by John Buchan
If a further proof be needed of Mr. Lloyd George’s miraculous vitality, it will be found in the fact that he could spare interest for matters which extended beyond the fortunes of the War. He made the War Cabinet a council of the whole Empire by summoning to its special meetings representatives of India and of the Dominions. Well might the Prime Minister of Canada declare that this meant the writing of a new page in imperial history. If it be said that there was a war purpose in such a step, since the whole Empire was in arms, and a war purpose is a measure like the Corn Production Act, which opened up a new vista for British agriculture, there could be none in the inquiries which Mr. Lloyd George set afoot and which resulted in Mr. Fisher’s great Education Bill, and the drastic scheme of electoral reform which admitted women to the vote, and the inception of the Whitley Councils. Under the pressure of war the old individualism of industry was breaking down, the State was enlarging its sphere of interest and duty, and on some there broke the vision of a new and wiser world coming to birth while the old things were dying.
II
The first of the old things to die was the Tsarist regime in Russia. A coup d’état, supported by most of the troops, ended on March 16th 1917 with the abdication of the Tsar and the establishment of a provisional Government. But the revolution was only beginning. The Liberal intellectuals now in office believed that they could conduct both a revolution and a war. They were soon undeceived, for it was against the War that the revolution was aimed. Kerensky, an emotional Girondin, who became Prime Minister, flung his energies into a great Russian offensive, but all discipline had gone from the army, and the last Russian attack of July 1st miserably failed. After that events marched fast. Outlaws long in exile were assisted by Germany to return to their native land, and among them came that strange being, Vladimir Ulianov, familiar to the world as Lenin, who was to be the Messiah of a new gospel. He and his Bolsheviks, knowing precisely what they wanted, prevailed against a leader who believed that rhetoric could hold a starving and dispirited people.
The army ceased to be an orderly force, and became a mob of peasants, clamouring for bread, for peace, and for land. Throughout the summer Kerensky laboured at his hopeless task, while the underground forces were growing stronger. Then Germany struck, and Riga fell; Kornilov, the one fighting general left, wasted his strength in futile quarrels; a weary people turned to whatever offered leadership; and in October the Bolshevik revolution, inspired by Lenin and organised by Trotsky, marched swiftly to power. On November 7th its triumph was complete, the triumph of a handful of determined men. An armistice soon followed, and at Brest Litovsk before the close of the year the new Russian rulers accepted from Germany a degrading peace.
Such is the bare record of a great tragedy. The tragedy was for the Russian people, who against terrible handicaps had struggled for two years with patient heroism, and were now condemned to a more horrible carnival of famine and blood; not for the Tsarist regime, which most amply deserved its fate. It had become an anachronism in the modern world, a mediæval fragment in line neither with the blundering German absolutism nor with the freedom of the Western peoples. History can only regard the gentle, ineffective, tragically-fated Emperor with compassion. He was born to a destiny too difficult; his very virtues — his loyalty, his mercifulness — contributed to his undoing. The worst influence was the wife whom he deeply loved, and who so surrounded him with rogues and charlatans that his Court stank in the nostrils of decent citizens. The autocracy collapsed from its own inherent rottenness. The old order crumbled at the first challenge, for it had become mere lath and plaster.
Russia’s revolution, unlike the French, had not come from the burning inspiration of a new faith, but from sheer weariness of mind and body, from utter loss of nerve and heart. There had always been in her people a certain lack of bone and fibre; as someone has said, they had the courage to die, but not to live. She had never wholly emerged from the servile state, and she was now to experience another type of serfdom. For upon her enfeebled frame a new faith fastened like a leech. The Bolsheviks were a mere fraction of the people, and they had many diverse types among them, but they owed unswerving allegiance to Lenin — the squat, smiling figure with the contemptuous eyes, who was known to admit that in every hundred of his followers only one was a true believer, and that of the residue sixty were fools and thirty-nine knaves. They were class maniacs, and in their own eyes class martyrs, and their day of revenge had come. They would liberate not only from the last shackles of Tsardom, but from the tumid constitutionalism beloved by the pedants of the West.
They were Marxists, but not orthodox Marxists, for they claimed a right to a free interpretation of their master. Capitalism was to disappear, and in the single-class community the co-operation of all would take the place of exploitation by the few. But before the unfeatured desert of their ideal could be attained rough places must be crossed, and the method must be a temporary dictatorship, the dictatorship of the workers, till capitalists and bourgeois were forcibly eliminated — converted or destroyed. Toleration was unthinkable, a synonym for weakness: the majority rule of democracy was equally impossible, for communists would never be a majority till they had purged the State by civil war. They were resolved to simplify society with the knife; a small elect minority, they would force the rest to do their bidding, because they were prepared to go to any lengths of terror and crime. It was class-rule carried to its logical conclusion, and murder exalted to be a normal function of the State. In this nightmare certain categories of Western thought made unholy alliance with the dark fatalism and the ancient cruelties of the East.
Beyond the Atlantic a second thing broke down, America’s patience and her traditional isolation. On February 1st Germany entered upon unrestricted submarine warfare, proclaiming a state of blockade in all the approaches to Europe, and her intention to sink at sight any vessel whatsoever found in those waters. The German Ambassador at Washington was promptly given his passports, but it was not till five American vessels were sunk in March with loss of life, and secret overtures were discovered from Germany to Mexico, that Mr. Wilson took action. On April 2nd the President asked Congress for a declaration of war. He outlined means for the preparation of America and for supplying the Allies with what they needed, and he concluded almost in the strain of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural:
It is a fearful thing to lead this great and peaceful people into war. . . . But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for the universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace that she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
With a strong people a slow change is a sure change. America flung herself into the preparations for war with a disciplined enthusiasm. Her coming seemed to make victory certain, and the right kind of victory, for she entered upon war not for any parochial ends, but for the reorganisation of the world’s life on a sane basis. She brought with her enormous assets. She was the largest workshop on earth; she had immense wealth to put into the common stock; she had a powerful fleet and a great capacity for shipbuilding; her reserves of man-power made her army capable of almost unlimited expansion. Mr. Wilson’s achievement should not be forgotten. He had brought the whole nation into line on a matter which meant the reversal of every traditional mode of thought: and one who remembers the centrifugal tendencies of American life and its stiff conservatism must admit that such a feat demanded no small genius in statecraft.
But during these months th
ere was another thing in danger of breaking — a thing whose destruction would have condemned the Allies to defeat long before America could take the field. Germany in her new submarine campaign had calculated that in five or six months she could bring Britain to her knees by cutting off sea-borne supplies. She was beginning herself to realise that in the long run the home front was the vital front. For a little it looked as if her calculations were right. She had five times as many submarines as in 1915, and she made ample use of them. In the closing months of 1916 the average loss of British tonnage had been 300,000: in February 1917 it rose to 468,000; in March to 500,000, and in April to 875,000. In the last month all our western sea approaches became a cemetery, and one ship out of four that left British ports never returned. Only six weeks’ supply of corn remained in the country.
It was the darkest moment in the War for Britain, but it was not realised except by the Government and the Admiralty. The Prime Minister rose to the crisis. It was impossible to reply by an offensive — by laying a mine-field close to the German bases, or by attacking these bases, for Jutland had left us without the full command of the North Sea. Much was done by rationing, by increasing home production, and by expanding our shipbuilding, but the real remedy, which before the summer was gone relieved the situation, was a new plan of defence. The convoy system was pressed upon an unwilling Admiralty — let it be said in fairness that at the time we had not the promise of a multitude of American destroyers — and with the help of some of the younger naval officers it was finally accepted and put into force. It worked like a charm. The losses to convoyed ships were only one per cent., and by September the monthly tonnage lost was under 200,000. When peace came 88,000 merchant vessels had been convoyed with a loss of only 436. Moreover, by various devices life was made more precarious for the enemy submarines. By the end of the War more than half of the German U-boats had been destroyed, all but a handful by the British Navy.
III
The new Government in Britain attempted to infuse its own spirit of vigour into the land campaign. But there it found itself confronted with a tougher problem. Mr. Lloyd George had never believed in the dogma of his military advisers that the Western Front was the only decisive area. He did not greatly believe in soldiers, since he distrusted all hierarchies and was constitutionally disinclined to submit to the dictation of experts. He thought, not without reason, that, since they were engaged in a new kind of war, the ordinary staff officers had little to their credit except a certain familiarity with an out-of-date technique. He was blind to the gains of the Somme battles, but he was acutely alive to their cost. He could see small co-ordination in the many desperate Allied attacks of the past two years. When he was told that they had a common purpose, the attrition of the enemy, he replied that attrition in the third year of war could not be a serious policy, but a confession of the absence of a policy. If we were wearing Germany down we were wearing ourselves out of existence, and competing in a futile race towards bankruptcy.
His instinct was right, but it was not easy to find means to enforce it. He still hankered after a switching of the main attack to a flank, and early in 1917 leaned to the sending of large bodies of troops to the Italian front for a knock-out blow against Austria. But it is doubtful if at this stage of the campaign such a transference was possible, since the two main forces had become accrochés, hooked together on the front in the West. Nor was his first effort to obtain some central direction more happily inspired, for it meant putting Haig and his army in a quasi-subordination to Nivelle, the new French Commander-in-Chief. But it is only fair to recognise the soundness of the instinct which inspired these adventures. Of all the civilians I have known Mr. Lloyd George seems to me to have possessed in the highest degree the capacity for becoming a great soldier. But he might have lost several armies while he was learning his trade.
In November 1916 a conference at Chantilly had laid down the French and British plans for the coming year. It was agreed that the main burden must fall on the British Army. The chief effort was to be an attack by it north of the Somme, and by the French south of the Oise, with a subsidiary movement in Champagne, to be followed in the summer by a British advance towards the enemy bases on the Belgian coast. Nivelle’s advent changed all this. He decided to confine Haig to the Arras region, and to deliver himself a mighty assault on the Aisne plateau. His purpose was not a series of methodical advances, but a complete break-through and a limitless pursuit. Haig and Pétain were sceptical, but he secured the approval of the two Governments, for to the civilians this seemed to be at any rate something more hopeful than the weary guerre d’usure.
Germany intervened to dislocate the plan. Ludendorff, aware of his diminishing man-power, set himself to reorganise his armies, and to prepare the way for that victory on land which he believed must follow the submarine triumph. Across the chord of his great salient in the west from Lens to Rheims he built a gigantic series of defences, which were named after the heroes of German mythology, and which Britain knew as the Hindenburg Line. Then he withdrew his front towards it, devastating all the area relinquished. It was a wise and provident plan, perfectly executed. It gave Germany a shorter and far stronger line. Above all it delayed and compromised the Allies’ offensive. They could not now strike before April, and Germany, instead of being pinned down, as Haig desired, to an awkward position, had a margin for refitment and rest.
The tale of the Allied campaign that year — in the West, for there was presently no Eastern Front — is one of difficult beginnings, successes which led nowhere, and desperate battles which all but broke their hearts. On April 9th Haig opened at Arras, captured the Vimy Ridge (which was to prove an invaluable gain in a year’s time), and was compelled to continue long after attack was fruitless. For meanwhile, on April 16th, Nivelle struck on the Aisne, with a poor tactical scheme and no chance of surprise, since the enemy knew his plans in detail. He suffered a costly check. For a little it seemed that the strength of France might melt away, since mutiny ran through the army, and at one moment it was believed that there were only two loyal divisions between the enemy and Paris. Pétain restored confidence and order — it was the greatest achievement of a fine soldier; but it took him all summer to nurse his armies back to health, and meantime Britain had to bear unaided the brunt of the war. At Messines in June we carried out a perfect model of a limited advance — it has been rightly described as the only true siege-warfare attack made throughout a siege war. But Britain could not rest; it had been the word of the British Prime Minister himself, at the conference in Paris in May which put new hope into France, that no respite must be given to the enemy. Haig turned to the offensive towards the Belgian coast, which had always been his main plan.
This is not the place to tell the melancholy story of that battle of a hundred days which is known as Passchendaele or Third Ypres. There was some merit in its conception, but little in its execution; the weather early made success impossible, and it was continued long after the mud-holes and ridges aimed at had lost all strategical meaning. The German defence showed great tactical ingenuity, but their strength was strained to its utmost and their fangs against France were for the moment drawn, since this cruellest action of the war cost them 300,000 men, if it cost us 100,000 more. Whatever the reason for the tragic prolongation — the uneasiness of the French, the inelasticity of our military machine — one alleged cause may be ruled out, the personal vanity of Haig. Such was not the nature of the most modest and single-hearted of men.
While our troops were dying in the Flanders bogs the usual autumnal sacrifice of an ally was all but consummated. On October 24th on the middle Isonzo an army of nine Austrian divisions and six German burst in the misty morning through the Italian front, and in a fortnight’s fighting forced it back from river line to river line with a loss of 600,000 men. Eventually standing ground was found on the Piave, which covered, but only just covered, Venice. Britain and France sent reinforcements, and British and French generals assisted in reconstituti
ng the broken forces of Italy. Meantime at Cambrai on November 20th Britain, by the use of some 400 tanks, at last achieved a surprise, and for a moment almost brought back the war of manoeuvre. The fatal drain of Passchendaele had depleted our reserves, and we were unable to develop our initial victory, or to prevent a vigorous German counterstroke ten days later. Our reach had exceeded our grasp: yet Cambrai remains one of the key actions of the War, for it offered us a way of release from siege bondage which, after some fumbling, we were to follow. For the first time we learned the true value of the new weapon of which we were the exponents.
We were pioneers at Cambrai in new tactics, of which, fortunately for us, the enemy did not grasp the meaning. But he, too, had been fruitful in tactical novelties. His problem was to discover a method which would restore open warfare and give a decision, and he deserves all credit for a brilliant departure from routine, a true intellectual effort to re-think the main problem of modern war. All former offensives had after a shorter or longer time come to a halt for the same reason — wearied troops were met by fresh reserves. The attacker continued hammering at an unbreakable front, because he had set the stage for action in that one area, and could not easily shift his batteries and communications. In a word, all offensives lacked mobility. Germany’s first business, therefore, was to make the battle mobile and bring in the element of surprise.
Her plan was not a break-through in the older sense, but a general crumbling. It was based upon the highly specialised training of certain units, and the absence of any preliminary massing near the point of attack. Again, there was no long bombardment to alarm the enemy. The advance was made by picked troops in small clusters, carrying light trench-mortars and many machine-guns, with the field batteries close behind them in support. The actual mode of attack, which the French called “infiltration,” may be likened to a hand, of which the finger-tips are shod with steel, and which is pushed into a yielding substance. The picked troops at the finger ends made gaps through which others passed, till each section of the defence found itself outflanked and encircled. It was no case of an isolated stroke, but of a creeping sickness which might demoralise a hundred miles of front. The first experiment was made at the capture of Riga in September, but the true test came in October at Caporetto. The final proof was the counterstroke at Cambrai. There the attack on the British left, carried out in the old fashion, signally failed, while the assault on the British right, after the new fashion, as signally succeeded. But the Allied Staffs were slow to grasp the meaning of the new method. Caporetto was explained by a breakdown in Italian nerve, and Cambrai by defective local intelligence. Four months later the armies of France and Britain read the true lesson in letters of fire.