Calais conference on command

On 26 February 1917 an Anglo-French conference met in the hotel by the railway station at Calais. Officially it was to resolve the transport crisis on the railways of northern France, which could not keep up with supplies for the British army before the spring offensive. In reality the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, had come intending to subordinate the British commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, to the French commander-in-chief, General Robert Nivelle. Neither Haig nor the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, knew about it until the evening.

Preparations behind the generals’ backs

Lloyd George had distrusted Haig from the start, even though Haig had been made a field marshal at New Year. On the other hand he liked very much the plan of Nivelle, who had since December commanded the French armies and promised to break through the front within a day or two. According to the British official history (Falls), the first documented trace of the affair is a telegram of 19 February in which the deputy French military attaché in London, Commandant Bertier de Sauvigny, reported to Nivelle that the British government wanted to call a conference and ask him whether Haig’s plans had his approval. According to the French officer’s account of a conversation a few days earlier, Lloyd George had told him that Nivelle should have all the forces on the Western Front at his disposal, and that Haig’s prestige was too great to subordinate him openly to the French, but that if necessary the Prime Minister would give him secret orders.

On 20 February the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, proposed a conference to the French ambassador, Paul Cambon. Cambon inferred from the conversation that the aim was to force Haig to submit to Nivelle’s directives, and telegraphed that the British government was uneasy about its commander’s conduct. Haig had recently given French journalists an interview in which he predicted a breakthrough that very year, and explanations had been demanded in the House of Commons. As early as 21 February the French staff prepared a draft of a new command organisation. On 24 February the War Cabinet authorised the Prime Minister to take such steps as would ensure unity of command before and during the offensive. Robertson was told that he need not attend that meeting. Haig, who asked for an agenda, was told that besides transport the operations in Macedonia would be discussed.

Nivelle’s draft

At Calais Britain was represented by Lloyd George, Haig and Robertson, France by the Prime Minister Aristide Briand, the Minister of War General Hubert Lyautey and Nivelle. Transport experts were also present, among them the head of the British transport service in France, Eric Geddes. Haig asked for a short talk with the Prime Minister before the session, but until the last moment Lloyd George was talking privately with Briand. The railway questions were quickly set aside and the specialists sent away. Nivelle presented his plan once again. When Lloyd George asked what exactly the difference was between the two commanders, the Frenchman named only one point: he wanted the British not to attack as far north as Vimy Ridge near Arras, but to strike more widely south of the river Scarpe. Haig explained why he wanted to take Vimy, and Lyautey found his reasons sound.

The Prime Minister then declared that the question of responsibility had to be settled, and asked Nivelle to put in writing the principles that should govern relations between the two commanders. The document was presented after dinner. As Falls later established, the French had brought it with them. From 1 March the French commander-in-chief was to direct the British armies in everything concerning the conduct of operations: plans and their execution, the strength and boundaries of the armies, the allocation of all resources. A British chief of the general staff was to be based at his headquarters, and would be the only channel of communication with the British War Office. Haig would be left with matters of discipline and personnel, that is, as Falls writes, little more than the role of an adjutant-general.

Compromise

Robertson was shocked and decided he would rather resign than agree to this. Haig was equally outraged. Lloyd George himself admitted that the draft went too far. After a long night-time discussion, in which, according to many historians, the secretary of the War Cabinet, Maurice Hankey, played a key role, a new formula emerged. The general direction of the coming campaign was to belong to the French, but only for its duration. Haig was to adapt his plans and preparations to Nivelle’s strategy and to carry out his orders during the operations. He kept, however, the right of appeal to his own government and freedom as to the means and methods of employing his troops in the sector assigned to him.

The Calais agreement was signed on 27 February by Haig, Robertson, Nivelle, Lyautey and both prime ministers. Haig added on his copy that he signed it as a correct statement of what had been agreed, but not as an approval. In the same town, in July 1915, the prime ministers of the two countries had met for the first time to agree a common strategy, but never before had the question of command so deeply divided the British government and its generals.

The dispute soon flared up again. The very next day Nivelle, in a sharp letter, demanded from Haig information not only on his orders to the armies but also on how the commanders were carrying them out, and asked that the British mission at his headquarters be taken over by General Henry Wilson. Haig protested in London. Relations between the two commanders had to be clarified at another conference in London, where on 13 March Haig and Nivelle signed a new agreement. By then the retreat that upset Nivelle’s plan was already under way: a few days before the conference the Germans had begun to withdraw from the Ancre, and in March they fell back to the Hindenburg Line. The offensive to which Haig’s army had been subordinated failed in April, and in May Nivelle lost his command.