THE MILITARY PREPARATIONS
When more time has passed and heads have become cooler the critics will
have to decide whether Great Britain was as fully prepared as she ought
to have been for the possibility of the great struggle into which she
had to enter in August, 1914. Hundreds of speeches have been made, and
still more articles have been written, to demonstrate that she was
caught wholly unready. On the other hand authoritative writers in
Germany have made the counter-assertion that she had prepared copiously,
not merely to defend herself, but to join in encircling and crushing
Germany.
I shall venture to submit some reasons for saying that neither of these
views is the true one. During the whole of the period between the
commencement of 1906 and the autumn of 1914 I sat on the Committee of
Imperial Defense and took an active part in its deliberations. For over
six of these eight years I was Minister for War, and I was in continuous
co-operation with the colleagues who were, like myself, engaged in
carrying into execution the methods which we had gradually worked out.
Such as the plans were, the preparations which they required were
completed before the war. As to the bulk of these preparations I speak
from direct knowledge.
The Expeditionary Force, the Territorial Force, and the Special Reserve
had been organized under my own eye, by soldiers who had studied modern
war upon what was in this country a wholly new principle. Before they
took matters in hand not only was there no divisional organization, but
hardly a brigade could have been sent to the Continent without being
recast. For there used to be a peace organization that was different
from the organization that was required for war, and to convert the
former into the latter meant a delay that would have been deadly. Swift
mobilization, like that of the Germans even in 1870, was in these older
days impracticable.
All this had been changed for the Regular Army at home by the end of
1908, and it was after that year easy to mobilize. Other changes, also
of a sweeping character, had been made to complete the new structure. On
August 4, 1914, Lord Kitchener took delivery of an army in being, small,
but not inferior in quality to the best that the enemy possessed. With
the creation of the new armies, for which the Expeditionary Force was
the pattern--and, indeed, with the general management of the war--I had
very little to do. But I saw a good deal of Lord Kitchener, enough to
impress me from the day when he became War Minister with his
extraordinary individuality and his remarkable courage and energy, and
to make me feel what an invaluable asset his personality was for putting
heart into the British nation.
I have referred to my own and earlier part in the matter only to make
plain that I do not speak about it from mere hearsay. And to say this
has been necessary, because I shall have to submit some observations
which, if true, do not harmonize with assertions made by some of the
critics of the successive Governments which were at work on the business
of preparation for possible contingencies between 1906 and 1914. I will,
however, begin by making these critics a present of a definite
admission. We never intended to create an army capable of invading or
encircling Germany, and we should, in our own view, have found ourselves
unable to do so even had we desired any such thing.
Our purpose was quite a different one. It was purely defensive. We knew
how high a level of military organization had been attained in France.
She had a large army, an army not so large as that of Germany, but
comparable with it in quality. Her ally, Russia, also had a large army
on the other side of Germany, altho one not so perfectly organized as
that of France. By adding to the French military defensive forces a
comparatively small British Expeditionary Force of very high quality,
organized as far as possible on the principle about which von der Goltz,
in the introduction to his famous book, "The Nation in Arms," had
written, we could provide what that eminent writer had suggested would
be formidable, could it be properly organized, even against the German
masses of troops. In the introduction to his "Nation in Arms" he had
declared that, "Looking forward into the future we seem to feel the
coming of a time when the armed millions of the present will have played
out their part. A new Alexander will arise who, with a small body of
well-equipped and skilled warriors, will drive the impotent hordes
before him, when, in their eagerness to multiply, they shall have
overstepped all proper bounds, have lost internal cohesion, and, like
the green-banner army of China, have become transformed into a
numberless but effete host of Philistines."
This, of course, did not mean that the little Expeditionary Force could
by itself cope with the admirably organized and enormous German Army,
but it did point to the growing importance in these times of high morale
and quality, and to the value that even a small force, if sufficiently
long and closely trained, might prove to have, if placed in a proper
position alongside the excellent soldiers of France. A careful study had
made us think that the addition of even a small force of such quality to
those of France and Russia would provide the combined armies with a good
chance of defeating any German attempt at the invasion and dismemberment
of France.
But in addition to and apart from all this, the British Navy had been
raised before 1914 to a strength unexampled in its history, and Mr.
Churchill had for the first time introduced in the autumn of 1911 the
valuable principle of a war staff, fashioned with a view to the
systematic study of modern naval war in co-operation with the forces on
land.
These naval reforms had helped to confer the fresh power which took
shape in the blockade which was in the end to prove decisive in the
struggle. The heads of the newly organized Military General Staff met
the representatives of the Admiralty War Staff at systematically held
meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defense, under the presidency of
the successive Prime Ministers--first of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
and then of Mr. Asquith. Not only were the Ministers at the head of the
Admiralty and the War Office present to listen to what their experts had
to say and to assist in arriving at conclusions on the questions
discussed at these meetings, but other Ministers (including Lord Crewe,
Sir Edward Grey, Lord Morley, Mr. Lloyd George, and Lord Harcourt)
attended regularly. The function of this committee was to consider
strategical difficulties with which the nation might conceivably find
itself confronted, and to work out the solutions. It was a committee the
members of which were selected and summoned by the Prime Minister, to
whom it was advisory. He determined the subjects to be investigated.
Secrecy was of course essential, excepting so far as the Cabinet was
concerned. The presence of the non-military Ministers to whom I have
referred was a proper guarantee that from the Cabinet there was no
desire to withhold information. Possible operations on the Continent of
our army occupied much of the time of the committee. About the propriety
of the conversations which took place between members of the General
Staffs of France and England questions have been raised. But these
conversations were concerned with purely technical matters, and doubts
as to their justification will hardly arise in the minds of people who
are aware what modern war implies in the way of preliminary inquiries as
to its conditions.
We were not engaging in any secret undertaking. We were merely providing
what modern military requirements had rendered essential. Without study
beforehand by a General Staff military operations in these days are
bound to fail. If at any time we had, by any chance whatever, to operate
in France it was essential that our generals should possess long in
advance the knowledge that was requisite, and this could only be
obtained with the assistance of the General Staff of France itself. We
committed ourselves to no undertaking of any kind, and it was from the
first put in writing that we could not do so. The conversations were
just the natural and informal outcome of our close friendship with
France.
The French had said that if it was to be regarded as even possible that
we should come to their assistance in resisting an attack, which might,
moreover, result if successful in great prejudice to our own security in
the Channel, we should find this study vital. Our General Staff took the
same view, and at the request of Sir Edward Grey, who had written to
him, I saw Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at his house in London in
January, 1906. He was a very cautious man, but he was also an old War
Minister. He at once saw the point, and he gave me authority for
directing the Staff at the War Office to take the necessary steps. He
naturally laid down that the study proposed was to be carefully guarded,
so far as any possible claim of commitment was concerned, that it was
not to go beyond the limits of purely General Staff work, and further
that it should not be talked about. The inquiry into conditions thus set
on foot was conducted by the three successive generals who occupied the
position of Director of Military Operations--the late General Grierson,
General Ewart, and General Wilson. Each of these distinguished soldiers
from time to time explained the progress made in working out conceivable
plans for using the Expeditionary Force in France and in more distant
regions, to the full Committee of Imperial Defense, and obtained its
provisional approval.
I should like to say how much the Committee of Imperial Defense, which
was originally a very valuable contribution made by Mr. Balfour, when
Prime Minister, to the organization of our preparedness for war, owed
to its secretaries. To such men as Admiral Sir Charles Ottley and, after
his time, to Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey, the nation is under a great
debt, and it was the least that could be done to include the latter in
the thanks of Parliament to the sailors and soldiers to whom our actual
success was due. It was he who, assisted by a brilliant staff on which
the late Colonel Grant Duff was prominent, planned and prepared that
remarkable War Book, which was completed in excellent time before the
outbreak of hostilities, and which contained full instructions for every
department of Government which could be called on to assist if war broke
out. Not only the drafts of the necessary orders, but those of the
necessary telegrams, were written out in advance under Sir Maurice
Hankey's instructions. He and Sir Charles Ottley, themselves sailors,
formed real links between the navy and the army, and did an enormous
amount of work in co-ordinating war objectives.
Of the Navy I need say nothing, for its preparations are well
understood. Nor need I say much of the details in the reorganization of
the army. The general principle of this was to complete the Cardwell
system by shaping the home battalions into six great divisions, and so
providing them with transport, munitions, stores, and medical and other
equipment, as to make them instantly ready for war. The characteristic
of the old British Army, as it was up to 1907, was, as I have already
observed, that it lived in peace formations only, in small and detached
units which would have to be refashioned into quite different formations
before they could be ready to be sent to fight.
This state of things involved much delay in mobilization. A careful
inquiry made in 1906 disclosed that in order to put even 80,000 men on
the Continent, a period which might be well over two months was the
minimum required. Besides this great difficulty, the other items to
which I have referred as required for the six divisions were not there
in any shape even approaching sufficiency. The artillery too was
deficient.
There is no more amusing myth than the one according to which the horse
and field artillery were reduced. The batteries which could be made
instantly effective for war were, in fact, raised from forty-two to
eighty-one. The personnel of this artillery was increased by a third for
mobilization. For the first time the horse and field artillery was given
the modern organization which Cardwell had not been able to give it. The
establishments had been merely peace establishments. There were
ninety-nine batteries which could parade about on ceremonial occasions,
but if war had broken out they would have had to be rolled up, and the
personnel of fifty-seven of them taken to produce the mobilized
forty-two which were all that could be put into the field. The
difficulty was got over by the organization of eighteen of the
ninety-nine into training brigades, and the additional men needed for
the mobilization of eighty-one fighting batteries were thus obtained. No
doubt some of the artillery officers did not like being set to training
work, and complained that they were being reduced. But it was a
reduction from unreal work of parade in order to double fighting
efficiency. Not a man or a gun of the regular horse and field artillery
was ever reduced in any shape or form, and not only were the effective
batteries largely increased, but over 150 serviceable batteries were
created and made part of the Second Line, or Territorial, Army. This was
a force which could be used either for home defense or for expansion of
an expeditionary force of Regulars. The Militia, which was not under
obligation to serve abroad, was abolished, and its substance was
converted into third regular battalions, organized for the purpose of
training and providing drafts to meet the wastage of war in the first
and second regular battalions of their regiments. Some of those third
battalions are said to have trained and sent out as many as twelve
thousand men apiece in the course of the war.
All these things were done under the direction of such young and
modern soldiers as Sir Douglas Haig on the General Staff side, and as
Sir John Cowans on the administrative side. Both of these officers
were brought home from India for the purpose. Sir Herbert Miles, as
Quartermaster-General, and Sir Stanley von Donop, as Master-General of
the Ordnance also rendered much help. The newly organized General Staff
thought the plans out under the direction, first of Sir Neville
Lyttelton, and then of Sir William Nicholson, its successive chiefs. The
latter and Sir Douglas Haig in addition worked out, in consultation with
the representatives of the Dominions, the organization of their troops
in units and with staffs and weapons corresponding as nearly as was
practicable to our own. Systematic conferences between the British and
Dominion War and other Ministers prepared the ground for this. Sir
Wilfrid Laurier and General Botha and others of the Dominion Ministers
came to London and co-operated.
It is sometimes said that all these things were very well, but that we
should have at once raised a much larger army, as in the course of the
war we ultimately had to do. The answer is that in a time of peace we
could not possibly have raised a large army on the Continental scale. If
we had tried to we should have made a miserable and possibly disastrous
failure. The utmost we could do toward it was to provide the
organization in which the comparatively small force which was all we
could create might be expanded after a war broke out.
How this nucleus organization, on the basis of which the later
expansions took place, was fashioned so as to afford a general pattern,
anyone may see who chooses to expend a shilling on the purchase of the
little volume called "Field Service Regulations, Part II." This piece of
work took nearly three years to prepare. With the organization of which
I have spoken, which was made in accordance with its principles, the
whole of the task of recasting the British Army was performed by 1911.
What we had by that time attained was the power to send an army of, not
100,000 men, which was all that had originally been suggested, but of
160,000, to a place of concentration opposite the Belgian frontier, and
to have it concentrated there within a time which was fifteen days in
1911, but was a little later reduced to twelve. No German army could
mobilize and concentrate at such a distance more rapidly. So far as I
know none of the necessary details were overlooked, and the timetables
and arrangements for the concentration worked out, when the moment for
their use came, without a hitch. What had been done was to take the
old-fashioned British Army and to rid it of superfluous fat, to develop
muscle in place of mere flesh, and to put the whole force into proper
training. If the warrior looked slender he was at least as well prepared
for the ring as science could make him.
It is said that this army ought to have been provided from the first
with more heavy artillery. But the reason why its artillery, and that of
the French armies also, were of a comparatively light pattern was not
due to any notion of economy or to civilian interference. We had enough
money, even in those difficult days, for every necessary purpose.
The real reason was that the General Staffs of both the French and the
British Armies had advised that the campaign would probably be one in
which swiftness in moving troops would prove the determining factor.
Heavy artillery, and even any large number of the ponderous machine-guns
of that period (the Lewis gun had not yet appeared), would have been a
serious impediment to such mobility. What was anticipated was a series
of great battles. "It was supposed by certain soldiers," says a
well-informed military critic (Colonel A'Court Repington, at page 276 of
his "Vestigia"), "that the war against Germany would be decided by the
fighting of some seven great battles _en rase campagne_, where heavies
would be a positive encumbrance."
So far the staffs proved to be right, for in the early period of the war
mobility did count for a very great deal, and it was not until later
that trench warfare became the dominant factor, a stage for which even
the Germans themselves, as we now know, from the memoirs of Admiral
Tirpitz and other books, were not adequately prepared in point of guns,
or of shells and powder, either.
It is said that we in Great Britain ought, before entering on the
Entente, to have provided an army, not of 160,000, but of 2,000,000 men.
And it is remarked that this is what we had to do in the end. This
suggestion does not, however, bear scrutiny. No doubt it would have been
a great advantage if, in addition to our tremendous navy, we could have
produced, at the outbreak of the war, 2,000,000 men, so trained as to
be the equals in this respect of German troops, and properly fashioned
into the great divisions that were necessary, with full equipment and
auxiliary services. But to train the recruits, and to command such an
army when fashioned, would have required a very great corps of
professional officers of high military education, many times as large as
we had actually raised. How were these to have been got?
I sometimes read speeches, made even by officers who have served with
distinction at the head of their men in the field, which express regret
that the British nation was so shortsighted as not to have provided such
an army before the war. They point to the effort it made later on with
such success during the war. But to raise armies under the stress of
war, when the people submit cheerfully to compulsion, and when highly
intelligent civilian men of business readily quit their occupations to
be trained as rapidly as possible for the work of every kind of officer,
is one thing. To do it in peace time is quite another. I doubt whether
more was possible in this direction than, in the days prior to the war,
to organize the Officers' Training Corps, which contained over twenty
thousand partially prepared young men, and began at once to expand to
yet larger dimensions from the day when war broke out. For the corps of
matured officers, required to train recruits and to command them in war
when organized in their units, would have had to consist of soldiers,
themselves highly trained in military organization, who had devoted
their lives to this work as a profession. It takes many years in peace
time to train such officers. Because they must be professional, they can
only be recruited under a voluntary system.
Now, before the war it was difficult enough to recruit even so many as
the number we then had got, a number totally inadequate for any army
larger than the small one we actually put into shape at home. Every
source had been tried in my time by the able administrative generals who
were working under me at the War Office. I say "administrative
generals," for here comes in the source of the confusion which at times
leads not a few--including some whose military training has been
exclusively in the leading of troops and in strategy and tactics--to
miss the point.
Under the modern military principle, which is the secret of rapidity and
efficiency in mobilization, duties are carefully defined and divided.
The General Staff does not administer, and is not trained in the
business of administration. This kind of military business is entrusted
to the administrative side of the army, the officers of which receive a
different kind of training. The General Staff says what is necessary.
The administrative side provides it as far as it can. And among the
exclusive functions of the administrative side of the War Office is the
recruiting of personnel by the Adjutant-General and the Military
Secretary. It is true that the Director of Military Training, who
supervises the training of the young officer when obtained, belongs to
the General Staff. That is because his work is educational. With
obtaining the young officer it is only accidentally that he is at all
concerned.
When, therefore, even distinguished commanders in the field express
regret at the want of foresight of the British nation in not having
prepared a much larger army before 1914, I would respectfully ask them
how they imagine it could have been done.
To raise a great corps of officers who have voluntarily selected the
career of an officer as an exclusive and absorbing profession has been
possible in Germany and in France. But it has only become possible there
after generations of effort and under pressure of a long-standing
tradition, extending from decade to decade, under which a nation, armed
for the defense of its land frontiers, has expended its money and its
spirit in creating such an officer caste.
Now, the British nation has put its money and its fighting spirit
primarily into its Navy and its oversea forces. Why? Because, just as
the Continental tradition had its genesis in the necessity for instant
readiness to defend land frontiers, so our tradition has had its genesis
in the vital necessity of always commanding the sea.
Possibly if, just after the war of 1870, we had endeavored to enter on a
new tradition, and to develop a great army, we might have succeeded in
doing so. With forty years' time devoted to the task and a very large
expenditure we might conceivably have succeeded. But I think that had we
done so we should have been very foolish. Our navy would inevitably have
been diminished and deteriorated. You can not ride two horses at once,
and no more can you possess in their integrity two great conflicting
military traditions.
But what I am saying does not rest on my own conclusions alone. In the
year 1912 the then Chief of the General Staff told me that he and the
General Staff would like to investigate, as a purely military problem,
the question whether we could or could not raise a great army. I thought
this a reasonable inquiry and sanctioned and found money for it, only
stipulating that they should consult with the Administrative Staffs when
assembling the materials for the investigation. The outcome was embodied
in a report made to me by Lord Nicholson, himself a soldier who had a
strong desire for compulsory service and a large army. He reported, as
the result of a prolonged and careful investigation, that, alike as
regarded officers and as regarded buildings and equipment, the
conclusion of the General Staff was that it would be in a high degree
unwise to try, during a period of unrest on the Continent, to commence a
new military system. It could not be built up excepting after much
unavoidable delay. We might at once experience a falling off in
voluntary recruiting, and so become seriously weaker before we had a
chance of becoming stronger. And the temptation to a foreign General
Staff to make an early end of what it might insist on interpreting as
preparation for aggression on our part would be too strong to be risked.
What we should get might prove to be a mob in place of an army. I quite
agreed, and not the less because it was highly improbable that the
country would have looked at anything of the sort.
What we actually could produce in the form of an army had to be
estimated, not as if we were standing alone, but as being an adjunct to
what was possessed by France and Russia. They had large armies and small
navies. We had a large navy and a small army. When these were considered
in conjunction, I do not think that the hope of some of our best
military authorities, that an aggressive attempt by the Central Powers
could be made abortive, was an over-sanguine one.
Much of what we did owe for the excellence of the Expeditionary Force,
such as it was in point of size, and much of what we have since owed for
the excellence of the great armies that we subsequently raised, was due
to the unbroken work of the fine Administrative Staff, developed in
those days, to which I have already referred. I often regret that when
the nation gave its thanks through Parliament to the army, the splendid
contribution made by those who prepared the administrative services was
not adequately recognized. But this arose from the old British tradition
under which fighting and administration were not distinguished as being
quite separate and yet equally essential for fighting. The public had
not got into its head the reality of the process of defining the two
different functions with precision, and of confiding them to different
sets of officers differently trained.
The principle was a novel one in the army itself, and why one set of
officers should be trained at the Staff College and another at the
London School of Economics was not a question the answer to which was
quite familiar, even to all soldiers.
It is, I think, certain that for purely military reasons, even if, in
view of political (including diplomatic) difficulties any party in the
State had felt itself able to undertake the task of raising a great army
under compulsory service, and to set itself to accomplish it, say,
within the ten years before the war, the fulfilment of the undertaking
could not have been accomplished, and failure in it would have made us
much weaker than we were when the war broke out. The only course really
open was to make use of the existing voluntary system, and bring its
organization for war up to the modern requirements, of which they were
in 1906 far short. It is true that the voluntary system could not give
us a substantially larger army, or more than a better one in point of
quality. The stream of voluntary recruits was limited. When the 156
battalions of the line which existed on paper in 1906 were in that year
nominally reduced to 148, there was no real reduction, altho some money
was saved which was required for some other essential military purposes.
For the remaining battalions were short of their proper strength, and
it took all the recruits set free by the so-called reductions to bring
the 148--some of which were badly short of officers and men alike--to
the proper establishment required for the six new divisions of the
Expeditionary Force.
I remember well the then Adjutant-General, Sir Charles Douglas, one of
the ablest men of business who ever filled that position in this
country, informing me at that time that he could not raise a single
further division to be added to the six at home.
But if the voluntary system had disadvantages, it also presented us with
advantages. The professional and therefore voluntary nature of our army,
which, because it was professional, was always ready for sending
overseas on expeditions, was in reality made necessary by our position
as the island center of a great and scattered Empire. We had increased
that Empire enormously by the possession of a voluntarily serving army.
Whether this vast increase of the Empire has been always defensible I am
not discussing. What I am saying is that we owe the actual increases
largely to this, that we were the only Power in the world that was ready
to step in at short notice and occupy vacant territory. We always had a
much larger Expeditionary Force available for this special purpose than
Germany or any other country. That has been our tradition, as contrasted
with the tradition of other nations who have been limited in this kind
of capacity by the necessity of putting their military forces on a
compulsory basis and keeping them at home for the protection of their
land frontiers. Ours was the method in which we had been schooled by
experience.
It is for such reasons as I have now submitted that I am wholly unable
to assent to the suggestion that we did not look ahead, or considered
within the years just before the war whether we were preparing to make
the sort of contribution that our own interests and our friendships
alike required. Sea power was for us then, as always before in our
history, the dominant element in military policy. I have little doubt
that we made mistakes over details. That is inherent in human and
therefore finite effort. But I believe that we did in the main the best
we could for the fulfilment of our only purpose, which was to preserve
the peace of the world and avoid contributing to its disturbance, and
also to prepare to defend ourselves and our friends against aggression.
Talk to the public we could not, for it would have hindered and not
helped us to do so. A "preventive war," which the Entente Powers would
not have been so ready to meet as they became later on, might well have
been the result. Rhetorical declarations on platforms would have been
wholly out of place. But we could think, and to the best of such
abilities as we and our expert advisers possessed, we did try to think.
A curious legend which had its origin in Berlin, in October, 1914, has
obtained such currency that it is worth while to make an end of it. The
legend is that the British Military Attaché at Brussels, the late
General Barnardiston, had informed the Chief of the Belgian General
Staff of secret plans, prepared at the War Office in London, to invade
Belgium, and if necessary to violate her neutrality, in order to make an
expedition, the purpose of which was to attack Germany through that
country. The story appears to have emanated from Baron Greindl, who was
the Belgian Minister at Berlin in 1911. He had been completely
misinformed, no doubt in that capital, and there is no truth whatever in
what he had been told about what he called the "perfidious and naïf
revelations" of the British Military Attaché at Brussels. Him the story
represents as having said that his Minister (by whom I presume myself,
as the then Secretary of State for War, to have been intended) and the
British General Staff were the only persons in the secret. I have to
observe, in the first place, that I never during my tenure of office,
either suggested any such plan, or heard of anyone else suggesting it.
When the story was brought to my knowledge, which was not until
November, 1914, I inquired at once of General Barnardiston and of his
successor, Colonel Bridges, whether there was any foundation for it. The
reply from each of these distinguished officers was that there was none.
We were among the guarantors of Belgian neutrality, and it was of course
conceivable that, if she called on us to do so, we might have had to
defend her. It would be part of the duty of our Military Attaché to
remember this, and, if opportunity offered, to ascertain in informal
conversation the view of the Belgian General Staff as to what form of
help they would be likely to ask us for. This he doubtless did, and
indeed it appears from what the Chief of the Belgian General Staff wrote
to the Belgian War Minister that the former had discussed the
contingency of Belgium desiring our help with General Barnardiston, and
had done so gladly. But even so the conversation must have been very
informal, for in the account of it by the Chief of the Belgian General
Staff there are errors about the composition of the possible British
Force which indicate that either he took no notes, or else that Colonel
Barnardiston had not thought it an occasion which required him to obtain
details from London. At all events, such talk as there was appears to
have had relation only to what we ought to do, if requested by Belgium
to help, in case of her being invaded by another Power.
The documents will be found in the volume of Collected Diplomatic
Documents relating to the outbreak of the war, presented to Parliament
in May, 1915 (Cd. 7860). This volume includes a vigorous denial by Sir
Edward Grey of the insinuation.