HIGH COMMAND IN WAR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3380, 27 June 1927, Page 8

HIGH COMMAND IN WAR.

A DEARTH OF GENIUS

Nothing is more interesting in Mr Churchill's book (writes J. M. Keynes, the well-known economist) than his impressions of, the prevailing types of the high command on each side. “There was altogether lacking,” he says, “that supreme combination of the King-warrior-statesmen which is apparent in the persons of the great conquerors of history. ’’ Most of the great commanders, with the possible exception of Joft're, were undoubtedly men of outstanding ability in their profession, but they were prevailingly of the heavy blockhead type, men whose nerves were much stronger than their imaginations. Hindeiiburg was not the only wooden image, Joffre, Kitchener, Haig, Robertson, Ludendorff —they also might bo commemorated in the same medium. They slept well, and ate Avell —nothing' could upset them. As they could seldom explain themselves and preferred to depend on their “ instincts’ ’ they could never be refuted. Mr Churchill, quoting a letter from Robertson to Haig in which the former proposes to stick to offensives in the West, “more because my instinct prompts me to stick to it than because of any good argument by which I can support it," comments: —“These are terrible words when used to sustain the sacrifice of nearly 400,000 men." The type reached its furthest limit in Mr Churchill’s semi-comic portrait of Pere Joft're, No doubt more highly strung men could not stand the wear and tear of High Command in modern warfare. They were necessarily eliminated in favour of those who, in Mr Churchill’s words, would preserve their sang froid amid disastrous surprises ‘ 1 to an extent almost indistinguishable from insensibility. ’ ’ Moreover, the Conunau-der-in-Chief may be almost the last person even to hear the truth. “The whole habit of mind of a military staff is based upon subordination to opinion," This meant that the lighter mind of the politician, surrounded by candid friends and watchful opponents, was indispensable to the right conclusions. The final defeat of Germany was, in fa, eft, due to the supreme strength of her great general staff. If Germany’s politicians had had the same influence as ours, or France’s, or America’s, she could never have suffered a similar defeat. Her three cardinal errors, according to Mr Churchill the invasion of Belgium, the unrestricted use of U-boats, the offensive of March, 1918—were all the peculiar and exclusive responsibility of the general staff. Ludendorffi was the final embodiment both of the influence of the general staff and of its highest qualities—of that general staff whose members “were bound together by the closest ties of professional comradeship and common doc trine They were to the rest of the army what the Jesuits in the greatest period had been to the Church of Rome. Their representatives at the side of every commander and at headquarters spoke a language and preserved confidences of their own. The German generals of corps and armies, army group commanders nay, Hindeiiburg • himself Were treated almost incredible, as figureheads, and this extraordinary confraternity raised the German military might to monstrous dimensions, provoked and organised inhuman exertions, and yet, by the inevitable workings of its own essence, brought down upon itself the great defeat, known .