VICTORY
“O God! Thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to Thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all.”
SHAKESPEARE’S _Henry V_, Act IV, Sc. viii.
THE last year of the Great War was undoubtedly the most critical and
momentous year in the modern history of these islands. By an amazing
combination of events, Western Europe was subject to a sudden revival of
extreme peril exceeding in violence the menace of 1914. Looking back
from the security of the present time (1920) it is easy to underrate the
threat of that great attack by the Central Powers: and, indeed, in our
present discussions there is an almost perilous oblivion of the dangers
through which we have passed. But those who study the memoirs of the
German War Leaders, which have poured out since the close of the
war,[116] will realise the complete confidence of the German General
Staff in the victory which seemed to lie ahead of them, as the natural
climax to the series of smashing blows which they had delivered to their
enemies during the two previous years (1916-17).
General Ludendorff finds the chief reason for the German defeat in the
war spirit which had been aroused in England under the leadership of Mr.
Lloyd George, and in France by the inspiration of M. Clemenceau. Neither
of those leaders would admit that they alone could have achieved so
great a triumph for liberty over the menace of militarism. It was the
spirit of the peoples of France and Great Britain that really achieved
resounding victory—the peoples who shrank from no sacrifice and faced
every trial rather than accept defeat. I have in my memory the spectacle
of a regiment of boys of eighteen and nineteen—London boys, freshly
plucked from the counter and the van—whom I met one evening, at the
height of the crisis in the spring of 1918, marching to be entrained
from Norfolk to Northern France. “Shall we win the war?” shouted one
half of them, and the other half replied with an echoing shout—“Yes!”
Those youths had been cut off from all leave and were being plunged into
the firing-line at a few hours’ notice. They went singing to almost
certain death. They were the fit crusaders of a race that never
contemplated defeat; and no man who had such a people behind him could
vainly boast of his own single achievements.
Yet leadership counts for much, and vainly do the masses struggle if
those at the top weaken and faint. There is no greater misfortune that
can befall a race than failure of valour and resolution in high places.
It was because Mr. Lloyd George kept, in the utmost stress of those
events, his courage undimmed and his spirit unshaken, that he has
rightly earned so large a part in the credit of victory.
Another scene comes back to me from those dark days. I was standing in
front of one of the large-scale maps at Downing Street, noting the point
reached by the German legions in one of those tremendous and determined
efforts to drive us into the sea during the April of 1918. There was the
sound of a step behind us, and suddenly we turned to find the Prime
Minister also observing the map with a close and concentrated gaze. We
knew that things were serious, and that there were influences at the
centre in favour of withdrawing our armies from France. But of all the
company he was the serenest. “Serious? Yes!” he said. “But by no means
desperate. Look here!” and he pointed to the north of Calais. “We can
flood that area if necessary. Then, if they drive us south of Calais, we
can still hold on. France is a large place, and it has many ports.
Retire from France? No, we will stand by our Allies to the last!” And he
went away singing, as undismayed as those boys whom I had seen marching
to France. A worthy leader of a worthy nation!
On another day I remember him describing to me a visit he had paid to
the fighting line at the most critical moment of that great peril. He
spoke with flashing eyes. “We motored,” he said, “from the coast right
up to the fighting front, and we did not meet a single British soldier
in flight. Not one had turned his back to the enemy, not one!” Yet
during that time the German guns were enfilading our trenches lined with
English boys, and the chance of survival in that defence without death
or injury had been reduced almost to the point of zero.
What was the cause of this last and most perilous phase? It was the
collapse of Russia, produced by the Bolshevist _coup d’état_ in
Petrograd on November 7th, 1917. On that day, Lenin achieved the purpose
for which the Germans had given him his passports into Russia. He
destroyed Kerensky, who combined revolution with national war, and he
substituted a policy of international peace combined with civil war.
Both edges of that policy were sharpened to the destruction of Russia as
a war power, and on December 20th Mr. Lloyd George warned the House of
Commons that the collapse of Russia, following on the Italian defeat,
would require a new and still greater output of man-power by Great
Britain. A Bill for that purpose was introduced into the House of
Commons on January 14th, abolishing almost the last exemptions from
military service. Events in Russia moved swiftly. On November 21st the
Bolshevists made to the Germans a definite proposal for armistice, and
peace negotiations began at Brest-Litovsk on December 2nd. The
Bolshevists twice broke up the Constituent Assembly at Petrograd by
force of arms. The Germans put forward peace terms of such severity that
even the Bolshevists were dismayed, and Trotsky attempted to declare
peace without signing the treaty. Thereupon the Germans advanced their
armies into Russia, meeting with no resistance, and occupying Minsk in
the north and Kieff in the south. Powerless in the face of this
invasion, the Bolshevists signed the peace treaty on March 2nd,
surrendering Lithuania, Finland, the Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic
Provinces, promising demobilisation of their armies and internment of
their ships. Russia was out of the war. On March 5th the Germans
followed this up by signing peace with Rumania, and on March 6th they
signed peace with Finland. Their great armies in the East of Europe were
now free to work their will on the West.
Ludendorff has told us that even then there was some debate among the
German military chiefs between the policy of defence in the West and the
policy of attack. But Mr. Lloyd George saw clearly that the Germans
would be obliged to attack. They were compelled by the logic of the
blockade. With all her feverish triumphs in the East of Europe, Germany
was, at that moment, in a parlous plight. She was in the position of a
besieged city. She had either to break out or to surrender. The fearful
ravage which she perpetrated in Rumania and the Ukraine, and in the
western provinces of Russia also, were really the measure of her need.
Food and materials were more necessary for her at that moment than
military triumphs, and she hastened to cash all her victories into
material produce of one kind or another. Like a hungry tiger, she
devoured her prey. But there were other beasts afoot in Eastern Europe
at the same time, and we know now that the division of the loot caused
extreme bitterness between Germany and Austria-Hungary, and that the
resentment of the Ukraine forced Germany to keep troops in the East of
Europe which might have struck the decisive blow in the West. Such is
the Nemesis of greed.
But still Germany could realise immediately over 2,000,000 new fighting
men for the grand sortie now planned on the Western Front, and
Ludendorff has told us how quickly and strenuously he trained the troops
for this gigantic effort. The blow came on March 21st, against the Third
and Fourth British Armies between the Scarpe and the Oise. Forty German
divisions attacked, and on the second day, the 22nd, there was a
break-through west of St. Quentin. On the following days the British
line had to withdraw nearly fifteen miles, back to the line of the
Somme, losing prisoners all the way, but inflicting very heavy losses on
the attacking division. The British line was broken, but not the British
Army. During the following days the German divisions steadily poured
through the gap, crossing the Somme, capturing Albert and Mezières, some
90,000 British prisoners, and over 1,300 guns.
The peril opened by this event both to France and the British Empire
lasted for four months, and during that period there was scarcely a day
on which the strain was relaxed. Colossal issues were at stake, and
among the chief was whether the British Empire should survive. Mr. Lloyd
George rose to the height of the crisis at once, and kept on the summit
until the close. Day by day he never relaxed his energy or his courage.
He did not abate, in those dark days, one jot of heart or hope. There
was no resource or reserve of national strength which he did not bring
to bear. There was no device that he left untried. It is easy to speak
of the hurricane and storm when you have reached harbour, but there is
little doubt that, unless we had had a good captain on the bridge, the
great ship “British Empire” would have foundered.
He envisaged the problem in two ways—strategy and numbers. He saw the
Allied Forces faced by overwhelming myriads of Teuton troops, combined
under one central command. To resist this assault he was more than ever
of the opinion that the defenders also must be placed under one command,
and he carried his faith to the full logic of his conclusion. In April
he agreed to the appointment of General Foch as supreme Commander of the
Allied Forces. It was a step involving great risks and great faith.
Fortunately Sir Douglas (now Lord) Haig agreed with Mr. Lloyd George,
and played the game to the full, like the great soldier he was.
Otherwise the thing could not have been done. The trial came for the
British when, as the crisis deepened, Marshal Foch began to exercise his
full powers, and to withdraw from the direction of the coast great
British forces which had been placed there in reserve for the protection
of the British line and the security of the Channel.
Like all great commanders, Foch himself had to take risks and to meet
the German concentrations by great concentrations on his own side. For
this purpose he had to wield full power over both British and French
Armies, and he exercised it to the full in the great battles of that
summer. It was an anxious time for the British Government. But Mr. Lloyd
George had taken the full measure of Foch as a soldier: he fully
believed in him, and he went to the whole extent of his faith. A working
arrangement was come to by which Mr. Lloyd George went over to meet
Clemenceau and Foch at Paris periodically, and the supreme conduct of
the war was now in the hands of these three men. So far for the strategy
which governed the great battles of that summer.
Then for numbers. Mr. Lloyd George saw in a moment that, unless drastic
and exceptional measures were taken the Allied Forces would simply be
snowed under by the hosts of the enemy. To meet this danger the natural
counter-measure was to throw across the Channel all the troops in
England sufficiently trained to go into the shock of battle. For this
purpose he was obliged to suspend all the usual age limits from active
foreign service and to send across the Channel the great army of youths
enlisted under the Conscription Act, and hitherto prepared only for home
defence. These great forces streamed across in the months of April, May,
and June, and did something to fill up the gaps in the line. But as the
weeks went by Mr. Lloyd George perceived that the British reinforcements
alone would be unequal to the great task. The Germans were still
straining every nerve, and they were fighting against time. Our
Government could not precisely tell how many reserves the Germans still
possessed, or how many men they could spare from their Eastern Front.
The Germans were working on the calculation that the Americans could not
come across till 1919 or 1920, and their submarines were operating
feverishly to keep up the alarm on the Atlantic Ocean. The Americans
themselves were too far removed from the scene of danger to realise at
once the greatness of the emergency. But they only required the S.O.S.
signal. Mr. Lloyd George determined to give it.
One morning that spring he made up his mind.
“We have to get 500,000 Americans over in four months, at the rate of
125,000 a month. How can that be done?” That was the problem as he saw
it and as he expressed it. He began to send a series of telegrams to
President Wilson through Lord Reading, explaining to Mr. Wilson the
peril and the need of instant help. President Wilson immediately grasped
the crisis. Mr. Lloyd George organised the Navy and the Merchant Service
for the work of transport on the British side of the Atlantic, and
President Wilson did the same on his side. So began that great Armada of
help from the New World. The American divisions poured across the
Atlantic, overcrowded on their transports, packed almost to suffocation,
but willing to suffer all things in the great crusade on which they were
bent. The Americans, indeed, did far better than the British Government
had expected. They sent a million men. It was a magnificent performance,
and must ever be remembered to the credit of that great nation.
Then President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George, acting together, went one
step further. When the American troops arrived many of them were
instantly brigaded with the British and French forces, and so they
learnt with the greatest rapidity possible all the craft and ruses
necessary for modern warfare. They did their utmost to acquire in a few
months all those new arts of destruction which it had taken Europe years
to evolve. To achieve this, for the time they gave up America’s great
dream of a national army. But, after all, the greatest fact of all was
their arrival.
Meanwhile, during these weeks of suspense and endeavour the German
armies had struck again and again in the last desperate campaign for
victory. Through April, May, and June the issue still hung in the
balance.
The second great attack on April 4th, when twenty German divisions,
advancing towards Amiens, attempted to divide the British Armies from
the French. That attack came very near to success. We all know how the
Germans arrived at positions from which they could bombard Amiens and
paralyse the communications, and it is blazed on the records of fame how
the armies of the British Empire—men from Australia and Canada—held
the line at Villers-Brettoneux, and by their invincible blending of
defence and attack kept the assailing German divisions from achieving
their purpose.
A few days later a new attack developed, this time farther north, west
of Lille. From the British point of view this was the most menacing
attack of all. It was a determined attempt to drive the British armies
into the sea. On April 10th Armentières was occupied and the
bloodstained Ridge of Messines crossed. On the 15th Bailleul was taken,
and on the 25th the attack came to a climax with the capture of Kemmel
Hill under the eyes of the German Emperor. Yet the Germans could not
gain the decision they require. The British troops gave ground, but
always fought on. The line bent, but it did not break.
But, as the weeks went on, the British Government replied in stern deeds
which the whole British people supported. Not only did the younger men
stream across the Channel, but the older men lined up to take their
places. It was on March 9th that Mr. Lloyd George introduced that last
and tremendous Military Service Act, raising the age to fifty, with a
reserve possibility of fifty-five, and threatening to extend
conscription to Ireland. Such extreme measures became in the result
unnecessary: but partly because the British people showed that they were
possible.
Ludendorff has described to us the gradual waning of his hopes[117] in
face of the unbroken resolution of the British people under Mr. Lloyd
George, the swift dying off in the fire of battle of all their best
troops, and the failing of human morale which took place under the
stress of those costly onslaughts. There is no more dramatic story in
history than his account of the way in which the revolutionary poison
which the Germans had inoculated into Russia by the sending of Lenin
returned back into the German Army and gradually destroyed by its
discipline and undermined its desire for victory.[118] But there is
another side to that story. Ludendorff describes, without apparently
understanding the significance of his narrative, the way in which his
troops, when they had captured a position, would spend the precious
minutes in overhauling and devouring the stores of food which they
found.[119] He seems to regard that as merely a sign of the weakening of
military discipline. But the plain fact is that hunger has no respect
for discipline; and it was hunger that was eating at the vitals of the
German nation—hunger and want of all the essentials of war. The
blockade was completing the work of our armies. For our prisoners found
that the Germans were lacking in the most elementary medical necessities
and that their transport had reached a point of decay which made it
almost impossible for them properly to feed and maintain their armies.
Ludendorff blames the German nation for not supporting the German Army,
but the fact is that this was not a war of armies, but a war of nations.
The German Army was still capable of great deeds, but the German nation
behind was stricken to the heart. Therefore, the strength of the Army,
which drew its vitality from the nation, was rapidly waning even in
those moments of victory.
With his instinctive insight for the real facts of the situation, Mr.
Lloyd George saw that even in the darkest hour here was the governing
issue—which nation could hold out the longest. So now he set himself,
with all his great powers, to hearten and encourage both the peoples and
the Armies in France and Great Britain. He kept travelling between
London and Paris, attending the meetings of the Versailles Council,
visiting the armies at the front, and exchanging cheerful messages
between the fighting men and the civilians. On the day Bailleul was
captured, April 15th, he boldly declared that we had lost “nothing
vital.” On May 3rd he returned from the Versailles Council with a
message from the troops to the nation at home—“Be of good cheer. We are
all right!”
But the crisis was by no means at an end. In May there came a third
German attack, this time towards Paris, and before it was broken it had
driven the British and French armies across the Aisne and the Marne and
had come within almost thirty miles of Paris. Those were anxious days.
But the lure of Paris was again to prove fatal to the German Army. Foch
withdrew his armies only to prepare for a fiercer spring. “My left is
driven back, and my right is driven back. I shall attack with my
centre!” was his famous utterance. The Germans were drawn perilously on,
until with a sudden smashing blow on July 18th Foch crumpled up the
right side of the phalanx which they were driving towards Paris.
Ludendorff tells us that, even after that unexpected defeat, the German
Staff still cherished hopes of victory towards the north, although, to
all outside observers, their aggressive powers seemed to be exhausted.
It was the attack on August 8th of the British and French troops
together, aided by an army of tanks, storming the German lines east of
Amiens, that came to Ludendorff as the final blow to his hopes. From
that time onward, until November, is one long story of unbroken victory
for the Allies. But it was victory dearly purchased by blood and
endurance; for the German armies retired sullenly and inflicted heavy
casualties.[120] We must not underrate the heroism of those months. It
is no small thing that the armies endured to the end. It is clear, from
the memoirs of the German chiefs, that they were still looking eagerly
for any sign of weakness, and that the smallest symptom of war-weariness
would have led to a renewal of German hopes. Mr. Lloyd George saw this
clearly, and never to the end did he give way to boasting. “The worst is
over,” he said at Manchester on September 12th, “but the end is not
yet.”
We know now from Ludendorff that suggestions for an armistice were made
by him to the German Government immediately after August 8th. But at
first the civilian power, under Count Hertling, the German Chancellor,
and his successor Hintze, was inclined to hold out. It was not until
after the smashing up of Bulgaria on September 16th, ending with its
surrender on the 30th, that Hintze resigned and gave place to Prince Max
of Baden. It was now the turn of the German military chiefs to resist
the civilians in their passion for surrender. For Ludendorff was in
favour of a final rally, whilst Prince Max was resolute to make peace.
It was to President Wilson that Prince Max made his overtures for an
armistice based on the Fourteen Points,[121] and the negotiations
continued all through October. No one who lived through those days will
forget the high, austere dignity of the American President’s replies,
which fell on the German Government and people with all the inexorable
force of impartial justice. He insisted that the Germans should leave
all invaded soil, that they should cease their barbarisms on land and
sea, and that the terms of Armistice must be such as to make a renewal
of hostilities impossible.[122]
President Wilson carried the correspondence with Prince Max as far as he
could without being in control of the armies, and then he telegraphed
the letters to the Governments of his Allies in Europe. Mr. Lloyd George
at once saw the practical peril of the new situation. It was that the
German military chiefs might use the Armistice for a recovery of
strength, and Ludendorff’s Memoirs show that he had full justification
for that fear.[123] He resolved at once that the only safe armistice
would be one of complete disarmament, and with that policy in his mind
he went to Paris to meet M. Clemenceau and Marshal Foch. There at
Versailles a full historic conference of all the Allies took place, and
lasted a fortnight. The European Allies modified President Wilson’s
terms on certain essential points. Great Britain excluded the control of
the seas from the sphere of negotiations, and France insisted on a wider
interpretation of President Wilson’s reparation demand. President Wilson
agreed to both these modifications.
Then the Versailles Council passed to their immediate practical
conditions. Marshal Foch insisted that the Germans must ask for an
Armistice in the ordinary military way from himself, the Allied
Commander. That being agreed, the terms were framed—and they were
pretty drastic terms. The German armies must retire across the Rhine and
must be demobilised. German guns and ships must be surrendered.[124] In
fact, Germany must be rendered incapable of resuming the war. Only on
those terms was an Armistice possible with an enemy who had given such
dire proofs of ill-faith.
Faced with these terrible terms, Ludendorff made a last effort to rally
Germany to a final war of defence. But he was too late. He himself had
fatally weakened the German fighting power when he suggested
negotiations in August. Then the civilians had protested. But now that
they had been converted to peace, nothing could make Germany face the
guns again. Their military strength suddenly collapsed. Turkey
surrendered on October 31st, and Austria-Hungary on November 4th. The
bell of doom had begun to toll.
On November 4th the German Government made a final effort to command
their fleet on to the high seas. But the fleet mutinied, and from that
mutiny a revolution began in Hamburg which soon spread over Germany. On
November 7th the British troops entered Valenciennes: on the 8th Prince
Max resigned and was succeeded by Herr Ebert. On the 9th the Kaiser
abdicated and fled into Holland. On that day the German envoys were
received by Foch at his headquarters and the new German Republic
accepted the terms of Armistice. On the morning of the 11th the
Canadians entered Mons, that little town where firing had opened more
than four years before, and precisely at 11 o’clock on that very morning
the Armistice began. There was a sudden stillness from the North Sea to
the frontier of Switzerland.
“Germany is doomed!” cried Mr. Lloyd George, speaking at the Mansion
House on November 9th; and he proved a true prophet.
The Allies had won the war. . . .
-----
[116] The Memoirs of Von Tirpitz and Falkenhayn, and last, but not
least, the frank and outspoken _War Memories_ of General Ludendorff.
[117] _War Memories_ (Hutchinson & Co., London), Vol. II, pp. 613-4 for
decline of morale, pp. 643-5 for effect of our propaganda.
[118] Vol. II, pp. 642-4, 767-9.
[119] Vol. II, p. 611.
[120] There were seven distinct great battles after August 8th—Bapaume,
Epehy, two battles of Cambrai, Courtrai, Selle, and Valenciennes.
[121] See Appendix D for the Fourteen Points.
[122] American Note of October 23rd, 1918.
[123] Page 721. The armistice terms were to permit a “resumption of
hostilities on our own borders.”
[124] Five thousand guns and 30,000 machine-guns, 5,000 locomotives, 22
big ships, and 50 destroyers.