Boulogne conference

On 25 September 1917, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, where a year earlier the leaders of the two countries had conferred on Greece, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, met the new French Prime Minister, Paul Painlevé, who had for two weeks been heading the government and was still Minister of War. They were accompanied by the chiefs of staff, General William Robertson and General Ferdinand Foch. The British chronology of the war states that the conference was to discuss the Italian offensive and the extension of the British front in France. At the same time the great British offensive was under way at Ypres, and that day the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge was drawing to a close.

The most pressing matter for the French was the front. According to the British official history (Edmonds), Painlevé painted a gloomy picture of the state of his army. France was losing, counting the sick, about 54,000 men a month, or about 650,000 a year, and could count on only 225,000 replacements. The French government also explained that the Chamber of Deputies was demanding the release of more soldiers for agricultural work and more frequent leave. Edmonds believed that the real reason was a plan of General Philippe Pétain: in case Russia collapsed and the Germans moved troops to the west, he wanted to have 40 divisions in reserve, and he could assemble them only if the British took over more of the line. According to French figures, the French were then holding 580 kilometres of front and the British only 150. On 22 September Pétain demanded that from 1 November the British army extend its right flank as far as Berry-au-Bac on the Aisne, or at least to Coucy-le-Château.

The second matter arose from the failure of the aid to Italy. At the beginning of September, after the meetings in London, the French had taken about a hundred heavy guns from Flanders and sent them to General Luigi Cadorna. Meanwhile Cadorna had decided to suspend the offensive and go over to the defensive, of which he informed Robertson and Foch on 21 September. At Boulogne it was therefore decided to withdraw all the French and British heavy artillery from Italy, since Cadorna was not conducting the attack for which it had been lent. The official minutes also recorded on the question of the front: “The British Government having accepted in principle the extension of the line held by the British Army on the Western Front, both Governments agree that the question of the extent of the extension and the time at which it is to take place shall be left to be settled by the two Commanders-in-Chief.” According to Robertson, the ministers also asked Foch to prepare a plan for a landing on the Syrian coast near Alexandretta (İskenderun), which Lloyd George was pressing. Foch judged that an independent operation would require eight to ten divisions, and the idea was not taken up again.

According to the minutes, that was all. After the war, however, Painlevé wrote in his book “Comment j’ai nommé Foch et Pétain” that at Boulogne he had talked privately with Lloyd George in a railway carriage, and the two had agreed the outline of a great change. They were to set up at once an inter-Allied war council with a permanent inter-Allied general staff under Foch’s chairmanship. Foch would command the Franco-British reserves until British public opinion was ready to make him commander-in-chief of both armies, and the British would be represented on the new body by General Henry Wilson, a long-standing friend of Foch. The British official history stresses that Robertson was not informed of this agreement and the British General Staff was not consulted. Lloyd George himself said in the House of Commons in November that he was “utterly opposed” to the appointment of an Allied commander-in-chief.

The next day Lloyd George, Robertson and the secretary of the War Cabinet, Maurice Hankey, visited Field Marshal Douglas Haig at his headquarters. The Prime Minister merely mentioned that the French would like the British to take over more of the front, and Haig replied that the government should oppose this until plans for the next year had been settled. He learned of the Boulogne decision only on 3 October from a letter from Robertson, and called it a “bombshell”. The extension of the British front began in January 1918, and the idea of a joint Allied body took shape in November 1917, when after the Italian defeat at Caporetto the Supreme War Council was set up at Rapallo.