was secretly assembled, and an intense bombardment of half an hour’s duration delivered on the German trenches, after which the artillery lengthened their range and dropped a curtain of fire to prevent the reenforcement of the enemy’s battered trenches, which were rapidly overrun by the infantry. Complete surprise was obtained and most of the first positions captured, but control broke down, reserves were late in coming up, and the opportunity of exploiting the initial success vanished. A further factor was that the narrow frontage of attack made the breach more easy for the defenders to close; this defect was unavoidable, owing to the general shortage of munitions.

The cost of this experiment might have been offset by the benefit of its experience. But both Haig and the Allied Command as a whole missed the true lesson, which was the surprise obtainable by a short bombardment that compensated its brevity by its intensity. And only partially did they appreciate that the sector attacked must be sufficiently wide to prevent the defender’s artillery commanding, or his reserves closing, the breach. Instead, they drew the superficial deduction that mere volume of shell fire was the key to success. Not until late in the war did they revert to the Neuve-Chapelle method, and meanwhile it was left to the Germans to turn it to profit at the expense of the Russians, in the Tarnow-Gorlice breakthrough in May 1915.

The British offensive at Loos, in September, was a more costly failure and without any experimental value. One fault was that it was too far away from the joint French offensive in Champagne for either to react on the other, but a worse was that the British Command tried to reconcile two irreconcilable factors; they aimed at a break-through, but preceded it with a prolonged bombardment which gave away all chance of surprise. But as the initial and fundamental mistake was appreciated only by a few, the brunt of the criticism fell on Sir John French, who had held the reserves too far back and handed them over to Haig too late for the brief opening success to be exploited.

While making all allowances for the new problems created by trenchwarfare conditions, — which, however, had been foreshadowed by the RussoJapanese War and prophesied by Monsieur Bloch, a Polish banker, twenty years earlier, — the historians of the future will find it difficult to understand the slowness of the Allied generals to grasp the defensive strength of barbed wire and machine guns. They refuted the old proverb, ‘Once bitten, twice shy,’for bite after bite failed to make them shy of prognosticating success, far less of their offensive efforts. More curious still, in a generation of soldiers nurtured on military history, was their utter disregard of military history. On the one hand, they disdained the principles of surprise and concentration, which have ever been the master keys of the Great Captains, announcing their intentions to the enemy by days of prolonged bombardment and attacking with a tiny fraction of their force while the rest remained inactive. On the other hand, while violating the principles of normal warfare, they refused to treat their operations as siege warfare. The Messines attack in 1917 was the first, and almost the only, British operation which was framed on a true siegewarfare basis.

III

The aftermath of Loos saw Sir John French relieved of his command of the British Expeditionary Force, and replaced by Sir Douglas Haig. The record of his career and every outward qualification except personal magnetism marked him out for this selection. If the miscarried offensives of 1915 had brought him no credit, they had not been signalized by the appearance of any possible rival. Haig’s first task was to forge the molten ore of the New Armies, which was flowing out to France, into an offensive weapon, and to sharpen its edge by trench experience and training behind the lines. To gain the time required all his strength of character, and the strain became greater when the Germans attacked Verdun and in that longdrawn-out attrition offensive gradually bled the lighting strength of France. To release French reserves Haig relieved the French army which was holding the sector around Arras, sandwiched between the British First and Third Armies. But he refused to be hurried into a relief offensive before his forces and resources were ready. Even before Verdun was assailed he had objected to Joffre’s plan for partial offensives in April and May as preparatory steps to a general Allied offensive, simultaneously with the Russians, in midsummer. It was a pity that Haig’s clear sight and sound attitude in resisting the many-sided pressure and clamor for a premature stroke in aid of the French were not maintained in the conduct of his own offensive. The original plan had been for the French to attack with forty divisions on a twenty-five-mile front south of the Somme, and the British to attack with twenty-five divisions if possible on a fourteen-mile front north of the Somme. But as the French were drained of their strength at Verdun, so did their share in the Somme plan evaporate. Ultimately their front of attack shrank to eight miles and their force to sixteen divisions, of which only five took part at the outset. Thus the main burden was shifted to the British and remained on their shoulders for the rest of the war.

Yet Haig’s aims do not seem to have been reduced in proportion to the shrinkage of his resources. True, his orders no longer ordained the unlimited objectives of Loos nor foresaw quite so rapid a break-through as had then proved a mirage. But the ultimate objectives were as far-reaching. What possible ground was there for such ambitious dreams? The plan, while disdaining the old master keys of concentration and surprise, made no pretense to provide any new key. The Fourth Army, which was to make the attack, had only seventeen divisions, with three more in reserve under Haig. The artillery concentration, of 1500 guns, was barely the equal of that of the Germans in May 1915 for their Tarnow-Gorlice break-through, and the defenses on the Russian front a year earlier could not be compared with the German network of wire and trenches on the Somme. The Fourth Army Command made a vain protest that with the artillery available the scheme was too ambitious. Worse still, the British had not only to attack uphill against an enemy holding the high ground, but they had strengthened their own obstacle by their shortsighted policy of harassing the enemy continuously as a normal trench routine. For when the Germans held the dominating positions, as well as a superiority in equipment and ammunition, these ‘worrying’ tactics wore down the British troops more than the enemy — attrition on the wrong side of the balance sheet. Further, they stirred the Germans to strengthen their trench defenses, to develop by art the advantages of nature, so that the British offensive came against an almost impregnable fortress instead of the relatively weak defense system which had faced the French when they held this part of the front. For the French policy, except when engaged in active operations, was ‘live and let live,’ and when their ‘war-weariness’ troubles of 1917 are recalled, it is the highest tribute to the endurance of British troops that they endured the policy of their leaders so long.

Finally, any chance of surprise was given away, not only by the neglect to conceal the vast preparations, but by a seven-days-long bombardment.

July 1, 1916, dawned with a promise of broiling heat, and at 7 A.M. the bombardment rose to its height. Half an hour later the infantry rose from their trenches, and thousands fell, strewing No Man’s Land with their bodies, before the German front trench was even reached. For their opponents were the Germans of 1916, most stubborn and skillful fighters, quick to exploit their defensive assets; while the British shells flattened their trenches, they sheltered in dugouts or shell holes and then, as the barrage lifted, dragged out their machine guns to pour an unslackening hail of bullets into the dense and rigid waves of the attackers. The Somme marked the nadir of infantry tactics, the revival of formations that were akin to those of the eighteenth century in their formalism and lack of manœuvring power. Only as the upstanding waves were broken up by the fire, and human nature, reasserting itself, formed little groups which worked forward by rushes from shell hole to shell hole, did advance become possible. The British losses on this terrible day were 60,000, the worst day’s loss in the whole history of the British Army, although only fourteen divisions were engaged. The only credit was earned by the skill and fortitude of the German defenders and the unquenchable courage of the New Armies of Britain. All along the attacking line these quondam civilians bore a percentage of losses such as no professional army of past wars had ever been deemed capable of suffering without being broken as an effective instrument. Yet they carried on an equally bitter struggle for another five months.

Two months of costly ‘nibbling’ followed before the crest of the ridge, so near and yet so far, was gained. By that time a fresh network of trenches had been woven in the rear, and with the early onset of the autumn rains vanished the last dim hope of a breakthrough. The British losses in this inverted attrition campaign had been double the German, and the only tangible result was that, with the capture of the ridge, the British had obtained the commanding observation by which their enemy had so long profited. But, once more overruling the opinion of the executive Army Command, the Commander in Chief threw away this advantage by spending the next month in fighting his way down into the valley beyond, and so doomed the troops to the misery of a winter in flooded trenches. If the German resistance was also strained, it did not prevent them from withdrawing troops to crush Rumania.

To the tragedy of lost, lines and lost chances was added that of lost potentialities. For on September 15 the premature use of a handful of tanks gave away the jealously guarded secret of this newly forged key to the trench deadlock, sacrificing its birthright of decisive strategic surprise for the mess of pottage of a local success. The metaphor has a satirical aptness, for military ignorance has never made a worse mess of any new weapon. The progenitors of the tank had long before sounded the warning, in a memorandum, that the secret must be preserved until masses of machines could be launched in a great surprise stroke, and that on no account should they be used in driblets as manufactured. As Haig had expressed his agreement with this memorandum in the spring of 1916, the military historian is driven to the conclusion that the tanks were literally ‘pawned for a song’ —of illusory triumph over a local success. If so, the greater prize thus lost beyond recall was a heavy forfeit to pay for an attempt to redeem some fragment of the failure on the Somme. A mere fifty-nine were used in tiny detachments of two or three tanks, their drivers insufficiently trained, the infantry untaught how to coöperate with them, the rear preparations scant and mismanaged, the very machines themselves obsolescent, because this early model was designed in accordance with specifications based on the trenches of 1915. It was little wonder that the majority broke down or became ‘ditched.’ Yet those that came into action proved such a lifesaving factor and moral tonic as to reveal to discerning eyes that here was the key which, when properly used, would unlock the trench barrier. But the folly did not end with their misuse. Haig reported so dubiously upon them, and in letters expressed so low an opinion of their value, that Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff at home, hastened to cancel the programme of construction, and was only prevented by political intervention.

The story of 1916, as of 1917, is a painful indictment of the Commander in Chief’s lack of vision and obstinate disregard of advice whose truth was borne out by the result. But it cannot be burked by the conscientious historian, even though he recognizes the virtue of this very obstinacy in later crises — to which it had contributed. In Haig, physiognomy was a true index of character: the forehead, though not mean, dominated and eclipsed by the chin. So thought and imagination, although active within strict limits, were dominated by an unswerving determination, which when beneficial was called tenacity, and when harmful was called obstinacy. Haig at least was far more than a Joffre: his obstinacy was due to mental limits, not to pure ignorance; and he was never the cat’s-paw of subtler brains. And although his determination was so strong, be was not so insensible to the human cost as some of his coadjutors whose personal resolution was less. In some measure his very defects sprang from virtues. His loyalty to old comrades and long-known subordinates made him slow to remove those who failed under the test of war and its new conditions. His lack of selfish ambition prevented him from cultivating that blend of geniality and fire which in some is natural and in others an artifice, but which is the magnetism of leadership. His remoteness. combined with his inability to argue, tended to discourage all but the most resolute subordinates from pressing contrary opinions; and physical courage is a far more common virtue than moral courage among soldiers long apprenticed to the profession of arms. The Army Commanders — “the Barons,’ as they were commonly termed — might be awe-inspiring war lords in their own domain, but few of them ventured to stand up to Haig. Because of his manner, more than his character, the very subordination which military discipline induces tended to become its own poison.

IV

But public and political criticism had been growing in volume, and at the close of the Somme campaign Haig was lucky to escape the fate of his French colleagues, Joffre and Foch. Nevertheless, the fall in his credit had perhaps worse consequences. For the British Government, now led by Mr. Lloyd George, lacked the courage to depose him or the confidence to support him, and so lent itself to the baneful compromise of subordinating him to the control, in operations, of the new Commander in Chief of the French Army, Nivelle. This violated an axiom of war, and of common sense, for a general cannot effectively direct another army while he is engrossed in the executive command of his own. Moreover, the atmosphere of distrust was a fertile breeding ground for intrigue. Early in 1917 the French produced, at the Calais conference, a scheme for an amalgamated command, with a French Commander in Chief, a British Chief of Staff, and a mixed Headquarters Staff. When this was rejected through British military opposition, and the other compromise — of subordination — adopted, Nivelle’s personal staff began to intrigue in London for Haig’s removal. The chief wirepuller was Colonel d’Alenson, who, in the confidential post of chef de cabinet, stood ever at his master’s elbow and wielded an irregular power far greater than that of the official heads of the French staff. Consumed with ambition and disease, conscious that his career was a race between glory and death, this restless and able schemer urged Nivelle on to an early and supreme gamble to win the war at a stroke. All the more anxious was he to remove any impediments to the fulfillment of his design, and, regarding Haig in this category, he sought to supplement his underground attack by a series of dictatorial instructions — their tone hardly civil — to Haig in the hope that resentment might produce a crisis and Haig’s resignation. In this object D’Alenson failed, and even the temporary harm he did to Allied relations was minimized by Haig’s own balance of mind; for, if stung to complain, he was not stung to retaliate, and it is one of the highest tributes to him that, although sorely tried, he never let his sense of injury obscure his sense of the need for cooperation between the Allies. It is a question whether a fine sense of duty should have prompted Haig to resign when he felt that he no longer possessed the confidence of his Government or his allies, and that his troops might suffer in consequence — as they did in April 1917 and March 1918. But it is beyond question that no man has shown or maintained greater self-control in face of the storms of criticism and undercurrents of intrigue,

Nivelle’s appointment caused a change and, worse still, a delay in the original plan of campaign for 1917. Before it could begin the Germans had disrupted its foundations — by a strategic withdrawal from the huge Somme salient which the Allies had planned to pinch out. Straightening their front by retiring to the newly fortified Hindenburg Line, the Germans left their foes to follow laboriously through the intervening desert which, with immense thoroughness of destruction, they had created. By nullifying the Allies’ preparations for attack, this withdrawal dislocated the initial moves in their plan and restricted them to the sectors on the two flanks of the evacuated area. Thus they had to launch their main blows before the enemy’s reserves were pinned down by pressure elsewhere.

The British struck first, in the north near Arras, on April 9. The temporary check to the supply of tanks had left a hurricane bombardment as the only means of achieving a surprise, but although Allen by, commanding the Third Army, urged such a course, the timely removal, by promotion, of his artillery adviser cleared the way for the long-drawn-out method which the Higher Command preferred. Three weeks of systematic wire-cutting followed by a five days’ bombardment gave the Germans ample warning, and the usual results followed. After sweeping over the forward positions which their shells had razed, the attackers were brought to a stop by intact defenses in rear. South of the evacuated area, the French blow in Champagne on April 16 was equally abortive in strategic results and, because of its greater scale, a greater fiasco. The excessive hopes raised by Nivelle caused the greater reaction, and to the accompaniment of mutinies among the slaughter-weary French troops Nivelle fell from power, to be replaced by Pétain and a more cautious policy, and for the rest of the year the British bore almost the entire burden of the campaign.

V

With the failure of the French any chance of a beneficial reaction on the dying British offensive at Arras vanished. But Haig decided to continue the operations in order, as he explained at a conference of Army Commanders on April 30, to reach a ‘good defensive line.’ If these later attacks were modest in scale of force and objective, they were extravagant in lives. Haig’s advocates have thrown the blame partly on the faulty tactics of the Third Army Command in face of the new defensive tactics of the Germans— thinly held forward positions with reserves concentrated in rear for prompt counterattack — and partly on the unfulfilled promises of the French to continue their pressure. If there is much truth in these contentions, it is not the whole truth. For the minutes of the conference on April 30 reveal, first, that Haig placed little reliance on the prospect of the French continuing their attacks; and, secondly, that the prolongation of the Arras offensive was based on a local object and not dictated by that of bringing relief to the French.

After the costly failure, early in May, to reach this ‘good defensive line,’ Haig decided to transfer the main weight of his attack into Belgium, as he had originally intended to do at an earlier date. His loyalty to his allies and his sense of the common interest inspired him to press on with this offensive policy even though French cooperation was lacking. And it is just to recognize that at this juncture the British Prime Minister, who had committed himself to the Nivelle gamble, was equally ardent to pursue the offensive, although on cooler reflection he subsequently tried, in vain, to check the policy which he had countenanced.

But if the ominous situation of the French Army, the crisis at sea caused by the submarine campaign, and the need to second the still possible Russian offensive, combined to justify Haig’s decision in May, the situation had changed well before the attack was launched at the end of July. In war all turns on the time factor. By July the French Army was recuperating, if still convalescent; the height of the submarine crisis was past; and the revolutionary paralysis of the Russian Army was clear. Nevertheless Haig would not change his plans.

As a preparatory step, the Messines ridge south of Ypres had been secured by the Second Army, under Plumer, with Harington as Chief of Staff. The explosion of long-prepared mines, the discharge of a great volume of gas, the dovetailed coöperation between artillery, tanks, and infantry, were features of a meticulously organized scheme which by its economical success proved a model example of the true siegewarfare attack. It was above all due to perfect staff work, and thus corresponded with the conditions of what was essentially a staff officers’ war, in all armies.

But in the greater operation which followed, not only the principle but the method and the choice of site were open to criticism. The axis of the attack diverged from, instead of converging on, the German main communications, so that the advance could not vitally endanger the security of the enemy’s position in France. Haig was to adopt here the same ‘eccentric’ direction of advance which a year later his advice prevented Foch and Pershing from taking. And if the advance on the Belgian coast could yield no wide strategic results, the idea that it was necessary in order to capture the German submarine bases on this coast has long since been exploded, for the main submarine campaign was conducted from German ports.

But, worst of all, the Ypres attack was doomed before it began — by its own destruction of the intricate drainage system in this part of Flanders. The British Command had persevered for over two years with the method of a prolonged preparatory bombardment, believing that quantity of shells was the key to success, and that, unlike all the Great Captains of history, they could disregard the principle of surprise. The offensive at Ypres, which was finally submerged in the swamps of Passchendaele in October, threw into stronger relief than ever before the fact that such a bombardment blocked the advance for which it was intended to pave the way, because it made the ground impassable.

The legend has been fostered that these swamps were a piece of ill luck due to the heavy rain, a natural and therefore unavoidable hindrance that could not be foreseen. In reality, before the battle began a memorandum was sent to General Headquarters pointing out that if the Ypres area were destroyed by bombardment the battlefield would become a swamp. In the disregard of this warning is epitomized the cause of that disastrous failure, inevitable from the outset, for the mud was hampering operations in the very first days. But in another quarter the lesson was assimilated in three days, instead of the three months which General Headquarters took before they abandoned the hopeless struggle. On August 3 an alternative project was drawn up at Tank Corps headquarters. Its preface contained this significant example of prevision: ‘From a tank point of view the Third Battle of Ypres may be considered dead. To go on using tanks in the present conditions will not only lead to good machines and better personnel being thrown away, but also to a loss of morale in the Infantry and tank crews through constant failure. From an infantry point of view, the Third Battle of Ypres may be considered comatose. It can only be continued at colossal loss and little gain.’

The alternative proposal was for a large-scale raid near Cambrai, where the rolling downland lent itself to tank movement, as a dramatic means of restoring British prestige and an economic means of keeping the Germans occupied. The basic idea was the release of a swarm of tanks without any preparatory bombardment to give warning of the blow. The proposed sector was in the area of the Third Army, now under Byng, who showed himself instantly receptive to the idea, although inclined to expand it from a raid into a definite attack. On August 6 he went to General Headquarters, saw Haig, and suggested an attack with tanks at Cambrai on September 20. The Commander in Chief was favorable, but his Chief of Staff, Kiggell, made strong objection on the ground that the army could not win a decisive battle in two places at once, and should rather concentrate every possible man in the Ypres area. Thus the enlarged idea postponed the raid, as the refusal to recognize the ‘writing on the wall’ at Ypres postponed the attack at Cambrai until it was too late to gain decisive results.

This damping reception failed to extinguish the scheme, and late in October the growing hopelessness of the Ypres offensive rekindled the smouldering embers; ultimately the Cambrai operation was fixed for November 20. But it had been transformed into a farreaching offensive, aimed to penetrate as far as Valenciennes, for which the British had not the resources because of the drain at Ypres. It is extremely difficult to understand what was in mind as to the future, for, without reserves, success could only mean the creation of an excessively deep and narrow salient, requiring many divisions to hold it.

Led by nearly four hundred tanks, but followed by only six infantry divisions, the attack came as a complete Surprise, and despite minor checks achieved a penetration far deeper and at less cost than any previous British offensive. But all the available troops and tanks were thrown into the first blow, and the Higher Command failed to give Byng the few reserves they possessed in time to exploit the success. And the cavalry, as always on the Western Front, belied Haig’s unfailing faith, proving unable to carry out this rôle. Once more the British Command had failed to fit their end to their means.

The best comment on this lack of reserves was supplied by the commander of the neighboring French Army Group, Franchet d’Espérey. A long motor ride in search of information brought him to a British headquarters at Albert. Entering, he interrogated a senior General Staff officer, flinging at him a string of questions as to the progress of the attack, its frontage, its depth. Then came the final, the vital question: ‘And where were your reserves?’ ‘Mon général, we had none.’ The French commander exclaimed, ‘Mon Dieu!’ turned on his heel, and fled. If the excuse be that the Ypres battles had drained us of reserves, — even so, there were divisions which came up too late, — then it surely reflects on the choice of that swamplike area and the failure to try earlier the method that at Cambrai unlocked the doors to decisive success.

For want of nourishment the advance died away, and on November 30 a German counterstroke nearly turned limited success into unlimited disaster. The sole fruit of Cambrai was the lesson — applied the next year.

But since early in November the stream of German troop trains westward from the Russian front had been steadily swelling, and the British Command suddenly awoke from their offensive dreams to the grim reality that, with Russia out of the war, they and their French allies had to face almost the whole armed strength of Germany. The Italian disaster at Caporetto added to their depression, and their mood veered round to one of sheer defense. But their own extravagant offensive had dissipated their resources and sacrificed their credit. If English action had relieved the strain on French resources, what was the benefit if England had drained her own to the verge of bankruptcy? And because of the loss of credit, reenforcements were withheld by a Government sick of spendthrift strategy and dubious of the military change of mood.

The danger was aggravated by two further developments. Owing to the insistence of Clemenceau, the new French Premier, Haig was forced to extend his line and take over more of the front from the French at the moment when his reserves were at the lowest. This meant that Gough’s Fifth Army was dangerously stretched out and took over ill-prepared defenses on the very sector where Ludendorff was about to strike. Secondly, Haig’s innate distrust of compromises led him to take the decisive step which nullified the effort to establish a form — if an immature one — of unified control before the threatening storm broke on the Allied front. The new Supreme War Council of the Allies had planned to create an Interallied general reserve, under the control of its military executive committee, of which Foch was appointed chairman. Haig, however, brought this scheme tumbling to the ground by his reply, when called on by Foch to contribute his quota of seven divisions, that he could spare no troops. He preferred to rely on a working arrangement with Pétain, his French vis-à-vis, for mutual support. But his own almost quixotic sense of loyally and the common interest led his judgment astray, and when the German blow fell on his own front, as he had rightly forecast, he was speedily disillusioned. Perhaps also he lacked the imagination to put himself in Pétain’s shoes and to make allowance for the possibility that the French commander might have an equally fixed, if incorrect, conviction that the real attack was due on his front.

When the German attack was launched on March 21 and the Fifth Army was driven back over the old Somme battlefields, Haig found that his compact with Pétain was inadequate. French reserves were slow to come to his assistance, and, after a comfortless interview with Pétain, Haig sent an urgent call to Lord Milner, the Secretary of State for War. Milner, however, was already on his way and the outcome of his intervention was the emergency conference of Allied ministers and generals at Doullens on March 26. Sinking personal pride in face of the crisis, not only did Haig back Milner’s proposal that Foch should be appointed to coordinate the combined action of the British and French armies, but it was on his intervention that the scope of Foch’s commission was extended to the whole of the Western Front, instead of merely ‘around Amiens.’ No one had a more thorough appreciation of the fact that Amiens, the junction point between the Allied armies, was also the joint in the Allied harness which must be covered at all costs. To no one was its security more due. But his instinct for method also taught him that a compromise which gave Foch partial responsibility was impracticable, and he voluntarily subordinated himself in order to give Foch a comprehensive responsibility. This loyal coöperation was maintained throughout the last year, and carried so far that when in July Foch pressed for British reserves to meet the expected German blow in Champagne, Haig complied with his demands although still expecting attack on his own front, and although those previously sent had been sacrificed owing to the blunders of their French commander. And in his loyalty Haig refused the British Government’s offer of intervention.

It is perhaps a little difficult to reconcile Haig’s emphasis on guarding the Amiens ‘joint’ with his initial dispositions, wherein he placed most of his reserves in ihe north, and left to Gough’s army not only the longest and most difficult sector to defend, but the lowest proportion of troops to hold it. The reason was probably that he anticipated, rightly, that the heavier weight of the German attack would fall on Byng’s Third Army near Arras, and did not anticipate that, if the Germans broke through, they would penetrate so deeply or so rapidly as they did. And whereas the front in the north was unpleasantly close to the vital Channel ports, there was room on Gough’s front to fall back some distance. It was only when the distance reached to a forty-mile withdrawal that the danger to Amiens became serious. Moreover, later knowledge reveals that Byng’s successful resistance at Arras, combined with the extent of Gough’s enforced retreat south of the Somme, tended to change radically the German plans, and lured Ludendorff on to his ultimate undoing.

Throughout the crisis of the German inroads, first on the Somme and then, in April, on the Lys, Haig proved the same cool and unshakable commander as at Ypres in 1914. If, because of the greater scale of his command, his control could not be so direct as in 1914, he showed the same prudent and calculating use of his reserves to ‘putty up’ the crumbling parts of the front, and the moral symbol of his ride down the Menin road was reproduced in his immortal order of April 11: ‘Many among us now are tired. To those I would say that victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest. . . . There is no other course open to us but to fight it out! Every position must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. . . .’ The only shadow on these noble sentiments is the reflection that if Haig had refrained earlier from butting frontally at an impassable wall his troops might not now have had their ‘backs to the wall.'

In this crisis, however, he strove manfully to husband life; his timely withdrawal of his line in the Ypres salient largely nullified the German blow planned at this point, and he would have made other elastic withdrawals but for Foch’s opposition. When the tide turned with the great counterstroke on the Marne in July, Haig had an opportunity to show that in attack he had profited by his repeated hard lessons of earlier years. He had let Foch have British reserves for the Marne battle against the wishes of his staff, and now he was instantly receptive to suggestions from the Fourth Army Command, whom he had overruled so frequently in 1916. A small but ably conceived surprise operation with tanks on July 4 had revealed to Rawlinson and his Chief of Staff, Montgomery, a significant weakening in t he enemy’s morale and defects in his trench system. After the idea had been broached in conversation, Rawlinson submitted to Haig on July 17 a detailed scheme for a large-scale surprise attack on the Cambrai model. Haig at once approved it in preference to an attack on the Lys, which Foch had proposed as one of a series of local offensives to free his lateral railway communications. Foch accepted the alternative site and placed under Haig the French First Army under Debeney, to extend the front of attack on the south. Rawlinson’s army was secretly doubled, and by skillful precautions the enemy was kept in the dark until, on August 8, the surprise attack was launched, led by 450 tanks. Great as a material success, it was still greater as a moral, for it so convinced Ludendorff of the final tilting of the scales that he informed the Kaiser that peace ought to be sought without delay.

VI

On August 10, when the advance was slowing down, but a new attack, by Humbert’s army, was beginning on Debeney’s right, Foch issued orders to Haig for Rawlinson and Debeney to continue their attack while Byng’s army was to prepare to strike in on Rawlinson’s left. Haig, now imbued with the principle of economizing life, objected to an immediate continuation of Rawlinson’s direct advance against stiffening resistance, but agreed to launch Byng, and proposed also to throw in the right of Horne’s First Army, lying next to Byng. After a tussle of wills, Foch gave way. On August 17 Mangin’s army struck, south of Humbert; on August 21 Byng advanced; on the twenty-sixth Horne, and on the same day Rawlinson, began to move forward again. The difference of opinion between Haig and Foch, and its effects, can be and have been exaggerated. For, although marked credit is due to Haig for modifying Foch’s method toward economy of life, it is clear that the basic plan of alternate ‘shouldering’ advances in rapid succession — the keynote of this new strategy—had already been created by Foch. As a result, the whole German front, Soissons to Arras, was in a state of flux, the Germans evacuating under pressure the areas captured in the spring, and falling back on the Hindenburg Line. Could they stand fast here? That was the vital problem. And in solving it Haig’s influence was more important than in the earlier question. Method and determination, his permanent assets, were now his valuable contributions to the Allied stock. Further, it is beyond question, if natural, that he had a more correct appreciation of the German decline than the Government at home. At the end of August they sent Haig a cipher telegram expressing their anxiety if further heavy losses were to be incurred in attacking the Hindenburg Line. It is absurd to blame them, as some have done, for not only had the soldiers given the statesmen just cause for anxiety in the past, but, as armed forces are based on the strength of the nation in the rear, strategy must necessarily be the servant of policy. At the same time it is just to recognize the moral courage which Haig showed in accepting responsibility for the attack and staking his reputation on his opinion.

Foch, who had now freed his lateral railways, was able to turn to wider aims and produced his plan for a combined general offensive. A compound British, French, and Belgian force was to attack on the left wing in Flanders; the main British force was to break the Hindenburg Line and advance toward Maubeuge, so threatening to cut the western end of the Germans’ main lateral railway and their line of retreat west of the hilly forest region of the Ardennes; the French were to advance against the German centre in Champagne; the Americans to strike toward the Briey coal fields, just west of Metz, and the eastern end of the German lateral railway. If rapidly successful, this last stroke promised decisive results in cutting the German line of retreat east of the Ardennes and turning the possible German line of resistance along the French frontier. But it diverged from the direction of the other attacks and so would not have the same reaction upon them as a converging advance. Haig, more prudent, urged Foch to alter this into a converging advance toward Mézières, and Foch agreed to the change.

Here again, although ardent partisans have exploited the modification to exalt Haig and depreciate Foch, the effect can be exaggerated. For, in the first place, the British broke through the renowned defenses of the Hindenburg Line without the Mézières attack drawing off any material fraction of the German resistance which faced them. At the outset of this battle there were fifty-seven German divisions opposing forty British and two American divisions on the Hindenburg Line. For the Mézières advance there were thirtyone French and thirteen larger-strength American divisions —a total equivalent to at least sixty normal Allied divisions — against twenty enemy divisions.

Secondly, after breaking through the German defenses the Allies’ converging advance lost impetus owing to the difficulty of supply over the destroyed areas, and by the date of the Armistice all hope had vanished of cutting off the main German forces. And when the curtain fell on the long drama of the Western Front, Foch was about to launch, although a little farther east, the Franco-American turning manœuvre which he had originally intended for September, and which was now the only chance of retrieving the hope of a decisive military victory.

It is right to put forward these facts to restore a balanced view, but they in no way depreciate the real services which Haig rendered in his own sphere by directing the vital operations which, by breaking the Hindenburg Line, hastened the German decision to capitulate.

As in an earlier phase his virtue of loyalty had the effect of a vice, so in the last phase his vice of obstinacy became a virtue. Like Foch, he had profited by experience, and, like Foch also, his profit was greatly increased because in the last phase, when the balance of numbers and morale turned definitely in his favor, the conditions at last came to fit his theories even more than his theories moved to meet the conditions.

He was different from Foch in that, while Foch stands out in relief from the background of war, vital in int erest as a man apart from his association with great events, Haig is engraved in the face of the war, and because of inherent self-effacement his career must be traced through the course of events.

As an executive commander there has never been a finer defensive general. In contrast, as an offensive general there has perhaps never been a worse one among those who have earned fame. In the last phase he did much to regild his reputation, but the scope for more than method and determination was not wide. His mind was dominated by the instinct of method, a valuable asset; where he failed was in the instinct of surprise, in its widest sense — originality of conception, fertility of resource, receptivity to ideas. And without the instinct of surprise, the key to economic and decisive success in war, no man can take rank among the Great Captains. But as a great gentleman, also in the widest sense, and as a pattern of noble character, Haig will stand out in the roll of history, chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, more spotless by far than most of Britain’s national heroes. Most of all, perhaps, because in his qualities and defects he was the very embodiment of the national character and the army tradition.