WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

THE UNITED FRONT 511
never to have accepted that condition. It hampered and
baffled my plans at every turn.
It was necessary therefore to find some method of
altering the war direction which would not involve the shock
to public opinion resulting from the abasement of men who
had won a larger measure of confidence at home than they
had amongst the survivors of the men whom they had driven
into the Flemish charnel house.
We had to remove the fundamental cause of the failures
of 1915, 1916, and 1917. What was it? The blind and stupid
refusal to accept the principle of the single front. Theoretically
and rhetorically the united front was boomed; in
practice it was ignored. Each G.H.Q. concentrated on its
own front. They gave no conscientious or coordinated thought
to other flanks which were equally important and at a given
moment might be more vital to the fortunes of the Alliance.
When from another side of the immense battlefield, our Allies
sent a cry of despair, then a little assistance was scraped
together — always belated. The full platters were for the
trenches where they were commanding; for the real need
there were only scraps. Russia, France, Britain and Serbia
were just Allies; they were not comrades fighting the same
battle for a common cause. Joffre, Haig and Cadorna were
entitled to say, "We have been entrusted with the conduct
of the fight on this particular sector. The business entrusted
to us is to beat the enemy in front of us. In order to do so we
must secure as many men and as much material as can be
spared for our enterprise. It is for the statesmen, with such
advice as they can command, to survey the battle area as a
whole on land and sea, to examine the needs and possibilities,
to make their plans and to dispose of their resources to
the best advantage." That was nominally the position. In
practice, there was no such distribution of functions. All
Governments had their expert military counsellors attached