The Evening Star SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1927. HISTORY AND THE WAR.

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1927. HISTORY AND THE WAR.

“ History Will lie about it, as it always does,” says General Burgoyne, in ‘ The Devil’s Disciple,’ foreseeing his inevitable defeat at Saratoga. What he meant was that history would lie deli beratejy, through a false sense of national pride, in iti desire to make the least of a national humiliation. Probably it was in his mind that it would lie also in allotting the responsibility for so much of error as was admitted; the evidence would be manipulated and in part suppressed to protect from its deserved blame the War Office, according to the fighting man’s convention that worst enemy of the British soldier. The cynicism was for once unfounded. We are not aware that any attempt has ever been "made to represent the surrender at Saratoga as any sort of a British triumph; to pass the sponge of kindly oblivion over the misfortune, if that had been desired, was impossible, since the Americans have had also their historians; and it Is generally admitted to-day that the conduct of the war against the revolting American colonists was egregiously bungled from London. History comes near enough to the truth after a sufficient period, but it is wonderful with what contradictory and confusing voices it can speak till the last most retiring or least wanted witnesses, possibly only after their deaths, have contributed their evidence for a judgment. "\Vhere evidence is conflicting it can be notoriously hard to sift; if it is military occurrences that have to be elucidated ■ lie fog of war does not disperse, it [may seem only to be increased, when the guns have ceased firing; personal experiences, likes and dislikes, as well as national prejudices, all make their different bias for witnesses and aerators ; the more judgments we read on any disputed event, till a hundred years after it has occurred, the more we may be puzzled to know just what actually happened. That has been particularly the case with the Great War. Libraries have been written on it and are still being written. Most of the chief actors have contributed their accounts, but the truth about a score of aspects of it is at least as difficult to feel sure about now as it was when the war was in progress. In some American magazines professors of history still discuss monthly the question of its origin, plainer than most questions for the majority of people, and reach different conclusions on it. As far as its conduct was concerned, Mr Churchill’s latest book, written by one of the most brilliant of all the actors, does not go anywhere, for the elucidation of pro-

bleins. Mr Churchill is not one of the historians who find truth consisting of a vast multitude of distorted parts, and work laboriously, like scientists in their laboratories, and with the same .dispassionateness, to bring right elements together. His opinions on the war, including every event in it, were formed while it was raging', and his vivid volumes are written confirm them—more especially to make good his own part in it. If we could trust certain conclusions to which he comes, or which he repeats with an emphasis as dazzling as Macaulay’s, the war would have no more uncertainties for us. Some morals could be drawn unhesitatingly of the utmost importance for future guidance. But Mr Churchill is too much a partisan for that confidence to bo felt in his conclusions. He has other defects of his qualities. So his book, with all its brilliance, cannot end a single controversy of the war years. It can only give new life to them. Take his description of the Battle of JutlandNothing - could be more graphic. Yet this is how a Rear-Admiral who commanded the Fifth Battle Squadron, and who fohnd himself without signals from the impetuous Lord Beatty and with a complete want of knowledge of what he intended at a crucial moment of the great action, feels compelled to describe it: “A mixture of armchair criticism, want of vision from a sailor’s point of view, an utter disregard of the effects of smoke, gunfire, and fog, added to a terribly partisan account.” Of the Battle of Jutland it is perhaps enough to know that Admiral Jellicoe, described by Mr Churchill himself as the only man in the world who was in such a position that he could have lost the war in an afternoon, did not lose it.' Bqt here is a matter of more importance for the future. We find the conclusion drawn from Mr Churchill’s book by one enthusiastic student of it that “Mr Winston Churchill has just made a revelation of a most amazing kind. Of intense interest to every man who fought in the war, the disclosure, if properly handled, may become one of the greatest factors in the making of international peace.” The revelation is that “in all the British offensive periods the British casualties were never less than three to two, and often nearly double the corresponding Gex - - man losses. . . . The ‘victory’

myth [for the attackers] worked both ways. When Germany launched an offensive her losses in officers and men were overwhelmingly greater than the losses of her defending—and presumably defeated—enemy. At only one period in the war between the British and the Germans were the relative losses reversed, and that was not when we were sweeping forward to a glorious victory, but when, ‘ with our backs to the wall,’ in 1918, we were beating a dogged and reluctant retreat to the coast.” The conclusion is drawn that “ if the military offensive is more costly than the defence—if an attacking army loses twice as many officers and men as the army it is attacking—surely there will be pause, and thought, and heart-searching before it is undertaken. Does not this mean that ultimately there will be more thought before war itself is' declared, for the declaration of war is really the first shell in the offensive that is going to cost more—in lives and money;—than the defence?” One would like to think “ Mr Churchill has done more m a few minutes than the League of Nations has done in seven years ” to wake an end of war. but it remains doubtful. His “ revelation ” may be less than correct. General Sir Frederick Maurice, who is himself an historian, has been studying Mr Churchill’s book. He has checked his figures for casualties, and he suggests that Mr Churchill, adopting methods of his own for comparison, has underestimated the Gorman casualties on the Western front by approximately 1,300,000. Ho is certain that he has greatly exaggerated the British battle casualties. “ The use he makes of his figures is entirely unreliable,” and “ his arguments . . . are based

upon incorrect data.” “ A groat book, but you must not call it history,” might be Sir Frederick Maurice’s general verdict on the statesman’s volumes. No one but Mr Churchill could have written them, he declares, and no one but he would have dared to write them. “He speaks with equal certainty when his sources of information are good and bad. He mixes gossip and hearsay with real evidence, and gives his lay reader little means of determining which is which. He takes a third-rate exponent of the views with which he disagrees, promotes him to the front rank, pounds him with his heavy artillery, and claims a glorious victory. He selects the veriest gossip with whose opinions he is in accord, and hails him as an overwhelming reinforcement.” Referring to the French mutiny in June, 1927, Mr Churchill stated that all the French regiments revolted and started to march towards Paris. M. Eainleve, who was French Minister-of War at the time, explains that there was “ only a vague tendency that way. There certainly wore spasmodic refusals to return to the ranks and vehement demands for leave.” But “discipline was entirely re-established after five weeks.” It will be a long time yet, probably, before a war book, claiming to settle disputed points, will appear that will not be contradicted. In some vague future the saying of the poet will be realised, that “ great is the truth, and will prevail, When none cares whether it prevail or not.” „