Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

‘ MACHINATIONS ’ OF A ‘ MILITARY CLIQUE ’?

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breakthrough on the Somme failed to materialise, Haig invited press baron Lord Northcliffe to tour the front, noting afterwards that Northcliffe was ‘much pleased with his visit’ and had asked Haig to inform him ‘should anything appear in The Times which was not altogether’ to the Army’s liking. 51 Thereafter, Northcliffe ensured that his newspapers portrayed the Army in the best possible light and actively opposed political interference with strategy. On 8 August The Times insisted that conditions behind the lines in France were ‘perfect’. Later that month, Northcliffe wrote to Lloyd George that ‘any wavering now will cost us eventual losses beyond calculation’ . 52 In the autumn, he wrote to Lloyd George’s secretary that ‘I hear L(loyd) G(eorge) has been interfering with strategy’, threatening that ‘if he goes on I will break him’. 53 On 13 October The Daily Mail ran with the headline ‘Politicians and Casualties: Hands Off the Army!’ and insisted that there was ‘no Cabinet Minister’ whom the nation would ‘allow … to interfere with the plans’ of Haig and Robertson. 54 The latter likewise established links with Fleet Street, famously telling Northcliffe that ‘the Boche give me no trouble compared with what I meet in London’. 55 That the Army did not actively seek to topple the government, therefore, did not mean it was unwilling to assert its influence in ways that would have been unimaginable before the war. Yet nor do the Army’s actions absolve Lloyd George, for despite what the War Memoirs would have us believe, the Prime Minister was just as willing to challenge the pre-war orthodoxy of civil-military relations as the ‘military clique’ which he opposed. Lloyd George routinely abused his influence throughout the war to further his objective of civilian control over the military and in doing so employed similar methods to those of the Army. Like Kitchener, he resorted to backchannels, maintaining a private correspondence with the British military attaché in Paris. 56 Moreover, Lloyd George intervened in the conduct of military operations with the deliberate intention of wresting control of strategy from Haig and Robertson. David French has defended this conduct on the basis of Lloyd George’s apparent cognisance of the fact that ‘heavy casualties which secured no apparent gains would soon sap popular support for continuing the war’. 57 Ultimately, however, whether Lloyd George possessed a better grasp of strategy than the generals is irrelevant from a constitutional perspective, as is the fact that he ‘never became the full director of strategy’, 58 given the extent to which constitutional norms were flouted in the pursuit of his objectives. Though Robertson had insisted that ‘politicians and soldiers must each keep within their respective sphere’, 59 Lloyd

51 McEwan, ‘“Brass Hats” and the British Press’, p. 53. 52 McEwan, ‘Northcliffe and Lloyd George at War’, p. 659. 53 Ibid., p. 661. 54 Ibid. 55 McEwan, ‘“Brass Hats” and the British Press’, p. 56. 56 French, ‘“A One Man Show?”, p. 99.

57 Ibid., p. 88. 58 Ibid., p. 46. 59 Ibid., p. 90.