The Battle of Passchendaele

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 90, 10 January 1935, Page 11

The Battle of Passchendaele

Sir, —Referring to your leader this morning and General Godley’s defence of Earl Haig, I hesitate to give credence to such a statement as “scurrilous,” coining from General Godley, and he cannot expect a student of history to interpret a statement of facts as an attack on a dead man. The evidence available now shatters any semblance of an excuse that the Passchentlaele affair was forced on the British command to ease the Verdun position. Foch and Petain opposed it. In May Petain told Sir Henry Wilson that Haig’s attack toward Ostend was certain to fail, that his effort to disengage Ostend and Felbrugge was a hopeless one. Foch thought the whole thing futile, fantastic and dangerous. These statements can b» read by anyone in Wilson’s diary, and yet jointly with Earl Haig he drew up the plan submitted to Cabinet. Ludendorf was so absolutely certain of failure that in the middle of the operation he was drawing off divisions for Riga and the Italian front. Earl Haig’s executors have discretion to publish his diaries whenever they think fit, and I venture to observe that it will be later discovered rhat he never once viewed the terrain where the expostulating General Gough and 400.000 others floundered till killed or wounded. The Tank Corps, whose fate we know, was told in the first instance to “send no more of these ridiculous maps” when they stated how bombardment would break down the dykes and reduce the terrain to a morass. My position in life does not allow me to publish letters in the public Press over my name, but you may furnish this to anyone interested enough.—l am. etc., W.R. Wellington, January 9