WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

THE CABINET'S DILEMMA 453
at Headquarters. What would have been the effect in France,
Italy, Russia? What would have happened here at home?
The French crisis based on acknowledged disaster in May,
would have been followed by a British crisis founded on a
still bloodier disaster in the autumn. Confidence in military
leadership — in military veracity — would have gone. With
Russia on the brink of going out and Italy sagging and
France unstrung, we could not have faced the necessary revelations.
The heart of the Allies would have been depressed,
maybe beyond stimulation — the spirit of the Central Powers
would have been renewed and reinvigorated. I decided that
the risk was too great and that it was better to take measures
in time that would prevent the recurrence in 1918 of the
blunders to which we had been committed in 1917 by the
Chantilly decisions of November, 1916.
Perhaps I was wrong. I state the facts so as to enable
others to judge fairly.
I considered that Sir William Robertson had signally
failed to realise what his duty was as an independent adviser
of the Imperial War Cabinet on military matters. He was not
under Haig and therefore he owed him no obedience. There
was no disciplinary obligation to prevent him from expressing
an opinion which did not conform to that of the Commander
in France.
What the Cabinet had to consider if they meant to dispense
with the services of Robertson, was whether they
should replace him with a man who was equipped for the
task of thinking out and directing the strategy of the Allied
campaign, or whether, if such a man were obtainable, it would
not be better to put him in a position where he could act in
more direct and constant cooperation with the military brains
of the other Allies. If the Cabinet came to the latter conclusion,
then Robertson might be left at the War Office. He
was capable of directing efficiently all the administrative