POINCARE’S MEMOIRS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3263, 5 February 1931, Page 7

POINCARE’S MEMOIRS

KEPT IN THE DARK BY JOFFRE. ALWAYS PROMISING VICTORY. The fourth volume of “The Memoirs of Raymond Poincare,” which has just made its appearance, covers the years 1915., It has been skilfully translated and adapted from the French by Sir George Arthur, and will always be a book indispensable for the understanding of the Great War. Its pages reveal, however, that M. Poincare, though he was the President and nominal head of the French Government, was kept very much in the dark by General Joffre. The impression left is a painful one —of a commander-in-chief in Joffre who was always promising immediate victory but invariably failing to produce it, and of statesmen growing more and more distrustful of his leadership and his “dull, dreary, windy communiques.” Again and again M. Poincare notes the failure of Joffre’s attacks. In February, 1915, Joffre “is not without hope that they (the French) will break through . . . Ministers are urging Millerand (French Minister of War) to ask Joffre as soon as the battle is over to furnish them with a detailed report as to the causes and consequences of the set-backs we have suffered. CAVALRY THROUGH. M. Poincare had a moment of hope in the great French offensive of September, 1915, which ended so lamentably: “In Champagne, he writes . . . our cavalry has got through on the right. I felt myself altogether overcome; I went up to my library, and alone with my wife I burst into tears. If it is really victory what joy! But if this evening or to-morrow we are held up by the second lines of defence or flung back by German coun-ter-attack, how many dead, how many wounded, what flow of blood for a quite illusory result.

Joffre’s policy of "quibbling’ (though the word used by the trans lator is “gnawing”) at the German front was in bitter fact “attriting” the Allies rather than the Germans. These memoirs bring out in strikfashion the strength of feeling among the upper ranks of the French Army for a much more cautious strategy. Even Foch, it appears, was for a defensive till the British were ready. This also was the policy whch Lord Kitchener advocated.

There are many references to the British, to whom the ex-President was always just. Of Sir Douglas Haig, M. Poincare says: “He is much smarter and better looking—and has much better manners —than his predecessor (Sir J. French).” Of Lord Grey and Lord Kitchener, he speaks thus: “I found Grey just the same as ever, a man of highest principle and splendid loyalty. Kitchener is always to me the great soldier, a noble character, with a will of steel.” And, again the ex-president says of Kitchener: He “has shown himself in his true character of an irreproachable ally.” Sinister figures make their appearance in this volume. There are allus-ions-to the activity of 8010, shot in 1918, and of Almeyreda, found dead in prison in 1917; but as yet they were evidently not suspected of deliberate treason.