The End of an Epic BOOKS OF THE DAY .

By WILSON HARRIS

Wrri this volumes Mr. Lloyd George brings his impressive undertaking to an end. He completes his million words ; he records his opinion of reviewers who have recorded their opinion of his previous volumes ; he winds up the .war ; he devotes a chapter to the Armistice negotiations, another (curiously interpolated) to Mr. Fisher's Education Act, two —of particular interest—to reflections on the War generally and more particularly on the respective functions of states- men and soldiers in war-time, another to the Imperial effort and another, much to be regretted, to Lord Haig's diaries ; and in a passage that will awaken lively expectations he intimates that he may now proceed to deal with the Peace Conference as he has dealt with the War.

The adjective to apply to this closing volume, even more than its predecessors, is " challenging," for by comparison with them it contains less narrative and more judgements, and there is hardly a judgement that fails to invite, if not contradiction, at any rate discussion—partly because it is so often based not on all the facts but on selected facts. Thus, the inadequacy of our generals, so far as they were inadequate, may well have been due to the fact that " on August 4th, 1914, not one of our great Commanders had encountered an enemy in battle for 12 years," but it would not have been irrelevant to add that on the same date not one of the great German Commanders had encountered an enemy in battle for 43 years. On unity of command again Mr. .Lloyd George's conclusions will not be gainsaid, but the subject, to be discussed adequately, must be presented in terms of Nivelle as well as Foch. And to taunt generals with studying their own safety in the rear while admiMls Iv ere risking their lives with the battle-squadrons is to draw a palpably false comparison between two totally different forms of warfare.

In the narrative or the review of the closing stages of the War all the old controversies re-emerge, and Mr. Lloyd George defends his theses with his accustomed skill and vigour. Was the War won in the West or the East ? The answer is unequivocal : " The events in those forgotten and despised theatres in the East brought the War to an end in 1918;" and again, " neither Germany nor Austria would ,have given in during 1918 had it not been for the overthrow of Bulgaria." But the drive against Bulgaria only began on September 13th, and Mr. Lloyd George himself had already quoted Ludendorff as declaring of Haig's great offensive of August 8th, " the 8th of August demonstrated the collapse of our fighting strength," and the Kaiser as acknowledging, on the very day the great battle in the West began, that " we are at the limits of our endurance. The War must be brought to an end." By the time the Bulgarian ..trolre was dealt the total defeat Of the German forces in France was an assured,, very largely an accomplished, fact; The old argument between Easterners and Westerneri can, in fact, never reach a conclusion, for no one is competent to decide what the consequences would have been if steps that were not taken had been. All that can be said is that the upholders of the Eastern thesis, Mr. Lloyd George among then], too often Vitiate their contention by assuming that mobility and enterprise on the part of the Allies would meet with no response from the enemy. It is arguable, and Mr'. Lloyd George does argue, that vigorous Allied pressure in the Balkans before the Bulgarians had taken their hesitant decision might well have Saved the whole situation ;- but from 1916 onwards Germany, operating from the centre, could *War. Memoirs:- By ,David 1.16y-dcOeinF. ?V0T. VI. -(illehola-dii and Watson.. 21s.)

always throw troops to the south-east to meet any Allied reinforcements sent by the long sea-route round the circum- ference. It was only when the Germans, gripped fast in the West in August, 1918, had to leave the appeals from the East unanswered that the Allied successes in the Balkans began.

In his narrative chapters Mr. Lloyd George writes with the élan his theme inspires, and throws into relief several points

of singular interest. He prints in full Sir Henry Wilson's

astonishing memorandum in which the C.I.G.S., his own nominee, writing on July 25th, 1918 (after Foch's counter-

offensive at Soissons, which began the whole German

dibeicle) discusses whether the War -can be ended in 1919 or 1920, and lays it down that the great Allied

offensive in the West should be fixed for " not later than

July 1st, 1919." He brings out the fact, by no means generally appreciated, that President Wilson, on• receipt

of the German Note of capitulation on October 5th, proceeded to answer it without a word of consultation with Allied statesmen in Europe ; fortunately even Clemenceau recognised that the reply was an excellent piece of work, but the statesmen at Paris very properly took prompt steps to establish and maintain contact with Wash- ington. Another not quite unknown, but by no means familiar, factor in the final developments is recalled in the reference to the coma into which the German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, relapsed for a critical 36 hours, from November 1st to 3rd, as result of an overdose of a sleeping- draught.

Among those of Mr, Lloyd George's judgements which, if they do not command universal assent at least command general respect, are his criticism of the military mentality which denied promotion above the rank of Brigadier-General to every single officer in the new armies, though civilians like Sir Arthur Currie and Sir John Monash were commanding the Canadians and Australians respectively with brilliant success ; and his defence of the Allied operations in Russia in 1918, when action against Germany was necessarily to some extent action against the Bolsheviks. His reasons for believing (a) that the War could have been avoided in 1914 ;

(b) that it could have been won (by one side or the other) earlier than 1918 ; and (c) that it could not have been ended satisfactorily by negotiation before 1918, open up questions

of the highest interest, but they can obviously not be entered

on here. The same may be said of his admission that it was arguable whether he ought not to have resigned when he

differed from all the generals and half the Cabinet over the Passchendaele offensive ; here the question is obviously raised whether a Prime Minister who acquiesced and did not resign is not thereby disabled from denouncing the operations subsequently as criminal folly. Of the chapter on Lord Haig the less said the better. If all Mr. Lloyd George did was to reply to criticisms on himself in Haig's diaries no one would grudge him the satisfaction of

the last word. But he goes far beyond that. Mr. Duff Cooper " attributes to his hero qualities of nobility, generosity,

selflessness and loyalty," and Mr. Lloyd George is determined at any cost to shatter that tribute. The result is a chapter the tenor of which may be judged• by the ascription of Haig's proposal of Foch as "co-ordinator " to " paralytic fright," " panic," and a readiness " to leave the clearing up of the mess which he and Main had conspired to produce " to someone else. To preface such a chapter with a recognition that it will inevitably be criticised as an attack on the dead is very far from making criticism superfluous or unjust.