POLICY AND STRATEGY. T WO books which have just appeared, Mr.
Dewar's Sir Douglas Haig's Command, and the first volume of the Official Military History of the War, throw a flood of light on a problem which has never yet been understood in this country. To the average man and woman person- alities are always more interesting than problems, and it is natural that these books have caused a stir, chiefly because they express very definite opinions as to whether this or that general, this or that statesman, was right or wrong. But the real purpose for all of us in getting at the facts of the Great War should be first to learn how to avoid war in the future, and secondly to learn how, if war is forced upon us, war should be con- ducted. One of the surest ways both to get war and to get war conducted badly is to forget about past war or to read its lessons wrongly.
The root of the matter for a democracy is that those whom it selects to rule should have clearly thought out the principles which should govern the relations of statesmen, soldiers and sailors in war. Since Lord Wolseley revived the study of war in this country soldiers have given some thought to this matter, while the sailors, more fortunate than the soldiers, have usually been left to themselves. But this is almost useless unless the statesmen can be induced in time of peace to study the conduct of war, and as in time of peace such study gets no votes, it is peculiarly difficult to get the statesmen to undertake it. So after all the experiences of the Great War the problem of the relation between Policy and Strategy remains unsolved to-day. The usual refuge of statesmen in a difficulty is to say that the British Constitution is not adapted to the conduct of war. I have heard that said many times by our statesmen between 1914 and 1918. I believe it to be a libel on our Constitution.
It is essential that strategy should be controlled by policy, that the soldier and the sailor should be directed by the statesman. When the military element has been allowed to become predominant disaster has usually followed. The classical examples of this are Napoleon and Germany. It is equally essential that the statesman should' know where his •functions end and those of the soldier and sailor begin. History teems with examples of the consequences of ignorance of this, but I believe the locus classicus of the future will be Mr. Lloyd George's interference before the great German attack of March, 1918. Two statesmen of democracies have solved the problem successfully, Abraham Lincoln and Georges Clemenceau ; the first, after learning from his own mis- takes, the second, after learning from the mistakes of others. As is usually the case, the principles are simple, the application of the principles is difficult. It is the duty of the statesman to decide on the object of the war, to approve of the theatres in which war is to be waged, to decide upon the number of men and the amount of money and material which can be made available, to regulate policy so as to increase the number of our friends and diminish the number of our enemies, to choose the Commander-in-Chief, to give him whole-hearted support while he is in office and to remove him the moment that he ceases to enjoy his confidence. It is the duty of the soldier to frame his plans in accordance with the policy of the Government, to inform the statesman of the means required to carry out his plans, and to make it clear at once if those means are, in his judgment, insufficient. It is no part of the business of a statesman to decide on the means required for a military plan, to say to the soldier, " This is enough for you, now go ahead." That is purely a technical matter.
How far were these simple principles applied or neg- lected during the War ? It is notorious that Mr. Lloyd George failed to apply them as regards the Commander- in-Chief. He had no confidence in Haig, and, he did not remove him. Worse still, in an ill-judged attempt to limit Haig's powers of doing harm, he placed the British Army under Nivelle on terms hastily drafted, without any preliminary consultation with British military opinion, and the result was disastrous. Worse, again, in his Paris speech of November, 1917, he publicly declared his lack of confidence in the Commander-in- Chief while still retaining him in office, and made against him the most terrible accusation that can be made against a general, that of wasting the lives of his men. For- tunately, in this case the confidence of the Army in Haig was such as to survive the blow. But the reputation of Great Britain abroad has suffered because the continued depreciation of Haig involved inevitably depreciation of the services of the British Army.
There is, in each of the books to which I am referring, a striking example of interference by statesmen in strategy ; one, in my judgment, justifiable, the other wholly unjustifiable. The first occurred at the very beginning of the War. After the battle of Le Cateau our Expeditionary Force retreated fast and far. We fell out of the Allied line and Sir John French, in his despatches home, gave the impression that it was his intention to fall out still further. Joffre was perturbed, the French Prime Minister was perturbed, and so was the French President. All of them made representations to our Government. Now, Sir John French was looking, natur- ally enough, to the safety of his little army. The Govern- ment and no one else could decide whether the execution of its policy or the safety of the Expeditionary Force was the more important. In these circumstances the -Government was right in sending the Secretary of State for War to France to clear up the situation, and to give him full authority to decide. It is a secondary point that by the time when Lord Kitchener reached Paris the situation had changed and no drastic interference on his part was required. That is the kind of responsibility which every Government must be prepared to take upon itself in time of war.
The second example of political interference is of a very different kind. At the end of January, 1918, the Supreme War Council held its first important meeting at Versailles to decide upon the plans of campaign for the year. The soldiers all agreed in anticipating a great German attack, and both Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig had for some time been pressing the Govern- ment to provide more men by the extension of the National Service Acts and by bringing troops to France from the more distant theatres of war. Foch warmly supported our soldiers. Be it noted, in parenthesis, that these things were all done after the German attack took place. Mr. Lloyd George strenuously and successfully opposed both demands, and he gave as his reason for doing so that, in his opinion, we were " over-insured on the Western Front " ; that is to say, he believed that we had more men there than were required to oppose any attack which Germany could develop. He believed in " the impenetrable barrier in the West." Now, that was interference by a statesman in a technical military question, on which he had no right to any opinion at all. In accordance with the principles which I have enunciated above, Mr. Lloyd George might have said that the British Empire could afford no more men. As the event proved he would have been wrong, but he would have been in his proper sphere in holding such an opinion. Or he might have said, " I have no confidence in the Commander-in- Chief ; I will get another and hear what he has to say," but in no circumstances would he have been right in attempting to make a calculation as to the number of men required to hold a given front.
This is a .very vital matter. We shall have made our sacrifices in vain if we do not learn from our mistakes and remedy them while there is time. Glaring examples of the same kind of mistake have occurred repeatedly since the War ended, as Sir Henry Wilson was making clear, and would have made still clearer had he lived. There were striking instances of exactly the same kind of blundering quite recently in the Near East. Now, the remedy is not difficult. The Prime Minister should, as he is Constitutionally entitled to do, call the leaders of the Opposition to the Committee of Imperial Defence, and there have formulated the principles which should govern the relations between Policy and Strategy. Once formulated these principles should be made public and, subject to periodic revision, should be accepted by all parties. Statesmen, soldiers, sailors and airmen will then have some definite guidance on a matter upon which the safety of the State may well depend. It is not a matter which, with any wisdom, can be left to chance or to the unsupported judgment of a powerful and popular Minister.
F. MAURICE.
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