HAIG’S GREATNESS

Hokitika Guardian, 22 July 1930, Page 7

HAIG’S GREATNESS

‘‘OUTSTANDING FIGURE OF THE WAR.” That an English war correspondent, should give as his deliberate opinion j that- Haig was the outstanding figure i of .the Great War will surprise many people, perhaps must, but it will be said that the source, is prejudiced. The same comment cannot be advanced against this judgment when it is passed- by General Pershing, commander of the American forces. As Sir Harry Peter Robinson, the • correspondent cited, says, if anybody | was in a position to judge, it should ' be jPershing. The average Briton will be surprised at this ranking, because he 1 has not thought of Haig as oc- ■ eupying this exalted position. By com nno'it agreemcaib Foull was tliei outstanding soldier in the war. Haig has been looked upon as a fine soldier and a great gentleman, but neither his personality nor his position nor his achievement -was as spectacular as Fooh’s. His is relatively a shadowy figure. He was unusually shy and reticent, content to ignore criticism, . leaving it to posterity, with the help .of his still unpublished diaries, to do him justice. In his article on. Haig in the I current “Nineteenth Century’’ Sir Harry Robinson asks how it is in the face of the known facts that the world has such a distorted view of the events and personalities of the war, and he answers: “Only those rushed into print—.politicians, soldiers, publicists—who had. something to explain, or to apologise for, and pacifists who having been restrained from railing at the war or its conductors till the victory was won, now burst into agitated description of its horrors . . , till the public, wearier, begged that there should be no more war talk.” Some of the most popular writers on the war, Wells, Montague, Nevinson, Tomlinson and Giib;bs, “are responsible for an amount of misunderstanding and depreciation of the British High Command and of staff officers in general which has .been cruelly uniust.” This “Times” correspondent of course is not the very first writer to demand justice for Haig. In their volumes, “Sir Douglas Haig’s Command,” Dewar and Boraston planted a growing doubt in some men’s minds .as to the superiority of the French over the British military conduct of the war, a superiority that so many Britons seem to take for granted. It is now fairly common knowledge that the British Government and FOeh expected the war to last into 1919, that it was Haig’s breaking of the Hindenburg line that enabled Foch to finish the job in 1918, and that Haig took this momentous decision without the backing of his Government. That ib to say, Haig shortened the war by from six months to a year. It ' is pretty well known, too, and the proofs of it accumulate that the Brit- < ish Flanders offensive of 1917, with i its appalling casualty lists (Passcben- <

daele lias tragic memories for Nei Zealand) whs undertaken to save th< French army, the morale of a larg; portion of which had become gravel; weakened iby the failure of Nivclle’i offensive. That offensive had beei substituted by the politicians for tin plans that Joffre and Haig had mad< for that year, plans that might hav< ended the war a year earlier. It ii now known—thank heaven we die not know it at the time—that whok French divisions mutinied and started to march on Paris. This ant other points Sir Harry piles up witl: deadly effect. It is his contentioE that in disputes with the French Haig was consistently right. He refused to carry out Joffe’s wishes on the Somme, and attained the desired ends by oilier and cheaper movements. He had no belief in Nivelle’s catastrophic offensive of 1917, but did his best to support it. The French refused to believe the British preconditions of the German withdrawal in 1916-17. They failed disastrously •lo interpret correctly the German preparations for the March, .1918, offensive, the direction of which the British High Command had accurately gauged. Later, when five exhausted Briti«h divisions had been sent to the Aisne, sector of the French front to rest, and the British command warned the French that a German attack was coming, there, the warning was disregarded and the divisions were wiped out. It' was Petain’s “pitiable” conduct in the crisis of the spring of 1918, that ac-. cording to this writer, made Haig ask for a generalissimo. Haig had been forced to take over more line against his judgment; French headquarters refused to believe that the attack wap coming there; Petain failed to move his reserves in accordance with the spirit of the agreement with Haig, and decided tp try to cover Paris, which was just what the Germans wanted him to do. Haig saw that a change must, be made. Yet Clemenceau in his “Memoirs” depicts Haig as opposed to the generalissimo idea; his version of the Doulienls Conference “clashes at every point with the authentic records.” He actually says that when the idea was broached to him Haig “leaped up lipe a jack-in-the-box With, both hands shot up ’to heaven and exclaimed, ‘M. Ctemenceau, if’li;: have only one chief, and can hq-ye no other—my King.’ ” A,s if. Haig, the most self-contained of men,“'could possibly so behave- Clemenceau’s version, however, has gone a|l,. over the world and been accepted by .millions. French publicity, as Sir Harry says, is much more efficient than. British. “The story of Verdmi is familiar to millions in many countries who know nothing of Ypres.” With the “gallant and honourable” Foeh, Haig was able to cooperate heartily, but “the strategy' which finished the war in 1918 was not Foch’s but Haig’s own/”' Haig corrected the whole scheme for the Allied advance, with momentous results, As strategist and tactician he was superior to all of the French commanders-in-chief and his conduct of the war has never, in any material particular, been seriously criticised by any soldier of repute. Sir

Harry Robinson writes to satisfy a burning sense of injustice, and it is from a similar motive that the humble writer' of the present article passes on his views. Haig, he says, was shockingly treated by his Gov- , eminent and liis countrymen and the world have not yet realised what a great soldier he was. He will emerge in time as incomparably the greatest fi.guro of the war. All those who were close to him in the war are confident of this; they are sure that he will rank with Marlborough, Nelson and Wellington. But while his work awaits due recognition the delay is unjust to Great Britain’s reputation among the nations and to the armies that he led. —CYRANO in Auckland “Star.”