HAIG FELLOW'S ADDRESS

The following address was delivered by John Hussey, Haig Fellow 1997, at the third Annual Lunch on 29th January 1997

My dear and ever-supportive Patron, Members of the Fellowship, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen.

The honour you have done me in asking for some words at today's commemoration would have seemed unthinkable to me when, in 1988, having closed a career in Oil, I became acquainted with John Terraine, and was drawn ever deeper into that vast misunderstood subject, the First World War. You are, in fact, honouring the influence of a great teacher in whose company I have had to consume entire lakes of red wine in order to sail on his ocean of learned wisdom.

I cannot express sufficiently my sorrow that successive illnesses and operations should have precluded my dear friend John from being among all his admirers today, and I beg that our Secretary will take him our good wishes. And since he is not here may I add this tribute.

I had long admired his books and I recall one of Haig's liaison officers, General Sir Clement Armitage (whose son Robert is here today) saying to me in 1965 a propos Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier that this was an historian whom soldiers could respect, an historian who "really understood Haig". But what none of us realised in the 1960s was the degree to which the great British public would refuse to open its eyes, to reconsider - in short, to think. Not a few have subsequently learned the trumpet call from John and, though the walls of Jericho still stand, I detect at last a shifting of their foundations.

At the two past annual lunches John has spoken at this point about the Field-Marshal's wartime achievements. So I think it acceptable today to take a different text, and speak a little of the year 1919.

"Peace hath her victories No less renowned than War" said Milton, and this is certainly true of Douglas Haig. Not that many recent books on Haig would lead you to think so: with the Armistice, the curtain falls. Gerard de Groot's elaborate 409 page biography, for instance, allows just 7 pages to the 14 months until Haig gave up the post of C-in-C Home Forces in January 1920, and 4V2 pages for the final 8 years - and even those pages are below his habitual standard. Once again the sixty-year-old work of Duff Cooper, so often dismissed, proves the fuller and safer guide.1 For in those years there is so much to understand and so much to applaud.

Few people other than Haig believed that victory could be won in 1918 - neither Lloyd George, nor Churchill, nor the CIGS Sir Henry Wilson. Even Foch - the splendid Foch in whom courage and optimism vied for first place - told Clemenceau as late as 20 July 1918 that 1919 would be the decisive year of the war.2 In all this Haig consistently showed the greater vision - and as we know his forecasts were disbelieved, in Lloyd George's case until October.

In life you pay for your mistakes. The price charged to the nation for that disbelief was spelt out in Haig's words to the City of London in June 1919, when he said:

peace has caught us unawares, almost to as great an extent as war did in 1914.3

For the nation had indeed been caught unawares.

Haig had never believed that he should do anything more than strive to defeat the German Army. He was not interested in the Higher Politics, Noble Experiments, in devising new political creeds or constitution-mongering. Once the Germans accepted that they were beaten in the field and that the British Empire and its Allies were victorious, that was enough - make peace.

But he had clear ideas on

• social stability,

• education for the young men coming out of the Army - many of whom had been too young to have learned a trade or profession,4

• jobs, and

• care for the wounded and bereaved.

And he saw with alarm that famine, murder and revolution were spreading across half Europe -with probable consequences for stability at home. Listen to the underlying note of concern in what he wrote on Armistice Day:

We heard this morning that the Kaiser is in Holland. If the war had gone against us no doubt our King would have had to go, and probably our Army would have become insubordinate like the German Army, cf John Bunyan's remark on seeing a man on his way to be hanged: "But for the grace of God, John Bunyan would have been in that man's place'.5

As 1918 ended and 1919 began, the Bolsheviks in Russia were calling for world revolution. In Finland there was a White Terror. War-bands ravaged the Baltic states. Rumania was tearing away large slices of Hungary. The Poles were eying western Russia. The Czechs coveted bits of Poland. The Southern Slavs were jockeying for supremacy among themselves. The old Habsburg territories were starving.

In Germany soldiers' Soviets proliferated. Famine and sickness were rife. In Berlin the Spartacist January rising of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg was put down only after full-scale fighting and lynchings. Then the Bavarian socialist leader was murdered. Next, a Bavarian soviet drove out the moderate government from Munich, and by the time the moderates recaptured the city in May the extremists had murdered their hostages including the Prince of Thurn und Taxis and his Austrian arch-duchess wife. By that time Bela Kun's Bolshevik experiment had begun in Hungary.

Three months after the Armistice Haig still had to push the government about famine in Germany, urging:

that the question of feeding Germany should be settled without any delay. The matter was serious. Germany was on the verge of famine... If we don't feed her, Bolshevism will spread. This will result in the destruction of Germany and probably in our having to intervene. And, further, Bolshevism is likely to spread to France and England.

What would be the likely reaction of British Tommies if they saw women and children starving in the Occupation Zone. Would unrest spread further west? Would it affect British troops, and through them British society? How close were we to that condemned man's place?6

I do not think that Haig showed any remarkable perceptiveness in recognising all this. He had spent years studying the signs day after day. Not to have identified these dangers by late 1918 would have been singularly unintelligent. But how did our Cabinet see it? How ready were they with plans for an orderly transition from war to peace, and stability in Europe?

Matters got off to a bad start. The speed and timing of the General Election made a bad impression. "Hanging the Kaiser" and "Making the Pips Squeak" were vicious themes. Polling Day was December 14th 1918, thirty-three days after the ceasefire. Here is what an infantry Captain, Military Cross, in the 37th Division wrote:

The voting papers which this honest ministry sent us arrived a week after the election had taken place. Perhaps the rest of the army were equally well served. I can conceive no other explanation of the return of the Coalition.7

Haig confided to his diary that the men sensed that they had been "got at".8 There was general discontent among civilians and soldiers when the same old names filled the new Cabinet. Of one danger Haig had publicly warned, that of Hubris. Standing on the Hohenzollern Bridge at Cologne on 16 December 1918 Haig said:

For my part I sincerely hope that in our time of victory we may not lose our heads, as the Germans lost theirs after 1870, with the result that we are here.

C E Montague, who heard him, wrote: "I think the speech was reported. But none of our foremen at home took any notice of it at all. They knew a trick worth two of Haig's. They were as moonstruck as any victorious Prussian".9

1919 was the year of demobilization and strike fever. And the British Government was taken by surprise. Haig had proposed a fair demobilization programme - basically the longest serving groups being released first - as long ago as October 3rd 1917. The War Cabinet deliberated and in November 1917 formally rejected his views.10 Instead, "pivotal" men should be released first, irrespective of service. In the three months to February 1919 a million men left the Army and flooded the labour market, but many of them had been among the last or very late in. All sorts of strange jobs suddenly became "pivotal".

The unsurprising consequence in that turbulent winter of 1918-19 was that in England several Base units rioted and went to London and the same troubles began to spread to France. Douglas Haig had no doubt that the demobilization system was wrong and unfair. But mutiny, if unchecked, would only spread. His unhesitating firmness was complemented by the swift good sense of Churchill, the new Secretary of State for War, who saw to it that a fair demobilization plan on Haig's 1917 lines was brought in to replace the self-inflicted nonsense.11 But none of this confusion need have happened.

With the effect of demobilization on labour relations Haig had nothing to do, but when the politicians began to lose control they sought his advice. Organised Union power had grown used to dealing with Lloyd George as an equal during the war, had taken the measure of the Cabinet, and meant to consolidate the wartime concessions and even to extend them.

Haig had left France in April 1919 to become C-in-C of the rapidly shrinking Home Forces. In September 1919, when the national railway strike threatened to paralyse the country, he had to define his guidelines for organised civil protest, and the use of military force. He gave full support to Lloyd George's government but insisted that troops should be kept as a final reserve, not in a front-line role, which he insisted was that of the unarmed police.12 His plans were as simple and unobtrusive as Wellington's during the Chartist demonstrations at Kennington in 1848, and they were as moderate.

He was far from moderate over disability pensions. On 21 November 1918 Haig had written to the CIGS:

I feel very strongly regarding the way the disabled, the widows and the children have been neglected up to date. And I consider that it would be very wrong of me to accept any reward until the Government give a definite assurance that they will receive adequate help in a practical way.

and a few days later:

I agree that [private charity] has done much good work, but it does not meet the present situation. I hold that it is the duty of the State to provide for those disabled in the service of the Country. Moreover Officers and their Wives and belongings will not, and ought not to be asked to, accept Charity.13

Each Whitehall department - Treasury, Pensions, War Office - recognised the need, and yet inevitably fought its own comer against the others, and there was a lack of co-ordination at the very top. The Prime Minister failed to appoint a super-minister or to intervene himself. Too little was done.

As the Times noted, "Sir Douglas Haig has long been known to have strong views about war pensions and their administration". Thus the impact of his evidence before the Commons Select Committee on Pensions was enormous. He spoke to them on July 1st.

In the late summer of 1918 I was appalled by the evidence received as to the methods of the State to provide for the disabled... I hold strongly that it is the duty of the State to provide for those who have suffered in the Great War.

Voluntary organisations would always be needed to assist in areas where the State could not go, but official recommendations on how to tackle the problem from Spring 1915 to Autumn 1918 had been ignored, inflation had attacked values of pensions fixed in mid 1917, and the Charities' burden was now so great that it stood as "sufficient condemnation" of government methods and the "inadequacy" of state pensions. He criticised the bureaucratic delays, overlap, rigidity and lack of sympathy (disabled men being called "malingerers" by some doctors, trades unions refusing to accept government technical training certificates), and gave instances of pensions "pittances" and widows'"poverty". He asked for:

more generous and sympathetic treatment to all who suffer from gas poisoning, shell-shock and neurasthenia. It is admitted that their suitable treatment is no simple matter. Employers are shy of giving them appointments. The many piteous appeals brought to my notice cry for an immediate reform in the method of treatment.

This is hardly the careless Butcher Haig of popular myth. The Committee and the Press were deeply troubled. As a result a further £21 million were voted for Service and war widows pensions, an increase of nearly 30%.14

There is no time today to speak of the handsome volume of "Collected Despatches" of 1919, the brain-child of that genius of "Everyman's Library", J M Dent - for, contrary to widespread belief, the idea for the book was not Haig's. Nor have I time to touch on the message of the great "Final Despatch", so full of matter relevant to any war with Germany in the first half of the 20th Century -matter ignored, as John Terraine has said, by the teachers of the 1920s and 30s.15 Nor can I now discuss the fascinating saga of the after-life of the "Memorandum of Operations 1916-1918" which was lodged under seal in the British Museum, not to be opened till 1940. All were time-consuming projects of 1919, additional to his other duties.

With the pensions scandal resolved Haig finally accepted his Earldom, his grant (four times the size of Wolseley's for the 1873 Ashanti campaign, and as much as Roberts's grant for his eleven months in South Africa in 1900). With that, and his cascade of degrees and freedoms, we must leave 1919.

Ahead still waits Douglas Haig's final campaign, and his finest, an 8-year campaign for peace, justice, work, self-respect, and sympathy for the wounded and bereaved; fought with the old energy and unyielding determination; inspired by a belief that civilian comradeship, not menacing uniformed columns of brown or black shirts, was the way to conduct affairs. Yet by New Year 1921 there were 600,000 unemployed ex-servicemen. In the words of the historian of the British Legion, Graham Wootton:

The land fit for heroes turned out to be a land in which heroes were selling bootlaces and matches in the streets, going with their families into the workhouse and tramping the heedless countryside in a vain search for work.16

Although no Minister has to fear a party political attack from Haig's Legion, every Ministry knew that Lord Haig would constantly maintain steady pressure; no ex-Serviceman feared that "the Chief would ignore a just appeal.

In the desperate crisis of April 1918 when once again heaven seemed falling, the hour when earth's foundations fled, a tough fighting battalion commander accorded Sir Douglas the supreme accolade of trust; "I have arrived at the stage of blind faith in the C-in-C because any other course would mean absolute dismay". Colonel Fraser of the Gordons was right.17 You could always rely on the C-in-C. And during all the faithless peacetime years of Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Baldwin, ex-servicemen across the British Isles and British Empire were safe in their faith in Douglas Haig.

I have kept you too long. My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you this toast:

To a patient, honourable and unconquerable servant of his people - Field-Marshal Lord Haig, "the Chief, Sir Douglas, "DH".

1. G J De Groot, Douglas Haig, 1861-1928 (1988), Duff Cooper, Haig (1935-36), 2 vols.

2. Les Armies francaises dans la Grande Guerre,Tome VII, annexe No 178.

3. Speech on receiving the Freedom of the City: Tim es,13 June 1919.

4. It is seldom remembered that on 8 March 1918, just before the great Ludendorff offensive, Haig issued instructions that an educational scheme should be established in each of his Armies "to give the men a wider view of their duties as citizens of the British Empire and to help men in their work after the war". Haig's dual objective for this citizen army and the vision of peace at such a time are surely not the mark of an unimaginative man. See Lord Gorell, Education and the Army (1921), pp 24-26, 69-70 and Fourth Army War Diary PRO.WO.95/436, 22 June 1918.

5. R Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig 1914-1919 (1952), p.341.

6. Blake, pp.355-56,19 Feb 1919: Haig's record of his interview with Lord Milner and the CIGS Wilson.

7. Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality (1933), chap.20 (page numbers differ in the several reprints).

8. Blake, p.347.

9. Montague's diary entry, quoted in O Elton, C E Montague, a Memoir (1930), p.230; the comment is in Montague's Disenchantment (1922), pp.181-82, where Haig's words are slightly differently ordered.

10. Duff Cooper, vol.ii,pp.404-05.

11. De Groot, pp.401-02, where the Calais incident is spoken of as a "serious riot"; Blake, p.353; W S Churchill, The World Crisis, the Aftermath (1929), pp.52-65. The armistices (standstill to the fighting) were being renewed periodically, a state of war still existed, and the outbreak was not a riot (a civilian term) but mutiny while on active service, which under the terms of the Army Act was a capital offence. Such, I believe, remained the case until at least the 1950s.

12. DuffCooper,ii,418;DeGroot, 402.

13. Wilson Papers, IWM, HHW/2/78/23A and 25:Haig's emphasis.

14. Times, 2 July 1919 for Haig's testimony and the editorial comment on his strong views. The subsequent increase in pensions is noted in The Annual Register for 1919 (1920). Passages from Haig's testimony were fittingly recalled by his son in the Lords' debate on service pensions, 16 Jan 1997. They had lost none of their force in almost 80 years. The publication of this book in 1919 has variously been described by his critics as Haig's pre-emptive strike on Hie historical record and popular opinion, a bid to make money (since the despatches were already available in the London Gazette), etc. In agreeing to Dent's proposal Haig insisted that all the royalties should go to the editor (Boraston) and the translator of the French edition (Commandant Gemeau). Terraine's comment is in his introduction to the 1979 reprint.

15. G Wootton, The Official History of the British Legion (1956), p.31. This fine work marks a significant advance on the understanding of Haig's role as related by Duff Cooper twenty years earlier. Yet De Groot totally ignores it.

16. Sir David Fraser (ed.), In Good Company, the WarLetters of the Hon William Fraser (1990), p.248