WAR OCCURRENCES IN RETROSPECT

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 101, 23 January 1935, Page 9

WAR OCCURRENCES IN RETROSPECT

Official History’s Version

LLOYD GEORGE’S ACTIONS IN 1918 CRITICISED Bv Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. ("Times” Cable.) (Received January 22, 7.40 p.m.) London, January 22. “As so often in history, the British Army was called on to undertake a task beyond the power of its numbers,” is the dictum of the official history of the war regarding resistance to the German attack in March, 1918. The volume indicates that the establishment of a Supreme War Council at Versailles was a compromise hindering rather than helping the Allies’ plans and operations, while the British plans in 1918 were further complicated by Mr. Lloyd George’s bias against the western front and his distrust of Sir William Robertson and Lord Haig, culminating in the dismissal of Sir William Robertson in February. Although he did not dismiss Lord Haig he rendered his task impossible by refusing men to fill the ranks of divisions which, ou the contrary, were reduced to nine battalions from 12. Simultaneously, in response to French political and military pressure, he agreed to extend the front south of the Oise which placed a fatal burden on a weakened force (namly Gough’s) facing the heaviest assault ever delivered. Moreover, the defences of the new front had been neglected.