WAR MEMOIRS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22024, 5 August 1933, Page 14

WAR MEMOIRS

BY MR LLOYD GEORGE GENERALS and statesmen THE TRAGEDY OF THE SOMME XVII. “We turned our backs on Salonika and our faces once more to the Somme,” says Mr Lloyd George. And he tells of the hopes and the cruel losses, suggesting all the while that everybody is on the side of the Allies. An interlude occurs in the next article, wherein Mr Lloyd George recounts some pre-war efforts along the paths of peace-

GENERAL JOFFRE’S MASTERS General Joffre, in order to placate the French statesmen, who for the first time had become his masters, deferred to their wishes about reinforcing the Salonika front. It was his offering on the altar of the offended gods. The Moloch of the Western Front had been temporarily satiated. Some sacrifice might now be spared for the idols of the Elysee. He came over to London on June 9, 1916, to persuade the British Cabinet to join the French in strengthening the forces at Salonika, At the conference which was held in Downing street, General Joffre presented his case with great force and eloquence. . . But he wa* urging an attack with forces devoid of the armaments necessary to achieve their purpose, and he made no suggestion that the equipment should be strengthened up to the point of effectiveness. It was one of the most cynical performances I have ever listened to. Having regard to the inevitable loss of brave lives which would have been entailed in a futile enterprise, it would have been wicked had it not been that he was relying upon our turning his proposal down. I realised that he did not mean business, and that am offensive at Salonika, unsupported by the necessary guns and ammunition, must fail; I also knew that such a failure must discourage any future attempt under more favourable conditions. FACING THE SOMME So, much to the secret satisfaction of General Joffre, we turned our backs on Salonika and our faces once more to the Somme. The Somme ranks with Verdun as one of the two bloodiest battles ever fought on this earth up to that date. The casualties on both sides were well over a million. It was not responsible for the failure of the German effort to capture Verdun. It was only an element in the slacking up of a German offensive which was ■already a practical and almost acknowledged failure. The French Commander-in-Chief said in May that the Germans had already been beaten at Verdun. It

certainly did not save Russia. Onethird of the Somme guns and ammunition transferred in time to the banks of another river, the Dnieper, would have won a great victory for Russia and deferred the revolution until after the war. It is claimed that the battle of the Somme destroyed the old German army by killing off its best officers and men. It killed off far more of our best and of the French beat. Had it not been for the inexplicable stupidity of the Germans in provoking a quarrel with America, and bringing that mighty people into the war against them just as they had succeeded in eliminating another powerful foe — Russia—the Somme would not have saved us from an inextricable stalemate. VISIONS OF VICTORY Whilst the French generals and our own were reporting victory after victory against the German Army on the Western Front —whilst our Intelligence Departments at the front wore assuring their chiefs, and through them their Governments at home, that five-sixths of the German divisions had been hammered to pulp and that the remaining divisions would soon be reduced to the same state, the Gorman General Staff were detaching several divisions from the battle area in France and sending'them to the Carpathians to join the Austrians and Bulgarians in an attack on Rumania. When the battle of the Somme was being fought I traversed the front from Verdun to Ypres. With M. Albert Thomas I visited General Haig at his headquarters, and with him I drove to General Cavan’s headquarters to meet General Joffrc. So one on the Allied side seemed to have anticipated this move —at least no one made any plans to counter it if and when it came. The whole mind of the western strategists was concentrated on one or other of the hamlets along the Somme. They exaggerated the effect of every flight advance they made, and worked themselves into a belief that the Germans were so pulverised by these attacks that they had not the men, the guns, nor the spirit to fight anywhere much longer. They were only waiting with hand cupped to car for the crack which would signify the final break of the German barrier, and they were massing cavalry immediately behind the French and British battle line tt> complete the ranks of the tattered remains of the German army. ‘ This is no exaggeration of their ill virions. I saw them at this moment of exaltation.

BOMBARDMENT and cavalry The latter and M. Thomas were anxious to secure a number of our 6iu howitzers for the French front. We had followed the advice given by the young French artillery officer at Boulogne, and manufactured these howitzers on a great scale, with a view of concentrating a plunging fire on the demolition of the enemy trenches. The French had gone in more for the long-range gun, and they were short of howitzers. When we reached General Cavan’s quarters there was a heavy bombardment going on from our Sin howitzers assembled in the valley below known to the soldiers as the Happy Valley, The roar of the guns beneath and the shrill keen of the shells overhead was deafening. We could hardly carry on a conversation. We found the noises were more baffling inside Lord Cavan s quarters than outside. After we had arranged the matter of the howitzers we got on to a general talk about the offensive. Both generals —Joffre and Haig—were elated with the successes achieved. On my way to this rendezvous I had driven through squadrons of cavalry clattering proudly to the front. When I asked what they were for, Sir Douglas Haig explained they were brought up as near the front line as possible so as to be ready to charge through the gap which was to be made by the Guards in the coming attack. The cavalry were to exploit the anticipated success and finish the German rout. The Guards could be seen marching on a long column through the valley on their way to the front line preparatory to the attack. Raymond Asquith was amongst them. Before I reached Ypres I heard that the attack had failed, and that the brilliant son of the British Prime Minister was amongst the fallen. THE PLACE OF CAVALRY When I ventured to express to General Joffre and Haig my doubts ns to whether cavalry could ever operate successfully on a front bristling for miles behind the enemy lines with barbed wire and machine guns, both generals fell ecstatically on me, and Joffre in particular explained that he expected the French cavalry to ride through the broken German lines on his front the following morning. You could hear the distant racket of the massed guns of France, which were at that moment providing a breach for tho French horsemen. This conversation gave me an idea of the exaltation produced in brave men by a battle. They were quite incapable of looking beyond and around, or even through, the struggle just in front of them. That would lave been all right had the Allied Governments been advised on the whole field of the war by independent advisers who were superior, or equal in capacity and will power, to these great soldiers whose vision was clouded by the smoke of the battle in which they were engaged. But neither the French nor ourselves had military counsellors at the side of Ministers comparable In ability and force to Joffre, Foch and Haig. ENORMOUS LOSSES General Gallieni had been a sick man for years, and therefore did not possess sufficient vitality to enforce the advice which his genius counselled. A mistaken loyalty to Sir Douglas Haig fettered Sir William Robertson’s commonsense. The result was that once more the break-through was postponed from victory to victory. We suffered enormous losses —some of them were irreplaceable —in officers apd in the picked men who had joined the Kitchener armies in the first moments of enthusiasm. The Germans advertised our failure on the Somme by their Rumanian campaign. They marched to the Danube to celebrate and exploit their victory on the Somme. Maekensen crossed that great river from the Bulgarian side and marched on Bucharest. Falkenhayn’a army had already fallen like an avalanche from the Carpathian heights, and overwhelmed the ill-equipped Rumanian armies on the plains. Rumania, with its oil and wheat, fell into German hands, and thus months and years were added to the war. Uur great offensive had failed in its avowed objective in this break-through, and we took refuge in statistics. Sir Douglas Haig had not achieved his objective, but Professor Oman more than made up for the failure by a ‘great statistical triumph he achieved in one of the back rooms of the War Office. As a matter of fact, we lost on our front 50 per cent, more men than the Germans did. The French casualties were not as heavy as ours, but they also were heavier than the German losses. Thus ended the third campaign of the Great War. HARKING BACK Opposed as I was to inflated armaments, I never hesitated in the view that Britain must not and would not allow such a naval situation to arise as that desired by Germany, whose object was to frighten Britain into renouncing without a battle her supremacy at sea. We had no army large enough to defend our country against the enormous conscript armies of the Continent. Our fleet was to-day just as much the sole guarantor of our liberties and independence as in the days of Napoleon. . We should, therefore, have to go on building ship for ship, and three ships to two, against any effort of the Germans. Our financial resources and shipbuilding equipment were adequate to counter their utmost achievement in naval rivalry. But as one who had been taught to believe that peace was the only sane and sound basis for human progress, I sought to allay the growing antagonism between the two nations. As Chancellor of the Exchequer I could not be indifferent to the cost of the useless naval competition. It was an exhausting drain upon resources sadly needed for social amelioration and national development. So I sought some means of reaching an agreement with Germany which would enable us on both sides to slow down the rate and volume of our naval construction.