War Memoirs of David
Lloyd-George: The Most Important History Book of the Twentieth Century, the
Foundational Document of American Foreign Policy
Americans
really know almost nothing about World War I, because it entered the war late
and the war ended soon after US troops started arriving in France in
strength. However, Lloyd-George shows
that the United States was always the 800 pound gorilla in the room. All through 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917 every
major decision by either belligerent was made with an eye on how it would play
in the USA.
David Lloyd-George was the British Prime Minister during
the last two years of World War I and during the Versailles peace
conference. Like many British
politicians, he is an excellent wordsmith.
Question time in Parliament is conducive to the political success of
highly literate people. For example: “Unquenchable heroism that will never
accept defeat, inexhaustible vanity that will never admit a mistake.” P. 320 – 321, Volume 4.
After leaving office, Lloyd-George spent five years writing
War Memoirs. Not for the faint hearted,
it is six volumes, more than three thousand pages, but worth every word. Lloyd-George was one of only two ministers on
the allied side who served all through the war.
He is the only one to base his memoirs on original documents. So, his book is an overview of World War I, the
perspective from the catbird seat.
The United States is the successor global power to the
British. So, the United States has, in a
sense, inherited something that its ignorance of World War I prevents it from
understanding. British troops fought the
Turks in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine where American arms are engaged
today. The current conflicts in Iraq and Palestine are directly related to
World War I. World War II was really
World War I redux, if not a resumption of the
original conflict after a twenty year hiatus.
Much of what happened in World War II makes much more sense in the light
of World War I’s events. Even the Cold War is related, because Communists came
to power in Russia as a result of the war; monarchies were overthrown and women
got the vote. Modern history begins with World War I and, in some ways, that war has never really ended.
The British were desperate to get the United States into the
war as an ally, while the Germans were equally anxious to keep it out. The large German and Irish populations in the
United States were far from eager to enter the war as an ally of Britain,
probably the major reason the country remained neutral for so long.
Lloyd-George was Chancellor of
the Exchequer, the number two position in the British government, in the run up
to the war. In 1914, Britain had a small
standing army of 250,000. It depended on
its fleet to keep sea lanes open to its colonies and on being an island to
protect it from invasion. Once underway, the British found themselves
outgunned 8 to 1 on the western front in France, hence the horrendous loses.
The army had insufficient arms and ammunition, not to mention trained soldiers.
Lloyd-George was asked to step down as Chancellor of the
Exchequer to become Minister of Munitions, a new ministry. He did, and basically was in charge of
reorganizing the domestic economy in support of the war. He solved the bottlenecks in armament supply
and, when it looked like the Allies were losing the war at the end of 1916,
became Prime Minister.
Everyone has heard of the Balfour Declaration and some even
know what it is, but how many know the history?
It is all here in vivid detail.
Lloyd-George was the Prime Minister when Arthur Balfour declared his
support for the creation of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Seeing as the
Balfour Declaration is the proximate cause of the creation of Israel, it would
behoove those interested in understanding the Arab anger at Israel’s existence
to take a hard look at how it came to pass.
This book also explains the Russian Revolution. Czarist Russia was an ally with 5 million men
under arms, but only 1.5 million rifles and little artillery. In the trenches, the unarmed soldiers were
told to clap their hands to make the sound of rifle fire, so the Germans would
think there were facing more armed troops than they were.
Naturally, the peasant Russian soldiers got massacred by
the Germans. The Russian strategy was
for the three in every ten men with rifles to charge forward and when one went
down, one of the unarmed seven behind was supposed to pick up the rifle of the
casualty and fight on. This only worked
when the Russians advanced, in retreat it did not work out so well.
So, villages sent 26 men off to war and only 2
returned. The home front became
demoralized and restless. They
demonstrated in Petersburg and the police showed up and shot them. Even the Russian peasants found it hard to
take that while the soldiers at the front lacked arms and ammunition, there
seemed to be enough for the police to shoot the protesters at home. This might explain one reason why after being
invaded by Germany twice in twenty-five years, post-World War II Russia had a
policy of never again being short of arms.
Yes, it is all here.
The foundation of American foreign policy in the
twentieth century. I discovered this book by accident. It is not available in electronic form, and
it is almost impossible to find even in libraries. If I were of a conspiratorial cast of mind, I
would say it was being suppressed. But
there is another reason why this essential book is unknown.
After leaving office and spending years writing his War
Memoirs, they were published in 1934, just in time to be ignored in the run up
to World War II. Many of the policies in
World War II were a direct result of correcting the tactical errors of World
War I.
Aeschylus wrote: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” He was talking about the mistaken ideas about
history that form the basis for future conflict.
A lot of people, especially
military people, denigrate Lloyd-George as a meddling politician. But Lloyd-George shows conclusively that in
war the winner is not the combatant with the biggest army, best arms, soldiers
and officers, the side that wins the most battles, or kills the most people,
but the belligerent who makes the fewest mistakes and is able to convince its
own population that the frightful cost of war in blood and treasure is worth
it.
If soldiers in combat fight, not for the cause, but for
their buddies to the left and right, then, in Lloyd-George’s words: “Great
leaders of men prove their gift of leadership, by the appeals they address to
those who under their command are called upon to fight against odds.”
Neither the Entente nor the Central Powers were fighting
for particularly noble causes. The allies were fighting for freedoms that none
of their subject peoples, who were also fighting and dying in combat, would see
in the aftermath of the war. Germany
fought out of a sense of wounded pride.
What World War I did do, however, is prove, not once and for all, but at
least once, that democracies are better and more effective ways of organizing a
nation for war than monarchies and dictatorships. It is a lesson that many nations, including
our own, seem to need to learn again.
Lloyd-George shows why
it is impossible to learn the proper lessons from previous conflicts. Maintaining morale among the population
necessarily requires lying: trumpeting victories and minimizing, even hiding,
defeats. Thus, the war people thought
they fought is not the war at all.
Lessons learned on the basis of official histories inevitably lead to the
wrong conclusions. It is not that armies
are always prepared to fight the last war, it is they are trained and prepared
to fight a war that never was. In war,
truth is the first casualty.
For example, in 1917 the French importuned the British to take
over more of the line on the Western Front.
Field Marshall Haig, obsessed with his impending attack in Flanders,
resisted. Histories treat this debate as
a clash of egos. In fact, mutinies in
the French army after the attack on the Chemin des
Dames made them incapable of attack and threatened the entire war effort. The attack had used a rolling barrage of
artillery behind which infantry advanced.
Deaths from “friendly” short shells were expected and common. When the assault failed after horrendous loses,
numerous units mutinied. Generals don’t call allies and say, “Hey, my armies
are mutinying and we can’t conduct offensive operations. How about taking over some of my line,
friend?” Nor do political leaders tell
their citizens to “work harder because the troops are mutinying.”
Another
reason to read this book is for Lloyd-George’s thumbnail sketches of other
leaders: Clemenceau, Wilson, and a multitude of generals and diplomats. He shows how to analyze a situation, how to
take into account positives and negatives of every person and situation. He fleshes out all the dimensions of a
decision and shows how to balance factors.
World War I was a good war to the extent that the children of the
leaders died in it. Lloyd-George does
not mince words or dissemble over the graves of a generation of millions of
young men, the children of his friends and colleagues.
The crowning gem of this book comes
at the end, in his defense accusations made against Douglas Haig’s
Memoirs. Lloyd-George deals with the
structural differences between the military and civilian leadership. In war, it is always easier to blame the
politicians. Blaming the generals can
seem unpatriotic, and the civilian leaders in a democracy are chosen by the
people, so in a way it is easier to blame the people and their representatives
than themselves. Here’s a little piece
of Lloyd-George in his defense of civilian leadership:
“Looking back on this devastating
War and surveying the part played in it by statesmen and soldiers respectively
in its direction I have come definitely to the conclusion that the former
showed too much caution in exerting their authority over the military
leaders….The difficulty, however, all Government experienced was in discovering
capable commanders who could have been relied upon not only to carry out their
policy but to do so efficiently and skillfully. The long siege warfare did not
provide opportunities for resourceful men to come to the top by a display of
superior skill. There was a rigidity and
restrictiveness about the methods employed which allowed no play for
initiative, imagination and inventiveness. The orders issued to divisional and
brigadier Generals and to Colonels from headquarters were precise and could not
be deviated from in any particular without risking a charge of insubordination.
The men on the heights offered no encouragement or chances to genius down
below. The distance between the châteaux and dugouts was as great as that from
the fixed stars to the caverns of earth. No telescope was powerful enough to
discern talent at that depth, even if a look-out were being kept. That is one
reason why no one reached the highest ranks in the British Army except those
who were there or thereabout when the War began. No civilian rose above the
rank of Brigadier, although there must have been hundreds of thousands who had
years of experience in the fighting line – many of them men of exceptional
capacity. Thousands of these men had passed through our Secondary Schools,
hundreds through our Universities, and not a few with distinction. It is incredible
that amongst men of that training and quality there should not have been found
one, fit for high promotion, after years of greater experience of fighting
under modern conditions than any General in the field had acquired. The regular
army before the war numbered something over 250,000. During the War four or
five million young men drawn from every class of the community passed through
its ranks. The wider the range of choice the better the
chance of finding the right men for leadership. Besides, the Army was
never considered to be a career for the talents. Rather the reverse. Boys who
were endowed with brains above their fellows sought other professions where
talent was more welcome and better requited. Independent thinking is not
encouraged in a professional Army. It is a form of mutiny. Obedience is the
supreme virtue. Theirs is not to reason why. Orders are to be carried out and
not canvassed. Criticism is insubordination. The object of discipline is to
accustom men to respond to a command instantly, by instant action, without
thought of effect or consequence. There were many intelligent officers and men
who knew that the orders given them during the War were utterly stupid and must
have been given by Staffs who had no understanding of the conditions. But
orders were orders. And with their men they went to a doom they foresaw was
inevitable. Such an instinctive obedience to the word of command is essential
to the efficiency of a body of men who have to face terror, death or mutilation
in the discharge of their terrible duties. But a long course of mental
subservience and suppression cramps the development and suppleness of the
intellect. It makes ‘an officer and a gentleman’ but it is not conducive to the
building up of an alert, adaptable and resourceful leader of men….” P. 342 – 344, Volume 6.
War Memoirs is a book about the primacy in warfare of
strategy over tactics. Lloyd-George,
first as a bean counter, and then as political leader, paints a unique picture
of World War I that shows the relationship between the two. This is an
indispensible book, especially as the centennial of World War I fast
approaches. It is important, because it
shows the ease with which tens of millions of people can have their lives
thrown away for nothing. In the nuclear
age, these are events the human race can not afford to see repeated. But are we tough enough to put down the
Bible, the Torah and the Koran and save the human race by reading true history
in the War Memoirs of David Lloyd-George? You tell me.
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