Secrets of the War

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19828, 30 April 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

Secrets of the War

Tactics on Land and Sea

Winston Churchills Revelations

Further interesting light upon the conduct of the Great War is contained in thie last two volumes, just published, of Mr. Winston Churchill’s history of tlie war, entitled “The World Crisis.”

In the course of his of the British operations in France, Air Churchill is justly severe on the British head-quarters staff, and especially on Sir William Robertson, who was Chief of Staff in France during 1915, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff during 19.16-17. “The. onlv method of waging war on the Western Front,’’ writes Mr Churchill, ‘‘was bv wearing down the enemy by ‘killing Gormans in a war of attrition.’ This we are assured was always Sir Douglas Haig’s scheme; he pursued it unswervingly throughout his whole command. Whetred encouraged or impeded by the Cabinet, his policy was always the same. ‘Gather together every man and gun. and wear down the enemy by constant and, if possible, ceaseless attacks.’ This, in the main, it is contended, he succeeded in doing, with the result, it is claimed, that in August, 1918, the enemy, at last worn down, lost heart., crumpled, and finally sued for peace. DISASTROUS MILITARY POLICY. Sir William Robertson’s doctrines were clear and consistent. He believed in concentrating all the efforts of the British and French armies upon offensive action in France and Flanders, and that we should stand on the defensive everywhere else. He advocated, and pressed every offensive in which the British armies were engaged, and did his utmost, to procure the compliance of the Cabinet in every operation. Ho succeeded in enforcing his policy against the better judgment of successive Cabinets or War Councils, with the result that when he left the War Office in February, 1918, the British and French armies wore at their weakest point in strength and fighting power, and the Gormans, for the first time since the original invasion, had gathered so great a superiority of reserves as to bo able to handle a gigantic attack. . . It cannot be said that ”the soldiers.” that is to say. the staff, did not have their wav. They took all they required from Britain. They tore down alike the manhood and th'e guns of the British army almost to destruction. Thov did it in the face of the plainest warnings, and of arguments which thov could not answer.” Mr Churchill quotes as follows from a letter written by Sir William Robertson to Sir Douglas Haig:—“My own views are known to you. They have always been ‘defensive’ in all theatres but the West. But the difficulty is to prove the wisdom of this now that Russia is out. I confess T stick to it more because I see nothing bettor, and because my instinct prompts me to stick to it. than because of any good argument by which 1 can support it.” On this extract Mr Churchill comments: — ‘•These are terrible words when used to sustain the sacrifices of nearly 490.009 men.” ATTACK MORE COSTLY THAN DEFENCE The policy of the head-quarters staff was to keep on killing Germans, so that eventually the side with the greatest reserves of man power would be victorious. And in consequence human lives in hundreds of thousands were offered up as a sacrifice to this uninspired military policy. It is small wonder that Mr Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, revolted against it, and that relations became strained between the British Cabinet and the head-quarters staff. And now Mr Churchill is able to reveal what was not known to the Cabinet at the time, that this hopeless policy would in itself have resulted in the defeat of the Allies, for the Germans were killing more British and French soldiers than the Germans themselves lost. Mr Churchill has compiled tables of losses of the combatants on the western front, and from them proves that “ during the whole war the Germans never lost in any phase of the fighting more than the French whom they fought, and frequently inflicted double casualties on them. In no one of the periods into which the fighting has been divided by the French authorities did the French come off best in killed, prisoners, and wounded. Whether they were on the defensive or were the attackers, the result was the same. Whether in the original rush of the invasion, or in the German offensive at Verdun, or in the great French assaults on the German line, or even in the long periods of wastage on the trench warfare front, it always took the blood of to 2 Frenchmen to inflict a corresponding injury upon a German. The second fact which presents itself from the tables is that in all the British offensives the British casualties were never less than 3 to 2, and often nearly double the corresponding German losses.” It was the general experience of the British. French and Germans that they suffered heavier losses than they inflicted when they took the offensive. As has been stated by Mr Churchill, the French, whether on Ihe defensive or offensive suffered greater losses than the Germans in every period of the fighting, but the British when on the defensive inflicted on the enemy greater losses than they themselves suffered. The total casualties of the Germans on the western front, in killed, died in hospital, wounded, missing and prisoners, is given as 5,383,090; and the losses they

inflicted on the French and British as 7,732.000, of which 4,974.000 were French casualties and 2,758,000 British. ADMIRAL JELLICOE’S UNIQUE POSITION The two chapters which deal with the battle of Jutland are of absorbing interest. Here the British losses in men were more than double the German losses, and in ships the losses were almost as great; but the greater part of the British losses occurred during the first half-hour of the engagement, which, if it had been fought out, would have resulted in an overwhelming victory for the British fleet. ‘‘There are profound differences.” writes Mr Churchill, “between a battle where both sides wish for a full trial of strength and skill, and a battle where one side has no intention of fighting to a finish, and seeks only to retire without disadvantage or dishonour, from an unequal and undesired combat. The problems before the the conditons of the conflict itself, are widely different in a fleeting encounter—no matter how large its scale—from those of a main trial of strength. Tn an encounter between forces obviously unequal, the object of the weaker is to escape, and that of the stronger to catch and destroy them.” Mr Churchill blames Admiral Jellicoe for adopting cautious tactics, which resulted in the escape of the German fleet, but he points out that there were weighty why Admiral Jellicoe believed that extreme caution was the best policy. The great disparity of the results at stake in a battle between the British and German navies can never be excluded from our thoughts. In a pitched battle fought to a conclusion on British terms between the British and German navies our preponderance was always sufficient to make victory reasonably probable, and in the spring of 1916 so great as to have- made it certain. No such assurance could be felt, in the earlier days at any rate, about the results of a piecemeal pursuing engagement against a retreating enemy. If that, enemy succeeded in drawing part of our fleet into a trap of mines or submarines, and eight or nine of the most powerful ships were blown up, the rest might have been defeated by the gunfire of the German fleet before the whole strength of the British line of battle could have reached the scene. A TREMENDOUS RESPONSIBILITY. This as wo know was always the German dream; but there could certainly be no excuse for a commander to take risks of this character with the British fleet, at a time when the situation at sea was entirely favourable to us. To be able to carry on all business on salt water in every part of the world without appreciable let or hindrance, to move armies, to feed nations, to nourish commerce in the teeth of war, imply the possession of command of the sea. If these are the tests, that priceless sovereignty was ours already. We were under no compulsion to fight a naval battle except under conditions which made victory morally certain. and shrious defeat, as far as human vision goes, impossible. The standpoint of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Grand Fleet was unique. His responsibilities were on a different scale from all others. It might fall to him as to no other man —sovereign, statesman, admiral or general— to issue orders which in the space of two or three hours might nakedly decide who won the war. Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon. First and foremost, last and dominating, in the mind of the Commander-in-Chief, stood the determination not to hazard the Battle Fleet.” THE BRITISH SHARE Mr Churchill gives much valuable information regarding the battle of the Somme, the German offensive against Verdun, the failure of General Nivellc’s attack on the Chemin des Dames, which was followed by widespread mutiny among French regiments. He deals with the German offensives in 1918, which went so near to driving a wedge between the British and French armies, and forcing the latter to fall back in defence of Paris. The .-oal phase of the struggle after Marshal Foeh was appointed Generalissimo, and the victorious advance of the Allies are dealt with sftniewhat briefly, doubtless because Mr Churchill found that he had used up nearly all his available space. But he points out that the brunt of the series of great battles which brought about the German collapse was borne by the British army. The British Prime Minister. Mr Llovd George, who had tried so long to bring about unitv of command in the Allied arnnes, ascribed the chief credit of the victorious advance to this unity under Foeh. and in this attitude he was supported bv the British press and instructed public, opinion. Mr Churchill insists however that the British army bore the lion's share of these battles, which made the advance possible, am! that Sir Douglas Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, by strenuous insistence, defeated the plans of the Supreme C 0,,, mand on more than one cardinal occasion, with results which were