Dismissal of Robertson

The British chronology of the war records under 18 February 1918 that General Sir William Robertson stepped down as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and under 19 February that he was succeeded by General Sir Henry Wilson. Robertson had headed the staff in London since December 1915. He had begun his service in 1877 as a cavalry trooper, an almost unheard-of route to the very top in the British Army. Needless to say, he was not leaving of his own accord. The first announcement of his “resignation” was issued by the official press bureau on the evening of 16 February, and on 18 February, when the newspapers were writing of nothing but him and Wilson, the Secretary of State for War, Lord Derby, instructed Wilson to take over the post the next morning. Robertson agreed to take Eastern Command in England, which had been vacant since Wilson left for the conference at Rapallo.

The Prime Minister and his adviser

The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, had long distrusted Robertson. Robertson consistently backed Field Marshal Douglas Haig, regarded the Western Front as decisive and opposed the expeditions against Turkey or on the Italian front that the Prime Minister wanted to pursue. At the beginning of 1916 Robertson had insisted that as chief of staff he would be the government’s sole adviser on strategy and that he would issue operational orders in the government’s name. Lloyd George could not simply remove him, because Robertson and Haig were backed by part of the press, the Conservatives and the King, and Derby threatened to resign if either of them was removed. The Prime Minister therefore sought a second adviser. He found him in Henry Wilson, whom in the autumn of 1917 he sent as British military representative to the Supreme War Council at Versailles.

The opportunity came with the council’s decisions of 2 February 1918. The council created a general reserve for the Western, Italian and Balkan fronts and entrusted it to an executive committee made up of the permanent military representatives and General Ferdinand Foch. The British were represented on it by Wilson, not by the chief of staff. Robertson fought at Versailles to the end to sit on the committee himself, and lost. The War Cabinet approved the resolutions on 4 February, but the Army Council, of which Robertson was a member, protested. It pointed out that a committee with no responsibility to Parliament was being given authority over British troops in France, Italy and the Balkans, and that the commanders-in-chief would receive orders from two directions. The War Office considered this contrary to the statute entrusting the army to the Army Council.

Nine days of crisis

On 9 February Derby summoned Haig to London. The field marshal stated that he could take orders only from the Army Council or from a field marshal senior to him, and that instructions from the committee at Versailles might have no legal force. Lloyd George put to him his idea that Wilson should become chief of staff and Robertson go to Versailles. Haig warned that the army did not trust Wilson. That same evening the Prime Minister drew up a note, which Robertson, who had been away from London since 7 February, received from Derby on his return on 11 February. The powers of the chief of staff were to revert to what they had been before Robertson’s appointment, and the representative at Versailles was to join the Army Council, be “absolutely free and unfettered” in his advice and receive full powers to issue orders concerning the reserve. The last point read: the military representative at Versailles is to be Sir William Robertson, and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir Henry Wilson.

Robertson refused. He wrote to Derby that orders concerning the reserves could be issued only by the chief of staff, who sat in the War Office and had intelligence at hand, and that any other arrangement would lead to confusion and possibly to defeat. He did not intend to put his name to a system that he himself and the other military members of the Army Council regarded as fundamentally unsound. The government wavered. According to Wilson’s diary, on the evening of 12 February Lord Alfred Milner came to him with the news that Derby wanted to keep Robertson, that Lloyd George, ill and undecided, had almost agreed to it, that in the Cabinet Lord George Curzon supported Robertson and that Andrew Bonar Law was hesitating. On 13 February Derby proposed to the Prime Minister that Robertson remain chief of staff and Wilson be his representative at Versailles, just as General Maxime Weygand was Foch’s representative. Robertson accepted at once, but Lloyd George refused because, as Robertson wrote, such an arrangement would deprive him of his second adviser.

On 14 February Robertson laid out his case before the War Cabinet. The Cabinet decided, however, that the chief of staff would return to his former, narrower powers and the representative at Versailles would join the Army Council. In the afternoon the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, and Derby offered Robertson the choice of remaining in post on the new terms or going to Versailles. He refused both. The post of chief of staff was offered by telegraph to General Herbert Plumer, commander of the British forces in Italy, with Robertson to succeed him in that command. On 15 February Plumer declined, adding that he did not agree with the plan for commanding the reserve. In the evening Lloyd George summoned Milner, Bonar Law, the Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey and Wilson to his house at Walton Heath. Wilson noted that he had at last seen the Prime Minister “in a real fighting mood”.

On the morning of 16 February Lloyd George once more personally asked Robertson to accept his note and stay in post. After an hour’s reflection Robertson replied that his conscience would not allow him to depart from his views, and that the system chosen by the government must prove “unworkable and dangerous”. In the evening the press bureau announced that the government had accepted his resignation. Robertson later wrote that this was not accurate, because a few days earlier he had been told to leave his post, so he could no longer resign from it. Haig came to England that day. On Sunday 17 February he told Wilson that the disputes in London did not concern him, that he would accept any decision of the Cabinet and carry it out loyally. As Wilson’s replacement at Versailles he proposed General Henry Rawlinson. Derby, who had earlier threatened to leave, in the end remained in the government.

Lloyd George before the House of Commons

On 19 February, the day Wilson took up his post, Lloyd George defended his decisions in the House of Commons. He asked that the matter be treated as a dispute about policy, not about persons. He claimed that everyone at Versailles had agreed on the plan and on the need for an inter-Allied body with executive power, and that the dispute concerned only the composition of that body. “If this policy is right, no individuals, however valuable, however important, however distinguished, ought to stand in the way of its execution”, he said. Finally he declared that if the House rejected his policy, he would resign. The Leader of the Opposition, Herbert Henry Asquith, acknowledged that Robertson had set a great example when, in the spirit of a loyal soldier, he accepted a post unworthy of his abilities, but reproached the government for having refused a week earlier to answer questions about Versailles. There was no vote against the government.

Significance

Rawlinson went to Versailles, Plumer returned to France and the command in Italy was taken over by Lord Cavan. The powers of the chief of staff were curtailed, but Wilson soon realised that the representative at Versailles could not be independent of him, and later subordinated him to himself. The general reserve over which the dispute had been fought never came into being, and the Executive War Board never used its powers. The British official history, written under the direction of James Edmonds, judged Robertson highly. It stressed that he had rebuilt the General Staff, rightly foresaw the danger of weakening the Western Front and successfully opposed plans to win the war in the East. His weakness was a lack of polish and of the ability to persuade politicians. By then fewer than five weeks remained before the German offensive on the Western Front.