Allenby of Megiddo

I

FEW famous men have been the object of such extremes of condemnation and admiration within the space of a few years as Allenby. It may be replied that these extremes are not so uncommon, that the crowd is always fickle in its favors. But the verdict came not from popular opinion, which knew him not until he was famous; it came from his peers and his subordinates who were in close touch with him during the four years of the World War. Most curious of all was the sharp dividing line drawn by a journey through the Mediterranean in June 1917. For almost three years in France he had been the target of strong criticism, lessening only in degree in the later part of this time — criticism not lightly to be discounted, because it came from many quarters and from men whose honesty and judgment were, and still are, held in the highest respect. Then he left to take over the command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, and from that moment on his reputation became as radiantly white as formerly it had been black. Nor was the change due to military success. Men may win victories which crown them with popular glory, but victory does not blind their coworkers to the existence of their defects. It is proverbial that no man is a hero to his valet, and few generals are immaculate in the eyes of their staff and subordinate commanders, however loyal these may be in comment at the time, or however much they may admire their chief on balance. Yet Allenby in Palestine became, as a chief, not only preponderant in his good qualities, but sans reproche for any bad qualities. By no means a human enigma, his career is an historical enigma. By no means a romantic type, he conducted one of the most romantic campaigns in history, alike in site, sequence, method, and result — the last Crusade.

An East Midlander by birth and having an ancestral link with Oliver Cromwell, Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby was born at Southwell in Nottinghamshire on April 23, 1861. Educated at an East Anglian school, Haileybury, he was intended for the Indian Civil Service, but failed in this stiff examination and, following his own inclinations, entered the army instead. From the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he passed to a commission in the Inniskilling Dragoons, whom he joined in South Africa during 1882. It has fallen to few young officers to go on active service so early in their career and to share in so many, if small, campaigns. A year after joining he was in the Zululand campaign which ended in King Cetewayo’s surrender; in 1885 he served with the Bechuanaland expedition; and in 1888, promoted captain after less than six years’ service, he was back again in Zululand to take part in the crushing of Dinizulu’s rebellion. Thereafter, although he passed through the Staff College, his career took a slower course until the Boer War came to his relief. He then gave up a staff appointment to go out again, in command of a squadron, to the land where he had first seen service.

Early in 1900, in charge of a small mixed column, he made a wide outflanking move against the enemy’s communications which brought him to notice, and was a foretaste of that bold sense and conception of manœuvre which later distinguished him. He was in command of his own regiment during the advance to Pretoria, and of a column in the ‘sweeping’ operations against the Boer guerrilla bands later, and at the end of the war was promoted lieutenant colonel and given command of the 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers. Yet in comparison with another great leader of the World War, born in the same year, Haig, he had lost ground. For although Haig had been commissioned three years later than Allenby, he was a full colonel at the end of the South African War and a major general less than two years after. The difference created by that campaign was to have a vital influence on the fortunes of the two cavalrymen and on the destiny of the command in France thirteen years later. Yet, if Allenby was to forfeit the greater prize, it may well have been to the advantage of his place in history. And even that lost prize was nearly restored to him by a turn of Fortune’s wheel, for it is within the knowledge of those who followed the devious undercurrents of war politics in 1914-18 that several times an eddy nearly swept him into the place of the man who had overtaken and passed him in South Africa.

Not until 1909, five years after Haig, did Allenby reach major general’s rank, although, at forty-eight, he was by ordinary standards youthful for this rank. Next year he became Inspector of Cavalry and the commander-designate of the cavalry of the Expeditionary Force.

In training the cavalry of the Home Army, ‘the Bull,’ as Allenby was universally called, proved himself as determined and uncompromising in pursuit of his ideal of efficiency as he had been when in command of a regiment. To the slack or incompetent he gave short shrift, but his discrimination was not always as good as his intention. And his impatience with diverging views and in sweeping aside reasonable explanations not infrequently created, among the best subordinates, a sense of injustice or aggravation, which was enhanced and gained point from the fact that his handling of the cavalry on manœuvres was by no means faultless.

II

On the outbreak of war in August 1914, Allenby went out to France as commander of the cavalry division, which actually consisted of four instead of the normal three brigades. Prior to the opening clash at Mons on August 22 the cavalry division had only succeeded in giving the British Command the vaguest warning of the hostile masses which were closing upon and threatening to surround the little British Expeditionary Force. This failure to fulfill its true rôle was due, however, primarily to the dispositions of the British Commander in Chief, who placed the cavalry at the outset on his right rear — which was also the flank of least danger. Indeed, these dispositions were not only a direct but an indirect source of harm. For when Sir John French, on his way to the front, called on his neighbor Lanrezac, commanding the French Fifth Army on his eastern flank, and explained his dispositions, Lanrezac formed such a low opinion of a man who could thus place his cavalry behind his infantry, when information and security were all-important, that he lost all faith in his British neighbor. Hence arose the friction and disunity of action between the neighboring armies which persisted throughout the retreat.

When the British moved forward on August 21, — pushing their head, in ignorance, into the German noose, — the cavalry division was moved over to the left flank. And when that tentative advance changed into defense at Mons, on August 23, Allenby’s troops prolonged the British left, covering the exposed western flank.

In the early hours of August 24 Sir John French issued orders for a retreat — to draw back if possible out of the noose — with the cavalry division covering the retirement of SmithDorrien’s 2nd Army Corps. When the 2nd Corps halted at Le Catcau the next evening, Allenby visited SmithDorrien and told him that the cavalry division was too scattered and the horses too tired for him to continue covering the retirement next day, and that the infantry must get away during the night if they were to avoid capture by the Germans, close on their heels. Allenby only gave this warning at 2 A.M., and it was impossible at such short notice for the infantry, footsore and partly distributed in defensive positions, to get on the move again before daylight. Thus Smith-Dorrien’s men were forced to stand and fight unsupported, escaping disaster only by their splendid resistance and at a heavy price. In the morning the cavalry continued their retirement except the 1st (Briggs) and 3rd (Gough) Cavalry Brigades, which stayed behind independently to cover the right rear of the 2nd Corps. When Smith-Dorrien’s men fell back that evening, exhausted and disordered, it was fortunate that the German pursuit was tardy and then took the wrong direction; but it was also fortunate that Smith-Dorrien’s left, the more exposed flank, was protected by Sordet’s French Cavalry Corps — for there was no British cavalry on this vital flank.

It is necessary for the historian, however unwillingly, to correct a popular delusion which gained color both from the Commander in Chief’s dispatches and his later comment that ‘the cavalry, under Allenby’s skillful direction, was effectively holding off the enemy’s pursuit.’

In blunt fact, Allenby, during the most critical phase, did not direct the cavalry operations in covering the retreat, because a large part of his division had escaped from his control. And as there was known friction between him and some of his subordinates, this escape was perhaps not involuntary — such, at least, is the belief of other eminent soldiers. Whether this be so or not, it is at least certain that at one time Allenby’s division, for practical purposes, consisted of little more than himself and his staff. Not until August 30 were three of the four brigades reunited under his control, and the other, the 3rd, never rejoined, remaining away on the right. On the eve of the battle of the Marne its commander, Gough, took the 5th Cavalry Brigade under his wing, and on September 16 these two brigades were officially designated the 2nd Cavalry Division.

When the British faced about on September 6, after retreating a day’s march farther south than their neighbors, the cavalry division under Allenby was kept on the right rear of the infantry during the first two days of the advance, covering the flank, although the vital need was for the British to retrace their steps at full speed and pierce the weak joint of the enemy line opposite them. Only on September 11, when the Germans had been in retreat for two days, was the cavalry division tentatively unleashed in pursuit by Sir John French, giving the Germans time to recover and, on September 14, block the British advance across the Aisne — a resistance which ushered in four years of trench warfare. When the British Expeditionary Force was transferred from the Aisne to Flanders, in the vain attempt of the Allies to find and turn the Germans’ open flank, the infantry went by rail, but the cavalry by march route through Picardy. During that move, on October 9, the two cavalry divisions were fused into a cavalry corps, under Allenby.

Directly on arrival the British advance began, by the 2nd Corps, while the cavalry corps moved forward along an arc to the north, covering the detrainment of the 3rd Corps and then advancing on its left. If the advance was short-lived, the cavalry corps secured the valuable MessinesWytschaete ridges before the advance changed to a desperate dismounted defense. Moreover, if they were stretched out perilously thin, they had linked up on the left with the hard-pressed defenders of Ypres, and thus a complete if slender barrier was opposed to the German masses who were incessantly hurled against it during the following weeks in the effort to break through to the Channel ports. Although forced to yield the Messines ridge, the dismounted cavalry maintained their front unbroken until at last French relief came. In this ‘soldiers’ battle’ Allenby, like other generals, could do no more than strive to ‘putty up’ the crumbling parts of his front, but in this process, cemented by ultimate success, he bore a responsibility next greatest to that of Haig.

In the trench warfare which followed there was no scope for cavalry and many cavalry soldiers began to change to the command of infantry formations, among them Allenby. Appropriately, it was during the crisis of the second battle of Ypres —the first gas attack — that Allenby was summoned to take charge of the threatened 5th Corps in the Ypres salient. If the immediate danger was averted, the drain of lives was heavy throughout the summer, perhaps heavier than necessary, and it is at least certain that the 5th Corps command acquired a reputation of ill omen among the troops. So much so that when a certain division, perhaps the best in France in 1915, received word that it was to be transferred to Allenby ’s Corps, the depression and morale decline were so marked that the consequences were pointed out to G. H. Q. and it was sent instead to another corps in the same area.

One source of complaint at Ypres was that the offensive spirit of the commander was not balanced by adequate investigation and knowledge of the situation. For example, a counterattack was ordered to recapture a supposed strong point, which was found — at a heavy price in lives — to have no existence except on a paper plan.

The swelling strength of the British forces had already led to their being divided into two armies, and in the late summer of 1915 a Third Army was formed when the British took over the French sector between the Ancre and the Somme. Monroe, who at the first Ypres had been a divisional commander in Haig’s Corps when Allenby was Cavalry Corps Commander, was given command, but in October he was sent to take charge of the Dardanelles Force, and Allenby stepped into his place — the last big appointment that Sir John French made before he was replaced as Commander in Chief by Haig.

Allenby was thus in charge of the sector where the main British offensive of 1916 was planned to take place, but some months before it was launched Allenby’s Army was side-stepped to the north, between the Ancre and Arras, and a new Fourth Army under Rawlinson was inserted to conduct the main offensive on the Somme. Thus the Third Army’s share on July I was limited to a subsidiary attack with two divisions against the Gommecourt salient, which met with an almost more bloody repulse than the main attack to the south. During the rest of tlie year Allenby had to remain inactive while the battles of the Somme were raging on his flank, a share of the offensive being now taken over by a new Fifth Army, under Gough, which had been pushed in between Rawlinson and Allenby.

But in the spring of 1917 an attacking rôle was at last assigned to Allenby, and when the time came almost the whole burden of the offensive fell to him. For the Germans’ strategic retreat to the Hindenburg Line dislocated the intended renewal of the offensive on the Somme by the artificial desert which it had created for the armies of Gough and Rawlinson to cross. The German retreat had flattened out their former pinch-inviting salient, and from Arras southeastward ran the tremendous defenses of the new Hindenburg Line. If Allenby could break through the old defenses just to the north of where this line ended, he would automatically take it in flank and rear; but in anticipation of such a move the Germans had dug a switch line from Queant, near the northern end of the Hindenburg Line, through Drocourt, covering the rear of their old defenses north of Arras. Thus Allenby’s whole chance of strategic success depended on whether he could reach and break through this partially completed switch line, some five miles behind the front system, before the German reserves could arrive in strength.

Surprise was the only key which could open this gate. Because of this the real drama of the Arras offensive lies in the preliminary discussions more than in the battle itself. Surprise had been discarded in the Somme offensive — indeed, this master key of all the Great Captains of history had been left to rust since the spring of 1915. Would it be brought out afresh in order to open the way to the Drocourt-Queant switch within the brief time before the door was bolted and barred by the German reserves? The two means by which surprise and time could be gained were by launching a mass of tanks, as at Cambrai in the autumn, or by a hurricane bombardment, brief but intense. The first means was impossible, owing to the slowness in delivering new tanks after the discouraging reports made upon them in 1916, so that sixty old machines were all that could be scraped together. Allenby and his artillery adviser were anxious to have the shortest possible artillery bombardment, and proposed that it should last only twenty-four hours. If this, according to later standards, was twenty hours too long, it was a tentative step in the direction of surprise. But General Headquarters were too materialminded to appreciate it and had a deeprooted distrust of such an innovation. Against their remonstrances, however, Allenby stood firm, until they hit upon the device of promoting his artillery adviser to another sphere and replacing him by one imbued with their own views.

Allenby then gave way, and the plan of a five days’ bombardment, preceded by three weeks of systematic wirecutting, was adopted, to the doom of surprise and the abnegation of a breakthrough. Allenby’s yielding on this point against his own convictions seems hardly in keeping with his reputation for strength of character, although it may be urged that, as a cavalryman, it was not easy for him to overrule the advice of an artillery expert. But where experts differ a general is justified in basing his choice on his own common sense, in the light of the fundamental principles of war.

In smaller points, however, he still sought for surprise, notably in opening up the underground quarries of Arras, St. Sauveur, and Ronville in order to shelter two divisions which were to pass underground and leapfrog through the leading divisions. Another feature of the plan was that, after the three assaulting corps of the Third Army had broken the enemy’s first system of defense, the Cavalry Corps and the 18th Corps were to pass through in the centre between the human buttresses and drive forward toward the switch line. Partly for concealment, the daring risk was taken of moving this pursuit force through the city of Arras, whose houses extended almost up to the front line. This plan, refreshingly ingenious, was vitiated, however, by two factors. First, the absence of initial surprise; second, the comparatively narrow front of the opening attack, — little more than ten miles, — so that the central bottleneck was, in turn, so narrow that its end could be easily stopped. Ludendorff in his Vilna offensive in the autumn of 1915 had revealed a better method — a dual penetration by two horns goring their way into the enemy front, while through the wide gap between the horns the pursuit force unexpectedly issued.

A fundamental defect of the Arras plan, moreover, was that its base was far wider than its fighting front, the routes of supply and reënforcement all converging on Arras, with the result that the narrow mouth of this bottleneck became utterly congested. When the initial attack failed to make the progress anticipated, this congestion was increased by the arrival of the cavalry in the forward area, although it should have been clear from the experience of the Somme that this advance was futile unless and until a wide path had been swept clear of the enemy. The results of the opening attack were greater and quicker, both in prisoners and progress, than any previous offensive, yet they extinguished the possibility of a strategic breakthrough, for only a miracle could have recovered the chance that had been dissipated almost completely before the attack was launched.

In the attempt to redeem the fading strategic hopes, Allenby’s resolution was more marked than his understanding of modern fire-power. To assist his frontal advance eastward he insisted that the divisions facing the Hindenburg Line should make a convergent attack from the southwest, disregarding the fact — and the protests — that they had insufficient artillery to subdue these formidable defenses. From this project, which must have cost a fruitless sacrifice of lives, he was only dissuaded by the personal intervention of Haig, who was visiting this sector. And when the distant French offensive on the Aisne, to which the Arras battle was the preliminary, proved abortive, Allenby’s renewed series of blunt attacks, some in conjunction with the Fifth Army, were merely an object lesson in the most expensive way of trying to occupy the enemy’s attention. They were closed down on May 5, and next month Allenby was sent from France to replace Sir Archibald Murray — French’s old chief of staff during the retreat from Mons — in command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force which had twice failed disastrously to break the Turkish defenses at Gaza.

III

That sea voyage is a turning point in Allenby’s career as well as in his reputation, both as commander and man. The clouding obsessions of the later phase at Arras were blown away, leaving the impressions of hard experience to broaden and refine the original instinct for surprise. It is a moot point whether, if he had stayed in France, he would ever have adapted himself to the conditions of siege warfare as well as Haig ultimately did. And a recall to France, to take the supreme command, was later a possibility. But it is doubtful whether any other leader, if sent to Palestine, would have been Allenby’s equal in boldness of conception and extent of success. For in this theatre of war, where the historic methods of attack were still feasible when directed with vigor, inspired by surprise, and attuned to modern weapons, Allenby found the right field for his gifts and instincts.

In France siege warfare was too firmly consolidated to be dissolved by merely ringing the changes upon traditional methods. In Palestine an alternative to siege warfare was possible and it could be exploited if surprise were brought to bear.

Gaza, on the coast, and Beersheba, thirty-five miles inland, form the two natural gateways into Palestine, and between them lies a series of ridges which form a natural wall easily capable of defense. The British troops, after dragging their weary length across the Sinai Desert from Egypt, had tried in vain to force the strongly fortified Gaza gate. Beersheba, less artificially strong, was protected by the difficulty of transport and of water supply for an attacking force.

Experience had taught Allenby that even the most difficult manœuvre was preferable to butting his head against a blank wall. Grown receptive, he had no hesitation, after study of the position, in adopting the plan outlined in an appreciation made by Chetwode, the commander on the spot, while improving its details by the light of his own experience. With a heightened understanding of the axiom that the success of an attack is in proportion to the firm security of the base from which it is launched, he devoted himself to intensive preparation — of communications, water supply, training — during his first three months on the borders of Palestine, while the season was still unsuitable for operations. Not less significant was that he moved General Headquarters up from Cairo to the front, at Rafa, where he could have his finger on the pulse of battle — and of his troops. It was not only a sound military move but a wise human move, acting both as an ointment to sore feelings — for men could not help contrasting their hardships in the desert with the supposed enjoyment of Cairo amenities by the arbiters of their fate — and as a tonic, because the presence of their Chief was to the men a visible guaranty that they would not be thrown into the attack without due study and knowledge of the situation. Even to the natives of the country Allenby’s coming carried a mystic significance, for the Arabic form of his name, ‘Allah Nebi,’ meant ‘the Prophet of God,’ and thus appeared the complement, in the eyes of a superstitious people, to the old prophecy that when the waters of the Nile flowed into Palestine the land would be freed from the domination of the Turk — a condition that had been fulfilled by the construction of a pipe line across the desert.

Furthermore, Allenby’s determination enabled him to insist on and obtain the force necessary for his plan, a reënforcement which his predecessor had asked for in vain. Thus Allenby obtained a full two-to-one superiority over his enemy — not excessive if he was to gain decisive results and in view of the increased resisting power of a defender under modern conditions. The enemy, on their side, were also planning an offensive to drive the British back into the desert, but Allenby struck first. By thorough precautions for secrecy and many ruses he misled the Turks as to the real point of attack. The defenses of Gaza were bombarded from October 26 onward, and as a deception to Turkish eyes the camps behind the British lines were left standing with rows of empty tents, whose occupants were on the move toward Beersheba. At dawn on October 31 two British infantry divisions attacked its defenses from the southwest while two mounted divisions, Anzac and Australian, were closing on the town from the east, and in the afternoon a daring cavalry charge over the narrow trenches captured this gateway to Palestine and its essential water supply.

Next, to maintain the delusion that this attack was only a diversion, a strong holding attack was made on the Gaza defenses during the night of November 1. The new enemy commander, von Falkenhayn, also aided Allenby’s plan by throwing in his reserves in a vain counterattack to regain Beersheba, and thus had no reserves left when, at dawn on November 6, Allenby’s main and decisive blow fell on the Turkish left centre and broke through into the Plain of Philistia. The mounted pursuit, hampered by lack of water, was also less able in execution than the battle had been in conception, and by a prompt retreat from Gaza the Turks avoided being cut off. Nevertheless, by November 14 the port of Jaffa had been seized, giving Allenby sea communication with Egypt, the Turkish force driven apart into two divergent masses, and, leaving a detachment to watch the mass which had retreated up the coast, Allenby wheeled east for an advance inland against Jerusalem. It was difficult to supply his whole force, and so Allenby took the sound risk of pushing on at full speed with a part to secure the mountain passes before the Turks could block them. He succeeded, and although a stout Turkish resistance, almost at the gates of Jerusalem, brought his rush to a halt, he had passed the worst obstacles, so that the arrival of reënforcements enabled him to capture the Turkish trenches and open the way to the Holy City, which was surrendered on December 9. Two days later Allenby entered the city on foot by the historic Jaffa Gate, specially reopened for the purpose, thus offering a contrast with the theatrical mounted entry of the Kaiser in 1898, for whose convenience and glorification a breach had been made in the city wall. Allenby’s next step was to secure his hold on Jerusalem and Jaffa by securing sufficient room for manœuvre in front of these cities, and the repulse of von Falkenhayn’s misguided attempt to retake Jerusalem enabled the British, on the rebound, to gain ample space to safeguard their possession of Jerusalem.

Allenby’s advance was resumed in February 1918, and his first step was to make his eastern flank secure as a preliminary to a northward move. Jericho and the river line of the Jordan had been gained when the crisis in France caused by the German offensive — Ludendorff’s last throw for victory — forced Allenby to dispatch thither most of his British troops. The depletion was made up by troops from India, and Allenby, undaunted, devoted the summer to the reorganization and training of these Indian units, building up a fresh striking force for the decisive stroke he had in mind. To pave the way, Allenby launched two raids east of the Jordan, in March and May, in order to create the impression that he intended to advance up the Hejaz railway, which ran parallel with and about thirty miles east of the Jordan, linking Arabia with Damascus. Allenby had already decided to make his real blow on the other flank in the coastal plain, where he could exploit his superiority in mounted troops, and his aim was therefore to draw the Turkish reserves over to the opposite flank. If neither of the raids was a full success tactically, they fulfilled their strategic object, for the threat led the new enemy commander, Liman von Sanders, to place one third of his total force henceforth on the east of the Jordan.

In this farsighted strategy of ‘mystify, mislead, and surprise,’Allenby had a new and important ally. Far away to the south in Arabia, the Hejaz had risen in revolt against the Turk in 1916, under Hussein, the Sherif of Mecca. This pin prick was converted into a dagger thrust through the appearance of a young Englishman, Lawrence, with an acute understanding of Arab psychology and a genius for guerrilla warfare, based on an inversion of the orthodox rules of strategy. He persuaded Feisal, son of Hussein and commander of the Arab forces, to neglect the Turkish armed forces in Arabia and to spread the revolt, like lighting a prairie fire, in their rear northward to Damascus, combining propaganda with continual raids on the long-drawn-out line of the Hejaz railway. To Lawrence’s strategic ideas and his appeals for equipment and camels Allenby was sympathetic, — one more proof of his new receptiveness, — and his support was an aid to Lawrence in dealing with more conventional and shorter-sighted members of his staff.

The outcome was that in September 1918 Lawrence and the Arab army were both a psychological and a material aid to Allenby’s plan. By circling round the rear of the Turkish army east of the Jordan, they cut the Damascus railway round the vital junction of Deraa, where the lines to the Hejaz and to Palestine diverged. Thus they not only attracted Turkish attention away from Allenby’s real point of attack, but closed the only railway line of retreat and supply to all the Turkish armies.

Allenby also turned to profit another new weapon — aircraft. On September 17 and 18 bombing raids cut the telegraph and telephone wires leading from the Turkish General Headquarters at Nazareth back along their line of communications, and on the night before the attack, September 18-19, a further raid on Afule destroyed the wires leading from General Headquarters to the front. Thus the directing power of the enemy’s brain was paralyzed.

Meanwhile, the carefully shrouded preparations for the attack had been completed. Feinting toward the east bank of the Jordan to distract the enemy’s attention afresh, the effect helped by a dummy concentration of troops in that area, Allenby secretly concentrated on the Mediterranean flank the mass of his infantry and behind them the cavalry, concealed in the orange and olive groves. Dust columns had gone eastward by day while troop columns marched westward by night. Thus he changed a two-toone superiority on the front as a whole into a four-to-one superiority on the fifteen-mile sector chosen for the decisive attack, leaving forces actually inferior to the Turks on the remaining forty-five miles of front. On the night of September 18-19, these forces attacked in the hilly centre to fix the enemy’s attention. At dawn, after only fifteen minutes’ bombardment, the western mass was launched and, after breaking through the Turkish defenses, wheeled to the right. Thus they rolled the Turks back northeast into the hills, like a door on its hinges.

Through the open doorway the cavalry passed, riding straight up the coastal corridor for thirty miles before swinging east to cut the Turkish communications and close all exits of retreat. One division captured Nazareth, fifty-two miles distant, twentyfour hours later; another covered the seventy miles to Beisan in thirty-four hours, and thus blocked the best line of retreat across the Jordan to Damascus. Completely trapped, the main Turkish armies were rounded up, while Allenby’s cavalry exploited the victory of Megiddo by a swift and sustained pursuit which, in conjunction with the Arabs, pulverized the Turkish Fourth Army east of the Jordan, and gained first Damascus and later Aleppo. On October 31 the capitulation of Turkey rang down the curtain on a brief and dazzling campaign in which the British had advanced three hundred and sixty miles in less than six weeks. Making all allowances for the British superiority in strength, — against which must be set off the difficult country and the defensive power of modern weapons, — this campaign must still rank as one of the masterpieces of military history, as classic in execution as in design. The clean-cut decisiveness of the result was the product of the clear-sighted selection of objectives and the nicely calculated distribution of force. The plan, like the execution, was distinguished by its fulfillment of and extreme emphasis upon the principles of mobility and surprise, both strategic and tactical, which have ever been the hall mark of the Great Captains. And it was Napoleonic not merely in its shrewdly directed thrusts at the enemy’s communications, but in its development of the British communications to coincide with the strategic plan, thus securing the offensive base from which the operations sprang and were maintained. In this campaign Allenby had a lesser superiority of strength than in his first, and the difference of result is partly to be explained by the difference in the security of his communications.

IV

Some who knew only the Allenby of Mons and its sequel, Ypres, and Arras, have found difficulty in understanding the apparent transformation of 1918. Thus, on the one hand, there has been a tendency to discount this masterpiece unduly because of Allenby’s superiority of strength. And, on the other, there has been a tendency, natural in view of the many other instances, to look for the brain of a staff officer behind the form of the commander — to ask who was Allenby’s Weygand, if not his Ludendorff. The fact that in this last year he had, in charge of the Operations Branch, Bartholomew, whose great ability was universally recognized, lent color to such speculations, which, as is usually the result, were rather fostered than dissipated by the extreme loyalty of Bartholomew, a second Weygand in his self-effacement. But, in fact, there are the strongest grounds for the verdict that, while the detailed working-out of the plan owed much to this staff officer’s gifts, the conception in its outline and pivotal points sprang direct from Allenby’s own brain. Indeed, he had originally intended a less far-reaching manœuvre and a more limited envelopment. But, returning one day from a ride spent in reflection, he made the announcement, the more dramatic because of its crisp directness, that he had decided to sweep straight up the coastal plain to near Megiddo, cross by the passes into the Plain of Esdraelon, — ancient Jezreel,—and, by securing the road and rail centres of Afule and Beisan, block the Turkish lines of retreat, drawing tight the neck of a bag which contained this whole force.

I would suggest that the evolution of Allenby from the bad general of 1914-15 into the great general of 1918 is less surprising than appears on the surface: that the current can be traced throughout its course. For, as early as the Boer War, Allenby had shown an almost unique instinct for surprise and mobility, which the strange conditions of siege warfare only damped but could not extinguish; they flickered into flame before Arras.

Perhaps even his impatience and irritability in France sprang from this forcible suppression of his natural instincts. Hard experience awakened him to the reality of the changed conditions of warfare, widened his understanding of material factors, taught him that obstacles could not be changed until they had first been undermined; and in the hour of final illumination he was sent to a theatre of war which might have been designed by Providence for the display of his natural gifts, now refined by experience. If he had advanced to meet the new conditions of warfare, Palestine brought back these conditions as near as possible to meet him, and the convergence produced a military classic, perhaps the last masterpiece of the old warfare in its medium, the foreshadowing of the new in its technique, and a reassertion of the unchanging principles in its governing ideas.

Moreover, Allenby had passed not only to a military region of greater freedom — from barbed-wire entanglements— but into an atmosphere of greater freedom. In Palestine he was a supreme war-lord, not merely one of the ‘Barons,’ as the Army Commanders in France were somewhat aptly styled. And there is little doubt that he was cast by nature for an independent rôle, better and bigger in carrying out his own plans than in executing the orders of others; for, although not insubordinate, subordination cramped and irked the free play of his genius and the full development of his powers. Experience and the change of conditions, both material and moral, combined to improve and expand him not only as a general but as a leader of men, to make him less of a martinet and more of a magnet, less intolerant and more understanding, less obstinate but no less resolute — in fact, to humanize ‘the Bull,’ whose coming many had feared, without diminishing but rather refining his inborn strength of character and purpose. Thus he not only achieved far greater results, but won far greater devotion.

In the Valley of Jezreel and the region of Megiddo, Allenby wrote a glorious last chapter to the old testament of warfare; at Nazareth he wrote the preface to the new. And the scope of his achievement, like the faith he inspired, was due to the light that had come to him on his journey to Damascus.