WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

374 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
could he not defeat Austria but he himself would need support.
So much for the prospect of Austria being defeated.
As regards our position, if the seventy-five batteries were
sent we must necessarily pass to the defensive for all practical
purposes, and be prepared to suffer losses similar to
those suffered by the Germans while on the defensive this
summer. 1 Also we must abandon all hope of making either
our air or sea situation more secure so far as the Belgian
coast was concerned, and, in fact, the Germans might conquer
us by an attempt to take Dunkirk, and if they succeeded the
situation would become even worse than it was now. He
"did not say that they would succeed, as this would depend
to some extent upon the reinforcements that Germany might
be able to bring over from the Russian Front and upon the
power of her artillery. This power has not been great recently,
and as the number of heavy guns she has on the Western
Front are approximately equal to the Allies, her failure
must be due to other reasons — for instance, the declining
morale, inferiority in the air, inefficient employment of the
guns, or want of ammunition. He did not pretend to say
which; it might be a combination of all." In a striking but
sinister sentence he said that: "We should follow the principle
of the gambler who has the heaviest purse and force our
adversary's hand and make him go on spending until he is
a pauper"
Germany would bring over heavy reinforcements if Russia
continued to do nothing or if she dropped out of the War
altogether. The best chance we had of keeping her in the
field was to continue our activity, for if we stopped being
aggressive she might think that we admitted our failures.
Further, the Russians were themselves supposed to be prex
This is on the assumption that Germans attack us on the Western Front,
i.€. t do not send any divisions to Italy.