WAR REVELATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1921, Page 11

WAR REVELATIONS.

HOW THE ALLIES NEARLY LOST. A NOTABLE WAR BOOK, London, April 15. “Expanding his famous article in ‘Blackwood’ into a volume which may be read at a sitting, but cannot be forgotten afterwards by either friend or foe, Captain Peter Wright, of set piirpose, lets loose a tempest of controversy. He calls the fell furies upon his audacious and amusing head. He hammers like an iconoclast at accepted opinions about the war, and at the most respectable reputations on both sides of the Channel. He challenges contradiction, ' persecution, and even prosecution. It is probably the shortest of all notable war-books. None stands out with more import and decision.” —The Observer.

“So serious are the charges made, however, supported as they are by references to secret documents in the Allied archives, that I shall be surprised if some further revelations are not made in support of the faction which Captain Wright attacks. ‘Who is back of Captain Wright?’ everyone is asking, and in the military clubs exalted names are freely mentioned..” —The Outlook.

At the Supreme War Council. By Captain Peter E. Wright. Late Assistant Secretary, Supreme War Council.

“Six months ago Captain Wright wrote a magazine article (in Blackwood’s Magazine). Using the same title he has now developed it into a book, in which he denounces Lord Haig, Sir William Robertson, Sir Frederick Maurice, and Lord Derby as war losers, and is full of enthusiastic praise for Marshal Foch, Mr. Lloyd George, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, and General Sir Hubert Gough,” says the Times Literary Supplement.

' “It deals with the relations of Sir William Robertson with Lieut.-Colonel A’Court Repington; the foundation o! the Versailles War Council; the plan of campaign for 1918 as evolved by that Council; General Maurice’s removal from the Army; the failure of Lord Haig to contribute to the General Reserve which the War Council proposed to command; the defeat of Gough; and the appointment of Foch as Generalissimo. WHO IS CAPTAIN WRIGHT. '‘Captain Wright was interpreter to the Versailles Supreme War Council. He says; " ‘The part I played was therefore very subordinate and, if difficult, rather mechanical. But my knowledge of debate (sic) and decisions (as of nearly all inter-allied discussions) was not an impression acquired by hearsay or as a casual hearer; it was an impression stamped into me by a process drastic and multiple in itself... .and giving me a knowledge of it, complete and profound, far greater than that possessed by any of the great Olympians (who never listened to each other with anything like the attention I was compelled to use).’” “Captain Peter Wright,” says the Evening News, “was educated at Harrow,

“From this school at the record age of 1G ho won a scholarship at Balliol and graduated a first-class in history. He subsequently travelled in America —because of ill-health—-and took up ranching in Texas.

“He was for a short time upon the Times Literary Supplement, and upon the outbreak of war joined the Royal Naval Air Service.

“He was transferred to the Army, and in view of his brilliant qualities as linguist became Secretary to the Supreme War Council at its inception.” TO MAKE A STIR. “There is always a public for a book in which matter that has hitherto been confidential is first made public; but we doubt whether in this case it will result in many judgments being recast,” says the Times Literary Supplement.

‘‘This book is sure to make some stir,” says the Manchester Guardian. On its paper overcoat we are told that in it ‘reputations go down like ninepins/ When such a reason is offered for buying a book, one’s natural impulse is not to read it. Scandal is pretty cheap in these days of ‘outspoken’ memoirs. And whatever the book may make us think, it does not make us wholly like its writer. Ho knows how to write; he has dearly a quick and capable mind; and he had great opportunities for learning things that few of us know.” “Captain Wright, somehow gives us an uncomfortable feeling that ho holds a. brief not so much for discretion and loyalty in soldiers as for certain soldiers and politicians, for whoso exaltation certain other soldiers have to bo found • wanting. He is pro-Foch, proHenry Wilson, pro-Lloyd George. And he is anti-Haig. Wo do not suggest that this invalidates all that he writes. Lawyers, though they are out to fight for one side, sometimes help a court towards part of the truth. So do one side’s most passionate witnesses. But let us wait to hear what the other side says. There is no need to decide in a hiirrv,” adds the Manchester Guardian.

WHAT CAPTAIN WRIGHT SAYS. “No, we cannot quite like Captain Wright,” says the Guardian. “We like better the people who could have done it and have not. And yet we must not deny that we have read him with zest, and that what he says will have to be dealt wi'ch by others, before the country can finally know whom to blame and whom to admire.

"Captain Wright’s advice is to admire Foch, Lloyd George, and Henry Wilson; to blame Haig, Robertson, and Petain. He is so fiery that at times he would make it almost a conflict of heroes and villains. The central point of his case is the British defeat by the Germans in March, 1918. That battle of St. Quentin cost us more men killed in ten days than the whole Peninsular War. It was, as Captain Wright says, the greatest defeat in our history, “No British troops, perhaps no troops in the world have ever been subjected to such destructive fire as that under which Gough's Fifth Army fought the week-long delaying battle which only just averted the capture of Amiens and the isolation of our armies from those of the French. Gough had no reserves, his front was enormously long, for that war, and virtually no reinforcements reached him until his army had so hrjnolftted itself and so exhausted an on-

ormously superior force of Germans that the enemy was for & time left lying, as it were, prostrate, with the way to victory open before him if he could’only rise and go on.” WHO WAS TO BLAMEt “Captain Wright’s contention is that for the extent of this calamity Petain, Haig, and Clemenceau were to blame; Petain supremely so, as a disloyal intriguer against the superior authority of the War Board—that is, really, of Foch; Haig in the second degree, as a dupe and assistant of Petain; Clemenceau in some minor degree as an accessory to Petain’s insubordination. “Captain Wright describes how, in the winter of 1917-18, the Executive War Board—that is, Foch, Wilson, Bliss (the American), and Cadorna—got to work, with full authority to co-ordin-ate the efforts of the Allies and direct their several Commanderg-in-Chief in the field. Foch evidently dominated over them all. The plan adopted was that a General Reserve of thirty divisions should be created by setting apart ‘a seventh of the total Allied force from the North Sea to the Ardiatic;’ and ‘on February 6 letters were addressed to each commander-in-Chief, asking him if he would contribute his quota, proper tionate to the number of divisions he commanded.’ Captain Wright, without professing verbatim accuracy, summarises Foch’s statement of the situation before March, 1918, and of his proposal', for meeting it. This plan was frustrated, and in the hour of need there was nothing 'standing behind the British Fifth Army.’”

SLAUGHTERED* “Foch*s 100 days’ battle and ical victory,. Captain Wright says, cost us three-quarters of what the paper successes of the Flanders battle in 1917 or of the Somme in 1916 had coH us, and mentions what has not hitherto been freely talked about—the revolt of the French troops at Soissons, the greatest rebellion in the war on our side, when these men proclaimed that they would no longer obey orders to go into such Tiutehery? '* 'No belligerent, in my opinion, not even the almost unarmed Russian masses .... were ever slaughtered at the same profuse rate as vze were, though our dogged, dauntless, and devoted armies were the only belligerent armies who ac no time in the war ever showed any signs of rebellion or dissolution.’ ”

A PITIFUL STORY OF JEALOUSIES.

"The thesis of this powerful and disturbing book,” says the Outlook, “is that Ludendorff’s victory of March 21 was due to the deliberate action of the British and French Comuianders-in-Chief in wrecking, for personal reasons, thq plan made by the Supreme War Council 1 to meet the expected German attack.

“Each disposed of his reserves without- regard to the other, so that when the blow fell only one British division, coming all the way from St. Omer, was able to support Gough in a week of battle and only ten French divisions arrived, ‘without their guns, their transports, or any sufficient signal or other staff organisation,’ in General Gough’s words.”

"If we could forget the 40,000 Englishmen who died in the great retreat we could not but be amused at the. irony of Captain Wright’s story of the jealousies, the stupidities, the ‘knightly’ Commander-in-Chief ‘on a very low plane of human intelligence as elderly cavalrymen sometimes are/ to be rewarded with a peerage after giving us St. Quentin, of what a defeat ought to be .... a flawless jewel of incompetence.’ ”

THWARTING MARSHAL FOCH.’ “We have had many apologies for, and as many attacks on, the conduct of the war, but none so far-reaching as this, which calls for reply from nearly everyone concerned in the conduct of the war in its later stages, 1 ’ says the Saturday Review. “Marshal Foch was. thwarted in his plans, and even M. Clemenceau was not altogether blameless in this, according to Captain Wright. "He tells us of Marshal Foch’s warning before the disaster wherein we lost 8,840 officers and 164,881 meA in ten days. Neither Lord Haig nor General Petain agreed .to the special reserve conceived by Marshal Foch, and this alone demands official explanation. The French General proved, when established in command, that his intuition was right and logical, for ho smashed Germany just as surely as, in Captain Wright’s opinion, Germany would have smashed the Allies had Marshal Foch been denied the supreme command any longer.”

GENERAL GOUGH A SCAPEGOAT?

“That General Gough was made a scapegoat, that Lord Haig and General Petain were at sixes and sevens with the French Marshal, and that certain papers divulged important plans to the enemy, are allegations now confirmed by Captain Wright,” adds the Saturday Review. "Mr. Lloyd George in spite of his 'taste for low and unscrupulous men’ (a nasty reflection on the Premier’s friends), did his utmost to override both Sir William Robertson and Lord Haig in their opposition to Marshal Foch, and to him and Sir Henry Wilson is attributed the final choice which won the war. The entire volume is a serious reflection on G.H.Q; and certain newspapers. The charges are too definite and well supported to pass without comment or explanation; so we may look forward to ,a.n avalanche of disclaimers and justifications.” , IS WRIGHT RIGHT? What the public wants to know is whether Captain Wright is right in his facts? We will quote what the Times says in its review of this challenging book. “The Supreme War Council met in London ‘in the first half of March, 1918/ and practically acquiesced in the repudiation of the War Board’s plan,” says the Times. “Foch uttered on March 15 a 'terrible’ warning of the ‘coming disaster.’ Six days later the Germans attacked and we suffered ‘the greatest defeat in our history,’ for in ten days we lost 8,840 officers and 164,881 men. Had the General Reserve existed our fifth army might have been saved. As it was the Germans came within 12,000 yards of complete victory, for if they had taken Amiens the war would have been transformed and might have been going on to-day. "Whatever we may think of the manner and the method of Captain Wright’s statements, his principal allegation reQuires attention. He asserts that Haig

and Petain made an arrangement which was kept secret until early in March, when, as they supposed,. the Germans were about to attack, although the actual attack did not come until nearly three weeks later. They made this arrangement in defiance of the plan of the Executive War Board, which Pucain bad professed to endorse on February 19, though Haig never gave explicit acquiescence.

"We cannot accept Captain Wright’s story without very large qualifications,” adds the Times. “We are unable to believe that he has told either the right story or the full ln any case the steps taken by liaig and Petain were apparently condoned, and even accepted, at the meeting of the Supreme War Council in London on March 14. But what Captain Wright seems unable to perceive is that unconsciously he has demolished his own idols. If all his statements are accurate, they imply severe reflections upon Foch and Wilson, and upon Mr. Lloyd George.

THE GERMAN ATTACK. “He tells us, again and again, that Foch divined the German plan in February. The staff under Wilson worked out almost the exact spot at which the attack would be delivered. Cox, of G.H.Q. Intelligence, 'tipped’ the exact date. Captain Wright says that Haig’s I refusal to contribute to the General Reserve ‘cannot altogether have come as a surprise’ to Wilson. It is admitted that Haig’s letter was written on March 2—16 days before the Germans attacked—and his alternative arrangement with Petain must have become known about that time, if not earlier. “There was still an ample number of days for the formation of the pftjposed General Reserve. If Foch and Wilson knew that disaster must ensue, i<f Mr. Lloyd George had suffered ‘a violent shock’ when he knew on March 3 that Haig had refused to accept the plan of the Executive War Board, why was no action taken? Why did the Supreme Council remain inactive for another eleven days, and then accept the arrangements of the Commanders-in-Chief and throw over the War Board’s plan?” adds the Times. THE LAST? "We hope that this is the last of the ‘How I won the war’ series. The public must surely be losing interest by no 'V The only outstanding feature for whreh we may be thankful is that so far our soldiers have not, like some of our sailors, been drawn into an active part in the controversy,’’, says the Morning Post. "The pettiness and ignorance of Mr. Wright is demonstrated by the attacks which he makes upon Haig at a time when the Field-Marshal is absent from England on behalf of the cause to which he has devoted his leisure—that, of his old comrades.”