HAIG’S COMMAND.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 71, 7 March 1923, Page 7

HAIG’S COMMAND.

A HISTORY AND A DEFENCE. IMPORTANT REVELATIONS The “Manchester Guardian” piublishes a two and a hall column review oi “Sir Douglas Haig’s Command,” by Georg© A. Dewar and Lieut.-Colonel Boraston, which has caused a considerable stir nt 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 on the British Army. The reviewer describes Lord llaig as a “splendidly reticent man,” jyid 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 are likely to see to an official defence of his generalship against its adverse critics.”

Among the new facts adduced is that in February, 1917. Nivellc, the architect of disaster at the Chemin des Dames in 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—which they did. as our G.H.Q. had expected. Another is that Nivellc—at that time put over Haig in the luckless early experiment in unity of command—was dead against our attacking the Vimy Ridge in the Battle of Arras in 1917 (in which the ridge was the only thing of high value, that we gained), whereas Mr. Lloyd George in the House of Commons in the following August claimed the capture of Vimy as a result of unified command. Another, that Mr. Lloyd George’s Government first approved and encouraged our plans foi the Flanders offensive of the autumn of 1917. and then, when the offensive had failed of its hopes, cut out of Haig’s despatches, .before publication, a passage which indicated that th" 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 French front down to the river Ailette, at the bidding of Sir Henr_ Wilson and his fellow-strategists on the Supreme War Council, as well as the sector from St. Quentin to Barisis. 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 coyer 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 of War and our C.I.G.S. to come over, ami sb get the thing put through at the Doullens conference. this action of Haig’s being the whole genesis of the unity 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 line, against which thin and poorly wired section the Germans thrust. The Fifth Army, worn to a mere screen,”' drew back, “fighting deperately. but never quite breaking,” until the battl e came to a standstill. The commander, Sir Hubert Gough “had conducted a. retreating battle unexoeptionably. Given the impossibl to do, he haddone it: he had lost his army, but not let the enemy through.” “The sequel was ignoble. Gough, 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 Jias not been finally fixed for the crime of leaving the Fifth Army to its fate unsupported.” 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 gives reasons for this doubt, and mentions that the Australians scarcely troubled to conceal their low opinion of the work of the Haig Command. But during the last months of the war, he says: J'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 carded out with the care and persistence which are indisputable attributes of Haig’g steadfast character and dutiful mind. Foch lias 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 The book confirms the impression that, as Generalissimo, Foch left the commanders under him a pretty free hand, and that tfie British was virtually independent.” Haig, says the reviewer. has had “gross 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 a.bl© to hope that history jvill 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 and self-control without e ver 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 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 in a publicity-mad world and of working on with an even mind at his appointed task, indifferent to praise or detraction.”