ONE of the early tasks of the new Parliament will be, if present intentions remain firm, to order an inquiry into the case of General H. P. Gough and into the circumstances of the defeat suffered by the Fifth and Third British Armies last March. This task will be urged upon the House of Commons by the Labor Party. The stigma which rests upon General Gough, who was deprived of his command without court-martial or inquiry, rests also upon the Fifth Army, and it is strongly felt by the leaders of the Labor Party that justice demands full investigation.

My own opinion, after watching the retreat in progress and after studying the circumstances carefully from Intelligence records, was that General Gough had been unfairly treated, and that the impression prevailing at the time in England was based upon ignorance of the facts. I attempted to correct this impression at the time. General Headquarters would not permit it. It was not thought desirable then to show up the falseness of the view taken by many English reviews and newspapers that upon the Fifth Army lay

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the responsibility for the loss of so much ground to the enemy; that this army was badly handled and therefore unable to put up a stout resistance; and that it 'let down' the Third Army, which, but for the collapse of the Fifth, would have been able to hold its ground.

That view in my opinion is grotesquely at odds with the truth. Its acceptance was due, I think,

(1) To the refusal of the public to believe anything written by war correspondents, a refusal for which I do not blame the public, considering how often they had been deceived before they realized the conditions under which war correspondents worked.

(2) To the loose and exaggerated accounts of the retreat given by wounded men of the units which went to the relief of the Fifth Army.

(3) To the statement made in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister, with incomplete knowledge and misunderstanding of the important

facts.

(4) To the treatment of General Gough.

If I venture, now that reasons for silence no longer exist, to ask for a

reconsideration of the part played by the Fifth Army, it is because I hate injustice, and because, as a war correspondent who was on the spot, I happen to be able to discuss the matter with some special knowledge. I heard accounts of the battle within a few days. from the staffs of most of the divisions engaged; in some cases from brigade staffs, and even battalion commanders. I saw the successive phases of the retreat for myself, as I had seen beforehand the positions in which our troops awaited the attack and the preparations made in the rear of those positions for defensive action in the event of the front line being overrun. I will say at once that I considered those preparations inadequate, but for this General Gough was not, I submit, solely or even chiefly to blame. Recollect what happened. During January, at the urgent request of the French Ministry, against the judgment not only of Field-Marshal Haig, but even of the French Generals, the British Army took over forty fresh miles of front, stretching roughly from Saint Quentin to La Fère. Along this front the Fifth Army was strung out, its line perilously thin. From the moment of our taking over this territory it was surmised that the heaviest weight of the German attack would be thrown against it. A wise commander always drives at his enemy's weakest point. Also the German High Command was known to favor striking at the point of junction between Allied forces, a point where, owing to difference of language and system, confusion is especially apt to occur. British G.H.Q. knew, thanks to the activity of the Intelligence Department under General Cox (whose accidental death deprived the army of a painstaking and vigorous officer), where the blow would fall. Most generals of division refused to believe that there would be

any blow. A fortnight before the offensive opened I heard from the staff of one of the Fifth Army divisions that they could not see why G.H.Q. had warned them to be prepared. But neither at Fifth Army Headquarters nor at Montreuil did any illusion prevail. Since he knew that the Fifth Army would be attacked with vast numbers, and knew also its weakness, Sir Douglas Haig must be blamed no less than General Gough if the preparations were inadequate.

I have a note in my diary of a conversation I had with General Gough as early as January 30. He said then: "The Germans might very likely attack his army front and would probably gain some ground if they did. The best line of defense would be the line of the Somme. Until they got across that there would be no tragedy. It might be a tragedy if they did.' That view had been discussed with G.H.Q., and G.H.Q. knew the strength of the Somme and other defences quite as well as General Gough. Yet very little was done to improve our positions anywhere. I recollect thinking, some weeks after the enemy had been brought to a standstill before Amiens, when trenches were being dug and wired in every direction and to a great depth, even behind Amiens, that if the British Army had done half this amount of work before the 21st of March, there would have been no retreat.

About that retreat, and especially the Fifth Army part in it, many absurd stories were afloat. What was particularly unfortunate was that American soldiers arriving in France were apt to be told that British troops became a disorderly rabble, that officers lost their heads, that men wandered like sheep without a shepherd, and that their unworthy conduct caused a grave setback to the Allied cause. Such

stories were, I dare say, set agoing, many of them, by spies and traitors, very likely by paid German agents. They were repeated by habitual grumblers, by those who like to 'seem to know,' and even by many who passed on this kind of talk merely because they had nothing better to say. One story which was widely told represented General Gough as having dined in London on the night of March 21!!

That the Fifth Army yielded more ground than the Third Army is indisputable. Hasty critics jumped to the conclusion that it did not fight so well. That was unjustifiable. Both armies fought with a dogged courage that has not been surpassed in any battle of the war. The reason for the Fifth Army's retirement lay in this, that it consisted of fourteen divisions, eleven in the line, three in reserve, and that it was attacked by forty-eight. Fourteen against forty-eight! That tells the whole story. No, not quite the whole, either, for this must be said, too, that the eleven divisions in the line were spread over a front of forty miles. Three miles is considered a very long front for a division to hold. These Fifth Army divisions each held nearly four. The task of the Fifth Army was therefore terrific in every way. Yet this was not clearly stated at the time, nor has the story, I think, been fairly told since the event. The instinct to seize upon a scapegoat when things go wrong is one of the most powerful instincts in human nature. Before the facts were known in England, the Fifth Army was blamed for what had happened. The public had thought, we had all hoped, that our line would stand firm against attack. That some territory might be gained by the enemy was known among those who studied the position on the spot. But no one expected the old Somme battlefields to be lost. The disappointment was hard to bear, and

someone had to bear the brunt of public irritation. Hurried judgment, hurried glances at the map, made the Fifth Army appear to be the culprit. Then General Gough was sent home. So the slander started. It has been running long enough.

The first count of the indictment against the Fifth Army was that it had been taken by surprise. There is no truth in that. I read day by day during February and March the reports of its Intelligence branch. There I found evidence cumulative and convincing that the Germans were preparing to attack the Fifth Army front. Now attention would be called to increase in the number of their hospitals and aerodromes, now to the multiplication of shell dumps, or to the improvement of roads and railways in the rear. All the divisions were warned to be ready. Even the date of the attack was discovered forty-eight hours in advance, and orders were given for the troops to stand to in their positions from 11 P.M. on March 20. Mr. Bonar Law Isaid in the House of Commons that there were some elements of surprise in the German attack. What they were I do not know. I have stated the fact.

That the enemy hoped to surprise us is certain. In the tactics which they developed during three years' close study of the best methods of forcing a fortified front, the element of surprise was given a prominent place. The wellinformed military critic of the Neue Freie Presse told his readers this before the offensive began. In everyone of their attacks the Germans took elaborate precautions to keep their intentions secret both from us and from their own troops. The specially trained assault battalions which formed the hammer-head of their phalanx were moved up only at the latest possible moment. Officers were given sealed