LORD HAIG

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 183, 6 July 1936, Page 4

LORD HAIG

AIR DUFF COOPER’S LIFE

FROAI 1917 TO THE END

Tlio military correspondent of the London Times writes :—The second volume of Mr Duff Cooper’s official biography of Lord Haig is now published. It completes the account of his career, dealing at length with its events from the beginning of 1917 to the end of the War, and more briefly with the later years of his life. The two volumes form a monumental biography. Through the skilful use of many extracts from his diaries, carefully fitted together, they show us Haig as he saw himself. They show lis the War as it appeared in Ins eyes. Despite a continuous current of vindi-

cation tlie reader is somehow persuaded long before the end to accept without question Mr Duff Cooper s final verdict that for all Haig s qualities, especially of character, he was a man without genius.” FLANDERS MUD. Mr Duff Cooper shows that Haig was filled with the idea that the Germans’ morale was failing before the Passciiefldaele offensive was launched, but he does not mention the refutations of tins idea which Haig received from his subordinates soon after it had begun. Like Haig himself at the time, he throws the blame for the disappointment on the Flanders weather, but lie

does not mention that e-ven Haig s chief intelligence olficer confessed that “all the records of previous years had given us fair warning.” Mr Duff Cooper ignores the still more significant fact that G.H.Q. had been warned that the Ypres area would become a swamp if the intricate and essential drainage system were destro3 T ed by prolonged bombardment. On the other hand Mr Duff Cooper treads too confidently' on ground that will not bear his weight when he goes on to remark :

The statement that even if the weather had remained fine it would not have been possible to conduct successful operations in this particular part of the country will not bear one moment s examination, for within exactly a year of the battle . . . another campaign was launched over the same territory with results that were completely and brilliantly successful. If he had taken time to examine the facts of our Flanders attack in the autumn of 1918 he would have found that, although the German moral was then collapsing and our troops had no difficulty in overcoming the enemy’s resistance, their transport stuck in the mud and the offensive had to be suspended in consequence. POLICY OF OPTIMISM.

Air Duff Cooper glmos over the August fighting at Ypres with the remark that “some local attacks took place and were accompanied with varying success.” The Australian Official History, pointing out the way in which Haig’s dispatches gloss over this period, emphasises that “the continual local attacks (in August) overtaxed and discouraged the British troops to an extent which their stubborn Comman-der-in-Chief did not realise, but which was obvious to everyone in touch with true feeling on the battlefield. ... . The truth was that these strokes, aimed at the moral of the German Army, were wearing down the moral of the British.” One of the drawbacks of the official biographer’s consistent justification of Haig’s earlier judgments is that it prevents him from showing how Haig learnt by experience, and thus deprives the biography of the sense of evolution.

Often Haig’s mistakes arose from the defects of his qualities. What he saw lie saw so clearly that lie found it difficult to appreciate that there was anything beyond. That tendency, combined with his inspT.tog self-confidence, made it difficult for him to see another point of view. Haig’s self-confessed habit of optimism might well explain why some of his estimates were so wide of the mark.