that Socialist theories, applied on the grand scale in Russia, have already caused a greater loss of human life, with suffering in more cruel forms, than the Great War.

How should history, including the history of war which, so far as we can see, mankind can never relegate to Saturn, be written? There is no agreement among the pandits; but a strain of fiction seems to be accepted as desirable. One authority has recently announced that, 'Even if truth has its uses, history is not the place for it Truth, however, still has its uses,' which democracies ignore, and if the past is to afford any teaching, it must find some 'place'in history. Mr Baldwin has shrewdly suggested that a certain measure of perşonal bias is necessary to make history tolerable to the general reader; but it is not easy to adjust the personal equation. Carlyle and Macaulay, in whose works bias was rampant, are eminently readable, and to the Duke of Wellington the latter appeared to be a master of his craft. Both have-irretrievably in many minds-injured the cause of truth.

The Great War stands out above all others in the intense complexity and novelty of its world-ranging operations, and in its revelation of the noblest qualities of the British peoples at the zenith of their capacity for united action and shared sacrifice. It is replete with records of gallantry never surpassed in our annals, and, as never before, to be lavishly found not only in the ranks of a professional navy and army, but among all classes of a whole nation in arms. It abounds with lessons of all kinds, going deeper than strategy and tactics to the political foundations of the State. All this and more must be faithfully registered lest we forget, even though half a century may be needed before the involved series of tremendous events can be placed in true perspective.

Mr Churchill's two final volumes complete a work in which the interest never flags. As a descriptive writer, he has few if any equals, and he paints alike men and happenings in vivid phrases which cling to the memory. His rhetoric is often dazzling, but here and there it strays dangerously near to the line at which bathos supervenes. There is bias in plenty, which leads to

judgments challenging criticism, while a far-ranging imagination induces speculations into the might-havebeens which, in war as in politics, may be barren of profit as well as misleading. In the first of these volumes, Mr Churchill goes back to the beginning of the War by recalling the wonderfully accurate forecast of General Michel in 1911 and his inspired plan of campaign, which were ruthlessly rejected by French military opinion. The Schlieffen plan had come to maturity before this time and was being perfected in detail by the Germans; but the French General Staff did not believe that Germany would make a turning movement through Belgium, certainly not through Northern Belgium,' and the 'offensive school,' led by Colonel Grandmaison, settled down to Plan XVII, which proved totally unsuited to the conditions in August 1914, and has since been riddled by French criticism. General Michel fell, and the execution of this disastrous plan rested with General Joffre, whose capacity Mr Churchill somewhat underrates, because he had never commanded an army nor directed ground manoeuvres even in a War Game,' though he possessed qualities which fitted him to render most useful service to the various fleeting French administrations which preceded the conflict.'

Thus, at the start, political considerations deflected the course of the terrific Battle of the Frontiers,' and, as the older Moltke laid down, mistakes in the first dispositions of the troops cannot be remedied. In spite of what Mr Churchill calls almost fatal errors' on our side, the Schlieffen plan miscarried, and Paris was saved, partly by the timely retreat of General Lanrezac and Sir John French and partly by the dramatic intervention of General Galliéni, but also by certain mistakes of the German General Staff. The immediate and critical situation was relieved; but the French lost nearly 330,000 men, including a great part of the flower of their regular army, expended in most gallant attacks, badly directed though heroically led, against overwhelming numbers. The victory of the Marne, followed by the German retreat, blinded us to some important facts by which the whole course of the War was prejudiced, and Mr Churchill rightly states that the magnitude and terror' of the tremendous Battle of the Frontiers is scarcely

now known to British consciousness.' That France remained undaunted and ready for vast new efforts is a striking proof of the fortitude of her people.

The chapter entitled 'The Blood Test,' in which the author surveys the war on the Western front from the point of view of the huge casualty lists, is painful reading. The prolonged agony of the combatant nations is here set down in cold figures, the full import of which we happily did not realise at the time. These grisly statistics are handled with much skill, but they are open to serious criticism, because the returns on which they are based are not strictly comparable; while the varying circumstances in which they occurred vitiate conclusions drawn from lumped totals. Major-General Sir F. Maurice, attacking Mr Churchill's deductions, has stated that he has,

'by omitting lightly wounded, under-estimated the total German casualties on the Western front by approximately 1,300,000. . . . I am certain that he has greatly exaggerated the British battle casualties.' †

Sir Charles Oman, M.P., has powerfully reinforced these conclusions,‡ and the danger of attempting to base theories upon statistics is manifest. Mr Churchill discredits the whole strategic conception of the Westerners, finds fault with the views of Sir Douglas Haig, and especially those of Sir William Robertson, and suggests that other methods and different strategic policies would have hastened the end and saved life on a large scale. Attacks on well-conceived defences created in the field have always been costly, and on the Western front the Germans lavished the art of the military engineer to an extent never approached in the past. To attack such intensely formidable lines as quickly grew up in front of the Allies required tactical experience, which could be gained only by fighting and then gradually, an overpowering artillery, which for many months existed only on the German side, and the Tank, slowly evolved and

* The overwhelming superiority of the German artillery in the earlier stages of the War, and our culpable deficiency in machine-guns, the use of which had been carefully studied in Berlin, are factors which Mr Churchill does not adequately regard.

+ The Times,' March 17.

'Nineteenth Century and After,' May 1927.

at first misused. In part at least, all that Mr Churchill sweepingly condemns in the policy of the Westerners must be attributed to the total and inevitable inadequacy of our preparations at the outbreak of war; to the continuous and insistent need for supporting, with insufficient means the measures to which the French were committed, and to the blighting influence of Plan XVII.

Mistakes were freely made on the Western front, as in the misconceived and therefore futile attack on the Dardanelles, or the mad advance with a tired and illequipped force on Bagdad. All this must be admitted; but the crash finally came in the West and was due to the heavy losses, to the wearing down of the German moral and to the exhaustion of man-power arising from the offensives of the Allies. Mr Churchill under-estimates at 3,348,000 the total German losses on the Western front before Ludendorff's great attack beginning in March 1918; but he explains the drain on German manpower, the annual intake of which had to be 'heavily anticipated . . . in their hard need.' in their hard need.' Yet he is convinced that 'It was their own offensive, not ours, that consummated their ruin. They were worn down not by Joffre, Nivelle, and Haig, but by Ludendorff.' But for what had been learned in the terrific fighting that preceded, with the shaking of the German moral which it entailed, Ludendorff's tremendous effort might have succeeded. But for the failure to reinforce the British armies in time, it might have taken other forms. Throughout these volumes, there is a stream of suggestion, that there are ways of avoiding costly offensives, by indirect methods pursuing lines of least resistance, which to politicians watching the long, bloody, and apparently abortive operations in the West seemed naturally attractive.

Mr Lloyd George had a great inspiration which appeared on Jan. 1, 1915. He proposed to withdraw our Expeditionary Force with the exception of a reserve to be retained near Boulogne, and to send it to the Balkans to operate in vague conjunction with the armies of Serbia, Greece, and Rumania against Austria. At the same time, 100,000 British troops were to be landed somewhere in Syria to cut off the Turks, believed to be

moving on Egypt. The effect of this wild-cat scheme would have been the conquest of France, the loss of the Channel ports and a German triumph. Mr Churchill, though a 'whole hogger' as regards the Dardanelles, does not appear to be a too enthusiastic Easterner, and he sharply condemns the original occupation of the pestilential area of Salonica.

'Such was their (M. Briand's and Mr Lloyd George's) influence upon events that a numerous allied army was, at enormous cost, in defiance of military opinion, and after most of the original political objectives had disappeared, carried or being carried to Salonica.'

Later, this army was to make good after unnecessary loss and wasteful expenditure. While, however, Mr Churchill is thus quick to note the gross defects of Mr Lloyd George's first contribution to war strategy, he asks us to Suppose for instance the war power represented by the 450,000 French and British casualties in the Champagne-Loos battle of 1915 had been used to force the Dardanelles, and combine the Balkan States'!

Such profitless imaginings could be multiplied-and parodied-indefinitely. In all, we employed nearly 470,000 troops at Gallipoli and lost about 120,000 killed and wounded, exclusive of heavy casualties from sickness, while 74,000 tons of war shipping were sunk, and the drain upon our resources was very great. The Expedition was happily withdrawn after risky delays caused by vacillations in council. The whole tragic story has been vividly told by Sir W. Robertson,* who is able to supplement the Report of the Royal Commission, and it is unjust to attribute this lamentable fiasco 'to the narrow and local views of British Admirals and Generals and of the French Headquarters.' Mr Churchill considers that, even in 1916, a 'surprise attack upon the Dardanelles... would best have served our interests.' But no such audacious scheme crossed the minds of our rulers,' and 'It was not until the summer of 1918 that Admiral Keyes -strong in the achievement of Zeebrugge-and Admiral Wemyss installed as First Sea Lord, were able to obtain the authority for a renewed naval forcing of the Dardanelles in the possible campaign of 1919. That was at last too late.'

" Soldiers and Statesmen.' Cassell & Co.