FIFTH ARMY’S ORDEAL

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21990, 14 January 1937, Page 9

FIFTH ARMY’S ORDEAL

RETREAT WHICH LED TO VICTORY EARL HAIG PRAISED FOR FORTITUDE LACK OF SUPPORT BY PRIME MINISTER ALLEGED (united tress ASSOCIATION—COPXSIGHT.) (Received January 13, 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 12. Surrounded by officers who participated in the 1918 retreat. General Sir Hubert and Lady Gough were the guests at dinner of the Fifth Army at a Piccadilly hotel, where a speech from General Sir Ivor Maxse, who was absent because of influenza, was read by Lady Maxse. Sir Ivor Maxse, who is Sir Hubert’s only surviving corps commander, demanded a field marshal’s baton in recognition of Sir Hubert’s services. Sir Ivor asserted that nobody but Earl Haig could have stood the strain of fighting the Germans. “It was a silent, stubborn. Lowland Scot, with his back to the wall, and behind the wall I detect a Prime Minister waiting to stab him in the back at a convenient opportunity,” said Sir Ivor. “Earl Haig knew that the Fifth Army had only one man for every yard of front. Neither he nor Sir Hubert was surprised by the German attack on a 42-mile front by the renowned thruster, General von Hutier, who had 60 divisions in the line, 30 in reserve, and 50 within a few days’, march, against 14 British divisions, with only two between themselves and the sea coast.” How, with only 30 yards’ visibility, the Fifth Army stuck it out for eight sleepless days and nights, transcended description. The retreat had relinquished to the exhausted Germans the entire salient into which four months later fresh Canadian and Australian divisions had plunged with tanks, leading General Ludendorff to identify August 1 as Germany’s blackest day. The retreat had enabled the mounting of the August attack, leading to the Armistice and the termination of the war. “What, therefore, became of Sir Hubert’s being made a scapegoat?” he asked. Sir ibert Gough, who rose amid thunderous cheers and upraised glasses, to respond to the toast, said: “It is now acknowledged that everything had been done *-by thinking and courageous men to meet the danger which, had it been overwhelming, would have been disastrous to the Allied cause and ended the war in. favour of the Germans. Earl Haig made some mistakes, hut his was not the sole responsibility for the Fifth Army’s desperate situation. The: Government could not escape , its share in failing to dispatch the necessary reinforcements and in compelling the reduction of i each brigade from four to three ■ battalions. Nevertheless, Earl Haig i at last led to victory the army which stood at the end of the war as the best in Europe.” i Only too soon Britain similarly i might be rested anew, he added. : The youth of to-day were sound, and could find lessons in the past. The Fifth Army had left a precious signpost on the road to nationalduty. •