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closely by William Philpott in Anglo-French Relations and Strategy
on the Western Front 20 . However, the really revolutionary advance
has been on the operational and tactical level of war. On the one
hand, Tim Travers, in a series of articles and two major
monographs, sought an explanation for the difficulties of the British
Army in coming to terms with the new conditions of warfare, in
what might be characterised as managerial terms. On the other,
Dominick Graham, in an additional article to his pre-1984 work,
and, especially, Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson in their study of
Rawlinson chose to focus more on the technical problems of
achieving a break-in and converting this to a break-through 21 .
While undeniably illuminating on the problems facing all
soldiers on the Western Front and for the British in particular given
the massive expansion and the long and painful learning curve in
grappling with difficulties well beyond previous experience, neither
party’s contribution to this on-going debate has altogether
convinced as an explanation for the sudden transformation of British
fortunes in mid-1918. Prior and Wilson, for example, have provided
an invaluable analysis of artillery techniques but completely ignore
the complex personalised command structure when the managerial
and technical aspects of command were clearly intimately related.
Travers devotes little attention to events after June 1918 and, while
far more aware of the personal element of command, cannot
actually explain how such an attitudinal transformation from the
previous hierarchical structure he describes became possible.
Clearly, it was not possible until late 1917 to contemplate a
technical solution to deadlock but, even then, there were other
factors. Graham is surely right to stress the emergence of a tougher
and younger core of natural leaders among the surviving officers
and of a young conscript army, which seemingly rekindled some of
the enthusiasm of the Kitchener volunteers and who died just as
willingly and even more numerously 22 . There is the need, too, to
consider the co-ordination of Allied effort after March 1918; the
abandonment of wider strategic objectives in favour of localised and
20 David French, The Meaning of Attrition, 1914-16, dans «Historical Journal», vol. 103,1988, p. 385-
405; Idem, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, Oxford, 1996; Idem, Allies, Rivals and
Enemies, dans John Turner (ed.), Britain and the First World War, London, 1988, p. 22-35; William
Philpott, Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, London, 1996; Trevor Wilson,
The Myriad Faces of War, Cambridge, 1986; John Bourne, Britain and the Great War, London, 1989;
Paul Kennedy, Britain in the First World War, dans A. R. Millett and W. Murray (eds.), Military
Effectiveness I: The First World War, Boston, 1988, p. 31-79.
21 Tim Travers, The Killing Ground, London, 1987; Idem, A Particular Style of Command: Haig and
GHQ, 1916-18, dans «Journal of Strategic Studies», N° 110/1987, p. 363-376; Idem, The Evolution of
British Strategy and Tactics on the Western Front in 1918: GHQ, Manpower and Technology, dans
«Journal of Military History», vol. 54, 1990, p. 173-200; Idem, How the War Was Won, London, 1992;
Dominick Graham, Observations on the Dialectics of British tactics, 1904-45, dans R. Haycock and K.
Neilson (eds.), Men, Machines and War, Waterloo, 1988, p.51-73; Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson,
Command on the Western Front, Oxford, 1992. Il y a un compte rendu très utile chez Andy Simpson,
The Evolution of Victory, London, 1995.
22 Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Firepower, London, 1982, p. 117.
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