now arose in Colonel Wilson's mind, What was to be done with the Force? That was a question with which he had nothing to do. It was a question for the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the country. Sir Edward Grey has given a full account of the process by which a decision was reached. The decision was not easy. Time was required. This was the delay that reduced Colonel Wilson to tears. He had aided and abetted the French in their belief. He had helped to incur that debt of honour which fell to others to be paid. When this came to light in the awful glare of war, England did not find herself so free to abstain, or free to enter, as Sir Edward Grey makes out in his elaborate defence. England was already compromised. She was to that extent no longer a sovereign State.

The real complaint against Colonel Wilson is not that his strategy was secret and French but that it was false, and that he led, or forced, England into war by the wrong road in opposition to those who knew better. The relation between Lord Kitchener and Sir Henry Wilson never was cordial. From his early days he had no high opinion of Kitchener's capacity. In March 1896, he was 'mightily disgusted at the way things are going in Egypt.' But in South Africa, this brigade-major was no better pleased with Buller. Lord Kitchener first met Wilson face to face in 1909 at the Staff College. The meeting was not auspicious for that great soldier: 'He attacked me,' writes Wilson, 'about trying to form a "school of thought," but he got no change out of me, and he really talked a great deal of nonsense' (1, 84). This school of thought was the French school whose teaching turned out so disastrous to themselves as well as to us. Lord Kitchener, on Aug. 6, 1914, took charge at the War Office. His first official act excited Wilson's violent indignation,' as it might interfere with Wilson's own arrangements. It turned out that Wilson had misinformed himself. He was in that temper when Kitchener sent for him. On the previous day, Kitchener, through the French Embassy, had asked that a specially accredited officer be sent from France to consult with him. The officer, General Huguet, arrived in the morning. Wilson had a 'long talk' with him, and the officer returned to France without having seen Lord Kitchener.

As a result, Kitchener was angry, angrier still because Wilson had told the French officer everything, and committed the Secretary of State to a decision he had not yet taken. Wilson's behaviour in this trying situation is described by himself, 'I answered back, as I have no intention of being bullied by him, especially when he talks such nonsense' (1, 160).

There was one more meeting with Lord Kitchener at the War Office, this time on Aug. 12; present, French, Murray, Wilson, and three French officers (1, 162). There we wrangled with K. for three hours. K. wanted to go to Amiens, and he was incapable of understanding the delays and difficulties of making such a change or the cowardice of it. He still thinks the Germans are coming north of the Meuse in great force, and will swamp us before we can concentrate.' Apparently it was more important to go to the wrong place than to have Lord Kitchener hopelessly messing up our plans' (1, 160). The army concentrated at Maubeuge, not at Amiens. It was overwhelmed. The Germans did come in great force north of the Meuse. The word 'cowardice' is not a nice word in the mouth of a soldier. The word is 'not applicable,' as they say in the army, to Lord Kitchener. He may well have consoled himself with the Fable of 'The Lion worn out with old age.' At 'the historic meeting of men, mostly ignorant of their subject,' which Wilson describes under date of Aug. 5, 1914, the ignorant men were Lord Kitchener, Lord Roberts, Prince Louis of Battenberg, Sir Douglas Haig, Mr Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Mr Churchill, six Generals, and three Colonels, including Wilson himself. Various proposals were made, that now appear to have been so sensible that Wilson thought them 'platitudes.' Sir Douglas Haig was modest enough to ask questions, and this led to our discussing strategy like idiots' (1, 158). Inasmuch as the strategy that issued out of the discussion was not adopted, and the strategy issuing out of Wilson's discussions with the French High Command during the four previous years was adopted, and failed, it is an easy surmise that the idiocy lay elsewhere. The caution of ignorance is less dangerous than the rashness of presumption.

Sir Henry Wilson was Commandant of the Staff

College from 1907 to 1910, and Director of Military Operations from that year until the War. During all that period he was in close, continuous, and confidential communication with the French General-staff. He above all men should have had a correct opinion upon the fundamental problems that faced the Empire, namely, the possibility of war, the duration and extent of it, and the number of troops that might be required. If he was wrong in this, his staff work was fantastic and his strategy grotesque. He was wrong. Let us examine his diary, first, upon the possibility of war-July 26, 1914: My own opinion is that if Germany does not mobilise to-day, there will be no war. July 27: I think there will not be any war. July 28: At 3 p.m. a note came from Asquith ordering the 'precautionary period.' I don't know why we are doing it, because there is nothing moving in Germany. July 30: War seems inevitable. July 31: We are in the soup.

His judgment upon the duration of the War is equally clear and equally fallacious. Aug. 5, 1914: The editor condenses. He spent an hour and a half with Sir John and Haig when the latter made the suggestion that troops ought not to cross the water for two or three months, during which period 'the immense resources of the Empire' could be developed. But Wilson pointed out that there were no resources for a long war, the view being very generally entertained that the contest would be a brief one (1, 158). Sept. 13, probably : Berthelot asked me when I thought we should cross into Germany, and I replied that unless we made some serious blunder we ought to be at Elsenborn' in four weeks. He thought three weeks (1, 177). Sept. 15 (Letter): If we drive in the force in front of us, we won't have any more trouble till we get to the Meuse (1, 177). Oct. 3: I still think the War will be over in February or March (1, 181). Oct. 26: I still think we shall finish in the Spring (1,185). May 4, 1915: Joffre talked of getting to Namur and the War being over in three months (1, 225). This was the official judgment of the British and French general staffs. It prevailed to the ends of the Empire. It governed the mobilisation in Canada, for example, by methods which imposed to this day an extra debt of two hundred million dollars, and wrenched

the Constitution so that it has not yet recovered from the strain.

The number of troops that might be required was the next vital problem. Upon this the diary is unmistakably clear. Equally clear is the editor of the diary that the diarist was wrong, and that Lord Kitchener was right. Lord Kitchener, he says, 'entertained no illusions as to the potentialities of the British Expeditionary Force. He perceived that this little army would be totally incapable of exercising a decisive influence, and he perceived it before that little army had quitted the shores of the United Kingdom. But Wilson's influence with Sir John French's entourage was strong. He consistently and effectively ridiculed the Secretary of State's designs and intentions. General headquarters followed his lead' (1, 162). Under date of Sept. 15, 1914, the diary contains this entry, written from France, when the War had been in progress for about six weeks: 'Kitchener's shadow armies for shadow campaigns, at unknown and different dates, prevent a lot of good officers, non-commissioned officers, and men from coming out. It is a scandalous thing. Under no circumstances can these mobs now being raised, without officers, and non-commissioned officers, without guns, rifles or uniforms, without rifle-ranges or training grounds, without supply or transport services, without moral or tradition, knowledge or experience-under no circumstances could these mobs take the field for two years. Then what is the use of them?' Two days later he wrote: His ridiculous and preposterous army of 25 corps is the laughing-stock of every soldier in Europe. It took the Germans 40 years of incessant work to make an army of 25 corps with the aid of conscription; it will take us to all eternity to do the same by voluntary effort' (1, 178).

And yet, within four months, from three thousand miles overseas came a Division of these 'shadows,' and to the German soldiers at Ypres they were not a laughing-stock. On April 22, they bore the brunt of the attack with poisonous gas, which would have been new and strange even to real soldiers, and Ypres was saved. 'But he could not withhold his admiration of the enemy's General-staff for accomplishing so much under the con

ditions that existed at the time' (1, 223)-this is the comment of the editor who, in proof, recites the diary for that day: 'The Germans did this by those noxious gases and without reinforcements, for they have none,' he wrote home, and so it was a very fine performance' (1, 223). This letter was to an Englishwoman—and Canadian mothers weeping for their children. In all these 753 pages of diary this commendation of the German General-staff is the only hint that nearly half a million Canadians were engaged on the Western Front. Of those at Vimy, there is one single line, and yet the terrain they captured must have been familiar, as it had been lost to the Germans by General Wilson himself in May 1916, when he commanded the IV corps. Neither Australians nor New Zealanders came under the notice of this Imperial Chief. Their name does not live even in the index.

War breeds lies as the earth breeds worms. That was a saying of Napoleon's, and he should know. In the vain attempt to deceive the enemy we succeeded in really deceiving ourselves. Retreat was victory; disaster triumph; to turn away was a clever stroke in naval tactics. People really were persuaded that this retreat to the Marne was the original plan of strategy, but it was carefully concealed from them that the plan cost 600,000 men. In this retreat from Mons, heralded at the time as 'a defensive battle,' one point of light emerges, when Smith-Dorrien 'turned upon an enemy of at least twice his strength, struck him hard, and withdrew practically without interference.' This decision to stand and fight instead of continuing the retreat was in direct opposition to his orders from headquarters, although finally Sir John French, who did not quite grasp what it involved, and in spite of all I could say, agreed.' Wilson adds the jealous words: This will lead to disaster, or ought to' (1, 168). And the cause of the defeat at Mons, he alleges, was the decision of the Cabinet to retain two divisions in England. And yet it must have been easier to extricate four divisions than six, unless indeed those six were able to arrest and defeat the whole invading German army. At any cost the Government must be put in the wrong.

A soldier may be 'all right in fighting,' as Sir John Vol. 251.-No. 497.

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