HAIG'S COMMAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 50, 28 February 1923, Page 7

HAIG'S COMMAND.

A HISTORY AND A DEFENCE.

IMPORTANT REVELATIONS. _____ | . The "Manchester Guardian" publishes ! a two and a-half column review of "Sir Douglas Haig's Command," by George A. Dewar and Lieut.-Colonel Boraston, ', which, as we have already been informed . by cable, has caused a considerable stir ; at Home and in France. It-is not difficult to detect in the review the hand of [ a brilliant member of the "Guardian's" ! staff, who served in the war and has ; written a notable book on it, which contains some sharp criticism of the British Army. The reviewer describes Lord Haig as a "splendidly reticent man," and says this book, by a distinguished writer who admires him greatly, helped by a confidential member of his personal staff in France, "comes about as near as anything we arc likely to see to ;an official defence of his generalship J against its adverse critics." j Among the new facts adduced is that lin February, 1917, Nivelle, the architect |of disaster at the Chemin dcs Dames in I that spring, put his money very hotly on ■ a prediction that the Germans would not fall back from the recent Somme battlefield to the Hindenburg line—' i which they did, as our G.H.Q. had j I expected. Another is that Nivelle —at >. that time put over Haig in the luckless | early experiment in unity of command— i : was dead against our attacking the | Vimy Rid<jc in the Battle of Arras in j 1917 (in whifth the ridge was the only ' I thing of high value that we gained), • whereas Mr. Lloyd Geor"e in the House lof Commons in the following August . claimed the capture of Vimy as a result i of unified command. Another, that Mr. . Lloyd George's Government first i approved and encouraged our plans for the Flanders offensive of the autumn of 1917. and then, when the offensive had failed of its hopes, cut out of Haig's dispatches, before publication, a passage I which indicated that they had backed ! this loser as well as he. Another, that only a threat.of resignation by Haig in January, 1918, saved us from having to ! take over the Frencli front down to the River Ailettc, at the bidding of Sir Henry Wilson and his fellow-strategists on the Supreme War Council, as well as the sector from St. Quentin to Barisis, j which proved more than we could hold

in March. Another: that on March 24, 1918, Petain, the French Commander-in-Chief, told Haig that if the German advance on Amiens continued he (Petain) would have to fall back so as to cover Paris, that Haig, seeing that this would mean the opening of a fatal gap between the British and the French armies, and believing that only a hard-fighting French generalissimo, Foch, could stop Petain, wired at once to our Secretary i for War and our C.I.G.S. to come over, and so got the thing put through at the Doullens conference, this action of Haig's being the whole genesis of the unity of command for which so many others, English and French, have taken credit. Dealing with- the defeat of the Fifth Army, the reviewer says that it is agreed that the British, much against Haig's wish, who was asking for more men, took over a long stretch of French Hne, against which thin and poorly,wied r section the Germans thrust. The Fifth Army, "worn to a mere screen," drew back, "figiting desperately, but never quite breaking," until the battle came to a standstill. The commander, Sir Hubert Gough, "had conducted a retreating 'battle unexceptionably. Given the impossible to do, he had done it; he had lost his army, but not let the enemy through." "The sequel was ignoble. Gougb, the one authority wholly and clearly unblameable for the catastrophe, was deprived of his command. He was the obvious scapegoat; his tongue was well tied; he was of Haig's breed, which does not whine.

And, even now, responsibility has not been finally fixed for the crime of \ leaving the Fifth Army to its fate, un-' supported." The reviewer records an immense admiration for Haig as a man, but says that this ably-written book, which is wholly and highly eulogistic of Haig as a.(general, does not banish doubt on that point. He giyes reasons for this doubt, and mentions that the Australians scarcely troubled to conceal their low opinion of the work of the High Command. But during the last months of the war, he says: "Haig's : generalship shone as it had never done before. The general plan of this converging series of attacks was—as any civilian can appreciate now —coherent and sound, and each attack was carried out with the care and persistence which are indisputable attributes of Haig's steadfast character and dutiful mind. Foch has handsomely done justice to them in public, and it is hardly a secret —though not mentioned in this book—that he felt Haig a more completely loyal coadjutor ' than even the French Commander-in-Chief. The book confirms the impression that, as Gen-

eralissimo, Foch left the commanders under him a pretty free hand, and that the British command was virtually independent." Haig, says the reviewer, has had "gross injustice" done to him in France in respect to this period, and has been scurvily treated in more than one Ministerial speech in England. The reviewer's summing up of Haig is, "A great man of honour." "We may scarcely be able to hope that history will place Haig among the greatest of generals. But he showed himself a man of great qualities, and he came through a most extraordinary test of will an«l self-control without ever losing balance or treating anyone unworthily. He was at any rate able to stand among some of the greatest events of history and never look dwarfish or grotesque in that tremendous company. . . We incline to think that intellectually he , was only a good specimen of a certain type, the standardised product of the pre-war educational and social ideals of England, with its sobriety and stability, and also with its limited power of grasping new facts and devising or accepting new expedients to meet them, and its rather hampered and chilled imagination. Mr. Dewar hates and derides that word, but war is a science, and the scientific imagination, which is a quite distinct thing, is a necessary condition of the first eminence in it. But morally we should incline to rank him much higher, as an individual of uncommon strength and loftiness of character, capable of keeping silence m a publicitymad world a"d of workino- on with an even mind at his appointed task, in different to praise or detraction."