First meeting of the Supreme War Council

At 11 a.m. on 1 December 1917 the Allied Supreme War Council, set up three weeks earlier at Rapallo, met for its first working session at the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles. The proceedings were chaired by the French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau. Great Britain was represented by the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and the War Cabinet member Lord Alfred Milner, Italy by the prime minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and the United States by Colonel Edward House, President Wilson’s personal envoy. Alongside them sat the permanent military representatives: General Henry Wilson, General Luigi Cadorna, General Tasker Bliss and General Maxime Weygand, as well as the chiefs of the general staffs, General Ferdinand Foch and General William Robertson. The resolutions were drafted by the secretary of the British cabinet, Maurice Hankey. According to Wilson’s biographer, the Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos also attended part of the session.

The session took place during the great inter-Allied conference that had been sitting in Paris since 29 November. The conference dealt with money, ships and food, while military matters were left to the council. The hotel was closely guarded by troops, and not even official photographers were admitted to the gardens. The press received only a brief communiqué stating that the proceedings had been harmonious and entirely satisfactory.

A plan for 1918

Clemenceau opened the proceedings with a speech whose content, as he himself pointed out, he had agreed beforehand with Lloyd George. He proposed that the council’s first task should be to determine what campaigns the Allies would undertake in 1918. Each government was to ask its own general staff for an opinion and pass it to the permanent military representatives, who were to examine the whole situation and advise the politicians. He drew attention to three new circumstances. First, no effective military help could be expected in 1918 from Russia, where the Bolsheviks were just opening armistice negotiations with the Central Powers, and the advisers were to assess how many enemy troops this would free for other fronts. Second, the Italian front had been stabilised after the defeat at Caporetto, and for the first time large British and French forces stood there. Third, the American army was growing, but the rate of its arrival in France depended on shipping.

Clemenceau also asked the advisers to bear in mind that the war had become largely a war of attrition and might be won by endurance rather than by a decision on the battlefield. Long offensives such as the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the fighting in Flanders in 1917 consumed enormous quantities of ammunition and material, and therefore also tonnage that could carry Americans. He recalled that Turkey and Austria-Hungary were not far from collapse. The advisers were to consider whether the defeat of Germany might not be brought closer by first crushing her allies, with the final blow better delivered only when a fully ready American army stood at the front.

Italy and Salonika

Clemenceau put the question of Italy first and asked whether the Allies should merely defend there or go over to the attack. He circulated a memorandum by General Alfred Micheler, who believed that an offensive could be carried out with 28 divisions. Orlando received the idea coolly. The council instructed the permanent representatives to examine the situation on the Italian front from the point of view of both defence and attack and to report within two weeks. Clemenceau also declared that the Salonika expedition must not be abandoned. Venizelos described the tragic state of Greece’s food supply, which hampered him in conscripting men for new divisions for the Salonika front, and asked for urgent deliveries of food.

Henry Wilson noted in his diary that the proceedings had gone very well. Clemenceau was an excellent chairman, Hankey wrote one resolution after another, Lloyd George read them out, and Clemenceau put them to the vote and they were adopted at once. The permanent representatives were given the questions of Italy, Salonika, Romania, rail transport and the Belgian army. Wilson considered that this would be enough to keep the advisers busy for some time. In conclusion the council instructed them to analyse the whole situation in view of the collapse of Russia and to prepare plans for the governments and staffs. Separate resolutions obliged ministries and staffs to supply the council with full and up-to-date information. The session ended at about 1.15 p.m.

American caution

House and Bliss had agreed that they would take no position, but only listen. They felt it would not be proper for them to speak on military matters as long as they had no soldiers in the front line. In his report to the President, House wrote that the council in its present form would not provide real unity in the direction of the war and was “almost a farce”. He believed, however, that the United States could make it an effective instrument of victory. That same afternoon the prime ministers and foreign ministers of France, Great Britain and Italy met in Paris and discussed Russia, but did not agree on a joint declaration on war aims.

The permanent representatives set to work at Versailles. On 6 December it was announced that Foch would remain in Paris as chief of staff and Clemenceau’s adviser, while Weygand would represent France at Versailles. From then on the advisers issued joint notes with recommendations to the governments. The council met again at the end of January 1918 to consider the plans for the coming year.