Слике страница
PDF
ePub

over the present and existing system? The first is that the information which is at the disposal of each of the allied staffs would then be at the disposal of this central council. Nominally that is so now, but it is only nominal. [Mr. Asquith] suggested that we should have something in the nature of liaison officers. That is the present system, and I do not believe that any general staff would say that it has at its disposal now all the information which is possessed by every general staff, even with regard to their own front, let alone with regard to the enemy. This central body will have distinguished representatives of each army upon it. Each of these representatives will be supplied with information from his own general staff. They will therefore be able, in the first instance, to co-ordinate information, and information is the basis of good strategy.

MILITARY COUNCIL SITS PERMANENTLY

What is the second point? They would sit continuously; it would be a permanent body. If the House will recollect, those are the very words used by the soldiers in that document which I have read when they recommended the setting up of a central permanent organization. Permanency is an essential part of it. The present system is a sporadic one, where you have got meetings perhaps once every three or four months, and barely that, for there is only one meeting a year between the whole of the staffs-that has been the rule-for the purpose of settling the strategy of the Allies over the whole of the battle fronts, which extend over thousands and thousands of miles, with millions of men in embattled array upon these fronts. A single day, with perhaps a morning added! No generals, however great their intuition, no generals, whatever their genius, could settle the strategy of a year at a sitting which only lasts over five or six hours. Utterly impossible! Therefore it is an essential part of the scheme that this body should be permanent, that they should sit together day by day, with all the information derived from every front before them, with the view to co-ordinating the plans of the general staffs over all the fronts.

COUNCIL SURVEYS WHOLE Field

The third point is that it will be the duty of this central body to survey the whole field and not merely a part of it. It may be said that each general staff does that at the present moment. In a sense they are bound, of course, to consider not merely their own front, but other fronts as

NAVAL STRATEGY CO-ORDINATED

369 well, but it is a secondary matter. They naturally do not devote the same study to other fronts, and there is always a delicacy on the part of any general staff when it comes to interfere with the sphere of another general staff and another general. It is quite natural that they may say, "It is quite as much as we can do to look after our own particular front." There is a delicacy even in making suggestions. . . .

We have come to the conclusion that the mere machinery of liaison officers, the mere machinery of occasional meetings of ministers, of occasional meetings of chiefs of the staff, once or twice a year is utterly inadequate, utterly inefficient, for the purpose of securing real co-ordination, and that you must have a permanent body that would be constantly watching these things, constantly advising upon them, constantly reporting upon them to the Governments, whether it is our front, the French front, the Italian front, or the Russian front.

INFORMATION FROM NAVY

Now I come to the next point put by [Mr. Asquith] with regard to the navy. I quite assure [him] that the representation of the navy here is not an afterthought. It is essential that all the information with regard to naval operations and co-operation, it is essential that these military advisers should have someone there constantly in touch with them to inform them about that. It is a different thing from a naval council to co-ordinate naval strategy. There is a good deal to be said for that. We are suffering even in that sphere, as any one who knows what has been happening in the Mediterranean can tell. ...

Now, if that speech was wrong I cannot plead any impulse. I cannot plead that it was something I said in the heat of the moment. I had considered it, and I did it for a deliberate purpose. I have seen resolutions for unity and for co-ordination. Where are they? You might as well have thrown them straight away into the waste-paper basket. Lord Kitchener tried it on January 28, 1915. I have seen other schemes by M. Briand and [Mr. Asquith], yet, somehow or other, they all came to nought, because naturally you got the disinclination of independent bodies to merge their individualities in a sort of common organization. It is inevitable and I was afraid that this would end in the same sort of way.1

1

1 Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, XCIX, 895-898, 899, 901.

III. PROCEEDINGS OF INTERALLIED CONFERENCE

The date first set for the meeting of the Interallied Conference was November 16. But on November 14 the Painlevé ministry in France was overthrown and the reconstitution of the government with Georges Clemenceau as premier and minister of war did not occur until the 19th. England produced a brake to smooth progress when, simultaneously with these events, a drive against Premier Lloyd George began in Parliament for his having supposedly curtailed the power of the general staff by assenting to the Rapallo agreement. His answer on November 19, quoted in part above, silenced his critics. Meantime the head of the American mission then in London gave out for publication the fact that the President had cabled that the United States Government considered unity of plan and control between the Allies and America essential. The effect of this can be appreciated by realizing that as respected supplies America was at the time the Providence of the Allies, as Lloyd George remarked later without any objection from the general staff. With Clemenceau at the head of things in France and the British general staff once more off its feet and down to business, the way was clear for the meeting of the conference.

The Interallied Conference convened on November 29, 1917, at the Quai d'Orsay. That it was an important gathering can readily be seen from the mere list of the principal delegates:

France.-Georges Clemenceau, premier and minister of war; Stephen Pichon, minister of foreign affairs; Louis L. Klotz, minister of finance; Georges Leygues, minister of marine; Etienne Clementel, minister of commerce; Louis Loucheur, minister of munitions; Victor Boret, minister of provisions; M. Lebrun, minister of blockade and invaded region; André Tardieu, high commissioner to the United States; Jean Jules Cambon, general secretary to the Foreign Office; P. de Margerie, director of the ministry of foreign affairs.

DELEGATES TO CONFERENCE

371

Great Britain.-David Lloyd George, premier; Lord Milner, member of the War Cabinet without portfolio; Arthur James Balfour, secretary of state for foreign affairs; Lord Bertie, ambassador to France; Sir Eric Campbell Geddes, first lord of the Admiralty; General Sir William Robertson, chief of the imperial staff at army headquarters; Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, chief of the naval staff; Col. Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary to the Committee on Imperial Defense; Lord Reading, special adviser on financial matters.

United States.-William Graves Sharp, ambassador to France; Edward Mandell House, chairman of special mission; Admiral William S. Benson, chief of naval operations; General Tasker H. Bliss, chief of staff; Oscar Terry Crosby, assistant secretary of the Treasury; Vance C. McCormick, chairman of the War Trade Board; Thomas Nelson Perkins of the Priority Board.

Italy.-Vittorio E. Orlando, premier and minister of the interior; Baron Sonnino, foreign minister; Francesco S. Nitti, minister of the Treasury; Count Bonin-Longare, ambassador to France; Signor Bianchi, minister of transports; General Alfredo dall' Olio, minister of munitions; General Cadorna.

Japan.-Viscount Chinda, ambassador to Great Britain; Mr.

Matsui.

Belgium.-Baron Charles de Broqueville, foreign minister; Baron de Gaiffier d'Hestroy, minister to France; General Rucquoy, chief of the general staff.

Serbia.-Nikola P. Pachich, premier and minister of foreign affairs; Milenko R. Vesnich, minister to France.

Rumania.-V. Antonescu, minister to France; General Iliescu, chief of the general staff.

Greece. Elephtherios Constantine Venizelos, premier and minister of war; Athos Romanos, minister to France; Alexander Diomedes, former minister of finance; M. Agyropoulos, governor of Macedonia; Colonel Frantzis; M. Rottassis, naval attaché.

Portugal.-Affonso Costa, premier and minister of finance; Augusto Soares, minister of foreign affairs.

Montenegro.-Eugene Popovich, premier and minister of foreign affairs.

Brazil.-Antonio Olynthe de Magalhaes, minister at Paris.

Cuba.-General Carlos García y Velez, minister at London. Russia. Mathieu Sevastopulo, counselor of the embassy at Paris; M. Maklakov, ambassador to France (by special invitation and unofficially, as he had not yet presented his letters). Siam.-M. Charoon, minister at Paris.

China.-Hu Wei Teh, minister in France; General Tang Tsai Lieh, vice secretary of the general staff of China. Liberia.-Baron dé San Miguel.

FORMAL ADDRESSES AT THE MEETINGS

In opening the conference Georges Clemenceau, the French premier, said:

Gentlemen, I have the honor of bidding you welcome on behalf of the French Republic. In this the greatest war it is the feeling of the supreme solidarity of the peoples which finds us united in the desire to win upon the field of battle the right to a peace which will really be a peace of humanity. In this way we all here are a magnificent center of hopes, duties and wills, all united for all the sacrifices demanded by the alliance, which no intrigue and no defection can in any way shake. The high passions which animate us we must translate into acts. Our order of the day is to work. Let us work.

The session adjourned immediately after organization was completed and continued the working out of the program in committees composed of the appropriate delegates and the technical experts accompanying them. The final meetings of the Interallied Conference were held on December 3, the committees continuing their activities according to the character and advancement of their labors. At the final session only two speeches were made,

« ПретходнаНастави »