Here is the final part of our excerpt from Professor Cassar's
Upon taking power, Lloyd George inherited all his key generals and admirals including two highly professional service chiefs, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe as First Sea Lord and Major-General Sir William Robertson as CIGS. The two were much respected and supported by the press and general public, as well as by their service commanders, Sir David Beatty, Admiral of the Fleet, and General Sir Douglas Haig with the BEF. Before going on, it might be useful to discuss briefly the four senior service advisers who formed a sort of élite group.
As naval commander, Jellicoe had faced the greatest test of his career when he encountered the German High Seas Fleet off Jutland at the end of May 1916. The battle proved to be a strategic, if not a tactical, victory. Jellicoe received much criticism for not pressing home the attack in the Nelson tradition and allowing the German High Seas Fleet to slip away and return to its base. Still, the German navy did not venture out of its home base again for the remainder of the war, leaving the British in effective control of the North Sea. Jellicoe laid down command of the Grand Fleet after two years to take over the task of First Sea Lord in November 1916, a position for which he was poorly suited. His health had deteriorated under the strain of wartime command and overwork, due in part to his reluctance to delegate authority. He was considerate and self-effacing, alert, intellectually gifted, excelled as a sailor and handler of ships, traditional in outlook, and held in the greatest esteem by all ranks in the service. What he lacked were strength of character and debating skills, severe handicaps when dealing with slippery and articulate politicians in Whitehall.
The government’s chief military advisor was Sir William Robertson, a talented administrator who, incredibly enough, started out as a private and rose to the highest rank in the army as a result of innate shrewdness, immense energy, and obsessive devotion to his profession. Of humble origins, Robertson dropped out of public school when he was 13 and worked at menial jobs before enlisting in the army at the age of 17. “Wully,” as he was affectionately called, was tall, powerfully built, ruggedly handsome and in excellent physical condition. He was earthy, graceless, blunt, and could be read as easily as a book. Like all the leading soldiers, he correctly identified the Western Front as the only place where the Germans could be beaten and strenuously opposed the diversion of resources to secondary theaters. He believed that, in order to triumph, the Allies must deny the German army respite and wear down its strength through repeated small-scale attacks with limited objectives.
Robertson’s Achilles heel was a lack of perspective, an inability to see the other side of an argument or to work in harmony with politicians questioning his military views. Another shortcoming was his failure to perceive that his proper role was to act as liaison between the government and General Headquarters in France, not as Haig’s advocate. His relations with Lloyd George were bad from the start and grew progressively worse.
Rare but Revealing Photograph of Lloyd George
with General Haig During a Visit to the Western Front
Robertson and Haig were never close friends, but they formed what David Woodward describes as “the most important and influential military partnership in British history.” Both were Scottish and every bit the professional. The two had served in India and later in the 1890s attended the Staff College at Camberley. They recognized that coalition warfare imposed restraints on British freedom of action. They shared a common disdain of politicians, and although they did not always see eye-to-eye at the operational level, were united in their belief that the war could only be won on the Western Front.
Time and time again Haig would induce Robertson to bend to his will. One can only speculate why someone as tough-minded and opinionated as Robertson would habitually defer to Haig. The reason, it would seem, was not so much because Robertson was awed or felt socially inferior, but because he was convinced that any split between the two would be exploited by the politicians to further their own agendas.
Lloyd George’s relations with Haig would be just as stormy as they were with Robertson. He regarded Haig as rigid, unimaginative, and delusional, with no idea of how to win the war, other than to charge like a bull at the enemy’s impregnable front. The most obvious solution was to replace Haig, but that option was unavailable to Lloyd George at the beginning of his tenure. The Tories had made Haig’s retention a condition for their participation in his government. Without confidence in the High Command, Lloyd George tried to take control of the war and shift the effort against Germany’s allies. If successful, he claimed, it would so weaken Germany as to compel its leaders to come to terms.
Lloyd George seemed to have shaken the government from top to bottom by the institutional changes that he had introduced, but what then were the challenges that Lloyd George faced and how would history judge his success in meeting them? John Ehrman was right on the mark when he observed that a prime minister engaged in total war was required to carry out three vital tasks: mobilize the home front; devise a coherent strategy; and keep up the nation’s fighting spirit. It remained to be seen whether Lloyd George had the wherewithal to respond effectively, or reasonably so, to the exigencies both at home and on the battlefield.
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