A WAR POSTCRIPT

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 281, 23 August 1919, Page 8

A WAR POSTCRIPT

"SHELL STUNT" KILLED

LORD FRENCH'S POINTS

DISSECTED

The "Shell stunt"—tho legend that our military operations 011 tho West were in part paralysed during the earlier months .of the war by the apathy of the War Office, which in effect means tho late Lord Kitchonc-r—is dead, and Lord French has killed it. The tale has fail;;.tq.survive his contradictions. -. Bu.t i though i the apathy charge, which was still going strongly only a weok or two ago, is not now mentioned, "1911" has been held up as enforcing the "unity of command" legend. In i|s present form —it has undergone seveTal variations— „thaj; particular tale is that "our own Generals insisted upon division of the supreme command in the West until March, 1918, when they finally acquiesced in tho appointment of General ■ Foch as Generalissimo." This division is represented as a grave evil, and, of course, the persons who agitated against it, and finally by the exorcise of their ■influence did away with it, won the war —more or less. The Antwerp Muddle, »'.'Unfortunately, to tell- the plain- truth -,in a plain , manner, Lord French's Recollections leave this tale also,, if not dead, in a very delicate state of health. It has been said, for example, that "all tho muddlo about Antwerp might, have had different results. For a time Lord ' French was actually donied control oyer the British forces in Belgium, which were apparently directed by Lord Kitch"erier from no more commanding vantage point than Whitehall." : Let us\seo what this really amounts t0.., There were three reasons why, after the-Germans had crossed the'Dyla, Antwerp was not and could not be further : j defended. First, the inner defences were not equipped with the necessary artillery; secondly, as tho Scheldt below 'Antwern_is ft Dutch waterway, the city was cut off from relief -from the sea; thirdly, thero was in those circumstances no military reason or advantage which ooild compensate for having- Antwerp knocked to pieces. The operation in hand was not a further defence of Antwerp—that had become out of (he question; the operation-in hand after after October 3 was simply and solely that of assisting the Belgian Army to evacuate the position. ' ■ The Seventh British Division was sent to Ostend for that purpose, and for that purpose alone. They were sent to Ostend. and in fact they had to be, at the shortest possible notice, and General Rawlinson was sent to take command at the shortest possible notice. It was 011 October 3 when he landed at Ostend, and hn moved forthwith upon Ghent in order to cover the flank of the Belgian retirement.

Now at that time Marshal French was . on the Aisne. and on this same day, October 3, the decision had there been arrived at to transfer the British Army to the northern end of the Allied line. How. immersed in that important and difficult business, 'was Marshal French also effectually to command troops at Ghent, more than a hundred miles away? Was it. reasonable .to.suppose-that while engaged in the transfer of the British Army, Marshal French ■ could also , look after the covering of tho Belgian retreat,., ail operation entirely, distinct, bet-, ter than that could bo done by.direct instructions from London? The fact, of coui 1 .;?, is that General Rawlinson nnd •'the Seventh Division were, for the time, operating not with and as part of tho other' British forces, not with nnd as auxiliary to tho Btfginiis.i It' was a special}, particular, and. temporary duty, which censed when tho Belgians had got out. The last of the Belgian forces left Antwerp 011 October. !). On October 11 this special and tem-porary-duty 011 tho pari of the 7th Division ceased. What happened then? .They were, and properly, placed forthwith under Marshal French's orders.

■ Such', briefly lold, aro the facts, and it is upon those facts that there has been. reared the allegation of "muddle," and bungling division of'command. If "tliafc- be -not an -attempt to "qaok" a case,, it is hard to day what is. The Clash With Kitchener, Alike at Mons, and until August 29, when..he .wroto his letter to tho Secretary of State for War reserving to himself the right if ho judged fit to retire upon Havre, Lord French took up an attitude of very distinct independence. And not merely did tho interview at Paris arise out of that altitude, but he states--both that 110 formed the project of transferring the British Army from the Aisne, and afterwards in conjunction with Mr. Churchill, the plan of an offensive towards Ostend and Zeebrugge. The latter schenio at any rate a de.culed assertion of independence in command, for it actually clashed with views then, held fit the French Headquarters, formulated without any regard for ■ them. ■ Lord Kitchener has been accused of trying to act at'one and tho same time as Secretary of State and Chief ot tho .Imperial General Staff. What Lo"rd ; Kitchener did, and he hod to do it, waa to establish a working unity of effort..;;.

Now the "unity of command" agitation was hot heard of until well on in 1917, and it took the form not of n demand for tlio .appointment of any generalissimo, but of a demand for-the appointment of the Versailles' Council. Was the Versailles Council unity' of'-'com-n\aud-?. Quite the contrary. Separating si' "P °' schemes from their execution and from responsibility for their execution, it represented the most ladical disunity of command imaginable. and a disunity which has always Jed to rovcrses 111 war. A working liarmony: between the British and French Headquarters had been evolved. For the sake, however, of this "principle," as old fus it is discredited, tlio working harmony was rooted, up. Who was Iho most resolute opponent of tho idea? The -British generals!-' Not at all. Its most resolute opponent wius General Foch. xle was put on the council, ibut he did not slay on it. Tho council ran, or was supposed to have run, the war on the West from tlio end of 1917 to nearly tho, end of. March,- J9lB. Will anybody now claim that that interval was brilliant or satisfactory ? Ig there any proof or shadow of proof that any British general opposed the appointment of Foch as generalissimo? Thero is not. Tlio statement that "they finally acquiesced" means, if. it means anything, that tho appointment was moro tfcan once suggested and rejected. Was the opinion of any British general outside Versailles so much as asked for? Was it not notorious that so far as the generals in the held were concerned this appointment ot general Foch was desired? Was i* 1 Jiob notorious that, apart from those men who were 011 it, every man in tho tu-iny looked upon the Versailles Council as a piece of ponderous futility? Sir William iiobertson spoke plainly and for the time paid tho penulty; Sir Uougla.s Haig offered to retire. The result of (liMegarding their counsels ' was—tho break-up of tho Fifth British Armv. A bad feature of this paper "unity" .was the movement of bodies of reserves without sufficient reference (0 the fact that the greater part of the work of an army in tho field at any time is admin-istration-transport ami supply, with modern armies an enormously intricate, delicate, and complicated process. There cannot lie efficiency and .success uniess tiLC administration runs MnooUily, ,or at any rale without serious hitches'. ' A system which put administration into one boat, and movements into another; milch, in lact, eat the machinery into two parts, was bound to cause, and did cause, liitche-;. While two complete machines, the British and the French, workins Hide by side, might have presented some imperfections, two cut up machines nominally tied together at 0110 end was an arrangement not only impcrfcct, but unworkable. Had that arrangement gono 011, it would not merely have sapper! efficiency;- it would lliave destroyed the moral of the Allied forces. After the German attack in March, t!IIH, its defects were. revealed as so gl:« ng that it had instantly to he scrapped. But the price of that experience— the price of disregarding, qualified advice, .and listening to unqualified advice—we.lo losses times over as heavy as those in.e.nj'rixl .in the retreat -from Mows. The "resiilf of this "stuul," iii short, was that •.Many a br;;ve man left his bones in France,, who bat for it would havo.been alive to-day. It. is but just to Lord French to say that ho never gave that 'irotesque agitation Ria 6upport.