kept them dumb when it was their duty to speak out. This inarticulate phase ended with the appointment of Sir William Robertson as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but difference of opinion persisted.

How frequent and how acute it was can be appreciated fully only by those who have read carefully the many chapters of " Soldiers and Statesmen," in which are recorded a comprehensive indictment of Mr. Lloyd George's conceptions of war and his methods of conducting it as Prime Minister. The story, for which so concise a writer as Sir William Robertson requires the greater part of two stout volumes, cannot be told here in a few pages: readers of this review can only be urged to read for themselves what the Field Marshal has to tell his fellow countrymen of the difficulties under which our General Staff laboured throughout 1917, and in 1918 until the German spring offensive, cutting the tangle of confused policies, "compelled a return to the principles of 1916, and to a better, if belated recognition of the fact that military work is best left to military people to do "a sentence which is itself a vindication of Mr. Asquith if there are those who still think he requires one.

Sir William Robertson's principal charges against Mr. Lloyd George are in respect of his Balkan policy early in the war, his later advocacy of using British troops against Austria in the Italian theatre of war, his constant desire to enlarge the scope of our operations in Palestine and, in 1917, his subordination of Sir Douglas Haig to General Nivelle without consulting his own responsible military advisers. For Mr. Lloyd George's methods there is nothing to be said. It is clear that he had no confidence in either the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London or the Field Marshal commanding the British armies in France and that, consequently, he repeatedly went behind their backs in efforts to get his own policy carried out. In doing this he showed both weakness of character and lack of understanding of his duties and responsibilities. Sir William Robertson puts the case very well when he says:

The function of the civil chief, the Prime Minister, is to appoint the naval and military chiefs, avoiding like the plague, all idea of balancing suspected inefficiency in these officers by seeking a second opinion from others. If they fail to retain his confidence they should be replaced, not supplemented, by those who have it.

So wide was the divergence of view between Mr. Lloyd George and Sir William Robertson that one is tempted to see in it a typical example of a deep mutual repulsion between two specialisations, that of the statesman and that of the soldier. Perhaps, however, the cause of the divergence lay nearer the surface and was in great measure due to a feeling in" the statesmen "that the soldiers" had misjudged gravely the possibilities of offensive action on the Western Front in the pre-tank phase of the war, and that our failure to deal adequately with Turkey in 1915 was prolonging the war. Hence the frantic search for those "short cuts to winning the war " on which Sir William Robertson is so severe. Obviously it was the duty of "the statesmen to try to win the war as quickly as possible: not only was Great Britain being depleted of its man power but, by the time America came into the war, its credit was in process of being exhausted, owing to the demands of the Allies and the interference with our commerce upon which that credit depends. Where "the statesmen went wrong in 1917 was in failing to realise that the introduction of tanks had altered fundamentally the prospects of offensive action on the Western Front, and that, the opportunities of 1915 having been thrown away, it was too late to attempt anything in the East to save Russia. In 1917 the only help we could give Russia was indirectly by a sustained offensive in France and Flanders, as advocated by Sir William Robertson, to the annoyance of the Prime Minister, who still preferred any alternative other than severe fighting in France, even though such fighting at last had prospects of decisive results.

It was not only the British General staff which suffered from the interference of the statesmen: "interference from above" is a common complaint of the soldiers of all the countries engaged in the war, one of the most flagrant instances being provided by our principal ally in the curious episode of Nivelle's offensive in 1917. That these difficulties are not due to a democratic form of government is clear from the story the German and Austrian leaders have told of the conduct of the war by the Governments of the Central Powers. The German Higher Command was changed three times as against one change in the command of the British armies in France. Readers of Ludwig's illuminating study of the psychology of William II will not feel that British Ministers, with all their faults and limitations, were worse

masters to serve than the German Emperor. As Sir William Robertson says:

Mistakes in management are to be found in all wars as in every other kind of business, and having regard to the length of the one here described, to the disadvantages under which we began it, and to the intense strain imposed upon those charged with its conduct, the wonder is that the mistakes made were not more numerous and the friction set up more acute. In both respects the Entente had a better record than the Central Powers.

The assurance that in the matter of "friction in war" our record was better than that of the Central Powers is, however, poor comfort the point is how in a future war to reduce that friction to a minimum at the place where it is most dangerous, viz., at the top. This postulates a simple organization and a full mutual understanding, by both statesmen and soldiers, of each other's duties and difficulties. To quote Sir William Robertson

once more :

The real headquarters of armies in these days are to be found not in the field abroad, but at the seat of Government at home, and plans of campaign are, and must be, now analysed and criticized by civilian ministers at the council table in a way quite unknown a few decades ago. The Field-Marshal's solution of the problem is to urge soldiers who exercise high command, without in any way becoming what are termed political generals, to know something about politics and to try to understand the way in which ministers look, and must necessarily look, at political things.

This is good advice as far as it goes, and Sir William admits it is easier said than done; but surely, its corollary is that "the statesmen" should also be educated to understand something of the point of view of "the soldiers" without becoming amateur strategists. This may seem to some, who remember the war and the influence upon it of amateur strategy, an unattainable ideal, yet others may see grounds for hope of a brighter future in the present organization of the Committee of Imperial Defence and in the recent birth of its youngest child, the Imperial Defence College it all depends how the former organization is worked in practice and how the latter institution develops during its next few important years.

In 1923, the whole question of Imperial Defence was reviewed by the Government. As a consequence of this stock-taking, certain changes were effected in the Committee of Imperial

Defence in 1924, of which the most important were a clear definition of its responsibilities and initiative, and above all, the creation of what is known as " the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee." This sub-committee is composed of the First Sea Lord in his capacity as Chief of the Naval Staff, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the Chief of the Air Staff. It is the duty of these three military experts (using the word military in its widest sense) to keep in close touch with one another and, through the Committee of Imperial Defence, with the Cabinet on all major questions of war and preparation for war, including projected operations. They are no longer the dumb experts, whose mistaken sense of departmental loyalty allowed their civilian chiefs to drift to disaster at Gallipoli; they now have enforced upon them the duty of being vocal, and are responsible to the Government for the advice they give. A duty which is not laid upon them in so many words, though inherent in this new aspect of their functions, is the education of ministers in all the wider aspects of war. This education will be the more effective for being unconscious: from each problem discussed and each project examined in common, the technical experts, without becoming, in Sir William Robertson's phrase, " political generals," will learn as much as is good for them to know of the point of view of " the statesmen," while the latter will gradually acquire the habit of understanding the language spoken by "the soldiers" and of appreciating the vital fact that ability in persuasion and dialectical skill are out of place when considering projected operations of war, which must stand or fall by their intrinsic merits and by them alone.

If the Imperial Defence College is allowed the scope which its advocates desire, it will play a great and increasing part in the education for co-operation in war of the military and civil elements in our imperial organization. One of its most important functions is to accustom selected members of the Civil Service to study the problem of Imperial Defence in common with representatives of the fighting services. Modern war is no longer the business of the so-called fighting services alone: it calls for a national effort involving the activity of every civil department which administers the life of the nation. In the immediate future much will depend on the wisdom of the selections made from the Civil Service for the courses at the Imperial Defence College: if the Civil

Service will but give of its best for co-operation in the common cause of mutual education and understanding, the country will reap great benefit in a future war through elimination of avoidable friction. If it does not do so, its chiefs will incur a heavy responsibility. The two great reforms which have been referred to above, the reorganization of the Committee of Imperial Defence and the institution of the Imperial Defence College, are admirable measures of peace-time preparation for war. There remains the question of the supreme control during war itself. Is the Committee of Imperial Defence a suitable instrument? It comprises no less than nine British ministers (besides representatives of the Dominions), as well as the three chiefs of the staff. In war, will it not be too cumbrous a machine? A Sanhedrin like those which, under various names, mismanaged the national effort in the late war? That is a danger which perhaps can be avoided only by the Prime Minister's having so great an ascendancy over his Cabinet colleagues, that in war he will himself decide all important questions of war policy with the advice of the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee. In short, the Cabinet must trust the Prime Minister sufficiently to accept responsibility for any decision he may take on the advice of his technical advisers. This brings us very nearly to the working organization which Chatham introduced after the dark days of 1757. His methods were autocratic. "I will be responsible for nothing I do not direct," he said to his Cabinet; but in what he ordered he had the advice of two experts, upon whom he leaned-Anson, for the navy, and Ligonier for the army. "For practical purposes," General Ellison reminds us, " these three formed a triumvirate to conduct strategy and operations, Pitt the statesman and Foreign Minister being primus inter pares."

Against this suggestion it may be urged that it presupposes on the one hand a Pitt and on the other a Cabinet complacent in its self-effacement, while it contains an element of danger in the apparent enhancement of the Prime Minister's power, surely to be deprecated in the light of Sir William Robertson's revelations of the war-time activities of Mr. Lloyd George.

To the first objections the answer is that Pitt's system can be worked by a lesser man than Pitt, provided the technical help he receives is as good as that given by Anson and Ligonier, and there is no reason to anticipate that the Sub-Committee of Chiefs of the