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nental warfare, and that Germany had been defeated by
46 the unquiet western front
the naval blockade and internal collapse rather than by
the wasteful attrition on the Western Front. He abetted
Churchill s case that a strategy of indirect approach, which
was attempted and failed tragically at the Dardanelles, was
the correct course for Britain. Additionally he helped to fo-
cus attention on the Palestine campaign and the romantic
exploits of T. E. Lawrence as an alternative to the blood-
bath in Flanders.36
The work which surely did most damage to the gener-
als and the conduct of the war on the Western Front 
thus powerfully endorsing the literary myth  was Lloyd
George s Memoirs, published in six volumes between 1933
and 1936. In his foreword to the new, two-volume, edition
in 1938 Lloyd George wrote:
I aim to tell the naked truth about the war as I saw it from
the conning-tower at Downing Street. I saw how the
incredible heroism of the common man was being
squandered to repair the incompetence of the trained
inexperts [sic] . . . in the narrow, selfish and unimaginative
strategy and in the ghastly butchery of a succession of vain
and insane offensives.
It is perhaps unnecessary to comment that Lloyd George
had been prime minister while the most controversial of
these offensives had taken place and had the constitutional
responsibility to stop it if he deemed it to be failing or too
costly in casualties. In his original preface he had referred
to  reckless and unintelligent handling [which] brought us
almost to the rim of catastrophe, and how we were saved
largely by the incredible folly of our foes . He regretted
 more than words can express the necessity for telling the
bare facts of our bloodstained stagger to victory . Lloyd
George, with Liddell Hart s help, devoted a special effort
to the prosecution case in the Passchendaele campaign be-
cause he saw this as crucial in shaping the British people s
memory of the Great War. Aware that he might be criticized
goodbye to all that, 1919--1933 47
for seeking to demolish the reputation of Field Marshal Earl
Haig after his death (in 1928), Lloyd George added a chap-
ter on  Lord Haig s Diaries and After , where he argued that
Alfred Duff Cooper s two-volume biography of the former
commander-in-chief (1935 6), which had quoted  remark-
ably sterile and undistinguished extracts from Haig s di-
aries, demanded a response.37 Lloyd George s immediate
target may have been Duff Cooper, but the real objective
of his venom was Haig. The latter has five closely printed
columns of entries in the index, nearly all of them uncom-
plimentary to say the least. Here is a sample:
His reputation founded on cavalry exploits.
Insists on premature use of tanks.
His refusal to face unpleasant facts.
His limited vision.
Viciously resists Lloyd George s attempts to get
Unity of Command.
His stubborn mind transfixed on the Somme.
Prefers to gamble with men s lives rather than to
admit an error.
Completely ignorant of the state of ground at
Passchendaele.
Painstaking but unimaginative.
Narrowness of his outlook.
Incapable of changing his plans.
His liking for great offensives.
Unequal to his task.
Did not inspire his men.
His ingenuity at shifting the blame to other
shoulders than his own.
Only took part in two battles during the war.
So it is clear that the prime minister was not wholly satis-
fied with his commander-in-chief! But note also two further
entries:
48 the unquiet western front
Lloyd George had no personal quarrel with . . . [and]
No conspicuous officer better qualified for highest
command than.
One should also not miss the index entries on  military
mind which include:
Military mind, narrowness of.
Stubbornness of, not peculiar to America.
Does not seem to understand arithmetic.
Represented by Sir Henry Wilson s fantastic
memorandum.
Obsessed with the North-West Frontier of India.
Impossibility of trusting.
Regards thinking as a form of mutiny.38
Lloyd George s Memoirs fanned the flames of bitter
controversy. Although Haig s supporters, including two
generals, Maurice and Gwynn, rallied to his defence, most
reviewers favoured the former prime minister s interpre-
tation. As much as any historical source these Memoirs
 stigmatized indelibly the military elite in the popular
memory.39
At the outset I mentioned Correlli Barnett s charge that
the anti-war literature of the late 1920s had fatally under-
mined British confidence in the national achievement in
the First World War, thereby contributing to a reluctance
to rearm when confronted by the Nazi threat in the 1930s,
and leading ultimately to the  collapse of British power . I
believe that this was one important element in the appeas-
ing mentality, though only entertained by a small minority
of the population as a whole. I have suggested, from a longer
perspective, that  with all its complexities and ambigui-
ties  British anti-war literature, given an enormous boost [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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