LLOYD GEORGE & ARMY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19138, 6 October 1936, Page 12

LLOYD GEORGE & ARMY

CONTINUE WAR OF WORDS GERMAN ENTERS FRAY • LONDON, Aug: 20. Mr. Lloyd , George continues, with dash and asperity, his private afid personal war against the generals. -He has just completed his last volume of memories and the pungent things he says in them about the, British military leadership during the years 1914 to 1918 have provoked a tempestuous correspondence in the London press. In fact the disputes have spread to Germany, for General von Gallwitz, who held a high military post under the former Kaiser and who commanded an army at Verdun, has now taken a hand in the verbal melee. Mr. Lloyd George attacked Lord Haig first for failure to provide adequate man-power for the sth Army, which was defeated by the Germans in the March offensive of 1918; and next for having thwarted the plans for the formation of a strong reserve army. • And he asserted that three distinguished generals had considered that it was good tactics “to mass the bulk of an army ’s strength at, points which are riot expected to be as sailed.” ; > General, von Gallwitz, in a. letter to the British press, gave it as his opinion, as a military man, that w.hen it was ,elear , that . the German Com-mander-in-chief- intended to launch a major offensive so as to smash up the British right wing in March, 1918, Lord Haig’s course should have been to have strengthened the sth Army by moving troops from the north and especially from Arras, where they were kept for the protection of the Channel ports. , , Criticism of Lord Haig, however, for not having formed a strong reserve was not endorsed by General von Gallwitz, as he considered the British were compelled to prolong their front in order to support the French. The German general added: “We Germans were grateful that very strong English’ contingents were .chained to other theatres of war, especially in the oast. The battles there did not burden us anything like as” much as a large-scale transter of divisions ro the western front W’ould have done. ”