SINNER OR SCAPEGOAT?

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 23, 26 January 1918, Page 4

SINNER OR SCAPEGOAT?

Though the November crisis blew over, it is possible that the lajsf; has not been heard of the conflict between certain politicians and certain soldiers in the Old Country. This conflict, partly open, partly subterranean, feeds on the general heart-sickness produced by hope deferred j feeds on it, and also intensifies it. In November, 1916, amid the ashes of the Rumanian campaign, the Allies perfected a plan intended to bring about a military decision in 1917. They relied on Russia, on Italy, and on the grinding power of the Anglo-French armies whose military education had been completed at the Somme. While the Anglo-French campaign started pretty well to scheduled time, the Eussian decay destroyed its chance of decisiveness, and the Italian collapse towards the close of the year overshadowed and partly destroyed the effect of the genuine successes won by Sir Douglas Haig. What the enemy accomplished in Russia and in Italy in 1917 was important less in a military than in a. moral sense. It certainly was not a military defeat of Haig and Petain, but by intensifying the moral doubts in Allied countries it has created, for Haig at any rate, serious military embarrassments. It has caused him to be criticised not from the standpoint of his own merits and shortcomings, but from the standpoint of a sense of disappointment caused by events beyond his control.

This, of course, is just the effect that the enemy's oblique operations in Russia and Italy were intended to create. It is also just the. effect that English-speak-ing peoples should guard against. If there was any unpardonable failure at Cambrai—the Government sa-ys there was not—then no responsible Comman-der-in-Chief should escape responsibility. No one not acquainted with the inner facts of Cambrai can attempt to form, any independent judgment thereon; and as •long as the Government deems those facts to be material for military secrecy, no just critic will, on mere presumption, "blamo the British High Command. It may be legitimate to question the wisdom of withholding facts, but it is neither legitimate nor honest to arrive at ft judgment in their absence; As fa* as the public and £h,e public critics go, the

position therefore appears to be as follows : The British High Command should certainly not be blamed for matters which, though within its responsibility, are imperfectly known; and alternatively it should not be made the scapegoat for a general failure due to circumstances beyond its control. Russian and Italian misadventures have postponed a decision and are irritating. But they do not in themselves justify domestic strife "in Britain between politician and soldier. Either the Haig regime has failed in Franco and should be indicted openly; or else Ministers and Generals., should close their ranks and continue to cooperate, without regard to the general atmosphere of disappointment and exasperation which the enemy's Russian and Italian campaigns were designed to produce.