WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

554 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
dissatisfaction. I therefore made up my mind to take up the
challenge of the War Office junta and its friends.
It was arranged that the setting up of the Council should
be announced by M. Painleve at a luncheon in Paris, to
which all the Deputies and Senators should be invited. At
that function I delivered a speech in which I explained the
reasons for taking this step. In the course of my speech I
placed before the distinguished assembly of French politicians
and publicists a candid survey of the military position
as it appeared to me. I pointed out that we had failed up to
that date to make the best of the advantages we possessed
by sea and land, that the fault had not been with the armies:
it had been entirely due to the absence of real unity in the
war direction of the Allied countries. From there I proceeded:
"As my colleagues here know very well, there have been many
attempts made to achieve strategic unity. Conferences have been
annually held to concert united action for the campaign of the
coming year. Great generals came from many lands to Paris with
carefully and skilfully prepared plans for their own fronts. In
the absence of a genuine Inter-Allied Council of men responsible
as much for one part of the battlefield as for another, there was a
sensitiveness, a delicacy about even tendering advice, letting alone
support for any sector other than that for which the generals
were themselves directly responsible. But there had to be an
appearance of a strategic whole, so they all sat at the same table
and metaphorically took thread and needle, sewed these plans
together, and produced them to a subsequent civilian conference
as one great strategic piece; and it was solemnly proclaimed to
the world the following morning that the unity of the Allies was
complete.
"That unity, in so far as strategy went, was pure makebelieve;
and make-believe may live through a generation of peace
— it cannot survive a week of war. It was a collection of completely
independent schemes pieced together. Stitching is not
strategy. So it came to pass that when these plans were worked