Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

‘ MACHINATIONS ’ OF A ‘ MILITARY CLIQUE ’?

193

The War Memoirs are not an objective history of the First World War, but rather an exercise in self-justification that attempts to disguise the extent to which Lloyd George was as willing to challenge constitutional norms as the ‘military party’ he opposed. Neither Robertson, Haig, Maurice, nor any other member of this ‘military party’ seriously attempted to topple the government. There was, however, a clear and obvious power struggle in which both Lloyd George and the Army sought to challenge each other’s constitutional authority and their own constitutional limitations. This in turn was a multi-faceted response to the tensions of war, analysis of which must be broadened beyond the narrow perspective offered by the War Memoirs . Though the British government’s efforts to manage a total war have been characterised as an ‘enormous essay in improvisation’, 68 which caused the traditional conventions of civil-military relations to break down, the evidence suggests that Lloyd George and the ‘military party’ were not merely ‘improvising’, but were deliberately indulging in all manner of political chicanery in the pursuit of their own interpretations of the demands of the war effort. The Army may not have contemplated ousting Lloyd George, but nor did it hesitate to use its supporters in the press and in Parliament to facilitate the introduction of conscription and keep the strategic focus fixed on the Western Front. Lloyd George similarly had no qualms about exploiting his own authority to undermine those senior officers whom he felt were incapable of winning battles. The British Constitution was thus caught between uniformed officers aggressively advancing the Army’s interests on the Commons benches and a Prime Minister bending every rule to breaking point in his desire for control of strategic policy. In this respect, the only difference between the Army’s methods and those of Lloyd George was that the latter proved a better salesman of his own legacy after the war. That neither the ‘frocks’ nor the ‘brass-hats’ were able to claim complete victory over the other, together with the fact that the Constitution survived the war and emerged re-invigorated by the 1918 Representation of the People Act, does not diminish the historical and constitutional significance of this wartime power struggle.

68 French, ‘“A One Man Show?’, p. 76.