WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

CAMPAIGN OF THE MUD! PASSCHENDAELE 321
notoriety of the Verdun, Somme and Passchendaele battlefields;
the fame won by sustained valour unrivalled in the
annals of war; the notoriety attained by a narrow and stubborn
egotism, unsurpassed amongst the records of disaster
wrought by human complacency.
Falkenhayn, Joffre, and Haig were trained soldiers who
had worked hard to master their profession. But there is no
profession where experience and training count less in comparison
with judgment and flair. The intervals between great
wars are fortunately so considerable, and in this age of restless
invention the change in mechanism and therefore in
methods is also so considerable and so rapid, that imagination,
resource, initiative and flexibility are more essential
to success in the vocation of the soldier than in any other.
The battle of the Flanders mud, better and more bitterly
known as the Battle of Passchendaele, had been put into Sir
Douglas Haig's tenacious brain as early as 1916. If it failed
it was not for lack of the most elaborate and prolonged preparations.
In July, 1917, he told the War Cabinet that he had
been preparing for it the whole year. Meanwhile he was impatient
of any other plan. The Chantilly* proposals provided
something for him to go on with, whilst he was completing his
preparations for the real campaign of the year. The Nivelle
"break-through" was a crude and inconvenient rival to the
Flanders operation. The capture of the Messines Ridge, a
perfect attack in its way, was just a useful little preliminary
to the real campaign, an aperitif provided by General Plumer
to stimulate the public appetite for the great carousal of
victory which was being provided for us by G.H.Q.
The Commander-in-Chief had caught fire with this idea in
1916. G.H.Q. had been burning with it ever since and was
now red-hot. Even the drenching rains of August and September
could not put it out. Fire in peat can be quenched by
1 The Chantilly Conference of Generals was held on November 15, 1916.