THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR

Britain’s role in the defeat of the Central Powers divides naturally into one which was land-based, or continental, one which was peripheral, and one which was within her longstanding naval traditions. How crucial were these?

The initial contributions to the land-based war were influenced by the perception that Britain was primarily a sea-power. The British Expeditionary Force, under Sir John French, comprised only four divisions in August 1914, compared with the French power of seventy divisions and the German of seventy-two. In the early stages, therefore, the British played a supporting role; they can be seen as the top edge of the blade, but the French provided the blade itself. The BEF slowed down the German advance at Mons in August, but it was the French who bore the full brunt of the German attack at the Marne in September, thereby destroying the Schlieffen Plan. The BEF was more crucial in its own right at the first Battle of Ypres between October and November 1914 and von Kluck, the German commander, observed that the BEF had been the main factor in preventing the German capture of Paris. In the process, over half the British contingent had been killed or wounded. At this point Britain’s military contribution was steadily upgraded. The first attempt to do this was through Lord Kitchener’s scheme of voluntary recruitment which produced, by early 1915, over 1 million British troops, with further additions from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.

These played a vital role at Neuve Chapelle, Loos and the second Battle of Ypres. The final stage was the introduction of conscription in May 1916, which placed Britain on an equal footing with France in bearing the brunt of German strength. While the French defended Verdun, the British attacked the Germans on the Somme. Casualties mounted rapidly to about 420,000 (compared with 194,000 French and 465,000 German).² Despite the futility of this offensive, for which the High Command under Haig was strongly criticised, it has been argued that the Somme and Verdun between them broke the back of the German armies. British troops were also involved in the third Battle of Ypres, or Passchendaele, in which they suffered 324,000 casualties. In the same year, there was a major British initiative at Cambrai, with the first use of tanks to break through German lines. Overall, the British military contribution to the war in France was unsurpassed by any other power—and was to be considerably more important to the eventual defeat of Germany than Britain’s campaigns on the western front during the Second World War.

Britain had on many previous occasions used a peripheral strategy of attacking a continental enemy from different directions. During the First

World War, in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, an attempt was made to assist Russia against the Turks, the reverse of what had happened in the Crimean War (1854–6). The aim was to develop supply lines to Russia to enable the latter to increase its war effort against Germany and thereby relieve the pressure of the Germans on the Western Front. There would be the added advantage of enticing Greece and Romania into the war which would, in turn, increase the pressure on Austria-Hungary. But the whole campaign was a failure and the British and Empire landings at Gallipoli could not be sustained. Much more successful were the British military campaigns in Iraq and Palestine. British forces captured Baghdad in 1917 and an extensive Arab revolt against the Turks was organised by T.E.Lawrence. British troops drove the Turks back and Allenby captured Jerusalem in 1917 and Damascus in 1918. Britain therefore did more than any other power to eliminate Turkey, which signed an armistice on 30 October.

Figure 2 Europe in the First World War

Before the outbreak of war it had always been taken for granted, first, that British seapower was fundamental and, second, that this would be asserted by victories in battle. After all, the last naval engagement on classical lines had been as recent as 1905—the Japanese victory over the Russian fleet at Tsushima. The first assumption was correct, but not the second. During the First World War there were no spectacular engagements, largely because both sides avoided risking their fleets. This applied as much to Admiral Jellicoe as it did to the Germans. Neither of the war’s two major engagements, the Falklands (December 1914) and Jutland (May 1916) can be compared with Tsushima nor, for that matter, with Trafalgar. The importance of Jutland was not that it produced a decisive victory: indeed, Britain lost 14 ships to Germany’s 11. Rather, it induced the Germans to avoid any further risks to their surface fleet by confining it to port for the rest of the war.

This meant that the real struggle at sea was one of attrition, with Britain as the main target and ultimate victor. German strategy was to use unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping supplying the British Isles and France, in an attempt to starve the Allies into submission.

This resulted in heavy losses of merchant shipping (430 ships in April 1917 alone) and several notorious incidents such as the sinking of the Lusitania in April 1915. However, the German attempt led to the entry of the United States into the war, which finally finished off the campaign on the Western Front. Also, the effectiveness of the submarine warfare was greatly reduced when Lloyd George introduced the convoy system to protect merchant shipping in 1917. From this time onwards fewer than 1 per cent of convoyed ships were lost. British attrition depended less on submarine warfare than on a surface blockade of German ports. This, too, was an attempt to prevent essential food supplies and raw materials reaching Germany. It was based very much on traditional principles already well tried and tested a hundred years earlier in the Napoleonic Wars. This eventually did to the Central Powers what the German submarine war failed to do to the Allies: it brought Germany close to starvation and incited mutiny in the fleet at Kiel and Hamburg and also among soldiers at Cologne.

Overall, Britain’s contribution in the First World War might be seen as the most varied and most complete of all the Allied powers. Against the recent trend of her history, she upgraded her forces to play a mainstream military role. This was combined with a peripheral role against the Turks, initially unsuccessful but eventually resulting in Turkey’s defeat. Britain also maintained a crucial naval role, not so much in destroying the German fleet—this had to be left to the Treaty of Versailles—as in containing it and imposing a blockade which undermined from within a war effort

which was being worn down from without. All this presents some important contrasts with Britain’s performance in the Second World War.

Then, Britain could not play an initial continental role because of the early defeat of France. Hence the peripheral role was to prove more important.

Britain also maximised her use of the new dimension of aerial warfare which, between 1914 and 1918, was still in its infancy. Above all, Britain’s key role between 1940 and 1941 was to keep the war going until other stronger adversaries—the Soviet Union and the United States—entered it to destroy Germany. Britain’s role in the First World War was therefore more complete than it had been in any other conflict in her history.

THE POLITICAL IMPACT

It would have been surprising if a military effort on this scale had not led to substantial political changes. Some were apparent in the short term;

others were longer-term trends for which the war had acted as a catalyst;

and one was a political revolution which would, in all probability, not have occurred without the war.

In the shorter term, Britain’s first experience of total war inevitably meant the widening of government powers. This, however, was a gradual process, in contrast to the Second World War, when the transition was immediate (see Chapter 11). In the first instance powers were precautionary, and the country was left largely to continue as normal. The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) of August 1914 enabled the government to impose censorship and to nationalise those industries considered vital to the war effort. As the demands of the front grew, government powers were correspondingly extended. Conscription was introduced for all men under 41 in May 1916, while tough measures were taken against conscientious objectors. Meanwhile, there had been growing government interference in the lives of the British people through a series of smaller measures designed to condition the population to being at war.

A number of Licensing Acts reduced the opening hours of public houses and increased the tax on alcohol; a minimum wage was introduced in munitions factories; the import of luxury goods was controlled by the McKenna Duties; strikes were banned by the Munitions of War Act;

summer time was introduced to save fuel; and food rationing was introduced throughout the country in 1918. Underlying all these changes was an unprecedented increase in government-sponsored information.

This took the form especially of atrocity propaganda, designed to induce a ferocious hatred of the enemy. It was done in the form of posters, cartoons and lurid descriptions of alleged brutality on women and children.

Particularly sensational was the coverage of the shooting of nurse Edith

Cavell by the Germans in 1915 for helping the escape of Allied soldiers. At first propaganda was co-ordinated by Charles Masterman from the National Health Insurance Commission. Eventually in 1916 Lloyd George set up a Department of Information and also a National War Aims Committee. Finally he elevated the Department to a Ministry in 1918 and placed it under Lord Beaverbrook.

Along with extended governmental powers came an experiment in coalition politics. This went through four distinct phases.

At first there was little change. There had been no real precedent for a war of this scale and intensity; it was therefore assumed that it could be pursued by the normal process of party government. After all, one of Asquith’s main concerns in August 1914 had been to prevent any split in his Liberal administration which might lead to a more broadly based one.

It soon became apparent, however, that Asquith was essentially a peacetime Prime Minister, preferring to leave the conduct of the war to the military. Increasingly, however, he came under heavy criticism. This led to the second stage, in which Asquith conceded that he would have to extend the range of his administration.

The immediate reason was the shells scandal of 1915, occasioned by the inadequacy of munitions production. According to The Times: ‘British soldiers are dying in vain because more shells are needed. The government, who have so severely failed to organise adequately our national resources, must bear their share of the grave responsibility’.³ Asquith was made to see the limitations of the Liberal government and set up a coalition in May 1915. This comprised several Conservatives, and Arthur Henderson as the sole Labour member, as well as Liberals. The specific cause of the crisis was dealt with by placing Lloyd George in charge of the Ministry of Munitions

—but this was to be the political base from which more damaging attacks were to be made upon Asquith in the future.

The third stage was the creation of a more genuine coalition, under a new Prime Minister. It was Asquith’s misfortune that there was in the background a rival willing to take on the burdens of wartime leadership;

the same applied to Neville Chamberlain in 1940. Lloyd George made two recommendations for the more effective conduct of the struggle against Germany. One was the introduction of conscription, which Asquith did reluctantly concede. The other demand was that the political and military leadership of the war should be more closely integrated in the form of a smaller war cabinet. Since this would be alien to Asquith’s style of government, Lloyd George advanced himself as an alternative leader and received large-scale support both at Westminster and from the press. His pressure succeeded and Asquith was forced to give way to Lloyd George in

December 1916. Under the latter’s leadership, the new coalition saw Britain through to victory by November 1918.

By this time, Lloyd George had been able to convert his wartime leadership into a peacetime equivalent, thus carrying coalition politics into a fourth phase. He received his mandate in the general election of December 1918 in which the ‘coupon’ agreement, drawn up between the Conservatives and a large part of the Liberal Party, produced a landslide victory. The supporters of the Coalition won 478 seats, 335 of which went to the Conservatives, 133 to the Liberals and 10 to Labour. The opposition included 23 non-Coalition Conservatives, 28 Asquithian Liberals and 63 Labour MPs, while the 73 Sinn Fein members refused to take up their seats at Westminster. The new peacetime coalition therefore had a working majority of 332. Lloyd George had the clearest possible peacetime mandate. He exercised it abroad as a statesman of international renown, playing the linchpin role at the Paris peace-conference. At home, he lost some of the powers he had held under the Defence of the Realm Act but nevertheless retained his quasi-presidential image, aloof from the party-political struggle which afflicted lesser premiers with smaller majorities. At least, this was the case until 1922, when his luck, reputation and support all ran out. At their inner sanctum, the Carlton Club, the Conservative party decided on 29 October that the time for coalitions and mercurial statesmen had run out. Party politics should now be resumed, even if it meant the accession of Andrew Bonar Law, whose best-known comment on authority had been: ‘I must follow them; I am their leader!’

Why was Lloyd George able to maintain an unchallenged ascendancy for six years? The early impetus was provided by the special circumstances of World War I. These placed a premium on the sort of characteristics which in peacetime would be associated with a political maverick:

boldness, a capacity to take swift decisions with minimal consultation and a capacity for charismatic and inspirational leadership. Much the same applied to the opportunity given to Churchill by World War II. In the circumstances, who else was there? Asquith had already had his chance—

and had shown his limitations. Andrew Bonar Law was probably the least striking leader the Conservatives had ever had, while his rival within the party, Lord Curzon, was deeply unpopular for his arrogant style. Once installed in December 1916, Lloyd George made his position impregnable by fundamentally rearranging the structure of his administration. He established an Imperial War Cabinet, comprising selected politicians and military leaders and served by a streamlined secretariat under Sir Maurice Hankey. This was ideally suited to the authoritarian style which Lloyd George preferred. He was also fortunate in that the Conservatives were prepared to concede him this power. They were genuinely convinced that

he was preferable to Asquith and for them he had the additional recommendation of polarising the Liberals into two mutually hostile factions. The latter point encouraged the Conservatives to keep him in power after the war as well. As a powerful leader without a party base, he was for a while acceptable to a powerful party which lacked an effective leader. Bonar Law was the first to recognise his own shortcomings, although he conceded rather more to Lloyd George than the rest of the Conservative party would have wished: ‘He can be Prime Minister for life if he likes.’

In fact, Lloyd George survived another four years and failed to reach another general election. Once the immediate requirements of the war had ended, his administration became more and more vulnerable. The rot set in with its inappropriate economic measures; it has, for example, been argued that he brought the post-war boom to a premature end by an unnecessarily severe policy of deflation which actually precipitated the collapse it was supposed to prevent. In addition, the Geddes Axe of 1922 removed at a blow the credibility of his promises to build ‘homes fit for heroes’ and to implement the measures in the 1918 Education Act. There was also a general malaise in industrial relations, which was not helped when Lloyd George decided to implement the 1919 Sankey Report by returning coal mines to private ownership. This provided the catalyst for a series of miners’ strikes which eventually culminated in the General Strike of 1926 (see Chapter 6). Lloyd George’s reputation was further tarnished by allegations of corruption at home through the sale of political honours in return for contributions to a political fund under his control. In fact, this was a manifestation of his greatest weakness—the lack of a party base.

He had become acutely conscious of this by 1920, when he had tried, unsuccessfully, to form a ‘national party’ which would have merged his own Liberal supporters with the majority of the Conservatives. By 1922, therefore, it was apparent that one of the most powerful prime ministers in British history had also become the most vulnerable to sudden desertion.

The occasion for this was his mishandling of the Chanak crisis in the Ottoman Empire, which the Conservatives used as an opportunity to withdraw their support. The case for doing this was strongly put by Stanley Baldwin at the 1922 Carlton Club meeting. Lloyd George, he argued, had become as much a danger to the Conservatives as to the Liberals. The very remoteness of his presidential position, once beneficial, was now an impediment to political progress.

He is a dynamic force, and it is from that very fact that our troubles, in my opinion, arise. A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you but it is not necessarily right. It is owing to that dynamic

force, and that remarkable personality, that the Liberal party, to which he formerly belonged, has been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same thing will happen to our party.⁴

The extraordinary career of Lloyd George can be seen as an immediate political effect of the First World War. There were, however, longer-term results, related largely to party politics. In each case there was an apparent contradiction: the eventual effects on each of the parties seemed diametrically opposed to their initial fortunes on the outbreak of war. This apparent contradiction would seem to indicate the importance of the war in transforming those fortunes.

Before the beginning of the war the Liberals were experiencing great difficulties. They had clung to power in the election of December 1910 only through the support of the Irish Nationalists, and it seemed that they would lose the next general election which would be held in 1915 at the

Before the beginning of the war the Liberals were experiencing great difficulties. They had clung to power in the election of December 1910 only through the support of the Irish Nationalists, and it seemed that they would lose the next general election which would be held in 1915 at the